Commenters Say the Darnedest Things. About Russia.
I've probably mentioned an untold number of times that I spend a lot of time reading comments that are attached to anything I read or research on the Internet. Somehow this really works for me. I come away with a context that becomes another pointer to the knowledge I store, but that's the least of it. So often, I find the most extraordinary information placed there by passers through — things that influence me more that the article they are attached to. True also, the comments can reveal interesting new trends and topics, and every once in awhile a fascinating participant will stand out who I'll remember to look for next time I return.
Each of the news sites and blogs pull a unique set of visitors into their orbit. Those visitors, in turn, develop their own community style. The longer they are together, the more distinct their commenting style becomes. I know from glancing at the comments whether I am at USA Today or the Daily Mirror or The Hill, even though they are all quite lowbrow. The Washington Post crowd is about as politically informed as the New York Times crowd, but their individual styles are strikingly different. The NYT's commenters are are far more circumspect in stating their opinions, while the delusions they've picked up from reading the Times seem rather innocent. The savvy devils at WAPO, however, are quick to grasp the intention of the news narrative, although there's an ever-present crowd of dumb clucks in their midst. At the Post, the most appreciated comments tend a little cynical. The Times readers are more self aware; their dumb clucks seem to have more restraint.
Overall, I'd say the comments, the conversations, offer a general picture of the immediate mental health of the nation — or of humans as a species. As you can imagine, that picture has been changing quite noticeably of late. Although, I'm happy to report that reading comprehension is much improved from just a year earlier. Autocorrect and grammarly have made it possible for the low-info constituents of the Right Wing to communicate with the rest of the nation, but there's still room for improvement in general coherence. I also read a lot of the foreign press, but only a few provide space for comments. Nevertheless, the Americans find their way to these foreign forums, and eagerly plop down their opinions and taunts. "If you build it, they will come."This, the foreign press has discovered. Self-appointed American trolls daily meddle in every nation's political business. But I think it's unlikely they'll be indicted by anyone.
Over the years, I have collected hundreds of comments that have caught my eye for one reason or another. I keep them loosely organized by topic or date. I have no idea why I am hanging on to them. I realized that in all this time, I have only twice, run across Russians or Russian associates who had something significant to say. My first encounter was in the comments at Fortune magazine, maybe four of five years ago.The Russian was in a conversation with an American that began mildly enough, then it shifted in intensity. There was no real anger or insults, but the Russian grew very verbose. They were discussing potential nuclear confrontations and you could see that the American was was absolutely positive that the US was the strongest nuclear force on the planet. The US had the most, the biggest, and the best he told the Russian. The US military was the fastest, the strongest, the most modern. The Russian took his time and laid out a relentless narrative describing why and how Russia would prevail in any nuclear encounter with the US. His argument included social and political realities that would have never occurred to me. His strategic and tactical scenarios were very sophisticated and impossible to refute due to geography and demographics. He pointed out that most of Russia's nuclear launch system could not be targeted by the US because it was in constant motion in the forests covering that vast nation. That gave Russia a solid second strike advantage over the US, which would determine the outcome. His resolve, rooted in history and in a typical Russian's lifetime of preparation and readiness for such an attack from the US, was unnerving. Pretty much the rest of Fortune's commenters fell silent. I scooped the whole exchange up.
I doubt he was ever indicted.
Then, nothing for years, except the usual chiding chit-chat and one-upmanship you see between Russians and USAins, usually on the defense industry reporting sites and at foreign newspapers. You could always find them at Russia Today, which was like catnip to the chickenhawks for quite awhile. My second Russian sighting occurred about seven months ago, and I should disclose that the fellow was not actually a Russian. He was a close Russian observer/associate. I spotted him at — of all places — Medium website, where he buried a comment in Caitlin Johnstone's essay, "Seymour Hersh Owes The World An Explanation For His Seth Rich Comments." It was August 2017 and the Russia craziness was still an epidemic. This continues today, without a scintilla of evidence to prove that the DNC was hacked at all (it wasn't), or that proves Russia "meddled" in the US presidential election — except for the 13 ham sandwiches Mueller indicted in St. Petersburg, Russia. In any event, I believe my Russian encounter of the Second Kind provides a fitting ending to this story. Here is that comment:
I am one of the few Americans that has been down inside one of Russia’s myriad array of nuclear bomb shelters. There may be others, but I have never met one. In correspondence with Stephen Cohen, he did not know of any others who had been inside them. He was unaware of the network and unaware it was still active.
Unlike in America, Russians have kept these operational, even through the breakup years. They are stocked with food and water and people use them every week as safe places to store food. Russia can put 60 million people underground in around 15 minutes. Russia’s apartment buildings, hotels and public buildings are also built of materials that won’t fail except partially, even with a direct air burst overhead. They are made of stone and concrete, built to double as fortresses in wartime.
