Listen to a reading of this article:

Hawks always say our geopolitical situation resembles that of 1938 so that any call for de-escalation, diplomacy or detente can be portrayed as “appeasement”. It’s never 1919, when the conditions which would give rise to World War Two were put in place, or any of the early 20th century years when the trajectory toward World War One could have easily been turned away from.

Our fetishization of World War Two has eclipsed from memory the fact that it was the single worst thing that ever happened on this planet. The trauma it inflicted upon our species still reverberates through our collective consciousness to this day, and avoiding it would have been objectively good.

Even if we fully espouse all the grandiose ego-stroking Anglo-American narratives about WWII, you don’t want to have a modern Churchill and FDR bravely standing against the forces of evil. What you want is for such a stand to be unnecessary, because the conflict was avoided.

But that’s not how you score political points in Washington and London. That’s not how you pull ratings as a news outlet. That’s not how you sell weapons as an arms manufacturer, and it’s not how you advance hegemonic agendas as an empire. That’s why peace doesn’t get a voice.

And, oh yeah, did I mention there are fucking nuclear weapons now? Even the dumbest of warmongers should want to postpone reenacting their favorite Hollywood WWII movies in the modern world, because it’s impossible to win a world war now. Stop buying this “it’s 1938” bullshit. It’s nothing like 1938, and a massive conflict can most definitely be avoided.

Like the Tao Te Ching says:

Prevent trouble before it arises.
Put things in order before they exist.
The giant pine tree
grows from a tiny sprout.
The journey of a thousand miles
starts from beneath your feet.

Or as we say in the west, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The only thing dumber than the risks our leaders are taking with our world is the reasons why they are taking those risks. It’s not for anything more noble or righteous than the desire to rule the world. Just stupid, garden variety power hunger.

If Ukraine has taught us anything it’s that the US and its allies should definitely stage as many aggressive provocations as possible in Taiwan.

Russia: Don’t cross our red lines in Ukraine or we’ll take action.

US politicians: They’re bluffing. Cross those red lines.

[Russia invades.]

China: Don’t cross our red lines in Taiwan or we’ll take action.

US politicians: They’re bluffing. Cross those red lines.

Can’t believe we’re adding a whole new country to risk nuclear war with just because Nancy Pelosi’s too fucking old to care if she gets shot down over Taiwan.

So it looks like Ukraine has begun using US-made weapons to strike Russian territory. At a time when dangerous escalations between nuclear superpowers is an almost daily occurrence, this one stands head and shoulders above most of the others and deserves special attention. There are many, many potential scenarios which could spark a nuclear exchange, but the US/Ukraine/NATO alliance continually pursuing a line of attack into Russia is by far the most surefire way to get there. Let’s hope that option remains off the table.

Western powers aren’t censoring Russian media to protect our minds from Russian propaganda, they are censoring Russian media because it interferes with western propaganda.

If we were being told the truth about this war there wouldn’t be such a wildly unprecedented push to censor, intimidate, troll and silence anyone who asks if we’re being lied to.

People who are ideologically prohibited from seeing capitalism as the obvious source of society’s ills are forced to make up other things to blame those ills on like elite pedovore cabals, Jews, immigrants, the LGBT community, and Satan.

Vastly outnumbering your rulers but choosing not to overthrow them because you think the status quo might someday make you wealthy is the same as having all the power in the world and trading it away for a lottery ticket.

Love so hard it terrifies you.

Keep writing poetry after your twenties.

Dismiss anyone who tells you to get thick skin.

Master the art of seeing beauty in each moment.

Find enough inner stability to let life destroy you.

Learn that it’s safe to let go: there’s nowhere to fall to.

