Ukraine is the iceberg tip and deeper struggles. The politics of divisiveness... and talk of civil war.

Two topics this time. 

First, my FB followers already saw this, but there are reasons to suspect that a lot more is going on, in the current Ukraine Imbroglio than readily meets the eye. 

Then I'll dive into the fractious political situation in the U.S., offering some insights you'll not see elsewhere. Perhaps... because I'm a nut and every other 'pundit' knows better? (I suppose that's possible!) Or else I'm trained to step back... like a Tex Avery character... and see things from a place some distance off the cliff.

== Are we in a "Cool War" that might turn hot... out of desperation? ==

My SFnal spidey sense powers are tingling over this Ukraine crisis… and not in ways that you’ll find in headlines. For example, across the last year, several subsea fiber cables have mysteriously failed. And abruptly, recently, the Russian Navy held exercises over the very patch where several more cables from North America converge on Ireland. (Note that a command delay device can be left in place, after such a distraction. So we’re not safe when that fleet moves on.) Russian and Chinese anti-satellite tests threaten what they tell themselves is the US military’s over-dependence upon space assets. And you can be sure a flurry of recent US defense launches are related, in some degree.

Vladimir Putin’s four year springtime of easy successes, after his triumph in the 2016 U.S. elections, has been followed by a year of winter-setbacks of which we only see iceberg-tip - which might include unseen pokes by unleashed western agencies who are no longer held back by a White House quisling, retaliating for what only a fool would not call relentless acts of war by the Kremlin’s FSB.

Moreover, speaking of winter, a big ticking clock is counting down for Vlad, as an invigorated NATO will now invest heavily in energy alternatives to (at last) free Europe from Russian gas.

All of the Ukraine headlines make sense in this context, as the bluster of a deeply desperate man and regime. And desperate men can be especially dangerous! They scream “Look at me! Respect me! I am dangerous!”

Frantically, they clutch the delusion of “western cowardly decadence” that Americans, especially, have had to disprove, expensively, almost every generation since the 1770s. (Australians, too, recently proved they are not so easy to intimidate.) It is the emotional recourse of those who cannot comprehend the concept of positive sum.

And so I get to my proposal... my call for someone, somewhere, to hunt down the rights to republish… at least online… a dire warning scenario from the 1980s - Frederik Pohl’s novel THE COOL WAR. Some of you know I have touted it for years, as a hugely plausible tale of worldwide failure, that depicts all nations devolving into a relentless cycle of tit-for-tat international sabotage.

Fred was spectacularly prescient quite often, e.g. in one book he became the only author before 1990 to predict cell phones would become speaking, all-purpose digital assistants.

But the COOL WAR is what we need circulating right now! Yes, even (temporarily) in pirated form! I think the meme and lesson is that important.

== Oh the (political ironies! ==

Dick Cheney came to the Capitol on the anniversary of the January 6 uprising - and said he's 'deeply disappointed in GOP leadership. Oof. When Dick Cheney, who sold us out amid lies and theft of tens of billions of dollars, has had a bellyful of Republican turpitude and insanity, you get a scale, a metric, by which to measure the depth of depravity in today's top GOP/confederate caste.

'When asked for his reaction to Republican leadership’s handling of this day (January 6), Cheney -- not one to mince words -- said, "Well, it’s not a leadership that resembles any of the folks that I knew when I was here for 10 years -- dramatically."'

It's not just that the Trump-McConnell-Graham + the Fox/Putin gang are worse thieves and liars, outdoing even the infamous Cheney Iraq Logistics Scam. What I believe bothers the Cheneys and Romney etc. above all is the stupidity of threatening the very survival of an American Republic on whose arteries these parasites sucked for so long. 

Killing the goose that laid their golden eggs might lead to revolution, of one sort or another. Even a mild version could shine radicalized transparency into corners they thought safely hidden. Today's central Foxite mantra, repeated at all levels every day... "Don't look!"... won't work for much longer, if the Trumpites keep riling things.

