Forever Preparing For the Previous Whore
It isn’t just generals who have this problem – we all want ‘the real struggle’ to be something we already know about, instead of what it actually is
Hey folks!
I must open with an apology to whores – my title refers to politicians who sell and debase themselves (and the public interest) shamelessly – and I do not mean to insult you, with the comparison.
Beyond that, I have to say I feel bad for my friends who still rely on commercial news right now – things absolutely are going weird – but very much sideways to the way they are being characterized.
Again, to be clear, I watch three or four commercial newscasts a day (from different channels, Canadian and American) and I still get my ‘top readers’ badge from the tragically neocolonialist and state-power-serving Guardian. But I read and watch a whole lot of other investigators and thinkers besides, because if I stopped doing that, I would be clueless! (and also, panicking).
I’m not trying to insult anyone, and I understand how difficult long-formed habits can be to change (habits of mind, most especially), but the distinction between feeling and knowing is really important.
Feeling is still useful stuff, because we can’t always know, and sometimes we have to gather indirectly and consider implications, rather than clear and tested evidence – but we have to know which mode we’re using, always, and share that, along with the results we find, in order to be both honest and useful.
I have two wildly overloaded subjects which I just have to touch-on, before I share a selection of rich and useful recent sources for your consideration and stimulation. World War Two and Boomers! (I know, sorry)
Culturally, the boomers did usher-in an age of much more expression of and reliance on, feeling, and the value of this is very hard to see now, because the ideas were so widely accepted, even in areas which at first resisted (because they were so useful). Men can express love without shame, and the status, roles and participation of women in society has been profoundly transformed. All good stuff.
But inevitably (especially for such a blindingly victorious cohort) the weaknesses of any dominant group, prove more and more troublesome as what was once a fresh victory, reaches a decadent stage.
Feeling will only take you so far – then you need to go back and do some serious thinking!
As I mentioned before, early feminist theorists quite seriously believed that violence and abuse in lesbian relationships would be completely impossible – because abuse and violence was so obviously a male thing.
That was just plainly and simply wrong. So is the still-popular assertion that “If only women ran the world, there would be no such thing as war” (more recently “black women”).
But you can only keep ‘feeling’ that way, if you’ve had your eyes closed tight for thirty straight years!
Do we remember Madeline Albright – the creator of The Albright Doctrine – which said the US should use military force way more often, to correct the obvious badness of all those nasty foreign people (so disobedient). She famously (and more than once) said, directly to a television interviewer that she felt that the fact that the US imposed sanctions on medical supplies to Iraq (after the US military had already smashed their once-advanced infrastructure, to bits) was projected to cause the death of hundreds of thousands (perhaps half a million) Iraqi children was “A price worth paying.”
What about Condoleeza Rice – W’s right-hand hench-woman? What about Victoria Nuland – perhaps the most lethal of all the neocon theorists, who Dick Cheney considered his “Evil Genius” strategist (really saying something, coming from him). She didn’t just work to bring devastation to Iraq in the second war, she helped plan the destruction of Syria and Libya also, before moving-on to become the master manipulator strategist who conned Ukraine into an always-obviously-suicidal war with Russia, just so the US could buy-up the ruins of both, cheap, when they lay desperate and begging.
So - just how wonderful is modern life for people in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine, thanks to all that nourishing earth-mother wisdom she offered?
Don’t mean to belabour the point, but any of you who still take Maddow seriously, must understand – she considers Nuland an expert to consult and ‘platform’ – rather than a disgusting scumbag mass-murdering war criminal – way worse than Kissinger (maybe even Dulles). Her inability to tell good, from actual outright outstanding evil, right in front of her, makes her a bad source for ‘information’. Even if she feels righteous.
And the real point here is just – yes we can find some good stuff with feeling, but we have to go back and check what the world has done since we first felt that thing, look for real world evidence of how it has been working out – and then, where our feelings are proven to have been foolish, think harder so we can feel better!
The Dunedin study (more than 1200 important research papers, and counting) is an especially hard one for a lot of people to absorb – even though it is probably the world’s best single longitudinal population study, in terms of both detail and participant retention. Following more than a thousand (just under a thousand, still involved) people for almost half a century now, and doing a number of detailed interviews and physical tests, they have shown some clear physical correlations between brain structure and behaviour.
They also found something which made a lot of feminists angry. Women aren’t less violent, they just tend to be weaker than their partners, do less damage, and send partners to hospital way less often.
That doesn’t mean male violence isn’t a serious problem, it just means that pretending it is some great distant alien evil which women cannot relate-to or understand, is dishonest and fanatical – takes us all away from solution, (integrating both feeling and thinking) not toward it.
Now of course modern trends have made feeling a more powerful thing than ever, which was how vast hordes of lazy-thinkers ended up feeling that paying careful attention to sweeping generalizations and categories, above all other considerations, could somehow produce a superior form of morality.
This was never going to work – because morality isn’t lazy, and it isn’t a system – you have to risk it, find it, and then actually do it. Systems of false-orthodoxy create opposition and resistance for a reason, because they REDUCE ACTIVE HUMANITY – and often they do so, exactly where the human angle was the key quality.
Many of my friends and readers will have encountered the talks and papers of the superb medical educator Doctor John Campbell over the course of the Covid pandemic. Right from the start he was asking smart questions, and sharing important peer-reviewed scientific studies (or noting when they were preliminary results) which were never once mentioned on the corporate news. For those watching both tracks, it was nothing short of stunning. The loudest follow the science people were actually all going “La la la, I can’t hear you” at the top of their voice, the whole time. Almost as if western BigMedia thought the Japanese didn’t do serious science (and Africans weren’t experiencing and learning from the damn plague, same as the rest of us).
