One of the most studied and debated events in human history is the decision by the Athenian empire to send an expeditionary force to Sicily. This happened in 415 B.C. during the middle of the Peloponnesian War between the Delian League led by Athens and the Peloponnesian League led by Sparta. Athens decided to send military support to allies on Sicily who were opposed to the dominant city state of Syracuse, which also happened to be an ally of Corinth.
The Sicilian Expedition is one of those events that offers something for everyone interested in the ancient world. The politics involved in the decision to send the expeditionary force are fascinating. Then you have the military side of things, which is one of the first examples of politics undermining military effectiveness. Of course, the political psychology around the war to that point is also important. Much of Athenian politics had been shaped by war.
The decision to send the navy to Sicily would turn out to be the turning point in the war with the Spartans. The expedition was a spectacular failure. In fact, it is on the list of great military disasters in human history. The defeat not only permanently weakened the Athenians militarily, but it also crippled their political culture. The politics of the region quickly moved against Athens, leading to the overthrow of the democratic system and the eventual defeat to the Spartans.
Like all great events in history, if you ask ten people with an interest in the topic, you will get eleven theories as to what happened and what it means today. Academic careers have been made studying the war and the events surrounding it. There is also the fact that Athens, despite losing the most important war in human history, continues to cast a shadow over the West. Sparta, on the other hand, is largely remembered for being a cartoonish version of a warrior state.
It matters to us today because the Global American Empire models itself after the Athenian empire. The Athenians had a moral certainty about themselves and what they did based on their form of government. Their system was superior, therefore whatever they did to spread their system must be righteous. Of course, spreading their system often meant overthrowing the rulers of neighboring city-states and installing their system, led by people friendly with Athens.
We see the same thing with the American empire. In fact, it has become a defining feature of the system. For the last thirty years, Washington has been trying to overthrow governments around the world in defense of democracy. There is even an organization called The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which works with various tentacles of the American empire to overthrow governments around the world. The business of America is not business. It is regime change.
Like the Athenian empire, the American empire has found a way to embroil itself in a war with a land power. This proxy war with Russia over Ukraine has little to do with the facts on the ground in Ukraine and everything to do with the politics that drive the expansive polices of the American empire. Like the Peloponnesian War, this is just the latest phase of a war that goes back to the defeat of fascism, which is the analogue for the defeat of the Persians by Athens and Sparta.
Like all historical analogies, this one is far from perfect, but it does provide a lens through which to view current events. Looking at this fight with Russia as a continuation of the Cold War helps explain the actions of the people involved. For the people driving American foreign policy, the main enemy was always Russia. In fact, they were at war with Russian long before they set foot in the new Athens. World War II was just another chapter in that long fight.
This might seem like a stretch but look at the people running foreign policy for the American empire. The people named in Seymour Hersh’s piece on the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines is a who’s who of neoconservatives. All of them are members of the same club, which is led by Robert Kagan. The wife of Robert Kagan is Victoria Nuland, who runs Ukraine policy for the empire. She is also the person who engineered regime change in Ukraine in 2014.
Proof that the universe has a sense of humor is the fact that Robert Kagan is the ideological leader of the war party. He was born in Athens Greece. His father was Donald Kagan, “the Sterling Professor of Classics and History Emeritus at Yale University and a specialist in the history of the Peloponnesian War.” His book on the Peloponnesian War is excellent. His book on the Sicilian Expedition is also quite good, but more aimed at an academic audience.
Robert appears to have read none of his father’s books, as his cult has led the American empire into its own version of the Sicilian Expedition. The decision to bet on Ukraine is turning into a catastrophe. Instead of sending triremes to aid a supposed ally in order to undermine an opponent, as Athens did when she sent that expedition to Sicily, Washington has sent its prestige and military production capacity to Ukraine in a futile attempt to undermine Russia.
Much like the Sicilian Expedition, the Ukraine war has become a dynamic all its own, sweeping up everyone in the empire. The Europeans, which should know better, have gone along with Washington. In the process, they have revealed themselves to be nothing more than a collection of flunkies serving Washington. The rules-based world order that Washington has claimed to defend has also been exposed as a rigged game to serve the interests of the empire.
Probably the biggest parallel between these two events is how the political class in both cases failed to consider failure as an option. When news of the disaster reached Athens, no one believed it. No one had prepared the Athenians for the possibility of defeat, much less a catastrophe. Once reality sunk in, panic gripped the people as they processed what the disaster meant for the war. Everything about the Sicilian Expedition assumed victory was inevitable.
Something similar is brewing for Washington. For a year the war party has been feeding the political class stories about the Russians running out of weapons and Russian troops being forced to fight naked in the snow. Political leaders are given scripts with big talk about total victory and the dissolution of Russia. The public has been told nothing about the reality of the war. Once news of this disaster makes itself fully known, we may see panic and disbelief in Washington.
Again, historical analogies are never perfect. At best they help contextualize current events by providing an objective viewpoint. Washington is not Athens. Robert Kagan is not Alcibiades and there is no one playing the role of Nicias. Instead, the empire is led by spoiled children of the managerial elite that rose along with the American empire in the aftermath of Word War II. The disaster for this empire, however, will be just as real as it was for the Athenian empire.
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The fallout is going to be immense. The neocons managed to dodge the Afghan debable with amazing deftness, but how do they get out of this one? Only a massive new black flag like a “climate event”, new pandemic or WW3 is going to cover this one. As for “The public has been told nothing about the reality of the war”, hey, we aren’t the Ancient Athenians; we have all the info literally to hand via the internet. Just like the vaccines, 20 minutes on a search engine could have told the normies all the truth they needed. But, hey, that’s why we call them sheep.
“Athens and Jerusalem.” I’ve heard that from the modern Christians, but don’t much remember the theme.
As usual, I was thinking of the negroid mercenaries hired by the Canaanites.
I felt the influence of their hit-and-run raider culture turns peacetime societies into war societies, running war economies, which are different in nature and spirit from peacetime societies.
But, the Iron Age Greeks weren’t much influenced by Bronze Age Levantines, unless as inheritors born of the Collapse.
Unless…contrary to my usual bias, they were copying us. I usually project the blame in the other direction; but copying us is what these parasites do.(They do then twist our gifts into highly imaginative new configurations.)
It seems that like will cultivate like. Alcibiades and his modern analogues, for example. Perhaps people of a certain mindset seek out others of like mind; this mutual reinforcement provides leverage, itself a type of fitness test.