Like Isoroku Yamamoto in 1941, Cheney's clade of satiably careful parasites fears awakening a sleeping giant - the sane American majority - and uniting all of the fact professions in purposeful wrath, determined to cleanse everything with light.

But heedless of that danger - and likely propelled by blackmail - the Trumpist cult stomps on the accelerator, toward a cliff of civil war they are deluded enough to think that they can win.

== Extremism in politics ==

This remarkable (and chilling) chart summarizes ongoing research and appraisal of the wide variety of riled up domestic extremist groups churning within the U.S., from old-fart “Oath-Keepers” to your disorganized but verbally violent incels and ‘stochastic haters.' And many of them are resembling more and more the “Holnists” I portrayed in The Postman as the straw that broke America’s – and the world’s – back. 

Want an important and cogent reminder of how vulnerable our enlightenment experiment in America is to civil division? 'In his Farewell Address, George Washington was almost fantastically lucid about the situation the United States faces at this exact moment. “I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations,” he warned. “This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.” The Founding Father saw hyper-partisanship as the greatest danger to American democracy. Almost 250 years later, he’s been proven correct.'

This an excerpt from Stephen Marche’s latest book: The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future:

I've written elsewhere of how fundamental the problem is, to the fate of humanity, the planet... and possibly the galaxy! 6000 years (or much more) of brutally stupid feudalist rule cauterized most civilizations on Earth, propelled by a darwinian trap of male nature, observed in species as diverse as lions and rabbits, orcas and elephant seals. 

Squint at all of them and you'll see overlaps with feudal lords, kings, theocrats and sons of Heaven, all striving to maximize dominance and reproduction by their own sons. And we are all -- all of us -- descended from the harems of the men who pulled that off.

But, just a few times -- perhaps only on this planet -- a rare alternative emerged, tried experimentally in Periclean Athens, then da Vinci's Florence, then Amsterdam and now succeeding against all odds, here and in other points of light, around the globe.

That alternative attractor state - with flattened/accountable hierarchies and maximized flat-fair-cooperative competition, and now moderated by female viewpoints - has proved so vastly more fecund, creative, productive, scientific, fun... and incrementally more fair... than all feudal systems, combined. It should be a no-brainer to prefer this... 

...proving that the worldwide cabal of oligarchs trying to bring it down right now have (essentially) no brains. (In EXISTENCE I portray what trillionaires might do who are actually smart, and not surrounded with sycophant flatterers.)

The very same nerd professions they now wage war against - through vile agents like Fox News - will remember. If the oligarch mafia succeeds in toppling this Experiment, they will thereupon ride tumbrels wondering: 

"What went wrong? In our closed circle-jerk, it looked like such a good plan!"

So go forth and convert a MAGA. I show a dozen ways how and offer some, in Polemical Judo. But you can start by quoting Washington... and Robert Heinlein.

== Talk of Civil War ==

But okay. it is a recurring concern. So let's dive into that Civil War, stuff.

“Generals Warn Of Divided Military And Possible Civil War In Next U.S. Coup Attempt.”  In all this yammering about 'civil war," no one notes that Phase 8 has been going on for years, now. Indeed they are talking about a hot Phase 9. And while the Officer Corps of smart, educated heroes who won the Cold War and the War on Terror are fleeing the gone-mad Republican Party in droves, they still allow Fox News to blare in the noncom ready rooms. (Though not in the Navy!) And THAT is the way things may divide, if it gets bad. Picture that divide, and shiver. Watch your backs.

Here are a couple of "civil war sci fi novels" that we hope will stay fiction. Tears of Abraham by Sean Smith and Our War by Craig Di-Louie. For nonfiction: newly released: How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them, by B. A. Walter.

Dismissing the Intel/FBI/Military officer corps as "deep state" traitors is despicable. The quarter of a million heroes who helped win the Cold War and the War on Terror and who put facts before dogma. 