Just as an aside, in one of his excellent programs, he mentioned that ever since the modern emphasis on academics and credentialism came into all kinds of specialist education, a whole lot of people, who have the exact sort of deeply patient and caring personalities which make them perfectly suited for the nursing profession, have been excluded from it, just because they aren’t so great at writing essays.
When is an aspirational educational theory a form of class warfare and mass exclusion? Here and now, folks - and several decades running already.
(The middle, as all too often, punching down, hard)
For those who missed it – I should digress briefly – news used to be about saying what happened (imperfectly, of course – but something everyone could read or watch, was the point – clear info). But around the time of Brexit in Europe (how dare those proles democratically choose wrong!) and then the first election of Trump in the states, two things happened. One, the long collapse of the old media revenue model got dire (internet stole all the ad revenue) and two irrationality presented as duty.
I’ve mentioned Edward Bernays (Freud’s nephew) the inventor of modern public relations, many times. The key innovation which made his work utterly transformative (not only the basis of modern advertising, but modern propaganda, also) was to recognize that non-rational ‘feelings’ were almost always more influential to the way humans thought about things, than facts or matters of reason.
We can see the evidence of his shift ourselves, when we look at the historical record. By the early 1900s advertising was already very popular and widespread – supported many publications – but if you look at the ads, they relate facts and features – appealing to your rational judgment and ability to compare.
When Bernays hit the scene, advertising was suddenly all about associated feelings (one of his most ‘impressive’ early campaigns was convincing women to smoke in huge numbers, by staging marches of flappers and suffragettes, then having them describe their smokes to reporters as ‘freedom torches’).
So – when media panicked about a combination of collapsing advertising revenue and a wayward populace (not voting the way their superiors told them to) – they suddenly took on a new mission – don’t just tell people what’s happening and let them think about it – tell them only what you think they should know, and also what to think about it.
They also took on a radically new model, to go with this new mission – we aren’t even trying for a story for the whole public anymore, we want to flatter and amuse our one special demographic – exactly like FOX! (which means enemies are required, for ratings)
(‘cause the sad truth is – the FOX model was the only one standing, that still made money).
All of which means that older people, who still rely on corporate media, and do not keep one foot in the world of independent reporting (as I have, for the last forty years or so) are hearing a highly curated selection of reality, rather than the old consensus-model, which we all used to agree was best (not least, for forming broad consensus among many segments of the population, so we can actually get useful things done).
It’s like an information gap, on top of the generation gaps, (and also the huge socialization gap, which places me at some cultural distance, even from the now decadent millennials, and still more for gen Z).
This might sound like a lot of work to get nowhere, but there’s a reason every part of this is worth thinking about (repeatedly, until we get-it).
What we propose as a solution, always depends on what we know, what we assume, and what we feel. Personally, I remain convinced that Timothy Leary was a great optimistic pioneer, who started from the assumption that most people had creativity, courage, the ability for self-reflection and deep humour.
I will go so far as to say I think most people have such potentials – but when you are talking about psychedelics, you aren’t on a pleasant garden stroll, you are attempting to scale a daunting peak.
I personally had a really important breakthrough on LSD, many years ago, of the most general and relatable sort. Because of the distortions of perception I experienced, I had a profound realization that everything I have always experienced, was mostly authored by my own brain, as a kind of creative response to reality – rather than being any kind of a direct (unfiltered unedited) sampling of reality.
Feeling and knowing that so much of my perception was subjectively structured, (and also doing tons of yoga) allowed me to step-back from the threatening turmoil inside my head (cult-escapee – so, lots to surmount) and, as Leary recommended – think about my thinking – which he denoted as intelligence squared.
More recently I have seen some very smart criticism which points out that a lot of promising young scholars, who were not equipped with all the right starting ingredients for that sort of inner exploration, were lost on the quest, and thus lost to culture itself. I remain sure that when Leary said “Drop out” he didn’t mean don’t do ANYTHING – he meant don’t waste your energy slaving for the man – use your life and energy to do your own vital and irreplaceable thing!
Problem is, he was trying to be encouraging and positive, while assuming people had the same rare ingredients that he had, inside their heads, to a degree that was, even if kindly meant, still irresponsible.
Boomers who love nature but hate zoos, don’t even stop to think about how much less contact with nature, kids have today – and how acute the risk, they might never fall in love with the natural world at all, without at least that seriously compromised taste.
But people like me from generation X, have just as hard a time recognizing the difficulty young people now face, trying to form solid long-term, emotionally nourishing relationships. The digital intermediary – and every one of Bernay’s irrational ‘feeling’ paradigms for manipulation, keep getting in their way.
Work is, if anything, even screwier. I know I’m not the only X-er who has watched work itself change three distinct times, during the course of our working life.
Lots of skilled well-paid, with tons of cool freelance work on the margins.
Skilled subcontractors with no benefits (worse pay – fewer cool gigs on the margins).
To the final sorry modern state of Fractional Work
– who cares how my work units eat or pay their rent, I only need them for three hours and seventeen minutes, four times a week, and refuse to pay for a single minute more.
We also remember that each of these radical disappointment stages, came with a sharp increase in insults to our basic dignity, rights and overall respectful treatment. It isn’t just typesetters who used to make good money in large numbers – union cashiers at the big grocery chains used to be able to buy houses, too! All gone.
