by Pepe Escobar with permission and first posted at Asia Times
The whole planet has every reason to be terminally puzzled at how all those lofty Enlightenment ideals Thomas Jefferson embedded in the 1776 Declaration of Independence ended up with…Trump vs. Biden.
Jefferson borrowed freely from Locke, Rousseau, Hume to come up with an eminently quotable Greatest Hits, featuring “self-evident” truths such as “all men are created equal”, “unalienable rights”, and that searing “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
Well, Baudrillard would have dubbed the exercise a mere simulacrum, because in real life none of this uplifting rhetoric applied to Native Americans and enslaved Africans.
Still, there’s something endlessly fascinating about these “self-evident truths”. They actually radiated like Spinoza axioms, spawning abstract truths that can be extrapolated at will. Jefferson’s “self-evident truths” ended up creating the whole, massive structure of what we define as “Western liberal democracy”.
So it’s no wonder that America – perennially self-described as “leader of the free world” – consider these “self-evident truths” as the basis of an ideal society.
And it’s this messianic river of fervent truth flowing out of a Himalaya of Morality that leads Americans to dismiss as “malign actors” every nation or society that is judged to be “deviating” from such obvious evidence.
Those damned furreners. They’re always up to no good.
Cut to a mini-remix of the last Trump-Biden presidential debate. In foreign policy terms, it went something like this.
The moderator is desperate to move on as she’s very much aware of time constraints and looming, incandescent clashes: “Now I want to move on to Defense. It’s established Russia and China are interfering in our election process…”
Here’s classic “self-evident truth” material, delivered according to strict Council on Foreign Relations guidelines.
Cut to Biden: any country that interferes with the American elections “will pay a price”. Russia’s “been involved, China has been involved to some degree, and Iran’s been involved.” They are interfering with “American sovereignty”. Rudy Giuliani was used “as a Russian pawn”. Trump is “unwilling” to confront Putin. Russia has “destabilized NATO” and is “paying bounties to kill Americans in Afghanistan.” And China “has to play by the rules” – or else.
Cut to Trump: “You mean the laptop from hell is another Russia, Russia, Russia hoax?”
For the record: Joe Biden did blame the contents of son Hunter’s laptop from hell on Russia.
And discussing North Korea, when Trump said he got along fine with Kim Jong-Un, Biden stated, “We had a good relationship with Hitler before he invaded Europe.” Incidentally, Germany is and remains in Europe. And it’s quite something to see Biden acknowledging in public proven US industrial and political support to Nazism.
Those damn furreners
So, inevitably, the laptop from hell had to show up.
The FBI had Hunter Biden’s laptop since December 2019 – as it had issued a subpoena for it in the first place. And yet the FBI sat on the laptop for 11 months doing nothing.
That must have given plenty of time for those pesky Russians to steal the laptop and plant incriminating evidence.
Well, not really. The FBI was busy mulling how to conduct an investigation on “money laundering”. And not on child porn – which, according to Giuliani, is the piece de resistance in the laptop. No one knows if these alleged “investigations” are ongoing.
Now, the FBI and the Department of Justice have finally “concurred”: Hunter Biden’s laptop and emails were not part of a Russian disinformation campaign – directly contradicting what Joe Biden said in the debate.
But then, right before the debate, a bombshell presser – including the FBI and Homeland Security – had announced those pesky Russians and Iranians were in fact “trying to influence opinion” on the US elections.
“Self-evident truths” were back with a bang.
One can’t make this stuff up. And it gets even murkier when the actual “election interference” may be coming from inside the US, not from those damn furreners.
This past summer, the Transition Integrity Project (TIP) war-gamed possible scenarios post-November 3. All the scenarios lead to a huge constitutional crisis – forced, as part of the premise, by Trump’s refusal to concede his defeat at the polls.
TIP, predictably, is a proverbial Beltway bubble, composed of assorted Democratic Party higher-ups, Clintonistas, Obamistas and neo-con Never Trumpers.
Their message is now widely accepted as another avatar of “self-evident truths” because of this group’s powerful grip over Anglo-American mainstream media. Reverberations may be seen, for instance, here, here and here.
So the preferred doomsday scenario ahead spells out an engineered unresolved election, wide socio-political chaos, “continuity of government” protocols, even martial law.
What’s “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” got to do with it?
If the rest of the world is truly puzzled by the painful contradictions evidenced by the actions versus words of the US ruling class, it is probably because they have come to accept and believe the endless propaganda created by the fascist corporate owned and controlled MSM.
In my opinion a cleaner way to understand this contradiction is to simply realize that the united States, along with its cherished vision of liberty, has been completely reconquered and recolonized (stealthily but more effectively for that stealth) by their traditional oppressors and original conquerors; the English aristocracy. So all the shit coming out of the American establishment is really English colonialist capitalism disguised as American. It is the maintenance of this recolonized status quo which requires such incessant propaganda.