But attacking Gen. Mark Milley as a "procurement bureaucrat" especially chaps my hide. It shows dismal ignorance of the badges that he earned, visible in photos. Paratrooper/Airborne. Ranger. Many action & theater commendations. His home unit is the "band of brothers" 101st Airborne. And the noblest of them all, the Combat Infantryman" insignia. Also, most senior officers have either a PhD or 2-3 masters or equivalents. (Read that again, to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Major General" tune!)

 They are well-versed in science and fact, making them desperately concerned about climate change and pandemics and the blatant meddling of foreign despots in one of our political parties. For example, they know the Russians are building 12 huge new military bases to control the melting Arctic. And those spewing 'deep state" slanders at them are not worthy to shine their boots.

Those hurling 'traitor' at such heroes should use the word into a mirror.

== Miscellany that Matters ==

And of course the same twits attack every other fact-using profession, from science, teaching, medicine and law to journalism. Name one exception to the Foxite all-out war on all fact people. Make that challenge viral. 

Significant and consistent: The rise and fall of rationality in language: "The post-truth era has taken many by surprise. Here, we use massive language analysis to demonstrate that the rise of fact-free argumentation may perhaps be understood as part of a deeper change. After the year 1850, the use of sentiment-laden words in Google Books declined systematically, while the use of words associated with fact-based argumentation rose steadily. This pattern reversed in the 1980s, and this change accelerated around 2007, when across languages, the frequency of fact-related words dropped while emotion-laden language surged, a trend paralleled by a shift from collectivistic to individualistic language."

This is reflected by the way the entire Mad Right and large swathes of the far-left are obsessed with SYMBOLISM... issues that cannot be refuted by facts and have little to do with achieving palpable outcomes, but are aimed at riling up client groups. (Example: the absolute lack of any positive metrics should have refuted the "supply side" cult long ago.)

It's why every night Fox & cohorts attack the nerdy fact-centered professions, now including the US military officer corps... and why I wrote the FACT Act. 

While this semantic analysis is disturbing confirmation... it also points to possible tactics to reverse the trend.

A rant about stupidity... and the coming civil war...

An article on Salon asks "Why Can't We Have Smarter Right Wingers?"

It's been my own stark plaint for a decade -- and not from any lefty reflex. Rather, as one who openly avows some libertarian and classic "conservative" views, sprinkled in a mostly-progressive goulash.

Shouldn't there be clear-headed voices, articulating the attractiveness of balanced budgets, national readiness, genuinely competitive free enterprise, and caution in international entanglements?  Isn't it good to have someone in the room demanding: "Prove that something really is broken, before using the the blunt instrument of the state to fix it"?  

I've long felt that the best minds of the right had useful things to contribute to a national conversation -- even if their overall habit of resistance to change proved wrongheaded, more often than right.  At least, some of them had the beneficial knack of targeting and criticizing the worst liberal mistakes, and often forcing needful re-drafting.

That is, some did, way back in when decent republicans and democrats shared one aim -- to negotiate better solutions for the republic.

=Does The New Right Even Have an Agenda Anymore?=

Alas, today's Republican Establishment seems not only incapable but uninterested in negotiation or deliberation. It isn't just the dogmatism, or lockstep partisanship, or Koolaid fantasies spun -up by the Murdoch-Limbaugh hate machine.  Heck, even though "culture war" is verifiably the worst direct treason against the United States of America since Fort Sumter, that isn't what boggles most.

