Macron's "Woke" Education Minster, The Kagan Family Industrial Complex, Strained HUN-POL relations, Shooters and Antidepressants, Manhattan vs. Brooklyn Cultural War
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My casual observation would be that now the election is out of the way he can now fully pursue the Davos / WEF agenda - I am not fully aware as to whether this conflicts with the French establishment but would guess that it does - would appreciate steering to any detailed thoughts you may have previously made on this.
I am critical of wokeism because it often overlooks the power structures that underly our economic system. To address the big problems such as the climate emergency, rising inequality, systemic corruption, biodiversity loss, collapsing supply chains, famines and draughts, democratic decline, surveillance and the power of AI, imperialism and war, the military-industrial complex, (the list could be made much longer), we need to go beyond the culture wars.
On the other hand, it is also clear that to tackle these problem we need a deep transformation of our society for which diversity and inclusion will be key. I am convinced that the future solutions will come not only from the WEIRD, to use a term popularized by Henrich. To summarize, wokeism is not the solution, but diversity and inclusion will play a crucial role in finding the solutions.
This country is a Wasp 🐝 Puritan Pirate Theocracy.
Wokeism is simply the latest version of Puritan Theocracy.
Ask the ☘️ how this works out, we’re literally their Fire Brigade. And Cop’s. And Troops. They couldn’t quite Genocide us so they gave us jobs. Had the Nazis made it the remaining Jews might well have had a place again at the Table.
As for the Diversely Included Dusky Retarded Sidekicks including the Kagan Purple Gang they’re on their way out. The Kagans are career criminals who focus on war profiteering, just like the inclusion of professional black peoples as diversion they’re both instantly disposable.
I just read a bit more about the Kagans. Then I tried to find out who says what about systemic corruption in the US. It is striking how little there is. Maybe it would be worth to crowdsource an effort mapping out systemic corruption ...
Do you know some scholarly work on systemic corruption in liberal western democracies? (I know the book by Camila Vergara, but this is pretty much it.)
The US government is a Contracting Brokerage that garners support and wealth from the Contractor class, which is double or Triple the size of the Official bureaucracy and conducts any day to day business, such as SNAP/EBT, TRAC phones and all the rest. This happened in the 90s when Clinton Reinvented Government.
Anything that actually happens is contracted. Military example below.
Some civilian examples; the Obama phone was TRAC phone (Bush contract actually).
WIC gave all the Baby Formula contracts to Abbott, who had their plant closed by FDA (forcing WIC to buy private sector causing shortage).
Military - everything is contracted , and no this isn’t MIC which Clinton DOD killed - at least the Industrial No, it made sense for them
Ukraine isn’t about the dead for decades MIC it’s about contracts.
Its good for the elites as massive immediate profits from the contracts (the notion that the MIC exists is 1960s thinking and Clinton killed MIC, replaced with corrupt contractors in the 90s).
We don’t have a military industrial complex since the 90s )
We have a government contractor complex of which the military part is a small part, even with Intel tossed in not even 20% of government spending.
It’s laughable.
The contracts unlike say industrial programs that take years or decades-
- the contracts are immediate.
Moreover the military will not even cut your orders until the contracts are cut
If as in DC something sudden happens lol you can sleep in the Capitol
And eat MRES- IF your unit remembers to bring
MRES
We were scheduled to go to Jordan and knew more than a year out
We left in January 2019
In early November 2018 I mentioned it to a friend we didn’t have orders yet, he said NO your contracts aren’t cut yet.
I said oh shit.
Told the unit and the soldiers we won’t get orders until after New Years. No one in government works from November until after New Years.
Thanks a lot. This does indeed explain a lot. There must be some academics, however obscure, who have studied the Contractor class. Do you know sth?
If we want to tackle systemic corruption, we need some theory background. For example, if we want to crowdsource a wiki on systemic corruption, we need some rules of what should go in and what not. It wouldnt help to just put everything we dont like. Some systematic account of corruption would be needed.
The beauty of contracts is that they are dull. Also enforceable at law and offer opportunities for 'commercially in confidence'. Perfect for hiding graft.
Must disagree about Ukraine. There are definitely geostrategic and military drivers behind US policy there. It has been obvious for well over a decade that the Russians have won the arms race and that US conventional forces lack combat reliability, so the US response has been to get nukes as close as possible to Russian targets. WMD are Washington's only remaining card. The Ukraine conflict is all about using nuclear proliferation in Europe (changes to the fusing/ignition system in the strategic nukes, the loan of tactical nukes to Germany, the placement of nukes in Poland and Rumania) to compensate for growing US weakness. The escalation of the Ukrainian artillery assault on the Donbass in February was a sign that Washington is getting close to panic. Later this year Moscow puts SARMAT missiles in service. The Pentagon wants the Donbass crushed by then.
You’re right about Ukraine of course, although to be clearer; the warmongers in DC are not in uniform, they are in suits or bloodthirsty women in pantsuits.