Ready Herman Melville;s Moby-Dick carefully to understand what is inner soul of America. It was published in 1851, it was 170 years ago. Who is not simulacrum of Captain Ahab? JF Kennedy, Nixon, Bushs, Trump, Obama, Biden, Hillary, Hamilton, Jefferson?
Is not Melville’s Moby Dick a criticism of the illusions of the self inflated egoism of the White American Male?
I would not rush to the belief that it describes the essence of America. Merely a criticism of egoism out of control. Admittedly some like to define America that way. But here we flirt with a major intellectual error. That being to define a thing (in this case America) by its distortion. Disentangling the real America from its ego driven distortion is the key to the necessary forward movement. There is no other way.
Indeed. I’m puzzled: why would be anyone puzzled ?
“The average lifespan of preeminent civilizations is 238 years. America is now 244 years old” – Fred Markert
What could one expect from a decaying corpse ?
Perinmet
The MSM is controlled by the US elite, which controls the corporations and, in conjunction with the City of London, controls the Federal Reserve and US finances. The Anglo-American elites have used the US for imperial conquest, and now the US is paying the price, running up a huge foreign and domestic debt.
Make America Jeffersonian Again ? Was it ever truly Jeffersonian, bearing in mind the US was created by slave owning freemasons ? As for the Declaration of Independence, I believe the word “democracy” is never used. However, what is used in the US Constitution are native American legal traditions, like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of individual representation, etc.
Has the US any future ? We shall see. The elite will do everything to maintain the status quo, regardless of political, economic, financial, social and ethnic consequences.
Pepe, much as I would like to say that you are a light unto the world, you just don’t get it. The AngloZionist Empire, which actually came into being long before Jefferson, is all about domination, about “chosenness” and ultimately about genocide. Just ask any Native American if you don’t believe it. Manifest Destiny is why the USA considered itself justified in taking Turtle Island away from the indigenous, exactly how the Israelis are now taking over Palestine. It’s in our DNA to be conquerers and exploiters. And, our ruling class and the MSM have been in on this scheme since forever.
The only way the USA can go back to being a normal nation that works for a living and pays its bills is to renounce the hubris and chosenness that is justifies rape and pillage rather than cooperation. It will never happen. I would like to think that we will just quietly go into that dark night and be buried in the sands of time like all other empires on the planet Earth, but we have nukes. That changes everything.
Indeed, you have a point. However, the ideology of the corporate state (a breakaway East India Company gone rogue from the British Crown — see flag similarities) is not an attribute vested on a fat, lazy, fiat-currency dependent economy dying like flies from obesity, food nutrition deficits, and a new flu-like corona virus (that probably escaped from military lab experiments somewhere in the network). It gives a pundit-smile to read the occasional media comment that they’ll have hyper-sonic missiles sometime soon, and ergo, put Putin back in his place as the footstool of the self-chosen ones. It must be some special kind of thanatotic grippe to live in a ‘new normal’ knowing that any chest-thumping mind-blustering provocative action towards Russia will bring an American civilizational end as if the gods themselves had enacted a rain of terror. To consciously know that national (and probably personal) death is only 30-minutes away from an idiot pressing the wrong button and unleashing a Reign of Terror while at the same time believing in a state of evidence-free exceptionalism must be a special kind of cognitive dissonance. No wonder the global bully is off to east Asia for a Chinese meal while yapping like a spent poodle at Russian ‘meddling’. The Hollywood scripts are tired. The people are revolting. The food is terrible. The public healthcare beyond the average pocket. The two clown faces of the Corporate Swindle Party farcical. The pursuit of happiness, as George Carlin once remarked, is a dream because Americans are, in the main, asleep. The military-industrial (NATO) complex is creaking at the knees and the European poodles (except the sycophant-born Polish) are starting to sniff the new Russian dog in town. NordStream II will deliver ‘soviet’ gas to German in due course and there is nothing the USA can do to stop it. On the contrary, Russian ‘icebreakers’ will finally rupture the frozen wastelands of ossified Anglo-American post-ww2-policy and a new geopolitical world will begin. Once the suit is seen to be empty the bully loses the intimidating edge. We read of Russian navy escorts for Iranian oil tankers to Syrian ports and nothing the ‘brave’ British navy dares do about it. One supposes they don’t want some Russian hypersonic sauce with their French Channel fish and English potato chips. So, on with the Taiwan side-Show of ‘strength’ … lol.
