Wafers-
Since April of 2006, this blog has received almost 7 million hits. Our influence has never been greater, as we march toward the 10 million mark. Innocent Americans accidentally trip onto this blog, and given the high level of intelligence that most of them possess, they are immediately converted to the Waferian outlook. No more chest-beating about how we're No. 1. No! They understand that the US is going down the tubes, and they prepare accordingly. I think all of us here at the blog can be justly proud.
Onward! And of course, Downward!
-mb
ReplyDeleteA 6 year old shoots a teacher. Perhaps the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song “Teach Your children” was an inspiration:
https://apnews.com/article/newport-news-virginia-88dfe91f65173cbbd198a8816a21b5be?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_05
Yeah. This country’s future certainly looks dandy.
U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!
William Cronon, in his 1998 essay, “‘Only Connect’: The Goals of a Liberal Education,” outlines the benefits of a broadly conceived education. He says of liberally educated people that:
ReplyDelete"They follow E.M. Forster’s injunction from Howard’s End: “Only connect…” More than anything else, being an educated person means being able to see connections that allow one to make sense of the world and act within it in creative ways. Every one of the qualities I have described here—listening, reading, talking, writing, puzzle solving, truth seeking, seeing through other people’s eyes, leading, working in a community—is finally about connecting. A liberal education is about gaining the power and the wisdom, the generosity and the freedom, to connect."
Hmm...America is the exact opposite of this, eh?
Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteBelow is a link to a tweet( by an Indian foreign policy and security observer)where a snippet of "Conclusions of 16 high ranking US military officials who participated in a 2011 strategy session at the National Defense University." is posted. The 1st line reads: "The window on America's hegemony is closing. We are at a point right now where we still have choices. By 2021, we will no longer have choices.".
I replied to the tweet referencing your book DAA and Orlov's book: :Reinventing Collapse.
https://twitter.com/ankitatIIMA/status/1611649701602037762?s=20&t=guFltysRn6a-RyW3vsdI5w
Himanshu
Paris Review contributor Katy Kelleher explores our obsession with gorgeous things, unveiling the fraught histories of makeup, flowers, perfume, silk, and other beautiful objects.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Ugly-History-of-Beautiful-Things/Katy-Kelleher/9781982179359
"Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possessions is a disease in them." - Sitting Bull
We are obsessed with the trivial, with possessions & objects, with creature comfort. Everything is at surface, no depth or nuances... How much longer can this way of life really go on?
Been vaguely wondering what Sarah Bakewell has been working on since authoring the superb books on Montaigne and the existentialists, and am excited to learn that she has a book on humanism coming out in March:
ReplyDeleteHumanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Enquiry and Hope
https://uk.bookshop.org/books/humanly-possible-seven-hundred-years-of-humanist-freethinking-enquiry-and-hope/9781784741662
Himan-
ReplyDeleteMany thanks. I still believe 2030 will be the de facto end of America. And I certainly think we no longer have choices.
Tiff-
Well, I still think that enjoying beautiful things, such as great art, is fine. It's just that we don't have to *possess* beautiful things.
Salt-
Thanks for the ref. "Existentialist Cafe" was terrific. Sarah and I corresponded abt it for a while, after it was published.
mb
MB, have you heard of the naturalist Robert Michael Pyle?
ReplyDeleteHe wrote the bk "Wintergreen: Rambles in a Ravaged Land" about the excessive logging in Willapa Hills, WA. Here's a quote I found on weeds:
"Farmers with their sprays and archaic weed boards with nefarious powers battle the tansy ragwort, Canadian thistles, and Himalayan blackberry. They make inroads with their powerful poisons. But make no mistake, the weeds will win: nature bats last."
This got me thinking about humans' percieved significance in the cosmos. Humans think they own this shit, when in reality they're just another species in the grand scheme of things. What other organism classifies something as "weeds" or "pests" to be ridden of? But glance @ any abandoned building & you'll see how Nature took it back w/ overgrown trees & bushes.
BTW, we also treat 1 another as "pests". These are my musings for the day
Pretty wild how many lawsuits & suicides have been linked to social media and no meaningful action is taken. The powers that be don't care because it has so many benefits for them. This should all be illegal & all these people thrown in jail. This crap is like gambling, cigarettes, pollution, and whatever else is harming everyone.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/tiktok-pushes-potentially-harmful-content-to-users-as-often-as-every-39-seconds-study/
Tik-
ReplyDeleteUltimately, when a civilization collapses, no one (rich or poor) cares abt anything. TS Eliot talked abt going out w/a bang or a whimper, but the American exit will be characterized by a shrug. Honestly, who cd give a shit abt Kevin McCarthy, or Kamala Schmamala, or Gisele Bundchen? Who will remember any of these and similar jokers 10 or 20 yrs from now?
mb
Unknown-
ReplyDeleteSorry, I don't post Unknowns. You need a real handle to participate in this discussion. I suggest Russ Fegoli.
mb
Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteOnward and Downward indeed. Sadly, the link provided below shows how bottomless this evil pit is. America is simply becoming a caricature of itself, and a very bad one!
https://www.yahoo.com/news/tranq-dope-animal-sedative-mixed-152242327.html
Sang-
ReplyDeleteWell, on top of everything, America is a charming country.
mb
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteRegarding Harry & Meghan: How much HLBO (High-Level Beating Off) can we engage in? Millions of Americans are forced to eat cat food, but they can't get enuf of Harry & Meghan.
mb
ps: Sang: Regarding yr link: on the microlevel, when a society collapses, this is what it looks like: grim as hell. All of which can be traced to the American Dream, and the failure of the American Dream.
ReplyDeletemb
Dr. B,
ReplyDeleteSeasons greetings from Glendale, CA. I don't have much room to complain, our city is regularly ranked one of the safest in the USA.
Lately I've been more skeptical regarding collapse and want to share this in view of Andrew Tate's arrest (the divisive internet personality charged with sex trafficking crimes).
https://www.vox.com/culture/2023/1/4/23539528/andrew-tate-arrest-jail-rape-human-trafficking
Tate moved to Romania complaining of a degenerate Western culture, and even converted to Islam as well. While I find him disgusting, he was nonetheless consistent in his culture war narrative.
But the catch is that there is a secret privilege with being a "degenerate Westerner", it's a kind of inverted racism. If we just replace ‘white man’s guilt’ with ‘white man’s corruption’, then it works, in the sense of “other countries can never be evil, degenerate; only the west has this privilege!”
Of course liberal democracy is in crisis, but in some weird way, being a ‘degenerate westerner’ can give you the right to then tell others how ‘generate’ they really are (by being deprived of western ‘excesses’ like feminism and human rights).
Ara-
ReplyDeleteI don't see that 'secret privilege' actually operating, but maybe I'm missing something.
mb
Thayer just passed away. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2023/01/04/nate-thayer-journalist-pol-pot-dies/) I wasn't aware of this interview, and it's an excellent illustration of how good people are at convincing themselves that they're on the side of right.
ReplyDeletehttps://twitter.com/sstrangio/status/1610846623927799809?t=KhjBWODkKFyqOtdxnOUaZQ&s=19
Ara-
ReplyDeleteSorry, cdn't run it (24-hr rule).
mb
Here is a very interesting and enlightening video about corporations being “people”. If these entities indeed are people, Mr. Nader gives very creative—if not hypothetically absurd examples—of these corporations being protected under the Constitution, as if they are real human beings with a soul. About the only thing from which they aren’t protected is the self incrimination of the 5th Amendment.
ReplyDeleteMr. Nader gives trenchant examples slightly after the 17 minute mark—one about them being protected from illegal search and seizures concerning pollution, another with robots using artificial intelligence. So one might ask, Are these corporate robots people?
These super large amoral businesses definitely are contributing to this pathetic capitalist country’s demise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmZbUUpgElE
Doctor, I don’t think I ever have heard you mention Ralph Nader. What are your thoughts on him?
Joe-
ReplyDeleteA gd man w/a lot of integrity. But he's sort of been marginalized; one doesn't hear much abt him these days. Also, it seems to me that he's always working w/in the system, i.e. trying to improve it. No future in that. Blind alley, misguided patriotism.
mb
A little more on the scope of the govt intelligence agencies influence w/in social media companies.
ReplyDeletehttps://jacobin.com/2022/12/twitter-files-censorship-content-moderation-intelligence-agencies-surveillance
From the article, one of the documents implies that the other social media players were more compliant than Twitter in regards to fulfilling requests.
Aren't the USAian leaders so great? They really ensure the USA wins the information "war" against China, Iran, Russia, Venezuela, etc...
1922
ReplyDeleteIn 2022, the centenary of James Joyce's Ulysses, two arts festival curators set out on an odyssey across Europe.
Their aim was to prove that Joyce's masterpiece is more than the great Irish novel - that it is quintessentially European.
Ulysses: Celebrating James Joyce, 'the quintessential European'
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-63859174
Just try to imagine a work of art, or an artist like this, ever coming from the US. NOTHING we have/had comes close to the great euro authors of the last century, we have our darlings but they're just not the same..
Beer-
ReplyDeleteNabokov said that the 4 greatest novels of the 20C were Joyce, Proust, Bely, and Kafka. No American novel comes even close. I've read 1/3 of Ulysses, Proust 1.5 times, Bely (Petersburg) 3x, and Kafka (Metamorphosis) once. Greatness, of course, emerges partly from spiritual context, and in America, the spiritual air is v. thin. (Some wd say nonexistent.)
mb
Check this short from Dust.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAKfbqVmxOI
Apparently, in this short modern civilization has collapsed due to global warming and oil reserves running out. And, all the land masses become islands in the future due to rising oceans and the climate is hotter. The Islander civilization of the distant future are primitive in a lot of ways yet at the same time more advanced. They seem to have technology but the tech they have is more towards "being one with the Earth." It seems to well flow with nature and not go against it. In short, I believe this short should be a part of the WAFerism library. What would make it better is if the young girl dug up your books.
Unknown-
ReplyDeleteSorry, I don't post Unknowns.
mb
Seattle's schools are suing tech giants for harming young people's mental health
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to see more lawsuits, but the answer would need to be on a national level. All these social media & gaming companies should be illegal & all the execs in jail. Social media should be seen in the same category as gambling, lottery, drinking, drugs, & hookers.
Irish data commission issues $400 million in fines to Meta
Facebook parent Meta will pay $725M to settle a privacy suit over Cambridge Analytica
Facebook gets sued for billions over fueling political violence in Africa
‘Fortnite’ maker Epic Games to pay $520 million in record-breaking FTC settlement
Tik-
ReplyDeleteNow *this* is my definition of progress!
mb
Dr. B,
ReplyDeleteI seem to have spoken too soon, and I do have problems to share. It is my relationship with the internet, which, although it allows me to connect (like now), has rendered me overloaded with info, immobilized and lonely.
I already had an internet problem when I was in high school, and deleted my social media accounts well into college (I didn’t finish college yet).
That was 5 years ago and social media has only become more needed than ever, if I am to have friends, meet people and be “normal”.
It was an experiment for sure, but somewhat ruined my reputation, status, and social capital. I became an outcast of sorts for not participating.
So I have rejoined reluctantly. I am again glued to my screen for 8 hours a day, comparing, worrying, and analyzing the hyperreality as described by Baudrillard. Trying to play “catch up” as reality melts away and I only care about my digital representation.