Most unfortunate it is that we (and everyone) have too many Alcibiades in our, or anyone’s, midst. For example, look what the blacks running the Jackson Water Dept. did to their own black city.
bush was one of the biggest pawns I’ve seen in my life.
Imagine how happy we’d all be if the US returned to isolationism.
Just leave us alone and stop the warmongering.
we owned America back then , now it is owned by a combination of Blackrock/vanguard/state street and the CCP . we don’t have enough money left to buy our economy back .
We won’t have to buy it back, we’ll take it back.
I like that attitude. I’m a bit long in the tooth to be of much help, but I wish you good cess.
Apparently the regime has refused relief for the folks in Ohio.
Guess Trump supporters are out of luck when it comes to major catastrophes (which I think was engineered).
How long till Ohio stops sending remittances to the Fed. They need that money for clean up.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/14/u-s-training-ukrainian-troops-use-less-ammo-00082765
The war will continue for a while yet, but if the above article is true then IMO the Ukraine is finished, I’m surprised it was published
Can’t even keep the artillery firing for a pretty well contained regional conflict. Some empire.
Reminds me of when, during WW2, we Brits built wooden guns to protect the English Channel. One day, the Germans bombed them – with wooden bombs.
Alcibiades, with his demagoguery and his capacity for cold-blooded treachery, seems to me an exemplary case of clinical psychopathy.
Just glancing at his Wikipedia entry, and it seems that although Alcibiades was born in Athens, he was of Spartan blood.
Being a peripatetic happy grinning hand-rubbing shape-shifting FOREIGN-BLOODED psychopath of a middleman seems to be an extremely profitable manner of organizing one’s affairs.
I also noticed the following…
Socrates [c470 – 399 BC]
Alcibiades [c450 – 404 BC]
Plato [c420s – c347 BC]
Aristotle [384 – 322 BC]
Alexander [356 – 323 BC]
Socrates was about 45 when Plato was born, and would have been about 65 as Plato was coming of age [Plato was only about 21 when Socrates died, i.e. roughly the age of a modern-day junior in college].
Plato was about 40 when Aristotle was born, and would have been about 60 or 65 as Aristotle was coming of age.
Aristotle was about 28 when Alexander was born, and would have been in his 40s as Alexander was coming of age.
Aristotle almost out-lived Alexander.
I don’t know what any of that means, but, by contrast, Alfred North Whitehead was only about 11 years older than Bertrand Russell.
If you told me 30+ years ago that I’d be agreeing with the Ayatollah’s appraisal of the good ole US of A as the “Great Satan” I’d laugh in your face.
I agree now with true horror and sorrow in my heart. We got the rulers trying to impoverish and kill us with race riots, drugs, lockdowns, mrna injections, destroying food and energy, doing a chemical attack in Ohio.
They outright promote and celebrating porn, abortion, trannies, and all forms of satanism.
AND they’re trying to provoke a nuclear war!
The population is so beaten and brainwashed over the decades, that at least half of the people are onboard and cheer it all.
America has become a nuclear-armed Satan. I hope it falls, but I fear what is necessary and happen when it does.
Aren’t we all just kind of hoping not to be collateral damage. You can’t prep for the end of the world.
To pick a nit: Americans were coddled and caressed into submission, not beaten into it
White Americans had their money, women, jobs, culture, religion, borders, race, children, and very mind, body, and soul taken away over the decades.
There were carrots and stick methods so call it what you will. I’ll stick with beating and humiliation.
And I forgot metaphorical and now literal castration.
The stage is set for Hell.
they don’t want to destroy the world , only depopulate it . they want a much smaller population for their utopia. here’s their plan.
https://www.2ndsmartestguyintheworld.com/p/fourth-toxic-train-derailment-all?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
I’m fine with depopulation – as long as Gates, Soros and Schwab lead the way.
Fake email-
I’ve agreed with bin Laden’s, “paper tiger,” comment for many years, but I’ve obviously never dared utter it in public.
I also agree with Jeffrey it is impossible to prep for SHTF. No one can anticipate every eventuality.
Best to enjoy what little time we have and get right with the Lord.
Oh for sure the evil of our country is rife with incompetenece and a “paper tiger” when the rubber hits the road on actually doing something productive and positive. But they’re not interested in being productive or doing any good. They’re real good at engineering ruin, misery, and death on their own citizens. Who do you think did 911? Not OBL.
These are power hungry monsters who are not above lying, cheating, killing, and harming children AT ALL. They’d sooner let the nukes fly then lose power. For them, it is better to rule in Hell because Heaven would surely punish them for what they’ve done. Their madness and sadism is truly terrifying and world-ending.
F. Scott Fitzgerald was prescient about the USA as he described Tom & Daisy…
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
“Planning is everything; the plan is nothing.”
Repeated often by our Belgian exchange officer and small group leader at a professional education course I completed some years ago.
Makes sense to me.
These full-on preppers make me laugh. If a crisis goes on long enough, they’ll be killed and all their stores will be stolen. All you can do is put away a few months of food at best and hope that, by then, there is some organise relief. Oh, and yes: enjoy the present and sort things out with the guy upstairs.
I first thought the “Imperial Disaster” was the Toxic Cloud over the poor souls in Ohio. If only our Cloud people could spend their days under such a cloud. They are above such mundane things. They are trancendant beings. Above Clouds. Clouds do their bidding. They bid that an actual Toxic Cloud be banished from their realm. It does not exist as the have willed it not be spoken of.
The Neo-Cunns are fighting an imaginary battle. They fight for their Image, Power, Status Revenge!!… whatever. With words. The Russians fight an existential battle. With actual weapons. Not words, narratives, spells and incantations. The Kagan Kult has neither the manpower nor the materiel to wage an actual War against a Peer Opponent. GAE MIC is profitable. Steady stock prices/dividends. But they don’t make anything anymore. They play $$ games in the Clouds. They are exceptional at ‘that’. But they don’t manufacture enough. Enough weapon systems to effectively overwhelm an actual enemy. Super complicated systems with extensive maintenance/upkeep contracts fulfil the MIC bottom line. War objectives? Not so much. GAE cannot put enough troops with necessary equipment in Ukraine to prevent the inevitable collapse. Whether they want to admit this doesn’t matter. Reality does not care. Hubris begets Chaos. Often Disaster.
I know a Marine Reserve F-35 pilot. He went to reserve status after about 17 years as a regular. Before he left he had gotten some sort of vague job with one of the contractors waiting on him when he left. He is able to work from home and travel by plane to hq a week a month or less. His travel, lodging and other expenses are company paid of course. He is paid almost $200k/year for as near as I can tell maybe 25-30 hours a week. He isn’t an aeronautical engineer and isn’t really qualified to contribute to the program especially in its current faiirly mature stage.