The “button” that Trump was yammering about a while back is actually a suicide button that will be the end of the world as we know it. Christian Zionists like Pompeo and Likudniks like Netanyahu are whispering in his ear, “Do it! Do it! Do it!…
Three part series where two quickly end in military takeover while the third is delayed. Biden wins: Part 2 of the series ‘The Coup’, ‘Biden Wins’, and ‘Trump Wins’. This series examines what may be the consequences of these senarios. This short video is the Biden Wins senario https://youtu.be/M6eXOc1VvaI or
http://www.cowdisley.com/videos/bidenwins.mp4
What then for the huge US arms industry? If the dollar fails so does the financial support for such. As the country burns can the military start another war? Unlikely as the military personnel would be more concerned for their pay and family survival regardless of the quantity and quality of the weapons systems available. They could not invade as it would require exactly such personnel. Would they start a nuclear war with another nuclear power? Unlikely as it would result in self-destruction even though the military are trained to administer death they are even more addicted and trained for their own survival.
I think the point PE is making is close to yours. So not sure what it is that he “does not get.”
Anything that causes the US to implode is to be welcomed. The sooner the better, with a dead political class people will have to create their own structures and solutions non of which will be as corrupt or inadequate as the current bipartisan neoliberal hell.
Benjamin Franklin, no friend of British empiricism (which would have never led him to discover electricity), substituted the Leibnizian* “pursuit of happiness” for Jefferson’s dogged insistence in “property,” in the image and likeness of his idols Locke and Hume (I’ll leave out proto-fascist Rousseau for the purposes of this conversation), employees of the British East India Company with a vested interest in the slave trade, which had nothing to do with happiness (except for Jefferson’s dalliances in the master bedroom which, if you’ve ever visited Monticello, for all intents and purposes looks like Hugh Hefner’s). Those hackneyed saws and “self-evident truths” were not all Jefferson’s “greatest hits” nor should be so glibly dismissed—there was considerable disagreement among the framers, such as Franklin (a fan of Confucius, whom he often cited**), regarding the end goal of the republican experiment, defeated so many times before in history (the Dutch republic and the gruesome murder of the De Witt brothers comes immediately to mind, right around the 1660 Stuart restoration consolidating the British Empire). Later Henry Carey’s Harmony of Interests drew heavily on Confucian Tai Chi Chuan, as in the current Chinese government’s “win-win” philosophy of investing in global infrastructure as a path to the Mandate of Heaven, at its most universal (nothing to do with Marx, mind you). Please do not write off founding principles of an American nation seriously gone astray (after developments which, like Russiagate, can be largely traced to toxic “meddling” by British intelligence in US politics, economic and foreign policy, education and general culture, including philosophy at its core), drifting from the humanist idearium of the Renaissance to a new dark age of cancel culture and looming fascism. Those are not intrinsic values of the American republic, however dominant and noxious their influence in the world has been, increasingly since the murder of Abraham Lincoln (cf. Pompeo’s fawning show of fealty to the Henry Jackson Society during his London visit in July). Many “leftists” seem to think that the best way to deal with a diseased, necrotic United States is to simply jettison it from the world stage, like Columbus’s and Lincoln’s statues in Portland, blissfully ignorant of the fact that carrying that carcass around will significantly hamper world progress or, in the nuclear alternative, halt it altogether. In the spirit of Lenin’s “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder, abstain from throwing all things American in the same yahoo basket, and pay more attention to alternatives which reach deeper into the history of a once great nation—an example, for a while, of how we can all coexist in peace, harmony and growing prosperity for all. Plenty of people in Russia and China understand this, too, believe me.
* Leibniz’s Monadology and other writings also reflect a Confucian affinity which I won’t state categorically due to my limited studies of the matter, but I do know that he maintained correspondence with 17th-century Chinese scholars and advocated for closer ties between Western and Eastern cultures, as well as economic integration following the East-West development model from before the Fall of Constantinople (can’t blame the British for that; the money bags of Empire still lived in Venice). Belt and Road, anybody?
** In a 1747 letter to pastor George Whitefield, Franklin wrote: “Confucius was my example. I followed Confucius.” Twelve years later, he published Confucius’s translated works.
Paracletus: Excellantly put. One of the neo-colonialist master strokes of the reconquering English Empire, in relation to America, has been to stealthily take charge of the ongoing discussion of what actually is “American.” (Largely through controlling ownership in influential media)Their need has been to frame and twist American’s understanding of their own history and culture into a format that serves capitalist hegemonic imperialism. Thus the enemies of America parasitically control America’s own self understanding. This is the only way the Anglo-Zionist empire can successfully turn the American nation to its alien purpose.
Consequently a people deliberately cut off from their own history and culture can be induced to see the English Imperialist preferred version of America as actually “America.” Bingo! they become alienated and disempowered in relation to their own seemingly worthless and poisoned culture. Bernays and co knew what they were doing, and so the game rolls on.