At Hiroshima, there were survivors in a stone and concrete bank almost directly underneath ground zero. There is every reason to think that in an all-out nuclear war, most Russians would survive. Contrast this with building designs in the US. Most homes are wood as are many public buildings. Most public/industrial buildings are glass and concrete fascia hung onto steel frames, or sheet metal. We have concrete floors in our high-rises, yes. But overpressure will drive glass deep into these buildings. The USA will lose a full nuclear war exchange.
Yes, I have read the articles about how we have nuclear submarine launch capability to take out many silos in a first strike. And I can tell you from employing people from the former USSR that they rolled right over problems like power outages and major issues as if they weren’t even there — things that would stop a US team cold. They are used to improvising and figuring things out, because in their world, logistics are screwed up most of the time. I hired a man who built his computers from parts he scavenged from the dump, and built his own step-down transformer to supply his home with power at the right voltage by hooking up to the subway rails. They are very capable, and everyone can function in war. It’s been driven deep into their culture.
Even with a hit, wrecking a silo, if there is a way to make that silo work again, they will find it. I am talking about ordinary civilians here, not specially trained troops. Plus, anyone who thinks that Russia hasn’t taken those reports into account and made steps to remedy it is a fool.
Russians do not want war. Near the (well hidden) entrance of the nuclear bomb shelter I visited in the Russian heartland, was a large sign, a kind of billboard, well executed, but hand-painted, wishing for peace on earth. They don’t want war. They want war far less than Americans do, in no small part because they know it’s real and the devastation it wrought on their country. Americans have never experienced that in an invasion scenario. Russians will fight for their country with tenacity that cannot be imagined by most of us raised on rather idiotic movies. The current generation of Russians are survivors of the breakup, a time when all the nightmares of American survivalists came true. This is no exaggeration. 80% of the economy evaporated. Police were not paid for years for all practical purposes. City engineers kept the lights on, but as volunteers, because in Russia, if you don’t take care of things like that, the winter will kill you all. All of the engineers I met were women. Women keep Russia running, and I know from personal experience that they consider American women rather stupid sheep.
In Russia they learned the lessons of surviving apocalyptic times when ex-military would rappel off the roof into open windows to murder everyone in an apartment building the size of a city block. Lesson #1 is that the lone wolves die. Humans survive bad times in groups and with friends by working together — period. I have said as much to the mock-survivalists in this country. Our survivalists live in fantasies. Russians, by contrast, live in reality, and they are not the soft, fat, foolish and arrogant children that tend to populate this nation.
The invention of this rabid anti-Russia drivel owes its strength to the decision of John Podesta and Hillary Rodham Clinton to make this the post-election deadly issue. That was documented in the book published about them by an author friendly to them. This is done for domestic advantage, the Democratic party’s equivalent of McCarthyism, but with the convenience of the target not being citizens. It is also done for venal purposes, because with the Bush Jr. administration, we outsourced military logistics and that means that the military industrial complex requires a hot-war to make its profits.
America is demonizing a president of Russia who is more popular than any US president in history. Vladimir Putin raised the GDP per capita of Russia by 5 times. He made the tax system something possible to follow and it works. He has been very careful and cautious in his moves. He is the coolest head I have ever observed, and I have followed him since before his ascent to the presidency.
Yes, Russia operates at a level of corruption that is a higher than ours. But we are working hard to catch up. We have a considerably greater share of our GDP in offshore banks than Russia does. Our oligarchs have a tighter stranglehold on our government that Russias do. We had the son of our last vice president make the Biden family rich in Ukraine trading on his white house connections. Think about that. A sitting vice-president’s family profited hugely off of the revolution-backing foriegn policy of the last administration.
Russia, however, has gone the other way. I was there in the Yeltsin years and I know how bad it was. Banks were taken over by armed gangs who literally played poker with depositor’s money, and that was just the start. Today, banks are run by competent people. Putin has executed a “Finding Joe Kennedy” strategy. He and his group (he does not operate alone) made deals with the smarter ones willing to move in the right direction. This policy works by iteration. He divides and conquers for the good of the nation, and it works. The GDP figures show it.
It is incredibly stupid to think that Russia, or any nation climbing up from where Russia was could operate with simon-pure “rule of law,” something our nation has progressively deserted in this century.
The USA has gone full on 1984 Orwellian on Russia over Ukraine. We supported a revolutionary coup that overthrew the elected government. Our beloved black hope presiident called the people of Ukraine who did not overthrow their government, “the rebels”. That is pure doublethink. The sky is pink with green polka dots. The grass is growing on the sun. That is the level of lie that our government, and virtually every journalist in the West have perpetrated without blinking. We did that right on Russia’s border, the place where Russia has been invaded multiple times, and we blame Russia for protecting their ethnic group when they asked for help.
