August 13, 2021
433
Well, that last thread was a good discussion. I wish, as the Great Seer of the Western Hemisphere (GSWH), and facilitator of the Greatest Blog on Earth (GBOE), that I had some words of wisdom to impart at this point. But--I don't. I can report to you that the antisemitic trollfoons have all but vanished. All I get now is the occasional hit-and-run message along the lines of "Yr a kike, I hate u"--evidence of the great intelligence possessed by these folks. But maybe most of them finally wised up, decided it was pointless to attack someone who can defeat them so easily (after all, without testes they don't exactly pose a serious threat), and found another Jew to annoy. I wish them godspeed. Anyway, let us continue our discussion, recognizing that 99% of the American population is clueless as to what is going on, and forge ahead, a beacon of light in a very dark time, and a very dark nation. A very few will hear us, and quite honestly, that is all we ask.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Wafers,
ReplyDeleteI only have the excerpt but even so Matt Taibbi paints an accurate picture of what Obama has always been about. The reality is that he might as well be describing the mindset of almost every American.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-vanishing-legacy-of-barack-obama
Xair-
ReplyDeleteHow many times have I said, The elite are trash? What a phony Obama was, what a piece of dreck. I suppose the progs still adore him...As an icon of garbage, he shows what the US is finally all about.
mb
@ Xair:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link. Along with revealing the actual nature of of the American political class (Dem or republican, they don't give a toss about anyone or anything outside of the hustle), It also highlights the pit that calls itself US 'culture' . Any self respecting creative person/artist/musician etc. would run a mile from hanging out with these people as it corrodes the soul, but appalling people are needed to create culture for an appalling populace. As a counterbalance, here is some wonderful work by the painter Frank Auerbach. Auerbach was one of a cohort of European Jewish artists who ended up in the UK post war. Other artists in this group included Leon Kossoff, Lucian Freud and their slightly older mentor, David Bomberg. https://www.wikiart.org/en/frank-auerbach
The odd thing to me is the making of the president into some sort of king. The president's office was supposed to be that of temporary chief executive - the CEO of the Federal part of the government. His power was explicitly circumscribed by Congress and the Supreme Court.
ReplyDeleteSince the administration of Wilson, and certainly, since that of FDR, the power of the president, like the federal branch in general, became de facto unlimited, with all the that implies for good government.
I imagine that we will see more and more articles like the following. A basic 'I got mine, good luck, suckers' approach. Behind almost everything the man says about how he and his wife will deal with climate change is that they have money- to retire, to buy a house and land in a rural setting (talk about ruining places!), to install solar 'just in case,' on and on. Probably earned and saved their money in work that trashed the climate in the first place (but they brought reusable bags to the grocery store!) and pushed more and more fellow citizens (yes Canada, you also have MBAs treating workers as something to be mined, not nurtured) into borderline poverty living.
ReplyDeleteRead it and weep for the rest of the world who will bear the brunt of our degeneracy over the last 40 years-
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/climate-change-strategy_n_5e4308c0c5b6b9d1a7570b47
Must admit that the idiotic puppet show of American celebrities and politicians is of no serious concern to me. Haven't expected anything but dog and pony shows for a long time now.
Dan - As a contemporary of Mr. Rueger, I'd like to speak in his defense.
ReplyDeleteLike he and his wife, I believe that's it too late to do anything substantial to change the trajectory of the climate. Corporations are created to maximize profits no matter what. And government officials, thus far as least, don't have the balls to do what's necessary. It's now only a matter of who much damage and when.
And like him, I have explored the possibility of moving to a cooler climate away from the ocean. My wife and I live in eastern North Carolina where the summers are getting hotter and the hurricanes more powerful.
And I admire him for doing what he can to protect and support he and his wife and possibly a larger community. His words on the latter resemble, to some extent, MB's ideas on NMIs.
"Perhaps the practical solution to our climate emergency isn’t to wait for politicians to shut down the fossil fuel industry. Instead, each of us can create our own local community and try our best to prepare for the inevitable dark days - and make it a place where art and music and literature play a central role in our lives."
I also completely agree with the Rueger article, and was amazed to see something both reality-based (there is now no stopping climate chaos, governments haven't and won't do much of anything no matter how bad it gets) and suggesting an actually appropriate response (live close to the land, focus on your local community) published at a dreary site like HuffPost.
ReplyDeleteProgs pounding the table about wind and solar are at this point nearly as annoying and as representative of this culture's complete moral bankruptcy and spiritual sickness as the fossil extraction cartels. My suggestion is that anyone still believing this disastrous civilization can turn this around needs to stop lying; first to themselves, and then to others.
https://vimeo.com/346171480
Waldo-
ReplyDeleteGd clip, thanks. The fact is that whether we're green or purple, everything in the US gets fed into the Hustle Ideology. It never is abt a serious chg in our values or the way we live. We will not pull out profit, greed, growth, expansion, consumerism, imperialism, etc. by the roots. What we really desire is to chg w/o changing.
mb
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteAmerican whopper dept.:
16 million Americans believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows:
https://roanoke.com/opinion/columnists/strong-dumb-and-dumber-americans/article_e5bbceea-ee2d-11eb-a203-5feb5f206238.html
We Americans are exhibiting greater and greater stupidity. The evidence for Americans being exceptionally stupid is staring them right in the face, but it makes no difference whatsoever. How was it even possible that America, for better or for worse, was heir to to the intellectual revolution of seventeenth-century Europe?
Miles
Dear Dr, Berman,
ReplyDeleteGreetings from the Burning West Cost nation state with 82 cities!
Wife says this morning: Honey, I can't take the news from Afghanistan.
What a waste of 3 trillion $$$, I reply. Another abandon-&-destabilize act of by Murica.
Wife: It's useless talking to you. I won't talk to you.
Full disclosure: She adores O.
Ajay-
ReplyDeleteBut who is O?
Jeff-
What abt black milk? As for our heritage: we were far more interested in John Locke (property) than Isaac Newton (critical thinking).
Wafers-
I'm pleased to report that this blog post pulled a few antisemitic trollfoons outta the woodwork. They are too stupid to realize that I was baiting them. Here's more: YOU HAVE NO TESTES! JEWS RULE! That shd snag a few more of them.
mb
Behold Barack Antoinette by Maureen Dowd https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/14/opinion/barack-obama-birthday.html
ReplyDeleteVery good!
Note to Bruce L.-
ReplyDeleteBruce, I'm puzzled by yr query. Didn't we have an email correspondence on the subject a while back, in wh/I answered it? I don't have anything to add, beyond what I wrote you at that time, so I suggest you check yr old messages. In any case, I can always be reached at mauricio@morrisberman.com, tho I shd add that I really don't want to repeat myself.
Dempsey-
Scroll back; the guy is a piece of trash.
mb
Regarding Obama, a few years ago you said something that REALLY stuck with me, Dr. B. It was in one of your interviews on YouTube:
ReplyDelete"Americans get very excited about race."
In other words, if I understood it correctly, Americans LOVE racial issues because they provide an opportunity to pretend to do something for their fellow citizens while really doing NOTHING at all.
In my estimation, the elites couldn't have found a more perfect avatar than Obama. And boy, was he ever a fantastic anodyne for the disgruntled masses who had finally caught on to the 3-card-monte game that Cheney and Rumsfeld had played with WMDs. They wanted the 'appearance' of change and they sure got it.
Ultimately, it was no different than ordering a different flavored latte from Starbucks and required about the same mental energy from the average American.
Chaos in the homeland: An anti-vax protest in LA turns violent-
ReplyDeletehttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/one-person-stabbed-during-clash-over-vaccines-in-la/ar-AANkBrw?ocid=hplocalnews
It's fascinating to read the homemade signs at protests in the US. My favorite from this one said "Stop the Needle Rape!!!"
https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_683,w_1024,x_0,y_0/dpr_1.5/c_limit,w_690/fl_lossy,q_auto/GettyImages-1234683359_kex7bn
And there's more chaos overseas: The US embassy in Kabul is about to fall-
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-embassy-kabul-evacuated-within-36-hours/
Jason-
ReplyDelete1st let me say that I am 100% opposed to needle rape (whatever the hell that is). 2nd, while I'm no fan of the Taliban, here is the lesson the US refuses to learn: You cannot make war on, or invade, another culture that you know fuck all abt, and think that you can remake it in your image. America has attempted to do this over and over again (cf. our embarrassing exit from Vietnam, the collapse of Iraq, etc.), and now (once again) it's getting its ass kicked. Problem: America is not very intelligent, so it is unable to learn from experience. Since it is run by and for douchebags, after it 'loses' Afghanistan, it'll find another country to attack for 20 yrs at a cost of many trillions of dollars. (Mark my words.)
Note to RCTD-
Whaa?
Louis-
As far as race goes, the issue enables progs to feel self-righteous--what we now call 'virtue signaling'. As you say, it's all talk. Things don't *actually* change. But the progs beat their chests, and it's pretty much like a drug. Excitement is an easy way of filling the Void in their souls. And as far as I can make out, the American soul is the emptiest of any in the entire world. All that aside, I'm very hurt that Obamaloney didn't invite me to his party. :-(
But here is a poem to cheer us up, and summarize the end-game of the US (move over, Keats):
I'm a bubba
I.e., a flubba.
I'm woke
I.e., a joke.
mb
Wafers, here is a comment in the FT as reported in the Guardian
ReplyDeleteWriting in the FT, the paper’s chief foreign affairs columnistGideon Rachman argues that “Joe Biden’s credibility has been shredded in Afghanistan”. He writes:
If Donald Trump were presiding over the debacle in Afghanistan, the US foreign policy establishment would be loudly condemning the irresponsibility and immorality of American strategy. Since it is Joe Biden in the White House there is instead, largely, an embarrassed silence.
It is true that Trump set the US on the path out of Afghanistan and began the delusional peace talks with the Taliban that have gone nowhere. But rather than reverse the withdrawal of troops, Biden accelerated it.
...
The US failure makes it much harder for Biden to push his core message that “America is back”. By contrast, it fits perfectly with two key messages pushed by the Chinese (and Russian) governments. First, that US power is in decline. Second, that American security guarantees cannot be relied upon.
If the US will not commit to a fight against the Taliban, there will be a question mark over whether America would really be willing to go to war with China or Russia. Yet America’s global network of alliances is based on the idea that, in the last resort, US troops would indeed be deployed to defend their allies in Asia, Europe and elsewhere.
----
The game is up.
Hi MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteDan Daniel, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the short piece from HuffPost you posted. You are right to be concerned about the ones who will be left behind as the planet scorches and burns. Governments are supposed to protect the masses, but that ship sailed a long time ago. I'm not sure there ever was such a ship in the US, except for maybe the USS Hustle. That ship is sinking, and it sure is fun to watch. Here is my favorite quote from the article you posted:
"Over and over again, we’ve seen corporations and governments ignore the people they should protect in order to line their own pockets. What has changed now is that they’re sacrificing an entire planet instead of a town or a country."
