Listen to a reading of this article:
❖
There’s a John Mearsheimer video clip from 2016 that’s going viral on Twitter right now, as old John Mearsheimer clips tend to do in the year 2022 when his predictions that western actions would lead to the destruction of Ukraine are coming horrifyingly true.
In response to a question about what the worst US foreign policy disaster has been, Mearsheimer agreed with a fellow panelist that at that moment Iraq looked like the worst, but said he believed US policy on Ukraine would prove much worse in coming years. He spoke of the fact that Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons, and that it’s entirely possible those weapons will be used if Russia feels threatened.
“Because the Cold War is in the distant past, most people, especially younger people, haven’t thought a lot about nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence, and they tend to be quite cavalier in their comments about nuclear weapons, and this makes me very nervous,” Mearsheimer said.
In 2016, Mearsheimer was asked what the biggest disaster in US foreign policy was. The panelist next to him said Iraq. Here’s his answer. In my business, this is called a crystal ball. pic.twitter.com/pFBnOIJ5Jm
— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) June 19, 2022
It makes me nervous too. Especially when we’ve got a steadily escalating proxy war which the standoff in Lithuania could easily see spin out into a direct hot war between Russia and NATO powers, and when we hear the UK’s top army general telling troops to prepare for World War Three.
Most of what I see in public discourse about escalating aggressions between the US power alliance and Russia reflects the cavalier attitude Mearsheimer spoke of in 2016, as do my own interactions with people online. Most of what I’m seeing in the behavior of NATO powers indicates this cavalier attitude about nuclear weapons as well. People, from the rank-and-file public to the upper echelons of empire management, don’t seem to be thinking very hard about what nuclear war is and what it would mean.
As Mearsheimer said, this does seem to be because we’re so removed now from the days when everyone was acutely aware that the missiles could start flying at any time.
It just doesn’t sit well with people’s understanding of the world that it could all end through the same nuclear armageddon scenario their grandparents used to worry about. If two men were holding guns to each other’s heads it would be experienced as very dangerous at first, but after a while if nobody pulled the trigger the emotional tension would begin to diminish. If years went by and the men got older it would diminish even further. If they got so old they couldn’t hold the guns anymore and had their children take over for them, and then their children’s children years later, the emotional experience of the standoff would be all but forgotten.
But the guns never got any less deadly. The fact that nuclear war hasn’t happened yet means only that: that it hasn’t happened yet. Things that have never happened before happen all the time. There didn’t used to be nuclear weapons, now there are. Earth is currently a habitable planet, one day soon it may not be.
We came within a hair’s breadth of wiping ourselves out during the last cold war, not just once but many times. Any amount of nuclear brinkmanship opens up the possibility of nuclear war erupting in ways that are too hard to anticipate and plan for, because there are too many small moving parts, too many ways a nuke could be detonated as a result of technical malfunction, miscommunication, miscalculation and/or misunderstanding. The further things escalate between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, the greater the likelihood of this happening.
And of course the powerful have every reason to encourage this way of thinking to continue. If a critical mass of the population really understood that their lives are being threatened with nuclear war for no other reason than the US empire’s willingness to risk everything to secure planetary hegemony, they would immediately become hard to deal with. Empire managers plan on not just engaging in nuclear brinkmanship but also making things much harder on the public financially in their long-term agendas against Russia and China, and the only way everyone plays along with this is if they are kept from understanding what’s being done to them.
This is why the media have been acting so strange in recent years. Agendas are being rolled out which no sane person would consent to if they fully understood them, so their consent needs to be manufactured with massive amounts of propaganda. It’s also why internet censorship has taken a high priority during that same period of time: can’t have people using their newfound information-sharing capability to interfere in the narrative manipulations of the empire.
We’re being sedated into a propaganda-induced coma while immensely powerful people play profoundly dangerous games with our lives. It is in our interest to find a way to awaken as soon as possible.
_________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
84 responses to “People Don’t Think Hard Enough About What Nuclear War Is And What It Would Mean”
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport.” That poignant quote from William Shakespeare still stings deeply for me having served as a medical corpsman in Vietnam. I saw the tragedy of war, and its true cost, up close and personal, during my tour of duty. America has been in decline since that humiliating defeat in Vietnam.. Yet nothing has changed among the elites who rule in Washington D.C. They are living in a parallel universe. From the fall of Saigon to the fall of Kabul, it’s been one foreign policy debacle after another. The elites are like ancient Greek gods sitting on high on their thrones on Mount Olympus hurtling down their thunderbolts on us mere mortals who fought and died for them, and yet they continue to do so in this era of forever wars. Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, was also a famous writer on that tragedy, But he admitted late in life he was wrong to have viewed the Holocaust as the triumph of hate over love. He finally realized that the opposite of love was not hate but indifference. These elites are indifferent to our fate even as mushroom clouds loom large on the horizon as the war in Ukraine continues to spin out of control. That’s why Professor John Mearshimer sarcastically said, “the US is fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.” The elites think Ukraine is just another war in their obsessive mania to try and maintain liberal hegemony over the world. Only sociopaths, who suffer from narcissistic personality disorder, such Robert McNamara, former secretary of defense and architect of the Vietnam War, think this way. They are all war criminals. This war isn’t just another proxy war as Vietnam was. We could be “going toe to toe with the Russkies” as Major Kong said in Dr. Strangelove. (By the way, it’s ironic and chilling McNamara’s middle name was Strange the family name of his ancestors.) I doubt Secretary of State Anthony Blinken will volunteer to ride on the tip of that nuclear bomb Major King did at the end of the movie. The elites who love to start these wars somehow fail to fight in them. They have to maintain their goal to be gainfully employed and serve as advisers on the council for the next war. So the last war was a debacle. We meant well. Our plans seemed logical and sound. You’re being so judgmental. You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs. That’s what they tell the eggs. And we all know who they are. Even Henry Kissinger is worried about the Ukraine War. He sees how NATO is repeating the mistakes that the European powers made as they were sleepwalking toward the abyss of the First World War with their eyes wide shut. But this time the ante has been upped with hypersonic nuclear missiles as Vladimir Putin has been warning NATO. Now when I agree with the uber war criminal of the 20th century something is terribly amiss in the world. The inmates have taken over the asylum. We had a joke in Vietnam that if the base came under a mortar attack all you had to do was “grab your ankles and kiss your ass goodbye.” It doesn’t seem so funny now as nuclear war becomes more and more thinkable.