Few of the 900,000 civilians in DOD served, as for Combat Veteran warmongers they do exist but mostly on MSNBC, etc.
The experience of being forced to lose wars you have won sours one on conquest, if ever that was the aim.
Our Diplomats are Warmongers, our soldiers would prefer peace.
What we need is social-networking analysis drawing on the names, CVs and bios of the corporate elite, political office-holders, Ivy league-graduating classes, service academies and the SES (senior executive service) of the federal civil administration over the last two decades. Then the 'revolving' door would start to make sense and the mentor/trainee affiliations, the para-masonic structure of the US elite would gradually open up. Without it we are blind.
I agree. But we also need to focus on the system, not only on the people. We need to come up with concrete proposals for changing the rules so that corruption becomes the exception.
The value of identifying the connections varies, depending on your immediate purpose. Targeting the right people or networks is essential for political confrontation. Besides the essence of politics (the application of power to potentially autonomous people) involves relationships between the powerful as well as relationships between rulers and ruled. Understanding precisely how the elite truly functions seems vastly better than relying on hunches or rumours.
Furthermore, exposing what is happening raises the possibility of reputational damage, in some cases even legal or political liabilities. At the very least it frustrates the deeply felt desire of the powerful for maximum privacy. Privacy is the ultimate luxury and the true caste-marker that distinguishes the elites from the plebs. The inexhaustible fury and malice of Washington towards Julian Assange derives in very large part from the fact that JA exposed the fact that Obama picked much of his first cabinet from a shortlist provided by Citibank execs. They truly fear that sort of exposure.
Re the loss of courage is profoundly demoralising, but you'll be surprised by how things will change. Once things get tougher, the opportunity costs of dissent, opposition and activism will fall steeply. The ability of the system to buy loyalty is compromised by economic failure and compounded by the reservation of so many perks for the favoured few. Downward social mobility will guarantee a surge in the numbers of seriously disaffected people. Over time numbers generate courage.
It's a shame they have been able to a large degree live off the reputation of Donald Kagan who is in my view a brilliant scholar of the Peloponnesian War (his biography on Pericles is also outstanding).
Expendable is the word! The Kagans belong to a generation reared by the Cold War. Unlike the Cold Warriors (WW2 vets) the boomer and post-boomer mandarins are and 'scholar-statesmen' are over-credentialled, unfamiliar with real danger and formed intellectually and morally by infotainment.
Well put - all of this is grounded in the materialist heresy (as is the Puritan Theocracy religious pretense notwithstanding). Also wokeism doesn't unintentionally overlook power structures which underlie the economic system but is specifically designed to undermine and detract from Marxist economic determinism to the benefit of the commercial oligarchy (this actually has its roots in the cold war) and also to debase what remains of the American middle class (an obstacle to oligarchic power)
See Phillip's response below. I don't have links but undermining the Soviet economic program on the left became a sub rosa goal of US foreign policy in the 1970s.
Woke is vile, but it is inevitable and makes sense given economic trends. One of its many functions is to justify the loss of prestige/deference to a declining class. As the US entrenches itself within the global economy, much of its working and middle class are becoming a surplus population. at least from the perspective of multinational firms. During the Cold War the US needed a well-paid, loyal, middle and working class. Today it doesn't. Woke helps manage the expectations of this class.
Woke also marks the eroding status of the upper middle class. During the New Deal era, the upper middle classes were not expected to pay a personal price for accommodating the civil rights movement. School bussing was forced onto the working and lower middle classes, sometimes at gunpoint as in South Boston. The current impact of woke on elite or sub-elite education imposes real costs on the educational experience of the professional and managerial classes. This is a real turning point.
Woke is also a legacy of the ideological side of the Cold War. During the Cold War the US became very sensitive to its image in the Third World. Many people in the Establishment argued that support for the civil rights movement was essential for winning hearts and minds in Africa and beyond. The Kirner Commission report blamed black poverty on systemic racism amongst whites in general. This directed attention/responsibility away from the Establishment. The Kirner Commission was stacked with leading Cold Warriors and eminent industrialists, the cream of the Establishment, including the Deep State.
Very interesting connection regarding wokeism and economic trends - possibly analogous to the original importance of common citizens in ancient Athens due to the need for masses of citizens as rowers to support its naval supremacy (which was the heart of its commercial empire).
20th c. welfare-capitalism was designed in no small part for the benefit of the military. During the Boer War the UK was horrified by the health problems of the recruits from urban slums. The need for a minimally healthy, physically competent, pool of cannon-fodder helped convinced the politicians of the need for a better deal for the working classes. The welfare/warfare nexus was widely understood across the political spectrum. Not just in the UK and its colonies but in Europe, Russia and America too. Forget citizens-soldiers...it was all about workers-grunts.
The decline of large standing armies (especially those mainly made up of large infantry) after the Cold War complemented the neo-liberal embrace of a covert class war by neglect and deindustrialisation. The so-called revolution in military affairs allowed the military to focus on high-tech weapons systems.