________________

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76 responses to “For Warmongers It’s Always 1938: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”

  1. A very interesting perspective on World War II as a global attack on working people may be found in John Spritzler’s book “The People as Enemy, the Leaders’ Hidden Agenda in World War II.” (Black Rose Books, 2003)
    >
    War is always the elite’s most effective tool to suppress dissent, in this case the now all but forgotten worldwide working class rebellion that resulted from the Great Depression. The total mobilization imposed on their populations by the warring powers was calculated to rekindle nationalism and to facilitate the denunciation and suppression of the millions actively resisting the ongoing further consolidation of elite power.
    >
    And consider that the successful authoritarian socialism of the “enemy” in Europe implicitly committed heresy against the west’s primary political fiction, that capitalism and democracy are compatible.

  2. peter mcloughlin Avatar
    peter mcloughlin

    One thing not learned from history is that everyone eventually gets the war they are trying to avoid.
    https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/

  3. Interestingly, it was the Poles who started WW2 by slaughtering German citizens in the lands that had been part of Germany prior to WW1, and which were about to conduct a plebiscite as to whether to return to Germany. Solution? Reduce the German population. Many of the photos you see of piles of bodies are from that massacre. But you won’t read that in most of the history books.
    So here we are again, with the same area causing the same problems. Ukrainians have been slaughtering ethnic Russians since 2014, and despite the Minsk Agreements, for which France and Germany stood as guarantors, they just kept on going, and were mustering massive forces to complete the job. Of course Russia couldn’t allow that to proceed, and of course the US knew they wouldn’t. The US imagined that they could impose sanctions on Russia for their “aggression” and that Russia would fold and would blame and remove Putin. Who runs the US State Department? I could have told them that was nonsense … and what do I know?
    So we are now indeed looking at a pre-WW1 mixed with a pre-WW2 moment. And yes, we could turn away, and allow ethnic Russians to return to their homeland; but as in pre-WW2, that would require a level of intelligence and diplomacy of which the West is completely devoid.
    Today I noted that Kosovo is rearing its head again … is this their go to?
    As for Taiwan, maybe gin-swigging Nance wants to go out with a bang. No loss.
    If you took a plebiscite in Taiwan, the majority would not care one way or the other, whether they are part of China or not, and if I’m wrong, it will lean towards “remain”. But that won’t deter the US State Department panning around for a war to cause somewhere soon … that’s all they know.

  4. The rouble is soaring and Putin is stronger than ever – our sanctions have backfired.

    By Simon Jenkins

    Western sanctions against Russia are the most ill-conceived and counterproductive policy in recent international history.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/29/putin-ruble-west-sanctions-russia-europe

  5. Susan Mercurio Avatar
    Susan Mercurio

    Note to China:
    PLEASE shoot down Nancy Pelosi, since the voters in her district are too chickenshit to vote her out. It’s the only way we’ll get rid of her.

  6. I won’t bother to comment anymore. My comment for this post is no longer visible.

    1. Sorry… I see it now at the very bottom…. I was the first to comment.

      1. Congratulations!

  7. CIA and FBI are heavily busy interfering in foreign countries decoupling themselves from the US empire. Iraq is under attack, Africa is under attack. The US evil empire will have to be restrained otherwise no one will live in peace.

    1. Susan Mercurio Avatar
      Susan Mercurio

      Watch How to Start a Revolution DVD documentary and read From Dictatorship to Democracy, the book by Dr Gene Sharp.

  8. Train music. Flute and drums. Outstanding.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7UIaXOH_IY
    Imagine the US trying to build this 20 mile stretch of high speed railway. Seems like an impossibility to me. But hey, I’m still holding out on that boyhood dream of mine, to ride an American bullet train, even if it’s just from the inner part of Fresno to the outer part of Fresno.
    I was listening to Ted Cruz earlier today, complaining and bitching and whining up a storm on the Senate floor, about how those son-of-a-bitch’s in the Chinese government protect the interests of not only their corporations, but of their goddamn people!
    The Commies are breaking the rules!
    Let’s take Guiyang, shall we?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6UNY_97ZmE
    It’s one of China’s teeny weeny cities, only 4 and half million people, or roughly the same size as Kyiv, and we’ll take it with what? 2 or 3 mechanized Marine brigades?
    Lot’s of elevetated sniper positions for the enemy make use of. 10s of 10s of thousands of them in fact. And the jungles that surround the city, might prove a minor headache. But the Marines can do anything.
    Plus, after we take Chengdu, we can just ride that high speed line above right into Guiyand at 300 kilometers per hour, and catch the enemy off guard.
    And that would make us the fastest moving army in history, make the blitzkrieging Wehrmacht of ’39 to ’41 look like an army of snails in comparison.
    It would be legendary.