But everything he makes is added to the cost of every F-35, then consider everyone else working on the program. It’s no wonder that the damn things are so expensive. I like this guy but I don’t speak of his job with him because I’m so pissed off that my taxes are funding his lifestyle.
That’s why we spend so much on defense and get so little. The F-35 program should have been aborted in its very early stages and now the DOD personnel and the corporate people involved should be imprisoned and their assets seized.
I meant to add that’s why we’ll lose a peer to peer war badly and fast.
True. This will be demonstrated quire clearly when the US engages the Russian Army.
Absolutely fricking nothing we went them made the slightest difference. If they hold on long enough to actually get the US/ NATO tanks, Russia will blow them up before they reach the battlefield with the Iranian drones the Azerbaijanis did the Armenian armored divisions in their war last year
Mike-
Thanks for sharing this terrific anecdote.
Now multiply this by 1, no 5, actually, better make it 10 million across the MIC.
That is why the GAE has such an enormous defense budget that it gets it very little actual real-world performance.
“That’s why we spend so much on defense and get so little.” (regarding USA defense budget).
That is not a problem, but the main feature of of the USA defense budget. Even the average shareholders of Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed stock does not get all that much out of this scam. But.. the “defense industry” insider persons make a lot. The revolving door for persons between active duty and the defense industry is perhaps, the most core feature of all.
One of the amusing freudian slip’s, that Ii witnessed, when I was a senior engineer at General Dynamics Land Systems (GDLS), was the utter failure & wasted tax dollars of the JTLV (joint tactical light vehicle). It was a rather heavy beast, & rejected, even by the US-Army generals…, How did GDLS react to that rejection? … glad you asked…
Mark C. Roualet – Executive Vice President of Combat Systems (he was then head of GDLS.. the “cash-cow”, of all 7 General Dynamics divisions). At our annual GDLS black-tie Christmass dinner, he made a speech, after he had 3-martini’s… his drunken slurred words: “JTLV.. well, when generals don’t like our products, we convince congressman otherwise”. The audience, several hundred of us GDLS shareholders,.. gasped at this.. Mr Roualet did not even notice that gasp. 10 minutes later.. he staggered off stage, jumped in his new Jaguar car, and sped off into the snowy-slushy night of Sterling Heights Michigan.
at the satanic sermon at independence hall in philly, the teleprompt reader effectively dared people like me to revolt.
amerika is effectively daring ivan to go nuclear.
my guess is the powers that be are getting impatient with how long it is taking to bring amerika to it’s knees.
All it takes is one dead black man.
The comparison of Athens/Delian league to the GAE is something that I’ve been thinking about a long time. I like it a lot better than Roman Empire comparisons. And I really like Zman’s analogy of the current situation between GAE and Russia to the Peloponnesian War. But I don’t think this war’s Sicilian expedition has happened. Yet. The business in Ukraine isn’t it. The GAE’s Sicilian expedition will be whatever seemingly unrelated military adventure it embarks on while the conflict with Russia goes on. It remains to be seen where or when that is. Switching to a WWII analogy, it’s still 1939 or early 1940.
At this point the GAE is locked into a course of action that was set by decisions that were made years, decades ago. Although few if any really knew or bothered to think about that at the time. The decision to expand NATO eastward toward Russia, evidently for no other reason than for the sake of expansion, was indeed fateful and led us inevitably to this. It seems to have been based on the business mindset that if you’re not growing you’re shrinking. It certainly didn’t serve any American interest, but then the GAE hasn’t done that in a long time. And now the GAE risks all for no better reason than that.
I’ve always said growth for the sake of growth is cancer
It will be Taiwan
Wait until they sink the first aircraft carrier without a single loss due to missles fired from land.
My guess as well.
Will it be the USS Equity, USS Diversity, or USS Inclusion?
USS Harvey Milk
I was stuck on the “Fall of Rome” analogy until I began to read Z Man and realized that the Athenian Empire made much better sense. I still see the elite of the Roman Republic after the Gracchi (121 BC) to be foreshadows of our own.
IMO Rome is a better analogy for America than Athens because both Rome and America experienced unprecedented exponential growth for a couple of centuries that made them the predominant power in their worlds.
That was never really the case with Athens – or even Britain.
And yeah we’re a very long way from fall of rome territory.
More like the late republic and the mithridatic wars.
I don’t think are government is focused on pushing for democracies. See Iran. I think that the military industrial complex drives our foreign policy. See Ike. Washington is about money not democracy. Once again we are led into the wrong situation for the wrong reason.
If governments are like safes that pirates are always trying to crack, liberal democracy is like a shoebox on the kitchen counter with the front door of the house wide open.
It is also about interests. The money faction is not the only faction. There is a nascent nation in the region that wants Iran weakened and its regime taken down and a puppet installed. Money will be made along the way, but for some it is just an added bonus that takes a back to power and territorial ambitions in the region.
And interests do vary, but the three *great* interests of all rulers are gold (metonymically), territory under decided control (borders nowhere retreating), and what we might call “bodies under surveillance” if Foucault hadn’t almost called it that.
What we should still be calling “globohomo”—pedo-imperial war, “black girl magic” embassies, bugs & pods, currency suicide / digitized finance, internet-connected thermostats, medical passports, euthanasia and eunuchry, social media as job requirement, ugly fat women in lingerie ads (and no job for you if you’re caught posting about it), etc., etc., etc.—isn’t a singular phenomenon, quite, but it’s also not a random assemblage of professional / managerial / leisure-class fads.
Also— Bring back William the Conqueror analogies! Elon Musk is the Revolt of the Earls! You’re reading the Domesday Book right now!
i meant to say, “… takes a back seat to power …”
“we may see panic and disbelief in Washington.” – This is what it takes? the Iraq War didn’t do it? Afghanistan didn’t do it? I think part of the problem is that the American people themselves don’t consider themselves citizens. It doesn’t register. Everyone’s bought off so it doesn’t matter. “Muricah” is nothing more than an ATM for degenerates to get their cash, so they can get their cases of bud light, etc. Throw in a hundred million foreigners squatting here, doing the same thing, and citizenship is as artificial as the USSR. The entire entity is there to be pillaged until nothing is left. Whatever comes after is an argument for another day. So who cares if it loses wars left and right, no one is really invested….or so they think….