It's the stupidity.  The vast and nearly uniform dumbitudinousness of ignoring what has happened to conservatism, a transformation of nearly all of the salient traits of Barry Goldwater from:

* prudence to recklessness
* accountability to secrecy
* fiscal discretion to spendthrift profligacy
* consistency to hypocrisy
* civility to nastiness
* international restraint to recklessness
* efficiency to no-tomorrow wastrelness
* personal rectitude to flagrant licentiousness
* cleanliness to filthy habits
* logic to unreason

...and more, reversing:

* from respect for science to incantatory voodoo
* from an almost pedantic love of history to near total ignorance of the past
* from individual-based deliberation to lockstep party-line voting
* from belief in federalism and states' rights to excusing monolithic presidential power
* from negotiated problem-solving to strawman-based politics
* from a bookish love of statistics to justification by anecdote
* from country-first patriotism to the flagwaving kind that can instantly turn into rants about secession, the killing of civil servants and praying for the president to fail, even if that means the country going down with him.

This is not about classic left-vs-right anymore. (As if that metaphor ever held cogent meaning.) Not when every measure of national health that conservatives ought to care about -- from budget balancing to small business startups, to military readiness, to States' Rights, to the economy, to individual liberty, to control over immigration at our borders -- does vastly and demonstrably better under democrats.  With nearly 100% perfection.

(Fact avoidance is even worse when you encompass ALL of history.  Ask today's conservatives which force destroyed more freedom and nearly every competitive market, across 5,000 years.  Which foe of liberty and enterprise did Adam Smith despise?  Hint: it wasn't "socialism" or "government bureaucrats.") 

No. Given their lack of any other tangible accomplishments across the last fifteen years, one must to conclude that the core agenda of Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch and their petroprince backers really is quite simple.

To find out just how far they can push "culture war" toward a repeat of 1861.

=Is the Agenda Civil War?=

Does that sound florid and paranoid?  Well, I do try to be entertaining! 

Anyway, bear with me a bit, because the parallels are eerie.  Not only on the geographical electoral map, but in the way that vast swathes of the South would only see or hear just one point of view (in uniformly pro-slavery newspapers, back in 1861, or via talk radio today), or propounded from every white pulpit -- an incessant drumbeat of regional, ethnic and partisan hatred.  With predictable results: the demolition of national discourse, along with the murder of census workers and the bubbling froth of a new wave of Timothy McVeighs.

Obviously, this is blatantly the agenda of Murdoch and Limbaugh and their foreign backers, since they do not even offer their own measures or agenda for deliberative negotiation with the party and president chosen by the American majority. They never even try to assert that any tangible improvements in national health occurred during their long tenure in power. Indeed, can you name any effective accomplishment -- consistently pursued and unambiguously achieved -- other than to push America toward Civil War?

Why they have been doing this is open to speculation. I have my theories.  You may have yours. 

But even without knowing their true motives, one can look ahead to outcomes.  And so, I have to ask these fellows one question --

Let's say that you succeed.  Suppose, driven by your potent and effective propaganda, America's "red" population rises up and Culture War finally goes all out... do you actually think that subsequent events will be to your liking?

=The  Mistake Made by All Our Enemies=

Step back for a minute and note an important piece of psychohistory -- that every generation of Americans faced adversaries who called us "decadent cowards and pleasure-seeking sybarites (wimps), devoid of any of the virtues of manhood."
 
Elsewhere, I mark out this pattern, showing how every hostile nation, leader or meme had to invest in this story, for a simple reason.  Because Americans were clearly happier, richer, smarter, more successful and far more free than anyone else.  Hence, either those darned Yanks must know a better way of living (unthinkable!)... or else they must have traded something for all those surface satisfactions. 

 Something precious.  Like their cojones.  Or their souls.  A devil's bargain.  And hence -- (our adversaries told themselves) -- those pathetic American will fold up, like pansies, as soon as you give them a good push.

 It is the one uniform trait shown by every* vicious, obstinate and troglodytic enemy of the American Experiment.  A wish fantasy that convinced Hitler and Stalin and the others that urbanized, comfortable New Yorkers and Californians and all the rest cannot possibly have any guts, not like real men.  A delusion shared by the King George, the plantation-owners, the Nazis, Soviets and so on, down to Saddam and Osama bin Laden.  A delusion that our ancestors disproved time and again, decisively -- though not without a lot of pain.