Unfortunately, it will not be possible to watch climate change from afar. If Wafers have not already done so, read the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. They're not pulling punches any more but they did throw in a little dash of hopium to keep the funding coming. It's pretty much a death knell for the planet. It's been nice knowing you, guys and gals.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Headline_Statements.pdf
Indian-
ReplyDeleteLink?
mb
Biden deserves blame for the debacle in Afghanistan ��
ReplyDeleteBy CNN National Security Analyst, Peter Bergen:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/08/12/opinions/afghanistan-president-biden-debacle-bergen/index.html
Majid-
ReplyDeleteKind of short-sighted. Is it just Biden? We've been messing w/the Muslim world for something like a century now, and ya know what? They don' like it!
mb
Afghanistan just follows a trail of debacles the US has had since 1945. To name just a few; China 1949, Vietnam 1975, Iran 1979, Afghanistan 2021. For a people that don't read history much less learn from it the typical reaction is: Why can't we all get along? Well, in Afghanistan when your trainees are shooting you on a regular basis you know the game is up. Or do you?
ReplyDeleteFound an interesting article on Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/is-anxiety-what-makes-us-human-why-kierkegaard-is-still-relevant-today
Author mentions how Kierkegaard "believed that true peace and joy come from the depths of the human heart, which can be reached only by contending with life’s uncertainties." This brings to mind an old interview (think it was w/ James Kunstler), where you mentioned the deep panic & anxiety that plagues most Amerikkkans. Maybe this is part of their love affair with opiates & happy pills
re responses to Reuger's apologia- @down you go, first let's dispose of the idea that "Corporations are created to maximize profits no matter what." This is propaganda created by some of the most despicable rapacious people the world has ever seen.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/09/09/how-the-cult-of-shareholder-value-wrecked-american-business/
As the first article ends, after looking at the legal history: "(I)t is activist hedge funds and modern executive compensation practices — not corporate law — that drive so many of today’s public companies to myopically focus on short-term earnings; cut back on investment and innovation; mistreat their employees, customers and communities; and indulge in reckless, irresponsible and environmentally destructive behaviors."
The 'We were only following the Wall Street propaganda' defense should be seen as a contemporary version of the Nuremberg defense of 'I was just following orders.'
Maybe you can explain the difference between Reuger's plan and the secure islands of Richard Branson and Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Theil's libertarian ship-nation plan, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezo's escape to space, etc? The scale is different but I think the purpose and end result are the same. 'Longtermism' may be a clear (yet idiotic, I know) statement of their elitist intentions, which I summarized as 'I got mine, good luck, suckers':
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/07/the-dangerous-ideas-of-longtermism-and-existential-risk
to be cont'd...
"The United States never has and never shall never lose a war.”
ReplyDelete“We’re bringing goodness and democracy to the world.”
The first quote was told to be by those wacky Roman Catholic nuns back in Catholic grammar school in the 1960’s. The second one has been muttered by many dumbed down, brainwashed USAins who have been fed this bullshit from birth. Of course our latest laughable debacle in Afghanistan belies what the hooded penguins said and what your pathetic average “patriotic” USAin claims.
But I digress. Let’s instead get a good laugh at a few American Karens in action as they fight their own war on society and make total jackasses of themselves. LOL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuTR_vs61xU&t=167s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvoP88zlmSY
David-
ReplyDeleteDon' ferget Iraq. You can get the full version of some of these in DAA, also in works by Stephen Kinzer. What else can you expect, when you've got turkeys fighting wars and formulating foreign policy? Military bozos, political bozos, and citizen bozos. Do the math.
Satchmo-
Americans cannot comprehend Keats' notion of "negative capability." They are far too stupid for that. I shd add that certainty and success always made me happy, but uncertainty and failure taught me abt life, and abt myself.
mb
MB, Here is the FT link, since you asked.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ft.com/content/71629b28-f730-431a-b8da-a2d45387a0c2
Dr. B-
ReplyDeleteMs. Khan is going to save us-
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/aug/14/lina-khan-big-tech-ftc-antitrust
Ha.
Birn-
ReplyDeleteI'm sure she'll turn everything around. Larchmont is quite a swanky town, BTW.
Indian-
In the future, when you cite material, pls provide links or refs as a courtesy to other Wafers. Thank you.
mb
Megan-
ReplyDeleteSorry, cdn't post it. Just to be clear: this is not really a blog for the broadcasting of opinions, for the most part. The basic idea is to make an argument regarding the collapse of the American empire, and then to provide supporting evidence in the form of links or reliable refs. There are, I'm quite sure, hundreds of thousands of blogs where people just weigh in on this or that issue, w/o any substantiation of their views. As it turns out, this is not one of them.
mb
Waldo Pepper
ReplyDeleteA little late but thanks for the connect to Bright Green Lies
reference which I am know reading. Not for the faint of heart to be
sure. A passage from the book peaked my curiosity and I thought
I would post here for perhaps a comment. The passage is "The
best we can do is practice self reliance and small-scale living
......." That passage made me think of Ralph Waldo Emerson's
philosophy of self-reliance and his famous essay with the same name.
Controversial essay yes but maybe not so today.
Foster-
ReplyDeleteI think your assertion is pretty stupid, but that's neither here nor there. The crucial pt is that we don't entertain bloviation on this blog. You wanna make an argument, you provide evidence for it; by which I mean links or refs to reliable sources. You provided nothing; you just blathered. I suspect you'll be happier on another blog, one that is impressed by your keen intellectual edge.
mb
The vultures in the American media are conveniently leaving out a VERY distinct possibility.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the Afghani people WANT the Taliban to run the country. Maybe the Afghani people prefer the construct of Islamic principles running their country instead of the vacuous narcissism plaguing American society.
I don't see unhappy people here in the streets:
https://youtu.be/jEAIecplyyE
I'm certainly not going to make the argument that the Taliban is offering the most optimal solution as a way of life. Life for women will be undoubtedly bad again.
However, we're in no position to be clutching our pearls and acting like some humanitarian crisis is underway. Maybe the Afghans look at our synthetic culture of celebrity worship, gender confusion, opiate addiction, and obsession with toxic social media and say to themselves: "NO THANK YOU!".
I know this may not be the most popular take, but I'd bet my house that Durkeim's theories of suicidality being lower in 'primitive' cultures rings absolutely true in Afghanistan.
Now I understand why I often see the world "lemmings" in comments
ReplyDeletesent in.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/south-dakota-governor-calls-sturgis-145218003.html
ps: there may have been another post sent in, wh/I accidentally deleted. Not sure, as technologically speaking, I'm an imbecile. Anyway, if you did get erased, my apologies, and pls re-send.
ReplyDeleteps2: I cd be wrong, but it's starting to look like the country is on its last legs. I predicted this for 2030, but now, I'm not sure. The Taliban surrounds Kabul, as we do a repeat of Saigon 1975 (and wasted trillions on a 20-yr war); covid is making a resurgence, and our control efforts have been rather a botch; Americans are massacring each other in the street on a daily basis; bubbas and wokes are equally silly, and equally damaging to the culture; and beyond the infrastructure bill, Biden's chances of getting anything substantive thru the Senate are on the order of negative infinity. A colossus adrift, a ship w/o a rudder, floating toward the edge of the known earth.
mb
ReplyDeleteAnother example of the left cannibalizing itself. Maher's last line made me think he may be starting to get it, but the jury is still out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ1mGVu5584&list=WL&index=
In addition to "Bright Green Lies" You may want to check out "Planet of the Humans" which the environmental movement "leaders" excoriated the film and even succeeded in having it banned from view for a few days last year.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE
ps3: In a *day*!:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/15/the-fall-of-kabul-a-20-year-mission-collapses-in-a-single-day
What dummies Americans are! Speaking of which:
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/south-dakota-governor-calls-sturgis-145218003.html
Does it get any dumber?
mb
A job is a little thing in the old English. It would have been well for Michiko Kakutani to have held her ambitions in check when reviewing Dark Ages. Worse than criticisng that survey book for not being a fresh monograph with 2000 person samples to indicate that people are at least self destructively limited in outlook where every daily politics calls for thought? She denied very many readers of a clear vista . And seemed to have done worse with quotes like this: For decades objectivity, or at least tge aim of ascertaining the best available truth has been falling out of style..."" from the Guardian review of her book on Trump's long moment. That attitude would have made my vote a nonstarter, that during our imperium Americans , soldiers least of all, do not belong anywhere they would be unwelcome to stay for a weekend vacation ie Iraq ie Afghanistan. I am better served every day by looking at the chemical dangers on my house painting gigs than by unmasking for the "best truth" that I will survive after inhaling petroleum and real nerve agents. Never heard of the best truth, maybe a political calculation. It paid for us to share DrMB's hard look at what suburbs mean. I quote a grammatical declension from a fellow house painter: Best, better, bested...
ReplyDeleteIt have been a few months since I've been on the blog, I was busy but now I'm glad I'm back.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, I spent this whole morning discussing gender issues with some americans, I quoted Dr. Berman and Alain Ehrenberg trying to prove that the deep structures of american society causes much of the issues. Honestly, it was like I was talking to a wall. They misunderstood everything I said and didn't understand basic concepts (ideology, critique, libido etc.). If they had different opinions and tried to prove me wrong I wouldn't mind it, but I was saying A and they were saying I said B. Intellectual disagreement is normal, but a total inability to understand what's being said, that's a sign of doom.
one unit-
ReplyDeleteHaving a hard time ascertaining what you are saying; yr post is a bit scrambled. Anyway, I thought DAA *was* a fresh monograph, but no harm done. Gd luck w/yr house painting. In future, here is the blog format I suggest you follow:
1. Present a specific argument you have on the collapse of the American empire;
2. Provide proof, in the form of reliable links or references.
Thank you,
mb
This reminds of Trump and the forces that landed him in the white house …
ReplyDeleteThe Dunning-Kruger Effect - Cognitive Bias - Why Incompetent People Think They Are Competent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y50i1bI2uN4
Time stamp 7:13 “In order to know you don’t know anything, you have to know something” This section discusses how ignorant people tend overestimate their abilities whereas competent people tend to rate themselves lower. “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” Charles Darwin
It seems that some Americans should be deported from their own country because they don’t know what’s going in it let alone history. JayWalking Citizenship https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJlY9C7YWzI
Timestamp 3:50 worst and funniest interview. Absolutely surreal. Sometimes I wonder how Jay Leno can do these interviews with a straight face.
Is China turning into America? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLmxoX7zuck
Time stamp 6:50 – No one steps in to help a drunk woman.
Time stamp 7:18 – A man has a stroke in a store, people just pass him by and no one helps. That’s really scary to see.
I am looking at Portugal as a potential place to emigrate. One thing that came up a few times in my research was that Portuguese culture favors face to face interactions over phone and email, even in the business world. The language seems difficult to learn compared to Spanish. Not a perfect country but it seems more humane than America: https://www.expatica.com/pt/
part 2, re responses to Reuger's apologia- @down you go:
ReplyDeleteI agree, that each of us needs to decide how to take care of ourselves in recognition of the ongoing and increasing disasters. Climate migration is happening everywhere. But the man in the article is both deluded that he had done anything useful for the last 40 years (bringing his own bag? recycling? again, does falling for capitalist propaganda make one innocent of the damage done by one's actions?) He plans to hole up in France, and may allow a small number of friends who can afford the airfare and arrange proper visas to live with him. And he will grace the indigenous population with art, literature, music? In France? Bringing coals to Newcastle, eh? I suggest reading Flaubert's 'Bouvard and Pécuchet.' My fear is that his selfish perspective- again, I got mine, good luck, suckers- will find a strong resonance among others with his money, and the world get flooded with mini-Bezos and Zuckermans in their more or less luxurious retirement community bolt holes (who then die within 20 years after irreparably changing the locale). Having read someone like Dr.B and his emigration and his engagement with his chosen community shows that emigration can be done with respect and admiration, and not be destructive to an existing community. But the Reuger article? Probably just the kind of ex-pat American who drove Dr.B from many possible places in Mexico.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-when-it-comes-to-climate-change-the-rich-are-the-culprit-but-they-won-t-pay-the-price-1.6491713
to be cont'd....