The point being is that now as the Empire rots to nothing Americans are driven to rediscover their real history and culture and find the seeds of liberation within it. This is why I like your comment so much Paracelsus. It points in exactly this direction. Americans need now to rediscover their own real culture of self determination, and the good news is that is it there. And beginning to reveal itself.
great explanation – that is probably why the zionazis love to destroy any evidence of past greatness – i.e. Palmyra, Serbian Churches in Kosovo etc
to disorient their victims/host as per Naomi Klein’s Shock doctrine
Michael Hudson said that a parakite first takes over the brain to make it look as if he is necessary
It is quite puzzling, indeed, the way the Americans bury their heads in the sand, blaming their own imperialism (direct consequence of their ‘pursuit of happiness’ to be extended to others – from the really native Americans, in the first place, to the Russians -, ‘exceptionalism’, ‘manifest destiny’) on the occult ‘meddling’ of the ‘British Empire’, British intelligence, British ‘oligarchy’, British ‘Round Table ”conspiracy”, in US politics, economic policy (blaming slavery on the British), foreign policy, education and general culture, including philosophy at its core, turning a blind eye to the role of Jewish-Dutch-German banking cabal which took such a grip on England and America (it was there from the very beginning), when the reverse is true. They meddled into British politics, foreign policy, ‘culture’, etc. with the purpose of taking over the British Empire (and the Spanish and French Empires), supporting everywhere ‘democratic’ revolutions, terrorism and revolution in Russia, fomenting revolutions in China, etc.
Some thoughts. The key thinker for our contemporary political and geopolitical situation is Polybius. His exceptionally brief text inserted within the Histories at the beginning of Book V features three distinct and crucial political theories. Firstly there is the mixed constitution. This is how we should think of China. Secondly, there is the idea of the anacyclosis. This tells us what we most need to understand about the Western and especially American political present. But lastly, there is his idea of the confederation, about 2000 years before Jefferson & Co. If we take freedom to be the immanent goal of Western political striving then the confederation of self governing political associations is basically the answer, not ‘the Union’, and especially not this ‘representative government’ which is a sugar coated additive to make oligarchy a bit more palatable. Freedom and self determination are possible in this world but to achieve such goods it would be necessary to give up entirely on imperialistic impulses. As the men of the 18th century and previously understood, ‘republics are small’. But again, the key to clarifying the coming gridlock of the upcoming election is the whole notion of stasis as summarised by Polybius as the endgame of the anacyclosis. When the republic gets to that point the next step is monarchy or bust. I imagine we’ll see a bit of both. But the revival of the republic will likely take forms that we won’t recognise. Many of the ancient Greek cities were founded by pirates. These days the more likely hero’s to fill the shoes of the fabled ‘founding fathers’ would, I expect, be our contemporary drug barons who already govern much of Mexico.
Let’s wait and see what the coca growers in Bolivia come up with, now that they’ve won the election… again. Up until last year’s coup, they were already doing a pretty good job of diversifying the lithium industry, and I hear they were talking nuclear development with China, too. As in China, a growing middle class is becoming affluent and educated, with a school of “indigenous” fashion design all their own. Maybe the Aymara and Guaraní aren’t as hip on the “noble savage” idea as Rousseau would have us believe. French anthropophagists are so clueless…
Good points and I should say I’m basically in agreement with your view, here, and especially what you have to say above about Franklin, very interesting man. In line with your observations I’ll briefly qualify my previous points. In America, and increasingly in Europe, a condition of stasis is settling in. The people are deeply divided and there’s no real resolution to their hostilities in sight. In Bolivia (and I think this is true of Mexico as well), while we see plenty in the way of class struggles overlapping racial divides, yet they are by no means sunk to a condition of gridlock. The Latino neoliberals of Bolivia are very much a minority. But significant as well, the indigenous peoples have a culture, which includes a political culture, that remains fairly intact, despite centuries of militarised, Americanised and fascistic governments. Like so many other native peoples extensive and more or less permanent consultations seems to be the rule. Morales would start the day early and end late, one meeting of constituents after another, day by day, year in, year out. It was never about ‘representation’ or lawyers or all of what goes with these. On this basis I to imagine that a long term and mutually beneficial relationship with a lithium hungry post carbon China is in the cards and both sides are aware of this (and not least the Beltway People). But with their gringo neighbours to the north the only visible movement that shows any promise is that which has been brewing on and off since the 60s, this movement back to the land, small cities and towns and relocalising community in the wake of a collapsing urban led globalist neoliberal order. If those who predict an international financial meltdown involving unthinkable quantities of these ‘derivatives’ are correct, the drug lords mentioned above are likely to thrive in the cities while in the country we will see the retreating libertarians, agrarians and general issue Jeffersonians getting back to their drawing boards as they return to the country.