At the moment I get the impression that both the high-tech obsession and the 'woke/diversity/equity' agenda is being used to cover up a growing crisis in recruitment. Only 25% of US men of military age are suitable for enlistment. This explains the woke military with its falling standards of fitness, discipline etc: they will take anybody they can and stick those who are least suitable for military service in the non-combat wing.
This suits the wider society which sees the military as a jobs trust and dispenser of health care and veterans benefits. It suits the Dems, who see the military as a gendarmerie of last resort and who prefer this gendarmerie as politically and racially reliable as possible.
Can anyone track down the Bild article quote in the Consortium news piece? I've tried, without success. Perhaps it's originally in German and that's why.
If the Wolfowitz Doctrine underpinning neocon/neoliberal interventionist actions actually replaced tyrants with something "better" (which I guess means more like Minnesota), I'd be prepared to support it. Since it doesn't, our demonstrated ability to invade and destroy, but never successfully rebuild, leaves me ashamed.
This goes back the debate that I constantly bring up here on this Substack as to whether they are sincere in their democracy promotion, or whether it is just a smokescreen to project power globally.
I soured on the USA moments after 9/11 when the neo-conservatives were put on TV insisting that Saddam Hussein must go. So, not too long before your awakening ;)
Reagan and America got a lot of grace for the simple reason that the USSR still existed then, and because the USA and its system seemed vastly preferable to that of the Eastern Bloc for so many people. Globalism entered the scene and really took off in the 90s, and now the bill is due.
George Bush I was experienced and smart enough to exercise restraint and realize the disaster that would occur if Hussein were removed - his son was not and got steamrolled by Cheney and the other vipers
Jun 4, 2022·edited Jun 4, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Are good intentions sincere? I learned as a child that referring to my good intentions is not a valid excuse (in most circumstances) that I can use to be let off the hook when my actions harm other people. But we all make excuses if we can get away with not being challenged.
US foreign policy has never been challenged in a serious way. So these guys are free to believe their own lies and excuses. In the sense that they honestly believe their own lies and excuses they are sincere. But this is sincere in a narrow sense which takes sincerity to be a feeling, an emotion.
I would not call the American foreign policy establishment sincere in the moral sense of the word. Ethics is about being able to justify your actions towards those who have to live with the consequences.
Another growing theme of this Substack is the lack of accountability for failures, which is becoming endemic in the USA. This touches upon your comment.
There is no one to hold these people accountable, which then gives them carte blanche to proceed at will.
Is it wise to even address this problem? By focusing on it you are framing things in terms of ethics (and focusing on their minds, rather than their actions), a dimension which lends itself to bullshit of all sorts. I long ago concluded that it is better to ignore what people think about themselves ethically and focus on concrete actions and the relationship between concrete things (actions). This clarifies things eventually. The labyrinth is haunted by ghosts...ignore them and focus on what counts.
I assume that you are referring to Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud and the man responsible for introducing psychoanalysis to Madison Avenue. If so, he would have been dealing with the issue from the perspective of exhortative rhetoric. I am looking at it from the perspective of what works analytically. Naturally Bernays was right: ethics settles issues politically, so long as it is all just a matter of public opinion. Doubtless this substack newsletter can cope with both sides of things.
Jun 4, 2022·edited Jun 4, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Universalism is a European idea, conceived to work for European peoples, so we stop the disastrous wars between ourselves that have kept Europe in permanent bloodshed for millennia, often putting us in danger of being crushed by foreign empires like the Ottomans.
It has its uses, for example we really, really should NOT want Serbs and Croats to fight between themselves, we don't want Romanians and Hungarians doing it either.
Ideally we want a European Europe where every smaller tribe is safe to hold its traditions and populations mix up naturally, through trade, travel etc., as there are no real concerns about integrating Slovaks in Germany or German Saxons in Romania. My city is extremely diverse for example, without a clear ethnic majority, Romanians, Hungarians, Serbs, Croats all live side by side peacefully and their cultures mix up nicely, by itself, without any exterior hand forcing it one way or another. It's lovely, European, peaceful, with great architecture and legacy.
Mixing naturally through trade, travel, etc is historically not unrelated to universalism ... see the last chapter of Henrich's book on the WEIRD people.
You have a peaceful Europe for a time because the Americans took the West and the Russians the East and the rest is the cleverest lie we or any power on earth ever pulled off…
…you see there’s this foundation myth called EU…
…the EU began after WW2 when the French and Germans established a common market for steel and coal called the EEC… and this became the EU and…
Yes, in 1945 the Victors France and Germany decided the conditions of the Peace…
No.
No, sorry .
Now save yourselves, we 🇺🇸 are descending into an abattoir 🩸☠️
And if didn’t like 🇺🇸 1.0 wait until you see who wins here and replaces these sick Boomer looters running out the last scams.