Dan and other interested in the topic - Exxon and other international oil companies are in business for one reason, to make profits for their shareholders (mostly rich people) and their executives. The law requires corporate directors and managers to pursue long-term, sustainable shareholder wealth maximization before the interests of society at large (or the environment) If they fail to do that, shareholders could sue them for mismanagement.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, Exxon and others have known about the dangers of climate warming for decades, but have chosen to do nothing about it. More than nothing - have contributed to and led campaigns to create doubt so they could keep making money. I don't know anything about Corporate Law but I know irresponsibility and greed when I see it,.
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2017/08/oil-company-communications-blow-smoke-about-climate
change/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6ubFmPG18gIVBojICh3f2wPmEAAYAyAAEgK5r_D_BwE
And I think it's ludicrous to compare middle class couples like the Ruegers and my wife and I to billionaires who can escape the harshest consequences of climate catastrophe by sailing to their private islands or launching themselves into space. I can assure you that I don't have a private island to run to when the shit hits the fan.
Although I don’t like quoting a conservative propaganda think tank machine like the American Enterprise Institute, I for one feel they are right on the mark. Here is another example and proof of just how overrated our so called “Intelligence”, our great “CIA”, actually is. Maybe it should do the only thing it’s been good at doing: staging coup d’etats and installing bullying far right/ corporate friendly military dictators in poor third world countries that can offer no resistance.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.aei.org/op-eds/dont-ignore-the-cias-intelligence-failure-on-afghanistan/
Matt Taibbi sums up American foreign policy in this article.
ReplyDeletehttps://taibbi.substack.com/p/afghanistan-we-never-learn?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzY1ODI4OCwicG9zdF9pZCI6NDAwNzM3MTQsIl8iOiJSRTJGYiIsImlhdCI6MTYyOTEzMTM0MCwiZXhwIjoxNjI5MTM0OTQwLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItMTA0MiIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.mebIGSlOEQbpy_uzevrttFfPYaafaWwzX81vtziTVcs
“The pattern is always the same. We go to places we’re not welcome, tell the public a confounding political problem can be solved militarily, and lie about our motives in occupying the country to boot. Then we pick a local civilian political authority to back that inevitably proves to be corrupt and repressive, increasing local antagonism toward the American presence.”
"The drastic change in Afghanistan's situation is undoubtedly a heavy blow to the US. It declared the complete failure of US intent to reshape Afghanistan," the Global Times said in an editorial published late on Sunday night. "This defeat of the US is a clearer demonstration of US impotence than the Vietnam War — the US is indeed like a 'paper tiger.'"
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/16/china/china-afghanistan-taliban-mic-intl-hnk/index.html
Hubris vs wisdom. See the two paragraphs after the above one in the article.
Orca-
ReplyDeleteDon't talk w/Americans. Emigrate.
Indian-
W/yet another American foreign policy debacle, the world can increasingly see that we are a doofus nation that has no idea as to what it's doing. This will fuel our decline.
Jamie, Joe-
We are too stupid to see our pattern, and wdn't be able to chg it even if we cd see it.
mb
Spaghetti -
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree on balance, blaming Wilson and FDR for inventing executive overreach is rather dubious. Our second and third presidents overstepped the constitution quite dramatically, with Adams' Alien and Sedition Acts, and Jefferson apparently deciding he could unilaterally agree to the Louisiana Purchase. I am not trying to let Wilson off the hook by any means, but I think it's clear that the expedient needs of an expansionist superpower were considered more important than constitutional limits long before America was enmeshed in World Wars 1 & 2.
A more thorough narrative of this phenomenon can be seen in this video, by the late great Gore Vidal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbOQcHZSY_Q . Obviously, he was erroneous in presuming that it would be Japan who overtook America as a world power, rather than China. But his narrative of the rise and fall of our would be Emperor-Presidents is nonetheless spot on.
Jamie, good link but FYI (and to other WAFers) you don't need to include the ? and anything after it in a link. So:
ReplyDeletehttps://taibbi.substack.com/p/afghanistan-we-never-learn
rather amusing ... no not the right term, what's a word for tragic and totally expected yet ironic? Whatever ... amusing to see all the pretend anti-war lefties all of a sudden going crazy about the US leaving, as if 20 years and 2 fuc%ing TRILLION dollars couldn't do what the Taliban did in a weekend. I don't even know where to start. Charlie Pierce can do it:
https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/71007-focus-what-the-hell-were-we-doing-there
Wafer Orca, respectfully, it does not matter who you quote or don't quote. Or how much evidence-based arguments and historical facts you presents. US-ians are braindead. There's an ontological blockage that inhibits most from seeing reality bc they 'believe' in the US empire.
ReplyDeleteIt does not matter how much US "schooling" that have, how 'nice' they appear to be, "intellectual", or "degrees" etc. US-ians are dumber than stale dogshit and can only chant, usa, usa, or 'hope' that things will get better, with a sprinkle of 'rising up' nonsense with some twatter-assbook memes-posts....talk about delusional/tone deaf.
Just focus on a serious plan for emigration to a NON-Anglo-Saxon country.
Bonne chance!
'
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteGood discussion. Thank you all for yr contributions. As we exit Afghanistan like a collection of buffoons, it demonstrates to all the world that America is a fucking joke, and not to be taken seriously. This will help in our decline.
mb
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteShort poem:
Biden:
Joe Biden is Coronaviral
his noodle is in a downward spiral
that silver nimble of dwindling hair
proves there's nothing going on up there
but an empty skull, dust, and denial.
Miles
A wonderful legacy of twenty years of money and lives pissed away in a country that clearly rejects western "values". You just can't fix stupid. Will we ever learn?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.npr.org/2021/06/24/1009846329/military-suicides-deaths-mental-health-crisis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhKkbDl3i08
ReplyDeleteA rare video of American progs realizing how destructive, deluded and senseless the Afghanistan debacle really was. Although Biden seems to lack any real conviction in the good things he's trying to accomplish, at least he was smart enough to end this war when it finally dawned on him how useless it was. This seems to indicate Biden is further to the left than the last five presidents, who happily expanded America's imperial wars even though doing so hastened America's decline. In his own sad, impotent way, Biden seems to be trying to save America, one step at a time. Someone needs to tell the poor fellow why it can't be done.
What do you think about Biden's role in this, MB and assorted Wafers?
Nadine-
ReplyDeleteThis guy said the Afghanistan caper was a house of cards. True, but more to the pt, it was a house of buffoons. Think back to Saigon 1975; the exit scenes are very similar. And since the US gov't consists of horses' asses, we just keep repeating the same foreign policy disasters over and over again.
Demo-
Regarding yr link: since US foreign policy is incoherent, and our military adventures empty and meaningless, I'm not surprised by the data on soldier suicide. John Kerry in 1971, regarding Vietnam: "How can you ask a man to die for a mistake?" But this is what we keep doing, repeatedly. Which points to a larger problem: the entire country is a mistake--a gigantic one, to quote Freud.
Jeff-
Once again, a beautiful poem. Here's my response:
"Our heads are tin-plated
For we are buffoons, and degraded."
mb
A article that sums up the situation in Afghanistan is at the Counterpunch.org website August 13,2021 titled "Stop Listening to the Pro-War Idiots Who Got Afghanistan Wrong"by Ted Rall.A statement that caught my eye was 'If you are a pacifist or skeptical about wars of choice in general,or merely anticipate problems with a particular military incursion it doesn't matter if you are a 100% correct 100% of the time you will be blackballed,ridiculed ,disappeared.'This is why the U.S. is surprised because it blinded itself.Thanks
ReplyDeleteDr B.,
ReplyDeleteLet's finish your poem...
"Our heads are tin-plated
For we are buffoons and degraded."
"Degraded and emasculated, humiliated.
Buffoons, loons, shit for brains.
WAFERS are few, but can smell the doodoo.
There is no hope. There is no hope.
Shit or Shinola?
We really don't know...."
#环球时报Editorial: From what happened in Afghanistan, those in Taiwan should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and US military won’t come to help. As a result, the DPP will quickly surrender. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202108/1231636.shtml
ReplyDeleteWelllll duh!
Skram-
ReplyDeleteThank you. Very moving.
mb
MB- in one of your posts you said that it is starting to look like the US is on its last legs. Since Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires, I also wonder if in this decade the US will collapse. We know that the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 and 2 yrs layer in 1991 the USSR disintegrated. Since the US lost in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I wonder, does the American military leadership think it can take on the Chinese and/or the Russians in a future conflict?
ReplyDeleteAmerica has set up a Suicide Hotline for vets who are distraught that their 'service' in Afghanistan was in vain.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.kktv.com/2021/08/17/what-was-all-this-colorado-vets-struggle-with-questions-after-afghanistan-falls-taliban-forces/
Quote:
“Right now, I’m afraid that as a veteran community, that number is going to skyrocket because we feel like what we did over there was for nothing.”
Bubba should take a couple of Tylenol and rest easy in the knowledge that Halliburton awarded SEVERAL 'million-dollar' bonuses to executives who helped organize the cleanup efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Sorry about losing your legs and all that, but Dick Cheney thanks you for your service, Bubba.
Hola Wafers, been a while. Never disappointed upon returning to the greatest of blogs. @cormorant Thanks for the art links. Very refreshing.
ReplyDeleteWell, Dr Berman, more proof that you are a modern day Nostradamus. This fella has declared us a silly people:
"In short, an unserious country mired in the most masturbatory hysterics over bullshit dramas waged war against an insurgency of religious zealots fired by a 7th-century morality, and utterly and totally lost."
https://www.thepullrequest.com/p/we-are-no-longer-a-serious-people?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=copy
Best,
Anders
anders-
ReplyDeleteA great essay; thanks. Two things stand out: Americans see everything as projections of their own worldview; and truly, we are indeed a silly people, a collection of frivolous, dumb-as-shit buffoons. The upshot is that we live in a kind of American bubble that has little to do w/the real world, so when Reality hits, we are left speechless. Why did the Vietnamese beat us? Because they were fighting for their country, and we were fighting for a false construct we had created about 'communism'. The Reality was, as Robt McNamara later admitted, that we had interfered in a civil war. So we rained down napalm and Agent Orange and massive technological destruction on peasants in pajamas...and the peasants won! Did we learn anything from that? Of course not. So we are now repeating in Kabul the scenes from Saigon in 1975. We had abs. no purpose in Afghanistan, whereas the Taliban were fighting for a way of life (no matter how much we dislike it). And what is our way of life? Consumerism, imperialism, hustling, and complete spiritual emptiness. These are not values in the human sense of the term, and because we lack real values, we make stupid wars on people who do have them, spend trillions doing it, and in the meantime are disintegrating as a nation. Meanwhile, the arms manufacturers and other merchants of death get fatter and fatter. As for "masturbatory hysterics": I have repeatedly said that the US was beating off. This is obvious to only a very few Americans.