Thing is – even though we keenly remember each stage of insult and degradation – that is only because we can still remember a better time and a better way, with a far more vital and diverse economy, that acted like it wanted workers and was especially prepared to reward especially great work. (again, long gone)
For our younger friends, who entered work in a time when internships (free labour indentures) were already standard, and full time jobs were evaporating fast, even as they desperately applied for them, it is really hard to ‘feel’ as if any of our old systems have solutions which will ever work for them. They never once saw the version of the economy that employed so many, so eagerly. Can’t even picture or believe in that.
All they know for sure is – this shit is seriously broken – and they are absolutely right! (their deal, truly sucks)
Now – put a pin in all this – let me see if I can connect it to another fraught and yet over-discussed subject.
I have been a history nut ever since I was a kid. Sure, there are plenty of other kinds of books which are exciting – but there is something about things that actually happened, which always feels deliciously clue-full.
While a lot of periods have much to teach us, I always felt as if the twentieth century was especially misunderstood, in almost every part. An early ‘feeling’ which my later study helped explain more fully (Bernays and propaganda and consumerism and the military industrial congressional complex, etc...) Some of the puzzles, I managed to tease-out at the time (I was a minor expert in the much lied-about Soviet Space program in the 1980s and 1990s), and some continue to puzzle me today.
Perhaps the strangest, is how loudly we proclaim the Nazi movement was in no way like us, even though they not only learned racist policy from American segregation (Adolph was a big fan), they were backed by an heir to the English throne (Edward used Wallis Simpson as cover for the abdication – he was absolutely forced-out – because it was his intention to be the first fascist king of England).
Still stranger, Nazis were banked by several wealthy families and old money banking concerns, many of which continue to have outsize and unscrutinized political influence to this day (Prescott Bush ring a bell? Yeah, those Bushes).
If you want to get a bit of the whiff of psychedelics, without getting all your mental climbing gear in order first, I’d strongly recommend Thomas Pynchon’s masterwork “Gravity’s Rainbow.” Pairs perfectly with “Catch 22” in capturing the insane “feeling” of that war, so often obscured by our propaganda stories (which are themselves about conditioning-us to support the next war, far more than learning from the last).
Pynchon devotes one entire (truly wild) chapter in that book to ‘light-bulb heaven’ where he teases out the complex business and licensing arrangements between the enemy sides, running all throughout the war. Somehow, even when seeking the complete annihilation of the other civilization, old money still managed to take a skim from every last damn thing that happened – FIRST.
Which makes me ask, are they really just the A team and the B team, but always in the same league?
One to lead us out (as for slaughter), and one to stampede us (as to riot and burn)?
I don’t mean this to sound conspiratorial, nor to deny the cruel insanity of the Nazis – just to deny our own long-tattered claim of such great moral distance from them. We tell better stories about ourselves, for sure, but we still kill lots and exploit far more – the famous ‘exportation of poverty’ – utterly shamelessly, and we continue to defend that, and even the destruction of the hopes and rights of our own young people, as our sacred right as self-evidently ‘good’ westerners. Trust me, no one else on earth is on that plan!
One of the most widespread beliefs for leftists (of almost any stripe) is that conservatives have a fundamentally wrong view of the world, because they almost always prioritize business and/or growth.
But even if we do regard that position as our own local relative B team (arrogant and unfair, but please bear with me a moment) we must honestly ask ourselves, what does the comparative A team really represent? Truth, fairness and justice?
Feels good to think that – but again – have we all been wearing blindfolds for thirty years?
What hit me (then messed me up, for being too heavy to dislodge again) recently, was that the A team – the Liberals in Canada, the Democrats in America – do not represent the fine aspirational things they claim (just as “family values” is a story, rather than the hard policy of the Republicans, even the especially chaotic ones).
What our wonderful fairness and justice proclaiming (but long corrupted) A teams represent is BANKS – which, again, for almost any kind of leftie (and most on the right, also) is pretty much the lowest of the low, when it comes to capitalism. Always looking to create and profit from false scarcity. To put the power of their available capital, in-between citizens and the things and development they need to thrive.
Forever promising a better world, but increasing debt, instead of growth and opportunity.
Now let me try to tie all this wonky wide-ranging stuff together a bit.
The moment things started going wrong in a big way for Canada was when Brian Mulroney sold us out to Bill Clinton and ratified the free trade deal – NAFTA. Many were already on their career track by then, and didn’t much notice – but I saw my friends losing jobs right away, and factory after factory, closing.
My younger friends won’t remember this, but a clear majority of Canadians voted against free trade, but the NDP decided to run an especially aggressive campaign against the Liberals (in the form of John Turner, who was sure he was our Kennedy and deserved his turn at last, since Trudeau had stolen his first chance at the spot-light).
Here’s an especially weird detail. One of the things the Liberals offered the NDP at the time, as an inducement to form a strategic alliance for that one election only, specifically to defeat Free Trade and preserve our national sovereignty, was to work on upgrading our welfare state to a Guaranteed Annual Income state instead. Someone in the G7 had to run the experiment – for one brief shining moment there, it was almost us.
The point is – we actually knew exactly why NAFTA was a horrible, economy-rending idea at the time (because big American businesses could enter our market to destroy key productive sectors, and make us into consumers only, where we used to be producers – and big American banks could buy up our key industries just to shutter them, in order to boost an American competitor whose shares they also held).
We gave away priority control of our national interest, in exchange for service to an always fickle consumer market – and we lost a ton of vitality and industrial creativity in the process (things that we happen to need a ton of – RIGHT NOW).
In my last piece, I mentioned that for those who wanted an end to empire and hegemony – Merry Christmas! Marco Rubio has outright declared a new paradigm in a recent interview. No more playing world cop, we’re playing money-ball hard now, instead.
