Mything Inaction
The Most Evil Games In The World Depend On Us Believing Fairy Tales (and investing in magic beans)
Hey Folks
I have spent a lot of time over the last few years talking about the way popular lies and manipulations have been used to get people who are sure they have only the best intentions, to openly and even enthusiastically serve murder and evil. (With the help of corporate media – EVERY F-ing TIME).
I do understand that my pals on the (fake-mob) left don’t like to hear they are complicit in, and even the drivers of, relentless racist slaughter and more recently the greatest mass child abuse by policy in modern history. But they are, so too F-ing bad. Harming kids is always wrong – don’t defend it.
Likewise, my friends on the right do not like the idea that their demands for old patterns of long- established virtue and community have been used not only for bankrupting imperialism and the enslavement (and values-destruction) of innocents elsewhere, but also to help big banks undermine and destroy our communities, the foundations of all such virtue, right here, and in industrial quantities.
But we are where we are, not where we fantasize we are. Even a two-word slogan like America First clearly doesn’t mean either one of those words, in any patriotic or a traditional values sense – at all.
When a leftist uses the word “Fascist” nowadays, what they really mean is “Icky” or “I don’t like you.” When a person on the right says “Communist” they actually mean “Freak” or “I don’t like you.” Yes this is idiotic and pathetic – substituting tantrums and narcissism for our old standards of intelligence principle and debate – but once again, it is where we are that counts, not where we wish we were.
The fact that there actually are fascists organizing mass-murder right now (mostly in Washington and London) and that there are insane communists in large numbers also (that incomparably destructive fake mob-left – both super-spreader and destroyer of civics beyond compare) isn’t ever engaged.
This constant state of high social tension, bitterness and misunderstanding combined with a studied two-sided blindness about the genuinely evil games done in our names, by our states, is not accidental, but the product of a whole lot of careful design and an absolutely staggering expenditure on long term propaganda and cultural conditioning, and the fact that it has come to seen almost normal to us (in this insane hyperviolent endlessly left-and-right supremacist century) should be a clear rebuke to all of us.
The distinction I hate having to repeat by far the most, is that between the emotional perspective and the practical. If we start and end with emotions, we can spend all our energy discussing who is the most upsetting, or who seems to be the ickiest out of all the ickies, without ever improving ANYTHING.
If you start with the question – suppose we actually wanted to FIX IT. So that we would have to find something new to complain about tomorrow (or perhaps even stop complaining and enjoy life at last) we begin entirely differently, and end up in an entirely different place also.
I want to offer an especially challenging idea for my politically concerned friends right here, because I think it might sound too strong now, but make a whole lot more sense by the end of this essay.
It is incredibly important to freedom and human thriving that no one faction wins completely, ever.
This is emotionally offensive on an almost instinctive level to many, nowadays, because we are so focused on how wrong the other guy is (and how righteous and wonderful our insensate hatred), that we do not ever stop to consider our own errors (or learn from them). But with even a half step back we quickly realize that this kind of emotions over reason pressure-cooker trains us to be Manichean (everything is pure good or pure evil) partisan maniacs. Fanatics, rather than sane and useful citizens.
The first objection clever folks raise to a statist leftist, really is the best (still unanswerable) one. Dictatorship of the proletariat? But wait a minute, the proletariat are a bunch of furious easily manipulable witch-burning imbeciles!
For those who haven’t read into that deep left playbook, substitute the more contemporary referent lockdowns – when an idiot’s Dictatorship of fear and ignorance dealt lifelong harm to every kid in the western world – without any part of society (or media) expressing the least bit of shame or regret (which also means no lesson-learning, which would be required to make sure they never do such harm again).
Likewise, the first objection anyone raises upon being introduced to traditional conservative ideas, has still not been addressed in a way which satisfies anyone who asks it. Conformity and fitting-in is far easier for some than for others – and freedom itself is all about the liberty to reject conformity, in favour of a new, and just possibly better way. (the only way we ever advance as a whole society, is by someone doing the proof-work, while the ideas still seem nutty to the conformists and conventional).
To balance both of those, I must point out that I know very few leftists who don’t want good money from their job, and very few on the right who would sacrifice personal freedoms gained by the left.
So – while many yell that the right is nothing but dangerous, they also rely on conservative traditions structures and institutions to feed them. And – while many insist the left is now utterly insane, vast numbers would be utterly miserable without the benefit of their wins for honesty and self-expression.
(I can’t tell you how much I want to digress for ten pages about that wasn’t left anyhow – but for the sake of brevity and clarity I won’t, here)
But before I leave the question of extremist emotionalist framing, which has so effectively manipulated large populations for more than a century now – ever since Freud’s nephew (Bernays) hit wall street, to sell creepy insight into the psychological manipulation of populations to globe-striding corporations – (and of course, their client governments) I have to stop and review a couple of our favourite dumb mind-trap stories, and tease out a few of the wildly contradictory facts and blind spots underneath them.
Uncountably many believe two great myths about the American political parties in particular – and these are so culturally influential (so far) that they carry over into politics across the west as a whole.
People on the (fake-mob) left think the Democrats are for “fairness” and are much less racist.
People on the (fake-mob) right think Republicans are for general prosperity and ‘family values’.