Louis-
I don't know if it is still online anywhere, but around 1970 I remember seeing footage of VN vets throwing their medals over the White House fence and screaming "You can keep this bullshit!" Of course by then many were on crutches and in wheelchairs. The Pentagon has done what it can to suppress those tapes.
Fer-
Since we are cowards, we won't confront China or Russia in any direct way (any more than we did during the Cold War). Since we are cowards, we take on small countries and tin pot dictatorships: Grenada, Iraq, Vietnam, etc. Has the American military had a serious victory since 1945? As for collapse of USSR: this was the result of much more than their defeat in Afghanistan (e.g. structural problems of the Soviet economy), altho that venture certainly didn't help the Soviet state. Our war/defeat in Afghanistan will bleed us severely, but again, there are larger forces at work. One thing I have stated on this blog, a # of times, is that 2030 will be a major turning pt: 9 yrs from now, our disintegration will be seriously accelerated, and the US will be a very different country from what it is rt now--w/or w/o Trumpaloni.
The thing to take away from Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iraq, and etc., is that we are morons. The people are morons; the people they elect to 'serve' them are morons; and the military that these elected people appoint to 'protect' us are morons. And just wait a few yrs...mark my words...we will find another Afghanistan/VN/Iraq, and repeat the same moronic pattern. Here's a gd post-it for y'all: BUFFOONS RULE. And they do, mes enfants; they do.
If you don't think the wo/man in the street is a buffoon, just go up to him and ask him 3 questions (randomly selected by me): Who was Adlai Stevenson? What is a prime #? Who wrote, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day"? Just watch their faces as they shake their heads and drool. These people are your neighbors!
mb
Hi Dr. Berman and Wafers:
ReplyDeleteJames Howard Kunstler's new column points out some interesting consequences of the Afghanistan pullout/failed occupation: China looking to take advantage of our current weakness in Taiwan, ex-military people being dispirited and angry over 'fighting and dying for nothing' and various other possibilities.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/strange-days-ahead/
And author/journalist Robin Wright suggesting in a New Yorker article that the American Era of world domination might be over (sorry if this link has problems).
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/does-the-great-retreat-from-afghanistan-mark-the-end-of-the-american-era
An additional "Kabul Moment" vignette from Kabul Airport yesterday to add to the discussion on Afghanistan here: US military dogs have been given priority seating on military evacuation aircraft over human evacuees (who must have the appropriate paperwork filled out). The photos are here, see for yourselves:
ReplyDeletewww.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/ex-royal-marine-Kabul-forced-24774988
Wafer Noura-
ReplyDelete"I am looking at Portugal as a potential place to emigrate."
1. Though it may not apparently seem so to foreigners, Portuguese and Spanish languages are quite similar, and nearly identical in their grammar. People who live along the border of both countries have no difficulty understanding each other speaking their own language, and same goes for South America along the border between Brazil and its neighbouring countries - they call it speaking 'portunhol' ('portuñol' in Spanish).
2. Unless you need to know the language in order to work, I wouldn't worry much about your Portuguese language skills. Exception made to older -less educated- people, the majority of the Portuguese speak decent English.
3. In Latino/southern European cultures, people are both physically and psychologically closer to one another. There is more familiarity, more intimacy, more time spent together, they socially kiss more, hug more, and so on. This may sound silly to state, but I've worked in England for a while and often notice that people from Anglo cultures feel somewhat uncomfortable with these traits. They are accustomed to be more formal and distant and not so interdependent.
Some ramblings from a portuguese reader of the blog; hope I could help.
Até logo!
part 3, @down we go- You say that you don't know corporate law, yet state with certainty that corporations are to do one thing only, make profits. I also am not a lawyer so I provided a couple of articles by lawyers who dispute this claim of yours. Feel free to respond similarly.
ReplyDeleteYou point to the !shocking! revelation of oil companies' knowledge of the long term implications of green house gases back in the 80s and their effort to suppress this information. But wait, these are the same corporations that you think have one and only one goal, so there should be no surprise. Seems that the US corporate structure is inherently immoral, unethical, and destructive, yes? I return to the Nuremberg defense, then- simply claiming you were following the law when the law is immoral is not a valid defense.
As to Reuger being middle class, I seriously doubt that. I am confident that Reuger is not looking to buy a working farm in France and planning to jet back and forth as a member of the middle class. It would take a short essay to explicate the parallels between Reuger and billionaire bolt hole builders, and since you declare such thinking ludicrous in the first place I would be wasting my time.
https://www.moneycrashers.com/middle-class-america-definition-income-range-jobs/
I do wish you well in dealing with a possible move; North Carolina, from the islands inland, is a beautiful place. With the number of impending climate refugees in the US, looking now makes sense. Having been in Vermont until recently, the influx of refugees such as you has been growing.
https://www.livescience.com/54042-climate-change-could-force-coastal-retreat.html
Michael-
ReplyDeleteMy response to intellectual breakthru provided by Robin Wright: Gee, no! Do ya think?
mb
Afghanistan isn’t just a 20-year lesson about the perils of invading and occupying countries. It’s a 40-year lesson about the perils of sending weapons to “freedom fighters.” https://nonzero.substack.com/p/how-the-afghanistan-war-really-started
ReplyDeleteHello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteUnlike all those hypocrites out there, I love saying "I told you so." From the beginning of the US invasion of Afghanistan, I noted there was no real objective other than a "war on terror." The US was from the start engaged in a fight against an abstraction, not against a tangible enemy. It's impossible to defeat an abstraction. The whole thing was thus necessarily a charade, including the stated goals, which could be summarised as "Truth, Justice and the American Way," or as George Carlin put it, "American Bullshit."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRklF2dIuBk&ab_channel=SamuelGalv%C3%A3o
(more to follow in 24 hours...)
This is a good piece on the intertwining of US imperialism with the values of progressive liberalism:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.conter.co.uk/blog/2020/12/16/cosmopolitan-dystopia-why-empire-needs-fatuous-leftism
Karl, al, Golf-
ReplyDeleteHave u guys given any serious thought as to how much slapping Americans need?
mb
ps: For example:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh88g_EKlqw
Miguel,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your thoughtful and helpful insights. Thank you so much!
MB,
Does the Afghan situation qualify as a Suez moment for America? Regardless, this is definitely a major milestone in the inexorable disintegration.
@ Al:
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty obvious that the whole point of Afghanistan was to enrich contractors. That's it. The US spent two trillion dollars on the occupation and the country didn't last a day. Where did all the money go? The US is basically a massive kleptocracy.
"The biggest chunk – nearly $1 trillion – was consumed by the Overseas Contingency Operations budget for the Department of Defense. The second biggest line item – $530bn – is the estimated interest payments on the money the US government borrowed to fund the war."
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/8/16/the-us-spent-2-trillion-in-afghanistan-and-for-what
"A scrimmage in a Border Station-
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail."
Noura-
ReplyDeleteA Suez Moment is one in which the entire world recognizes that the country in question is no longer #1 in the power game. This has not quite happened as of yet, but with the debacle in Afghanistan, we are getting pretty close. The 20-yr war and resulting failure makes us look like a collection of incompetent morons. Which wd be a correct assessment.
mb
cor-
ReplyDeleteHere is my reply poem:
An American who went to Kabul
Realized that of shit, he was full.
“I’ll leave pretty soon,
For I’m a hustler and buffoon,
And as for money, I can’t resist the pull.”
Wafers are invited to improve on that last line.
mb
“The U.S. government should acknowledge what happened at Guantánamo, and they should apologize, and they should at least compensate those detainees.”
ReplyDeletehttps://theintercept.com/2021/08/17/guantanamo-memoir-mansoor-adayfi/?utm_campaign=theintercept
Grant Powers
ReplyDeleteI'm a hustler. An imperialist, a war mongering goon.
With a backwards baseball cap in full bloom.
Storming olive oil factories, 1000+ overseas military bases in full sight
Ugh-My cable tee vee went out last night.
Infecting the world with our toxic charm.
Buy this, buy that,causing great harm.
Oh well...
For it's Kim's tushie is all I can think about.
How big is her house, does she have enough money, it's not even funny.
For I'm a American, a bad joke.
Empty brain, empty soul, a fucked up bloke.
No place to hide except in my debts
It must be my fault, didn't work hard enough.
Pass the salt.
Grant-
ReplyDeleteWhen pigs fly.
Glans-
Gd summary of US since 1945.
These are your neighbors!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYYUrjeri14
mb
Well, we can at least thank them for creating jobs and profits from
ReplyDeleteall this weaponry. If they need spare parts and ammunition, more
of the same for free enterprise.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/white-house-says-fair-amount-202716868.html
This from the NYT:
ReplyDelete"The scenes at the Kabul airport will now give Afghanistan a place in America’s national memory as another failed attempt to reshape a far-off land."
Some questions:
1. *What* national memory? What we have in reality is national amnesia. The word 'another' suggests we never learn anything.
2. Instead of attempting to reshape a far-off land, why doesn't America do the world a favor and reshape itself?
Bozos...mb
Paul Kingsnorth is in UnHerd today arguing that, 40 years after Alasdair Macintyre's 'After Virtue', everything he predicted has come true:
ReplyDeletehttps://unherd.com/2021/08/why-the-west-will-collapse/
And Nick Turse and Ryan Grim today on The Intercept:
https://theintercept.com/2021/08/17/afghanistan-taliban-surrender-withdrawal-biden/
https://theintercept.com/2021/08/17/afghanistan-papers-kabul-taliban-craig-whitlock/
Smart cats, these guys.
cormorant,
ReplyDeletePathetic, isn't it? It would have been far less destructive if the American government had simply given a few hundred billion dollars to the weapons companies. It would have spared the lives of countless people.
Louis-
ReplyDeleteSorry, cdn't run it (24-hr rule).
Fox-
A great essay. Kingsnorth is a Wafer.
mb
Current status of some declining empire markers:
ReplyDeleteEconomic Inequality
A new report released by the World Economic Forum on Jan. 16 showed that, while the U.S. is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, it’s also one of the most unequal, coming in at No. 23 out of 30 developed nations for inequality.
https://www.bichee.com/read-blog/230_america-has-the-worst-record-in-history-when-it-comes-to-wealth-inequality.html
Out of Control Military
Spot-on analogy by Caitlin Johnstone comparing US military to Edward Scissorhands.
“People who think the US military can be used for good remind me of that scene in Edward Scissorhands where he's going around the house accidentally slashing things and then trying to fix them but he can't fix them because he's got horrible scissor hands that can only slash.” https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL2108/S00038/stop-believing-us-military-invasions-have-noble-intentions-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix.htm
Distraction of Trivia, Juvenile Entertainment. baby-talk (Postman) and the Immaturity of American Culture To such an extent that serious ideas are hardly ever considered and serious problems are ignored
http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100388060
https://theconversation.com/the-infantilization-of-western-culture-99556
down-
ReplyDeleteSome possible descriptions of the US today:
-A baby with a bazooka in its hands, waving it around indiscriminately while the rest of the world hasta tiptoe around it.
-A genocidal war machine run by a plutocracy and cheered on by clueless morons whose only concerns are hustling and having an endless flow of consumer goods, which they think will make them OK inside.
Regarding yr city lights link: the claim is that our situation can be turned around. Problem: our situation cannot be turned around.
Regarding yr conversation link: gd essay; see also WAF ch. 3.
mb
Dr. Berman and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteI think the US empire is on the right track.