Still atomized, but atomized together I guess.
https://jacobin.com/2022/12/from-bowling-alone-to-posting-alone
Ara-
ReplyDeleteFer chrissakes, chico: get out of the house and make some friends. Join a club or whatever. Spend 1 hr online, tops.
mb
Dr. B,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind sentiments. I did in fact step outside today, met with friends and even went to city council to speak about local issues. I have recently made friends with an old-timer at these meetings, who is a firebrand holding council to task.
I still have friends which is good, I am just no longer as popular as I once was.
Here in LA and Hollywood, popularity is akin to currency.
I find it poetic that the commenter above me should have wrote about the dangers of social media. Shucks! I appreciate you accepting my post though, as part testimonial and confession.
Ara-
ReplyDeleteAlso get out in nature, at least once a wk.
mb
MB, talking of liberal education, the US has successfully exported the carcass of liberal education all over. Power to connect? The only connection we understand is what help us climb the ladder in our careers. Truth seeking? Professional journals are more concerned about their business bottom line than any greater ideal. Impact factor of journals are the equivalents of Facebook likes and YouTube hits. Class teaching and nuanced discussions are being replaced by online lectures. Sheer number of publications go a long way in enhancing the ‘ranking’ of a university. Students seek not professors who are erudite, but who control huge sums of money. I can go on. But I guess the point has been made.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I wonder if this is really the profession I chose in my youth.
From the “artificial intelligence” area of the dumbed down USAin brains:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-chewed-ear-78-year-old-man-oregon-train-platform-said-victim-was-r-rcna64386
So the question is: Under our totally laughable screwed up legal system, will this guy’s defense attorney use that ( an alleged robot attacking him) as his defense? LOL!
Watch also in the same video the piece of crap pushing a 3 year old child onto the tracks. Yep. Only here in the world’s biggest violent shithole.
p.s. Move over, Kim Kardashian. You’re no longer the main topic of the daily banal, insipid USAin discussions in its populace. You’ve been replaced by Prince Harry.
Dr. B. Thanks for the ref to Forster's Howards End. I read it in college (1970s) and again recently. It's a novel about the fate of nations, therefore relevant to this blog.
ReplyDeleteThe leitmotif is connection -- or rather the lack of it. People and social classes are disconnected from one another, and most individual characters in the novel are not capable of connecting with each other or capable of connecting the dots in their lives and their worlds well enough to draw a clear picture of themselves or their predicaments.
Another motif is hatred and distrust. Example: The scion of new wealth, Charles Wilcox, distrusts the scion of old wealth, Helen Schlegel, because her ancestors had earned the money she lived on. "Honest and hearty was Charles's dislike [of Helen], and the past spread itself out very clearly before him; hatred is a skilled compositor."
Hatred is indeed a skilled compositor, and much of America's public discourse is shaped by hate.
Of course Howards End is fiction, and life never imitates art.
Greetings GSWH and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteI just finished reading Daniel J Boorstin's "The Image: A Guide to Psuedo-Events in America" and I enjoyed it very much. I think it's been discussed on this blog a before but I wanted to share a few thoughts I had after reading it if that's permitted.
It's wild to think it was written in 1961. How different the world must be since then? The problems he describes ring true to my ears. Americans are conditioned to expect news regularly and with ever more increasing novelty. There are lulls in the news if there are not many spontaneous events so this is where corporations and politicians created pseudo-events. Americans today probably watch more TV and cellfone screens than ever before. And I would think most of what they consume is pseudo events but I don't have data for that.
I feel my own conditioning at times when there is a slowdown on this blog and I am expecting more activity. But sometimes reality dictates a slowdown. People have lives to live.
I hope you're all staying sane out there. It's not easy if you're still in the United States of America. Thanks for keeping this blog going as a drop of sanity in the ocean of buffoonery on the web.
Krak-
ReplyDeleteImportant to remember that we live in a sea of buffoonery. However, this might help:
https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Jenny-Odell/dp/1612198554/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1WYEH674FK73R&keywords=how+to+do+nothing+jenny+odell&qid=1673479690&s=books&sprefix=how+to+do+no%2Cstripbooks%2C801&sr=1-1
Pete-
Check out my portrait of Forster in EPV.
Joe-
Remember how agog everyone was abt Brexit, while my comment on the situation was Brexit, Schmexit. Now I'd like to say, as regards Prince Harry: Markle, Schmarkle.
Indian-
Every institution in the US is busy beating off. (Just look at the House of Rep.) There is no reason this shd not apply to our 'educational' institutions as well. And the vigor w/wh/they beat off is impressive.
going down-
You'd probably be better served by a different blog. Gd luck.
mb
ps: Joe: Harry will make a fortune from the sales of his bk. And if he really does manage to bring down the (useless, stupid) monarchy, more power to him. What a collection of turkeys. But this whole thing is yet another bit of theater, an exercise in jerking off. And so I am forced to say: Harry, Schmarry; Meghan, Schmeghan.
ReplyDeleteWafers-
ReplyDeleteCNN (and much of America) regards this as (significant) news:
http://edition.cnn.com/2022/04/28/entertainment/kim-kardashian-kanye-sex-tape/index.html?dicbo=v2-d7b2c9fdd31b6c0a1248366441c2249e&iid=ob_lockedrail_topeditorial
mb
Waiter! I'd like 2 got Bonnie & Clyde wannabes w/ a serving of corpse. Someone got smoked in a dispute over a TRASH BIN. The bin was in a neighbor's way, & said neighbor tried moving it. Bin's owner wasn't havin' it.
ReplyDeletehttps://fox59.com/news/indycrime/neighbor-says-couple-in-lawrence-police-shootout-like-bonnie-and-clyde/
Nuggin-
ReplyDeleteWrong blog for broadcasting opinions. Anyone can have an opinion. We are not impressed. In future, state your argument and defend it with links and reliable references. Thank you.
mb
Gee, what a surprise:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/12/antisemitism-anti-defamation-league-survey/
MB: More on a theme, here-- The batshit idea that Roth spent over three decades devoting heroic work to Human Rights Watch compiling detailed investigations on every nasty regime in the world, was just a cover for his real agenda, being anti-Israel?!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.middleeasteye.net/news/outrage-harvard-denies-fellowship-former-hrw-chief-criticism-israel
Got some crazy shit to report. I was taking a walk early this afternoon, when someone in a bluish-grey Dodge jumped the curb near my apt complex & crashed it right in2 someone's wall, where their A/C unit was. Police says the driver evaded a traffic stop. They then went 2 a cul-de-sac, where you can only drive around & exit the same way u came. The "solution" for the perp was to crash & run.
ReplyDeleteNever a dull moment, eh? And 2 think some folks still believe Amerikkka has a chance. HAH!
Here’s some more of that good old USAin kindness. A business owner in San Francisco hoses down a homeless woman. Also, check further in the video. You’ll see one of the many miniature tent cities here in the world headquarters of capitalism. These folks certainly are living the American Dream.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/video-shows-san-francisco-man-spraying-homeless-woman-water-hose-rcna65372
And of course, USAins always are extremely kind on the roads.
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/pipe-wielding-tesla-driver-violently-attacks-vehicles-on-socal-freeways/
U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!
Joe-
ReplyDeleteI don't get it. Why didn't he just gun her down like a dog? This is America, after all. True Americans carry guns and don't pull punches. They don't use hoses. Same w/the Tesla driver: a pipe? Where was his revolver?
octagon-
Was there a news item on this?
Joey-
This really is deplorable, how Israel has intimidated everyone via the fear of being labeled antisemitic. I don't want to get into an extended discussion abt Palestine, since I tried it yrs ago here w/a few Zionists, and you might as well talk to a wall (or what Orwell once labeled "the gramophone mind"). The crux of the matter is that many Jews are (understandably) traumatized by the Holocaust, so that they simply cannot lose an argument; which for them wd be the equivalent of dying. This is probably how Judaism got conflated w/Zionism, so that any critique of the Israeli gov't, no matter how obviously legitimate, immediately evokes a cry of 'antisemitism'. Israel has pretty much got it sewn up: voice any critique, and you'll lose yr job. Its own brand of fascism, I guess.
mb
Food for thought dept.:
ReplyDeleteFrom Chris Cuomo, "Feminism and Ecological Communities":
“Moral agents can decide how to negotiate the world w/o hopes of reaching a predetermined, necessary state of harmony or static equilibrium, or any ultimate state. Indeed, the abandonment of such a teleology also entails abandoning hopes that our decisions and actions will result in perfect harmony or order, and such non-teleological ethics can’t be motivated by a desire to actualize a pre-established end or enact given roles. We can, however, value the somewhat ordered/somewhat chaotic universe in wh/we inevitably dwell, and we can also decide that it is good and worthwhile to prevent significant destruction to other valuable members of the universe thru the agency and choice that also seem inevitable.”
From Walter Benjamin: “As flowers turn toward the sun, by dint of a secret heliotropism the past strives to turn toward the sun that is rising in the sky of history.”
I'm not sure you're aware of just how much worse high schools are becoming. Some schools are now REQUIRING cell phones in class (to take photos rather than taking notes). Celebrity, consumerism, spectator sports, & social media are dominating what these kids think about. These were issues decades ago, but I think it's gotten much worse in the last 5 years.
ReplyDeleteIt's not so much the teenagers to blame, as it is the parents & schools. They are the ones creating this stuff & pushing for its use. It could be banned, but society is choosing to do this. I would highly suggest anyone having children reconsider the environment you're going to raise them in; the US is getting worse by the day.
"The biggest takeaway, Superintendent Bill Wilson said, was that parents wanted their children to have access to their phones."
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/parents-pushback-on-cellphone-bans-at-school
ship-
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info. I don't own a cell fone, myself, but then I'm not in high school. Keep in mind that most Americans are buffoons; they really do have shit for brains. This is merely the latest manifestation. Within the next decade, it will be possible to have a fone installed in your brain. Most Americans will get in line for this operation, will celebrate it as 'progress'.
mb
This is simply wonderful:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/14/george-santos-politician-americans-deserve
(I mean it.)
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteCheck out article on J. Edgar Hoover in the 21 Nov 22 New Yorker, based on the new biography by Beverly Gage. It's in the same category as Stephen Kinzer's bio of the Dulles brothers, "The Brothers." Amazing, what trash has been governing the country, and what damage they did to the nation as a result. Also noteworthy is how the American people adored Hoover, and how they approved of what he was doing. (In 1964, when Hoover denounced MLK, all of 16% of the American people sided w/King. All this talk of how Americans are oppressed by the gov't, and by elites...give me a break.)
mb
Sweet mother of Jesus, boy do we Americans deserve this creep George Santos! He is us! And we are him: an empty buffoon, a degraded human being! The article nailed it. Wonderful, indeed.
ReplyDeleteYou know, Ernest Becker writes:
“This is one aspect of the basic human predicament, that we are simultaneously worms and gods. There it is again: gods with anuses.” (p. 51) *
But today, wouldn’t Becker have to account for Americans? Who are clearly something we’ve never seen before: buffoons with anuses? George Santos, you say? Ah yes, he is us, an American: “There it is again: buffoons with anuses.” !
Maybe even Ernest Becker didn’t account for this. How could he? So here’s a prayer for us now, straight out of Hemingway: “Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada..” **
George Santos/Americans: nada. With a capital “N”.
*”The Denial of Death”. The Free Press, paperback ed., 1997.
** https://www.lonestar.edu/18158.htm
Ro-
ReplyDeleteSantos = America in microcosm. This is what a culture such as ours finally produces, logically speaking. A turkey, a douche bag, a supreme hustler. In terms of decline, he's wonderful. George, keep doin' what yr doin'!
mb
Mr Berman:
ReplyDeleteFascinating quote alongside the equally fascinating Walter Benjamin quote, did you use Cuomo's "Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing" as a source text in Wandering God? Or is it something new you've picked up recently? Looks great!