I do often wonder – do people on the left still know how to count? I mean count the corpses or gravestones of non-western people, and the bodybags of the poor kids sent to mass-murder them?
I also often wonder – do people on the right still know how to run a business or balance the books – and have they actually looked their own pastor square in the eye with full humility, any time recently?
The Democrats were literally THE party of segregation and southern racism, right up until they passed civil rights (which only they could have passed, for that same exact reason). But the moment they finally assented to basic fairness under law (which was the actual demand of civil rights), they started mass murdering Vietnamese people in vast numbers, and also setting up a whole wave of massive capital expenditure programs (to ensure hugely profitable debt for their big-banking pals) pretty much all of which went off the rails within a decade (that is, more than half a century ago) – and yet are still defended as “the only way.” (Though how a way that doesn’t work could be that, is not explained).
(Clue – making American blacks dependant wards of the state is not in fact restoring full person-hood)
The Republicans under Nixon (much as I hate him, as a person) negotiated the most important nuclear arms control treaties with the Soviet Union that ever happened, and almost certainly prevented a global general nuclear war (at least, so far). The Republicans under Reagan and Bush senior added to those world-saving treaties and then also negotiated the (historically amazing) peaceful end of the cold war. (Again, like him or not, credit where it is due).
It was the (yes, still absolutely one-hundred percent racist) Democrats under Clinton who rejected that peace altogether and instead used Russia’s time of weakness (1990s) to make America far more violent, bullying and destructive to the world than ever before. W used Reagan-built weapons to devastate Afghanistan and Iraq (and destroy the last remaining American prosperity with banker-serving debt). Obama and Biden used Clinton-built militarized racism (the first generation of absolutely outrageously racist “colour revolution” fairy tales) to murder at least two million Slavs (so far) and are proud of it.
The war which destroyed Yugoslavia was not an accident, or a result of ‘age-old’ racial tensions, the way we are told to think of it here. Please get it straight folks – before the war in Iraq, nobody cared at all who was Shia and who was Sunni. It didn’t matter, because the society actually functioned at a high level for most (yes, many qualifiers there, but none that need repeating after decades of propaganda).
The point I’m making is that a society which is functional, is a society where everyone has a reason to get along and work for better things for the whole society. Whereas a society which is shattered completely, by say, foreign maniacs bombing all your water treatment and power facilities in the first week of conflict (as the bloodthirsty maniacal Americans did to Iraq – TWICE!) or arming and funding vicious racist mass murdering terrorist groups and undermining or destroying all civil government (as Obama commanded the CIA and US military to do in both Libya and Syria) you don’t have your old society anymore, all you have left is anger. And you’ll use anything strong which is already inside your head, to express and explain it. (As with religion and war – coincidence is not the same as causality).
The sabotage and destruction of the once vital state of Yugoslavia (much missed by my Serbian and Croatian pals both, though that fact alone will shock many lazy moralizing well-propagandized ‘good-racist’ westerners) was the work of the entitled supremacist killers in British intelligence and the CIA in combination. Precipitating the crisis in Bosnia was achieved by bribing the Bosnian leadership of the time to sabotage the infamous ‘last chance’ party conference. Just as in Ukraine, peace and conflict avoidance was right there on-offer, it was foreign interference which derailed that peace track.
Foreigners supposedly representing us “moral” and “advanced” people in the west. Killers for profit.
So – why does the modern world’s most violent, deranged and bloodthirsty slave-master culture (UK) hate Russia and the former states of Eastern Europe so very much (to a level of profoundly self-harming insanity)?
I have read several hundred pages on this subject, much contradictory and much compelling. Feels like a whole lot of reasons at once, but above all – basic imperialist mass-murder justifying racism.
The British bankers and oligarchs who run the country so completely that they now actually have British voters arrested en-masse, just for expressing their silenced democratic demands, desperately want Russia’s resources for the western moneyed class, and also think Slavs are an inferior people who simply don’t know what to do with their own natural resource wealth. (in the always hilariously racist terminology of old British “Orientalists” one need only describe Russians as “Asiatic” to imply that they share no values, ethics or even a basic respect for human life – and again to find great approval for your open and insane bigotry from uncountably many who all think themselves ‘good’ as they hate).
Now, for those who are watching the sad reality of western markets over the last few years, (who needs roller-coasters, for thrills, right?) the most obvious and pressing motive right now is that the UK (and the US) actually need to steal trillions in wealth from someone else, just to cover up their own outrageous corruption and the bankruptcy it has produced (lest the public finally see it clearly, as they are closer-to than ever, and finally run their entire CLASS from power for good). But this crazy hatred is much older than our modern self-created fiscal emergencies (and psychotic insistence on denial).
I don’t just mean the classical “Into the valley of the shadow of death, rode the six hundred.” Margaret Thatcher made a very famous speech where she said exactly that directly, and the applause was thunderous – (and anyone who thinks Tony Blair wasn’t Thatcher MK II, imperialism with a ‘hipper rap’ – just as Clinton was Reagan Re-branded – just hasn’t been paying attention). WAKE UP – please!
If we go by what we can observe (and the bodies, graves and destroyed countries we can count)
The Democrats are actually relentless anti-peace oligarch-serving mass-murdering racist scumbags.