It wouldn’t be surprising if there is a world map in Davos that shows the Americas labeled as ‘Economic Zone 34.’
well this is close : it’s the general plan . https://www.2ndsmartestguyintheworld.com/p/fourth-toxic-train-derailment-all?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
This, gentlemen – unfortunately – is how the human animal rolls. If you hanged ever last chit bird in Washington today – there’d be new ones to replace them tomorrow. It is an unfortunate truism that people get the govt’s they want and deserve. If you want free stuff the morons in power will give it to you; the price of doing so should be self-evident and intuitively obvious. Nothing will change until We The People do. And We The People are becoming mostly violent brown and black retards with basement level IQs.
Things are so bad now that anyone with any sense will be screwing the American empire for all they are worth – because that is exactly what the other guy is doing. And – when the free money ends, and the lights go out and people start going hungry… put it this way – the Russians will be the last guys you have to worry about.
This is true and this i exactly why I don’t want to fly anymore. Flying never bothered me in the past, but aviation is a very peculiar thing in that you need a large group of people all on the same page to keep the pressurized aluminum cylinder from crashing to Earth. Even thought the process is mostly automated, you still have some bargain basement pajeet writing code for some important piece of avionics. Frightening if you think about it. I just waited an hour for my luggage that happened to pop up on the Air Canada carousel across the claim. The problem is, I never flew Air Canada…
“Dear passengers. Your pilot here. My name’s LaQuishia and I’m non-binary. You’ll also be pleased to know that I have had all my covid boosters.” Yep, I don’t fly anymore either.
Bleed the beast utill it’s dead
Pick at the corpse.
Gnaw the bones
When nothing is left that is when shtf. (EBT dosen’t work)
The trick is recognizing when to bail out.
Imo the beast is already dead but hasn’t fallen yet.
Doom porn.
The so-called J6 “insurrection” certainly caused a panic. More’s the pity it was merely a paroxysm of paranoia.
They’ll never give us the satisfaction of publicly panicking. Rather we’ll get a lot of media coverage to the effect of “We didn’t really care about Ukraine anyway”…… “Here’s why Russia taking Ukraine isn’t ackshually that important”
The Conservative case for giving up Ukraine?
The invasion of Sicily was fueled by hubris. A lot of hubris. Washington’s decision to go to war with Russia in its own backyard is an order of magnitude beyond that. It’s so utterly insane and retarded at the same time that… Let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised to see Biden shuffle in front of a camera, ramble about Purity Of Essence and Peace On Earth for a couple of minutes and then being hurriedly escorted into an underground bunker. Then a transvestite in a summer dress will take Biden’s place in front of the camera, anounce himself as Dame Very Lynn and start singing “We’ll meet again”. The end.
If I get the reference – as Lloyd Austin rides a nuke dropped on the Russkies. Then ‘The End’.
And we all know what comes after hubris: Nemesis
the Greek goddess of retributive justice
Mine shaft gap !
Great essay. I have been going back and looking at Athenian history lately, fits right in.
The Global American Empire? Was it ever an American Empire? It sure looks to me like the last 120+ years has been Europe dragging the United States, with the aid of ye olde North Eastern Puritan stock, in to their historical disagreements. The Brits get their tit in a wringer and then drag their former colony in to the fight as the heavy. Who shut down the peace agreement between Russia and the Ukraine? The Brits? The Neocons? Both?
It is 2023, not 1913 or 1943, and the corellation of power has reversed. The GAE calls all the shots nowadays. The EU and its people are the GAE’s catspaw in Eurasia.
Yeah, it’s always poor old america being fooled by those wily Europeans.
Also amusing to think of the Us being the heavy as it lost the same number of men as the British did in WW2 and was a bit player in WW1.
…ever since Bretton Woods.
I’ll raise you one: where are the WASPs in general? Seems to me they imploded along with W, and what we have now is a free-for-all in the power vacuum. I think of movers, shakers, and performers off the top of my head, and Bill Gates is the only one who comes to mind. Otherwise it’s blacks, Jews, Catholics, Indians, Asians, latinos, and Elon Musk. No surprise the identity crisis and the coming-apart.
But yeah, America’s domestic and foreign policies changed drastically when it got involved in Old World business, and I doubt it was for the sake of doing something different.
The W administration does appear to have been the last hurrah of the WASPs running GAE, but based on the results, they weren’t leading it anywhere good anyway.
Yep, lesson learned, I hope.
Woodrow Wilson stated he wanted to “make the world safe for democracy” aka destroy the monarchies in Europe and impose “republican” government.
It was a moral crusade.
Meanwhile, the latest article by renowned WSJ journalist Gabriel Rubin just dropped: “To Save Money, You Should Skip Breakfast”. That’s not very Christian of him. Will Stacy Abrams be required to skip a few meals, too?
You will be poisoned, you will own nothing and eat nothing and you will be happy.
Even ze bugs will be too expensive.
But really, this is nothing new. The Boskin Commission changed inflation from measuring the cost of living to measuring the cost of survival through the use of “substitution” It was sold to the public as “if the cost of ice cream goes up too much, people will try things like frozen yogurt” which was big at the time. These things are roughly the same.
But what it really means is if the price of steak goes up, you can always eat hotdogs. This particular substitution has been in the substitution list multiple times. Unlike yogurt and ice cream, hotdogs and steak are just not comparable. It is a large drop in your standard of living. It’s more a measurement of cost of calories.
The BLS calculations were changed in the late 90s to drive down the official inflation measure, not only implementing circular calculations like changing product weightings for high/low inflation items (substitution effect), but also trying to filter out product improvements, and swapping out home prices for esoteric comparable rent calculations.
Entire books could be written about the “Hedonic Adjustment”
Something tells me Garbriel Rubin isn’t missing his morning bagel and glass of Christian baby blood.
“For the last thirty years, Washington has been trying to overthrow governments around the world in defense of democracy.”
I think you meant the last 130 years, and not just for democracy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_interventions_by_the_United_States
One wonders just what happened between father and son. I’m not a close family friend or anything, but I knew Donald Kagan slightly, having attended several of his talks and even chatted with him at conferences. He didn’t seem like a lunatic. He seemed sober-minded and sensible. I guess that particular apple fell far from the tree… then got picked up by a tornado and deposited a few states over.
Donald Kagan was a respected academic, his stuff was on all my reading lists in grad school 30 years ago.
Along with guys like Mearsheimer and Walt and Morgenthau, I might add.
Classic case of spoiled children. Person works hard to provide better life for kids, but the better life ruins the offspring. To quote the philosopher Dylan: “I’m trying to read your poetry, but I’m helpless like a rich man’s child.”
