Current events are what drives this blog but originally I began writing about ideologies–specifically neoliberalism and neoconservatism.

The whole messianic belief in markets as a way to organize society with its insistence that there was “no alternative” made me furious. Of course I was right to view neoliberalism with suspicion and hostility. Treating markets as an end all subjects Americans to the orthodoxies of a very unforgiving form of financial capitalism. After 40 odd years it’s apparent that neoliberalism has impoverished many scores of millions and devastated our middle class.

Likewise, the messianic belief in the American empire whose mission is to spread democracy and free markets by force always seemed fated for disaster, especially as it has meant endless wars. In a clever bit of marketing the US and NATO dressed it up as what is called “R2P,” “the responsibility to protect.” We, the enlightened nations of the world, have a duty to protect others from such catastrophes as genocide, starvation, ethnic-cleansing and other such crimes against humanity. R2P licenses “humanitarian interventions.” This is now accepted as a guiding principle among the US and Western nations even as the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza makes a lie of all of it.

The funny thing about ideologies is that they don’t survive contact with reality. Some ideologies simply take longer than others. The only thing holding our precious ideologies together at this point is propaganda. A propaganda that becomes more threadbare by the day. I mean who believes in the stories our rulers tell us anymore?

Those regimes that rely on propaganda to present themselves to their people and to the world ultimately make themselves in the image of their propaganda. This is also true of America in 2024, where we’ve assumed the character of the propaganda that surrounds us.

Despite the propaganda, neoliberalism and neoconservatism, ironically, have led to disaster for the American empire. It’s ironic because the neocons want to wage war on the whole world but the neoliberals have looted the American economy and made it impossible. The US strategy can be summed up as a steadfast belief that the best way to preserve U.S. dominance is by prioritizing corporate needs, zero accountability, and hope that for-profit corruption can maintain the American corporate empire.

But I digress. I mean to discuss the Iranian missile and drone attack on Israel that provides further proof of the ongoing disaster. The Iranian missile attack on Israel was a surgical hit, meant to send a message, not killing people on purpose. And, no, Israel, the US and NATO did not achieve a 99% shoot down rate no matter what the corporate media tells you. My favorite part of the attack was Iran hitting the officers’ swimming pool at Nevatim Air Base. What’s clear is that the attack demonstrated that even well-guarded air defenses, like those of Israel and similar systems used by the US in the Persian Gulf, are, in fact, vulnerable.

Former intelligence officer and arms control expert Scott Ritter says that–“Iran’s purpose in launching the attack was to establish a deterrence posture designed to put Israel and the United States on notice that any attack against Iran, whether on Iranian soil or on the territory of other nations, would trigger a retaliation which would inflict more damage on the attacker than the attacker could hope to inflict on Iran.”

Ritter goes on to claim that Iran’s demonstrated capabilities “…has implications that reach far beyond the environs of Israel or the Middle East. By defeating the US-Israeli missile defense shield, Iran exposed the notion of US missile defense supremacy that serves as the heart of US force protection models used when projecting military power on a global scale. Not only have the enormous and ever-expanding missile arsenals of Iran and Hezbollah checkmated the Zionists’ regional nuclear monopoly, but by implication the at-least-equally-advanced missiles of Russia and China should have no problem defeating US air defenses. The US empire, with its flotilla of sitting ducks and its 800 now hyper-vulnerable bases occupying dozens of countries, is about as impregnable as the Maginot Line.”

What abundantly clear is that the US is at the end of the line with it’s all-war-all-the-time means of organizing the American empire, especially when the organizing ideologies underpinning its power are in conflict.  The neocons dream of conquering the world by force, while the neoliberals want to profit next quarter. Something has to give.

But the attack also points to a larger problem. I cannot remember when the United States has not been at war somewhere on planet Earth.  With more than 700 known military outposts circling the globe, it is difficult to see how this finally ends in anything other than catastrophe.

What infuriates me is that the notion of what it means to be a patriotic American has been diabolically twisted by the sociopathic neocons. In 1821, John Quincy Adams pointed to this in his call for America to avoid foreign policy adventurism: “[America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own… [If America engages in militarism] the fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit…”

Update: The Congressional approval of Ukrainian/Israeli/ Taiwan war funding represents a double-down response to the Iranian drone/missile attack on Israel. Orwell would have appreciated the New York Times headline that read–Biden Praises Aid Package for Ukraine and Israel as a ‘Good Day for World Peace’.

What did you expect? The neocons that control both parties are extremist warmongers who are dedicated to keeping the United States empire in a position of unilateral hegemony even at the risk of nuclear war.