And be clear, folks – this world cop, do what ‘the good people’ say or we’ll kill you routine, goes all the way back to world war one and Woodrow freakin’ Wilson – more than a century of thou shalt and bayonets. That is a lot of inertia, to try to bring to a full stop.
(Also a lot of delicate things which will be smashed, and people knocked off their feet). Much too sudden. Unfair. Cruel, even. But as I said – you don’t get gentle, in a historical breaking-point. Anyhow, we westerners have had way more than our fair share of the gentle already – time to pay the piper, by growing brains, heart and nerve!
We always knew the American government, banks and companies were not to be trusted, and would use their leverage without any respect or moral restraint, to gain every possible advantage (as they did for decades before this China-shop bull arrived in Washington) – we just never realized their politics (and ours) would become so deeply corrupted – and so weirdly disconnected from reality and civic will.
Last time I put it simply – two sides can both be wrong at once. This time I’ll go one layer more subtle – the A team relies on the B team to smash stuff, so the A team can come in after and ‘rescue’ (buy and control) the unfortunate victims with their boundless humanity (banking capital, industry monopolies and government-corruption, backers).
But please don’t kid yourself – the A team and B team play in the same league – AGAINST US ALL
Solutions, my dear friends of every stripe, absolutely must come from our own direct human effort (especially effort to overcome false division and find common cause instead).
We must understand that BigNews wants us to feel, instead of understand – because they are like that patronizing joy-killing teacher who thinks they are helping the dummies, by telling us how we are supposed to interpret the poem – rather than just letting us read it and then react to it, honestly, with our own true hearts.
We must understand that our kids have less nature, less deep human contact, less reason for hope, and almost no belief that ‘the system’ we have, can do any better. We can help them with every part of this – not just by sharing better ways that we’ve seen (and done) ourselves – but most especially, by understanding that we make seriously unfair assumptions, whenever we take our own experience as somehow normal.
That’s nostalgia – another fun ‘feeling’ thing. Okay, just so as we don’t ever let it pollute our far more important THINKING.
So now here’s the weirdest upshot. Canada needs a military which can defend our own territory – because have no natural enemies to attack, but if we can’t defend the north ourselves effectively, we will forever have great-power bullies, looking to take a chunk out of us (you know for sure, any Greenland deal, will come with a ton of frustrating border arguments about sea-lanes and mining rights in the extreme north).
Canada needs a strong manufacturing and more robust agriculture sector (no more central valley vegetables), because sometimes shipping stops (remember Covid) and we all still need stuff – and anyhow, kids actually need jobs, not just hobbies. Houses, too.
Canada needs massively expanded inter-provincial transport (no other country on earth cries out for high-speed rail, the way we do), so we can greatly expand trade and tourism from coast to coast) and a greatly diversified export base, with RIGHTS FOR WORKERS PARAMOUNT (unlike every trade deal we’ve signed for decades, which have bargained workers rights down to the lowest common denominator – or lower)
Which makes me think we need a leader who thinks like William Lyon Mackenzie King – who we Canadians don’t talk about often enough. He was a student radical in his youth, remained deeply convinced that capital and labour both had legitimate aspirations, and was sure that both the wealthy and the workers would prosper best, if the benefits of advances were widely shared and the considerations of all parties taken into consideration in bargaining, and in federal policy. He wasn’t trying for zero-sum wins, but for deft balance and healthy growth (of hope and vision, not just jobs)
He also got us helping England with supplies, training and combat forces in World War Two, more than two years before our American friends finally woke up and started fighting too (the A team wanted to see a lot more profitable smashing, first, before they really started to get in the B team’s way?) then set us up after the war with an incredible portfolio of industrial promise – Avro Canada, DeHavilliand Canada and Canadair all producing world-beating feats of engineering over the next few years – just as the labs of ultimately ill-fated Northern Telecom, the world’s first company with a communications satellite (and soon, a whole network), remained a high tech patent leader, for many decades after.
We ain’t just lumberjacks (and we ain’t okay, just now – but will be, when we finally wake all the way up and shake-off the deep stank of dreams forgone and base subservience).
Trump is reckless and ill-informed. Some of the things he is smashing really are bad, but it is very hard to give him credit, when he is also tearing-down so many things which people have long relied on.
So what lemonade can we make from this sour-puss? REALITY-CHECK. Time to end Free-Trade and return to full Canadian sovereignty – which means leadership capable of harnessing both our banking and business sectors, so that they finally agree to cut workers back into the deal – because nothing else can reliably build the best (middle class) customers, and they are going to start running low on their favourite cash-cow boomers (most middle-class generation in modern history, by far) any time now.
We can’t keep doing six-month cycles of planning, without thinking smart about the next fifty years. Most of all, if we want to save Canada, we need to give kids a reason to believe in it passionately – which means showing we take it seriously ourselves, by taking them, their voices and their aspirations for the future seriously, at long last.
As Bill Morneau (former finance minister) famously quipped:
“Everyone in Ottawa is always talking about how to spend money. No one ever talks about how we are going to make it.”
We can do better – and we will. And ten hard years from now, we’ll thank that asshole for reminding us that surly neighbours work best when respect is established and fully earned by both parties, at every possible level. (that is – when we can tell them to f@ck right the hell off, and not worry even one little bit for our markets, kids, or jobs)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Before I get into today’s selection of weird and tasty treats, I should share my own piece on William Lyon Mackenzie King – he really is worth thinking more about. (And a deep hopeful ethical balance of interests in policy, really worth seeking)
Now I have a few links today which are so good, I want to share long excerpts, so I’ll add double dividers, and try to limit the number a bit more than I have, of late (even though I kind of want to share the whole damn toybox with you, every time). ;o)
First, here’s something for lovers of the well-wrought word – a real treat for your (perhaps over-wrought) minds!