I didn’t attend Yale, but did take Kissinger’s course at Harvard, and he was a very reasonable and objective analyst of foreign policy back then…When he got into national politics, things changed and he went with the flow…
That happens. I know of few better books on the insanity of Vietnam than H.R. McMaster’s Dereliction of Duty. But then Trump appointed McMaster as his National Security Adviser and he, McMaster, proceeded to do every single thing he’d excoriated in his book. Almost in the same order, as if he was using his own book on why NOT to do those things as a how-to guide.
There must be some kind of academic version of what Z Man calls “the narcotic of minor celebrity.” It’s as if they say “People are finally listening to me! Now I have to go native as fast as humanly possible.”
Somehow, the desire to be spoken well of in the New York Times seems to infect everyone who sets foot in the DC zip code
“History of the Origins of War” was one of my all-time favorite courses and Prof. Kagan was an engaging educator, not at all pretentious and very straightforward. I have nothing but good memories of him and his work, paticularly a memory of him shutting down an obnoxious feminist Marxist with a one-word rebuttal of a dismissal of his suggestion that one factor leading up to WW I was the fact that the Kaiser had a withered arm and his royal cousins bullied him when children, leading the Kaiser to challenge Britain’s blue-water navy. When Ms X had finshed her diatribe, he looked at the guy next to her, which meant he was looking her in the eye (he had an opthomological disorder), smiled a tight-lipped smile and replied “Crap”. When she made a further effort to challenge, he calmly stated “Ms X, you have never been a six year old boy fighting to protect his lunch on the playground”. Game, set, match. Would that there had been more like him! Strongly doubt there are many now. Sad that his son went off the reservation and blemished his dad’s name by becoming a warmonger.
I think we can skip over the family and go straight to Society™ for how that kid weren’t brung up right.
Derbyshire voice: “Absimilation!”
Ukraine seems to be more the equivalent of a nice body blow. It doesn’t drop the boxer, but it does damage that shows up later in the fight.
Ukraine will be a disaster, but the GAE and the neocons will spin a yarn about how Ukraine was too corrupt to use our weapons effectively and how the Russian threw wave after wave of men to finally win by shear numbers alone.
The neocons will think that everything is fine. Indeed, Ukraine was a success because it made Europe even more dependent on us.
But Ukraine seems to be putting things in motion that will hurt GAE down the road. Russia’s ability to get around the sanctions is huge. The drive to find alternatives to holding treasuries is now in high gear. The push to find a way to trade energy in something besides the dollar is also moving forward.
Also, the realization of countries that no leader is safe from American regime change attacks has changed global dynamics. Saudi Arabia understands clearly that they are not safe. That no one is safe.
People keep saying that Ukraine won’t be that bad because the American military won’t be defeated, but they’re missing America’s real powers: the dollar, treasuries and control of the global banking/trade system. If those are weakened, GAE is weakened. If alternatives to those are put in place over the next decade, GAE is mortally wounded.
“The neocons will think that everything is fine. Indeed, Ukraine was a success because it made Europe even more dependent on us.”
That was the goal. It is not the sign of a confident empire.
” Russia’s ability to get around the sanctions is huge.”
This. It seems the silver bullet has failed miserably and this bodes ill for the GAE in the near future. I’m detecting factional dissent to bail and economics may be the primary reason.
I’m actually somewhat concerned about how far the neocons will go to protect the dollar/treasury system. They know that it’s the lynchpin to our power.
If the world can hold something besides treasuries because they can trade for energy in other currencies, our debt because very problematic, which means that we can’t afford our giant military, i.e. the whole house of cards comes down.
They’re not going to let that happen easily.
Citizen-
You’ve touched on a piece of the entire reset narrative that I’ve never understood.
That is the fact that the power of the controllers rests on the dollar system and all the equities and derivatives the dollar system supports.
If the dollar system goes, the controllers will be down in the muck with the rest of us, grabbling for the day’s bug ration.
Yep, funny how a certain people with a fondness for small hats always uses finance and money to control things.
Every country in the world needs the global banking system to function and trade. The global banking system is tied to the dollar and treasuries. Control access to that system and to dollars and you control the world.
That’s what Russia, China, India and Saudi Arabia are trying to break away from. Will they be successful? I don’t know. It’s a very tough nut to crack, but they’re extremely motivated.
In the 19th and early 20th century, the Pound Sterling was the world’s reserve currency. Dutch Guilder prior to that, in Europe. People were able to transition out of them once they failed. The world can move on quickly from the dollar.
I think the issue, and thus the answer, is manifold. First, most of the control is based on the ability to direct and manipulate the flow of money, not the money itself. In a fiat currency, the actual hoard is irrelevant (I am not saying debt is pointless – I am looking at it from the putative perspective of the overlord); the ability to direct the creation of new debt is power. The ridiculous prices paid for art by the elites is proof of their contempt for actual dollar hoards. Third, as long as the collapse applies to the people on the ground, but not the overarching macro structure, the ability to reorganize the dirt people with handouts is unlimited. By gradually crashing the dollar, and then substituting a basket currency, they have only really changed their ability to institute further controls on a global level. In many ways, the dollar is already a basket currency, especially when considering the overlap between the Fed and BIS. I think the collapse of the dollar allows them to claim that this is the result of nationalism, racism, etc. and, thus, they need to implement a global currency which they administer.
Finally, I recognize that this is a gross simplification, and who knows what the heck these people plan. But I do believe that they are efficacious.
The one thing China and the other BRICS have is actual products and production. Replacing the $ system for trade may be difficult but the purpose of trade is goods. Dollars just facilitate the trade.the facilitator can be replaced unless it has the physical force to prevent its replacement.
US doesn’t have a giant military. They have an expensive one and it has been rumbled by their Ukraine adventure.
That’s why they’re pushing CBDC so aggressively.
They want their regime to survive extremely high inflation and extreme political discontent by having “private” entities control people’s lives, lock bank account for protesting, etc.
Of course I am merely stating what has already begun eg Canada.
This brings to mind one of my favorite Morrissey songs, called “Boxers”:
Losing in front of your home town
The crowd call your name
They love you all the same
The sound, the smell, and the spray
You will take them all away
And they’ll stay ’til the grave
Find the analogies where you will
Morrissey is one weird dude, but he knows the score with immigration and replacement. Irish blood, English heart is a pretty clear statement.
There’s a meme today over a WRSA with the image of an assault rifle toting, black balaclava clad IRA man saying this, “We fought for a Millenia [sic] against British rule so Ireland can become African”.
Ouch. Morrissey is not operating on that basis.
Read a few interviews with him. He’s said worse (better).