On a rainy Cascadian weekend, I’ve been catching up on various blog commentaries. One that caught my eye was a guest post by Helmholtz Smith on Larry Johnson’s blog Sonar21.com. Smith postulates the hope that, through military defeat of the U.S. and its NATO allies in Ukraine by Russia, a decisive blow against the power of the U.S. bipartisan “war party” might happen and be the only way the peoples of the U.S. and the West “can see to get their leeches off their backs.”
ReplyDeletehttps://sonar21.com/destroying-monsters-by-helmholtz-smith/
Thinking about Smith’s hope of the bubble bursting, I see a potential disappointment in expecting to “get history for free”, to borrow one of MB’s phrases, in the hope of the Russians furnishing the decisive push (Smith doesn’t mention the risk of nuclear conflict in that scenario). Methinks the demise of the capability of the “war party” more likely would come as the result of secession and political disintegration over the next decade, i.e. portions of the American polity opting out in reaction to prolonged financial crisis and institutional breakdowns. What do other Wafers think?
Jack-
ReplyDeleteCol. Douglas Macgregor keeps saying that what the MSM is feeding us re: Ukrainian victory is b.s.; that in fact, Russia is winning this war. Hard to know what to believe, but I certainly don't believe the MSM. Wd it be a wake-up call for America, if Russia wins? I'm skeptical, because in the past, even w/defeats (e.g. Vietnam), 0 manages to wake America up. I'm not even sure that the total collapse of the US wd wake Americans up. We are just not the sharpest nail in the box, and 99% of the country will never understand its own history. Myth always wins.
papri-
New.
mb
ps: Jack: Yrs ago, when asked to speak to college classes, I wd start out by writing NOAM CHOMSKY on the blackboard, and ask, "How many of you know who this is?" Typically, in a class of 40-50, 1 or 2 students at most wd raise their hands.
ReplyDeleteIt wd be the same today, I'm guessing. Probably 50% wd have heard of Gisele Bundchen.
Doctor & Wafers,
ReplyDeleteCheck out the latest from our AR15 toting/immature crybaby/ high school dropout doofus who symbolizes the Young Right in this shitty country.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/01/14/southern-star-brewery-kyle-rittenhouse/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/threatened-texas-brewery-defends-decision-155009941.html
Of course like any other far right USAin conservative, Crybaby Kyle—along with another entity mentioned, Defiance Press—is playing the usual, stale “persecuted martyr” card. The ongoing disintegration of this majority macho far right/de facto Christian theocracy is entertaining.
p.s. I want to see a Rittenhouse/Santos Republican ticket in 2024! LOL! That’s a sure way to expedite this wasteland to go belly up! LOL!
MD,
ReplyDeleteI just came across the article below by Patrick Lawrence by way of John Pilger's Twitter feed:
https://scheerpost.com/2023/01/08/patrick-lawrence-europe-and-the-legitimization-of-deception/
It's about the war in Ukraine and how France and Germany helped the US stoke this war. There's a good amount of the backstory there that will never, ever, see the light of day in the New York Times. I especially like seeing Lawrence refer to Antony Blinken and Wendy Sherman as "bimbos," which they surely are. Hollande and Merkel come off maybe not as bimbos but certainly as tools.
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteCheck out letters to editor in New Yorker 26 Dec 22, which report on what I call Dual Process work in Europe. (There is one abt the US, but of course, it's rather iffy.) These are really inspiring, and have happened because of the relative intelligence of non-Americans, and a very different value system. A # of Americans have hopes for DP happening here, but given the low level of intelligence in the US, coupled with ingrained narcissism and individualism, I don't that anything sustained will take place.
mb
ps: article in New Yorker 19 Dec 22 on people in India working to reverse environmental destruction. Question: Why is this happening in India (and being successful), and not in the US?
ReplyDelete1. 1-word answer: buffoons
2. 3-word answer: shit for brains
4. 4-word answer: heads rammed in rumps
Wafers are encouraged to add to this list.
This issue of the mag has a lotta gd stuff in it. Besides the above, there is a review of Cormac McCarthy's latest novels. One character calls Auschwitz and Hiroshima "the sister events that sealed forever the fate of the West." I wd say that after 1945,
1. We lost the moral high ground
2. It was hard to say where we were going, beyond pursuing the consumer lifestyle
3. In 1960, Fellini gave the answer in "La dolce vita," which enraged millions of people. (See my chapter on Fellini in "Genio".)
There is also an article by Stephen Witt on the current state of applied physics. Abs. fascinating, altho a bit difficult to follow. The whole enterprise is soaking in $, of course.
As we are now well into the new yr, I ask all of you to remember 3 things:
1. The US is a collection of turkeys.
2. It has absolutely no future.
3. If anyone tells you it does have a future, know that u.r. talking to a dunce.
mb
ps2: this is a small part of what I'm talking abt:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/16/california-shooting-mother-baby-six-people-killed-goshen
Daily occurrence by now, this sorta thing.
Thinking abt Ariel Dorfman, born in Argentina, now teaching at Duke University. A great man. I first ran across his work many yrs ago:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/-/es/Ariel-Dorfman/dp/0745339786/ref=sr_1_1?crid=P2DEHACHUZ3Y&keywords=ariel+dorfman&qid=1673979720&s=books&sprefix=ariel+%2Cstripbooks%2C275&sr=1-1
He originally wrote in Spanish, later in English. This bk shows how Disney promotes a view of foreign cultures that sees them as inferior to the US; as jokes, really. Altho obviously, Disney is hardly the only vehicle for that outlook. And it's sad, how Americans run around chanting "We're No. 1," when from a human pt of view, those mocked cultures are so far superior to ours. We're clueless; we never bother to find out abt the Other. History will show who the real joke was, I'm guessing.
mb
More USAin “love thy neighbor”. And check out our winning daily mug shot.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/15/2147442/-Indiana-woman-stabbed-Asian-American-student-to-have-one-less-person-to-blow-up-our-country
Ya just gotta love this too. It’s another example of the Charles Darwin USAin capitalist “survival of the fittest”. As we all know Madison Avenue a few decades ago thought up its newest cleverest marketing scheme— putting humongous business names on arenas and stadiums. Of course the apathetic dumbed down sports fans go right along with it. Like musical chairs the names change regularly as these respective corporations go belly up. The latest is in Miami. The phony crypto currency company FTX has joined the capitalist dinosaurs and woolly mammoths in the exceptional U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!
https://apnews.com/article/ftx-miami-heat-arena-name-change-b3f47e4fb5bb0f102560fa6956997bdb
p.s. Doctor, You mentioned a latest mass shooting. What do you think of this idea? I’m thinking of writing in to Jeopardy and suggesting a new category which should last quite awhile. I’m going to suggest a “Mass Shooting” category. Besides the names of the mass shooters ( Dylann Roof, Stephen Paddock, Nikolas Cruz, et al.) some of the names of the cities ( Orlando, Newtown, El Paso) or states or when they took place also could be used as various clues.
Joe-
ReplyDeleteI'm relieved the student who was attacked survived. As for her attacker: what stupidity, and what a face. This is surely America in microcosm. As for yr Jeopardy idea: I suggest a larger category, wh/wd include Mass Shooters: Buffoons. A very rich vein to tap, in America. I can't help it: I love a gd buffoon.
mb
David Brooks in the Atlantic- positively cheerful on USAs future prospects. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/american-optimism-productivity-innovation-rise/672714/
ReplyDeleteWhat a douchebag! We know how wrong all of this is but USA elites will lap this up.
Here's a thread about French intellectual Emmanuel Todd on the Ukraine war. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1613924570725244928.html
With the news coming out now about Angela Merkel and Poroshenko about the Minsk agreements only being signed only to buy time for the coming military conflict and they had no intention of abiding by the agreements. Western leaders are going to come out of this conflict looking two-faced. Here's the Jimmy Dore segment about it. https://youtu.be/AjwSNiCSpnw
Krak-
ReplyDeleteBrooks is a laughable person. If there were a Nobel Prize in douchebaggery, he wd be its first recipient. In terms of public commentators, America has produced no greater asshole.
As for the real agenda of the Minsk Agreement, this says it all. What a pile of b.s. This will be pushed outta sight by the MSM, of course. Clearly, beating off is hardly limited to the US.
mb
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteHere's another Face of America:
http://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/08/us/gofundme-prison-scam-new-jersey-homeless-man/index.html?dicbo=v2-7b18af8e46f94fb04874a7870572b15c&iid=ob_lockedrail_topeditorial
We need to start collecting these. They make the case for decline better than I ever could.
mb
I think that the second winner of a Nobel Prize for douchebaggery could easily go to Paul Krugman.
ReplyDeleteHere he is telling us that everything is quite wonderful economically in a piece with the title "Will It Be Morning in Joe Biden's America?":
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/opinion/joe-biden-america-economy.html
The man is practically giving Joe Biden a tongue bath, but that's normal for him. I know people in rural areas who would not agree with his assessment of the economy, not be a long shot. But those people are invisible to the likes of Paul Krugman, or so it seems.
Well, Krugman did win a Nobel Prize, but maybe not the right one.
ccg-
ReplyDeleteThat entire op-ed team at the NYT is a joke. The Times is all abt reassuring the upper and professional classes that all is well, appearances to the contrary. Also pushing propaganda pieces as objective news, as in case of Ukraine.
mb
Got any good book recommendations on the Red Scare & anti-Communism in America? I'm looking for something written in the last 10 years.
ReplyDeleteMore people have noticed Christianity’s decline in America
Red-
ReplyDeleteCheck out Stephen Kinzer, "The Brothers." Also:
https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Griffin-Fariello/dp/0393335046/ref=sr_1_3?__mk_es_US=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&keywords=red+scare&qid=1674073601&s=books&sr=1-3
mb
Some yrs ago, in an effort to pretend he wasn't in charge, Putin had a putz named Medvedev become prime minister of Russia; but in truth, Medvedev did whatever Putin told him to do. The following joke became very popular in Russia: The 2 of them are in a restaurant, and the waitress asks Putin, "What can I bring you?" He says, "I'd like a small stake." Then she says, "And for the vegetable?" Putin replies, "He'll have the steak as well."
ReplyDeleteGeraldine Tyler is now 94. A few years ago, she accrued a $2,300 tax debt.
ReplyDeleteThe government added $13,000 in fees, took her home, sold it for $40,000, and kept all the proceeds.
A federal court said that was A-OK.
https://reason.com/2022/03/11/a-93-year-old-woman-couldnt-pay-her-2300-tax-bill-the-government-sold-her-home-and-kept-the-money/
A country for and run by criminals..
Tan-
ReplyDeleteTrue, but they are not true Americans, imo. True Americans wd have dragged her out into the street, gunned her down like a dog, and then thrown her corpse on a nearby landfill. Then have installed their relatives in the now-empty house.
Rabbi Hillel (1stC BC) was asked by a Roman centurion to explain the Torah to him in the time he (the centurion) cd stay balanced on 1 ft. Hillel told him, "That which is hateful to you, don't do to another person. That's the core of it. Everything else is just editorializing."
How many Americans, do you think, live by that rule?
mb
"To get a good job you need a good education.” I often was fed this b.s. from a television commercial while growing up in the 1960’s. The opposite is true. You can be your own boss. If you’re a young high school dropout ( actually if you’ve been kicked out for always playing video games) you can market the new “Esports” to millions of our dumbed down, functionally illiterate youth. An esports bar. Ya gotta love it! LOL!