I know what happened after the breakup in Republic of Georgia. Georgia seceded on a platform of racism and bigotry, that Georgians were superior and others had no rights. Russian girls were raped constantly, multiple times per day quite often. Russian ethnics were beaten and killed. These were people who went to the same public schools as everyone else. It was as if you woke up tomorrow, and at the supermarket, people you went to school with surrounded you, beat you, raped you, took your money and you were grateful to get out alive. These were people from families who were mostly exiled to Tbilisi by the czar or the USSR’s government and had been there for longer than the USA has been a nation. I can connect you to a woman who escaped Republic of Georgia to the USA at a time when the Russian Federation was collapsing. Her story is written on her face and body. Yes, Georgia fought a civil war to get rid of Ghamsakurdia, the literal madman who led that insanity. Shevardnadze took over and things went back to normal.
The evidence says that the Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who took over Kiev would commit atrocities because they have committed atrocities. They immediately started a war effort of ethnic cleansing, firing on homes of Russian ethnics.
There is absolutely no justification for the sanctions on Russia. There is no justification for the demonization. There is no justification for the provocations on Russia’s border. But most of all, making war with Russia is an incredibly dangerous and stupid course. We will lose. They will not. It will be the end for us, it will be a terrible set back for them, but they will recover. We will cease to exist as the nation we know. We will be occupied and never return to what we are now. I doubt it will be Russia that will occupy us, but we will lose our sovereignty. That is what history tells us happens to empires that lose.
This comment was written by Brian Hanley. He has written publications on terrorism through West Point and a range of papers in economics, biosciences and policy. He obtained his PhD in microbiology with honors from UC Davis, has a bachelors degree in computer science, is a multiple entrepreneur and lectured for years to the MBA program at Santa Clara University on terrorism and international business matters.
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1202-2795
Comments
In other news:
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
"Oh wait ..."
Not only the Clinton foundation, he also paid Bill $500,000 to give a speech. Just what could he possibly say that's worth being paid that much that he hasn't said since he started giving them 18 years ago?
This is a brilliant essay, Pluto. Thanks for sharing what this dude said. I've also read that Russians are doing drills for the possibility of a nuclear attack.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
@snoopydawg
Just wondering, has anyone seen any actual evidence offered on Putin supplying the money which, in the detailed expose of this back in ?2013?, was attributed specifically to various of those investors profiting from the transaction, with the speaker's fee payment from a bank, one said to be connected to the government?
Since virtually everything is now being attributed to PUTIN DID IT!!! (and a good deal of money was paid in by investors) and the money paid to the Clinton Fundation Slushfund apparently has no relation to the Clintons whatsoever in this completely different iteration, where Mr. Giustra, who for quite some time since this has been partnered with Bill Clinton in a spin-off Foundation, is now downplayed with, in some articles, little or no mention of the hundred million in donations he'd publicly promised to the Clinton Fundation, on top of well over 30 million from him alone, (it was previously spoken of as being around 140 million, oddly enough, just the amount that Putin - completely unmentioned as having done so at the time of the independent news-investigation release, but now freely spoken of in the corporate media as having made - was supposed to have made) and I forget how many millions more from other investors standing to benefit from the deal.
But when this came out it was all about the vast amount donated by the investors with no mention of Putin/the Russian government having made any, until recently, in the ongoing propaganda blitz. And now it's all about Putin, not about the Clintons, nor about any of the investors who donated a total of hundreds of millions to the Clinton slush-fund, including Mr. Giustra, Bill Clinton's spin-off Foundation partner - a Canadian, non-American, citizen.
So I'm wondering if anyone's actually seen any verification of the accuracy of this attribution and emphasis, in view of the sources, the propaganda blitz, the Clinton involvement and potential concerns about leading interest away from Bills spin-off Foundation partner, investigation of whom might lead to sekit information about more of the Clinton's corruption, when, perhaps, the 'proof' will be Top Secret, but vouched for by 17 spy agencies, virtually none of which have seen any of it, apart from a few trusted souls who just know that it'd damage National security if the public ever saw it.
Has there been anything produced beyond oft-repeated allegations that 'PUTIN DID IT!' which I've simply not encountered? For some reason, I have little faith in the combination of CIA-infiltrated/bought/influenced corporate media, and any Clinton-protective, Putin-attacking Official Story... at this point, it sounds to me like another scapegoating redirection involving Clinton projectile (play on words intended) blame-transfer-games, a current talking-point aiming at the attack of yet another country and this time using expensive nukes which would need more taxpayer money to replace, if anyone survived their use.