    1. I admire you to be able to listen to a speech by Lying Ted. Apparently he learns them by heart and tells them verbatim because whenever he starts improvising, he fucks up with hubris-inspired unpleasant thoughts.
      Apart from which, I visited Guiyang in 1988. There were only wooden houses there at the time. It was also very humid and the air, which put a coat of mist on your camera lens as soon as you took the cover off, carried a palpable smell of duck. What a change…
      Yet I hope they haven’t built that kind of skyscrapers in the lovely minority villages of the area, like the Miaos’. Here’s what Guiyang looked like 44 years ago (at least in my memory):

      1. Sorry: 34 years ago.

      2. What I’m seeing, anything pre-Mao, or maybe 20 to 40 years before that, that’s in decent shape, will be salvagged, supported, rebuilt to the same specs, etc … whenever possible.
        Nothing against Mao or the 20th century in particular, it’s simply the aesthetic of the time doesn’t meet the current standard. It was a rather dullish period as far as China’s periods go.
        What trips me out most, I’ll start on one of these walks, and I’m in old village, cobblestone streets, and walk for a mile or two thinking this place is quite nice, I wonder how big … and suddenly there’s a turn and an opening and I’m the middle of city of 20 million people, with skyscrapers all around.

        1. I’m sorry myself. I just remembered, it wasn’t Ted Cruz. It was Marco Rubio.
          How could I ever get those two mixed up?
          Lmao …

          1. Last I heard, their own mothers couldn’t tell the difference :o)

  9. There is no profit in nuclear war.
    There is however much profit to be made from the threat of nuclear war.

    1. Especially for the media!

    2. There’s always profit in weapons sales from elevating the fear.
      The German Armed Forces Leadership are doing just that right now. They already have US nuclear weapons. Now they want to look like they can threaten Russia.

      Churchill, that old imperialist, is not lily white. The Brits won WWII, sort of. Germany lost, absolutely. More died in Britain’s far abroad colonies than is generally accounted for. Papered over by a heavy veneer of Victorian moralizing.

      The increasingly wretched state of Western Europe, brought on entirely by their own leadership, examined here . . . https://les7eb.substack.com/p/ukraine-notes-the-long-proxy-war-67b

  10. BB Benderhaus Avatar
    BB Benderhaus

    Intelligence service which is an oxymoron if there ever was one, just stated Russia has had 75000 casualties in 6 months in Ukraine. Now it took the US 10 years for 58000 casualties in Vietnam. They must really think the world is full of idiots. Lets just get on with it and bring on our new dystopian world.