I have a writer’s crush on Sam Kriss – so many smart elements and insights blended so exquisitely – does he write about history, politics, choice bits of personal witness, philosophy, metaphysics? YES! This one is long-ish, but extremely thoughtful and filled with humour and helpful perspective(s).
A taste:
“...Binary automata are everywhere. I’m now old enough to have experienced four cycles of the skinny jeans-baggy jeans automaton. Somehow, every time it happens, people are still amazed that they managed to spend the last decade wearing such objectively incorrect jeans. Like waking out of a dream. How could you have possibly believed that these revolting things actually looked good? Then a few years later it switches the other way, and you’re once again yelping in horror at your own trousers. The jeans automaton is a dialectic without sublation: it never goes anywhere, and nothing is ever learned. We are all doomed to repeat it for the rest of our lives. A lot of other binary automata line up with the jeans cycle, so you may as well bundle them all together. Skinny-jean eras are manic and expressive. Statistically, large new reserves of natural resources are almost always discovered while skinny jeans are in fashion. In economics, Keynesian interventionism predominates. Artists engage with the forms of pop culture; US Presidents announce missions to Mars that never happen; teenagers learn to play the guitar. Skinny jeans tend to coincide major conflicts between states. Baggy-jean eras are tetchy and introspective. Economically significant uptick in the consumption of raw vegetables. Neoclassicism in economics, lots of mirrors hung up in galleries, Middle East peace initiatives instead of Mars missions, teenagers making electronic music in their bedrooms. When you see a lot of baggy jeans on the street, you’re in a time of civil war. “
Now here’s a piece of soaring uplift, from the often super-serious Caitlin Johnstone – really smart, non-denominational heart-stuff!
Now still on hope – but easing into the strife of the world – here’s the action last weekend in Serbia – totally inspiring kids!
Here’s some astounding footage of the scale, as well as several stories from the student march from Belgrade and the HUGE and peaceful protests in Novi Sad
And here is a link for all my friends who want to keep following important Serbian stories in English
Here’s Simplicius the Thinker from his Dark Futura column, on why the gang that lose the most, from the introduction of the open-source AI ‘Deep-Seek’ model, were scary and truly deserved to be thwarted (and is anyone developing these new digital monstrosities competent? – or is the problem really just about honesty?)
Here’s the Monopoly Round-up perspective – China embarrasses US Big Tech
Here’s a much drier angle (energy market journal) on the reverberations of that same market shock.
“...The market just got a hard lesson in volatility. Shares of independent power producers and advanced nuclear firms plummeted Monday after Chinese AI startup DeepSeek released high-performing models that appear to require far less energy than their U.S. counterparts. The news sent Vistra and Talen tumbling over 20%, with Constellation Energy suffering a similar fate.
DeepSeek’s models reportedly cost 45 times less to train than OpenAI and Anthropic’s latest offerings. That efficiency threatens the foundation of recent U.S. electricity demand forecasts, which had been largely propped up by expectations of massive AI-driven power consumption. Investment bank Jefferies warned that AI accounts for about 75% of projected U.S. load growth through 2035—an assumption that may now be wildly overstated.”
Oh, and while we’re looking at power projections and production – here’s a small funny note for my friends who, like me, spent many fun hours in the strange world of New Vegas – Helios One is real! (and will look exactly like it does in the game – that is, post apocalyptic – within a year or two, no doubt!)
When I say some bad stuff is also being smashed, I mean it. Watching democrats debase themselves like demented warmongers, trying to get Tulsi Gabbard to declare Edward Snowden a traitor (though he was never charged with treason), was shameful. She literally tried to pass a bill to prevent direct American funding of violent (not merely political) terrorist organizations – and for that she has been regarded ever since as a traitor to the war-state – no kidding. Anti-war is now treasonous – to Democrats
Aaron Mate is as courageous and principled a journalist as they come, and a stalwart opponent of war and empire both. His take on Tulsi Gabbard’s fitness for office, is clear, detailed, surprising and very revealing. (no puff-piece)
Matt Taibbi remains one of the smartest journalists alive – here he is calling-out Bernie for being a dumb tribalist, rather than showing people that at least one democrat can still do principle – so freakin’ sad.
If it’s the opening of the secret books of USAID which is troubling you – it should, there is some seriously creepy stuff in there (and generations of penetration by CIA at all levels – sometimes 20 or 30 percent of the total staff)
Here’s Mark Wauck of “Meaning in History” with a truly frightening bunch of links and quotes about the reckless and often lethal messes, being turned-up right now!
Wuhan funding? USAID! (but I’m sure all those sneaky Pangolins just timed their first cough, so as to be able to blame the running-dog lackeys of the imperialists)
Here’s Dennis Kucinich on direct US funding of al-Queda in Syria. BTW, Tulsi being smeared for doing the right thing when nobody else would – reminds me a bit of Jody Wilson-Raybould, who tried quite correctly to punish SNC Lavalin (our Bechtel) – a major Canadian construction and development corporation, for international corruption (which would have sent a clear signal that WE HAD TO USE OUR WHITE POWER MORE ETHICALLY – and we really f@cking do, by the way), but was fired for it, thanks to the obtuse and wilful corruption of the imperial Prime Minister’s Office of Justin – which had actually passed a special bill saying “Yeah, but the rule of law doesn’t apply to that (party-backing) company.”
Also have to say (again) – the only time in my life that America ever considered an honest election between the two better halves of their deep spirit, was that glorious moment when both Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich were potential candidates. Of course neither party ever has the courage to back a genuine principled idealist of any kind (congresspersons and senators are all bought as they enter, and have been since Mark Twain’s time – as his sharp one-liners prove, with their ongoing relevance).
