For anyone who, like me, rode along over the last couple of years with Scott Ritter as he stood almost alone for peace (at great personal cost), then became over-emotional and also over-optimistic in some very strange ways, and most recently shifted to being frighteningly bitter – Brian Berletic may just be the perfect balancer, you've been looking for.
To be clear, Ritter has showed extraordinary (heroic) courage for decades, and personally contributed a great deal to America’s potential to re-balance policy toward integrity (remote as that goal remains). No slight whatsoever to a genuinely great man.
But sometimes analysis requires a bit more sang-froid than he has been able to muster, of late.
Not to mention – Thailand seems like a FANTASTIC place to watch this mess from – at least when it comes to achieving some measure of emotional detachment. Long piece, but tons of subtle clarity.
Plus, Berletic himself is BRILLIANT and his perspectives not only thoughtful, but well-evidenced!
The Divide: The ruling elite, the managers, and the plebs. Biden and Trump are just managers, media personifying them plays to the elite, and plays on the plebs. It's no wonder the rich think the poor in mind cannot govern themselves. When you don't think and stand up for yourself, someone will do it for you.
The problem with Israel controlling the world is that a bunch of 'racists' get to act legit. Same way a bunch of wannabe macho men got to support Russia, not because NATO is wrong (even though that's a valid argument).
It's an uncomfortable situation wherewith some people use the truth of 'my' geopolitics as their excuse for hatred e.g., they'll 'conservatively' endanger gay folk.
I'm more you in that the USA is using Israel. However, with long relationships there's cross-pollination, and thus some Zionists are buying American favour. Similarly, cheap labour changed the whiteness of the UK, and eventually led to London's current mayor and their last quick prime minister.
When I'm reading the long version of you, it means I have to skip another 10 substackers repeating the news with outrage. Today, I can say, "Rather this!"
I'll take the ever-changing Pain of Salvation over 'Emerson Lake and Palmer'.
Yes - simplifying in either (any) direction gets you into all kinds of trouble - and also empowers all kinds of malign impulses (which always naturally coagulate, to do worse) that whole "enemy of my enemy" thing, has done more damage to more aspirations...
As to control, it's one of those things that sort of flips again, every time you go another level down (why I invoked nested parenthesis and matryoshka). I think of Marlon Brando in a classic film about Saudi oil, staring at another character with (you idiot) disgust, and saying "We ARE the Arabs" (It is SaudiARAMco, after all, not Saudi totally independent inc).
My main goal is to get people to break up the simplifications they are comfortable with and think more and harder, stay flexible and nimble, rather than relying on the kind of levers which are invevitably weaponized against us, in short order. Cooption and power-fakery have been the hidden keynotes for the span of our lives (as Xers, in particular). The flower kids had a few years of sewing their own jeans before they came prefab, at least - but our rebel culture was punk/goth branded and mass marketed WHILE IT WAS FREAKIN HAPPENING - and it has only got worse since then (I feel genuinely bad for kids - so few hard referents of genuine value). Sorry - may seem a digression, but I think you'll understand I mean the fakery generalizes to the political as well as the cultural level. Probably why the matrix remains the most unforgettable (and equally dangerous) 'text' of our age.
I really hope Ted Gioia is right, and a new romantic rebellion is just around the corner and set to sweep the world (and restrain the psychotic cyberneticists as leftists, anarchists, Christians and those of many other faiths TOGETHER once restrained the worst rapacity of industrialism).
Mind you, I've been hoping for that since I was 12! (oh dear)
My jeans were torn from use, and eventually bad enough they'd be turned into shorts, all the while listening to great music from a fantastically darker world. 20 years down the line, a kid into pop orders new torn jeans and wears a Nirvana t-shirt.
History shows that there are 4 cycles, and that destruction always follows selfishness. Thereafter, a bunch of us die, forcing us to work together in kumbaya until we become richer and repeat the cycle of destruction and growth, and necessity and hate.
For anyone who, like me, rode along over the last couple of years with Scott Ritter as he stood almost alone for peace (at great personal cost), then became over-emotional and also over-optimistic in some very strange ways, and most recently shifted to being frighteningly bitter – Brian Berletic may just be the perfect balancer, you've been looking for.
To be clear, Ritter has showed extraordinary (heroic) courage for decades, and personally contributed a great deal to America’s potential to re-balance policy toward integrity (remote as that goal remains). No slight whatsoever to a genuinely great man.