    1. “Intelligence service which is an oxymoron if there ever was one … ”
      It sure is. Yyves Smith at NCap had a good one today, introducing Michael Hudson’s latest:
      “Yves here. American diplomacy has become an oxymoron. Michael Hudson explains that what the US likes to depict as promoting democracy is actually extending the reach of neoliberalism. And while we once offered some carrots as part of the process, it now appears that America is in “The beatings will continue until morale improves” mode.”
      https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/07/michael-hudson-american-diplomacy-as-a-tragic-drama.html
      Caitlin Johnstone: ” … it’s impossible to win a world war now.”
      It sure is. I mean think about the dilemma this Taiwan brouhaha poses for our Navy. If it wants to fuck China up and fuck up em good, it has to dodge barrage after barrage of a dedicated carrier killing ballistic missiles that have ranges out 3,000 kilometers.
      If it survives that, it next has to face salvo after salvo of land, air and surface to surface -wave skipping! – cruise missiles.
      Only then can it launch it peashooters, it’s F-18 Growlers and Hornets and F-35 Lightenings and other aggresive sounding warplanes, to do what exactly?
      Set up of a no-fly zone over Taiwan?
      Outnumbered at least 20 to 1,* flying limited duration flights in a hostile environment, meaning all the surface to air belonds to the enemy.
      The Spartans faced better odds at Thermopylae.
      Navies are obsolete. Armies are obsolete. Conventional war, at anything approaching the global scale, is obsolete. You can still have a nice little skirmish, like we had Vietnam or the Russkies are having now in Ukraine, but that’s about it.
      *That’s assuming we can get four or five carrier groups into the fight, which seems unlikely, because the process by which such a force could be assembled and make it to South China theater of war, would take at least 6-9 months, and if I’m right, that type of mustering of forces will prove a bit too slow, as I think Taiwan will capitulate within 48 hours.

      1. It could be a good diversion to quietly ditch the Garden Gnome in Kiev because everybody’s aware that Ukraine can’t win, the weapons have been sold and how are they gonna be repaid? Well here’s an interesting appraisal of who owns the Ukrainian land and the Western vultures eying it like they did in Romania.
        https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/blog/who-owns-agricultural-land-ukraine
        Give Putin his Russkie folks which will stop him and pack the Garden Gnome off to Miami where he can learn Spanish to become a dick playing mariachi while we do serious business in the breadbasket.

        1. At least I didn’t see Bill Gates name in there – which was something of a shocker, actually.
          Don’t you get you get the feeling at this point that the Russians are just like, fuck it, we gave them plenty of chances, now its time to think about all the sacrifices we’ve made, and permanently take whatever good stuff Ukraine has to offer?
          Did you see Medvedev’s map of Ukraine?
          https://odessa-journal.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/imaginary-map-1024×706.jpeg
          Lmao … Poland’s piece is bigger than the Uke rump state.

        2. This is scary, considering the land reform has not passed yet. The only way foreign entities could own land in Ukraine is via Uke oligarchs selling shares in their (some kind of) fund or company – I guess.
          From what I read, it is not legal in Ukraine, yet, to sell agricultural land to foreigners.

      2. Ted Christian Avatar
        Ted Christian

        That sounds like a good sketch of the facts on the water, and the facts on the ground are laughably worse. Pound for pound there’s not that much difference between a modern carrier and those from WW II, but missiles have radically advanced. A state of the art missile can hit a particular letter on a ship’s name. And back of everything is the reality that the Chinese will absolutely go nuclear if they have to.
        I think Nancy needs to wear a little admiral’s outfit with braid and shit. That would be plucky.

        1. “… the facts on the ground are laughably worse.”
          At roughly 4:50 the elderly Uyghur man explains just how foolish it would be to invade his country based on simple mathematics.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V976H5Gz3aw&t=359s
          Ok. We take Taiwan, and we build up our forces for D-Day II, so it’ll be what, 4 million vs 1 billion (?), because you must also include these type of home defense forces.
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKWLIomt-U8
          Nice unis. I’d hate see them get creased and wrinkled due to combat conditions.

          1. Correction. 3:50 minute mark.

          2. Ted Christian Avatar
            Ted Christian

            No such thing as a US land war in China, I like to imagine even the DoD doesn’t plan for it. They would get lost in Beijing, and China would go nuclear when the first boot hit the ground if they thought they needed to.

    2. About a month the ago the BBC tried desperately to find hints, any hints at all, and they sure searched mightily, of Russian losses being higher than those named by the Russian MoD.

      They found nothing.