Still, one would like to think integrity, intelligent compassion, genuine freedom and liberty would all remain powerful organizing causes in some form, even if highly dilute. But these two polarities of good are nowhere to be found in the current rosters (in any nation or party in the west, as far as I can tell) though they clearly remain a yearned-for aspiration, in the general populace. There is still no better proven way to build serious unity and social cohesion than to share a big-positive project to work for.
Ex CIA analyst Larry Johnson has a lot of unusual insight into actual US policy (and the nerve to share)
“...the CIA has a history of working with groups the US identified as terrorists in order to try to weaken Russia or Iran. My goal is to get a discussion started. I want to focus on the Kosovo War (1998-1999). Part of my inspiration is Jim Jatras. I recorded an interview today with Jim for my Counter Currents channel. It will probably go up on Friday. Jim was a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) and then worked on Capitol Hill as a staffer on the Foreign Relations committee. Jim is a recognized expert on the subject.
What makes the 1998-1999 period worthy of attention is that the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC) was raising the alarm about Al Qaeda, which had attacked two US embassies in east Africa in August 1998, while the CIA’s Special Activities Division was working with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which was receiving support from Al Qaeda and was considered a terrorist organization in 1998.”
The CIAs history of supporting Islamic Jihad - the Kosovo War
John Helmer, who writes “Moon of Alabama” is a controversial but also very well informed observer of international conflict, especially that between the west and Russia. This piece goes into even more detail about how NGOs have been used by the CIA for operations which they used to directly fund and control themselves (greatly improving public image, and making all their regime-change funding ‘charity’)
Halt of USAID Exposes Malign Foriegn Influence
Now here’s a written piece from the brilliant economist Michael Hudson, who I shared in interview-form quite recently. This one is so spot-on and of the moment, I need to share two chunks!
“...US domestic politics is equally unstable. Trump’s America First political theater that got him elected may get his gang unseated as the contradictions and consequences of their operating philosophy are recognized and replaced. His tariff policy will accelerate US price inflation and, even more fatally, cause chaos in US and foreign financial markets. Supply chains will be disrupted, interrupting US exports of everything from aircraft to information technology. And other countries will find themselves obliged to make their economies no longer dependent on US exports or dollar credit.
And perhaps in the long-term view this would not be a bad thing. The problem is in the short run as supply chains, trade patterns and dependency are replaced as part of the new geopolitical economic order. US policy is forcing other countries to adapt.
Trump bases his attempt to tear up the existing linkages and reciprocity of international trade and finance on the assumption that in a chaotic grab-bag, America will come out on top. That confidence underlies his willingness to pull out of today’s geopolitical interconnections.
He thinks that the US economy is like a cosmic black hole, that is, a center of gravity able to pull all the world’s money and economic surplus to itself.
That is the explicit aim of America First. That is what makes Trump’s program a declaration of economic war on the rest of the world. There is no longer a promise that the economic order sponsored by US diplomacy will make other countries prosperous. The gains from trade and foreign investment are to be sent to and concentrated in America.
The problem goes beyond Trump. He is simply following what already has been implicit in US policy since 1945. America’s self-image is that it is the only economy in the world that can be thoroughly self-sufficient economically. It produces its own energy, and also its own food, and supplies these basic needs to other countries or has the ability to turn off the spigot.
Most important, the United States is the only economy without the financial constraints that constrain other countries. America’s debt is in its own currency, and there has been no limit on its ability to spend beyond its means by flooding the world with excess dollars, which other countries accept as their monetary reserves as if the dollar is still as good as gold. And underneath it all is the assumption that almost with a flick of the switch, the United States can become as industrially self-sufficient as it was in 1945. America is the world’s Blanche duBois in Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire, living in the past while not aging well.”
And here’s another taste (because this piece is so ridiculously good and wide-ranging)
“...Not many leading politicians have the leeway that Germany’s Annalena Baerbock has of saying that her Green Party does not have to listen to what German voters say they want. Global South oligarchies may rely on US support, but Germany is certainly an outlier when it comes to being willing to commit economic suicide out of loyalty to US foreign policy without limit.
Suspending debt service is less destructive than continuing to succumb to the Trump-based America First order. What blocks that policy is political, along with a centrist fear of embarking on the major policy change necessary to avoid economic polarization and austerity.
Europe seems afraid to use the option of simply calling Trump’s bluff, despite its being an empty threat that would be blocked by America’s own vested interests among the Donor Class.
Trump has stated that if countries do not agree to spend 5% of its GDP on military arms (largely from the United States) and buy more US liquid natural gas (LNG) energy, he will impose tariffs of 20% on countries that resist. But if European leaders do not resist, the euro will fall perhaps by 10 or 20 percent. Domestic prices will rise, and national budgets will have to cut back social spending programs such as support for families to buy more expensive gas or electricity to heat and power their homes.
America’s neoliberal leaders welcome this class-war phase of US demands on foreign governments. US diplomacy has been active in crippling the political leadership of former labor and social democratic parties in Europe and other countries so thoroughly that it no longer seems to matter what voters want. That is what America’s National Endowment Democracy is for, along with its mainstream media ownership and narrative. But what is being shaken up is not merely America’s unipolar dominance of the West and its sphere of influence, but the worldwide structure of international trade and financial relations—and inevitably, military relations and alliances as well.”
Michael Hudson – on how balance of payments disruption could cause global economic chaos (but then again, wasn’t class warfare on an unprecedented scale always kind of the point both teams have been working toward?)