The thing is, that Democratic hyper-violent supremacist worldview is also (thanks to vast scale paranoia-fuelled efforts, throughout this especially corrupted century, post 9/11) the ‘anchor’ for most of what the rest of the countries of the west still (somehow) think of as their Liberal or Centrist parties.
Put a pin in that one. We’ll return to it.
Now let’s talk about those famous Republican ‘values’ and general overall prosperity.
One of the reasons that I have always had many friends on the right, even in my most ardent leftist partisan days, is that I really am the man from Mars. Arrived completely clueless in my own culture (escaped a cult) and had to learn what all the normal people were doing and thinking from scratch, at age sixteen.
Because of my unusual cluelessness and openness, I was far more often moved by respect for efforts expended and accomplishments earned, than I was by any conflict over ideology or philosophy. Even a total jackass is doing a genuine service to society if they give dozens of people decent jobs for decades.
And yes, I am very sorry to say, people on ‘the right’ are far more often realistic enough about planning, inputs and logistics to make a business thrive, than the far more romantic wishingists on the left.
Looking after a family, or helping to nurture many families and grow your whole community isn’t The Evil Patriarchy it’s as old as civilization. The part of capitalism at the far end from monopolism, and arguably, one part of a healthy mix that fosters citizen flourishing, without dictatorship by committee (that is, a key part of any formula which allows for respect for difference and functional FREEDOM).
There is a huge difference between a hobby gardener and a farmer. The amateur can have all kinds of interesting knowledge and passion, but they select according to their own preference. The farmer has no such luxury, they must address every last part of the real-world process or else fail and go bankrupt.
The weirdest thing about American Republicans to me, is that the moment they missed, the way the Democrats have missed and misunderstood every (banker-sellout betrayal) move since civil rights, remains just as invisible to them.
I have been puzzling over Nixon ‘dropping the gold standard’ since I was a kid, and first heard about it. I know it feels like ‘boring economics 101’ to many – but the worst creeps rely on us feeling that way, so they can keep making us complicit in mass murder – so I insist it’s worth thinking about anyhow!
The problem is, if you want to understand the history and development (mutations) of American Capitalism, you first have to think about the history (centuries of slaughter) of British Capitalism.
Sorry – I have railed against cheap moral suasion many times and shouldn’t invoke it so, but seriously, mass-murder makes me furious, and I’m sick of feeling lonely in that. So this is for the back row who are cheering me with raised cans and funny nostalgic salutes, in between big big sips! (or puffs).
This study is especially tricky for a ‘colonial’ – because Canadians (like our Aussie and Kiwi cousins) are deeply steeped in a version of history which is weirdly soft-focus and romantic about old empire, and yet vicious (like a spiteful jealous relative) in criticism of the younger US globe-striding empire.
There are a lot of similarities, and again, this is not by accident. The sad fact is that after the Second World War, when the British (already bankrupted by the first world war, but living way beyond their means for decades after, like they still held sway by demonstrated superiority, instead of the inertia of empire and their long sad habit of regularly resorting to ultra-violence) finally had to pass the baton of Western global market dominance to the Americans, a huge proportion of the most evil thinking of the old British empire was transplanted whole, directly into the heart of the American secret War-state.
(For those who haven’t been reading me long, or need more data – start digging in at The National Security Act of 1947 – which I have repeatedly written about as “The thing that ate the constitution”)
FDR was not in any way a socialist, he was (and this according even to serious capitalist historians) actually the saviour of capitalism, in a moment which might have tipped all the way into revolution.
BUT – he was also very serious about not spilling American blood (in the second world war) for the sake of the old European Empires. The (then still ardently racist and imperialist) European powers badly needed American supplies, but even figures like DeGaulle were furious about this position on the part of the American government. They thought allowing independence for all their colonies was – foreign interference in their own affairs. Because they didn’t even realize they were the evil outsiders!
The unique and principled journalist Eric Margolis, who developed unusual contacts with intelligence and military people over his career, insists that there are still many in French intelligence circles who believe Roosevelt was poisoned, so that he would not survive long enough to be the one to draw up the final peace, specifically so that the European colonialists (and their own powerful war-state and corporate allies in the US) could pressure the intellectual lightweight Truman into allowing them to reoccupy even colonies they had abandoned in war, without defending them with a single shot.
Let me put that differently. There would have been no reason for any Vietnam war (not the often forgotten but also vicious and protracted French colonial war, or the more widely discussed American), had Roosevelt lived just one year longer, because Vietnam would have been an independent secular democracy at the end of the war, and the long decades of insurgency against foreign exploiters and death-dealers would never have been needed. Ho Chi Minh would have been just another politician.
Some will object that the global trade empire the US inherited post war could not be managed in such a way, and colonies were required, to guarantee continued exploitation of foreign resources by the west.
This argument was certainly made by the European powers (UK in particular, and the paper-trail on this is huge and incredibly depressing). The fact that the UK finally convinced the CIA of this in the late forties is a huge part of why the CIA has been essentially evil (and badly corrupted by actual fascists and their insane thinking) right from the beginning. So much of America’s downfall starts there exactly.
But as I say – there actually are some big differences between British and American economic systems – and the fact that the two approaches both have some advocates (and have enjoyed varying levels of influence over time) in both countries, makes the clear distinction far more, not less, crucial.