Just to complicate things, the EU is the US sponsored take on a succession of plans for European economic integration. The US utilised planning/thinking on economics and industry that had been developed by the Nazis and their allies during WW2. This in turn relied on thinking first developed by the Germans during WW1. The underlyng ideas (using the transnational regulation of law and monetary policy to create integrated economic zones that remain divided into nominally sovereign states) was unchanged. The rhetoric and PR is heavily reworked to suit Anglo preferences.
The social conflicts of 2022 are no longer religious. The past religious conflicts were often still tribal. Faith cannot bring together Sudanese and Norwegians. There is no tool to transcend ethnos other than millennia of reproduction.
Universalism is only possible or credible within zones established by prior imperial success. Pre-Alexandrian Greeks were not universalists. The Romans became universalists only after they had settled into their empire and crushed attempts to disrupt imperial control. Modern European universalism was made possible by Latin Christianity and the Holy Roman Empire. The current re-iteration of universalism extends no further than the borders of the EU or the use of the petro-dollar.
Universalism is the politics of the regnant ethnic group once it can relax. Its values are universal, everyone else's are tribal or sectarian.
Finally, the tolerance to which Random alludes is real (and deserves to be appreciated), but it was made possible in the first place by the ruin and cruelty of several world wars which destroyed a great deal of the troubling social, ethnic and sectarian diversity that exists no more. The mitigated, domesticated, and tranquilised diversity of the late democratic system involves an exchange of tolerance between largely identical social and cultural groups.
Due to an accident of my Dad's employment at the time, I was born and spent the first five years of my life just outside of NYC. I've been back a few times to visit friends from University and the place never fails to disgust me. It's not just that I prefer the quiet backwoods I spent most of my life in, though I do, but the culture is just so alien. Spent a week with an old friend who was doing post grad theatre school(not gay but very fat, excellent for typecasting as Nazi #3 in Diary of Anne Frank) and the effete hipsters mixed with hasidic Jews was like some ridiculous combination out of a satire. Spent about forty bucks on sausages and beer and immediately wanted to get back on the plane. I liked Chicago more and I barely avoided getting mugged there.
If any New Yorkers read this, rest assured, I don't care and the place only doesn't reek to you because you're used to it. And I literally live in a swamp.
Jun 5, 2022·edited Jun 5, 2022Liked by Niccolo Soldo
Regarding Nuland and her neo-con friends in Washington this guy I found only recently makes some great videos discussing their activities in great detail, the rabbit hole goes very deep.
Moral cripples like the Kagans are a second order problem. The important thing about them is the function they play. They are entertainers in a real-life performance pitched for viewers reared on garbage like THE WEST WING or HOUSE OF CARDS.
The Kagans front a political project that serves the public relations and inter-governmental functions of the US foreign policy. Their rhetoric, personae, and writings fulfill this function. They are virtuoso bullshit-artists…star performers amongst the imagined scholar-statesmen of the Beltway, the sopohistocastrati of the American meritocracy.
Something of the true agenda at work is discernible from the identity of the corporate donors who finance the think-tanks. Identifying these donors by name is heuristically valuable but the whole miserable drama remains a blur.
My take on the Obama/Kagan meeting is simple. Obama was publicly signalling that he had received the message. In reality, a change in policy would have already been decided, but a contrived public difference of opinion between the fake scholar-president and the fake scholar-statesman was staged. This is the political kabuki of an elite that imagines itself to be refined.
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New material coming this next week. Enjoy your weekend.
Great roundup!
Could Macron be a double agent, working to restore the French 'populist' right to power?
Or is he just another 'young leader', trained to double down on the narrative until they literally lose their heads...
He is a 100% creature of the French establishment. There's nothing deeper to him than that.
My casual observation would be that now the election is out of the way he can now fully pursue the Davos / WEF agenda - I am not fully aware as to whether this conflicts with the French establishment but would guess that it does - would appreciate steering to any detailed thoughts you may have previously made on this.
I think your Occam's Razor approach is quite valid in this instance.
This begs an interesting question - what is the French establishment?
Who are these people, institutions, centers of power?
Are they the same as they were 50 or 100 years ago, and if not, why not?
The answer to these questions would explain Macron's real goals.
I don’t know the situation in France and I hope someone who knows better could explain.
France can be rather opaque for us outsiders.
Very useful, I would never come across this stuff on my own, so thank you.
I am critical of wokeism because it often overlooks the power structures that underly our economic system. To address the big problems such as the climate emergency, rising inequality, systemic corruption, biodiversity loss, collapsing supply chains, famines and draughts, democratic decline, surveillance and the power of AI, imperialism and war, the military-industrial complex, (the list could be made much longer), we need to go beyond the culture wars.
On the other hand, it is also clear that to tackle these problem we need a deep transformation of our society for which diversity and inclusion will be key. I am convinced that the future solutions will come not only from the WEIRD, to use a term popularized by Henrich. To summarize, wokeism is not the solution, but diversity and inclusion will play a crucial role in finding the solutions.
Diversely included lol
This country is a Wasp 🐝 Puritan Pirate Theocracy.