Here’s an excellent piece from investigative reporter Michael Tracey on president Grover Cleveland, the historical context of America’s first lurch into imperial excess, and someone Trump’s advisors are clearly rather fond of – president William McKinley (about whom, Twain cursed beautifully).
What really surprised me this week (and appeared nowhere on corporate news), was that quite a few of the progressive economic big-thinkers I read not only thought the tariff plan was a serious long-term policy direction, they even allowed that history suggests it could bear fruit, at least in some ways.
Matt Stoller writes in depth about American monopolies and unfair trade practices, so I was especially curious to get his take on Trump’s big new wave of sanctions – it is surprisingly balanced and even restrained, which suggests he is perhaps thinking of the bigger historical view, and a newer paradigm.
Here’s a compilation from the tireless Mark Wauck again, with some more fascinating details and insight about the paradigm shift which are not making the news – quoting Arnaud Bertrand, here
“....Hegemony was going to end sooner or later, and now the U.S. is basically choosing to end it on its own terms. It is the post-American world order - brought to you by America itself.
Even the tariffs on allies, viewed under this angle, make sense, as it redefines the concept of "allies": they don't want – or maybe rather can't afford – vassals anymore, but rather relationships that evolve based on current interests.
You can either view it as decline – because it does unquestionably look like the end of the American empire – or as avoiding further decline: controlled withdrawal from imperial commitments in order to focus resources on core national interests rather than being forced into an even messier retreat at a later stage.
In any case it is the end of an era and, while the Trump administration looks like chaos to many observers, they're probably much more attuned to the changing realities of the world and their own country's predicament than their predecessors. Acknowledging the existence of a multipolar world and choosing to operate within it rather than trying to maintain an increasingly costly global hegemony couldn't be delayed much further. It looks messy but it is probably better than maintaining the fiction of American primacy until it eventually collapses under its own weight.
This is not to say that the U.S. won't continue to wreak havoc on the world, and in fact we might be seeing it become even more aggressive than before. Because when it previously was (badly, and very hypocritically) trying to maintain some semblance of self-proclaimed "rules-based order", it now doesn't even have to pretend it is under any constraint, not even the constraint of playing nice with allies. It's the end of the U.S. empire, but definitely not the end of the U.S. as a major disruptive force in world affairs.
All in all this transformation may mark one of the most significant shifts in international relations since the fall of the Soviet Union. And those most unprepared for it, as is already painfully obvious, are America's vassals caught completely flat-footed by the realization that the patron they've relied on for decades is now treating them as just another set of countries to negotiate with.”
Glenn Diesen – is one of my favourite political historians for a very good reason!
“...The idea was that great powers would not engage in rivalry and security competition if the benign hegemon of the US could not be contested. US security strategy was based on global primacy, and it was expected that there was no possibility and need to compete with the benign hegemony of the US. Furthermore, US global primacy would also ensure that liberal democratic values would be elevated. Yet, unipolarity would depend on keeping down rising powers that would therefore have an interest to collectively balance the US. Liberal democratic values would be corrupted as they would be used to legitimise the sovereign inequality required to interfere in every corner of the world. Even Charles Krauthammer who coined and celebrated the term “unipolar moment”, recognised it was a temporary phenomenon that resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Security under the unipolar system did not entail managing the security competition. On the contrary, security was dependent on dominating to such an extent that no rivals could even aspire to challenge the US. In 2002, the US Security Strategy explicitly outlined that global dominance would “dissuade future military competition” and that the US therefore had to perpetuate “the unparalleled strength of the United States armed forces, and their forward presence”. The hegemonic strategy is why the West abandoned all agreements for an inclusive pan-European security architecture with Russia, and instead returned to bloc politics by expanding NATO toward Russian borders. It would threaten Russian security, but there would be no security competition as Russia would be too weak. The sentiment was that Russia would have to adjust to new realities or be confronted by NATO that had encircled it.
Diplomacy under unipolarity also came to an end. Diplomacy no longer meant to recognise mutual security concerns to find solutions for indivisible security. Rather, diplomacy was replaced with the language of ultimatums and threats as other states would have to accept unilateral concessions. In the past, Western politicians and media would discuss the security concerns of adversaries to mitigate security competition. After the Cold War, Western politicians and media largely stopped discussing the security concerns of adversaries, as there was no desire to “legitimise” the notion that Western hegemony as a “force for good” could be considered a threat. When the West placed its military forces on the borders of other countries, it was claimed to bring democracy, stability and peace. Furthermore, conflicts could not be resolved by diplomacy if they challenged the dominance of the West. For example, taking into account Russian security concerns about NATO’s incursion into Ukraine would represent a rejection of the hegemonic system. While NATO rejected diplomacy for three years as hundreds of thousands of men died on the front line, Rubio now suggests that diplomacy and negotiations must start as “We just have to be realistic about the fact that Ukraine has lost”.
And here’s another really well informed deep take, which he only posted to X (where I go rarely, and only in pursuit of such rare insight as this)
“...Scandinavia’s recognition of security competition has suffered from what is referred to in the literature as “ideological fundamentalism”. Actors are seen as either good or bad based on political identities that have been assigned by ideology. Ideological fundamentalism reduces the ability to recognise that one’s own policies and actions may constitute a threat to others, because one’s own political identity is held to be indisputably positive and dissociated from any threatening behaviour. There is a lack of understanding of why Russia would feel threatened by NATO expansion even after Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and the proxy war in Ukraine. NATO is merely a “defensive alliance”, even as it bombs countries that never threatened it. Ideological fundamentalism can best be explained by President Reagan’s reaction to how Able Archer, a NATO military exercise in 1983 that almost triggered a nuclear war. Convinced that the US was a force for good that was fighting an evil empire, Reagan was bewildered that the Soviets did not see it the same way:
“Three years had taught me something surprising about the Russians: Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans... I’d always felt that from our deeds it must be clear to anyone that Americans were a moral people who starting at the birth of our nation had always used our power only as a force of good in the world”.