The most important thing to understand about the British System of Capitalism at it’s peak, is that it didn’t just colonize and bully the world, pulling the rug out from under millions, over and over, just to make a buck, it also absolutely DESTROYED British society and thriving in the working and middle classes, and it wasn’t even the least bit ashamed of that. So advanced a predator it could eat itself!
“Free Trade” is one of those phrases we hear again and again, without ever understanding. Free trade means foreign corporate giants (moneyed aristocracy) get free access to your materials and markets, and in exchange for a deluge of foreign manufactures, you trade away the dignity and sovereignty of your own workers and undercut the middle class who are supposed to empower and manage them.
Again, I know that will sound hyperbolic to some, but it really is what the phrase means. When you get a whole bunch of countries together on it, what you end up with is a vicious circle where the capitalists from one country screw the citizens in the country to the left, and so on, all the way around and back.
Free trade means concessions from workers – every freakin’ time. Concessions for monopolists, who need no concessions (but rather, ought to be leashed and limited only to socially viable boundaries).
Free Trade was how the British used their new industrial mills to destroy textile workers in India and seize their markets, then later ship those same industrial machines over to India, so they could use their cheap labour to completely destroy BRITISH UNION WORKERS who were finally gaining a foothold and asserting a right to dignity and a share of the bounty in the industrial age. Evil for centuries.
Profit coming, profit going – devastation in their wake, with every dishonourable move they make.
That’s The Glory of Albion in a nutshell. You are a prince, or you are cattle (the current Labour prime minister obviously despises the poor – and feels no obligation even to listen to, let far alone serve them).
The American System was very different, and was designed to allow for local flourishing, despite the existence of the globe striding economic hegemon of the UK. (Something about fighting a war with such jerks, keeps your whole society ‘on your toes’ for several decades afterward, rather helpfully).
The extraordinarily rapid economic development of America (again, something many leftists now ignore studiously, and yet somehow still claim they care about poverty and dignity) was based upon understanding of planning and inputs, and a firm insistence (like I say, revolution-powered) on not giving up the skim, to the overlord class. Very imperfectly realized, as this was and has been since.
My fellow Canadian chums have a funny example of this sort of helpful orneriness, close to home. Canadian culture is not the same as American culture, nor is it just a pastiche of inputs from elsewhere. But while the subject needs an entire essay, to explore properly, if you’re an Anglo Canadian and you are interested in any of the arts, you are bound to be jealous of your Francophone friends in Quebec!
Tensions and economic relations between Quebec and the rest of Canada shift a lot over time, but even in times of very low tension and general widespread prosperity, the fact that the citizens of Quebec always feel like a minority culture within a larger culture that doesn’t listen, makes them extra fierce about defending promoting and also savouring their own culture.
A Toronto kid, by contrast, faces the sad (longstanding) reality that it is way easier to make it in Toronto by being someone interesting from somewhere else. We mostly ignore our local talents (who are then forced to move elsewhere, before they find an audience that can be bothered to support them).
Would I rather feel like a misunderstood minority? Nope. But would I rather the people around me were feisty enough to get excited about culture and the vital importance of it for society? Hell yeah!
So the amazing thing about still usefully-ornery early America was they were able to build new prosperity in a global trade environment which had been shaped by the biggest player (UK), to deny them or anyone else that power, without being fundamentally corrupted by it, the way the UK was.
I also have to remind my leftist friends (especially the less bookish or historical) that it was this deluge of prosperity which allowed workers to organize and bargain for a cut. There has to be loot, to split!
The first great betrayal of the American economic system (with which we’re familiar) happened a bit more than a century ago. The establishment of the Federal Reserve – a private bank – at the centre of the American economy – was widely recognized at the time – by other smaller more community minded and involved bankers, right across America – as a very dangerous highly anti-democratic concentration of power in far too few and unaccountable hands.
One banker famously said “Give me control of a nation’s currency and I care not who makes its laws.”
This move (specifically contradicting the constitution, mind you, in the clearest possible way) was sold as an “Emergency need, due to the pressing demands of war” But now that historians widely agree there would not have been a WWII, had America not joined WWI, we must ask – was justifying the handover of American prosperity to private ownership actually the reason America joined the war?
From that time to this, the American System of prosperity-generation aspiration and fast rising boats for all (so much middle-class wealth that like the Dutch before them, they felt morally compelled to share it more widely across the society over time – hence the union and religious movements together, and their many victories for normal people, most of which have been erased in the last decade or two) has been steadily morphing into, and has increasingly taken on the old evil shape and ethos of the old British “make beggars of everyone” free-trade cutthroat wealthy-rule-all ultra-dominance system.
So, confusing as it sounds, most of what we hate about modern America is it’s corporate Britishness.
And yes, the ‘intelligence masters’ in Britain are very pleased by every part of this. The argument can even be made that through their deep influence on America’s greatest institutions of corruption (CIA especially, but by no means exclusively) and also American private banks, they kind of still run their old empire, one step removed, like a crazy old shrivelled up Oz behind the curtain, raking-in the profits. They just let America deal the punches and take the global opprobrium for them. This is certainly an old and often repeated pattern, for decadent decaying empires.
But whether or not that is true (certainly it is not a matter we are ever allowed to vote for, or against) we can clearly recognize the American system thrived – despite the British Empire, and ever since they have been corrupted by British Free Trade Spirit, American (and global) thriving has suffered greatly.