Listening to this wisdom from Tulsi makes me have great hope for this shining city on a hill paved with gold filled with those brave warriors. We can renew democracy....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16_YskdLFzQ
Americans NEVER learn....it's part of their charm (Vidal).
Wafer Glans Butterworth, III:
ReplyDeleteNice poem-aptly summarizes the business enterprise masquerading as a country (Noura).
Most of the wealth in the US was inherited or married money.
So the next time someone tells ya to "work hard," someday someday bs, impress the boss/corporation, stay late, weekends, etc...remind them that many US-ians were born on 3rd base but thought they hit a triple. You're simply being exploited by the vile US empire.
Dr. Shit-
ReplyDeleteA lot of the mess we are in cd have been avoided had we listened to Tulsi. I am almost finished w/my 5-vol. study, "Cornerstones of Tulsism: An Introduction." We can, in fact, renew democracy, but only if we embrace our Inner Tulsi.
mb
The battle of competing narratives is on about Afghanistan, the Kabul Moment, and the Taliban. Here are two discussions for Wafer consideration. First, an opinion piece by an Australian academic, Sahar Ghumkhor, on the Taliban as the new bogeymen of the U.S. Empire and its allies:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/8/18/monsters-inc-the-taliban-as-empires-bogeyman
For a comprehensive (and long! 1:38) discussion of US withdrawal from Afghanistan from a non-West/Iranian perspective – they are next door, after all, and have taken in 3 million Afghan refugees – see Rania Khalek’s “Dispatches” interview with Mohammad Marandi, Professor of English and Orientalism at the University of Tehran:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbgfVznNB-c
Gotta love politicians.
ReplyDeleteGovernor of Texas gets Covid even though doubly vaccinated. Immediately asks for best treatment and a 3rd shot all the while downplaying seriousness and opening up and fighting masking.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/greg-abbott-regeneron_n_611cb156e4b0ff60bf7b14a3
Up here in Alberta our politicians pretty much the same.
Let's revisit a masterpiece of modernist photography, Edward Weston's 'Nautilus.'
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautilus_(photograph)
And the Nautilus today, limited in range, dying off from the rising temperatures of their preferred level in the ocean-
https://nautil.us/issue/104/harmony/twilight-of-the-nautilus
Put succinctly: "In less than a century, climate change has upended conditions that have sustained life in the Mesophotic Zone for millions of years."
Way to go, capitalism! How's everyone's 401ks doing, eh?
And although I appreciate that the language on this blog avoids certain crudeness common elsewhere days, I hope that people will understand when I say-
Fuck you, George Bush.
https://www.bushcenter.org/about-the-center/newsroom/press-releases/2021/08/statement-president-and-mrs-bush-afghanistan.html
A soldier with two deployments in Afghanistan looks back-
https://laurajedeed.medium.com/afghanistan-meant-nothing-9e3f099b00e5
And we have 20 years worth of these soldiers on our streets. Chickens coming home to roost... 'We use people up and throw them away like it's nothing' applies not just to Afghans.
Hi Dr. Berman and Wafers:
ReplyDeleteA nice essay, practically the only positive essay or opinion piece I have seen by anyone about the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, by Stan Goff praising Joe Biden for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan - while making his generally negative view of Joe Biden plain. In response to veteran views that the US fought in Afghanistan for nothing, Goff suggests if US policymakers learn not to repeat such a foolish involvement, that might make that involvement worth it. Of course, as Gore Vidal said, "Americans never learn, its part of our charm." Very doubtful America learns anything from this fiasco.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/08/18/in-praise-of-joe-biden/
Hello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteAs I was walking home after the show on Sunday, I was listening to the following, by Lucky Millinder's Orchestra:
"We're gonna have to slap the dirty little Jap
And Uncle Sam's the guy who can do it
We'll murder Hirohito, massacre that slob Benito
Hang'em with that Shicklegruber when we're through it
We'll search the highest mountain for the tallest tree
To build us a hanging post for the evil three
We'll call in all our neighbors, let 'em know they're free
We gotta slap the dirty little Jap"
OK, it's crude, but at least the expressed goals are clear.
Has anyone noticed that we never hear the term "power projection" anymore? It was quite popular during the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Again, another abstraction. As many others have stated in the past week, the Afghan war accomplished absolutely nothing beyond causing untold suffering and making a few war pigs richer.
This article was written in 2017 but I think it’s still relevant today:
ReplyDeletehttps://theintercept.com/2017/08/22/afghanistan-donald-trump-taliban-surrender-here-we-are/
“DID YOU KNOW that shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, the Taliban tried to surrender?”
White corporations have all the money. Do they help their fellow
ReplyDeletewhites by increasing wages for affordable family formation? Is
it easier for them to use cheap UNwhite labor with their increasing
birth rate? What will the change in color mean in the long run?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghgAuKgaD7o
Dan D-
ReplyDeleteWatch length, por favor. As for elites: remember, they are trash.
Jack-
Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh
Taliban is gonna win!
(just updating US foreign policy)
mb
WAFERS,
ReplyDeleteAmerica finds the hustle in everything. On another note what a buffon Rachel Maddow is.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/we-failed-afghanistan-not-the-other?r=92gds&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twitter
With all the talk about this pathetic nation’s latest embarrassing war/military fiasco in Afghanistan, let’s not forget the daily mass shootings that take place here in the Dysfunctional States of America. Here is the latest one.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/08/18/frankfort-indiana-factory-shooting-victims-suspect/8188063002/
And here is a mugshot of the creep. p.s. Is it only I? Or does this creep resemble Don Trump’s January 6th shaman insurrectionist?
https://www.wlfi.com/content/news/Mugshot-released-of-Frankfort-shooter-victims-identified-575127191.html
Maybe she hates her children and wants them to get sick and die so
ReplyDeletethe food budget will be less each week? Killing your children is
certainly a sign of decline.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/texas-parent-rips-mask-off-105657040.html
A rather fitting week to stumble upon this from the 'history has NEVER been our strong suit' dept. I found at least one damn good laugh and several assorted chuckles in it: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-think-todays-students-dont-know-history-try-looking-at-students-100-years-ago/2018/09
ReplyDeleteDespite the warped popular image of Thoreau as an apolitical and misanthropic hermit, he actively lived his philosophy —he risked his neck helping slaves to freedom and pioneered an ethic of civil disobedience that both Gandhi and MLK cited as a major influence
ReplyDeleteAmerican Diogenes - Henry David Thoreau's Living Philosophy
Philosophy’s not about having “subtle thoughts” but about loving wisdom so much that you “live according to its dictates”
The Living Philosophy
https://thelivingphilosophy.substack.com/p/american-diogenes-henry-david-thoreaus
A nice essay on a hero of mine and certainly a proto-Wafer.
This is sad but interesting. As Dr. Berman has written about many times, we always look to technology to solve all of our problems, as if it’s our lord and savior. Some of the folks at Davos definitely see it that way as can be witnessed here in this clip from Russel Brand’s podcast.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/dgIYd23hemk
It’s funny how Schmidt mentions how much smarter AI will make us, but no mention of how much wiser. That’s the root of the problem. Technology is probably the reason we’ve been in a pandemic for the last year and a half. Scientists playing god in a lab, thinking they know the solution to future pandemics lies in their technical ability to engineer super-viruses.
-Anders
Anders-
ReplyDeleteI probably mentioned this b4: WAF ch. 3.
mb
Sybok-
ReplyDeleteCdn't run it (half pg max rule). Pls compress by 1/3 and re-send, thank you.
mb
Perhaps this explains why millions of Americans are none too
ReplyDeleteintelligent? Perhaps they are survivors of this ailment.
https://ca.style.yahoo.com/north-carolina-child-dies-brain-165527805.html
Cosmo-
ReplyDeleteClearly, *some* explanation for American stupidity is badly needed, but I'm not sure if it is this strange amoeba. After all, a large % of Americans have pieces of dogshit in their heads, in lieu of gray matter. This scientifically determined fact explains an awful lot, imo.
On another note, I need to register my sadness and disappointment over Tulsi's reluctance to step up during this crisis in Kabul. Two things she is known for--1st-rate intelligence and immense talent as a skilled negotiator--are badly needed rt now, and thus far she has not offered her services to the Biden admin, to sit down w/the Taliban and sort things out. Given her way of approaching things, I'm quite sure the Talis wd want to hear what she hasta say. As one of her most fervent supporters once put it, "There is no way to Tulsi; Tulsi is the way!"
mb
I respectfully disagree Dr. Berman with your assessment of Ms. Tulsi. She has indeed 'stepped up' many times for America:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4-lk9HZ09s
Perhaps, you may need to update your multi-volume Tulsi Reader with this tidbit of Tulsi/American excellence....got a lil' verklempt watching this, so, so proud of the profound and soulful humans that the US produces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uNYpE_RxcI
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPe07kyOdLU
Astonishingly, some American far-right politicians and influencers, including the Qanon Congresswoman Lauren Boebert and the infamous white supremacist Nick Fuentes, are actually praising the Taliban. Apparently, they have finally realized how much they have in common with Islamic extremists, and hate liberals so much that they're willing to join forces with these extremists to destroy them. Although this makes sense, it's still astonishing, given the fact that these same people wanted to rid the world of Islam less than a year ago when Trump was president. Never in a million years did I think I would witness something like this.
I think there's a lesson to be learned from this: absolutely anything, no matter how insane or contradictory, is possible as America rots from within. It's going to be a wild ride, and one for the history books.
Dr. Shit-
ReplyDeleteYou cd be rt. I may hafta think my entire approach to Tulsi, based on this inspiring video. Her profundity, and her soulfulness, shine thru.
mb
About those Jewish space lasers...someone has found a way to make money off of them:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.redbubble.com/shop/jewish+space+lasers
Gotta love America!
Nadine-
ReplyDeleteI guess that's one collapse scenario I hadn't reckoned on: that an internal Taliban develops in the US. (= death by buffoonery) Or maybe that's what was happening on Jan. 6 (sans theological unity). The Taliban represents rt-wing success, so why not have a homegrown version, might be the reasoning of the American rt wing. It's fabulous theater, really, but maybe, as we careen toward ecpyrosis, we shall at long last have the Boogaloo we've all been waiting for. Go, Boebert! And then, the Taliban is rabidly antisemitic, so the antisemitic trollfoons who occasionally pop up on this blog (w/less and less frequency, I'm sorry to say), will feel a kinship w/them, and give them unqualified support. Go, trollfoons! Here in Waferland, we salute you, and we salute your comrades-in-arms, the Taliban. (This shd get them going.)
mb
Hi Dr. Berman and Wafers:
ReplyDeleteThe American occupation of Afghanistan was for not for nothing, about 10 years ago I read in a brief mention in the first section of the Ithaca Journal that government/corporate prospectors discovered upwards of one trillion dollars worth of rare earth elements and hard rock metals deposits in Afghanistan. I found where the brief mention came from - the New York Times -
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html
And a now a humorous mocking by antiwar activists of CNN's moaning over the loss of that mineral wealth because of the US withdrawal. Poor babies!
https://www.rt.com/usa/532519-cnn-afghanistan-minerals-lithium/
I had an experience recently that I think exemplifies an important nuance of how consistently disappointing Americans are. The experience is: One day, a classmate sent me an extraordinarily kind letter in which they complimented me on a few things and in a way that came across as them truly seeing me as an individual. So ok, maybe they are a unique person to be able to write that kind of a letter, maybe I missed something, I thought? Well, I sent a nice letter back but didn't hold my breath since I had a suspicion it was coming from a place of like what I'll explain below.