“The fact that nuclear war hasn’t happened yet means only that: that it hasn’t happened yet.”
And history shows that every empire eventually faces the war it seeks to avert – its own downfall. Nobody wants a nuclear war. The conclusion of the syllogism is clear: humanity is facing nuclear holocaust. The answer to why – which continues to elude the human race – lies in history.
https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/
Ernest Hemingway„Třesu se někdy o svou vlast, když pomyslím na to, že Bůh je spravedlivý.“ – Thomas Jefferson
„Věřím, že spojené státy americké kteří těží z války a přispívají k jejímu vzniku,
by měli být ASIMILIOVÁNI hned první den občany své země.“ – Ernest Hemingway
Nuclear weapons do not exist.
See:
http://www.big-lies.org
Tell that to everybody that lives in Hiroshima
i think nuclear war will be great! Think of all the cool superpowers and body makeovers we’ll get. I’m hoping for hair tentacles and an extra leg.
The American Hegemon needs war to cover up the ongoing train wreck it instituted years ago. War is the sideshow to distract the rubes from how the political elite are always pickpocketing them. Later with their crocodile tears they propagandize the dead rubes for making the ultimate sacrifice. Its evil beyond belief.
Chongqing elevated monorail, driver view.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeknYFMs6KI
The idea that US is competitive with China is equivalent of believing some Soap Box Derby kids can race against a Formula One team with expectations of success.
The nuclear war that I believe is coming will be the result of jealousy. The US will never accept second banana status, and the only reason we are not closer to war with China than we are at the moment, is because the US is incabable of the self-reflection necessary to grasp that the little wooden car it’s trying to compete with doesn’t have an engine.
What pains me the most about this process is Western leftists and socialists for the most part refuse to see let alone accept China’s greatness. Forget political stuctures you dumb fucking twits, they are irrelevant in this story. What is China doing, in other arenas, that in less than 30 years it went from being the labor sweathouse of the world to being by far and away the most equitable and prosperous civilization in the history of this planet?
Could it be SOCIALISM?
And I won’t even get into the esoterics, like pursuit of happiness, because that would be piling on. If there is ONE THING that is abundantly clear about modern day China, no people have ever been happier.
I’m talking to you Russel Brand.*
*And yes, I agree, shit like digital money is scary. I personally gave up all my plasic more than a decade ago, because if I am to be robbed, I prefer it to come at gunpoint than to have some bank steal money off a computer screen behind my back.
But Mr. Brand, as I go around China, and pay digitally everywhere I go, not only do I admit to enjoying the convenience of it. but as long as my state run banks are working for me, and not against me, are not trying rape my personage 24/7 but are in fact dedicated to my interest and penalty free liberties, I’m willing to reconsider the whole idea.
Maybe we’ll get better at self reflection when the food starts to run out. We might even get smart enough to collectivize.
Have you seen the video/s of the attacks on women in China? I’d bet there are a lot more unhappy people than you think. As is the norm in communist countries, they know better than to complain. And let’s not forget the Uyghurs. I’d wager very few of them are happy. Suppose for arguments sake, somebody working for your bank(government) monitoring social media decided they didn’t like something you posted on social media, and decided then to freeze your account? Or decide you spent too much last month on beef, so this month your beef allowance was cut off?
What communist country do you currently inhabit?
They’re coming out of the woodwork,
The Uyghurs!!! Lmao …
This next phase of the neo-liberal globalist struggle is going to be brutal. If we thought the whining was bad during this Russian fiasco, just wait till they take on China.
Ty Píčus ,každá země se má starat jen o sebe!!§USA se sre do všech zemí světa vykrádá je a dělá z nich žebráky. Co je ti do ujguru??? Vyvraždili jste 40 milionu puvodních američanu indiánu!!! Ukradli jste ji jejich zem KDO VÁS ZA TO POTRESTA???
Maybe you should actually spend some China and SE Asia like I have, Also SW Asia for that matter. China is well it is built by Chinese in a slap-dash fashion and the Chinese talent much like the rest of Asia is the ability to make something brand new look very old in a short period of time. The chinese have very low abilities at invention on average. Chinese vehicles are garbage, they have not been able to build any sort of Airplane that the world would buy and put passengers on. Much like the Soviet Union planes and cars. Have you actually dealt with Chinese in China? As in ya know, buying stuff, getting stuff made, etc? I have. Wow… All I can say is you are so blinded by the propaganda…
Proof?
DVĚ STĚ LET TERORISMU USA: Přehledný seznam všech amerických válečných zločinů, teroru a válek (část 2: od války ve Vietnamu do současnosti)
http://www.rodon.cz/print/clanek.php?id=3886
“It is in our interest to find a way to awaken as soon as possible.”
And what, EXACTLY, are “we” going to do AFTER we awaken? Are We, the Woke, We Who Already Understand What’s Going On c going to ontinue to vote our warmongering, false-narrative-creating oppressors’ bought-and-paid-for R and D agents into public offices time and time again!