The Militarization of Scandinavia and the Great Northern War 2.0 – by Glenn Diesen
And here’s something both interesting and troubling, about Trump’s own thinking about negotiating, which my friend Cathie Hueston posted on facebook (thank you!)
The best, most cogent and elegantly simple explanation into the inexplicably destructive negotiating processes of the president, by Prof. David Honig of Indiana University.
Everybody I know should read this accurate and enlightening piece...
“I’m going to get a little wonky and write about Donald Trump and negotiations. For those who don't know, I'm an adjunct professor at Indiana University - Robert H. McKinney School of Law and I teach negotiations. Okay, here goes.
Trump, as most of us know, is the credited author of "The Art of the Deal," a book that was actually ghost written by a man named Tony Schwartz, who was given access to Trump and wrote based upon his observations. If you've read The Art of the Deal, or if you've followed Trump lately, you'll know, even if you didn't know the label, that he sees all dealmaking as what we call "distributive bargaining."
Distributive bargaining always has a winner and a loser. It happens when there is a fixed quantity of something and two sides are fighting over how it gets distributed. Think of it as a pie and you're fighting over who gets how many pieces. In Trump's world, the bargaining was for a building, or for construction work, or subcontractors. He perceives a successful bargain as one in which there is a winner and a loser, so if he pays less than the seller wants, he wins. The more he saves the more he wins.
The other type of bargaining is called integrative bargaining. In integrative bargaining the two sides don't have a complete conflict of interest, and it is possible to reach mutually beneficial agreements. Think of it, not a single pie to be divided by two hungry people, but as a baker and a caterer negotiating over how many pies will be baked at what prices, and the nature of their ongoing relationship after this one gig is over.
The problem with Trump is that he sees only distributive bargaining in an international world that requires integrative bargaining. He can raise tariffs, but so can other countries. He can't demand they not respond. There is no defined end to the negotiation and there is no simple winner and loser. There are always more pies to be baked. Further, negotiations aren't binary. China's choices aren't (a) buy soybeans from US farmers, or (b) don't buy soybeans. They can also (c) buy soybeans from Russia, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Canada, etc. That completely strips the distributive bargainer of his power to win or lose, to control the negotiation.
One of the risks of distributive bargaining is bad will. In a one-time distributive bargain, e.g. negotiating with the cabinet maker in your casino about whether you're going to pay his whole bill or demand a discount, you don't have to worry about your ongoing credibility or the next deal. If you do that to the cabinet maker, you can bet he won't agree to do the cabinets in your next casino, and you're going to have to find another cabinet maker.
There isn't another Canada.
So when you approach international negotiation, in a world as complex as ours, with integrated economies and multiple buyers and sellers, you simply must approach them through integrative bargaining. If you attempt distributive bargaining, success is impossible. And we see that already.
Trump has raised tariffs on China. China responded, in addition to raising tariffs on US goods, by dropping all its soybean orders from the US and buying them from Russia. The effect is not only to cause tremendous harm to US farmers, but also to increase Russian revenue, making Russia less susceptible to sanctions and boycotts, increasing its economic and political power in the world, and reducing ours. Trump saw steel and aluminum and thought it would be an easy win, BECAUSE HE SAW ONLY STEEL AND ALUMINUM - HE SEES EVERY NEGOTIATION AS DISTRIBUTIVE. China saw it as integrative, and integrated Russia and its soybean purchase orders into a far more complex negotiation ecosystem.
Trump has the same weakness politically. For every winner there must be a loser. And that's just not how politics works, not over the long run.
For people who study negotiations, this is incredibly basic stuff, negotiations 101, definitions you learn before you even start talking about styles and tactics. And here's another huge problem for us.
Trump is utterly convinced that his experience in a closely held real estate company has prepared him to run a nation, and therefore he rejects the advice of people who spent entire careers studying the nuances of international negotiations and diplomacy. But the leaders on the other side of the table have not eschewed expertise, they have embraced it. And that means they look at Trump and, given his very limited tool chest and his blindly distributive understanding of negotiation, they know exactly what he is going to do and exactly how to respond to it.
From a professional negotiation point of view, Trump isn't even bringing checkers to a chess match. He's bringing a quarter that he insists of flipping for heads or tails, while everybody else is studying the chess board to decide whether its better to open with Najdorf or Grünfeld.”
— David Honig
Here’s a really smart piece about where young conservative intellectuals are, intellectually, by someone who should (according to popular standards of paranoia) have every reason there is, to hate and fear them – a young Iranian woman. (long-ish, but seriously perceptive, and absolutely beautifully written).
Dang, I honestly have more than thirty other fine links, and I didn’t even browse my in-box today to check for last minute stand-outs, because I’ve been busy writing this – but I don’t want to keep you all day.
How about a wacky video, to wind up the wonky world of absurdity?
One of the weirdest things about propaganda is the shocking uniformity of it – so much easier to see, when you are actively reading all sides of everything (and also to notice, where all the much-hyped contradictions are really a false-front, hiding a much deeper agreement, on all of the most evil terms).
Matt Orfalea has a special genius for rubbing our noses in what we all should have noticed anyhow.
Can’t exactly call his stuff funny – but we sure as heck deserve it, though
I forgot the very best quotation about psychedelics of all time (from Alan Ginsberg, no less)
"Once the door is open - stop knocking!"