ReplyDelete…I eventually got curious, so later on while using someone else’s social media account to look at her page, I saw that she posted a quote that represented some kind of wide movement about ‘being kind and recognizing the best in others, to give kind compliments to other individuals to change the world!’; it was in the same kind of spirit as one of those cancer walks Americans love.
Now I think back to something someone posted a while ago (don’t remember who) about how someone who they dated back in the 60s-70s actually had the capability to cry when listening to Bach’s Cello Suites… Jesus, what has happened since then!
Many my age tend to hate the Boomers, but then I think of the Boomers as the last generation that wasn’t totally made outta Cheetos.. totally growing up in the “white noise”. Cheetos, Cheetos, Cheetos :(
Brian-
ReplyDeleteI was the one who dated the cellist who cried while listening to Yo Yo Ma. But it was in the 1980s.
Demo-
Truth: I bought a Jewish Space Lasers T-shirt a few mos. ago; I think it was off of Amazon. I wear it proudly. (More bait for the antisemitic trollfoons)
mb
This is nice (face of America):
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thegazette.com/crime-courts/racially-motivated-iowa-woman-who-struck-children-with-suv-sentenced-to-25-years-for-federal-hate-cr/
Is this how an Empire bleeds to death in its final days? Both ironic and hilarious.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ndtv.com/world-news/unflyable-planes-wrong-camouflage-how-us-blew-billions-in-afghanistan-2514589#pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll
MB, maybe America too, but the rise of the Taliban is surely going give our hindu rt a justification to exist, and to continue with their bigotry. The process has already started.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/how-taliban-takeover-of-afghanistan-may-help-bjp-in-2022-up-assembly-election/articleshow/85480867.cms
In the meantime, since it is out of focus for a while, the Indian farmers are still continuing with their protests. They are not allowing the political parties supporting the contentious pro-corporate laws to carry out their activities in a couple of states. And most significantly, they held a 'parliament' parallel to the session of the Parliament of India discussing all aspects of the farm laws in detail in an open forum.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/farmers-enact-a-mock-parliament-to-protest-agricultural-laws-101628016632241.html
This country still amazes me with its contradictions!
Plato in Sicily
ReplyDeletePlato travelled to the decadent strife-torn court of Syracuse three times, risking his life to create a philosopher-king
https://aeon.co/amp/essays/when-philosopher-met-king-on-platos-italian-voyages
In a way this is a v nice supplement to MB's "Genio"
Bobby-
ReplyDeleteSee also the story called "Anaximenes!" in my most recent bk, "The Heart of the Matter."
mb
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteHow long will it take for American corporations to start manufacturing Taliban items? T-shirts, hats, coffee mugs, the works? I have a sneaking suspicion that this is currently being contemplated.
mb
ps: For example: Taliban Juice. "Put a zing in your step with Minute Maid's Organic Taliban Juice!"
ReplyDeleteHello WAFers,
ReplyDeleteFor your amusement, more random street interviews showing the general intelligence level out there..
https://rumble.com/vler3v-unreal-do-young-americans-know-anything.html
vso-
ReplyDeleteThe military consists of goofballs (well demonstrated these last few days), ditto the politicians, and esp. true of the wo/man in the street, who has shit for brains. All of them cd use a large glass of Taliban Juice.
mb
A 3/30/1980 nyt article sounded the alarm that the black middle class (defined as blacks who are “making it” in America) was vulnerable due to “complex economic problems” incl inflation, but also from legal attacks being made on the relevant govt programs.
ReplyDeleteThe ability to pass on the gains made by blacks to new generations was at risk, several years after the end of Vietnam war.
And now another opportunity for a reckoning on what spending a few trillion on war has done to the middle class, but instead all media can do is show a few days of turmoil near the airport.
Lots of media time spent on right wing media covid misinformation, but few notice that tax laws give full charitable deductions for all who donate to .orgs like AAPS which do nothing but churn out vile misinformation on health related issues. AAPS is a John Birch front group that’s been quoted in various newspapers and other media.
AAPS.org
Theorist-
ReplyDeleteEvidence? References? Why shd we believe you?
mb
Hope this can be seen to fit within the rubric “American decline”; it certainly fits within the rubric “buffoon, degraded (1 each).”
ReplyDeleteThe US Congress set up a watchdog group some 13 years ago charged with documenting the successes and failures of America’s efforts in Afghanistan. The group was designated the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). Here are a couple of the buffooneries this group identified as decided failures in the war’s execution: (1). To build up an Afghan air force, the US spent at least $549 millions for 20 refurbished Italian-made G222 turboprop aircraft. Sixteen of the planes saw little service, but were left languishing in the weeds at HKIA after maintenance issues made them unflyable; these were sold as scrap for 6 cents a pound, recouping $32,000. The Justice Department told SIGAR they did not intend to prosecute civil and criminal cases arising out of the affair. Nobody at fault. (2). The US spent $28 million buying uniforms for the Afghan military with camouflage patterns inconsistent with the environment because Afghanistan’s Minister of Defence thought they looked good.
As the saying goes “Mistakes were made…” (passive voice, the refuge of governments/militaries everywhere).
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/unflyable-planes-wrong-camouflage-how-us-blew-billions-in-afghanistan-2514589#pfrom=home-ndtv_topscroll
Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteFarewell to Bourgeois Kings...https://tinkzorg.wordpress.com/2021/08/16/farewell-to-bourgeois-kings/
Quiet-
ReplyDeleteTerrific essay, thank you, altho Spengler cd have been cited as well as Schmitt.
Jas-
1. The elite are trash.
2. The Army is a collection of buffoons.
QED
mb
“Mere weeks into the pandemic, America had constructed large, archetypal myths by which to make sense of events. On the left, Trump as Aztec priest. On the right, China, which like the serpent in Genesis had lied with cunning & malice” - Macaes Bruno in Geopolitics For The End Time
ReplyDelete“Things in America fet like a disaster movie. In Europe they just felt like a disaster.”
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Geopolitics-End-Time-Pandemic-Climate/dp/178738554X?ref_=d6k_applink_bb_marketplace
Note to Quiet-
ReplyDeleteYou may not be familiar w/the rules of this blog. One is, post only once (max) every 24 hrs. Ergo, please wait until 24 elapse since yr previous post, and then re-send your follow-up. Thanks.
mb
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteCheck out the essay posted by Quiet Desperation, above. I say something similar in the Twilight book: that every civilization has a central Idea, in the Platonic sense, and once the spirit of that Idea evaporates--i.e., once the citizens stop believing in it--the civilization is to all intents and purposes finished. Thus the author of that essay sees the fall of Afghanistan as a major turning pt, or what we have called on this blog the external Suez Moment. I didn't originally see it as such, because in a true Suez Moment, power passes from the traditional hegemonic nation to another nation, as occurred in the Suez crisis of 1956. Altho the US is losing its hegemonic influence to China, practically on a daily basis, this transfer of power has not occurred in Afghanistan--at least, not yet. (What Chinese-Taliban relations will be in the future is at present unclear.) Nevertheless, how many times can you botch a war, reveal yr incompetence for the whole world to see--Vietnam, Iraq--b4 the international community regards you as little more than a bad joke and an embarrassment? Our totally fucked up exit from Afghanistan puts us to shame, and the cumulative effect of having a vile and stupid foreign policy surely makes this a Half Suez Moment. We may still be the #1 military power in the world (for how long?), but how much is that worth, when that military, and that foreign policy, are completely discredited? And as for moral leadership--well, that's a joke. It may take another Half Suez Moment to polish us off, but in lieu of that, slow-to-rapid disintegration, already in progress, will undoubtedly do the job. We are goofballs, and have no inherent strength. Other nations are beginning to see this, China and Russia in particular. 'Douchebag' in Mandarin is 'Chōngxǐ dài'; in Russian it's 'pridurok'. My guess is that in Beijing and Moscow, respectively, these words are being tossed around a lot these days.
mb
Once again, the mainstream is catching up to me:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz1y37vnThQ
Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteSorry for opining a few days ago with no links. I was using a device that doesn't allow me to make links, so I should have just been patient and waited till I got back to my computer.
From the little that I know of him, Stefan Molyneux appears to be a rather unpleasant individual. However, this talk on the fall of Rome, where he compares it in some detail to the present day U.S., really is quite good and informative. Well worth two hours of your time, if you are at all interested in the subject. The parallels are quite striking indeed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGYVWrjRMXU
Belatedly, Dr. Berman, with apologies: "O" is O(bama)!
ReplyDeleteMegan-
ReplyDeleteIf I am 'at all interested'? I wrote a whole bk on the subject!
mb
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking a bit recently about political activism in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, 15 mos. ago. All of you, of course, remember the rioting that took place after that horrible event. But I'm wondering, if one were to canvass the non-black population in America, how many people wd recognize his name at this pt. I'm guessing that 95% of the entire population wd not be able to say who Derek Chauvin is, and the same is probably true for Dylan Roof and George Zimmerman. For Americans of every color, 'politics' consists of emotional outpouring, wh/eventually dies down until the next black person gets shot by a white one. Of substantive political organizing, there is basically none.
After all, what happened in the wake of Floyd's death, once the rioting and the rage petered out? BLM was the big political movement; what did it accomplish?
-Amanda Gorman got celebrated as the new Keats, read a poem at Biden's inauguration, and got herself on the front cover of Vogue.
-The Biden admin made many gov't appointments of people of color.
-Corporations adopted a woke attitude; and henceforth the word 'black' wd be capitalized.
-Stories of black people seemed to be everywhere, and they were also heavily featured in ads of various sorts.
-Calls for defunding the police went nowhere. In fact, police depts. across the nation are (according to some online reports I read) better funded now than prior to Floyd's death.
-In the wake of Floyd's death, BLM co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors "went on a real estate buying binge, snagging four high-end homes for $3.2 million in the US alone, according to property records." (Note that it has been contested, whether this $ came from BLM coffers; but regardless, one cannot put this woman in the category of an oppressed minority.)
Conclusion: no substantive socioeconomic change occurred for the black community during the last 15 mos. It has pretty much been smoke and mirrors. However, I am not singling out the black community as unique in its willingness to settle for symbols, for cosmetic changes. A large % of America's white youth, during the 60s, equated hip boutiques and bell-bottom trousers w/serious social change, and the 60s came and went, w/nothing much accomplished as a result (Jerry Rubin is a symbol of this foolishness). The question raised by all this, whether for blacks or whites or purples, is Why? Why don't Americans know the difference between shadow and substance? Why do they settle for symbolism? Why is their politics shallow and emotional? Any ideas?
mb
MB,
ReplyDeleteWhy don't Americans know the difference between shadow and substance? Stupidity is definitely part of the problem, but I think several other factors are at play here. Americans are extremely patriotic, can't admit to themselves how fucked up their country is, and therefore accept any narrative that claims their country is doing well no matter how little substance it contains. Their addiction to electronic media also causes them to focus on appearance and ignore the underlying reality of any given situation. As a result, they think dramatic displays like pussy hat marches are indicative of substantive social change. Americans are also emotional wrecks; all the rage, despair and anxiety they carry around inside themselves prevents them from thinking clearly and makes them desperate for solutions, so they immediately latch onto any narrative that promises salvation, even if that narrative has no substance. Narcissism and the concomitant obsession with the self and self-presentation also plays a role; Americans are simply too self-absorbed to distinguish or care about the difference between reality and illusion. Finally, these factors all exacerbate one another and have created the mass psychosis currently plaguing America.