What, exactly, does the word “revolution” mean? Is there universal agreement on what the word “revolution” means? If there is, please tell me precisely HOW people “revolt”? What would the BEHAVIOR of “revolting” be? Would We, the Woke, We Who Already Understand What’s Going On be picking up guns and running down the streets with our hair on fire, each of us yelling in perfect synchronicity with the collective “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!”? Would We, the Woke, We Who Already Understand What’s Going On be guillotining some VIPs on the White House lawn? Would We, the Woke, We Who Already Understand What’s Going On be marching hand in hand down Penn. Ave. demand, demand, demanding that the Elite behave better, or else? (“or else” just exactly WHAT?!)
Here’s what you, me, We, the Woke, We Who Already Understand What’s Going On, We Who Want A Better, Healthier World are eventually going to HAVE TO DO because
there. is. no. other. way! to remove our warmongering, false-narrative-creating oppressors’ 536 Rs and Ds from federal elected positions of power. (If you know of another way, please spell it out, right here, right now and, BTW, reading another hundred really great books that tell you who’s holding the reins of power in one hand and your balls in the other, wishing upon a star, dream, dream, dreaming; hoping and praying and deep, deep, deep self-study and drug-trips are not going to do that job.)
THIS is how you “revolt”: If you do not want More Of The Same that you’ve gotten after every election in the past, do not vote for another R or D, ever, no matter what an R or D promises! Jimmy Dore explains EXACTLY why.
If you DO want More Of The Same, when you walk into the voting booth, just vote for another R or D, makes no difference which. (The latter is what the tens of millions of direct and indirect employees of, and the investors in, the MIC are going to do. They’re going to vote for No. 1 and they don’t give a shit if doing that ultimately leads to nuclear WWIII; they know precisely what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. )
All 80 million of us have to do is vote those 536 R and D fuckers out of office and the world at least has a chance at becoming a better place.
I too have thought it odd that people no longer seem concerned about the possibility of nuclear war, musing in conversation that perhaps they think the batteries in the missiles have all gone dead. Part of the reason is the system tries to keep it under the rug and off the radar, but mostly I think it really is because people are by now used to it not happening. Complacency is nice while it lasts.
We’re in an open ended game of nuclear Russian roulette and we’re eventually going to hit a loaded chamber. Instead of unrealistically trying to avoid nuclear war it might be more productive to think and act in terms of trying to limit it to the smallest scale achievable. Accept that some number of warheads will be used and some number of cities destroyed, but try to quickly converge back to zero while we still have a civilization left. If we can do that then once it happens I think humanity will come around to eliminating nuclear weapons, but until then it seems reason and logic aren’t going to be sufficient. I don’t know exactly how we’re supposed to pursue nuclear war non escalation, but that may be the most realistic path. And at the risk of sounding optimistic it might be that small scale use of nuclear weapons will be something of a death blow to militarism generally.
Perhaps we can start by saying aloud that Nuclear Weapons Are Illegal Since 2021.
UN headquarters are in New York, they can easily remind US government that US is in illegal possession of WMD.
So, US government cannot be spending $1.2 trillion on nuclear modernization, right?
I would not be pinning my hopes on low yield nukes, because Pentagon and the MSM tried to sell them to the public as a more safe and humane version of what they did in Hiroshima. And low yield nukes are actually 2-4 times the tonnage of the Hiroshima bomb.
https://www.npr.org/2021/01/22/959583731/u-n-treaty-banning-nuclear-weapons-takes-effect-without-the-u-s-and-others
Yeah, the TPNW. It’s nice to have a legal framework but I don’t see the UN writing any tickets. And I don’t get anybody thinking low yield nukes are some kind of answer, and more than Saturday night specials are a solution to gun violence. And speaking of yields, the highest yielding bomb yet detonated was around 3000 times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb.
How will this struggle for influence in the area of the former USSR end? In the Book of Daniel we read: “At the appointed time [the king of the north] will return back [Russian troops will return to where they were previously stationed. It also means means military actions, a major crisis, plus the break-up of the EU and NATO], and will enter into the south [because of ethnic conflict (Matthew 24:7)], but it will not be as the former [Georgia – 2008] or as the latter [Russia’s current military actions in Eastern Europe also will not evolve into WW3. This will happen only later, after Russia’s return], for the dwellers of coastlands of Kittim [the distant West] will come against him, and (he) will broke down [mentally], and will go back.” (11:29, 30a) This will be a mutual slaughter and world war not only by name. And the great power sword will be used. (Revelation 6:4) Jesus characterized him in this way: “A frightening things both and extraordinary (related to unusual phenomena) from sky powerful will be.” (Luke 21:11) Because of the use of these terrible weapons there will be significant tremors along the length and breadth of the regions [of strategic importance] and famines, and pestilences. Some ancient manuscripts contain the words “and frosts”. The Aramaic Peshitta: “and will be great frosts”. (Luke 21:11) We call this today “nuclear winter”. In Mark 13:8 there are also words of Jesus: “and disorders” (in the sense of confusion and chaos). The Aramaic Peshitta: “and confusion” (on the state of public order). It won’t be Armageddon. “But all these things are a beginning of birth-pains.” (Matthew 24:8, DLNT)
Return whence you came and droppeth off the earth. (Bill:1)
“Birth-pains”? Nuclear “birth” fucking “pains”? I just want to go on record as saying that if I manage to survive a nuclear war brought on by you fundi nitwits then you people better just stay the hell out of my sights, and if that sounds harsh at least I’m not trying to bible thump you and everybody else into oblivion.
“WE DIDN’T START THE FIRE,
IT WAS ALWAYS BURNING
SINCE THE WORLD’S BEEN TURNING”…..SOMETHING’S WRONG WITH THE HUMAN RACE
Any American president puppet would have to be an idiot to go nuclear. American gas is running up to $7 a gallon, a witching price for a America with an average wage of $25 an hour. The price of everything that moves is jumping vertical. Straight up.