And if the propagandists can endlessly repeat Big Lies, I can repeat what I recall of what was actually documented at the time - barring some actual proof on this. It's too easy to be suckered, when the end game has been said to be that no American any longer believes anything that is true, according to a quote someone made here a while back. What's on the internet can be changed, but reality can't. They can only make us uncertain and doubt ourselves or whoever they choose to take blame.
Edited because the whole mess was duplicated when it posted; think my mouse is getting me back for having the cat sleep in here...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
In a different world, we would be sharing cultural gems made
more splendid by appreciating what it is to be human. Now, 'leaders' boast of nuclear war, again. As G Carlin said to us, our leaders grew up in our schools, churches and so on, they are us; ergo, the indictment falls squarely on us all for allowing the BS to grow; notwithstanding, corporate fascism won the day many decades ago--hell some warned of establishing corporations when in infancy.
It's the relentless propaganda, sponsored mostly by the corporate community, sung by politicians across the globe that needs undivided attention--this power must be stopped.
Before kos, where we first followed each other, i ventured into the Times' discussions and others before blogging caught on, it was more civil then which brings me to this sad thought-- following your insight of technology empowering those lacking writing skills to participate--what garden grew such angry, vile and uncaring people spewing idiocy and carrying crosses, too?
Looking for a solution...a start could be breaking up the media 'corps' as soon as possible; we need a Teddy! And a humanist to lead, to break through this global quagmire!
Well, i've rambled enough; thanks for this good essay!
In the matter of sharing cultural gems...
...and the relentless propaganda of the corporate unipower stretching its reach into the sovereignty of nations and cultures and pulling them under to drown — yes, that must be stopped. Time is short. There is no sane reason why the world works the way it does. It's merely an imposed reality. Enough modern history has passed and been analyzed to allow for a beneficial reboot that restores cultural self-determination without the pitfalls.
I read a think tank out of Russia that is defining the instinctive global movement toward "Polycentricity" that allows countries to come together, check the corporations, and restore themselves to sanity. The Essay at Geopolitics ru titled Multipolarity and Polycentricity might interest you. Several American thinkers have made significant contributions to this movement. I believe Putin has been very influenced by this idea. China is the most natural fit considering the path they are on, but there is also wide interest in South America and resonance in Africa and Southeast Asia. Canada has even incorporated the terminology into parts of their government. The fact is, the world is now positioned to flick a switch and transform itself anytime it wants to. They put a lot of work into climbing to this plateau.
Quite coincidently, I also read an article there that attempts to deconstruct the very question you pose:
INHIBITORY BRAKES FALL. DISTURBING SYMPTOM. is an essay that asks the same question. As the title might suggest, it is an appalling translation into English. Actually it was written in Italian, then translated into Russian, then into English. Oy. The other day, though, I read it out loud and I totally caught the drift. It opens in a fun way, where the author examines a statement made by Donald Trump, then one made by Harry Reid. Then he shakes his fists and implores god to explain how these men have the nerve to say the things that they just did, outloud! Looking at it through his eyes, wow. We've lost our senses.
Anyway, he calls this symptom/disease that we have a dangerous lack of "Inhibitory Brakes." The author is truly astonished, which is a bit amusing in a macabre way.
It gets particulary useful when he points out where this has happened before.
Who knew? Scary stuff. Give it a look.
Thanks for the wonderful feedback, Smiley.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
You are right about what Putin has said
Here what he said about this. BTW, how many people are aware that Russia has universal health care and many of things that today's liberals used to want?
I keep reading that he is a thug and that he has ruined Russia. This is so far from the truth about him. Is he perfect? Nope, but who is?
Russia spends less than 3% of their GDP on defense as opposed to ours which is above 50%. No wonder they can have nice things.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Pluto, weekends, especially, consume my attention and time...
pardon this late response. Read "Colonizing the Western Mind" during an awake period last night. i'm not vouching for the author nor do i know if this piece is splattered over the front pages--doubt it--or linked to and discussed here on c99, but i mused over pieces of this straight forward work raising like questions to yours and want to share in case you and others missed it:
A good read, imho, needing more contemplation.
Edit, adding link: https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/02/colonizing-the-western-mind/
Just to mention, there are armies of trolls online.
Keeps getting harder finding articles I've seen, even in Duck Duck Go, results have been 'adapted' to show almost-solid tons of RUSSIAN!!! TROLLS!!! and the odd HATERS TROLLING HILLARY!!! - or perhaps factual ones are being removed leaving only propaganda, but here's one example from 2015.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-02/government-trolls-are-using-ps...
And from 2012:
https://www.occupycorporatism.com/2012/11/29/cia-sponsored-trolls-monito...
This seems to be undated, but there's a comment dated 2014:
http://consciouslifenews.com/cia-media-infiltration-operation-mockingbir...