But sometimes analysis requires a bit more sang-froid than he has been able to muster, of late.
Not to mention – Thailand seems like a FANTASTIC place to watch this mess from – at least when it comes to achieving some measure of emotional detachment. Long piece, but tons of subtle clarity.
Plus, Berletic himself is BRILLIANT and his perspectives not only thoughtful, but well-evidenced!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwYRkJqDbRE
I've followed Larry and the Judge for years. I'm pleased that they've forsaken their Trumpian ways. We are all human, and we learn.
I think the trick is to seperate three things
Trump himself
People who think the Democrats are corrupt shit-heads (self-evidently true)
The recognition that the old system and structures aren't working anymore.
Opposing Trump the man makes every kind of sense, on every possible level.
So does opposing totally corrupt Democrats (or Liberals, here in Canada)
Pretending that the opposition to corruption is agreement with the Don, is dishonest.
But pretending that the tide isn't coming-in to wash away almost a century of bloodsoaked western imperialism, is a really good way to drown!
(Millions of turkeys in a rainstorm looking up and going "me, me, me, me - glub")
The Divide: The ruling elite, the managers, and the plebs. Biden and Trump are just managers, media personifying them plays to the elite, and plays on the plebs. It's no wonder the rich think the poor in mind cannot govern themselves. When you don't think and stand up for yourself, someone will do it for you.
I'm gonna steal that for a note.
The problem with Israel controlling the world is that a bunch of 'racists' get to act legit. Same way a bunch of wannabe macho men got to support Russia, not because NATO is wrong (even though that's a valid argument).
It's an uncomfortable situation wherewith some people use the truth of 'my' geopolitics as their excuse for hatred e.g., they'll 'conservatively' endanger gay folk.
I'm more you in that the USA is using Israel. However, with long relationships there's cross-pollination, and thus some Zionists are buying American favour. Similarly, cheap labour changed the whiteness of the UK, and eventually led to London's current mayor and their last quick prime minister.
When I'm reading the long version of you, it means I have to skip another 10 substackers repeating the news with outrage. Today, I can say, "Rather this!"
I'll take the ever-changing Pain of Salvation over 'Emerson Lake and Palmer'.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC-Ntvx_Uuc
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QKmOJl4GXQ
Yes - simplifying in either (any) direction gets you into all kinds of trouble - and also empowers all kinds of malign impulses (which always naturally coagulate, to do worse) that whole "enemy of my enemy" thing, has done more damage to more aspirations...
As to control, it's one of those things that sort of flips again, every time you go another level down (why I invoked nested parenthesis and matryoshka). I think of Marlon Brando in a classic film about Saudi oil, staring at another character with (you idiot) disgust, and saying "We ARE the Arabs" (It is SaudiARAMco, after all, not Saudi totally independent inc).
My main goal is to get people to break up the simplifications they are comfortable with and think more and harder, stay flexible and nimble, rather than relying on the kind of levers which are invevitably weaponized against us, in short order. Cooption and power-fakery have been the hidden keynotes for the span of our lives (as Xers, in particular). The flower kids had a few years of sewing their own jeans before they came prefab, at least - but our rebel culture was punk/goth branded and mass marketed WHILE IT WAS FREAKIN HAPPENING - and it has only got worse since then (I feel genuinely bad for kids - so few hard referents of genuine value). Sorry - may seem a digression, but I think you'll understand I mean the fakery generalizes to the political as well as the cultural level. Probably why the matrix remains the most unforgettable (and equally dangerous) 'text' of our age.
I really hope Ted Gioia is right, and a new romantic rebellion is just around the corner and set to sweep the world (and restrain the psychotic cyberneticists as leftists, anarchists, Christians and those of many other faiths TOGETHER once restrained the worst rapacity of industrialism).
Mind you, I've been hoping for that since I was 12! (oh dear)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My jeans were torn from use, and eventually bad enough they'd be turned into shorts, all the while listening to great music from a fantastically darker world. 20 years down the line, a kid into pop orders new torn jeans and wears a Nirvana t-shirt.
History shows that there are 4 cycles, and that destruction always follows selfishness. Thereafter, a bunch of us die, forcing us to work together in kumbaya until we become richer and repeat the cycle of destruction and growth, and necessity and hate.