My sources are Christopher Lasch's "The Culture of Narcissism", Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death" and Robert Bellah's "Varieties of Civil Religion".
Nadine-
ReplyDeleteNot bad. We are definitely talking abt the walking wounded.
Wafers-
Check this out: https://www.noemamag.com/you-cant-build-others-nations/
mb
I have to second Dr. B's recommendation of the Quiet Desperation essay above. It's excellently written. It sparked a thought that I hadn't considered up until now:
ReplyDeleteMaybe America actually won the war.
I don't mean this to be cosmetically contrarian or to play Devil's Advocate.
If America is nothing more than a capitalist pigsty, then how can we interpret the siphoning off of TRILLIONS of dollars from the hands of American buffoons into the hands of their capitalist overlords anything other than a resounding success? The business of America is business, right?
It seems to me that if defense stocks outperformed the S&P 500, then the war was an outstanding addition to one's investment portfolio. That sure sounds to me like the American definition of WINNING.
Wafer Nadine-great symposis of the US-ian.
ReplyDeleteMost were (past tense intentional) severely mentally ill, yet don't want any help nor feel they need any help because they live in the most amazing, incredible place ever; at least that's what the "news" tells them.
Louis-
ReplyDeleteTrue, but the political class (not the economic one) is right out in the open, for everyone to see (true also for the military), and thus they are concerned abt optics, i.e. perception. Even if they have power, even if they get paid handsomely, being perceived as douchebags by the rest of the world is something that they wish to avoid, because it can only undermine their authority. Imo it's 3 strikes and yr out: Vietnam, Iraq, and now Afghanistan. All show the same insane foreign policy: to remake other countries in our own image. As one of the above essays points out, this worked in the case of Germany and Japan because we literally obliterated those countries (altho it left Japan conflicted, w/a permanent neurosis--see NB). So they literally had to start over from scratch. But we did not do that w/VN, Iraq, and Afghan, and as a result these 3 ventures were complete debacles. What the rest of the world finally sees (if it indeed didn't realize it w/Saigon 1975), is that the US is degraded and debased. This is now a public, widespread perception. W/each passing day, we command less respect. So as I said, we are living thru a Half Suez Moment, and by 2030, if not b4, the other shoe will have dropped.
mb
All is related to all. How can there be an escape as long as the
ReplyDeleteold ways continue, no matter the new "miracles" of techno-green
economy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0ckvo2Z5BU
Another embarrassing useless overseas war lost by the most overrated military on earth. But fret not! Right here in our homeland the “War of the Karens” goes on and on! LOL!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvWXyWyakYI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9NsktAOaFQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ujn0UPwPZH8
Zig-
ReplyDeleteOn the subject of consumerism, see the 2nd story in "Heart of the Matter."
mb
Megan:
ReplyDeleteStefan Molyneux is far worse than being merely a "unpleasant person". He is a a racist who promotes eugenics and white supremacism:
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/stefan-molyneux
TBH, people REALLY need to be careful about links they provide with regard to the collapse of the US, especially from here on out. The collapse so obvious at this stage that pretty much everyone who outside the bourgeois class who wants to garner an audience/influence is jumping on the bandwagon, and this includes racist and fascist fanatics. There are plenty of more reliable sources one can refer to for the parallels (and differences) between the fall of Rome and the US without giving a platform to racist hatemongers. I'd suggest doing a bit more digging before sharing links.
Another excellent interview with Colnel Wilkerson who has gone almost full Wafer over the last few years
ReplyDeleteOf particular interest are his initial comments beginning at the 6 minute mark where he concedes the real problem is the American people and their ignorance. He is unsparing in his comments and, unlike most, admits to his past culpability.
https://youtu.be/cOZxjqSIHPM
I've found the Chinese Morris Berman:
ReplyDeletehttps://angelanagle.substack.com/p/america-against-america
I was planning to move to Arizona decades ago. Choosing between Phoenix and Tucson, I looked at maps of each city. I saw all the golf courses in Phoenix and thought to myself, there people really don't understand what it means to live in a desert, do they?
ReplyDeleteAnd here we are, the Colorado River running dry, 40 million people and countless farmers facing severe water shortages.
https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2021/08/us/colorado-river-water-shortage/
In related news of irrational exuberance, the Dow Jones stay near record highs. How's everybody's 401ks doing, eh?
https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/dow/
Golf-
ReplyDeleteSomeone already posted this, but it can't hurt to hear it again.
Anjin-
Impt clip, and thanks for posting it. Very unusual to hear any American, let alone a military person, say that the problem is the American people themselves. Jesus, how many times have I said it? So maybe the idea is finally getting some traction, such that we can pull away from Chomsky's notion of manufactured consent (tho he is partially correct). The only problem I have w/the extremely few who recognize this is that they fail to characterize Americans for what they are. Sure, these few will talk abt 'ignorance'; but in vain do I listen for terms such as 'douchebags', 'morons', 'bozos', and 'buffoons'. H.L. Mencken coined the term 'booboisie', wh/Merriam-Webster defines as "the general public regarded as consisting of boobs." The day that these terms become common currency, I can die a happy man.
cor-
Regarding 'reliable sources' on the subject, check out "The Twilight of American Culture."
mb
Wafer Anjin--thank you very much for sharing this video of Colonel Wilkerson.
ReplyDeleteVery rare for a American (esp as Dr. Berman said-a military man) to blame the US empire's populace for their fate--usually it's the typical 'wool being pulled over their eyes' 'brainwashing' they 'have' to hustle bc everything costs so much etc...
NOPE--there's a WILLFUL buy-in for what America is offering--and most (citizens, immigrants) gleefully accept it and want more of it.
Hi all,
ReplyDeleteI think the pattern is playing out again.
Biden has planted the first seed for the future of our shining city on the hill. The pull out of Afghanistan will be to focus on bringing democracy elsewhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9RIDIem89c&t=196s
Pay attention to what he says and how he says it.
It's looking like North Africa is likely the next candidate for an occupation.
Brian-
ReplyDeleteYes, "democracy" in quotes. John Berger once wrote that besides delivering pizza, America knew how to do two things well: transfer $, and drop bombs. War is what we're abt, and now having fucked up Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, we'll just go somewhere else and do the same thing.
Mike R-
And they are assholes. Never forget it: Americans are assholes.
mb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF1N91Deu6c&t=470s
ReplyDeleteThis guy is a perfect example of how full of shit the American left is. Here, a prominent, wealthy "socialist" Youtuber argues that America has the moral duty to reshape much of the world in its own image through war. As such, he's angry that Biden withdrew from Afghanistan because he believes America could have "built back better", or drastically improved Afghanistan through violent nation-building, if America had made better strategic decisions during the war. If this is what American liberals stand for, what do you think American centrists and conservatives stand for? It's a scary thought.
It seems Biden, with his feeble and ineffectual attempts at reviving FDR's socioeconomic model, is much too liberal for most American liberals, who are addicted to endless war and rapacious capitalism...and Biden isn't all that liberal to begin with.
Nadine-
ReplyDeleteGore Vidal once described American politics as one political party with two rt wings. He also said Americans never learn anything. I guess this is what depresses me the most: a complete absence of soul-searching, wh/will continue after we have no more clout on the world stage. For nearly 100% of the populace, the problem is always 'out there'. We never contributed to our downfall; oh no, that's outta the question. Our intentions were gd, our behavior reasonable. No flies on us.
In the wake of 9/11, Susan Sontag suggested that we cd learn more abt what happened by examining the history of US foreign policy than by trying to probe Mohammed Atta's brain. For this, she was vilified, regarded as a traitor.
As I said to Mike R., above, Americans are assholes. To wh/we wd hafta add, they are also blockheads. There is simply no getting thru, and the # of Sontags existing in the US at any given time is probably less than 100. As for the # of critics who point to the American people as the crux of our disaster as a nation (e.g., Col. Wilkerson), it's nearly zero, because it is politically incorrect to do so. So they too are assholes, and cowards as well. We shall not escape our fate (karma), but we also shall not realize that we died by our own hand.
mb
*Barack Obama was in high school in Hawaii in the years that led up to the fall of Saigon. Donald Trump was still just another no-name real estate developer from Queens. George W. Bush was packing off to Harvard Business School. Bill Clinton was fresh out of law school and teaching in Arkansas. Jimmy Carter was winding down his single term as governor of Georgia, still unknown on the national stage. Ronald Reagan was leaving behind his governorship of California and gearing up for his first serious national campaign. But Joe Biden was already in D.C. helping shape the congressional policy that tied the hands of Gerald Ford while Saigon was overrun.
ReplyDeleteHawks and doves alike blasted Biden for opposing the Gulf War in 1990-91, supporting the Iraq War in 2002-03, opposing the surge in 2007, and supporting the 2009-11 withdrawal (a move that was seconded by Tony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, now his secretaries of state and defense). In 2010, Biden boasted of the U.S. departure from Iraq, “Some said that our drawdown would bring about more violence. Well, they were wrong, because the Iraqis are ready to take charge.” Instead, ISIS took over nearly half the country, and the United States had to go back to war.*
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/joe-biden-is-who-we-said-he-was/
Joe Biden Is Who We Said He Was
I'm trying to recall, did MB recommend the film "The Physician" to us Wafers?
ReplyDeleteIf so, I viewed it last night. A great experience!
My reciprocal rec is here for free with a 30 day trial
https://mubi.com/films/meeting-the-man-james-baldwin-in-paris
MEETING THE MAN: JAMES BALDWIN IN PARIS
Stew-
ReplyDeleteI think so, yes; but it was a long time ago.
mb
Dr. Berman et al.,apologize for this rant Sir, Madame:
ReplyDeleteI wish folks stop using the BS PC term of americans were/are "ignorant" etc. Ignorance implies not knowing something but recognizing one's ignorance and being proactive to learn about one's educational omissions. Not americans.
They're mainly stupid and enjoy being that way. They're idiots, fools, fuck ups, and clowns in addition to loving war for their imperialism. Right, Left, Center-doesn't matter. They're assholes (Berman) period. It was gigantic/massive mistake from Day 1 (Freud).-Bringing "democracy" to the world-LOL. What? Mindless CONsumerism, horrible "food," corporate chain stores, greed, hustling, exploitation, endless war, etc..etc.all with Uncle Scam and that idiotic flag waving propaganda.
How ANYONE with a working brainstem can say US empire, or even call it a "country" with a straight face is beyond me. Turkeys, buffoons all. "Ignorant"-my ass.
Dr. B-
ReplyDeleteHere is the cost of the US war in Afghanistan, from 2001-2021, as estimated by the Watson Institute at Brown University-
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/human-and-budgetary-costs-date-us-war-afghanistan-2001-2021
(A clickable link to footnotes is near the bottom of the page.)
Dr. Shit-
ReplyDeletePls, don't hold back. Tell us how you *really* feel!
mb
Have you readers discuss the revolutionary prospects in the latest
ReplyDeletecrisis of Late Capitalism.
https://ca.yahoo.com/finance/news/no-toilet-paper-again-shoppers-235000819.html
Cosmo-
ReplyDeleteBut u.r. one of my readers! Discuss!
mb
Hope my fellow WAFers had a good weekend!