It sure looks to me that American is going full bore into communism. And the majority seem to be going along with it. That is because they don’t know what communism is. But they will eventually find out when capitalism finally dies. The collapse of it is in progress. When the shelves are empty and there are no more chickens for every pot people will begin to get the point. Capitalism made this country rich and communism will make it poor.
Nonsense. It’s not communism ailing the US. It’s the rape and plunder of the oligarchic class along with those whose name must not be mentioned. These classes have long since bought out by bribery and blackmail the political classes, who are probably mostly selected in advance anyway, as already owned or controlled. The US has the best government money can buy, and it has spread its corruption and insatiable greed around the globe to its place-men in other western governments. The West is dying of corruption from the inside, not from Communism, the US’s favourite and stereotypical boogie man long used to scare the horses into compliance.
Absolutely Razor!
Capitalism is long gone…what remains is a bankster dominated kleptocracy which has morphed into the most obscene and outrageous model of inverted socialism in humanity’s history.
Sad times
Col
When government can shut down businesses in mass, compel people to lock down and wear masks, ignore experts that disagree with it on their pandemic decisions, keep children from attending in person school, pay out money to keep select corporations from going into bankruptcy due to their inefficiency, this is centralized planning & governing, so it sure looks like communism to me.
If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck it must be a duck. Blaming the oligarchic class without naming specific names means nothing. It is the attitude of the people that matters. And right now the attitude of the people is divided. Part of the people have an altruistic bent and believe the government while another part want no part of the government plan and are resisting.
Right now I believe we are like Germany 1930 to 1934 which is a fight between communism and fascism; neither any good. But communism is where we are going; not only in the US, but also Europe if the people lose their fight with their governments.
With all due respect, communism is defined to be a system in which the “The means of production are owned collectively”. Communism does NOT mean “Commie rats and others that we don’t like”. Nor does it mean deranged crackpots who do not know their own gender and wish to censor all those who disagree.
The system of USA is plutocracy, a system in which “A handful of people own all the means of production and wealth”. The average American owns close to nothing apart from his mortgaged house, car, credit cards, TV, computer, etc. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Zuckerburg, George Soros are plutocrats, not communists. They support BLM, civil strife, chaos, gender dystophia, pride parades, etc. to keep the masses distracted and squabbling amongst themselves. They do not want their companies to be nationalized or socialized.
To correctly identify the enemy is the first step in any struggle. Otherwise we will keep fighting demons, hobgoblins, communists, and whatever we don’t like.
Well said, disgusted. Thank you. Only uneducated morons can call the deformed offspring of the parasitic late-stage rentierism – communism. And there’s plenty of those in Murka.
“Communism is defined to be a system in which “the means of production are owned collectively””.
Don’t forget to add “and run by the government”, after it was stolen from private ownership. Government produces nothing but is eager to steel productive enterprise from private ownership that developed the product. How altruistic!
Right now government is telling small businesses what to do. That is communism. The large corporations are writing regulations for the government to implement to kill competition. For example, Boeing writes the standards for the FAA to follow. That is Fascism.
The fight going on today is between communism and Fascism.
Government (“the State”) is the original enterprise owned by Society. Government did not “steel” commerce from private enterprises; selfish bandits stole commerce from greater society. Likewise, government being totally captured by said bandits, as in the West, is not a fault of government but of the lack of government.
“Government did not “steal” commerce from private enterprises; selfish bandits store commerce from greater society.”
Yes; with the help of government. That is fascism because it was done using government. Those bandits; as you call them are better called monopolies that write the regulations for government.
“it is not the fault of government but the lack of it”.
I think the other way around. Government as gotten big because of these so called bandits due to all the regulations the bandits have written for the government they stole for their own purposes. Remove the regulations and watch what happens. Competition from new green sprouts. Regulations are like roundup in the plant world.
You don’t get it, do you? None of us here is either defending or criticizing communism. The point simply is words don’t mean whatever we want them to mean, they have a fixed meaning. Look up any English dictionary before using words whose meaning you do not know. Unless of course you are a woke believing in 38 genders and a user of transgender washrooms. Communism is defined in any dictionary.
I know what communism means and don’t need the dictionary to tell me. Half my family lived under it.
Woodstock cannot be counted as an experience of comunismo.
So, the crime is the ‘alleged’ influence of American politics (voters) without going through the official ‘unofficial’ money-pump channels direct into political pockets. They should, quite obviously, operate like Israel and Saudi Arabia and follow the proper DC Beltway protocols for stuffing greenbacks into House/Senate back pockets.
A still young country with a very old government, the oldest national government on Earth, the USA is a broken society, with a corrupted government, a deviant culture and representative of a dying Civilization (Western), all cantilevered upon a bankrupt economy of infinite debt and immeasurable derivatives (a financial bubble of cosmic size).
