Nov 23, 2022·edited Nov 23, 2022Liked by laughlyn (johan eddebo)
Good read. I especially enjoyed your attention for the way our societies have forgotten to look critically at power.
I often think about this, and the professionalization we saw from the 90s on seems to play a big part in how people view the world and themselves within it. It has become more important to fit in than to reflect.
This is why American patriotism smells phony to me. Is this what one should be proud of? Even if you don’t know the extent of it (and really, is there someone out there who truly knows the extent of it), you can feel it in your bones that you’re a part of an evil empire whose hunger is never satiated.
Such good thinking and writing. Thank you for that. I am looking forward to the next part.
There's a new novel out titled The Passenger from an American writer Cormac Mccarthy. In the book, there are the following words: "A calamity can be erased by no amount of good. It can only be erased by a worse calamity."
Yes, so, how was ALL of this forgotten over the last 15 years ?
Among people I grew up with, all of whom knew this, or appeared to know it, today the same people are unrecognizable.
2 possibilities:
1. The system reversed/degraded everything, inverted every principle/belief that people formerly subscribed to, and nobody noticed.
OR
2. It’s always been this way; people never really held these beliefs. They were just sounds picked up from mass media, which included such ideas at the time, and parroted albeit with less interpretive reflection than is indeed evidenced by parrots 🦜
I’m leaning toward 2.
A small point about the article above: Russia does produce its own microchips. Not at 7 namometer (yet) but they have no problem producing their own chips.
And those relative valuations of countries (and companies) at dollar value are io be weighed: shareholder stock valuation in dollar reserve currency financialized economies versus material and industrial output
Here’s another list of things everyone used to “know”, or a list of officials who said outloud the same thing, which everyone knew:
Why even read beyond the first one? Well, but the list is endless, from the architect of the Cold War himself, George Kennan, to every high official in living memory, to every 12 year old kid riding a skateboard down some cul de sac, EVERYONE KNEW.
So what happened? How was the entire political/institutional establishment uprooted, set afire on the trash heap of history, and replaced by a political army of totally psychotic zombified automaton suicidal freaks, while NOBODY NOTICED. Seriously, fuck me, it’s definitely number 2.
But there’s counter evidence. Americans with a functioning brain are endangered species, but they’re not extinct, yet. Here’s one
Nothing to do with people and power is simple, because humans are complex. Very, very few people have the integrity to resist the lure of money and/or power, be they Left or Right, US or foreign. Those positions attract psychopaths, who crave power like an addict craves heroin.
There's a good reason why our Constitution specifies that only Congress can declare war. It's the sons and daughters of the lower and middle classes who go off to war, and pay the hugeprice in blood and inflation. But we haven't "declared war" since WWII, & not even Rand Paul has objected to this Ukraine debacle, nor insisted on the congressional right to declare war.
But it's never as cut and dried as you portray it, and not every war was provoked by us. Communits and leftist "revolutionaries" have done their share, especially in S. America, as have Muslims worldwide.
Good read. I especially enjoyed your attention for the way our societies have forgotten to look critically at power.
I often think about this, and the professionalization we saw from the 90s on seems to play a big part in how people view the world and themselves within it. It has become more important to fit in than to reflect.
Tough to take but true. Perkins in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man covers a lot of this too.
This is why American patriotism smells phony to me. Is this what one should be proud of? Even if you don’t know the extent of it (and really, is there someone out there who truly knows the extent of it), you can feel it in your bones that you’re a part of an evil empire whose hunger is never satiated.
Such good thinking and writing. Thank you for that. I am looking forward to the next part.
There's a new novel out titled The Passenger from an American writer Cormac Mccarthy. In the book, there are the following words: "A calamity can be erased by no amount of good. It can only be erased by a worse calamity."
Killing Hope by William Blum was a wake up call for me in the late 90's. Excellent piece, looking forward to the next installment.
Fantastic, thank you.
Yes, so, how was ALL of this forgotten over the last 15 years ?
Among people I grew up with, all of whom knew this, or appeared to know it, today the same people are unrecognizable.
2 possibilities:
1. The system reversed/degraded everything, inverted every principle/belief that people formerly subscribed to, and nobody noticed.
OR
2. It’s always been this way; people never really held these beliefs. They were just sounds picked up from mass media, which included such ideas at the time, and parroted albeit with less interpretive reflection than is indeed evidenced by parrots 🦜
I’m leaning toward 2.
A small point about the article above: Russia does produce its own microchips. Not at 7 namometer (yet) but they have no problem producing their own chips.
And those relative valuations of countries (and companies) at dollar value are io be weighed: shareholder stock valuation in dollar reserve currency financialized economies versus material and industrial output
Here’s another list of things everyone used to “know”, or a list of officials who said outloud the same thing, which everyone knew:
https://whileican.substack.com/p/jeffrey-sachs-must-be-a-deranged
Why even read beyond the first one? Well, but the list is endless, from the architect of the Cold War himself, George Kennan, to every high official in living memory, to every 12 year old kid riding a skateboard down some cul de sac, EVERYONE KNEW.
So what happened? How was the entire political/institutional establishment uprooted, set afire on the trash heap of history, and replaced by a political army of totally psychotic zombified automaton suicidal freaks, while NOBODY NOTICED. Seriously, fuck me, it’s definitely number 2.
But there’s counter evidence. Americans with a functioning brain are endangered species, but they’re not extinct, yet. Here’s one
https://youtu.be/QOfF-lgd9jA
Douglas Macgregor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Macgregor
…same in Sweden; I know at least two
Your description of the Chile/Pinochet ascension doesn't mention the horrors of Allende and his Castro-imported thugs that "disappeared" many Chileans, and ruined Chile's economy. (https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/when-chile-chose-a-marxist-leader).
Nothing to do with people and power is simple, because humans are complex. Very, very few people have the integrity to resist the lure of money and/or power, be they Left or Right, US or foreign. Those positions attract psychopaths, who crave power like an addict craves heroin.
There's a good reason why our Constitution specifies that only Congress can declare war. It's the sons and daughters of the lower and middle classes who go off to war, and pay the hugeprice in blood and inflation. But we haven't "declared war" since WWII, & not even Rand Paul has objected to this Ukraine debacle, nor insisted on the congressional right to declare war.
But it's never as cut and dried as you portray it, and not every war was provoked by us. Communits and leftist "revolutionaries" have done their share, especially in S. America, as have Muslims worldwide.
It's just not that simple.