–
A few months from now a president puppet could be dangling from a streetlamp Mussolini style if the war they started did not bring relief from the coming shitshow. A shitshow of high prices and starvation that really can’t be stopped.
–
Because it was drill baby drill for investors and the politicians they bought. Now the wells go dry and America is fucked.
–
Interest rates won’t put food on the shelves when it is not there to be put on shelves in the first place. Monetary policy won’t put meat on your bones. Nuking people won’t solve anything and can only make things worse.
–
The president puppet should see war as dumb, but like $$ chasing automatons everywhere chasing money makes people dumb. They live in bubbles of fantasy cut off from the real world.
–
Troubles brew and gasoline is at a witching price. Do you really want to drive to your $15 an hour job 40 miles away for a 4 hour shift?
–
I’ll help with the math. Driving will take 50% of your take home.
–
Now how do you feel about rich assholes in suites killing people to improve ‘the situation’?
–
Schadenfreude won’t put gas in your tank.
–
More about the gas situation on my website. ‘I have a graph’!
*rich assholes in suits
“A few months from now a president puppet could be dangling from a streetlamp Mussolini style if the war they started did not bring relief from the coming shitshow. A shitshow of high prices and starvation that really can’t be stopped”.
Actually Mussolini was not hung from a street lamp but from an… Esso gas station. Can’t make that stuff up! :o)
My point was that even in a minimal case, which is doubtful, the results would be overwhelmingly bad.
Nice thought.
But after thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers already died fighting in Ukraine one cannot stop wondering about the US reaction to 2 American soldiers captured in Ukraine who might face death penalty for joining the fight as mercenaries which are not covered by the war laws for prisoners. One or two is too much and it is a genocide against the US-UK empire, the source of all evil in the world.
The US State Dept had to explain To Americans to ignore its own propaganda and not volunteer for war in Ukraine!
They said, you can help in many other ways.
they also have a moroccan and 2 english mercenaries who have already been convicted to the death penalty (and they plan to really execute, firing squad, i believe).
Yes. The world must stop letting go unchecked American war criminals. The world must learn to say NO to American wars to imprison all the rest as hostages of economic-military retaliations. America in politics, law, diplomacy, war, acts as a young criminal hoping to get away from the consequences of his criminal actions. The difference is that all criminal actions committed by America are think throughout the process counting with impunity in the outcome while the young transgressor can blame hormones, low self-steam.
If the world still let it go as it is Lebanon will be seized by Israel who can only do this because its fellow young criminal sponsor allows it to happen counting on impunity and if it does not work they appeal to anti semitism. We are not anti-semitic of course, we are anti psychopath criminals like America, Great Britain and Israel.
No kidding, Biden isn’t spending (our) forty billion to buy weapons for any Palestinians.
Gas fields in Lebanon which Israel is already making deal to sell to Europe after a special military operation takes place to seize it from them.
S LIDSKO RASOU JE VŠECHNO V POŘÁDKU.
V historii Země neexistuje žádný jiný stát
jako USA , jehož politika šíří válku a zlo
tak rychle a s devastujícími následky pro
obyvatele planety.
Teroristický stát USA bojuje proti Rusku za likvidaci lidské civilizace na planetě!
The Grayzone has several reports on the type of American “hero” going to Ukraine to kill Russians. Quote, “corporate US media has promoted known US white nationalists fighting in Ukraine as heroes, while whitewashing their records of murder and political violence. And while the Department of Homeland Security expresses ‘concern’ over potential blowback when these openly fascist combat veterans return to the US, the administration of Joseph Biden appears to be doing nothing to stop them from making their way to the battlefield.”
*
Articles online at https://thegrayzone.com/2022/05/31/us-trained-extremists-fighting-russia-blowback/ and https://thegrayzone.com/2022/05/31/american-neo-nazi-ukraine-hero-corporate-media/
White nationalists? From the pics of those mercs caught and ar least one killed there are quite a few Asians and even one black american boasted about being there… so please spare me the white nationalist bs
Since both American and Russian sides mentioned they don’t want nuclear war, we have to assume they are being deceptive.
Living in the USA, I can attest that US government and industries are absolutely not prepared to deal with the aftermath of nuclear war, because they cannot print dollars as a way out of that catastrophe.
So we have to assume they know there will be no survivors, and that is why they are not prepared.
As for the Russian side, US sanctions are making it harder for people to live, and may be preparing them to be better survivors.
the russian side doesn’t want nuclear war, but can be provoked into it (which seems to be the plan, imo). the same happened with the special military operation. russians were not planning to attack (except for contingency plans), but biden was already sure because they were going to provoke them with an attack on donbass. the blockade of kaliningrad is just the latest straw of a series that has been pummeling russian pride (removal of ww2 victory-monuments, …) and people (russian language and sentiment is persecuted in the baltics).
the american side, at least those with decisive power (not the president), do want nuclear war. the american oligarchy (not the prominently visible ones) think they can survive (these contingency plans do also exist, i suspect). the rabble may rot.
The US is absolutely in brinkmanship mode (as in, ‘playing chicken’) and in the context of a general popular ignorance about what nuclear war would involve, the US adminstration is quite capable of triggering a nuclear war. The US State Department is so war-hungry that the Pentagon has to apply counter-pressure to slow the escalation. When did that ever happen before?
The US government and industries are of course not prepared for the aftermath of nuclear war, for the simple reason that it is impossible to make such preparations. Even if you hid yourself in a decomissioned missile silo, your resources would be limited and there would be nothing to look forward to at the ground surface.