      Though it has been pointed out many times over on Naked Capitalism that the KIA numbers for Russian forces that the ukies claim are suspiciously close to the losses that they themselves are suffering according pretty much all not brainwashed western war watchers.

    3. Casualties are not equal to deaths.

      58000 is the number of deaths in Vietnam.

      Casualties are the number unfit to fight presently, including deaths. Many with injuries are later brought back into combat.

      Comparing Vietnamese deaths with Russian casualties is comparing apples and oranges.

      1. Regardless, that number is ridiculously high and wishful thinking on the part of our not so intelligence agencies.

  11. The hit with the little Switchblade is nothing compared to the HIMARS explosion at the pre-trial detention center in Elenovka. When all your Nazis and officers of command are being held by the enemy and put on public trial what do you do? You bomb the jail…

    I wonder if the Ukies wanted it or the Americans in charge of the HIMARS just went ahead and did it because the USA is so implicated in all that has happened since 2014.

    1. While the Russians were hosting the Sochi Olympics, Victoria Newland was engineering the coup in Ukraine.

      Can you imagine the horrified people fleeing the Olympics if Putin were to take military action to restore the coup damage at that time? This just shows how heartlessly Russia was treated for trying to be a good neighbor to Europe.

      The USA tried to ruin Putin’s Olympics, the most expensive one at that time.

  12. I guess this is as good time as any to reiterate that America put Germany on its way to WW|| when it refused to forgive what Britain and France owed to US from WW1.
    Then Britain and France forced Germany to repay this huge debt in USD, while Germany experienced hyperinflation.
    So Hitler had to go to war bcs Germany could not pay that much.
    Was Hitler crazy or was he going after the bankers in Britain and France?

    1. Keynes wrote about the devastation and the impossibility for Germany to pay war reparations. His critique of the Treaty of Versailles was also devastating.

      Germany lost the port of Danzig, making Germany landlocked as far as trade goes, all to the benefit of the British and French empires.

      That’s why Germany’s first move in 1938 was toward Danzig into Poland.

      The same reasons were for Russia to take Crimea.

    2. When a country’s government cannot meet its international financial obligation, that government is either has to resign, or go to war. If it resigns, new more extreme government may come to power. This can be applied to both Russia and the US.
      The US is trying to put a financial blockade on Russia, so Russia cannot make payments on its foreign debt, Instead of, as claimed, making Russia unable to make war, it actually forces Russia to stay at war and even expand it.
      With the US, its government is already in debt, and all their additional spending and “aid” to Ukraine are done by going further into debt. So the US has chosen to spend more (issue more debt), while trying to start WW3. The US government is trying to make a global narrative management so we remain faithful to the US dollar that is being devalued as they keep printing more dollars (same as issuing new debt, or more unbudgeted government spending). This is causing global inflation, because all commodities aka food and gas, are being paid for by the US dollars. It also means robbing everybody who is using US dollars, to pay for American global war (shall we call it hybrid WW3 already).

      1. Susan Mercurio Avatar
        Susan Mercurio

        Please learn about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).
        The government doesn’t have a “budget” the way you have your household budget. They are the currency creator, not a currency user. MMT explains all of this.
        We can agree that the government needs to be reined in and held accountable for its spending.
        The reason why we want more ordinary citizens to learn MMT is that it will arm you against the lies that our politicians tell, banking on your not knowing how the monetary system works.

    3. Susan Mercurio Avatar
      Susan Mercurio

      OMG! With all that I THOUGHT I knew about the Treaty of Versailles and the Weimar Republic, there’s always something new to learn. I never knew that Germany was forced to pay back that debt in USD.

  13. America, king of road rage.

    Why shouldn’t America be the international world wide road rage capital?

    Road rage happens between egos that hold it is better to die than to not defend against imaginary (or real) insults.

    And why shouldn’t America’s government, even with its corrupt election system, not reflect the character of its people?