Can't seem to find one I saw within the past week, about the army of military trolls combating anything citizens aren't supposed to say; they're issued a lengthy list of personae and individuals can apparently seem like quite a swarm. And a nasty one. And of course there are corporate trolls; the pathologically ugly Monsanto/Bivings thing is legendary. And who can forget Hillary's 'Correct the record' trolls, much as we might like to?
This sort of thing has been around for some time. As well as whatever their main agenda is, those paid trolls really do help to sow division and make people lose faith in their fellow-wo/men, even when the goal is to trick/bully the sheep into following what's pretending to be 'the herd' for fear of being called nasty names. As with the CorpoDems...
Don't let the bastards fool you into getting down about it. Your fellow-citizens may not be anywhere near as propagandized and mean-minded as those trolls - in trying to 'normalize' idiotic talking-points and distort your perceptions - might want to make you think.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
The quoted message will be greeted by disbelief but it is true
We would all be speaking German now if Russia hadn't won WW2. We did 10% of the fighting and 8% of the dying. Russia was bled dry, losing over 20 million soldiers and 30 million + citizens. Naturally in our junior grade propaganda factories (elementary and middle schools) WE won the war and the Russians were just helpless victims of Stalin's stupidity--until they weren't.
The Russians want no more war on their soil and will not tolerate the slightest aggression to that end whether by land, sea, or air. We should all be grateful for Putin because he has the wisdom and cool calculations to deal with American Imbeciles like the Orangutan and the Mad Bomber without destroying us all.
"Rebuilding our nukes"! How insanely stupid is that? But both Killary and Drumpf promote it.
@Alligator Ed
Actually, our non-master-race, non-'pure German' parents would likely have wound up, if not dead, 'ghettoized' or enslaved, a condition we might well have been born into.
We all owe Russia our lives and freedom. As much as the PTB (in or working with the current incarnation of the US industrialist faction who sponsored Hitler and the Nazis for their first shot at global fascist takeover, and likely particularly hating Russia as being responsible for their defeat that time,) who want to nuke Russia and end life on the planet have permitted us to keep at this point, and for however long we retain even the former without regaining democracy and governments of, by and for the people...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Thank-you!
While I read Caitlin's essay when she posted it, evidently Mr. Hanley had not yet posted his comment. Of course, it's really far more than simply a comment. Anyway, I'd never read it until now. Thanks so much for catching this.
The vast majority of Americans have no clue about Russia. That fact is both sad and deadly.
1. Oh shit. 2. Taibbi. 3. Bottomless crazy
My first thought (after "oh shit") on reading Hanley's comment was that there would be enormous value for his message to be amplified by somebody with some experience in Russia and a big media platform, like Matt Taibbi. Hanley seems to have had a similar thought, because he prefaced his comment with "I sent this to Rolling Stone, but they ignored it AFAIK. So I’ll post it here."
Presumably Hanley has shared his comments with anybody in the foreign policy establishment who is willing to listen.
And presumably Putin's team has tried to leverage Russia's preparedness into persuading the USA to take a less confrontational approach to Russia.
The OP's two quoted comments, on top of Putin's recent publicity about new weapons and new tripwires for using them, suggest that the anti-Russian brinksmanship of the USA government is even crazier than was apparent from a broader quasi-informed reading of international politics.
Look at who controls American Federal POTUS, Congress,
SCOTUS, state government, slowly gaining in controlling both state and federal judiciary: FRightwingnuts stand up!! All the shite has risen to the top (yet again) here. It really kicked off in 1964 when the GOPukes were blasted along with Goldwater. Our "great patriots" Weyrich and Lewis Powell wrote about it. The Religious Right literally were scammed into being this group's Christian soldiers. If these azzholes don't start Thermonuclear warfare, this old Futurist dame will be VERY RELIEVED.
Russia has been around for several thousand years. They were nearly wiped out in WWII. Only the peoples' fierce fighting and their winters wrecked the Nazis. You can bet their informed citizens are laughing sadly at all this Amerikkkan hysteria over the Russkies hijacking the 2016 POTUS election. I look at all of it with a truckload of salt. Excellent diary! Rec'd!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
If you can keep your wits about you
when all around you are losing theirs...then you might find Mr. Hanleys keenly observed comment about the Russian people useful information as you try navigating through a sea of propaganda being spouted out by undiscerning nitwits whose brains have clearly been hijacked by Borgs.
Thank you for your essay.
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
Pluto's Republic,
thanks, as always.
One point that Brian Hanley's essay makes so strongly is that Americans get their knowledge about war, about WWII, and about Russia from "media" of various kinds, from newspapers, television, movies, and novels, whereas the Russian people got it from life. You would think that the American people would know the difference, but increasingly it appears that we don't.