So – when I say that there was a second path, after the second world war, what I’m talking about is a piece of every pie in the world, and all pies growing. A skim of genuine thriving (which, thanks to America’s special position of capital and productivity at the end of the war, was a guaranteed win).
Let me put this in more specific terms, to ground the road not taken more concretely. I was very fortunate to work with a fellow who was standing in Black Star Square in Accra (as a thrilled 16 year old) the day Kwame Nkrumah declared Ghana the first independent post-colonial African state (1956).
Because of him, I was aware enough of Ghanaian politics and history to be excited when I found Kwame Nkrumah’s sadly under-read autobiography (inspiring pan-African spirit, throughout). I was also very pleased to be able to pass it on to him, so his kids could learn about a true founding father.
My friend also happened to come from a village on the upper Volta river, so he was very aware of the dam project and the hydro-electric power which was soon expected to bring about an African renaissance. What many here don’t realize is that Ghana had both that fantastic opportunity for hydro-electric power – and also tons of bauxite (raw aluminum ore, which requires electricity in large quantities at low rates, for anything close to economic manufacture of finished aluminum).
But the bitchy departing colonialists (British) pulled their capital from the Upper Volta dam on their way out the door, leaving Nkrumah to ask the Americans for help, to bring Ghana into the future.
With the old American System of fostering key industries for far-reverberating growth, they might have come in with the necessary capital (they had it), started an integrated aluminum industry in Ghana, and made it the heart of a new boom in African productivity (with shares in all of it, thanks to their capital).
Instead, with Richard Nixon negotiating on behalf of the Eisenhower Administration, they went with the British screw everyone you can system. They gave Ghana the capital for the dam, in exchange for a contract for insanely cheap rates of electricity for a US aluminum smelter (Kaiser, specifically).
BUT – they didn’t develop the Ghanaian mining industry, to feed that smelter, instead they chopped off huge chunks of Jamaica (that my Jamaican friends were rather fond of). Not because the ore was of higher concentration (this is so, but the difference was not prohibitive) but rather, to prevent the full takeoff effect created by the old American system of industrial fostering, for long-term prosperity.
You know who has been using the old American System of fostering key industry and infrastructure for that takeoff effect, for decades now? (while we’ve been busy murdering woefully disobedient inferiors by the millions, and destroying dozens of entire countries) that would be China, folks. How impudent!
No really, think about it for a second. People who still unabashedly call themselves communists, are now reflecting more of the practical hard nosed conservative society-fostering spirit – which alone out of all the theories of governance and management – actually works – than any party or society in the entire western world. (Unless you happen to live in Lichtenstein, and personally know differently). ;o)
I was wrong when I previously wrote that it was Deng Xiaoping in 1993 who insisted on a new focus on rare earths, as a key part of industrial independence. They actually started on it in the seventies (according to Alexander Mercouris, an especially good source and memory, on matters industrial).
So when Trump rails and blusters, or Bessant wheedles about how nasty “China is Bullying the World” (LOL) what they are really saying is – we Americans don’t do long-term planning anymore, we do maximum short-term profits, screw everyone. To which the Chinese shrug and say “okay then, see you when you catch-up, like, never.”
So – Republicans and prosperity lasted about as long as the American System of (well founded) economics, and began to run down steadily after the second world war. The famous post-war boom (because most of the other factories on earth had just been bombed) was the last gasp of it.
Kennedy, very complicated figure though he remains, represents the most recent attempt to assert that old American System (which had, lets remember, allowed much social progress, over many decades) instead of the corruption of Free-Tradeism (hyper-destructive unhinged socially corrosive capitalism).
Johnson is much much weirder still than Kennedy (needs many essays, even to approach), but just as Kennedy’s assassination led directly to the backsliding imperialist mass murderer Johnson, (and another fundamental reversal of the foundation of American prosperity – in the name of ‘big state’ benevolence) Johnson’s own imperialist arrogance led directly to president Richard Nixon. (rather like Obama’s hyper-violent liberal imperialism and outrageous banker-serving oligarch corruption, led us directly and entirely predictably to Trump – curse the whole damn lot of them).
So now here’s a weird question. If we allow (as many historians now do) that Nixon sent Kissinger to sabotage the Paris peace talks (where terms similar to those finally agreed more than five years later, were discussed) and so extended the Vietnam war, to secure his own election win, could he have turned America back toward prosperity again, if he had ended the war immediately, or simply won honestly, without sabotaging the peace? (a win which was not at all impossible despite lazy myths, the times were very weird).
The reason that question is worth asking again and again (at least until we westerners finally snap out of our imperialist delusions in healthy numbers) is that America already went completely bankrupt thanks to the cost of extending the Vietnam war – yet it was handled so smoothly, no one really noticed. (Yes there was strife – gasoline lines, stagflation etc. – but the scale of the ruin is still hidden).
Now here is the part where history keeners really start to scratch their heads. For the very first time in recorded history, the dominant empire of the entire globe went bankrupt – without losing dominance!
(OMFG were the British ever jealous of this trick, and wish they’d invented it themselves, first!)
No really. When we say “The End of Bretton Woods” (Itself a system of trade dominance, but a stable and predictable one, which did not reward wild speculators on the fortunes of entire economies with unearned treasure) we’re talking about an empire that should have collapsed in 1971, but did not.