    See the fine collection of fragile American egos in combat with each other at the following blog:

    https://morrisberman.blogspot.com/

  14. At least the great and magnificent United States of America will have maintained its “face” and “honor,” even if those vile Chi-Coms and vicious Russkies have to be exterminated like cockroaches, along with ourselves in the bargain. Will it be worth it, you ask? As any 6 year old child knows, winning the game and reigning as king of the hill is always worth it! Damn the costs, no one should ever think they can defy the United States of America…and of the World, about anything, even if we must all perish in the process. We will rule you afterwards in Hell! Don’t you fools know that? Why do you foreigners make what should be simple so hard to fathom and accept? WE, and nobody else, are the exceptional ones, the new chosen people, intended by God to rule this planet. WE are the people with all the money, the dollars which we create and the rest of you grub for. Look at Zelensky, debasing his entire population of 40 million people to dance to our tune. We are destined to rule für tausend Jahre! /sarc/

    1. Master race latest news: “My name is Kamala Harris, my pronouns are she and her. I am a woman sitting at this table and wearing a blue suit”
      https://www.bing.com/search?q=i+am+kamala+harris&qs=UT&pq=i+am+kamala+harris&sc=8-18&cvid=58AC3C5F777F434DAC224C4FBE1BF7AB&FORM=QBRE&sp=1
      … and I’m speaking through a fucking useless mask to people over six feet away at the expense of clarity of speech to make the sheeple believe it’s doomsday and help my Big Pharma sponsors makabuck.
      However Kamala shot herself in the foot in this heroic address because even the judge that she and her pal Brandon proposed the other day to Congress said she was not able to define a woman.
      This goes to show that behind the window-dressing, Kamala is a fucking sexist and therefore racist, transphobic, white supremacist Trump supporter with nazi tendencies expressed in her support for the Garden Gnome of Kiev :o)

      1. She is also totally corrupt and dumb as a sack of rocks.

  15. Ted Christian Avatar
    Ted Christian

    Cutting and pasting my comment 2 days ago elsewhere-
    “(WW II) was a long time ago and most Americans know essentially nothing about it except American war is good. Wars are viewed through the WW II lens because that justifies them, whereas viewing wars through the Korean, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Kosovo, WW I, Crimean, Trojan, etc etc etc. war lens does not.”

    “Vastly outnumbering your rulers but choosing not to overthrow them because you think the status quo might someday make you wealthy is the same as having all the power in the world and trading it away for a lottery ticket” and see this is where an MBA or a law degree or running an HOA would clip your wings. Fly on, flamethrower butterfly!

    But, OK, absolutely not to douse your tongues but “capitalism” is essentially a strawman word popularized by Marx, who was a poser trust fund baby, and anyway it means “take the rich people’s stuff”, which is synonymous with theft, since the poor don’t have anything worth taking. Society, meanwhile, runs on a process of creating and exchanging goods and services (the economy) by way of a medium of exchange (money). This has produced, for instance, everything you have. I’m not inherently opposed to tie-dye cooperatives or whatever other alternatives you envision but along with coming up with details you need to make a clear distinction, because it certainly exists, between what individuals decide to do and what the government makes them do by force, and I add “force” for clarity because it’s redundant. You yourself wax luminous we really may be on the edge of the abyss. We need all the light we can get.

  16. What could possibly go wrong with Nancy continuing to provoke China?

    1. Ted Christian Avatar
      Ted Christian

      Good movie, worth it just for the end. Google “Vasily Arkhipov” to read how close this actually came to happening during the Cuban Missile Crises. I emphasis to people that even if you want to believe in rational politicians we’re playing Russian roulette and we’re eventually going to spin a loaded chamber.

  17. Bless you, Caitlin. My wife started painting water colors. Some are muddy, some pretty good, one of our deceased cat walking into the light with his tail in the air has that ineffable quality of past and future saints. I was playing guitar and singing my newest song the other night, my wife remarked, you sound like Bob Dylan. Of course not, but she heard that ineffable quality that I was feeling as the music expressed itself. I replied, don’t insult the Bob!, but with a tear in my eye. Oh right, we’re supposed to be talking about psychotic politicians and Armageddon, sorry.