Between the US and Russia, there are enough nuclear warheads to destroy all human life on Earth several times over.
By the way, does anyone read John Hersey’s ‘Hiroshima’ any more? Now might be a good time.
Russia is not being “deceptive” about anything. They’ve said they’ll use nuclear weapons if they believe the existence of Russia is threatened and they obviously mean it.
The PTB seem to think nuclear weapons can be confined to the battlefield. Maybe that’s true, but is it likely? If we consider the consequences of a few 100 kiloton devices detonated over several population centers, is the risk really worth it? In all likelihood the injured and displaced would swamp the system. There would be no way they could be cared for. They would be left to die in the tens of thousands. But the damage wouldn’t be confined to those unlucky few. A hit on a major transportation center would cripple the rest of the nation for months if not a few years. The prompt radiation would be a hazard for a while, but after a few weeks it would be mostly gone. However, with our ultra-efficient just in time delivery strategy millions would be left in the lurch. In a few days or a week the food would be gone in some regions. And all for what? So some backwater country can pretend to join NATO? Some people in positions of power seem to think it’s worth it. Perhaps they should be shown the door.
i don’ think nuclear war works with a one by one exchange. first use and the response will be launched probably almost all nukes at once. once the first nuke is launched, both sides are in a ‘use it or lose it’ situation.
My point was that even in a minimal case, which is doubtful, the results would be overwhelmingly bad.
The ‘leaders’ of the Deep State who control the US government want the people to be so frightened that they will do anything for the promise of safety or security. The threat of nuclear war that has been pushed into the background by the media so far will be shouted to instill fear very soon. This article is leading the way to remind people and to increase that fear. Will this lead people to take action against the ‘leaders’ who live on war and fear or will it instill the fear and inaction that the Deep State wants?
I am hoping for a USSR type collapse in America with states becoming sovereign entities either alone or in groups and Europe reverting to autonomous countries. The reformed will then figure out what to do with the nukes similar to Russia. I hope.
More likely is a schism where you end up with a performatively cartoonish leftist country and a performatively cartoonish rightist country.
~
Neither is going to use their nukes to make a Dyson drive to go to Alpha Centauri or anything. Most likely we’ll get a few years of turmoil, then if history teaches us anything, the next empire (whoever it is), will be worse than the current one.
I like the term ‘nuclear superpower’. Can you heal the sick? Raise the dead? Feed the poor? Nope, their superpower is to make everything go away. I’m surprised that the world oligarchs want to play the everything erased game since they’ll have private jets, mansions, heated pools and sports cars regardless. They have to know their underground bunkers will get old quick.
My view of people has substantially changed over the last handful of years.
Very recently I have added a new working theory, not yet solidified into a firm belief.
Yet.
Hannah Arendt coined the term, “banality of evil”.
She used it to describe Adolf Eichmann.
I once believed that “Eichmanns” were the exception.
My new theory is that Eichmanns are the rule.
—-
Eichmanns with T-shirts:
https://imgbox.com/gDCbsrfO
(a nuclear family, by the way)
The biggest shakeup to my world view came with Russiagate.
I had previously believed that intelligence sat at the top of the hierarchy in
how people process information and get their belief systems.
Now I know that intelligence is a sub-layer in the hierarchy, and not even second.
Levels:
1) People identify with groups and get their beliefs from that group – herds.
2) People mimic their herd.
3) People apply their intelligence to rationalize the beliefs that they *already* acquired
from their group.
Trying to deprogram a headline-reader or ingestor of the MSM (aka MIC-mouthpiece)
by interacting with them at level #3 is like “spooning against the tide”. You are not even getting close to level #1.
That is actually validating people’s delusion that they are operating primarily from an intelligence level – a catch-22.
That isn’t helping them.
So what might actually work to reach people?
Ridicule of the identity group (found at #1).
Show it’s corruption, it’s hypocrisy, it’s contradictions, it’s failures, it’s banality.
Shake them loose from that identity.
It’s easier to dupe someone than to convince them they were duped.
This is Mark Twain’s idea, but not word for word.
If you can do it without getting punched I think making fun of such people might be the most effective way of reaching them, and is certainly the most enjoyable. And I like the analogy “like teaching a pig to sing”, which continues with “you can’t do it, and it annoys the pig”.
Have you ever read “Moral Mazes?”
~
You might like that book. It dovetails nicely with Arendt.
~
Jonathan
The fact is that we can think as hard as we want about nuclear war, there’s nothing we can do about the decisions involved. We can’t even do anything about the sanctions imposed on Russia that will allegedly kill millions in the Global South, where one person – generally a child – has already been dying of starvation every three seconds for over a century anyway without raising much concern.
The nuclear threat is just one of those things, like living in the vicinity of the Vesuvius in Pompei and Herculaneum.
I don’t know if there were fantasies about the Vesuvius there but there sure are about nuclear war. The reason is always the same: we don’t know much about it. We’ve got a few images like the classic mushroom – rather pretty actually – and photos of Hiroshima bearing a striking resemblance to those of Dresden after 773 RAF planes dropped 1,181 tons of incendiary bombs and 1,477 tons of explosives during the night of 13-14 February 1945, burning alive an estimated 25,000 people.
Understandably, neither the Americans nor the Russians will explain to us exactly what would happen in case of nuclear war, which of course opens the door to a flurry of fantasies exploited by Hollywood sci-fi movies – in alternance with the deadly giant asteroid and the alien invasion – but they are more indicative of the level of paranoia of their directors than of any scientific reality.
Then there’s the classic blanket statement that a nuclear mushroom would wipe out the entire planet leaving no life on it except for cockroaches and Keith Richards.