I’m not spinning a conspiracy theory here. I’m talking about the work of Michael Hudson, who, as a young American economist (expert on the balance of trade) helped in part to design this strategy of externalizing America’s debt, then wrote such a solid critique of it, his book “Hyper Imperialism” remains in print fifty years later. As an old man with a conscience he has spoken very widely about the unstable and poorly conceived economic foundation of modern America, not based on hard work, long term planning and facing reality (the old American and now freshly re-validated functional Chinese approach), but rather vast interlocking gambling plays on abstract stores of value (not just fiat currency itself, weird enough already – dollars not connected to any real hard value in the world – but also the whole demented, outsize and now regularly entire-economy-threatening world of derivatives).
So – am I saying (at long last) that this (1971) is the big crucial moment the Republicans missed? Nope – EVERYONE missed the significance of this fundamental hollowing out of western capitalism. What we have actually earned, like the decadent smug and over-extended British before us - and for more than a half a century now is international losership, based upon our dumb supremacist inertia, fantasy and relentless self-predation (ask any working classer, old enough to remember the days when a worker in a factory could afford to buy a house). But we’re living in a vast construct of denial, pretending we are the greatest winners of all time, even as we undermine every strength (and core value) which once earned the west great (albeit, always more qualified than we recognized) admiration, around the world.
The key moment Republicans missed was actually Jimmy Carter’s “Tighten Our Belts” speech, which I am convinced was no less important than Eisenhower’s extraordinary exit speech, warning about the danger to a free and thriving society of the military-industrial-congressional (in the original) complex.
Jimmy really was a deeply religious man (even if somewhat hapless, as president) and correctly recognized that only a return to hard work and prudence could return America to the American System – which is to say return it to creditor, instead of world’s greatest “too big to fail” debtor-bully, status.
Instead of heeding that clear (albeit depressing) moral call, America embraced Reagan, and his own wacky ideas about “productivity” (which began both the creation of our modern corrupting super rich oligarchs and the massive manufacturing transfer to China, as our capital sought maximum profit, finally fully-divorced from any concern about social value whatsoever). Mind you, just like it was Jimmy (and Z-Big) who started the war in Afghanistan, then Reagan doubled-down on the crazy, Clinton turbo-charged Reaganomics AND the transfer of jobs to China, even as he sabotaged the peace dividend which we had all earned and expected (to carry all boats higher) at the end of the cold war. (real busy irredeemably evil scumbag, that one - still entirely unrepudiated by most Democratards).
You might notice I have mentioned Trump exactly once, so far. But I hope that you have also noticed every single historical subject I have discussed is directly relevant to this extremely dangerous moment.
The modern EU far better represents the rabid and disgusting violent racialist animus that Mercouris so beautifully calls “That old philosophy of the nineteen thirties” than it does any of the great enduring virtues of widespread freedom, aspiration and healthy thriving which many elsewhere used to admire about the west. No one here is fighting for democracy anywhere. In fact, our so-called representatives are all actively sabotaging our democracies on the orders of the oligarchs they actually serve, so that they can continue the centuries old grand (bloody) global struggle for free-trader hegemony.
Seriously people. Go look up who paid for and organized the recent “No More Kings” Marches. Literally a bunch of corporate oligarch (and absolutely free-trader psychopath) Kings! No really.
It isn’t the left or the right which is against freedom – both (fake-coopted) “sides” are mobilizing popular anger to enable government ‘representatives’ to enact sweeping anti-citizen moves by all parties because the richest people on earth are LIQUIDATING DEMOCRACY. (Like Frank Zappa said so brilliantly, many years ago,
“The illusion of freedom will last exactly as long as it is profitable, and then they’ll take down the lights and the sets and the curtains and we’ll all be left staring at the bare brick wall at the back of the theatre.”
NOT the dangerous LEFT or RIGHT – it is crazy powerful scumbags (mostly invisible to us normal citizens, who have almost everything in common) against all of us.
This bigger pattern is KEY, folks. Please don’t get confused by bellowing or shrill personalities or even entire insane nation-states. Also, please try very hard (tricky though it is, in this moment especially) to look at what people do and keep doing, not the torrent of engineered bullshit they say (so often lies, that you are better informed if you follow clear secondary indicators, than the loudmouths themselves).
Are the richest scum in the world entitled to start wars, destroy entire countries and make us (as good patriotic and obedient sheep) forge the weapons and then send our kids into battle carrying them?
ARE WE BROKEN PATHETIC FUCKING SERFS OR CITIZENS OF FREE DEMOCRACIES?
Trump is a crazy asshole but Ursula Fond O’Lyin’ is even crazier – because she definitely knows that what she’s doing is evil and anti-democratic in every last way.
Kier Starmer may head the Labour party, but he sure as hell doesn’t represent the British working class. He spent his professional life locking working-class Britons up, while protecting notorious (Royal connected) serial pedophiles from prosecution.
Emmanuel Macron (who is despised by the voters of France, but refuses to resign) does not give the slightest shit about the French Republic. He cares about his pride and the banks that trained him and groomed him for office (and clearly own him).
Georgia Meloni, very much like Trump himself, ran as a populist with all sorts of ideas for shaking up the old corrupt parasitic special interests, then as soon as she was in office, reversed herself on every key point which had given her base hope of any serious and useful change at all.