  18. I’m afraid the Russiagaters are no more likely to come to their senses than the antivaxxers.

    1. Timothy Michel Avatar
      Timothy Michel

      Antivaxxers? What is that?

      1. Same as russiagaters, except Fauci is their Putin.

        1. Don’t forget to take your meds.

          1. Grampa’s mad, time to change the channel for him.

            1. And leave that bottle alone for Chrissakes!

  19. Timothy Michel Avatar
    Timothy Michel

    Putin will not make the same mistake twice and will not be the first to initiate a nuclear strike. He will wait until the U.S. uses it’s first tactical nuke either in the Donbass region of Ukraine or inside Russia itself.
    ~
    But don’t fret Caitlin, China will come to dominate the world regardless of what kind of posturing the U.S. engages in presently. The United States turned all of it’s manufacturing over to China a long time ago. It is just a matter of time before China comes to collect the debts owed it.

    1. Ted Christian Avatar
      Ted Christian

      Yeah, getting into an arms race with a country you’ve outsourced your manufacturing to is … ill advised? Foolish? Psychotic? Fatal?

      1. China, source of huge amounts of American pharmaceuticals.

        Go to war with China only if what ails you can be remedied with aspirin.

        Maybe the American government is dissatisfied with the character of the people who live here now.

        A nice war to depopulate America’s undesirables and, with the end of abortions, the oligarchy might be able to raise a population from childbirth to warriors, more pleasing to the real owners of this country.

    2. Timothy Michel Avatar
      Timothy Michel

      Right now, all the United States has left in it’s tool box is desperation. I think the time is long past for the United States to re-start building a real economy.
      ~
      The experiment in democracy has failed because the people of the United States could not distinguish between democracy and capitalism. Capitalism has no interest in sovereign states, only money wherever it may be had.
      ~
      We may see China swept up via the Great Reset and the emergence of global governance as well, along with all the other countries of the world.
      ~
      The New World Order where you will own nothing, not you house, not your car, not the clothes on your back, and you will be happy. Like the Enoi of the Time Machine saga.

      1. And the guys who will own the whole shebang like Bill Gates, Larry Fink & Co will therefore be so unhappy, in corollary deduction, that it makes me wanna cry…

  20. Wills Flowers Avatar
    Wills Flowers

    I get the following Narrative Manager column from a one Oliver Knox from the WaPo every week in my email inbox. Tucked into the top of the column right under the logo is a discrete “presented by ExxonMobile”

    They don’t even try to hide it now.

  21. All this was very predictable. In Chinese horoscope, 1938 was a year of the Tiger and 2022 is also a year of the Tiger. So it’s normal that people act the same. In ancient Greece, the concept of eternal return (or eternal occurrence), which was found in Indian philosophy and ancient Egypt and subsequently taken up by the Pythagoreans and Stoics, claimed that all existence in the universe has been recurring and will continue to recur in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across infinite time and space. There are recurring conflagrations and after each conflagration, the same people come back, have the same friends and do and say the same things like in a play that would start again as soon as it’s over.

    It doesn’t give precise indications about these conflagrations but it is clear that the politicians for instance, have the same friends and always repeat the same things. See?

    One might presume therefore that with us being in a year of the Tiger, Nancy Pelosi would go to Munich but it’s not that simple because she was born in 1940 which is a year of the Dragon. So it’s normal she wants to go to China instead, where most dragons live, to try and find out if she’s got fambly there. In Chinese, dragons are called Long. If they catch Covid, it’s called Long Covid, which Nancy might very well get if she’s not careful.