But let's get back to my question for Murdoch and Limbaugh and their puppetmasters.  All right, so you are pushing us toward another 1861, betting that we'll tear ourselves to shreds, and that the "red" portion will dominate whatever's left standing. 

But do you even remember what happened in 1862?  In 1863 and 1864 and 1865? 

(A side bet?  Ask any of the flag-waving jingo-patriots you know, "Have you ever fantasized about riding with Nathan Bedford Forrest?"  (Name's unfamiliar? Wiki him and read it all.)  My experience, asking that question? A shockingly high percentage of the loudest "patriots" have daydreamed about riding with that brilliant traitor, cutting down their fellow citizens -- both blue and black -- with a whoop and a holler, while screaming damnation at the United States of America.  Some patriots.)

=Have They Really Thought It Out?=

But all right, Rush and Rupert and Sean and Glenn and Tafik.  Go ahead.  Push hard enough to finally wake up the real United States -- the "Blue America" that seems all mushy because it always tries reason first. The citified sophisticates who have, for generations, sent vast net-flows of their taxes toward the red counties that then bit that generous hand with rants about the "decadent cities..." even though those cities have proved to be more moral, by far.  (Compare rates of divorce, domestic violence, teen sex, STDs and yes, even abortion!) 

Even though those cities are the front lines in the modern war on terror.  Even though it was city folk who proved their courage and resilience, standing up for their country on 9/11.

Remember what finally happened almost a century and a half ago, Rush.  Pushed too far, and as a last resort, those "decadent" Americans rose up.  They donned that color blue and wore it proudly to defend the Union -- and the dream -- with their very lives.

(And this isn't just regionalist bigotry, speaking.  In every state of the Confederacy -- except South Carolina -- regiments of volunteers  marched off to wear blue and fight for the country they had given sacred oaths to defend, showing even more courage than boys from Indiana or Maine.  Ultimately, it wasn't North vs South)

 So, Sean and Glenn.  Do you have any solid reason to believe things will go differently, this time? That we, the heirs of Fremont and Hancock, are made of lesser stuff?  Really?  You think so? 

Well, you seem determined to find out.  So keep pushing. The Union will awaken.  It always has.  We always will.

=Is it Useless To Say Any Of This?=

Folks, the truth is, these guys really haven't thought it out. 

It's never occurred to them, for example, to ponder the reason why liberals aren't even tepidly trying to pass Gun Control laws, anymore. Because, after eight years of power-grabbing, centralization and abuse by the Bushite Cabal, they came to realize that they might need protection and militia recourse, someday, after all.  Especially at a time when their red neighbors are packing away bullets so fast that the factories have to work overtime, while screeching about using violence against their own freely-elected government. 

No, Hannity & co haven't thought that out, so wedded are they to the Decadence Assumption.  The smugly satisfying but ultimately fatuous notion that wimpy cowardice is all you can expect from anyone with a post-graduate degree.  (Tell it to Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.  Tell it to George Marshall.)

=Why Do All Fools Think They Are Wise?=

And so we have circled back to where we started -- the sad decline of American conservatism into cartoonish idiocy.  The puppeteers may be rich.  They may be talented provocateurs and con artists... but talent does not equate to brains.  Not when the GOP has driven off almost everybody in America who actually knows stuff, including nearly all the scientists, the skilled innovators, and most of the U.S. Officer Corps.

Alas. This is no longer even about "conservatism" anymore.  Barry Goldwater lived long enough to denounce what he saw happening to his beloved movement, and things have plummeted even father, since that great man died.

Nowadays, bottom-to-top -- and especially at the very top -- it is all about stupidity.

----------

* Oh. There was one exception to the rule that all our foes have committed the Decadence Assumption.  Ho Chi Minh never underestimated America.  His avowed hero was George Washington and he remained in awe of the U.S., all his life.  He remains the only enemy leader who ever defeated us at war, and then only because our hubris (not decadence) got the better of us.