The fact is we don’t know. The explosions we’re aware of don’t look like that, being geographically quite limited. Then there’s the excellent documentary by John Pilger about the nuclear tests in the Pacific with their disastrous consequences on people’s health – like with the depleted uranium bombing of Iraq. Yet no apocalypse there…
An interesting question, supposing a war turns nuclear under the impulse of this British General Strangelove and unhinged MIC shills like Max Boot…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb0jpkkzHGg
… what would the US and Russia strike? Would it be civilian and political targets (New York, Washington, Moscow, Saint-Petersburg…) or would it be military ones: nuclear silos in Colorado, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Missouri, Montana, Wyoming and other western states on one side and the European part of Russia on the other?
Nevertheless, considering the insanity currently displayed by the Western eugenicist “global leaders” – a very real, powerful and organized cabal reminiscent of James Bond’s Spectre -, an even more pressing question comes to mind: would that psychopathic bloodthirsty mob care at all about reducing the world’s population by 93% as advised by the infamous Georgia Guidestones?
That would be a significant “Great Reset” to “build back better”! However, Montaigne said “I’ve suffered a lot in my life from things that never happened”, so I’ve personally always been more inclined to try not to suffer from things that do happen by looking for solutions within my reach. A dose of fatalism never hurts either, hand-wringing having never got anybody anywhere…
” … what would the US and Russia strike?”
If there is a full exchange, then vaporizing nuclear power plants and nuclear waste facilities, along with heavy doses of air-burst EMP’s will be the predominant feature of the counter-strikes. The object of a counter-strike is afterall, overkill, and you don’t achieve it by wasting ammo striking population centers.
Force multiplication. Nuclear war 101.
Nothing survives the exchange, not even the legendary cockroach, because the wispy thin ozone layer of this planet is not made out of a high grade alloy, but comprised solely of the delicate O3 molecule that has been known to break apart in high winds, and will it not take kindly to being blown apart by the EMPs , not will it be happy with a sudden interaction with hundreds of thousands of tons of aerosoled radionuclides.
The ozone layer will be destroyed. No ozone layer, no atmosphere, no atmoshphere, no life.
What is most interesting to me about the belief that WWIII will involve mostly good old fashioned 1950s style nuclear blasts in the middle of the planet’s major cities, is that there are still people in Great Britian (or Florida for that matter) who aren’t quite grasping the modern concept that the nuclear tsumani’s will subsume their entire land mass.
How do “drop a bomb” on say London (or Miami), when it is under 100 feet of water?
“Nothing survives the exchange”
What, you mean not even Keith Richards?
On a side note, since you’re interested in China, I found this licking by them, in the form of fact-checking, of serial liar Antony Blinken quite enjoyable:
https://english.news.cn/20220619/edf2556087954b8d90440b077a3c3c21/c.html
A long but very interesting read with a lot more truth in it, from what I otherwise know, than any single sentence by Blinken any time.
They’ve even noticed that what he calls disinformation is actually what runs contrary to his own systematic gaslighting. These guys are dangerously perceptive… :o)
“These guys are dangerously perceptive… ”
Yeah they are.
They also know how to get shit done, and how make lifelong friends.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8CLyJJ1284
At the 3 minute mark, there is rust on the bracing of the basketball rim. I shit you not, but this first time I’ve seen rust in China. Rust is one the 20 signs of trouble I Iook for on my virtual China walks and drives and flybies, and never see.
Emporer Xi! There is a rim in Tibet that need replacing! Lmao …
Thanks for the link. I think China gets at least some it’s anti-Blinken talking points from the Caitlin Johnson blog.
Wouldn’t doubt it. They steal from the best.
“They steal from the best”
Do you know this one?
This reminds mevof a story my father told me. A bully in school kept picking on a much smaller kid and finally beat him up after school one day. The little kid got up and went home. The next day while the bully was leaning down to get a drink from the water fountain, the little kid hit him in the back of the head with a large metal lunchbox, knocking out his front teeth. The US, like the bully thiinks no one would dare hit back.
The main problem of the US leaders is that they are insane – in the strictest clinical sense of the word – and believe their own propaganda that a supernatural dude called God (that no one’s ever seen) blesses America and is leading it to total control of the planet to bring light upon the nations – old biblical Hebrew stuff transposed to America thanks to Anglo-Saxon hubris. The harder they’ll fall. Whether or not they’ll choose the Samson option is the million dollar unknown.
I always thought of the US and the west in general as the great babylon destined for destruction.
Ernest Hemingway„Třesu se někdy o svou vlast, když pomyslím na to, že Bůh je spravedlivý.“ – Thomas Jefferson
„Věřím, že spojené státy americké kteří těží z války a přispívají k jejímu vzniku,
by měli být ASIMILIOVÁNI hned první den občany své země.“ – Ernest Hemingway
This is not a story passed down by my Dad, but real life experiences I’ve lived thru and survived.