There is a point that I think he may misunderstand though. He says,
Russia's corruption is ours. It is from U.S. corporations, the same banks, oil companies, railroad companies, mining and engineering companies that have developed Russia since the Bolshevik period and continue to exist as the Russian military industrial complex today.
Gorbachev sought to move the Soviet Union in the direction of socialist democracy, and therefore he was removed and replaced with Bushworld, gangster capitalism.
The problem these fascist gangsters have with Putin and Assad is that, corrupt as they may be, as murderous as they may be, they're TOO DEMOCRATIC. Putin and Assad see the advantage of raising wages, nationalizing resources, providing education, providing healthcare, as against WAR. Putin's unforgivable sin was to make an economic deal with Ukraine that would have benefited both countries. Peaceful coexistence would eliminate war, and what the American and European elite have been living off of is war capitalism, also known as socialism for killers.
@Linda Wood
If I had a nickel for every time I've wished I had extra recs to give your comments, I'd be able to give the site a sizable donation.
You've so beautifully made the essential point that the mafia-style crony capitalism was imposed by US PTB electoral interference to install a puppet government that nearly foundered Russia, and this needs to be brought up at every opportunity to counter the projection propaganda, as does your equally imperative point that the US PTB is working to stamp out the very concepts of democracy, at home and abroad, by underhanded and brutal methods.
Regarding the US PTB, this isn't a normal political issue within an at least semi-functional democracy; this regards psychopaths taking over political/military/judiciary control of another democracy, which is an entirely different matter, and needs to be viewed in that light.
So many people still, even knowing America to be a fascist state, don't seem to really realize it yet or take it into account, and expect the remaining human (non-psychopathic) individuals within the system to be able to defy it and therefore, at best, nullify, with their elimination from the system by whatever route, any good they could do working more quietly within the system to do what they can, although the same was true under the Nazi's last time, with underground Resistance members having worked from within at appalling risk actually murdered as collaborators by the very people helped by what they did in this necessary pretense of collaboration.
If we throw the baby out with the bathwater in discarding allies because they cannot do what we'd like under a fascist system which they're also fighting however they actually can, we sacrifice our chances without even allowing them to grow or any plans to reach fruition.
A hero can't save us; we must save ourselves, while admitting that there are limits on what we can do and direct our efforts in every way still possible, cherishing every ally we have without expecting the impossible of them but using what good they can provide.
Nobody will ever agree on everything with anybody else; the fact that we have trouble accepting this and working together for the common good without rejecting people over differences is a product of divisive propaganda which has so far succeeded in quelling the potential of The People United who The Psychopaths That Be justly fear.
Internet keeps cutting out; I'll see if this will post after forever of being unable to view the blasted thing to miss whatever typos or bad phrasing anyway, lol.
Edited to add, in case anyone hasn't seen them yet, these, both highly pertinent to election interference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMqIU2ue0eE
(In this case, the bit about election interference shows up maybe 10? minutes in. In the process of watching it myself, lol.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYlDgnvJ63I
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Ellen,
thank you. I daily think to write to you that your work here makes an immense difference, that your impassioned writing moves us toward a larger understanding.
I think one thing you and I see that needs reinforcing is that the military industrial cabal that is wrecking the world and running our government is MULTINATIONAL. The corporations plundering life and humanity on earth have no loyalty to the United States, no loyalty to Russia, no loyalty to the Saudi princes or to Uzbekistan. They work for all of these governments, and they run the world. They will kill the people of the United States and the people of Russia if they decide it is in their interests. When the corporate media describe the conflict as Us versus Them, the Us they are referring to is the international industrial cabal. The Them they are referring to is the working people of America and Russia and Eurasia, meaning all working people.
@Linda Wood
You are a sweet person! Coming from you, that almost flabbergasts me, especially since I'm pretty much peanut gallery watching a field of brilliant and informed writers. But thanks for saying those kind words!
You couldn't be more right, in my perspective; look at the number of uber-wealthy people born and raised in the US, all set up to run to NZ or elsewhere and let America break down/be nuked behind them rather than quit bleeding the system, the environment, people and all, dry beforehand - this when it's uber-wealthy people wrecking the country and world in order to become become so very, very wealthy at the expense of others.
Indeed, we're coming from the same place there; it's a collaboration between 'Psychopaths Of The World, Uniting', to profiteer without restraint even in self-preservation, except of course we look at the 'Us and Them' the other way around - and therefore outvote them 99 to 1%. And I generally term them fascists, using the 'military/corporate state' definition of fascism; inhuman against humans, psychopaths against the humane, money against the morality instinctive in the normals.