The knock on him is that he’s “based” because that’s the kind of men he finds sexually appealing.
Morrissey has a song called “National Front Disco” where he writes sympathetically about a young man in the 1990s joining Britain’s National Front. The title draws an analogy between coming out to your family as a nationalist and coming out to your family as a homo.
‘Your friends all say…
“Where is our boy? Oh, we’ve lost our boy”
But they should know
Where you’ve gone
Because again and again you’ve explained’
“England for the English!”
He was harshly criticized for this song and defended by it saying he wasn’t advocating joining the National Front, but sympathizing with a poor, young man who did. He still performs it.
He is his own man. He is such a strident vegetarian that he stopped a show at a festival in Texas because he couldn’t stand the smell of the bar-b-ques.
With the dawn of AI toys, you’re going to see a far less networked world, as countries will simply shut down internet communications with the United States to avoid the AI regime change swarms that will infest all of their media. You will also see mass expulsion of humanitarian NGO’s that are just regime change toadies.
The network will be closed just as hard as the borders in countries that are under the eye of the GAE.
There’s a pretty clear path to avoiding regime change. Keep (((Westerners))) from owning your media. Kick out NGOs. Ban foreign donors from giving to politicians. Not perfect, but it gets you a long way home.
But you’re still beholden to the global trade and financial system, which makes you vulnerable.
Japan is a good example. It keep western cultural control out of its banks and media, but it’s still reliant on the dollar and treasuries, so we have a lot of control over them.
Dude, quit with the echos crap. Gonna name the Jew, name the Jew. That the Tribe had a huge influence over Western media is pretty well accepted in these circles.
It annoys Jews more to name them without naming them. You’re mocking what they do which is pretend to be something else.
And, yes, only a person living in a cave doesn’t know that Jews control the media in the US and Europe. Probably South America as well, but I never bothered to look.
The US destroyed the Japanese financial system.
The three largest banks on the planet in 1990 were all Japanese. Even in the late ’90’s, Japan was HUGE on Wall Street.
Now? The only “global” bank still extant in Japan is Mitsubishi UFJ, which is smaller than JP Morgan. Keep in mind, MUFJ is the equivalent of a merged JPM, BofA and Wells Fargo.
“we may see panic and disbelief in Washington”
I doubt it. These people never have been held accountable for anything and have failed at everything for three generations. If there is widespread economic devastation, which certainly is possible, panic may start after the great unwashed revolt under the command of a dissident elite. Another military humiliation and generous waste of magic money, though, is just another day ending in “y.”
Finally, as historical analogies go, the GAE leadership more resembles the Habsburgs, inbred and stupid and ruling over a polyglot, multi-cultural empire they did not understand but felt fully competent to lead. Fifty years after abdication, they lived abroad in the style of Norma Desmond, thinking “no one leaves a star; that’s what makes them a star,” all the while applying more makeup and avoiding the sunlight. The Athenians, after all, were smart despite their hubris. This crowd ain’t.
Yes, “never held accountable” is key. That’s why they lurch from one f-up to another.
The GAE psychopaths are not 1/10 the Habsburgs
“The disaster for this empire, however, will be just as real as it was for the Athenian empire”.
From your mouth to Gods ears.
I don’t WANT the GAE to collapse. My family all lives within it and it is where I keep all my stuff. I’ve been to India, China and Africa and they suck.
Will I defend the GAE? Absolutely. I know my role and my place in this organism. My sons and I will be right behind the diversity and strawnk independent whamen.
The best hope for the future of your people and culture is collapse of the GAE
Amen, Mr. Whitney. Amen.
Perhaps, but timing is everything. If it collapses now, we don’t really have the numbers to influence the constitution of any successor state, likely we’d just end up under an even more unfriendly regime.
Give it 5 or 10 more years, and I suspect it’ll be a different story.
Reform, not collapse. A thorough “Scouring of the Shire”, if you will!
Be nice if things could be reformed, but that option went away irrevocably during the Covid tyranny and Biden installation (probably much earlier).
We are in the “fire-sale, everything must go” stage.
A. That’s a troll post.
B. You have no business posting in this blog.
“my role is to pay taxes for the govt to buy the loyalty breeding stupid violent people who hate me”
Being a peasant in the middle ages would be less insulting
Empires have collapsed in the past and been able to devolve into reasonably sane and functional countries. That’s America’s hope. But you will have to get rid of all the neocons and current political class.
“The disaster for this empire, however, will be just as real as it was for the Athenian empire.”
Well, not quite yet. Unlike the Athens, GloboHomoZio hasn’t yet sent an expeditionary force of its best troops to Ukraine. So far all they’ve done is spend a bunch of fiat dollars on a proxy war.
If U.S. Marines were to be defeated in an amphibious attack and the Navy got its ass kicked in the Black Sea and thousands of American POWs were to starve to death in open-air prison camps, that would parallel the Athenian defeat.
Could happen, sure… but we’re getting ahead of the game. Imperial collapse porn has become a thing on the dissident Right, and I am not necessarily unsympathetic to it, but we cannot discount the possibility that imperial collapse could also take decades if not centuries, a slow but steady loss of territory and influence — i.e. the Ottoman Empire and the British Empire.
Yeah. I agree with you. We probably won’t live to see the “collapse”, as it will likely take a few more generations. Of course, I agree with Zman that the Neocons are doing their level best to accelerate the process.
Now it could be argued that eventually people will stop taking orders from us and accepting our green paper money. And this could happen sooner rather than later. But they still are for some reason, despite our losses in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. These were bigger Ls in terms of $ and lives than the one we’re going to take in Ukraine.
Unless, of course, the nukes fly……
Ukraine isn’t about the war on the ground. It’s about the dollar, treasuries and the energy trade.
But, yes, it’s a slow grind downward, not a spectacular fall.
It’s obvious we have military boots on the ground in Ukraine, on top of all the high tech support we are giving them. The real question is going to be when the bodies of our troops start showing up at a rate that the military can no longer discount them as mercenaries anymore.
Unfortunately, mass corpses of American soldiers will give the GAE probably 60%+ support for war with Russia. Now they can leave without a huge blow to credibility, but in this situation the empire will be in a position where they absolutely, positively can’t lose.
It won’t matter because they’re all mercs on contracts with private military companies.
That means the number of flag-draped coffins flown back to Dover from Ukraine will always be zero.
