Gotterdammerung -- It's Not Just For Germans Any More

From another message board at the start of the end of the world:
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Definition of Götterdämmerung
: a collapse (as of a society or regime) marked by catastrophic violence and disorder
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So far in 2020 we are only getting hints, false alarms and near misses of catastrophic violence and disorder, but you cannot miss the signals coming from all over this troubled planet:

A continent on fire;

War against Iran -- plus how ever many allies they could muster -- reduced within a few hours to a "tit for tat" by the MSM;

A bizarre "impeachment" that continues the war of hyperbolic rhetoric totally devoid of practical consequence between the major parties

A virus is now loose in China that has so far attacked a microscopic portion of the human race, but is nevertheless scaring the shit out of the authorities, with air travel to China shutting down and the stock market falling.

Civilization threatening problems arising in a time of political paralysis.

Sounds like bad science fiction, doesn't it?

A few days later, I added this posted meditation on what became the Ukraine War:

The dream of ruling the world is as old as Alexander the Great, at least, and a host of kings, emperors and every other stripe of potentate have taken a shot at living it out. None have succeeded.

My guesses and leaps of logic about what has happened to the USA in the 21st Century are primarily rooted in a Harper's Magazine Article that I read in 2002, at the start of what was then called The War on Terror. Dick Cheney's Song of America. Here is the lead setting forth the case made:

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Few writers are more ambitious than the writers of government poli­cy papers, and few policy papers are more ambitious than Dick Cheney’s masterwork. It has taken several forms over the last decade and is in fact the product of several ghostwrit­ers (notably Paul Wolfowitz and Colin Powell), but Cheney has been consistent in his dedication to the ideas in the documents that bear his name, and he has maintained a close association with the ideologues be­hind them. Let us, therefore, call Cheney the author, and this series of documents the Plan.

The Plan was published in unclas­sified form most recently under the title of Defense Strategy for the 1990s, as Cheney ended his term as secretary of defense under the elder George Bush in early 1993, but it is, like Leaves of Grass, a perpetually evolving work. It was the controver­sial Defense Planning Guidance draft of 1992 — from which Cheney, unconvincingly, tried to distance him­self — and it was the somewhat less aggressive revised draft of that same year. This June it was a presidential lecture in the form of a commence­ment address at West Point, and in July it was leaked to the press as yet another Defense Planning Guidance (this time under the pen name of Defense Secretary Donald Rums­feld). It will take its ultimate form, though, as America’s new national security strategy — and Cheney et al. will experience what few writers have even dared dream: their words will become our reality.

The Plan is for the United States to rule the world. The overt theme is unilateralism, but it is ultimately a story of domination. It calls for the United States to maintain its over­whelming military superiority and prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge it on the world stage. It calls for dominion over friends and enemies alike. It says not that the United States must be more power­ful, or most powerful, but that it must be absolutely powerful.

The Plan is disturbing in many ways, and ultimately unworkable. Yet it is being sold now as an answer to the “new realities” of the post–September 11 world, even as it was sold previously as the answer to the new realities of the post–Cold War world. For Cheney, the Plan has al­ways been the right answer, no mat­ter how different the questions.

Cheney’s unwavering adherence to the Plan would be amusing, and maybe a little sad, except that it is now our plan. In its pages are the ideas that we now act upon every day with the full might of the Unit­ed States military. Strangely, few critics have noted that Cheney’s work has a long history, or that it was once quite unpopular, or that it was created in reaction to circumstances that are far removed from the ones we now face. But Cheney is a well-known action man. One has to admire, in a way, the Babe Ruth–like sureness of his political work. He pointed to center field ten years ago, and now the ball is sailing over the fence.
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The article goes on to relate some history that I did not notice in the early 90s, obscured by the "triumph" of the First Gulf War. I was surprised to learn that it was Poppy Bush who first kyboshed this maniacal proposition. As President, Clinton triangulated everything, and he gave us Empire Lite and embraced the Powell Doctrine of keeping our soldiers out of hot wars as much as possible. But September 11 and Shrub changed all that.

The Plan itself is a product of intellectuals and sourpuss politicians, and it has no popular appeal of its own. But arms contractors and their financial cousins can easily see the benefits of war against the whole world.

It is too far fetched even for me to suggest that Cheney plus any combination of allies and financial angels could have plotted the course we have taken. The logic of neoliberalism does it on its own -- where money is to be made, "rational decision making" leads inexorably to its reductio ad absurdum of buying the government to create the market for products.

Our empire has no beef with Russia or Russians -- it propagandizes Russia as the enemy just as Orwell predicted for the simple reason that without an enemy the propaganda does not work.

It took a generation to weed the old style Democrats out of office -- only the ancient Bernie Sanders survives. And now we have two War Parties. That is why I do not support Sanders any more -- he does not oppose the Cheney premise that it is in our national interest to boss other countries around. Like Bill Clinton, you can see clearly that he would rather not make war, but not so intensely as to give up his political ambitions to take a Tulsi style stand against war mongers.

In order for the Empire to continue to use Uncle Sam's credit card on this fool's errand of world domination, they need to keep the populace divided. This has evolved to the current charade of futile impeachment and asinine gestures like Pussy Hats that pit the 20% who used to be the Tea Party against the 20% of Democratic Tribalists, especially the educated ones who fancy themselves savvy about World Events and such. Trump's grotesque behavior drives such people into braindead rage. In turn, upper middle class liberals enrage Trump's constituency, for the obvious reason that those smartypants people really do have visceral contempt for blue collar people, especially white ones who are deplorable.

The 60% majority is split between non-voters and Independents who have no representation in public life.

Again, I do not claim that there are 2 or 20 or 20,000 Evil Geniuses concocting all this, although it would not shock me to find out that this is literally true. My case is that we have evolved into this nightmare -- a perfect storm of neoliberal nihilism, neoconservative ambition to rule the world and a management class running banks and corporations who see how much money can be made by perpetual war.

It will take a revolution to stop this shit.

Or, as Bill Buckley used to say, "I could be wrong."