To me, it seems evident that fascism represents simply what happens when psychopaths take over, reflecting their mindset and limitations, and clearly cannot be pretended to be any sustainable political system; it involves mindless destruction of the integral concepts of humanity to facilitate the personal goals of the mightiest, demonstrating the inability for human survival and the creation of any civilization in such as ethics and empathy being emotions alien to them and perceived as weaknesses rather than the strengths they are.
So, somewhat different terms/concepts used, perhaps, but arriving, I think, in the same area.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Absolutely.
The concept that our CIA director, Allen Dulles, protected and empowered Nazi butchers after the war, by placing such murderers as Reinhard Gehlen as first chief of West Germany’s foreign intelligence service (!), is OK because Dulles was anti-Soviet, is supposed to cover for the fact that Dulles was Hitler's New York lawyer leading up to the war! This doesn't mean these psychopathic killers were something like fascists. These psychopathic killers were fascism, they built it, they financed and fueled it for the duration of WWII, and their industrial offspring continued bringing the world to order under dictatorship immediately afterward, and they thrive on this inhumanity today.
Exactly! And thanks SO much for the history!
And for indicating where a lot of that international network of pathology stemmed from... Also shows how bad the corruption must already have been that this was accepted and the Dulles weren't rotting in prison by then.
Now, still the same deal - the claim which was floated around that things being uncovered in the Great Server Unvestigation Farce would bring down the government and that this stopped that opportunity says a lot; suicidally murderous government corruption being 'too big to fail' and all, so let's just leave it and let them finish killing off life on the planet in any of a multitude of ways.
I have a theory that their virulent hatred and long targeting of Russians stems from the fact that the Russian were integral to the allies winning the war, killing off enough of their pet Nazi's, despite their own horrendous losses during the Nazi invasion, to help make (what I generally and often loosely speak of as) The Psychopaths That Be's first attempt at global fascist dominance fail.
That and the fact that psychopaths despise as 'weaknesses' human ethics and emotions necessary for species survival and any civilized society but which they're unfortunately incapable of feeling, and can't stand the fact that some peoples in some countries sometimes still manage to vote in governments which at least look to the public interest. So Putin ensuring health care and pensions out of public funds for those actually most in need of it - even without the fossil fuel issue - would no doubt anyway make him a particular target, even apart from old Nazi grudges.
My memory sucks and I couldn't for the life of me remember what little I'd heard of the Dulles brothers beyond the general impression I had of them, which your interesting bit of history ought to have triggered, did a little poking but was too tired and here I am back on what must by now be a dead thread in a pre-coffee phase in much the same condition.
Had started reading this article (following, some way down, lol) which you've likely seen? The money quote condensed from a couple of paragraphs off to one side:
If I could still afford to buy books, The Devil's Chessboard would be on the top of my rather lengthy list, not that I can remember any others at the moment, but - my morning coffee's ready by now!
Great freaking interview from when Mother Jones was still an asset!
Although the author doesn't seem to make the connection that it often isn't actually necessary or good to send people to their deaths in war (so often involving bullying/predation/control issues) or to make decisions that result in greater suffering - typically for the more vulnerable, to benefit a relative few; it's often the result of the ruthless, scheming psychopathic being 'in power' (the common use of that phrase being itself indicative, as public servants are in the public service, not holding power over the people who effectively form the country, as such, except in such as exerting public-protective law preventing predation/abuses) and the pathologizing of the society by misusing language and the distortion of concepts, as well as other forms of propaganda which may also confuse communications/'normalize' the psychopathic mentality. (And I personally believe that any degree of callousness ought to be an instant disqualification for holding any public office in any country. It should hurt any normal, actual human being to have to send others into hazard to face death; they'll then make damn certain that it's utterly necessary and not something that' doesn't hurt them a bit'. We've all seen where that gets us when politicians don't care about human lives, both locally and globally..)
Despite all this, 'normals' are often instinctively and self-protectively repulsed by those psychopaths who do not cover by being deceptively charming, (as with Bill Clinton, such as these fooling even experts, at least in the short term,) with those lacking/not bothering to fake this quality, such as Hillary Clinton, Dick Cheney and Pelosi, triggering that self-protective emotional recoil which increases with exposure, as we see occurring in these cases.
I do blather on but, as you know, this is important. We're being hit with confusion tactics to make us distrust our own perceptions and memories for a not-good reason. A universal understanding of defined terms, concepts, etc. is obviously essential to our ability for communication, these under heavy attack; phrasing/context/mental association all matters - hell, that's what PR is, lol - and we keep letting them distort the language, 'reframe' things and distort perceptions in order to lure us down a garden path leading over a cliff from which there will be no return.
https://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/10/book-review-devils-chessboard-...