Frederick (Blackrock) Merz (down the hall from Lucy and Desi) was elected on a promise to deal with the German debt crisis (not as bad as in France and England, but considering Germany is supposed to be the economic heart of Europe, still very very bad). As soon as he took power he announced he would expand the debt in such a reckless way as to turn that still-repairable crisis into a huge long term disaster for Germans for generations, change failing Volkswagen into a tank manufacturer (more debt, big-time) and in a few years re-fight the second world war with Russia. (Seriously, look it up). All this right out in the open, as if the rest of us don’t remember which side Germany was on in that war. Truly totally absolutely batshit crazy.
And these are all (with the exception of Meloni) representatives of the “Sane” and “Sober” “Liberal” or “Centrist” parties, which stand for “Ethics” and defend us from “Far-rightists” who want above all else an end to all this demented nationally ruinous free-traderism, war-talk bullshit AND long term debt-enslavement to greedy insane bankers, in favour of a return to the old model of sensible general all boats rising prosperity. (Gosh what brutal threatening primitives, compared to the ‘enlightened’ model).
Canadians electing Mark Carney – an appointee technocrat investment banker who never even ran for dog-catcher, before scoring the top job, depresses me like very few things in recent memory. And I admit, this reveals my own disgusting bigotry clearly. I always thought Canadians were just a tiny bit smarter than Americans, and thanks to this fresh evidence, it is now impossible for me to further sustain this smug comforting theory. We elected an oligarch-serving investment banker liquidator, to face Trump, in a fight for our sovereignty. Seriously, we are now being led by a Conrad Black clone, who isn’t even as smart or canny.
Let me explain this for the slow group (and those who have never once considered how strategy works). The reason Trump NEEDED it to be Carney, and not Pollievre, was that for all his bluster he actually does have to respond to two key power-block factions, his donors and his “base.”
Had Canadians elected Pollievre (as they were on track to, before elbows-up psy-op shenanigans) Trump’s base would have said, “See? Canadians are a lot like us, and they are trying to recover their old prosperity models also.” Which would have made it impossible for Trump to attack and rob us blind (as an entire Nation) for his lunch-money.
Those who do watch actions not words will have already noticed that supposedly Liberal Carney is working very hard to implement almost all of (supposedly conservative, but that’s another essay) Pollievre’s plan for infrastructure and development, while actively repealing huge swathes of unpopular Trudeau (bullshit wishingist) policy, so that these uncountable proven disasters will be much harder to run against, in the next election cycle.
So we managed to get a fully conservative servile sellout economic policy, while also staying on America’s convenient shit-list for bullying and extortion. Well played, you brainless f#ckt@rds.
As I said at the start of this mess (when America proved its lack of honour to the world, by attacking Canada, long their closest best economic and security friend) what they want is our auto industry, and they’ll get it, and then it will die anyhow (as it would have if we hadn’t lost it, also). Because China has us both beat, hands-down.
Not because they are sneaky and evil, but because they are sane enough to make long term plans and then actually do the thing. Comparing the cost of high speed rail (and the scale of implementation) here and there, makes this point hilariously clear. (I’ll attach a video below – ROTFL or cry, your call).
While huge swathes of western fake-leftist supremacists have been whining about China being the world’s greatest new polluter (which is dumb, because the affordable goods aren’t just for China, but for the world) Chinese planning and hard work has put them in a position to actually solve the key problems we have long been screaming most need solving. And how do we respond to their solutions? We use nutty tariffs to guard our (imploding) car markets against (finally) affordable electric cars!
No really, the greenest politicians in the western world care way more about stock valuations, than they do the planet. That isn’t because the planet isn’t truly important, but because in the hands of our “leaders” everything we do becomes corruption.
China also leads the world by huge margins in production installation and generation of solar and wind power (and several manufacturers have now revealed affordable hydrogen car prototypes, should the world finally turn in that still promising, but also still technically under-developed direction).
Not because they are preachy and whiny (a model we have proven utterly futile) but by HARD WORK.
So now let me say a few things clearly and simply, that wouldn’t make any sense at all without the stuff I’ve just said above.
What Canada needs is an old fashioned American-Style economic policy, which is geared to make sure we get the goods from the world which we need, while steadily developing complete self-reliance in all other areas.
This isn’t about (and can’t be achieved by) any kind of arrogance whatsoever. It is about cooperation and win-win deals with others, rather than using our extraction industries (among the most profitable and exploitative in the world) to beggar the poor elsewhere, then have their capitalists do it to our poor.
Canada should be in BRICS, or at least on the waiting list. Acting like we have a spine, instead of like the broken-spirited obedient spouse of two abusive senile empires, as almost all of our contemporary politicians now assume, upon entry. (May even be the pass-fail bar by which they are selected, by our oligarch class – who laugh their guts out in comfortable semi-invisibility, while we mob manicheans rail against yanks, instead of going after the bastards in our backyard, who we could actually catch).
A specific detail that might make this western ahistorical arrogance and wild stupidity mix, clearer. Most now know that China has a special new power in trade negotiations thanks to a half a century of careful planning and hard work on rare earths (and when I say planning long term, I mean they have roughly fifty entire university programs, specializing in rare earth chemistry and processing).