Wokeism is simply the latest version of Puritan Theocracy.
Ask the ☘️ how this works out, we’re literally their Fire Brigade. And Cop’s. And Troops. They couldn’t quite Genocide us so they gave us jobs. Had the Nazis made it the remaining Jews might well have had a place again at the Table.
As for the Diversely Included Dusky Retarded Sidekicks including the Kagan Purple Gang they’re on their way out. The Kagans are career criminals who focus on war profiteering, just like the inclusion of professional black peoples as diversion they’re both instantly disposable.
We’re only expendable ☘️
Its a step up.
I joke but I’m serious.
I just read a bit more about the Kagans. Then I tried to find out who says what about systemic corruption in the US. It is striking how little there is. Maybe it would be worth to crowdsource an effort mapping out systemic corruption ...
Herculean task
Do you know some scholarly work on systemic corruption in liberal western democracies? (I know the book by Camila Vergara, but this is pretty much it.)
To be honest I can't say that I do because the subject is treated very dryly.
That’s a task that would strain the powers of Lucifer, never mind poor Hercules.
Contractors.
In a word.
Mr Kurz your answer is Contractors in a word.
The US government is a Contracting Brokerage that garners support and wealth from the Contractor class, which is double or Triple the size of the Official bureaucracy and conducts any day to day business, such as SNAP/EBT, TRAC phones and all the rest. This happened in the 90s when Clinton Reinvented Government.
Anything that actually happens is contracted. Military example below.
Some civilian examples; the Obama phone was TRAC phone (Bush contract actually).
WIC gave all the Baby Formula contracts to Abbott, who had their plant closed by FDA (forcing WIC to buy private sector causing shortage).
Military - everything is contracted , and no this isn’t MIC which Clinton DOD killed - at least the Industrial No, it made sense for them
Ukraine isn’t about the dead for decades MIC it’s about contracts.
Its good for the elites as massive immediate profits from the contracts (the notion that the MIC exists is 1960s thinking and Clinton killed MIC, replaced with corrupt contractors in the 90s).
We don’t have a military industrial complex since the 90s )
We have a government contractor complex of which the military part is a small part, even with Intel tossed in not even 20% of government spending.
It’s laughable.
The contracts unlike say industrial programs that take years or decades-
- the contracts are immediate.
Moreover the military will not even cut your orders until the contracts are cut
If as in DC something sudden happens lol you can sleep in the Capitol
And eat MRES- IF your unit remembers to bring
MRES
We were scheduled to go to Jordan and knew more than a year out
We left in January 2019
In early November 2018 I mentioned it to a friend we didn’t have orders yet, he said NO your contracts aren’t cut yet.
I said oh shit.
Told the unit and the soldiers we won’t get orders until after New Years. No one in government works from November until after New Years.
Exactly as I said
No orders until after New Years weekend
This of course is every Makes a lot more sense
Contracts are immediate needs such as food
Fuel
Housing
Sanitation
Everything
Anyone can be an LLC
Anyone’s family can be LLC
And they are
Millions of them
No election changes that-)
Thanks a lot. This does indeed explain a lot. There must be some academics, however obscure, who have studied the Contractor class. Do you know sth?
If we want to tackle systemic corruption, we need some theory background. For example, if we want to crowdsource a wiki on systemic corruption, we need some rules of what should go in and what not. It wouldnt help to just put everything we dont like. Some systematic account of corruption would be needed.
No, sorry.
Respectfully we don’t need to study the problem.
We need to act, or silently accept our fate.
Making information publicly available and accessible is a form of action.
The beauty of contracts is that they are dull. Also enforceable at law and offer opportunities for 'commercially in confidence'. Perfect for hiding graft.
Must disagree about Ukraine. There are definitely geostrategic and military drivers behind US policy there. It has been obvious for well over a decade that the Russians have won the arms race and that US conventional forces lack combat reliability, so the US response has been to get nukes as close as possible to Russian targets. WMD are Washington's only remaining card. The Ukraine conflict is all about using nuclear proliferation in Europe (changes to the fusing/ignition system in the strategic nukes, the loan of tactical nukes to Germany, the placement of nukes in Poland and Rumania) to compensate for growing US weakness. The escalation of the Ukrainian artillery assault on the Donbass in February was a sign that Washington is getting close to panic. Later this year Moscow puts SARMAT missiles in service. The Pentagon wants the Donbass crushed by then.
You’re right about Ukraine of course, although to be clearer; the warmongers in DC are not in uniform, they are in suits or bloodthirsty women in pantsuits.
Few of the 900,000 civilians in DOD served, as for Combat Veteran warmongers they do exist but mostly on MSNBC, etc.
The experience of being forced to lose wars you have won sours one on conquest, if ever that was the aim.
Our Diplomats are Warmongers, our soldiers would prefer peace.