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esports
https://www.wral.com/gaming-the-system-triangle-man-opens-esports-bar-in-durham-for-devoted-gamers/20669182/
https://www.wral.com/bad-machines-gives-gamers-a-place-to-play-in-durham/20672117/
In other headline USAin news, the conservative poster boy for USAin high school dropouts had two speaking appearances cancelled on him. This may hurt the Rittenhouse/Santos presidential ticket in 2924. But fear not. Santos has been appointed to two congressional committees.
https://www.newsweek.com/kyle-rittenhouse-cancelled-events-texas-las-vegas-1774551
https://www.ktnv.com/news/event-featuring-kyle-rittenhouse-at-venetian-on-las-vegas-strip-canceled-hotel-officials-say
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3816976-george-santos-gets-two-committee-assignments/
The future of this country looks great! U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!
Hello Dear Doctor Berman
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cnn.com/2023/01/17/politics/george-santos-committee-assignments/index.html
The competition between George Santos and Kyle Rittehouse for the most TRUELY AMERICAN is fierce.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/kyle-rittenhouse-furious-after-his-events-keep-getting-canceled/ar-AA16ti9T
Where Kyle decries how "unfair" it is that events he was scheduled to appear at keep getting canceled.
United States of Shamerica Rules.
MB: just reading the fascinating new yrkr review of the Hoover book. Do you know if the whole cross-dressing thing was real? Or just homophobic gossip of the time slandering a homophobic P.O.S.?
ReplyDeleteThen here's this contribution for our blog:
Eating a wild fish the same as drinking tainted water for a month: US study - US Today News
https://ustoday.news/eating-a-wild-fish-the-same-as-drinking-tainted-water-a-month-study-2/
Jersey-
ReplyDeleteI really dunno, but by all acc'ts he was a very weird dude.
Glenn-
America is basically a machine for manufacturing assholes.
Joe-
See reply to Glenn. These people are seriously underslapped, and their shoes are too dry.
mb
lots more reporting, and likely more subpoenaing, to be done but the answer to "why does the Mayor of New York City hang around with so many crooks?" is pretty clear
ReplyDeletea ex-cop who chaired the state senate gambling committee and has a bunch of close friends who have been indicted or investigated for corruption and white collar crime. It's a very basic pattern
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/how-eric-adams-started-mentoring-a-con-man
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jan/19/france-hit-by-nationwide-strikes-over-macron-pension-plans
ReplyDeleteIn France, the people have spine. In America, on the other hand, they kiss the asses of the people who oppress them.
I'd also like to say to women who run around w/Louis Vuitton bags: it's a douche bag, and so r.u.
mb
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/01/19/metro/harvard-dean-reverses-decision-not-offer-fellowship-human-rights-activist-kenneth-roth/
ReplyDeleteHarvard is so stupid. 1st it's no fellowship; now it's yes fellowship, due to public pressure (thank god for that). Defending the rt to criticize and dissent: why wd Harvard care abt that? That dean needs a severe beating. Talk abt hi-IQ morons.
mb
"The findings ... suggest the rise of growing crops and herding animals as a way of life, replacing hunting and gathering, may have laid the foundations for formalised warfare."
ReplyDeleteFurther findings to supplement the "Wandering God" book!
https://www.ed.ac.uk/news/2023/violence-was-widespread-in-early-farming-society
Cross-
ReplyDeleteI thank you. WG, and my bk on Japan, are my 2 favorites.
mb
The Karens are back! Wait. They never left! LOL! Now they’re going around airports spraying everyone with fire extinguishers.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoITevgxX9M
https://abcnews.go.com/US/woman-assaults-multiple-flight-attendants-cops-fire-extinguisher/story?id=96558575
And they’re going around shouting for everyone to die.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV6Tk-XVOy4
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11646959/I-hope-crash-die-Woman-screams-passengers-Las-Vegas-flight-booted-off.html
“American woman. Stay away from me.” -The Guess Who
It only can happen here. It’s an outright comedy show. If it wasn’t so funny it would be downright pathetic.
U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!
Biden as total scumbag:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/jan/20/joe-biden-julian-assange-extradition-tribunal
Joe Biden is also a pathological liar. He lied about his academic record when he ran for president back in the 80's. He also plagiarized a speech from a British politician. I remember all of that because it forced him to drop out of the running.
ReplyDeleteBut he's still lying about about his alleged activities during the civil rights era. Here's a great take-down of Biden on his long term lying on this which continued right up to MLK day earlier this week:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXv1GwkQzd0
What are your thoughts on ChatGPT? This is sure to speed up the dumbing down of the entire planet. People I'm talking to are excited and thrilled, but I think this is one of the most dangerous tools I've seen. The creators have programmed it to say it's neutral and without bias, while spitting out answers based on who knows what.
ReplyDeleteHere's sample output to a question: "My creators at OpenAI have built me to be neutral and impartial, without any inherent bias towards any particular group or ideology. However, it's true that the data used to train me may contain biases, as biases can be present in any dataset. But my creators are aware of this and are working to minimize the impact of these biases on my responses. They have implemented techniques to detect and address bias in my training data and they continually monitor my output to ensure that it is fair and unbiased."
https://chat.openai.com/chat
Chat-
ReplyDeleteA gd example of Americans putting their energy in the wrong place.
mb
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteMany yrs ago, NPR mounted a 2-day festival of "Negro Spirituals" from the 40s and 50s. Herewith, my favorite song:
Well you know ma baby, she ran off with the garbage man.
Yeah, you know ma baby, she ran off, ran off with the garbage man.
Come back baby, empty out my can.
https://edition.cnn.com/us/live-news/los-angeles-mass-shooting-01-22-2023/index.html
ReplyDeleteFolks, it's time we faced facts: the only way for the US to solve its problems is for the country to come to an end. This means that everyone gets armed and guns down everyone else, in the street, like dogs. Wafers and Native Americans will be excepted. When the dust settles, we will start a new country, based on principles of elementary decency. Our goal will be to be happy, not to accumulate wealth or show off our (pathetic little) egos.
mb
Unknown-
ReplyDeleteSorry, I don't post Unknowns. If you want to participate in this discussion, you need a real handle. E.g., Dr. Russ Fegoli.
mb
Wired wants you to up your hustle game by thinking like a medieval monk.
ReplyDelete“Medieval monks were, in many ways, the original LinkedIn power users.”
“Pachomius and his ilk set a high bar for concentration that other monks aspired to match. These super-concentrators were the first millennium embodiment of #workgoals, #hustle, and #selfimprovement.”
“Maybe monks aren’t the technophobes we might imagine them to be. Today, nuns on TikTok are using the platform to bring the world inside their cloisters. Kreiner imagines that even early Christian devotees would try their hand at social media. Saint Jerome basically invented subtweeting, after all.”
“Instead of turning to modern-day productivity gurus like Tim Ferriss, perhaps there’s some wisdom to be gained by exploring the lives of the original workaholics.”
― “Easily Distracted? You Need to Think Like a Medieval Monk,” Wired, January 18, 2023.
Sing-Along With Pete Seeger
Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteIn the below tweet an Indian foreign policy/security observed posted the following link about a crime ring targeting Asian elders in San Diego, CA:
https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/san-diego-police-hunting-dozens-connected-to-crime-ring-that-targets-asian-elders/3146279/?_osource=db_npd_nbc_knsd_twt_shr
Tweet link: https://twitter.com/ankitatIIMA/status/1617226589468774401?s=20&t=nOoHSxcfng_hgTJqCy9WbA
He predicts that as dedollarization proceeds and its effects trickle down more such incidents will happen and in an organized form , en masse with police support against Asians (mainly Indians + Chinese). I suspect that Jews would be affected as well (they are also among the most successful groups in US). Do you agree with this prediction?
Thanks,
Himanshu
Himan-
ReplyDeleteWhen we talk abt Americans, we are not talking abt an insightful people who are talented at self-transparency and self-analysis. Rather, we are talking abt a people for whom the 'enemy' is always outside, and for whom scapegoating others comes quite naturally. All recent surveys abt antisemitism in the US indicate that it's at record-high levels, esp. among American youth. These tendencies will surely be extended to Asians.
k-
What Wired, and Americans in general, know about medieval monasticism would rattle in a thimble.
mb
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteI’ve been thinking abt writing a book abt healing.
Healing is waking up to Reality, and then acting on it.
Reality actually reaches out to us, unexpectedly, once in a while. It breaks thru the fog of daily life. In daily life, we are living out an arc, program, narrative. These breaks are windows on an alternative narrative. They encourage us to get to the root of our programmed narrative, to find what set us out on that unconscious path. Very few people are interested in this, and if a break occurs, it is fleeting, and then gone. We live out our arc, and then die. Ivan Ilyich (by Tolstoy) had only 3 days of awareness in his entire life. Most people don’t have any.
All of this is brilliantly captured in the popular TV series The Sopranos, which ran from 1999 to 2007. Level of violence aside, these Mafia folks are obsessed w/what most Americans are: money. It’s the arc of their lives. But the writer, David Chase, inserts an occasional Aha! moment that bids fair to shake up the status quo, and then is ignored.
-Carmela goes to Paris, and is exposed to a true civ, one not run along the lines of material acquisition. Even deeper, she realizes that worry dominates our lives, and that it is finally “all washed away.” It comes to nothing, she says. She starts crying.
-Tony, in a coma in the hospital, momentarily wakes up and says to no one in particular, “Who am I? Where am I going?”
-Someone posts a note on the bulletin board in his hospital rm, an Ojibwe saying abt how we run around in pity for ourselves, when all the while a great wind carries us along.
-On a trip to Las Vegas, Tony takes peyote, and as the sun rises he cries out, “I get it.” He later tells his therapist that what he got was the realization that our mothers were like buses. They “deposit” us and go on their way, and instead of letting them go, we try to keep getting back onto the bus.
These are great moments, but they chg nothing. Carmela wants to leave her dishonest life, but in the end the lure of its material advantages are too strong for her. Tony could use his therapy to evolve, to become a different person, but he chooses not to. All along, the therapy just serves to make him a more skilled mafioso. He never figures out who he is, nor does he see that he is going nowhere. Meadow is aware of social injustice in the world, but finally winds up w/a partner who is the son of a major member of the gang, and is doing corporate law.
What does it take to pay attn to these moments, to use them for our growth? To not let them just become fleeting memories? The 1st step is to see thru our narrative, what we tell ourselves. Once we see thru this unconscious programming, make it conscious, we can begin the process of exploring alternatives.
mb
Dear Dr Berman, I am currently reading your American Empire trilogy. I am amazed how much of a prophecy The Twilight of the Culture is and how you saw what was coming back 2000. I think was a lot easier back then to dismiss these discussions has doom and gloom, but anyone today who can not see what is coming down the road must be blind. I first discovered your work on Geopolitics and Empire on YouTube. You have truly opened my eyes to what this country is about and now there no turning back. You are like the rug in The Big Lebowski. You tighted my whole view of America together. A sincere thank of the upmost.
ReplyDeleteKyle-
ReplyDeleteI appreciate yr appreciation, thank you. Jus' call me Cassandra. I've already picked out my epitaph: I KEPT TELLING THEM, BUT DID THEY LISTEN? NO! It's a sobering vision: you look out across the American landscape, and you see 335 million people w/their heads in their rumps, rolling around like donuts.
mb
https://edition.cnn.com/us/live-news/half-moon-bay-california-shooting-1-23-23/index.html
ReplyDeleteMass shootings now on a daily basis. America's future looks increasingly bright.
ps: my mistake: 38 shootings in 3 wks--almost 2 a day. Don' miss the cutting-edge comment from Kamala.