being born in Germany and migrated to Australia in 1953, highlighted to me, the bullying nature of Western people. I started school in 1956 and immediately discovered what bullying was. Sad to say, the teachers also fell into the same group, all because I was born in Germany, to German parents. I was bullied nearly every day, until I took things into my own hands. the first time was at the drinking fountain, as I bent down to get a drink, an arm was placed around my neck by a bigger kid who started to strangle me. I was also a member of the Boy Scouts who had recently taught us self defence, so I thought I’d put to the test, what I had learned, it worked a treat, in front of the whole school, (who always ran to see and enjoy such events) I put this creep flat on his back on the ground, and put my foot on his chest, asking him if he wanted more, he started crying and said no. Next thing I found myself in front of the headmasters office and got 4 cuts with the cane for my trouble, but the offender got nothing. So the victim is punished, and the bully gets off scott free. And people wonder, why there is so much bullying in the World today ! The next time, was when I started high school, one particular individual had it in for me, even though he was two years up from me, nearly twice a week, this guy would waylay me on the way home from school and bully me, and bash my ears calling me all sorts of names. Finaly, I had enough, one day I found a broom handle on my way home, picked it up and used it to whack the bushes, came around a corner, and there he was waiting for me again, without even thinking about it, I laid into him, for the first time in my life, (and only time) I completely lost it, all the rage built up throughout my schooling years came out, and I beat the crap out of him. My mind cleared when I saw him on the ground with his blood nose and bawling his head off. Crikey, what have I done. i told him there was more where that came from, if he ever again tried to bully me. The next time I saw this guy, was his photo in the paper when the H.M.S. Sydney disaster occurred, he was one of the sailors who died in that tragedy. So for all the folks who think appeasing a bully works, I’ve got news for you, you need to give out exactly what they’ve been dishing out to you, PLUS a little more. Countries are no different, they are people too, and will behave the same way, when stood up to.
Fully agree with Caitlin’s analysis. It’s shocking and disturbing, the number of otherwise liberal Americans who call out to escalate the Ukraine war drive Russia off the map. That in itself is confirmation that propaganda has been refined to a very high level of performance. Which implies, effectively, a very high level of thought control among the propagandized. With Ukraine, as with other issues, successful propaganda is largely about controlling the terms and boundaries of the debate. Once you control the parameters of the debate, and debate on Ukraine war has been very effectively confined, by the US and NATO and compliant media, to a discussion of how to defend the poor victim Ukraine against the giant bully Russia. Any thoughts or ideas that don’t fit into that narrow debate scheme are automatically disqualified.
So, those of us with different views are marginalized and generally ignored. As a demonstration of the power of propaganda, I think we are witnessing the use of a new level of thought control weapon, almost analogous to the development of nuclear bombs. It’s just stunning.
Nothing I’ve said here is new, but from my perspective it means that we are pretty well out of the loop as far as directly preventing a nuclear war. I mean, where are the massive demonstrations against it? Short answer: those people are begging for war escalation.
It’s madness, so perhaps all we can do is live courageously and wage peace wherever the opportunity arises. I remember the courage of Buddhist monks in Vietnam, who would walk calmly along a dike separating American and North Vietnamese fighters, and bring a hope for peace in that moment.
Corrrection: should read, “escalate the Ukraine war and drive Russia off the map”
That is because the US is full of idiots. An exame is Bidens economic advisor just said we can beat inflation with more government spending.
For once we must be honest and admit that Western hegemony and the desperate attitudes to preserve it, is the most dangerous existential threat the world is facing. We are told China or Russia are what we should be fearing, and to go along blindly with the whims of their avowed adversaries. Europe and the now no longer BREXIT UK for example have swallowed the lie to the fullest. Europe fears Russia like a snake without any valid reason instead of waking up to the reality that Russia has always been open to a constructive engagement in relation to matters of mutual security and peace. Now that the rich families and bankers of the world find themselves at the edge of a precipice, they want to annihilate all life on earth. The refusal to accommodate the fact that there are other forces beside the West who are also capable to shape the world’s
institutions the way they see fit, and possibly to the benefit of many others, that is what will bring about WWIII.
“People Don’t Think Hard Enough……………”. Unfortunately, most people don’t think AT ALL about what a nuclear war would mean – it is beyond their comprehension, because it hasn’t happened in their lifetimes. To them, it is an abstract idea, like living on Mars.
They know that it involves bombs and missiles, and very large explosions, but that’s where it starts and ends. Beyond that it is impossible for them to imagine.
In the 60’s and 70’s there was a lot of media about nuclear war, including film clips, videos of Nagasaki and Hiroshima victims, demonstrations, and discussion about the effects of radiation. Nevil Shute’s 1959 film of his book ‘On the Beach’ portrays a very realistic scenario of what would happen here in Australia in the aftermath of a nuclear war in the northern hemisphere.
I think the biggest danger now is that the people who have the ability to initiate a nuclear war can’t imagine it either. They think of it in terms of conventional warfare – winnable by whichever side strikes quickest and hardest. They simply don’t understand that the missiles could reach them wherever they are in the world, unless they were deep underground, and would wipe out their families and friends and possibly the human race as well.
The World has moved on from 1959. Today we understand a hell of a lot more about nuclear war, than we did in 1959. For example, we KNOW two nuclear bombs were deliberately dropped onto the Japanese, not because they were a threat, but to scare the Russians.(why scare the Russians, they helped end WW 2, yet even back then, they were already targeted for destruction) The results of that event, displayed for everyone, the damage these weapons could create. BUT, people miss the point, Japan did not DIE ! In fact the same cities today are thriving metropolisis with millions of people living there. Where’s the radiation we are told, would contaminate everything and everyone for a thousand years ???? Sure, if we had a WW with nuclear weapons, that would simply multiply the damage, kill more people, destroy infrastructure, cause global cooling, (which the likes of out Climate warmers would be very happy about) but I don’t believe it would make the earth uninhabitable. WHY you ask ?
Because we’ve seen massive nuclear melt downs during out lifetimes, with massive radiation and gases released to spread all over the Northern Hemisphere. When Chernobyl blew, the radiation was recorded as far away in Scotland making a sweeping swath across Northern Europe. Where did it go, did it just vanish into thin air ? Not likely, it’s still there, settled on the ground/water/mud even picked up in plants that fires proved, when the ash from such fires turned out to be contaminated with radiation compounds. Same thing happened with Fukushima, and in that case, the contamination was allowed to be pumped into the ocean, causing a massive swath along the coast all the way to Alaska and the northern coasts of America. BUT, the World did not end, sure, wild life died/got contaminated, lived reduced life spans and were morphed into weird creatures, but the World did not stop, and everyone continued their lives as if nothing happened. One thing that very few people even noticed, was the FACT the the radiation meters used World wide, all had to be recalibrated to account for the heavier radiation in the earth’s atmosphere from all these events. So if you had a radiation meter from the 60’s, the zero reading today would never be able to be reached, because there is no longer a zero in the earths contamination field. That’s how much it’s been contaminated. BUT, we’re all still alive and breathing. Sure, if your going to blow these things up in the hundreds, the after effects will multiply, no getting way from that, and have more serious effects on certain locations targeted. But apparently the folks who run the World, believe that will be minimal, and everything will recover nicely.
