A thought -- it could have been different - starting with the modern "original sin - the "Russia-gate" hoax:
Now we have $300 B to extremely wealthy -- definition of Biden's "transformative" presidency and DNC "party" of oligarchs and corruption !!
But -- cowardly Bernie Sanders missed one opportunity in HUNDRED years -- to unmask the modern "original sin" -- DNC-CIA scam of the century -- the Russia-gate hoax. Our beloved country would look VERY different if he had courage to stand up and unmask Hillary-Obama-Biden Russia-gate concoction.
Bernie still has time to state it publicly -- while we are hurling in the NEW Cold war with Russia, a CAPITALIST country for 31+ years...
Especially for: "There is the Antony Blinken case. Tiresome as it is, have you taken the trouble to follow his Twitter messages? If you want to understand his record as secretary of state you must, because all he seems to do is Tweet utterly ridiculous bromides as to America’s respect for human rights, the right of others to self-determination, and press freedom along with his “deep concern” for starving Syrian children—children whose malnutrition is the direct result of sanctions Blinken maintains against the Syrian Arab Republic. There is always, of course, Blinken’s idolatry in the matter of “the international rules-based order.”
Blinken is not the worst secretary of state in my lifetime—that distinction goes to John Foster Dulles. But he is the most ineffectual, and possible the stupidest. His function is purely to portray, to put across, carefully, a nonexistent America. He is a custodian of images, nothing more."
I must say that this latest effort of yours plugs right in with what I have been saying for a long time - American society has become sclerotic. As Valery said the Europeans didn't know how to think, I'd probably be more generous and say that they had just finished a long race or completed a major task and were stuck in an infinite loop of solving the existential crisis they'd just been in. It is interesting that he spoke of moral qualities (of which we clearly have none) as those moderate man's behavior which is a major part of our present problem. Remarkably, someone else was writing in 1919 by the name of Christopher Morley. Amongst many other things he did he wrote a book called the Haunted Bookshop. Right at the beginning of the story (and it is the second book of a pair that simply tell a story set in Connecticut and New York in 1919) Morley describes what it would take to cause a follow on war to the one most recently concluded and he plugged in exactly what would happen twenty years later. I liked your three examples although I'd go further than you did with your first one. While Assange is being persecuted for exposing American war crimes, he exposed, left handedly, a much more fundamental sin. The US was using the classification system to hide crimes. That's illegal but you'll notice no one's getting called on it (See Ben Franklin - if you can keep it).
A thought -- it could have been different - starting with the modern "original sin - the "Russia-gate" hoax:
Now we have $300 B to extremely wealthy -- definition of Biden's "transformative" presidency and DNC "party" of oligarchs and corruption !!
But -- cowardly Bernie Sanders missed one opportunity in HUNDRED years -- to unmask the modern "original sin" -- DNC-CIA scam of the century -- the Russia-gate hoax. Our beloved country would look VERY different if he had courage to stand up and unmask Hillary-Obama-Biden Russia-gate concoction.
Bernie still has time to state it publicly -- while we are hurling in the NEW Cold war with Russia, a CAPITALIST country for 31+ years...
THANK YOU !!
Especially for: "There is the Antony Blinken case. Tiresome as it is, have you taken the trouble to follow his Twitter messages? If you want to understand his record as secretary of state you must, because all he seems to do is Tweet utterly ridiculous bromides as to America’s respect for human rights, the right of others to self-determination, and press freedom along with his “deep concern” for starving Syrian children—children whose malnutrition is the direct result of sanctions Blinken maintains against the Syrian Arab Republic. There is always, of course, Blinken’s idolatry in the matter of “the international rules-based order.”
Blinken is not the worst secretary of state in my lifetime—that distinction goes to John Foster Dulles. But he is the most ineffectual, and possible the stupidest. His function is purely to portray, to put across, carefully, a nonexistent America. He is a custodian of images, nothing more."
I must say that this latest effort of yours plugs right in with what I have been saying for a long time - American society has become sclerotic. As Valery said the Europeans didn't know how to think, I'd probably be more generous and say that they had just finished a long race or completed a major task and were stuck in an infinite loop of solving the existential crisis they'd just been in. It is interesting that he spoke of moral qualities (of which we clearly have none) as those moderate man's behavior which is a major part of our present problem. Remarkably, someone else was writing in 1919 by the name of Christopher Morley. Amongst many other things he did he wrote a book called the Haunted Bookshop. Right at the beginning of the story (and it is the second book of a pair that simply tell a story set in Connecticut and New York in 1919) Morley describes what it would take to cause a follow on war to the one most recently concluded and he plugged in exactly what would happen twenty years later. I liked your three examples although I'd go further than you did with your first one. While Assange is being persecuted for exposing American war crimes, he exposed, left handedly, a much more fundamental sin. The US was using the classification system to hide crimes. That's illegal but you'll notice no one's getting called on it (See Ben Franklin - if you can keep it).
Both Jacques Barzun, in 'From Dawn to Decadence: 500 years of Western Cultural History,' and
Ortega y Gasset in one or more of his many books [I am remiss to recall which] had both written
on this theme. Ortega said that intellectuals -- was it before or after WWI -- had been put on
notice that their services were no longer needed -- meaning politics would not be informed
by intellectuals or philosophers henceforth. Of course there's Hannah Arendt whose contribution
coined by the phrase 'banality of evil' -- is critical, yet I think a lot less understood by those in
the political class and celebrities as influencers, to use a present cliche. A lot less understood
than needs to be understood, I mean. Even figures whom I have supported -- like Tulsi Gabbard --
I think lack the intellectual depth that Hannah Arendt knew was necessary to preclude another
catastrophe like WWII. Geo Bush Jr had an ivy league education; I don't think he got it. So did
B. Obama, and his prosecution of wars upon Libya, Syria, continuing the others; the CIA coup
upon Ukraine . . . all evince that he also didn't really get what Hannah Arendt was driving at.