    But why Taiwan instead of mainland China? Some killjoys claim that she wants to taunt Xi. Nothing such! It is to reconcile the year she was born (1940) with the cycle she’s in (1938-2022). For in Taiwan, at Lotus Lake, there’s a temple called Dragon and Tiger Pagodas which is made of two towers, one for a Dragon and one for a Tiger as any goddam moron will have guessed already.

    At press time, we don’t know if Michelle Yeoh, who starred in the 2000 multiple award-winning movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon will meet with Nancy there – which goes to show the art of horoscope is perfectible.

    Worse! We don’t even know if the latter will actually get on with it now that Xi has explained to Brandon in no uncertain terms that it would be extremely bad manners and there was no way of knowing what the Chinese military, in whose hands he’d put the matter, would make of it.

    In every country, the military is not very curious and therefore tends to shoot first and ask questions later and it is not yet clear whether Nancy would be able to jump on roofs and run along walls like Michelle Yeoh in the aforementioned movie to dodge the machine guns.

    If she does though, she’ll qualify to show up on the Ukrainian front once Volo is through with bringing freedom and democracy to his country by making lists of dissidents he wants buried alive honey-coated in holes brimming with Wolfsangel-waving nazi red ants.

    Political life has its good moments!

    1. Timothy Michel Avatar
      Timothy Michel

      Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was a great movie. I would like to point out that Ziyi Zhang was a dancer, not a martial artists and she used her mastery of dance to produce those incredible martial arts scenes.

      1. Same goes for Michelle Yeoh.

    2. Timothy Michel Avatar
      Timothy Michel

      House of Flying Daggers is another great movie where Ziyi Zhang shows off her mastery of dance.
      ~
      https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1569718553/?ref_=tt_vi_i_1

    3. Timothy Michel Avatar
      Timothy Michel

      Life is a stage on which we dance for a moment. We come from the stage and we return to the stage after we have completed our dance.

    4. Timothy Michel Avatar
      Timothy Michel

      And one last thing, I had an opportunity to meet Ziyi Zhang when she came to the Screen Actor’s Guild in Hollywood. I am sorry I didn’t notice that she was booked to appear in the Cagney room until after the event.
      ~
      Sorry I didn’t know as much about Michelle Yeoh as I did Ziyi Zhang.

      1. Never mind. Most people have Wikipedia these days and you’re bloody well entitled to have a crush on whatever birthing person you want! :o)

        1. Here’s actually the scene I had in mind when I wrote the text but I posted the other one because it shows Zhang Ziyi’s beautiful face contrary to this one and the fight is just as good. Still, if Nancy can do that in Taiwan, she’s in for a win :o)

    5. Nice thought about the great initiates from the ancient world. Nice sword fight. I like that movie. The message is about mind over strength. That old lady showed mercy as Li Mu Bai did several times but the young female is too prick like Caitlin and Tim. She just cannot help herself. Pretty much women.

  22. American empire is under volunteer suicide. It looks like pretty staged but it is not. I guess.

    1. THAT, contrary to what Hamlet believed, is the question. Ordo ab chao?

  23. Richard Simpson Avatar
    Richard Simpson

    There is way too much Neo-Con talk about “winnable nuclear wars” The imperial hubris around these folks is truly astounding and dangerous. Their inherent pathology is on full display for all to see, now.

  24. Well, actually the decadance and paralysis of Weimar society resonate pretty strongly with present day US. I feel it every day. With fascist militarism right below the surface.

  25. Michael Graham Avatar
    Michael Graham

    In 1938, no one had any nuclear weapons. This is the single most important difference.

    1. But by 1945 they did and they were used.

  26. Well done, comrade. I posted your last two blogs, and they are in plain view at the top of my FB wall… with ‘China is issuing the same red line warnings’ as the featured article, and this jewel at the end, to put a manhole cover on the post; after a number of relatively poignant comments from moi. I used to have a blog, and I gave it up. Between you and several very special others, you are collectively saying what I want to say, and I can sit safely on the sidelines and throw poison darts to add my own color to the big top circus.

    Cheers, mate.

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