For 75 years the USA counted on hegemonic wars to sustain its development and maintain its global status. Now, it is breaking out and away from all the international modes of relation, cooperation and security. It is setting new rules and coercing other nations to obey them.
Historically, this will not work as a new global order. A unipolar nation facing near-equal competitors has never prevailed. With at least eight nations including the USA possessing nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them anywhere on the globe, unipolar power is limited to economic power and diplomatic skill.
These last two qualities of power, economics and diplomacy, are lost to the USA by their own hands. Their economy is riddled like wormwood and its practice of diplomacy has been long abandoned.
Thus, the USA is on two paths. The first is economic ruin. The second is war. The USA will drive itself into a war if it continues on its hegemonic ways, using military force and financial vises of sanctions to extort fines, penalties, commodities and minerals from weak nations.
However, as it throws its hegemonic weight around, it has pushed three competing powers to action in concert, Russia, China and Iran. The first two, Russia and China, are close to a military alliance. Such a development would make the USA either commit military suicide if it attempted any action against either or make the USA cease to operate as a hegemonic power. Just as Russia provides a degree of protection now for China, both Russia and China offer a degree of protection for Iran. The triad of nations presents a conundrum for the USA.It makes a military option of coercion or destruction of Iran an impossibility.
The longer the USA rages against Russia, China or Iran, the greater the picture of futility it presents to the rest of the world.
And, the longer the USA cannot solve its economic mess, the more China will replace it as number one.
These are the macro issues that make the USA a very dangerous player in the world.
The internal issues of social justice, economic inequalities, the tech industry oligarchs, the fascist relationship of corporations and government, the Deep State anarchy and color revolution tactics set against the population, the corrupt Shadow Government and the very flawed uniparty duopoly corrupted by millions of dollars needed to run election and re-election campaigns (provided by K Street lobbyists and billionaires) all are tumors upon the Republic and the democratic will of the people. They pale against the economic challenges no one can fix.
Shortly, the Fed will issue digital currency, and then begin to abandon its promise to pay its debt and dollar holders. It is the only way to escape the collapse of the money system, massive devaluation and massive inflation.
The flight of capital is the canary in the coal mine. Watch which way the investment capital flows. It always flies to safety and growth. Right now it has been heading for China.
98% of all money in the West is already digital, existing only on bank computers, created as debt by private banks, such that
no debts = no money
The few own the debt and the many owe it – the debt slaves owe to the banks, enforced by the IRS and the US military.
The Chinese government by contrast creates its domestic currency the yuan free of debt to the private banking cabal, that puts its workforce to productive use to expand its economy.
China is now the largest creditor nation with $2.3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, compared with the US, that is now the largest debtor nation. The US Treasury is now $26 trillion in debt to the private sector and foreign governments.
I like the phrase “riddled like wormwood.” It is easy to imagine the entire edifice chewed up from inside, as if by termites, just waiting to collapse. My worry is that the US elites won’t allow that to happen; if it gets close to such a moment, they’d rather have war. A war was what pulled the US out of the Great Depression fiasco, and it seems there are people, who believe the cycle can be repeated.
Re: Iran joining the club. Daily the Apartheid State flies up to the borders of Syria and launches a few missiles, some make it through, some not, many laugh, no big deal, just big show. I see practice, not for Syria but for Iran. With NK conflict suiting the Occupiers of Palestine, they have access to and bases to fly up to Iran’s Northern border, close to Tehran and lob missiles from another country’s air space. Now that the axis of evil has Arab countries bordering Iran signing on to and giving the Occupiers of Palestine air corridors, there is now the possibility to fly up to Iran’s sourthern border and lob missiles from outside Iran. What were the two things that may save the USA…………survey says, 50% chance of war. False flag or not.
Cheers, M
The real danger is outlined in this video – for all countries
https://banned.video/watch?id=5f937050199e5017543f7083
Mind control via vaccines – digital currencies – big business wiping out small.
magic chips are not necessary for Kapital to follow its NATURAL tendency towards monopoly and concentration.
Tommy A inspires me….yet again!
/make-america-jeffersonian-again/#comment-864544
and; /make-america-jeffersonian-again/#comment-864831
Western self-loathing leading to a desire to share a generalized western death wish….as a “sweet escape” for all concerned???
Shades of “The Reverend” Jim Jones!
No thanks, Tommy. Not buying your Western Suicide Kool-Aid.
Paracletus in his excellent “baby saving summary” comment offers a more balanced, saner path to durable survival…………. of the entire human species. Including us westerners.
Entirely too many are morally exhausted these days (or so they posture!) , weary of trying to compute or rationally calculate the vexing complexities of achieving Any Optimistic Way Out……….. and are far too eager to succumb to a fate of self pity, despair………. and end up just wanting to throw Everything Away……in a self-righteous fit of mental indolence and resignation: “I give up!”