What we need is social-networking analysis drawing on the names, CVs and bios of the corporate elite, political office-holders, Ivy league-graduating classes, service academies and the SES (senior executive service) of the federal civil administration over the last two decades. Then the 'revolving' door would start to make sense and the mentor/trainee affiliations, the para-masonic structure of the US elite would gradually open up. Without it we are blind.
I agree. But we also need to focus on the system, not only on the people. We need to come up with concrete proposals for changing the rules so that corruption becomes the exception.
And if we see what then?
Look down, we lost our balls.
Improving our view of the enemy only wastes time and will paralyze whatever will we have left.
The value of identifying the connections varies, depending on your immediate purpose. Targeting the right people or networks is essential for political confrontation. Besides the essence of politics (the application of power to potentially autonomous people) involves relationships between the powerful as well as relationships between rulers and ruled. Understanding precisely how the elite truly functions seems vastly better than relying on hunches or rumours.
Furthermore, exposing what is happening raises the possibility of reputational damage, in some cases even legal or political liabilities. At the very least it frustrates the deeply felt desire of the powerful for maximum privacy. Privacy is the ultimate luxury and the true caste-marker that distinguishes the elites from the plebs. The inexhaustible fury and malice of Washington towards Julian Assange derives in very large part from the fact that JA exposed the fact that Obama picked much of his first cabinet from a shortlist provided by Citibank execs. They truly fear that sort of exposure.
Re the loss of courage is profoundly demoralising, but you'll be surprised by how things will change. Once things get tougher, the opportunity costs of dissent, opposition and activism will fall steeply. The ability of the system to buy loyalty is compromised by economic failure and compounded by the reservation of so many perks for the favoured few. Downward social mobility will guarantee a surge in the numbers of seriously disaffected people. Over time numbers generate courage.
It's a shame they have been able to a large degree live off the reputation of Donald Kagan who is in my view a brilliant scholar of the Peloponnesian War (his biography on Pericles is also outstanding).
Expendable is the word! The Kagans belong to a generation reared by the Cold War. Unlike the Cold Warriors (WW2 vets) the boomer and post-boomer mandarins are and 'scholar-statesmen' are over-credentialled, unfamiliar with real danger and formed intellectually and morally by infotainment.
Well put - all of this is grounded in the materialist heresy (as is the Puritan Theocracy religious pretense notwithstanding). Also wokeism doesn't unintentionally overlook power structures which underlie the economic system but is specifically designed to undermine and detract from Marxist economic determinism to the benefit of the commercial oligarchy (this actually has its roots in the cold war) and also to debase what remains of the American middle class (an obstacle to oligarchic power)
I'd be interested to hear more about the connection you make with the cold war.
See Phillip's response below. I don't have links but undermining the Soviet economic program on the left became a sub rosa goal of US foreign policy in the 1970s.
Woke is vile, but it is inevitable and makes sense given economic trends. One of its many functions is to justify the loss of prestige/deference to a declining class. As the US entrenches itself within the global economy, much of its working and middle class are becoming a surplus population. at least from the perspective of multinational firms. During the Cold War the US needed a well-paid, loyal, middle and working class. Today it doesn't. Woke helps manage the expectations of this class.
Woke also marks the eroding status of the upper middle class. During the New Deal era, the upper middle classes were not expected to pay a personal price for accommodating the civil rights movement. School bussing was forced onto the working and lower middle classes, sometimes at gunpoint as in South Boston. The current impact of woke on elite or sub-elite education imposes real costs on the educational experience of the professional and managerial classes. This is a real turning point.
Woke is also a legacy of the ideological side of the Cold War. During the Cold War the US became very sensitive to its image in the Third World. Many people in the Establishment argued that support for the civil rights movement was essential for winning hearts and minds in Africa and beyond. The Kirner Commission report blamed black poverty on systemic racism amongst whites in general. This directed attention/responsibility away from the Establishment. The Kirner Commission was stacked with leading Cold Warriors and eminent industrialists, the cream of the Establishment, including the Deep State.
Very interesting connection regarding wokeism and economic trends - possibly analogous to the original importance of common citizens in ancient Athens due to the need for masses of citizens as rowers to support its naval supremacy (which was the heart of its commercial empire).
20th c. welfare-capitalism was designed in no small part for the benefit of the military. During the Boer War the UK was horrified by the health problems of the recruits from urban slums. The need for a minimally healthy, physically competent, pool of cannon-fodder helped convinced the politicians of the need for a better deal for the working classes. The welfare/warfare nexus was widely understood across the political spectrum. Not just in the UK and its colonies but in Europe, Russia and America too. Forget citizens-soldiers...it was all about workers-grunts.
The decline of large standing armies (especially those mainly made up of large infantry) after the Cold War complemented the neo-liberal embrace of a covert class war by neglect and deindustrialisation. The so-called revolution in military affairs allowed the military to focus on high-tech weapons systems.
At the moment I get the impression that both the high-tech obsession and the 'woke/diversity/equity' agenda is being used to cover up a growing crisis in recruitment. Only 25% of US men of military age are suitable for enlistment. This explains the woke military with its falling standards of fitness, discipline etc: they will take anybody they can and stick those who are least suitable for military service in the non-combat wing.