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/23/politics/mass-shootings-in-2023-what-matters/index.html
ps2: Duh. I wonder if this sorta thing might be related to our national disintegration:
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/23/business/nightcap-geoff-morrell-disney-pr/index.html
Dr. Berman
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to bring this to your attention. I have seen how you have made the comparison between The Sopranos and the average American family. Did you know there was a book written on this type of subject? It is called Tony Soprano's America: The Criminal Side of the American Dream, by David R. Simon (2002). I read it some years back, nearly finished it, depressing stuff. Good book overall, just never had the makings of varsity athlete. Junior Soprono pun. Lol
https://www.amazon.com/Tony-Sopranos-America-Criminal-America/dp/0813340365
ReplyDeleteYou just gotta love the latest from the USAin capitalistic “bigger is better” icon. Now the leviathan is in to prescription drugs. We already see their black box trucks everywhere we go. So now in addition to those omnipresent drug commercials we see on literally every television program, theirs shall be one of the sponsors that promote an alleged cure-all for everything.
https://apnews.com/article/technology-health-amazoncom-inc-business-medication-210271424588592ebbbd63c2c34a412b
They obviously, in addition to Viagara and other “potency” drugs, shall market meds for hot tempered residents with anger issues at mental health clinics.
https://www.wfla.com/news/florida/50-person-riot-breaks-out-at-florida-mental-health-treatment-center/
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/nation-world/national/article271567147.html
And our ideal 2024 Republican presidential candidate shall be speaking later this week. Yes. With Killer Kyle and our angry youth, the future of this country sure looks great!
https://www.the-sun.com/news/7212258/kyle-rittenhouse-pleads-people-attend-censorship-rally-venue-controversy/
U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!
Kyle-
ReplyDeleteThanks. In future, post only once every 24 hrs.
mb
This shd be gd:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-01-24/kamala-harris-monterey-park-mass-shooting
Wish I cd be there, hear a douche baguette utter empty phrases. Frankly, sending Kamala will be as effective in stopping massacres as sending a box of stale dog turds.
mb
A mass shooting occurs, I intend to post it here to be part chronicling the descent of the evil empire into chaos, only for it to be overshadowed by an even worse shooting a day later. What is even the point anymore.
ReplyDeleteI do, however, have this to post:
It's a couple of American guys in Japan. How do they behave with the locals? Well, with the respect and thoughtfulness Americans are known for, of course!
Cherith-
ReplyDeleteTime to refresh yr post-its:
NO AMOUNT OF SLAPPING
NO AMOUNT OF URINE
MB
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteNOW we're talking!
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/jan/25/pepper-spray-school-run-apocalyptic-suv-reznavi-vengeange
Long overdue, imo.
mb
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteSome time ago someone asked me abt bks abt the Red Scare. I mentioned a couple of refs, but let me take this opportunity to add to that list.
-A terrific novel by Francine Prose called "The Vixen." It's abt the state murder of the Rosenbergs.
-Check out her Acknowledgments page for a decent biblio of the subject. In particular, a bk by a former colleague of mine (decades ago), David Oshinsky, "A Conspiracy So Immense."
-https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Sam-Roberts/dp/0375500138/ref=sr_1_1?__mk_es_US=%C3%85M%C3%85%C5%BD%C3%95%C3%91&crid=2SHW6ENA772Q8&keywords=david+greenglass&qid=1674699932&s=books&sprefix=david+greenglass%2Cstripbooks%2C334&sr=1-1
Hope that helps.
mb
What a week!
ReplyDeleteThe doomsday clock is the closest to midnight it has ever been.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/01/25/hardly-anyone-is-thinking-logically-about-the-risk-of-nuclear-war/
Germany has just said it is at war with Russia (and we all know how that went last time). Starts about time stamp 2:05
https://youtu.be/1oHtyNl09DA
It seems to me that Country Joe was right all those years ago... Whoopee we're all gonna die!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxEyg61LC4g
Musk is such a piece of shit, and, a techno-buffoon as we say around here. Caters to the Chinese president (at the plight of millions of Chinese muslims) and now to India's PM:
ReplyDeleteElon Musk Removes BBC documentary at Request of India PM Modi
https://theintercept.com/2023/01/24/twitter-elon-musk-modi-india-bbc/
You can see the blocked doc film here. It's quite informative and damning:
https://odysee.com/$/embed/@Archive:90/India-The-Modi-Question-S01E02:6
Diana-
ReplyDeleteWhat % of the American public adores Musk, and wd trade places with him in a heartbeat, do ya think? What % shares his empty value-system?
mb
ReplyDeleteHere’s another accolade and toast to the “Back the Blue”. And especially to all those conservatives that have their “Back the Blue” stickers attached on the backs of their pickup trucks and SUV’s. Check out below another example of a SWAT team’s gentleness, reminiscent of the Daniel Shaver execution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq0bexr6x0c
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11664527/Ive-shot-Shocking-moment-shows-North-Carolina-police-shooting-unarmed-disabled-man.html
Ya just gotta love and admire our trigger happy, shoot first/lie later de facto police state in this shithole of a country. And as always, “Obey authority”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_in_the_United_States
U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!
The only public critique of the U.S. proxy war and the escalation escalator in Ukraine in mainstream media has been coming from the right. The New York Daily News today reported Trump’s remarks blasting Biden for sending tanks to Ukraine, and even Marjorie “Jewish Space Lasers” Greene has called Ukraine a corrupt cesspit. But where are Tulsi and Rom Mittney on this?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/us-elections-government/ny-trump-blasts-biden-tanks-ukraine-20230126
Jack-
ReplyDeleteTulsi has actually spoken out regarding repression in the Ukraine, including repression of churches. Revelations of Ukrainian corruption have filled the news lately, so Marjorie ain't wrong. But you hafta ask yrself, if, as the MSM reports, the Ukraine is winning (wh/Col. Douglas Macgregor has fingered as bullshit), why wd they need all these tanks and assorted materiel from Europe and America? (Hint: they aren't winning)
A Trump victory in 2024 wd of course be a kind of horror, but as I've said b4, unlike Schmiden, he's not a warmonger.
mb
Wd someone explain this to me? Why wd 5 black cops viciously beat another black man to death? I'm sorry, I just can't understand this. It makes no sense at all.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/26/tyre-nichols-five-ex-police-officers-custody
Hola MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteMB-
Yeah, this is some crazy shit! It's bad enough that we have to routinely deal w/white cops gunning down defenseless and unarmed black men. Now we have a situation where a collection of black cops savagely beat Tyre Nichols to death over a traffic stop. The only thing I can think of is that these cops -possibly all cops- believe they are simply above the law, no matter the race of the officer. Brass tacks: the police cannot be trusted w/our lives. Remember the movement to defund the police? Good idea, but now it's just crickets...
Jeff
ps: Thanks for the Francine Prose novel recommendation.
Dr. Berman and @Diana,
ReplyDeleteRe: BBC Doc on Indian PM: Not damning at all. You are just listening to a one sided narrative (colonial). Below is a rich discussion on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbRe97XTwNo
Summary: BBC has been exposed for it's nefarious activities and it's disgusting anti-India stance. BBC's stand has always been against India, which shows that they haven't been able to come out of their colonialist mentality. BBC is a propaganda channel that runs distorted and pathetic narratives to peddle their hatred and to divide India, that they can't see progress. Pt. Satish Sharma, Vibhuti Jha and Sanjay Dixit analyze the disgraceful attitude of the BBC.
Also the below discussion dismantles and exposes 20 plus years of fake news about Modi: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPxOxAqMrM8
Himanshu
Jeff-
ReplyDeleteHow many times will the Pentagon ignore my letters, regarding how to solve the problem of America? You issue AK-47's to everyone between the ages of 2 and 92 (keep in mind that we've had a few cases of toddlers shooting people), and tell them all, "Knock yrselves out! Black on black, Asian on Asian, bubbas on bubbas--what the heck. Just go for it."
I'm still bewildered by the Tyre Nichols murder.
Himan-
While we're at it, I think it's time to round up the Royals and ship them off to some South Sea island. (I'm being serious.)
mb
mb
ps: some new T-shirt ideas:
ReplyDeleteTHE BBC IS FULL OF SHIT
THE MONARCHY IS A JOKE
AMERICA WAS A MISTAKE FROM DAY ONE
KARMA IS COMING
On The Macro & Micro Experience
ReplyDeleteMeta study on the loneliness and city design. Nothing new or unexpected: if you want less loneliness you should focus on less cars, less crime, more access to nature, more walkability, more public transit, less renting/social housing. Long story short: GET OUT OF THE USA
https://theconversation.com/why-loneliness-is-both-an-individual-thing-and-a-shared-result-of-the-cities-we-create-198069
Dr. Berman—
ReplyDeleteI think you'd find a lot of common ground with Professor Darcia Narvaez in this interview, "How to Be a Human Again". She says that Americans and people in capitalist societies in general have lost their way as humans; that America is probably the worst place to raise a child unless you live in a war zone. I'll have to look further into her work. The interview with her begins at 25:39.
Oops-
ReplyDeleteAlways helps to provide a link. I think I wrote a blurb for her most recent bk, but can't remember exactly.
mb
Oops, MB:
ReplyDeleteOh wow I love her writing MB! As well as yours of course! Which book was it? I see she has one coming out in 2023 and one that was republished in 2022..
https://darcianarvaez.com/publications
Sil-
ReplyDeleteI think 2022. Can't recall the title.
mb
I've been a reader for a long time. Today I have something I've been thinking about for a while I'd like to share with you. À la Zizek, I've been thinking about how american cultural products reflect the state of american psyche today. From the 60s until the 2000s all we had was cowboys, tough guys and money. A sort of marketing of the american dream. Things have changesd however. Films and TV series now generally follow two trends, apocalyptic scenarios or superheros. I think this reflects a coming to termes in the american psyche with the fact that the apocalypse is here, the decline have begun. It also reflects the wish for some sort of a messianic saviour (a superhero). This may be unconscious at the moment, but a wide scale awakening is just around the corner.
ReplyDeleteI know that I'm supposed to provide links but this is a personal meditation and the only source is my on deductions. Also I'm notoriously bad at writing, I hope you get my idea.
French-
ReplyDeleteWdn't hurt to provide a link to Zizek, n'est-ce pas? Actually, the 60s and 70s generated a lot of counter-cultural films. E.g., "The Graduate", "If," and so on.
mb
Wafers-
ReplyDeleteIn the wake of the Tyre Nichols murder, Schmiden delivered a beat-off speech that will change nothing. (Easily found online) I still don't get the savagery of 5 black cops against a young black man. This is worse than the George Floyd murder, it seems to me. Maybe it's just that everyone in America is filled w/rage.
mb
Biden admin expert claims obesity cannot be treated with exercise and good diet
ReplyDeletehttps://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-admin-expert-claims-obesity-cannot-treated-exercise-good-diet
I'd like to tether her to the back of my truck and forcibly jog the extra 20# she waddles around with. A wise man once told me 10% of weight loss happens in the gym. The other 90% is in the kitchen. He's an old black janitor so who's gonna listen to him, ya?
comrade-
ReplyDeleteActually, an increasing # of drs. are coming to that conclusion.
mb
Go Golden State! Roll on! California suddenly has taken the lead over Philadelphia, Georgia, Chicago, and the many other violent milieus of this pathetic shit bowl of a country in deadly shootings.