“How absurdly and (ironically!) comically sad.”, I quietly whisper.
Back to the drawing board, people!
The Universe always provides solutions, just not instantly or for free. Happiness is not guaranteed by the US Constitution. Only it the right to “pursue” it….to work for it, is.
As the West got flabby and more corrupt…and the opportunity of Asians to work more “profitably” than just bent over all day in a rice paddy in subsistence agriculture mode was seized with both hands…..because Western Industry sought short term profit by lower labor costs in Asia…….the pursuit of happiness via long range planning and hard work was incentivized in the east…..and severely damaged in the west……for the average member of society.
Now, since people like to throw around scary concepts like “digital currencies” and other spooky, alien concepts, y’all might recognize in 4 paragraphs from this essay below…..what “happiness” or “good” might be offered in regard to that poorly understood (and thus much feared!) mini-domain within the Multiply Connected Complex Macro Domain, and grasp within it, metaphorically………principles of the Nature of The Universe …and of Man” that are ALSO operative in the fascinating dance between East and West (and within each!) today…which Pepe’s article deals with:
“Corporate actors need to build an environment that is conducive to long-term growth. The situation requires investor approval. Here, the choice of investors is essential. Where an organisation seeks merely to benefit from short-term gains and promoting the price of an asset and not to grow across years, the lifespan of the organisation will be short-lived. ”
(ME: Describes more East…..or more West….the last half and especially last quarter century????)
“Social responsibility is not the same thing as not making a profit. But few seem to understand that a long-term path to profitability and sustainable business practice present something different from an increase in the short-term share price.
Equally, business is not a tool for social activism, and it is not a tool of government. As virtual citizens, companies also have rights. Corporate citizenship means that the government does not have the right to dictate how money and profit are spent. Responsible corporations cannot be seen as the lapdog of whatever social justice platform seeking to redistribute wealth at any particular time. Corporations are not tools for delivering social change, but, at the same time, they come under all of the other responsibilities of citizenship. Corporations own property. Property owners have duties and responsibilities. Corporations have rights, yet, they live in a community, in society, which means that they have both rights and obligations. Milton Friedman was in error when he said that corporations only had a responsibility to their shareholders. Corporations are made up of many entities. If a corporation does not treat their personnel and their suppliers well, they will find a higher turnover, which leads to higher costs. In the long term, short-term gains reduce profitability.
Whether we are talking about mercantilism or fascism or state capitalism, as has become fashionable in many Communist countries, where business becomes the lapdog of state and social activist groups, it falls into the same problems as it does as the lapdog of the ‘rent-seekers’ and financial vampires that inhabit much of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Such groups offer promises of short-term benefits as they bleed their corporate victim dry.”
https://craigwright.net/blog/economics/bitcoin-model-of-capitalism/
Now, full elucidation of the matters raised by Pepe and in the above link requires dozens of comments, many linked articles and videos, free uncensored debate, and time, study, and mental WORK.…but I here strongly suggest that those who have the “digital domain” squarely on their plate …either fearing even a taste…..or curious and unafraid ..That is, these 3 here in this thread:
Kapricorn4, GoreKoshka and Santiago……touch gingerly upon…………….. plus those (..namely the arguers with Thunderbird: .Disgusted…..Col…Ken Leslie….. ) who might grasp the parallel, metaphorical “dance” of the necessary balance between Government & Individual…Centralization and Decentralization…..”capitalist” or “socialist” models (many of which are neither…but some troublesome blend!) reflected in those 4 paragraphs (and the rest of the essay) as that uneasy, difficult “dance” relates to the wider topic of this thread…..and anyone else, of course….. whose interest or curiosity may be piqued by the correspondence of issues and challenges in that essay with Pepe’s………..make it to the end of that essay I linked above:
“Bitcoin is a system designed to be honest, and it is a system designed to enable sound business practice. Building a world that we want to live in, that we would like our children to inherit, a world that is fair to all requires openness and honesty. Bitcoin is not a system that is designed to promote anarchy, and it is not a system that is favourable to those who break the law. Bitcoin presents a structure of rules that encourage openness. The candidness that comes with the system does not require a business to act philanthropically. Still, it allows members of the community to verify such ones that do and to actively make a choice to support the organisations that they see as best serving the community.
Such is why I created Bitcoin.”
For my part, I have found comparing and contrasting Satoshi’s motivation and thoughts and principles with many of the other analysts of the Current Crossroads Of Eastern and Western Civilizations to be immensely stimulating and indicative of the possibility that the Universe does indeed provide for solutions to the most vexing problems…....if they are worked for, discovered or uncovered…then utilized!