Extrapolating from two nuclear reactor accidents to a full scale nuclear exchange is absurd. Do you have some objective reason to imagine yourself qualified to make all your pronouncements? Do you even know what radiation is? Do you know the difference between a megaton and a kiloton? Fission and fusion? Ever hear of a terabecquerel? Blast wave? Thermal pulse? And nuclear warheads don’t number in the “hundreds”, there are in fact many thousands, so there’s a number you can learn. Go get a physics degree, or at least do some reading, then post another comment. In the meantime, take it as a given that a full scale nuclear war is quite beyond your imagination, as your comment demonstrates.
Do you have objective reasons to imagine yourself qualified to bully others about their opinions. Your daddy is bigger?
I’ve forgotten more about nuclear physics/war than Eddy will ever know, and I haven’t forgotten much, and I’m blunt because Eddy is blithering about something that stands to get me and everyone I know killed. When it comes to things like nuclear warfare people need to go out and get an opinion before they start sharing it.
I don’t think people can be scared into avoiding nuclear war..If they could then then capital punishment would have gotten rid of murder. But even in places with swift
(and public) executions like Iran, or Pakistan murder is not uncommon. I blame the left, especially the western left entirely for being a bunch of useless cunts. Revolution is not about rainbows and unicorns and extremist individualism. It is about taking political power from the bourgeois degenerates who threaten the world with nuclear war. .
System1: reaction, intuition, emotional
System2: response, cerebral, intellectual
Warrior breath: reactive, immediate
Scholar breath: reflective, hesitant
Militarism does predictable things over time-deception, dehumanization and death, which is obvious to anyone willing to see. What is less palatable and often hidden is the internalized framework to judge reality and work with it, which perpetuates self-deception, personal debasement.
‘Laughter is the movement of nature’ I read once, and mockery isn’t a crime yet. Of that vein, Twitter questions like: “Hey LimboJoe, would you mind setting off a nuclear holocaust before the end of the month-my rent is due and I’ve been spending a lot for gas’ or ‘If you folks at 1600Penn could hurry the hell up and get everyone killed, I wouldn’t have to be concerned about vaccine injuries in family and friends’ or ‘I am reluctant to interrupt the obvious incompetence of unskilled opportunists, but the knuckle-pumpers slow-stroking everyone into some flavor of death seem to be further cocking up their duties by backing away from Armageddon’ or ‘I know you clown-fondlers are down for a good fisting every Friday, and I’m not one for broadcasting the proclivities of private citizens, but I have to ask if the willingness to crack-babble is the result of said activities’.
After DoJ/FBI gets a person on the right watch list, or all of them, remember the mind is the best weapon AND the real erogenous zone-turn ’em on and run ’em down.
You missed out a very relevant group, that is the folks who believe whole heartedly in the RAPTURE. They would LOVE a nuclear holocaust because then they would all be floated up to heaven, whilst us nine believers would deserve our fate. And in America today, there’s a hell of a lot of people, who believe in this and looking forwards to the day.
That’s because all their propagandists whether from their pie-in-the-sky government or their heaven-on-earth church have let them down. They ultimately get beaten down enough to see this society for the web of lies that it is. No one is going to make good on their promises to them, so they embrace death and the hope that it will bring relief. That’s why so much suicide by fentanyl.
LBJ had this to say about nuclear war:
“People will envy the dead.”
“the living will envy the dead”, actually…..sounds better in original form..
Obama form : “Folks will envy the dead” …see what I mean ?
Folks are who we tortured… some of them.
I recall reading about a military exercise.
This was quite some time ago that I read it, perhaps even decades, so my memory is sketchy on this.
But my main point is still clear.
No live ammo, it was done on video screens. Commanders were allowed the option
of using nuclear weapons, and not only tactical nukes.
The war game was rigged so that the commanders would find themselves in
a desperate losing position. They would often(?) choose to use the nukes to
get out of their losing position.
My main point, and on this part I believe my memory is good, the
commanders had no idea of what their nukes would do. They didn’t know
whether to call up a quarter of a megaton yield or 100 megatons, for their
particular situation. A frequent outcome would be the commander
being stunned as his nuke detonation ballooned on the screen to not only encompass
the enemy but his own troops and even far beyond.
Sounds like the Milgram experiment, Levi.
For the uninitiated. An experiment where people were giving electric shocks to “ participant’s” in another room if the participants gave a wrong answer to a question.
The participants were actually actors not getting shocked just screaming out as though they were.
The person delivering the shock although disturbed by all this often continued to the “ bitter end” believing they actually killed the participant.
Point is, as we are finding with our psychotic “ruling elite” and all their torturous mandates upon us, the people. “It’s okay when we do it”
Just look at Boris “ the party boy” Johnson.
It feels like it’s out of our hands now. How does an empire with this many nukes end? Not voluntarily, I’d say.
Everything IS out of our hands. “We” never voted or even asked to go to war in all these countries. “We” never told any of those assholes in Washington to squander trillions of our tax dollars to kill millions of other people so the assholes could get their rocks off feeling powerful and superior to all other humans.