ReplyDeletehttps://apnews.com/article/crime-california-los-angeles-9aae014fbb6f2edcc54abccfb48a3f66?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_05
And of course the many non violent crimes here are of the unconscionable swindling type. No level is too low. But hey: Having and getting money via whatever means is everything here. That’s the purpose of USAin life.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/florida-woman-arrested-defrauding-holocaust-survivor-28-million-connection-romance-scam
Joe-
ReplyDeleteWhat kind of a name is Peaches Stergo? And check out her scary face--the face of America.
mb
Wafers: Check it out:
ReplyDeleteThe Cycle Of Civilizations
A Noema symposium on clashes and cross-pollination.
Nathan Gardels, Noema Editor-in-Chief
“The intelligible unit of historical study,” Arnold Toynbee famously wrote, is neither the nation-state nor mankind as a whole, but civilizations that grew out of societies that evolved toward dominance of their “known world,” or stalled in isolation and fell into obscurity, depending on challenges to which they rose in response or that defeated them.
Writing his “Study of History” in the mid-20th century, he counted some 22 such civilizations that had arisen over the last 6,000 years, from the Mayan to Hindic to Sinic and Hellenic among many others. Each saw its foundation in a religious or cosmological outlook that shaped its internal cohesion through the form of the life of a society, its style of life, moral taste, form of government and spirit of laws.
For Toynbee, as the political scientist Robert Loevy has put it, “often one nation-state is the most powerful leader in the Civilization and comes to dominate it and symbolize it. After a lengthy period of domination, the Civilization falls, the world goes into a state of low-level organization, and humanity waits for the next Civilization to emerge and the cycle to begin anew.” Inevitably, as Toynbee saw it, creative elites become complacent in their success and fail to meet new challenges, both internally and from the outside.
Oswald Spengler, another philosopher of history most known for his book, “The Decline of the West”, similarly argued that the dominance of a civilization always diminished as the creative impulse that propelled its rise waned, overcome by “critical impulses” that destroyed the internal cohesion that sustained it.
A Turn Of The Cycle, Or Not?
These reflections are obviously relevant today as Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China push back against the liberal world order led by the United States that has dominated the “known world” for the last eight decades following the West’s four-century rise.
Since they frame their challenge as “civilizational states” reasserting their historical identities anew, the question arises whether that challenge will defeat the West or serve to revitalize it by compelling a fresh creative response that both renews its internal cohesion and resists the hegemony of others.
Over the next weeks, Noema will address these issues in a running symposium of authors from West and East. We start out with the scholar-diplomat Bruno Maçães on “the return of civilizations” and then a response from Shashi Tharoor, the Indian parliamentarian and former under-secretary general of the United Nations, who argues that civilizational states are, by definition, “exclusive and illiberal.”
Zhang Weiwei, the Shanghai scholar favored by China’s leadership who wrote “The China Wave: Rise Of A Civilizational State,” argues that China’s system of governance is superior because it is rooted in the civilizational foundations of a unitary state led in modern times by a disciplined party administered by meritocratic elites. Alexander Lukin of the Russian Academy of Sciences challenges this thesis pithily: “China is not a civilization pretending to be a state … but a modern state that, for various political and ideological reasons, pretends to be a civilization.”
A former foreign minister of Singapore, George Yeo, argues that the West need to “refresh and extend” its liberal ideas globally and tolerate “the yearnings of non-Western peoples.” Pallavi Aiyar discusses the clash within Hindu civilization playing out in India today. Finally, the historian of Eurasia, Wang Gungwu, notes that “civilizations can coexist across boundaries as they have for centuries” but warns that “when ‘civilization power’ is claimed as universal and conflated with national interests, or when it is invoked in the name of national empire, the world becomes a dangerous place.”
(Continued below)
Pragmatic Cross-Pollination
ReplyDeleteTo review in this context the thinking of Lee Kuan Yew, one of the earliest proponents of the civilizational frame, which he called “the East Asian Way,” reveals some surprises. In one of our many conversations over the years, the founding father of Singapore brought his signature pragmatism into the picture of the evolution of distinct ways of life.
“Seeing the ancient, complex cultural map of this part of the world, can we all of a sudden accept universal values of democracy and human rights as defined by America? I don’t think that it is possible,” he said at one session at the Istana, the former British governor’s residence, where we usually met. “Values are formed out of the history and experience of a people. One absorbs these notions through the mother’s milk. The values that East Asian culture upholds, such as the primacy of group interests over individual interests, support the total group effort necessary to develop rapidly.”
He went on:
The idea of individual supremacy and the right to free expression, when carried to excess, has not worked. They have made it difficult to keep American society cohesive. Asians can see it is not working.
Yes, the creativity of ideas, the ability to bring new ideas to fruition and test them in the marketplace, that is all greatly admired around the world. But this free-for-all, this notion that all ideas should contend and there will be blinding light out of which you’ll see the truth — ha!
So far, so expected. Yet, he didn’t stop there. He saw that no place is an island anymore, not even Singapore, in a world far more intensively connected by the flow of information and cultural cross-pollination than in the long history of Toynbee’s considerations:
I do not see the conflict as competition between two closed systems. For Asia, I think that over the next one, two or perhaps three generations, there will have to be adjustments. So, a hundred years from now, I’m sure Europeans, East Asians and Americans will arrive at something approximating universal values and norms.
In such a world, no society can be protected from the influence of another. But that doesn’t mean that all Western values will prevail. I can only say that Western values are in fact superior insofar as they bring about superior performance in a society and help it survive. If adopting Western values diminishes the prospects for survival of a society, they will be rejected.
Non-Universal Pluralism Of Civilizations
Following Toynbee’s rubric, where we appear to be today is on the cusp of his state of low-level organization of the world, in which Western dominance is fading, but the cycle has not yet turned toward the preeminence of another civilization attractive enough to cement its influence across “the known world.” Perhaps this historical moment can be seen as a protracted reprieve from Toynbee’s cycles to a world of non-universal pluralism where cross-pollination seeds revitalizing creativity beyond boundaries made more porous than ever before by ubiquitous connectivity?
As Lee suggests, it is not beyond the realm of imagination that today’s clashes are a passage to some future sublation of one into the other. Though Toynbee did not consider the environment in times past as a challenge giving rise to a robust civilizational response, the imperative of mitigating climate change shared by all in one self-aware world could well be a new breed of challenge that brings about a new kind of planetary civilization the study of all previous history could not foretell.
Scott Ritter spells out how we should all be praying for a Russian victory in Ukraine, no matter how we may feel about Russia:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/-UKbgfVMnbc (Scott Ritter: NATO is a Suicide Pill for the World… Pray that Russia Wins)
Of course, one thing we perhaps ought to be feeling about Russia over the past couple of days is gratitude:
https://youtu.be/At_DW116s3Q (A sombre and chilling anniversary, it’s 78 years since the Red Army liberated #Auschwitz death camp)
Finally, a question for Professor Berman: I've heard some suggest world wars I, II, and the looming and likely terminal III, are all really one war. As a historian, would you say there is any merit to that idea in any way?
Pol-
ReplyDeleteThere is a small collection of political analysts (naturally, marginalized) who understand that this Ukrainian flap is dog poop: Ritter, Mearsheim, John Pilger, Douglas Macgregor, et al. They will be ignored; but the need to ship all this $ and materiel to the Ukraine suggests that they are, contra to MSM propaganda, losing the war. Ritter is rt, that the US needs to fail; but as Gore Vidal once said, we never learn from our mistakes (Vietnam being the premiere example). Once this absurd war is lost, America will start scanning for another 'enemy' (China/Taiwan?); and if we lose that one, we may decide that penguins are communists, and start bombing Antarctica. (See my essays in QOV on 'negative identity', etc.) In a word: America is a bad joke, and its leaders little more than robots.
Russia not only liberated Auschwitz; it effectively won WW2 for the West. US losses were something like 650,000; Russian losses, abt 27 million. Do the math.
Regarding the wars: yes, some merit to the idea, I suppose. WWI inevitably led to WWII, because of the Treaty of Versailles, wh/placed a crushing burden on Germany, such that a figure such as Hitler became inevitable, demanding 'Lebensraum'. JM Keynes was part of the British team at Versailles, and tried to warn the Allies they were making a mistake. He effectively predicted the rise of a Hitler-type figure in his classic work of 1919, "The Economic Consequences of the Peace." As for this leading to a possible WWIII...this is rather complicated, esp. since we already seem to be in yet another Cold War. Check out the discussion of Truman and the Trinity Test and the subsequent 'negotiation' (my ass) w/Russia in my bk on Japan. Of course, it takes 2 to tango, but I place most of the responsibility for the C.W. on the US. It's a long story. The problem is, we never gave up the 'containment' model, despite the warning of George Kennan, and we are too stupid to break away from that destructive narrative.
Both in 1945, and in 1989, we celebrated ourselves as the 'exceptional people', the city on the hill and answer to the world's problems. Obama was still touting this jingoistic, capitalist nonsense ca. 2014; Putin responded w/a very sober, intelligent speech saying that such a position was not healthy for any country to take. (For a positive take on Putin see "Le mage du Kremlin," by Empoli. As a complementary text, we need a book called "The Dunce in the White House.")
Schmiden is a fool. He's following the old Cold War script, both w/Russia and China. What cd be dumber? This is certainly pushing the envelope of WWIII, perhaps in a nuclear form.
mb
How many more massacres will it take for the Pentagon to carry out my suggestion?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/28/california-shooting-los-angeles-three-dead
ps: it's either that or Herman Cain's 999 Plan, wh/we shd have put in place yrs ago.
ReplyDeleteWafers-
ReplyDeleteGetting back to Tyre Nichols...What impressed me abt this event, beyond the fact that a black man was murdered by 5 black cops, is the sadism, the evil energy, that was involved. As tho we have 5 people with short fuses, just ready to blow. And this leads me to ask, How many Americans fall into this category? How many are living with hatred and violence just beneath the surface? Hats off to Joe for collecting the data for us, but is there a way of knowing the % of the American population ready to kill based on road rage or perceived slights or an annoying hangnail?
mb
ps: maybe they can beat a few more people to death:
ReplyDeletehttps://news.yahoo.com/lapd-officers-riot-gear-face-070215200.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACNwI1OL4SrJB-T0RzChDitHvgirRXQwfg0_XB5VfI8SBAZsseB4KpUdukJTR7dqb8jvmC9cf7G0lL51VO_Yk1cgoNSOYQ-F7ikNru299-l4vDkyhdYrJcH7J5zGK7_P2E0tv9GmSio-P8yDq5KSA0D8Ifh5Z5EOnrrfCspG5YJM
That brief mention about how “obesity cannot be treated with exercise and good diet,” reminds me that maybe I should read Lionel Shriver’s Big Brother, a novel “inspired by her own brother and his obesity-linked death.” Because I did like the Wafer rec’d The Mandibles. Here’s the epigraph to Big Brother:
ReplyDelete“The dieting industry is the only profitable business in the world with a 98 percent failure rate.”
—eatingdisorderfoundation.org
So the dieting industry has *not* failed its test in the marketplace, since it is profitable. But its efficacy has been questioned by the scientific community for many years and now it’s in the MSM. And what about the human cost? And do we need to add to this equation the failure rate of Americans? As Dr. Berman has said: “Americans are alienated from their bodies big time.” And then we wonder why these “fat” bodies don’t hold up so well when they’re subjected to the “market discipline” of the diet and exercise industry? They don’t need new bodies, but maybe a different epistemology would help! Oh wait, these are Americans we’re talking about…alas…
https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/11/big-brother-lionel-shriver-review
Btw, in a similar vein, check out this “promethean” bozo:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-01-25/anti-aging-techniques-taken-to-extreme-by-bryan-johnson
Bonhoeffer’s “theory of stupidity”: We have more to fear from stupid people than evil ones
ReplyDeletehttps://bigthink.com/thinking/bonhoeffers-theory-stupidity-evil/
Americans should be feared most of all, then!
Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteRe: Scmiden's CW redux with Russia/China: Even as hawkish a think tank as Rand has come out with a policy paper advising against a protracted war in Ukraine:
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PEA2500/PEA2510-1/RAND_PEA2510-1.pdf
Some crucial highlights are in this link: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/new-rand-study-breaks-dc-consensus-warns-us-against-protracted-conflict-ukraine
The abstract on the introductory page reads as follows: "The authors argue that, in addition to minimizing the risks of major escalation, U.S. interests would be best served by avoiding a protracted conflict. The costs and risks of a long war in Ukraine are significant and outweigh the possible benefits of such a trajectory for the United States. Although Washington cannot by itself determine the war's duration, it can take steps that make an eventual negotiated end to the conflict more likely."
Is this an indirect admission of defeat in Ukraine? Will Schmiden listen? Another crucial admission in the document is that the Ukraine war distracts and wastes precious defense resources away from another important theater of operations: China and east Asia.
Himanshu
Himan-
ReplyDeleteSomeone sent me some figs. re: casualties, tho I'm not sure how reliable they are. 30,000-40,000 Russians killed, 232,000 Ukrainians. Such figs. wd indicate we are losing the war. As for pulling back: yes, we'll just shift our stupidity to China and Taiwan.
mb
The cops involved in the Tyre Nichols case might fit into the “angry young men” category. (Age in this case being immaterial, it appears.)
ReplyDeleteThis article from The Atlantic might offer some ideas to explain what’s going on. I see great benefit in keeping to myself, avoiding publc spaces, and, as George Carlin said he did, watching the circus (via TV) from my front row seat.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/lost-boys-violent-narcissism-angry-young-men/672886/
Blackburn-
ReplyDeleteThat link doesn't work, as it turns out. But be advised that we are a discussion forum, not just a bulletin board.
Thank you.
mb
Greetings MB and Wafers,
ReplyDeleteI hope you guys can access this link:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/george-kennan-warning-on-ukraine
Frank Costigliola is an expert on George Kennan, and has written several books about him. He argues, like Kennan, that US-driven expansion of NATO would "doom" any kind of democracy movement in Russia and could "ignite" another Cold War. He also states that Kennan remains relevant today, despite the fact that Kennan underestimated the intensity of Ukrainian nationalism, and that he is essentially an ignored prophet. What are the odds that Biden, Kamala, or the clown, Lloyd Austin will read something like this?
Jeff
"We Indians seem to have rejected Gandhi, as we once rejected the Buddha; no matter, humans elsewhere will take up and nobly affirm the ideals of those we have so cruelly and carelessly discarded."
ReplyDeleteIndia against Gandhi — a legacy rewritten Seventy-five years after his assassination, the ‘father of the nation’ is a problem for Narendra Modi — but the country still needs his ideas
https://www.ft.com/content/a0b17ed9-092d-4e83-90fe-2a6cea952518
https://www.amazon.com/Gandhi-Years-Changed-World-1914-1948/dp/0385532318/
I shared the article about Elon Musk's boneheadedness in India the other day. Here we have more on the stormy political climate in India today, and a new book on a Wafer hero, Gandhi.
Deana-
ReplyDeleteFT has a paywall. The bk, however, looks pretty gd. Musk is a douche bag.
Jeff-
Our leaders don't understand alternative narratives. Schmiden will stop the Ukraine project when the Ukraine is defeated. This he will understand. KAMALA SCHMAMALA!
mb
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/29/systemic-crisis-tyre-nichols-fatal-beating-by-police-condemned-by-legal-experts
ReplyDeleteYeah, we're gonna have "broad reforms." In a pig's eye.
“Most Americans frankly aren’t too bright.”-GSWH
ReplyDeleteYes, Wafers. Our good Doctor is correct. Here’s a funny example:
https://localtoday.news/tx/road-rage-suspect-arrested-in-mcdonalds-drive-thru-after-allegedly-tailgating-and-waving-a-gun-at-someone-in-northwest-houston-157731.html
Poor McDonald’s. Angry Karens and other angry USAin riffraff seem to congregate there. https://www.tiktok.com/@djplaylive/video/7175940243814878510
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgWBg8D501s
They’re at Walmart too. The many angry dregs of the U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.! seem to hang out at this wasteland’s myriad omnipresent low level business establishments.
https://www.tiktok.com/@djdrealdfw/video/7184412619405839662
“America the Beautiful. One big transcontinental commercial cesspool.” -George Carlin.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/30/politics/police-reform-tyre-nichols-what-matters/index.html
ReplyDeleteNichols got a beating. The response will be that police depts. will beat off.
I'm reading "Permissible Progeny" (Oxford 2015), the essay "The Misanthropic Argument for Anti-natalism" by David Benatar. While he has some overlap with your criticism of the stupidity of Americans, he goes further by criticizing all of humanity for our cruelty, stupidity, and ugliness.
ReplyDeleteI agree with his take on humanity, but I'm probably in a tiny minority. While I think America is a distillation of the worst of humanity, these core issues are just under the surface elsewhere. Benatar points to the widespread callous indifference towards pollution & animal suffering as evidence.
What are your thoughts? While I think leaving America is good, humanity is cruel everywhere, and at best you can minimize harm by not having more children while surrounding yourself with intelligent, sensitive, and empathetic people. There are other population indices like the Gini coefficient. Is there a stupidity and cruelty coefficient for cities around the world?
The stupidity of SUVs in the US is only getting worse. For the bulk of people driving alone and without a need to carry people or kids, there's no reason they can't be driving a subcompact.
ReplyDelete"Pepper spray for the school run? The weaponised SUV set to terrify America’s streets"
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/jan/25/pepper-spray-school-run-apocalyptic-suv-reznavi-vengeange?CMP=share_btn_tw
"Trucks And SUVs Are Now Over 80 Percent Of New Car Sales In The U.S."
https://jalopnik.com/trucks-and-suvs-are-now-over-80-percent-of-new-car-sale-1848427797
SUVs = 'solution' to empty souls.
ReplyDeleteMisanthropy-
George Carlin usta say, "If yr born on this earth, yr born into a freak show. But if yr born in the US, you get a front row seat." As for an index: MPH, i.e. morons per hectare: Denmark = 0.6; US = 188.5. Scientists are currently compiling a DBI, i.e. Douche Bag Index.
mb
I'm curious how you feel about corporations sidestepping parents in order to target teenagers with advertising. Seems like this has gone on for decades, but in the last 5 years it's gone absolutely wild with youtube, and the amount of stupidity in high schools today is staggering.
ReplyDeleteAll high school students are being issued a Chromebook (most already have a phone), and this is beyond control of the parents. So then the teenagers get hooked into advertising (they can surf all they want since the laptop is owned and controlled by the school), and start demanding consumer goods from their parents. Since most parents are idiots, they give in. Influencers are all about being upbeat and helping humanity, and teenagers especially buy into the propaganda.
More teachers are requiring both laptops and cell phones in class. Kids are taking pictures of the whiteboard with their cell phone cameras, rather than taking notes.
https://www.spaywall.com/search/https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2018/02/knots-my-stomach-how-youtube-consumerism-affects-children-and-teens
teen-
ReplyDeleteI shd tell u that we've discussed these issues at length in the past, so can't really go into them again at this pt. However:
1. Yr claim that Americans of any age are morons is 100% correct.
2. We are declinists, on this blog. We not only believe America is going down the tubes; we think this wd be gd for the planet and for international politics. Therefore, when we read the data such as you provide, we
a) want to vomit
b) have a nice, fuzzy feeling inside.
Since yr a teen, start formulating your escape plan today.
mb
Dr. B.,
ReplyDeleteI'm not comparing the horrifying Tyre Nichols police brutality incident with the following, but your mentioning of the potential widespread phenomenon of Americans seething inside with hatred and violence reminded me of the incident about 10 years ago on this blog regarding a user named Autonomous (which began in the comments here: https://morrisberman.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-postman-lecture.html). I remembered this and re-read the essay you wrote following the incident, entitled "The Existential Strain" (http://morrisberman.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-existential-strain_20.html). A key phrase to me is "the consequent rage at his own impotence had to find a target."
Torreblanca
Torre-
ReplyDeleteThe fact is that most Americans hate themselves, for various reasons; they feel they are not OK (I agree w/them). This works v. well in a capitalist economy, because when people feel inadequate, and feel they shd be doing better than they are, they hate themselves and others (and then buy tons of shit to prove they are OK). Maybe Tyre triggered a reminder of this in those 5 cops. In savagely beating him, maybe they were really beating themselves. (The day will never come when Americans see thru the system, and direct their rage toward the correct target. They don't have the intelligence for that. So they lash out at the nearest target.)
mb
@Deana and Dr.Berman: Because this blog is abt US collapse and not abt Modi, India or Gandhi I won't dwell much on it(this will be my last rebuttal) but @Deana you keep posting highly biased narratives spewed by Marxist historians (MH) abt India (which western outlets, including alternative media, publish).
ReplyDelete1st: India never rejected the Buddha (This narrative was created by western and MH since the 1830s. MH= Indians who have internalized the colonial narrative): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fksiPf9rL9A and https://sanjay-dixit.medium.com/indian-history-and-the-great-lies-17817bb296db
“It has been well said that Buddhism is Hinduism stripped for export. …” See the full quote by Alan Watts at the bottom of the article: https://www.greenshinto.com/2018/03/20/alan-watts-on-hindu-shinto/
2nd: Gandhi was not a saint but a mixed bag like most individuals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0fl9gaQvOY Scholarly ref: https://www.amazon.com/India-Bharat-Pakistan-Constitutional-Civilisation-ebook/dp/B0B9846BTX
I have not read the Gandhi book you referenced so I won’t comment on it but I do know its author is a MH. Here is a critique of him: https://www.opindia.com/2021/11/here-why-ramachandra-guha-is-stupid-for-opposing-narendra-modi-kedarnath-temple-visit/
Finally : Gandhi is not a problem for Modi but Modi is a problem for MH & their western handlers, because his govt has allowed full access to the history archives: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFBWPpZGLos
Himanshu
Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteClose on the heels of the Rand policy paper about the Ukraine war, Doug MacGregor wrote this in The American Conservative: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/this-time-its-different/
Excerpts: "Contrary to early Beltway hopes and expectations, Russia neither collapsed internally nor capitulated to the collective West’s demands for regime change in Moscow. Washington underestimated Russia’s societal cohesion, its latent military potential, and its relative immunity to Western economic sanctions.
As a result, Washington’s proxy war against Russia is failing. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was unusually candid about the situation in Ukraine when he told the allies in Germany at Ramstein Air Base on January 20, “We have a window of opportunity here, between now and the spring,” admitting, “That’s not a long time.”
Another relevant article posted recently: 'A panicked Empire tries to make Russia an ‘offer it can’t refuse’ discusses an Op Ed in the WaPo (hidden behind a paywall): http://thesaker.is/a-panicked-empire-tries-to-make-russia-an-offer-it-cant-refuse/
“Realizing NATO’s war with Russia will likely end unfavorably, the US is test-driving an exit offer. ...Their power is slipping away, fast: Militarily, via NATO’s progressive humiliation in Ukraine; Financially, sooner rather than later, most of the Global South will want nothing to do with the currency of a bankrupt rogue giant; Politically, the global majority is taking decisive steps to stop obeying a rapacious, discredited, de facto minority.”