ReplyDeleteWe know that Americans are buffoons, but have you wondered what their inner lives are actually like? The more I watch this American circus tent go up in flames, the more I realize that Americans are emotionally arrested somewhere between 8 - 15 years old.
https://news.yahoo.com/radio-host-regretted-vaccine-hesitancy-004349441.html
Phil Valentine didn't just express vaccine skepticism. He also wrote a painfully unfunny parody song called 'Vaxman' based on a Beatles melody. This is his legacy to the world now that he's dead of Covid:
https://soundcloud.com/philvalentineshow/vaxman
And this gets to what I think is at the core of the American mind. While the superstructure is rapidly crashing down around them, the only way they know how to deal with their problems is to figuratively shoot spitballs at their political rivals during recess and tape 'KICK ME' signs on the backs of marginalized people. As terrifying a thought as it is, the Junior High mentality is truly the standard to which you can hold the American mind.
Anything else is asking a chimpanzee to perform Mozart.
Louis-
ReplyDelete1st of all, American mind shd always be written as follows: American "mind".
2nd: Can buffoons actually have an inner life? I'm curious abt that. If so, what wd it consist of?
mb
No Kidding Dept., w/a comment on possibly America's greatest asshole, Thos Friedman:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/west-fall-of-kabul-sudan-iraq-afghanistan-us-uk-policies
No evidence has emerged that a series of Gaza high rises that Israel toppled served any military purpose, suggesting the attacks were mostly intended as collective punishment.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.hrw.org/news/2021/08/23/gaza-israels-may-airstrikes-high-rises#
I'm sure WAFers have noticed this odd media duplicity, right up WAFer Nadine's alley:
ReplyDeletehttps://newrepublic.com/article/163337/fake-feminism-afghanistan-war-withdrawal
@Anjin- thanks for the Wilkerson clip. He makes a great point- Americans WANT to screw over other people and to be selfish a**holes. Trump knows this and played it up perfectly. This jibes with people like Henry Giroux who focuses on the cruelty of the US (e.g. https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/23/culture-of-cruelty-the-age-of-neoliberal-authoritarianism/ )
ReplyDeleteHighlighting people's active engagement is important. I've had many discussions with people engaging with local politics who simply won't accept that, for example, the local power structure simply does not want to help the homeless and only care about people with lots of money, even when all of their actions work for these goals. To appeal to people's better side when they don't have one won't get you anywhere.
@Nadine Bupkis- can you give a time where Vaush says what you attribute to him? I simply can't stomach youtube pundiots for very long. At the end of the video- 34:20 ff- he says that he agrees with the withdrawal and the need to end the occupation.
Vaush is described as a libertarian socialist with anarchist principles, or such. Can anyone explain what that means? Is this simply the million monkey approach to 'thought,' where someone keeps rambling and you wait for the Shakespeare play to emerge? I thought Camille Paglia had that market cornered.
Amy-
ReplyDeleteIsraeli military strategy is to bludgeon the Palestinians into submission. Thus far, it has failed. But you can be sure they'll keep doing it. A more vicious and dishonest government wd be hard to find.
mb
Good morning Wafers And Dr Berman
ReplyDeleteI absolutely disagree with the often stated claim
that Americans are stupid. They can follow a script.
Read that attached from 2010 and see if you do not agree
that things are on track.
https://www.salon.com/2010/12/06/america_collapse_2025/
Dan,
ReplyDeleteGo to 6:30. That's when he starts to explain that America has "moral obligation" to use the military to "build back better" via "economic investment" (whatever the fuck that means) and counter-terrorism operations. This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard, because militarism is what created the mess to begin with. Even worse, in some of this other videos, Vaush heaps praise upon our military and describes our soldiers as noble, selfless heroes willing to risk life and limb to save other countries from themselves. This dishonest, grandiose, chest-thumping imperialism is exactly like that of his Republican nemeses.
Vaush is the poster child for the moral bankruptcy of the American left.
Tim2-
ReplyDeleteSorry! Did I say stupid? I meant to say that Americans are the smartest group of people on the planet.
mb
Hi. An interesting debate on race, culture, and history.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EpS9OUI-As
Does this remind you of Jonestown mass suicide?
ReplyDeletehttps://ca.news.yahoo.com/where-adults-mary-trump-lashes-034448085.html
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteYesterday I screened "Nomadland" for the 2nd time. Gorgeous film; hard to believe it was made by Americans. (Actually, it was made by Chloe Zhao, who is Chinese.) It says a lot abt truth, beauty, and self-acceptance. It also won a pile of Oscars. Makes ya think.
mb
Civil war preview?
ReplyDeletehttps://taibbi.substack.com/p/activism-uncensored-the-great-american
Matt Taibbi - America, 2021: left and right punch each other in the face, scream, "Fuck you!" and even stab each other
“From fights over transgender rights, to Covid measures, to support for Israel, one thing is certain,” narrates Ford Fischer of News2Share. “The violence at these rallies is escalating, and it remains a constant potential, regardless of the substance of an event’s actual subject, as long as it fits into the broader culture war.”
Hello MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteGreat piece here by Hamid Dabashi. The 'Graveyard of Empires' has struck again. But of course, most Americans will not take any lessons from it. From a declinist perspective, it's almost poetic. Exactly 20 years after the misguided "War on Terror" was launched with the invasion of Afghanistan, we're back at square one. I have to say, with Trump, COVID, and now this debacle, the unraveling of the empire cannot get much more literal.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/8/23/the-new-and-improved-taliban-the-us-parting-gift-to-afghanistan
Arnie-
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize you were still alive. In any case, thanks for this terrific essay. Author certainly pulls no punches. Yr rt, America will learn 0 from the Afghani caper, any more than they did from Vietnam and Iraq. Note that Schmiden, in his most recent speech, outlined where the Army will go next, starting w/North Africa. We will trash some country there, leave a mess, and then go on to the next 'democratic' venture. Hopefully the US will crash and burn b4 it can continue on this inhuman path, a path that historically has murdered millions. And as for the individual American? Ignorant, yes, but also: a joke.
MH-
Moving toward ecpyrosis. A declinist can only applaud.
mb
America, the Land of the Pseudo-Event, where nothing matters but the hype and the hustle -
ReplyDeleteAs Hurricane Henri moved toward New England, it weakened into a tropical storm with winds of 60 or less. Undaunted, the hucksters at The Weather Channel continued to talk about it as if it continue to pose great danger. https://weather.com/safety/hurricane/news/2021-08-21-hurricane-henri-long-island-new-york-connecticut-massachusetts
I've noticed from watching TWC and local weather persons that the real purpose of the broadcasts is to exaggerate possible damages to person and property, which instills fear in the viewer, which makes it more likely that he/she will continue to watch, which increases viewership, which drives up the costs of ads and thus makes more money for the company.
It's about the sizzle, not the steak. Here's an example from my own state of NChttps://characterandleadership.com/why-do-meteorologists-over-hype-the-weather/
down-
ReplyDeleteBecause Americans are empty, they need to fill the Void, and excitement does the trick, if only for a short time. By then, they are onto the next 'exciting' event. The same psychology is operative in the need for Manichaean logic: hatred of bubbas, of wokes, of racists, of anti-racists, etc. The alternative is to see thru the game, and stop doing it; but for many, that cd result in suicide.
Cosmo-
Cdn't run it. No links, no evidence. Not how this blog operates.
mb
Theorist-
ReplyDeleteI think I accidentally deleted yr post. Sorry! If I remember correctly, you were having trouble substantiating yr arguments. So, if this time around, you provided links and refs, pls feel free to re-send. Thank you.
mb
ps: I just discovered what happened. For some odd reason, you sent yr message to post #396. This is a sure way to get ignored. Pls send messages to most recent post, as no one reads the older stuff. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteHello Wafers:
ReplyDeleteI tried watching that Vaush video, but made it through only about three minutes. I can't stand Youtube bloviators in this sort of format. I like what Jimmy Dore has to say, for example, but I dislike watching his videos. The same goes with sports guys and intrusive narrators on Youtube history videos.
In any case I heard this Vaush person say that the US should stop invading countries and destroy them, then walk away without fixing the damage they caused. He advocated paying these countries reparations. I missed any praise of the US military. I don't have any desire to endure more of his videos to verify if he is indeed representative of a morally bankrupt US left.
I might add that any discussion about the "left" in the USA needs some sort of glossary, because your definitions don't mesh with those used elsewhere. For example, every Wafers' favourite standup hack, Bill Maher, is called a "leftist," despite his being a millionaire who frequently goes out of his way to attack communism.
al-
ReplyDeleteNon-communist lefties are a long tradition in the US and Europe. Rich lefties I do have a problem with, however, because I don't expect them to campaign for distribution of wealth.
mb
@nadine bupkis- I share al-Qa'bong's thinking. I'll suggest ContraPoints to broaden your concept of 'Left.'
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuN6GfUix7c
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJW4-cOZt8A
Vaush represents no 'Left.' Left and Prog are used in a very imprecise, darn near Manichean, way here as a way to dismiss anyone to the left of Mitch McConnell it seems. There is a huge diversity out there. The 'idiot lefties' in my town not only reduced the police force last year but also have beaten back two votes to override this. They took over a park, trained hundreds of people in deescalation techniques, ran large demonstrations with their own traffic control so smoothly that the police stayed blocks away. They have run a public food program that coordinates dozens of restaurants, food stores, farmers, cooks, kitchens, etc. EVERY SINGLE DAY for two years. They run fundraisers to get blankets and tents and wool socks to anyone who needs them. They coordinate eviction defenses and trips to the doctor and food drops to shut-ins. Sure, it means little at the present moment. But when things really get bad, meaning far beyond running out of toilet paper bad, these people will know how to feed hundreds of people at a time. And start rebuilding something worth living in. Sure, most here could care less about what happens after the collapse but some of us are going to have to deal with this. These groups are NOT on social media, or youtube and I can't link to info. Because they are too busy, and because they know sticking your head up in this country is how you get it chopped off or bought off. Look closely at the cracks where you live and you might find similar groups.
Dan D-
ReplyDeleteI hope by 'here' (2x) you are not referring to this blog. That wd be quite inaccurate, but beyond that, attacking the blog or the people on it is a no-no. I'll give u the benefit of the doubt this one time, but in future, clarification wd be useful. If you meant 'the US', then we have no problem.
mb
Ajay-
ReplyDeleteSorry, much too long.
mb
MB,
ReplyDeleteI'm 100% certain Dan was referring to the US, but you're right, clarification would be useful so others don't get confused. I've long known that clarity and truth are paramount on this blog. It's what differentiates it from 99.9% of the internet, which is designed to make as much money as possible, and has no interest in clarity or truth.
Now that I think about it, the greatest casualties of hustling might be clarity and truth. I can't see how a civilization awash in bullshit and lies could avoid becoming depraved, and I can't see how a civilization with a depraved populace could avoid going the way of the dinosaurs. Maybe there's a good reason why lying and manipulation are reviled by all the major religions.
Courageous bikers are willing to do what they can for medical science?
ReplyDeletehttps://ca.news.yahoo.com/south-dakota-sees-352-covid-171131566.html
Art-
ReplyDeleteI love a gd buffoon.
Nadine-
When I hear that people have gone to other blogs, I just shake my head. Nothing makes me sadder. "Why in the world--?" I say. It just makes no sense.
mb