This suits the wider society which sees the military as a jobs trust and dispenser of health care and veterans benefits. It suits the Dems, who see the military as a gendarmerie of last resort and who prefer this gendarmerie as politically and racially reliable as possible.
Can anyone track down the Bild article quote in the Consortium news piece? I've tried, without success. Perhaps it's originally in German and that's why.
Maybe German Reader can help?
Vielen Dank
German Reader came through - https://www.bild.de/politik/inland/muenchner-sicherheitskonferenz/was-us-politiker-ueber-deutschland-denken-39678276.bild.html
If the Wolfowitz Doctrine underpinning neocon/neoliberal interventionist actions actually replaced tyrants with something "better" (which I guess means more like Minnesota), I'd be prepared to support it. Since it doesn't, our demonstrated ability to invade and destroy, but never successfully rebuild, leaves me ashamed.
This goes back the debate that I constantly bring up here on this Substack as to whether they are sincere in their democracy promotion, or whether it is just a smokescreen to project power globally.
Thanks, appreciate your taking the time. What might have been on Iraq reconstruction (punchline: Jay Garner), was my awakening
I soured on the USA moments after 9/11 when the neo-conservatives were put on TV insisting that Saddam Hussein must go. So, not too long before your awakening ;)
I soured in the mid 80s with that guy called Reagan.
Still needed as a counter force to the oligarch's current faves though.
Reagan and America got a lot of grace for the simple reason that the USSR still existed then, and because the USA and its system seemed vastly preferable to that of the Eastern Bloc for so many people. Globalism entered the scene and really took off in the 90s, and now the bill is due.
George Bush I was experienced and smart enough to exercise restraint and realize the disaster that would occur if Hussein were removed - his son was not and got steamrolled by Cheney and the other vipers
Are good intentions sincere? I learned as a child that referring to my good intentions is not a valid excuse (in most circumstances) that I can use to be let off the hook when my actions harm other people. But we all make excuses if we can get away with not being challenged.
US foreign policy has never been challenged in a serious way. So these guys are free to believe their own lies and excuses. In the sense that they honestly believe their own lies and excuses they are sincere. But this is sincere in a narrow sense which takes sincerity to be a feeling, an emotion.
I would not call the American foreign policy establishment sincere in the moral sense of the word. Ethics is about being able to justify your actions towards those who have to live with the consequences.
Another growing theme of this Substack is the lack of accountability for failures, which is becoming endemic in the USA. This touches upon your comment.
There is no one to hold these people accountable, which then gives them carte blanche to proceed at will.
If you don’t read “The Past has Another Pattern” by George Ball you’re not going to understand the sincerity of our ruling psychopath class.
Is it wise to even address this problem? By focusing on it you are framing things in terms of ethics (and focusing on their minds, rather than their actions), a dimension which lends itself to bullshit of all sorts. I long ago concluded that it is better to ignore what people think about themselves ethically and focus on concrete actions and the relationship between concrete things (actions). This clarifies things eventually. The labyrinth is haunted by ghosts...ignore them and focus on what counts.
Bernays felt otherwise
I assume that you are referring to Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud and the man responsible for introducing psychoanalysis to Madison Avenue. If so, he would have been dealing with the issue from the perspective of exhortative rhetoric. I am looking at it from the perspective of what works analytically. Naturally Bernays was right: ethics settles issues politically, so long as it is all just a matter of public opinion. Doubtless this substack newsletter can cope with both sides of things.
Not sure what the Kagan’s have to do but they’re gonna bring the Thunder down again, hope it was worth it.
No pity left here for anyone above the age of 15. Nope.
This is a good account of Consortium News' interaction with NewsGuard, and defense of their reporting on Ukraine.
https://scheerpost.com/2022/06/03/u-s-state-affiliated-newsguard-targets-consortium-news/
I had this bookmarked, but haven't gotten around to reading it yet. Will do so now, thanks.
“ The author is correct: New York DOES set the tone for the rest of America.”
You’re just being Canadian, so 🛑 stop.
Yes you are too.
Unrelated to the article but I was wondering when you’ll be back on the bird app/how to find your new @
I will let you guys know if and when I go back.
I’m waiting for Musk.
I’ve been cancelled so many times 😂
tfw when no fbf on the tl
Hey bro!
Universalism is a European idea, conceived to work for European peoples, so we stop the disastrous wars between ourselves that have kept Europe in permanent bloodshed for millennia, often putting us in danger of being crushed by foreign empires like the Ottomans.
It has its uses, for example we really, really should NOT want Serbs and Croats to fight between themselves, we don't want Romanians and Hungarians doing it either.