Himanshu
Himan-
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised the MSM even published this:
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/01/europe/ukraine-anti-corruption-raids-intl/index.html
Of course, they don' say much abt the Nazi component of the Ukraine.
When the US suffered a humiliating defeat in Vietnam, I remember the MSM (and the gov't) trying to put a positive spin on it. To this day, most Americans believe we won that war. If Macgregor and others are correct, and Russia prevails in this latest version of the Cold War, I suspect something similar will happen. Will the MSM, with its endless pro-Ukraine and anti-Russian propaganda, come clean, and apologize to the American people for trying to deceive them, hiding the facts of the war? Yes, when pigs fly in V-geese formation over the White House.
How few Americans realize what a pile of shit this country is; what a mountain of phony baloney it contains.
mb
ps: this is what the MSM considers news:
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/01/opinions/tom-brady-gisele-bundchen-divorce-filipovic/index.html
No mention of the fact that Bundchen was secretly running the State Dept.
mb
Doctor,
ReplyDeleteThis now is an almost daily normal occurrence that only makes the local news in whatever part of this garbage dump of a country it happens:
https://www.wral.com/20699805/
https://www.wral.com/
https://whyy.org/articles/philadelphia-teenager-shot-overbrook-high-school-lockdown-shooting-near-61st-street/
With adolescents being subjected to this on a regular basis, it’s a big contribution to the implosion.
But I disagree with you on Tom Brady being the main major headline in the MSM. Once again, as far as I’m concerned, that of course goes to the ever annoying to one’s intelligence:
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/meghan-markle-prince-harry-acted-like-couple-teenagers-palace-sources-allege-explosive-new-book
https://www.npr.org/2023/01/18/1149718994/we-royally-wade-into-the-harry-and-meghan-discourse
Where in America could we say is a safe place?
ReplyDeleteA fight broke out among spectators at a basketball game Tuesday night between seventh and eighth graders in Alburgh, Vermont. Vermont state troopers were summoned to restore order, too late for one attendee, a 60-year-old who died at a medical center in St. Albans. Presumably from injuries suffered in the fracas.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/feb/01/man-dies-after-fans-brawl-at-vermont-middle-school-basketball-game?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Joe-
ReplyDeleteWhy is America falling apart? There can be only 1 reason. Everyone has an Inner Bundchen. But Americans refuse to embrace her. The results are obvious.
mb
Kamala Schmamala in full beat-off mode:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/01/tyre-nichols-funeral-memphis-kamala-harris
And this is kinda nice:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/31/anthony-lowe-police-killing-amputee-huntington-park
Also neat:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/01/ukraine-head-of-kyiv-tax-authority-accused-of-multi-million-dollar
The American Beat-Off Index (ABOI) has never been higher!
mb
Dr. Berman,
ReplyDeleteI have a question I have been meaning to ask you. Why did our religions not put a brake on a lot of this hustling and exploitation we see in our society? I am no bible scholar but read enough Bible to see it's speaks out against that stuff, both the Jewish scriptures and the Christian scriptures. The Jewish scriptures actually seem to mandate a basic safety net for people. Even the Quran condemns the desire to just make money and hustle and people have certain rights just because they are human .
BH-
ReplyDeleteI think u know the answer. Religion in theory and religion in practice are 2 different things. Who gives a crap that Jesus said it was easier for a camel to go thru the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven? It's just words.
mb
Cascadians are atwitter as the Seattle Times reports this afternoon that the Pentagon is concerned about an alleged Chinese “spy balloon” spotted over Billings, Montana on its way allegedly to surveil the ICBM fields of the Dakotas.
ReplyDeletehttps://seattletimes.com/nation-world/pentagon-chinese-spy-balloon-spotted-over-western-us/
I’m sure the mainstream media will be filled with more such alerts as the official narrative pivots to a new enemy as the Ukraine war staggers in another debacle for the West.
Jack-
ReplyDeleteExactly what I thought when I read this 'news' article on cnn. I watch America robotically and unconsciously acting out the essays in QOV, and I think: Cd anything be more stupid? Yes, as we get creamed in the Ukraine, and the MSM tries to hide it, they will also fill the airwaves w/articles on the Chinese 'threat'. We are an alcoholic nation, hitting bottom on the other side of death. Suggested new post-it:
OH RUSSIA!
OH CHINA!
OH PENGUINS IN ANTARCTICA!
OH GENERALIZED GENERIC ENEMY!
mb
BH
ReplyDeleteBecause a lot of these religious folks are wolves in sheep's clothing.
Matthew 7:15
“Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves." I've read some of Bible myself and everything that the USA stands for the Bible is against. Even though we give lip service as a Christian nation we are not. We worship free enterprise and worship money instead of God. Money is our God.
RE: Murder of Tyre Nichols.
ReplyDeleteHere's an explanation quoted in a USA Today article. "Black people and Black police officers can carry with them some of the same understandings or views of Black people as white police officers might," said Ralph Richard Banks, law professor and faculty director of the Stanford Center for Racial Justice. "There’s nothing that immunizes them.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/01/28/tyre-nichols-death-black-police-officers/11136520002/
Also, could it be that violent bullies regardless of ethnicity are attracted to police work? Maybe it's a mistake to attribute all police violence to racism.
ps: Jack: I left out a fifth line:
ReplyDeleteOH HOW WE NEED YOU!
Since we are empty at the core, an enemy, and war, provide us w/psychological coherence. I discuss this in QOV, as does Denis Duclos in "The Werewolf Complex." He says that it is very impt for the US to believe that there is some dangerous beast out there, threatening to destroy us. Which is the key to US foreign policy for centuries. Central to this constellation is the lack of interest in, or ability for, any self-transparency. It's a major factor in our disintegration (following the Roman pattern), and it is a rare American who understands what we are up to. (Walter Lippmann: "Our imperialism is largely unconscious.") More than 99% of them live in a fog of bullshit, illusion, and self-deception--a situation that is not likely to change any time soon.
The result is that we are stuck in crap, as Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now the Ukraine are demonstrating. Our failures stare us in the face, and yet we learn 0 from them. We are being punished for our stupidity, yet all we can seem to do is shift the werewolf model to a different venue. Ultimately, as in the case of Rome and imperial overstretch, the model will do us in. I am as sure of that as I am of the existence of gravity. And as we go down the drain, we can be found hysterically waving the American flag. Bozos, one and all.
mb
But then this is nice:
ReplyDeletehttps://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/02/us/ohio-investigating-white-supremacist-homeschooling-network/index.html
What’s worse? Gunning down an elected public official or somebody outside of a funeral home mourning a deceased aunt? And some drivers here shall come after you with a machete if they don’t have a gun. It gets lower and more despicable each passing day here.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/national/nj-councilwoman-found-shot-to-death-outside-of-her-home
https://www.audacy.com/1010wins/news/local/man-40-fatally-shot-outside-brooklyn-funeral-home-during-aunts-wake
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/south-bay/san-jose-road-rage-machete-attack/3146919/
But cheer up. Life is just honky dory here if you don’t get murdered by somebody. Next week Schmiden shall give the annual dose of positive reinforcement bullcrap to the public. The USAin “exceptionalism” and “ prosperity” propaganda shall be peddled yet again in his State of the Landfill speech. And who will give the Republican reply after Schimden gives it? None other than Sarah Huckabee Sanders! That’s the best they can do? Ha!Ha!Ha! We also can laugh during this one big comedy show. That’s into which this shit show of a country has become! LOL!
https://apnews.com/article/biden-sarah-huckabee-sanders-united-states-government-kevin-mccarthy-arkansas-08ac2cde69ce857c54dc290af4614c55
U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!
With apologies to Frank Zappa’s “Montana”, I wrote an ode to the current wave of U.S. anxiety over the purported Chinese spy balloon, as reported today:
ReplyDeletewww.politico.com/news/2023/02/02/mccarthy-intel-briefing-chinese-spy-balloon-montana-00081038
How do they know it wasn’t a Russian spy balloon? But whatever, here are some abbreviated lyrics for Wafers to sing along:
Balloon be movin’ to Montana soon
Just to look down at a crop of dental floss
Raisin’ it up, waxen it down
In a little white box Chinese can sell uptown
By itself, China fave no boss
But they rather be sellin’ their dental floss
Gonna be a Chinese floss tycoon, yes they are
Chinese o’er Montana soon
Gonna be a mennil-toss flykune, look out
They be pluckin’ ol’ dennil floss
Mericans not wakin’ up soon
It’s name is Eastern Moon, it’s a spy balloon
They be pluckin’ that dennil floss
That looks like Merican decline, boss
They movin’ to Montana soon
They movin’ to Montana soon
Jack-
ReplyDeleteSince you use the word soon, you might try rhyming it w/buffoon.
mb
Speaking of being aware of false prophets especially when they justify their actions in the name of their tribalistic cultic "god", remember that someone once quite rightly told us that when fascism eventually, even inevitably, comes to Amerika it will be ringing the bells of freedom (freedumb) and waving a Bible and rosary beads in the air.
ReplyDeleteThis outfit, the convenor of which was the Trumpen-fuhrer's chief of staff features all of the usual benighted ghouls and outfits committed to such a scenario. It was recently promoted on the benighted American Conservative website. www.project2025.org
Ichabod-
ReplyDeleteI can't remember who said that. Upton Sinclair?
mb
Dr. B,
ReplyDeleteI think this idea was expressed by Sinclair Lewis in his book _It Can’t Happen Here_ but the thing people quote is not an exact quotation from him.
-- Torreblanca
Torre-
ReplyDeleteYeah, Sinclair Lewis, probably. The quote I remember is "When fascism comes to America, it will come in the name of freedom."
mb
Dr Berman, sorry for the very late response. My Zizek infliences we're mainly his two films "A pervert's guide to ideology" and "A pervert's guide to cinema". Both are on YouTube but I am not going to share them because I believe They're pirated copies. Anyone can look them up.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, I don't know if anyone shared this or if it you're aware of this, here's an attempt to a new step in the Orwellisation of America (Idk if the word Orwellisation is already there or if I invented the word). Now they're attempting a legalised form of organ trafficing. The US is a very bad satire of a nation, one that's Wilder than our wildest imagination
https://www.levernews.com/mass-prisoners-could-choose-between-freedom-and-their-organs/
This is so vicious. A 9 year old girl getting pummeled by this young boy on the school bus. Pummeled. So the girl puts her hands over her head for protection. Such vicious, vicious brutality. What’s the explanation? These are children.
ReplyDeletehttps://amp.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/homestead/article272092052.html
And what about the unrestrained, pitiless savagery of this boy beating this girl? NO MERCY. It reminds me of the Tyre Nichols beating. I’m sure there’s a correlation here. I just don’t know what it is yet. But what I do know is that American democracy eats its young. That I do know. And I think we’re seeing some of what happens as a result.
Ro-
ReplyDeleteNot just its young. All of America, young or old, is a case of "Lord of the Flies." Or to take another allegory, wh/I've talked abt b4, "The Sopranos." In this TV series, as it plays out, the only purpose in living is to acquire $ and material gds, and to beat out the competition. By the end, the 'brothers' are killing each other off, eating each other alive (despite their constant hugging of each other). Is this not a very close description of contemporary America?
mb
ps: And in both cases, there is no way of arresting this pattern. Rather, the system has to die.
ReplyDelete