All true, but forcing a remedy in advance of collapse is fraught will consequences that can lead to many of the worst case outcomes. For example, there is a non-trivial probability that Biden’s handlers may stumble into a nuclear exchange with Russia by overplaying their hand. That is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Of the more tangible options for near-term remedy is if a dozen or more governors unite to begin discussion of a real secession movement, perhaps soliciting polling data or hold a plebiscite on the issue. That might trigger DC to either get real or go full retard. Yes, this option is very unlikely, but could gain momentum as hardship escalates. The reality is that only a full blown economic collapse can get things moving toward real change. Russia knows this and explains why they are helping the GAE destroy itself.
> Of the more tangible options for near-term remedy is if a dozen or more governors unite to begin discussion of a real secession movement,
The best play is to secede in everything but paper. Don’t make a proclamation, just silently ignore them. The right’s infatuation with dramatics has to go.
I agree. The DR likes to live in fantasyland of a big collapse rather than the slow grind and hard work of building an althernative.
I’m guilty of that myself, but I’m trying to be better.
Rapid collapses do happen, but they’re almost impossible to predict. The best recent examples are Wilhelmine Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Tsarist Russia. In 1914 none of them had the slightest idea how bad things would get by 1918.
But frankly, those are rare. In instances like Constantinople, you had a centuries-long decline and loss of peripheral territory until only the city was left, and that fell in dramatic fashion in 1450. The Ottomans similarly experienced a centuries-long decline until their defeat in World War I, but even that did not really impact Anatolia itself.
Napoleon had his Waterloo in 1815, but it did not lead to the elimination of France as a nation; to the contrary 30+ years later his nephew claimed his imperial title.
The collapse of the USSR was rapid but hardly catastrophic. The primary constituent republic, Russia, did not really collapse, it just changed governments. People like Yeltsin and Putin, who had been communists in good standing in 1985, were leading figures in non-communist Russian politics by 1995.
Hard to tell what is going to happen to us from the historical examples. The only thing we know for sure is what the wise man told the king in the fable — “All of this someday shall pass.”
Exactly. And the psychopaths in DC wake up one day and find that no-one gives a damn what they say anymore. Let’s hope Florida and Greater Idaho are a precursor for this.
British and Soviet empires diminished almost overnight. Remember 1989? One minute there was this untouchable Goliath, next minute a bunch of denim-clad, mulleted East Germans were bashing down the Berlin Wall.
Our collapse won’t be like Ottoman collapse. They didn’t actively replace their own people as they were collapsing.
The British Empire is a special case of collapse, with their rich powerful uncle the GAE ensuring their continued comfort, wealth, and some degree of influence as they were collapsing. There is presently no such apparent entity waiting in the wings to prop up the GAE, although China could end up becoming that, if it wants to. It is kind of incentivized to. They need to sell us, or somebody, their cheap junk.
I agree with what you say, but under no circumstances can I imagine the GAE suviving for centuries. The signs of weakness, incompetence and irrationality, along with those of decay and deterioration, are everywhere. I give it no more than 40 years.
I doubt it will survive for centuries myself, but of course that’s just a guess. Reasoning by historical analogy, there is the Athenian model and the Roman model. The Golden Age of Athens was only a couple hundred years, and it has been controlled by various other imperial powers ever since the end of the Peloponnesian War. But it is still there and we still call it “Athens.”
By contrast you have the Roman model, under which the internal rot was obvious when Caesar usurped the Senate and made himself dictator-for-life, but it took another 500 years to move the capital to Constantinople, and another thousand years after that for Constantinople to be overrun by the Turks. That’s a pretty damn long “collapse.”
The Athenian model seems like it could be the more likely outcome for the U.S., but you just never know. We have already had our civil war, our first mulatto emperor, and now a senile emperor, no doubt our first empress and our first transgender ruler are on the way. Perhaps after that we may get a run of “Five Good Emperors” to square things away for another century or so.
It seems to me technology, and in particular, information technology, speeds the pace of sociopolitical change. Despite intensive censorship, ideas, and many of them heretical, filter through society. The same is true for news–true news, not the phony pabalum pushed by the imperial media. I believe this factor will ensure the GAE disintegrates quickly, far more rapidly than Rome. The justification for dismantling the GAE already exists in superabundance. The only thing lacking is the will to do it. I have to believe a critical mass of such will will emerge within the next few decades.
Yep. Things happen much faster these days.
I have no real qualification to comment on this topic. It is fascinating. In Ukraine, there will be no massive manpower defeat of the American military itself. What will be exposed is its ability to wage proxy wars against a rival defending an attack on a border province of a former vassal state turned by a recent coup.
It seems to me the GAE’s big war is the war it has waged against its people for 65 years. The rabble that rules America has at every turn, when confronted with real crisis, economic and social, run like cowards and thrown its majority population under the bus. It is so afraid that it desires to weaken and replace them entirely.
I suspect what history will write is that the GAE spent all of its financial and social capital creating a nascent power in the Middle East as it was effectively turned into a vassal of said nascent power. What comes to mind is Pelosi’s statement about what the US would do if DC was turned to rubble.
How severe is the collateral damage of the financial system of the GAE exposed during the Ukraine sanctions and by the decades long war on the Heritage population of the country? Do the people of the US have some organization or structure ready if the alien GAE regime is staggering and punch drunk? I wonder if we are ready for the new FBI headquarters bigger than the Pentagon whose credo/mission is DIE.
Another interesting thing to watch is the GAE’s regime change operation in Hungary.
And speaking directly to this oh-so-fucking-obvious regime change operation being waged against Hungary, is this post from Gates of Vienna:
https://gatesofvienna.net/2023/02/bloody-marxist-terror-wave-hits-budapest/
I guess it was just a coincidence that Samantha Powers showed up in Budapest as the multi-national antifa demons descended on the city. You know, it’d be such a shame if she wound up as a floater in the river, kind of like her predecessor as a leftist shit-stirrer, Rosa Luxembourg.
JerseyJeffersonian: Very interesting – thanks for the link. I stopped reading at GatesofVienna years ago after I was banned. They were always maniacally pro-jevv/pro Israel, but this report is directly from European sources so appears legitimately pro nationalist.
A generally prosperous, peaceful, and homogeneous nation like Hungary is definitely a target of AINO in every way. It is profoundly disturbing to read that Hungary has a member of parliament who is openly Antifa. Like everyone else, they’re in danger of rot from within, and AINO/WEF etc. will work that angle hard, with all the funds and spiteful mutants at their disposal.
After the German lands’ defeat in WWII, they took a knee to the jevvs, hoping that this would buy them some toleration. Well, I guess not; jevvs are running the show more than ever before, and now Germany is getting the Morgenthau Plan implemented on them as thanks for their condign servility.