I repeat from above:
And here we are, back in a recycled propaganda-wave against communists-as-a generic-label-for-elimination again. And if you hadn't brought that up, I'd otherwise not have looked just now to see that specific personal 'mentoring' connection between that next step admin unrolling The Plan further and Allen Dulles, Rumsfeld and others each next step of the 'incremental' way carrying the flame-torch, although I knew, of course, that Cheney was now 'mentoring' the Trump Admin. and that a number of those involved in both previous Admins and The Plan were still also evidently involved in control of public policy toward that plan.
One of my theories-for-every-occasion (also explaining her - and others - still having a security clearance and access to restricted National Security information while out of any public office, and for freaking years, for whatever difference that makes among the lawless) involves Sec of State Hillary and, before her, the Bush Admin passing official top secret info along to various Trilateral Commission or other involved members and getting away with doing so and with simply shifting/destroying evidence on private servers and the like when officially leaving office, although still involved and still getting classified info, all due to the extreme corruption already implanted/cheated in - Debbie Wasserman's pet Awans likely setting up an information conduit even from the apparently unwitting to various foreign participants by design, in this scenario. That also potentially explaining a lot that didn't otherwise fit or sit well about anything to do with them. Or done on their behalf, or not done by those responsible for security.
I lack the energy and, oddly, (since sitting at the computer all day, lol,) time for any actual research on anything, as it is so very time-consuming, at least for me; so many apparently barely-related by-ways/mentions encountered along the way on many subjects often bring very interesting relevancies or at least greater general understanding that it often took me a long time to get to where I was originally headed (much as with my writing, although months or years are fortunately not involved in the latter, even if it might sometimes feel that way, lol) - and now all that I often remember are general understandings and not the myriad essential details which that understanding was based on. Wish I'd be able to avoid what are apparently common household chemical exposures and just freaking get better; I hate being this tired and stupid, lol...
I don't think we're being saturated in neuro- and other toxins entirely 'by accident', either, even if they are 'cost-saving'. Over about the past decade, on a game I used to be addicted to, I saw people - mostly kids/young people, begin, and then more and more started, posting in their sigs (and complaining in comments) that 'their memories were becoming so bad, remind them', until it rapidly - within a few years - became so accepted as standard that "well of course I have such a bad memory" that it was just assumed. And it was predicted in the corporate media years back that dementia (which now apparently covers having a bad memory, where actual dementia is not required to exist as a condition for the label) was expected to sharply rise pretty much immediately, in the young and middle-aged, as well as the elderly. Not surprising, considering what we eat, drink, breathe and otherwise absorb, but industrial toxins and new varieties of these being pumped out and into all sorts of things were (not surprisingly, considering the source) unmentioned, as far as I recall.
So many are completely unaware and still seem to think they wouldn't be knowingly sold seriously damaging toxins in household products, never mind food, drink and, f course, pharma meds and it's been getting harder, ever since Obama, to find anything factual on anything potentially affecting polluting industry profits; much worse now and there are so many deadly ones - including nano-tech - increasingly used in household products... People are still selecting and paying to be poisoned.
Shows how well the Psychopaths That Be can con us all, when we are not aware of what they are and of at least some of what they're up to. Intensive and worsening, knowledge of world-killing types and levels of industrial pollution have overall been drowned out by 'carbon trading', even where environmentalists are mentioned in corporate news, that, 'mentioned' perhaps being the operative term. Awareness matters. As does the identification and elimination of psychopaths/the pathologized in public office, without which this situation would never have obtained.
This thread'll be long dead by now, so at least this won't be forming a lump in the midst of any conversation, although doubtful that you or anyone else might happen to read it, but I'll post it anyway... often don't, when I'm processing connections through any remaining semi-functional brain cells and ramble this much. And take two days to freaking do it, what with one thing and another and another and cetera.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
You and Linda had a brilliant conversation here.
Both of you are so generous with your time and information, which is presented in such an engaging way. I really appreciate you both so much. Thank you for contributing to this essay.
I had mentioned I was going to contact you about a brainwashing treatise I had inadvertently unearthed. I think I have finally found that link cluster. It is sensitive and disturbing, so I will PM you about it. Reading your conversation above, I had a feeling this may have been covertly used in the 1950s pertaining to those events.
____________________
The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Tried for ages last night to
Tried for ages last night to get a comment on expressing appreciation for the essay and to say thanks for saving and passing on that informative comment; had forgotten that it wouldn't. (Turned out somebody had put the routers in a closed heavy wood and glass cabinet, with the routers on top of some other (probably also semi-)functioning electronic equipment, which I only discovered today, a little while ago; with those shifted off and the cabinet doors opened, I no longer have to spend ludicrous amounts of time having the connection mostly cut out on a slow, weak signal as low as 1 MBS before getting pages to change and mostly getting nowhere and finally remembered, lol.)
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.