What people have not heard (because as I keep saying, our news is now utter shit) is that China knew that they could not afford to use this leverage until very recently, because their industries were just as dependent on American Helium inputs, as American industry was on Chinese Rare Earth inputs.
China finally achieved full Helium independence just a couple of years ago (again, thanks to careful planning over decades), and, being such careful realistic planners, it was only then that they finally saw their dominance in rare earths as a bargaining chip which would not backfire, if they were ever forced to actually use it.
Now contrast the western approach. Did you hear about what the crazy idiots in the Netherlands just did, as part of the great war between the desperate, decaying (bankrupt) “glorious west” and BRICS, for the future of trade leadership?
The Chinese invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing a chip company in Holland called Nexperia, which provided many good jobs to smart young Dutch designers and technical people (Holland has a long and widely under-appreciated history of gifting the world with truly great civilian technology – like the great Lou Ottens, who invented the cassette tape, while working for Phillips). Nexperia did not make the most advanced chips, they went after mass quantities of standard low cost and flexible chips, which are used all over the place in general manufacture of consumer goods.
So – on orders from the Americans (this, from every source I have) the Dutch government seized this chip company, to punish China for its support for Russia. (In the war absolutely started by western war-state intel and oligarchs, which could have been ended in weeks, except every peace Russia offered, was also blocked by the west).
The Chinese were not happy about this completely illegal (and investor-terrifying) theft of their company, naturally. But they also had a little think about it and then said, “Say, you guys do realize that the factory where Nexperia actually manufactures those chips, is right here in China, don’t you?”
Three guesses, who isn’t taking calls from head office anymore. Make that one.
No, I mean it, we (the blood-soaked imperialist west) really are THAT DUMB now. They seized the corporate offices to a company, even though the primary production capacity is located in the country being punished.
So – along with Canada needing some old fashioned free-trade (imperialism) proof American-style economics (and we are fortunate enough to have the diversity of resources, to make that play work very well, long term). We also need to stop moralizing and emoting (like entitled imperialists) and start thinking and working.
This is yet another reason I keep coming back around to anti-tribalism. I want us to make it, and I want it to be better to be alive, year after year, even though it’s been going the other way for many decades.
We are going to need big ideas, but we are also going to need a TON of practical realistic hard work and applied planning. Neither the tribalists on the left or the right can make this actually work alone. That’s why they keep dividing us – so we the people can keep being just as passionate caring and active as we want and yet will ultimately end up every time as futile wasted losers.
Is Trump’s brute force approach to re-shoring American industry going to work? Absolutely not, because the fundamentals that made that American system work in America the first time – strong infrastructure, advanced transport, supply chain coordination and trade education aren’t there in America anymore (might have been worth trying in the 90s, but too many of the necessaries have since been mothballed).
But this is a very different thing from saying that the theory of nationally (rather than globalist investor) driven economics, is without any merit, or fundamentally right-wing in intention or effect – the full last century and more of our own history actually suggest quite the opposite is in fact true.
It is free-traderism (piracy, legalized) which makes a psychotic ruling class destroy other entire countries for profit, and learn that trick so well and deeply that they even come home to pillage from the foundations of their own. The Atlantis model.
Nationhood, for all it’s proven and oft-discussed faults, can actually contain way more pride aspiration and hope than that.
When we do it right (like the old pan-African spirit) life feels more like purpose, less like jail!
But I mean a kind of nationhood which is not so corrupted as to be habituated and even addicted to never ending cycles of self-destruction.
You know exactly what I mean, don’t you?
Like a bunch of real Americans, as opposed to, well, um, a bunch of real Americans?
(I know, sorry, couldn’t resist it. Upstairs neighbour humour).
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Here’s that ROTFL story about how we do rail, and how they do rail (and just how freakin’ doomed we will remain, until we pull our heads out of our arrogant assess)
From Kevin at China Business Insider
Here is a superb discussion of the crumbling of our old imperial (economic parasite) model with the extraordinary geopolitical analyst Alex Krainer and the amazing professor Glenn Diesen (a peace hero)
Here’s one of my favourite Chinese commentators on trade and markets, not only is Sean Foo direct and up to date, he’s also hilarious. “Don’t try to bluff an entire civilization. They literally wrote the art of war, for crying out loud.”
And here’s the brilliant and highly informative anti-monopolist Matt Stoller making many of these same points I did, but with a different focus and selection of historical referents (and also a far more paranoid view of China, than my own).
And in case you think I’m making up the west’s absolute brick-wall refusal of Russian peace offers that would have saved at least a million lives (maybe twice that), please check out this under-covered story.
Finally, you are reading Kit Klarenburg, right? Nobody else on earth is digging into the history of our (ongoing) western supremacist cold war madness and complicity in evil (CIA and UK intel especially) like Kit (just as courageous and far-seeking as his Grayzone colleague Max Blumenthal is, on Gaza).












This piece really made me think. It's so important to analyse how both sides can be manipulated. Thank you for this honest and insightful perspective, it's a critical system check we need.
For any who have a hard time with my contempt for the modern Democrats (and their many grotesque clones around the world) please check out Chris Hedges - the only man I know who is both a Marxist and a sincere Christian pastor (both an economic critique, and also serious ethics).
https://scheerpost.com/2025/11/04/chris-hedges-trumps-greatest-ally-is-the-democratic-party/