Franklin said something to this effect, “Those who would trade away essential liberties for a little peace deserve neither”. A wise fellow, was Mr. Franklin.
JerseyJeffersonian: The average Hungarian, at least a few decades ago, knew the jevvs were not his friend. They still remembered Bela Kun and Matyas Rakosi/Rosenfield. My worry is whether that knowledge has been properly transmitted to the younger generations.
Hungary has experienced imperial rule by another insane power in the recent past. It learned a few lessons then, too. 3g mentioned the youth, but as I recall, the Orban government has insisted on teaching children objective history to the chagrin of most NGO’s and that’s one of the knocks on him. Powers probably wants instruction about the black kings who ruled centuries ago and what a secret hero Bela Kun really was, but she’s not likely to be accomodated.
How the Soviet Union treated Hungary while it was in the East Bloc and how the United States treats it as part of NATO is eerily similar.
bush was one of the biggest pawns I’ve seen in my life.
oops , wrong thread. sorry
Two links from Remix News detailing anti-Hungarian actions by Germany and the US are not being permitted as “spam”. Both items found in today’s news links at Gates of Vienna under European news. Both are outrageous and petulantly childish. There to read if anyone chooses to track them down at the site. Oh well.
The GAE does seem to be getting desperate. One of the Rothchilds is said to have told the British that the war in Ukraine cannot be lost because it would bring an end to the “New World Order.”
Regards Hungary, Putin should help with ending the overthrow operation. Then after the war offer Hungary the portions of Ukraine where ethnic Hungarians reside.
Not just Hungary. Remember when Kiev became “Kyiv” overnight in English-language media? I’m increasingly seeing Turkey referred to as “Türkiye” in the wake of the earthquake, so I have a hunch they’re finally ready to replace Erdogan with the Shadowy Imam of the Poconos.
Iosif Biyden, b’gosh n’ b’gorra!
I would vote Milley as Nicias and Sergei Shoigu as Gylippus. There is of course no Alcibiades to win the war for Biden. I would add that had the Athenians not arrested Alcibiades on that trumped-up charge concerning the Hermes, he quite possibly would have defeated the Syracusans. But even after the destruction of her fleet and army, Athens was able to defeat Sparta at Cyzicus and Arginusae even after Sparta had received massive amounts of Persian money. Athens had won the war, but refused peace overtures from Sparta. Hubris and all that.
Incidentally, I leave Monday for three months in the jungles of Central America. I am taking with me Thucydides and Xenophon as my companions.
Wave to the hordes traveling toward El Norte.
I will. Some of them might be my relatives, as I am half-Mexican.
Have a great trip and give my regards to Pachamama.
Don’t be Tony Last.
(ThisIsNotNutella)
Pachamama is an Andean goddess, not a Central American one. She is a real bitch, and the Indigenous of the Andes fear her. The Maya in Guatemala have an entire pantheon of demons they call gods, and none of them are pleasant. Look up Chaac. He is a true piece of shit. The locals in the Honduran Mosquito Coast worship a monkey god.
Think I’ll stick with Christ.
me too , but pope francis seems to like pachamama.
He seems like an anti-pope to me. I believe the Holy See to be vacant. Benedict XVI was the last pope.
Joining Michael Yon at Darien Gap, I hope? Good fortune and travels to you.
Thank you.
I walked the Darien Gap way back in 1987. Took me 11 days without porters or guides or boats. Even then there were people crossing from Colombia to Panama.
https://mikeaustin.org/south_american_explorers_article.htm
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I guess since the vaunted neo-clowns figured they whooped the Ruskies in the Cold War, mainly by outspending them, a hot war against an equivalent power should be no problem as well. Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan etc., apparently didn’t weigh in the balance. The downfall of the current government can’t come soon enough.
Of course the Athenians were able to rustle up the energy to fight on for another decade after the Sicilian disaster. Similarly, maybe we already had our version of it, in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am a fan of Victor Davis Hanson, having read his books on the warfare and the agricultural life of the Greeks, but he was all on board the Bush misadventures, casting the global empire that is the United States as the embattled 300 and the… Iraqis, I guess, as the Persians. It was simply absurd, yet this is how these people viewed themselves as their empire as they conducted these wars. The actual outcome of the wars didn’t change their thoughts or behavior, they moved on to the next thing (which in some cases was the old thing, remember David Petraeus as the Warrior-Philosopher King?). The Ukraine folly is somehow even more black-and-white, good-and-evil, than Iraq was framed as, thus showing they didn’t learn and didn’t change. In spite of the havoc and chaos they have unleashed, in spite of the millions of people whose deaths they are directly responsible for, they see themselves as good people. They have to, I suppose.
An example of the old observation, attributed to Tallyrand, speaking of the hidebound, “They have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing”.
That’s our Leaders.
The application of labels to the Ukraine-Russia situation as if it is a stark good/evil dichotomy ignores the reality that conflicts between countries are never that simplistic. People who could not find Ukraine on a globe last year are now pontificating as ‘experts’ on foreign policy and geopolitical affairs. While most act as if history began around the time Myspace came online, the historical details around that region are complex and full of nuance to how we find ourselves where we are today. These are VERY tense times that require Realpolitik and deft hands skilled in diplomacy.
The current administration has not shown evidence so far that they have these skills.
“The application of labels to the Ukraine-Russia situation….”
… is simply a replay of the VERY SAME playbook that put Belgian ‘infants on the end of Hun bayonets’ … had thousands of American young men out there killing ‘towel heads’ … nothing new under the sun.
To gin up war fever, putting aside the motivations of the parties, requires the most base, dumbed-down rhetoric imaginable. People at the ‘highest levels’ sound just as stupid … make that sinister … like Killary breaking out her ‘southern accent.’
Except these people manipulate the emotions of the lower orders to make filthy lucre and kill to enrich themselves.
All Russia has to do in order to bring down the GAE is simply survive unscathed for another decade or so. It will be the equivalent of tossing a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West.
I’ll just throw this in as a side note: today’s ruling class would absolutely love Alcibiades, as he was what todays kids would call “pansexual.” He was infamous for effing anything that walked and having no sexual scruples.
He allegedly defaced statues, which make him a hero tot he current crowd.
Alcibiades also betrayed Athens, then Sparta—he impregnated the Spartan king’s wife—then Persia, then Athens again. Quite the piece of work. He was the most brilliant and despicable man of his time. He was 44 when he was at last assassinated, the Thracians—with whom he was living at the time—having had enough of his nonsense.
“Tides of War” by Steven Pressfield is a marvelous novel about Alcibiades.