A passage from Leibniz’s the preface to Theodicy …..subtitled Lazy Reason………on “Fatum Mohametatum” (no offense Muslims…..the principle applies just as well to ALL other varieties of “Fundamnetalist-Literalists” in the west as well….LOL) comes to mind, to ridicule the laziness, and motivate the required work ethic:
http://davidsbuendler.freehostia.com/leibniz.htm.
“…Men have been perplexed in well-nigh every age by a sophism which the ancients called the ‘Lazy reason’, because it tended towards doing nothing, or at least towards being careful for nothing, and only following inclination for the pleasure of the moment. For, they said, if the future is necessary, that which must happen will happen, whatever I may do. …………..
….The false conception of necessity, being applied in practice, has given rise to what I call Fatum Mahometanum, fate after the Turkish fashion, because it is said of the Turks that they do not shun danger or even abandon places infected with plague, owing to their use of such reasoning as that just recorded. For what is called Fatum Stoicum, was not so black as it is painted: it did not divert men from the care of their affairs, but it tended to give them tranquillity in regard to events, through the consideration of necessity, which renders our anxieties and our vexations needless……..”
…………………and this sentence by Leibniz…….an additional, earlier than Franklin….. western fan of Confucius….. has provided me with endless mirth, ever since I read it 30 years ago, whenever it comes back to mind:
“Nevertheless it happens that most men, and even Christians, introduce into their dealings some mixture of fate after the Turkish fashion, although they do not sufficiently acknowledge it. It is true that they are not inactive or negligent when obvious perils or great and manifest hopes present themselves; for they will not fail to abandon a house that is about to fall, and to turn aside from a precipice they see in their path; and they will burrow in the earth to dig up a treasure half uncovered, without waiting for fate to finish dislodging it. “
Indeed, they will!
In almost ALL cases in which their baser senses are at least minimally functional!
Which is a start, at least.
Saker I realize the thoughts, feelings via writers at your blog are chosen/selected for a myriad of conceptual truths: cognitive; @ extremely profound level/s. World War III began when in Iran’s holiest city, Qom, the Red Flag was raised over the Mosque of Jamkaran to avenge the death of General Soleimani. To see the future in greater transparency, part the gnat’s eyebrow about past. IE,EG, Germany had to pay for World War II. The price? Inconceivable. Banks, businesses, Etcetera in countless countries were raped, pillaged, plundered. War is a most vile crime. COVID19, shut down economies, the losses suffered are inconceivable. Was this Agenda to allow the criminally insane that caused IT to make certain those who rule the west are well rewarded for WWIII?
By elucidating suppressed history, one can determine a course out of the darkness:
√ The takeover of the MSM by the banks, Wall Street, Tavistock (Bernays/Freud), the CIA (aka Deep State); all to create an artificial narrative that supports oligarchy takeover of society.
√ The takeover of U.S. banking (boom-to-bust, fractional reserve) by a private cartel, whose self-serving actions are buried by their MSM artificial narrative.
√ The takeover of transnational drug trafficking (drugs for arms) to enrich the banking oligarchy Deep State, while providing a pretext for nation-state disruption (e.g. Chinese Opium Wars, Iran-Contra).
√ The takeover of big pharma by the Deep State to ensure control of over the (ill) health of society. Diseases and the cure (vaccines). Soma, anyone?
√ The takeover of U.S. education to change from teaching critical thinking skills, to a behaviorist model that treats students more like Pavlovian dogs, than human beings. ‘Getting along’, ‘fitting in’ is valued over all else.
√ Disruption of the world’s ecclesiastical institutions. For, it is man’s religion that has created the foundation of justice (Torah); and has fostered, then led the emancipation movements against the ‘priest class’ (paganism) throughout history; and, therefore, must be controlled (divide and conquer, elevation of the occult).
√ Repeated false flags to draw the U.S. (world) into serial wars, police actions, that drain its resources, enriches, empowers the Deep State, while destroying democratic institutions as continous war allows for tyranny, including eviscerating the 2nd Amendment.
√ Creation of supra-national bodies (UN, GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA, EU, NATO, OAS) that act as proxys for oligarchy globalist control. NGOs that act as fronts for intelligence agencies working for the Deep State.
Oh, and about Jefferson: it was he, long before the Fabians, the ‘Eastern Establishment’, concocted ‘communism’; controlling society, the banks, population (Eugenics) while providing an illusion of a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ … Jefferson predicted the outcome of unfettered, unchecked, privately owned fractional reserve banking.
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” – Thomas Jefferson in the debate over the Re-charter of the Bank Bill (1809)
“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.” –Thomas Jefferson
“… The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood, and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating.” -Thomas Jefferson
What’s “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” got to do with it?
Not a great deal!!! Good post!
Everything! It is the battle cry of anarchism.
You are unfair to Joe. He said “invaded Europe” but immediately added, “the rest of Europe.”
“The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.”
― Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)