Ideally we want a European Europe where every smaller tribe is safe to hold its traditions and populations mix up naturally, through trade, travel etc., as there are no real concerns about integrating Slovaks in Germany or German Saxons in Romania. My city is extremely diverse for example, without a clear ethnic majority, Romanians, Hungarians, Serbs, Croats all live side by side peacefully and their cultures mix up nicely, by itself, without any exterior hand forcing it one way or another. It's lovely, European, peaceful, with great architecture and legacy.
Mixing naturally through trade, travel, etc is historically not unrelated to universalism ... see the last chapter of Henrich's book on the WEIRD people.
If this worked WW1 would not have happened.
You have a peaceful Europe for a time because the Americans took the West and the Russians the East and the rest is the cleverest lie we or any power on earth ever pulled off…
…you see there’s this foundation myth called EU…
…the EU began after WW2 when the French and Germans established a common market for steel and coal called the EEC… and this became the EU and…
Yes, in 1945 the Victors France and Germany decided the conditions of the Peace…
No.
No, sorry .
Now save yourselves, we 🇺🇸 are descending into an abattoir 🩸☠️
And if didn’t like 🇺🇸 1.0 wait until you see who wins here and replaces these sick Boomer looters running out the last scams.
Just to complicate things, the EU is the US sponsored take on a succession of plans for European economic integration. The US utilised planning/thinking on economics and industry that had been developed by the Nazis and their allies during WW2. This in turn relied on thinking first developed by the Germans during WW1. The underlyng ideas (using the transnational regulation of law and monetary policy to create integrated economic zones that remain divided into nominally sovereign states) was unchanged. The rhetoric and PR is heavily reworked to suit Anglo preferences.
All very true ⬆️
The CDU’s program of course is the er prior program with the Cross as opposed to ☠️
Universalism died with the Church.
The US Government is the first plausible replacement.
Politics makes a poor Religion.
Power a poor God.
Government a poor Church.
But that’s our offer.
And its actually a demand.
It doesn’t get any better for them not knowing this is exactly what they are doing and what they want.
The social conflicts of 2022 are no longer religious. The past religious conflicts were often still tribal. Faith cannot bring together Sudanese and Norwegians. There is no tool to transcend ethnos other than millennia of reproduction.
In America all the political conflicts are religious- the Party is the Church
Universalism is only possible or credible within zones established by prior imperial success. Pre-Alexandrian Greeks were not universalists. The Romans became universalists only after they had settled into their empire and crushed attempts to disrupt imperial control. Modern European universalism was made possible by Latin Christianity and the Holy Roman Empire. The current re-iteration of universalism extends no further than the borders of the EU or the use of the petro-dollar.
Universalism is the politics of the regnant ethnic group once it can relax. Its values are universal, everyone else's are tribal or sectarian.
Finally, the tolerance to which Random alludes is real (and deserves to be appreciated), but it was made possible in the first place by the ruin and cruelty of several world wars which destroyed a great deal of the troubling social, ethnic and sectarian diversity that exists no more. The mitigated, domesticated, and tranquilised diversity of the late democratic system involves an exchange of tolerance between largely identical social and cultural groups.
Due to an accident of my Dad's employment at the time, I was born and spent the first five years of my life just outside of NYC. I've been back a few times to visit friends from University and the place never fails to disgust me. It's not just that I prefer the quiet backwoods I spent most of my life in, though I do, but the culture is just so alien. Spent a week with an old friend who was doing post grad theatre school(not gay but very fat, excellent for typecasting as Nazi #3 in Diary of Anne Frank) and the effete hipsters mixed with hasidic Jews was like some ridiculous combination out of a satire. Spent about forty bucks on sausages and beer and immediately wanted to get back on the plane. I liked Chicago more and I barely avoided getting mugged there.
If any New Yorkers read this, rest assured, I don't care and the place only doesn't reek to you because you're used to it. And I literally live in a swamp.
Regarding Nuland and her neo-con friends in Washington this guy I found only recently makes some great videos discussing their activities in great detail, the rabbit hole goes very deep.
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheNewAtlas/videos
I always tell my kids 3 things every night before I put them to bed: 1.) study hard 2.) be respectful 3.) never trust a Kagan.
Moral cripples like the Kagans are a second order problem. The important thing about them is the function they play. They are entertainers in a real-life performance pitched for viewers reared on garbage like THE WEST WING or HOUSE OF CARDS.
The Kagans front a political project that serves the public relations and inter-governmental functions of the US foreign policy. Their rhetoric, personae, and writings fulfill this function. They are virtuoso bullshit-artists…star performers amongst the imagined scholar-statesmen of the Beltway, the sopohistocastrati of the American meritocracy.
Something of the true agenda at work is discernible from the identity of the corporate donors who finance the think-tanks. Identifying these donors by name is heuristically valuable but the whole miserable drama remains a blur.
My take on the Obama/Kagan meeting is simple. Obama was publicly signalling that he had received the message. In reality, a change in policy would have already been decided, but a contrived public difference of opinion between the fake scholar-president and the fake scholar-statesman was staged. This is the political kabuki of an elite that imagines itself to be refined.