Our elite have been marinating in a vat of jingoism, ignorance and hubris. Of course, it’s a bi-partisan effort because the Democratic party does not represent a sane or credible alternative to the warmongering lunacy of the Republicans.
Let’s start with the Republicans, where the loony-tunes Republican senator from Louisiana–John Kennedy–put his foot in his mouth and started chewing. “I think that the people running Iran are reptiles. And they’re part of a colony of reptiles: China, North Korea, Russia and, as I said, Iran. The chief reptile, the quarterback, is President Xi in China.”
The more interesting and illuminating example came in May 2014, when the empire was still flush, Obama was president and little Vicky got out over her skis. Weeks after welcoming the ouster of Ukraine’s democratically elected president in the Maidan uprising, one of Washington’s most influential policymakers confidently predicted that a similar fate awaited Moscow. “Unless Putin changes course, at some point in the not-too-distant future, the current nationalistic fever will break in Russia,” Victoria Nuland, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “When it does, it will give way to a sweaty and harsh realization of the economic costs. Then, if they are free enough to think for themselves, Russia’s citizens will ask: What have we really achieved? Instead of funding schools, hospitals, science and prosperity at home in Russia, we have squandered our national wealth on adventurism, interventionism and the ambitions of a leader who cares more about empire than his own citizens.”
Americans could rightfully ask their representatives about the US’s very own “sweaty and harsh realization” in the wake of Trump’s latest West Asia disaster, “if they are free enough to think for themselves”, that is.
Reading shit like this makes me laugh.
But let’s recall that our intrepid Mrs. Nuland, then the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, was quite busy fomenting the Ukrainian coup. You might remember from the wayback machine when her mobile phone was hacked as she instructed Geoffrey Pyatt, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, who they wanted as the next foreign minister. She said “Yats is the guy,” Arseniy Petrovych Yatsenyuk, who indeed got the job. There was also some naughty language from Vicky when she exclaimed “fuck the EU”.
Maybe there’s something in the water in DC, but it’s probably because the empire selects for sociopaths/psychopaths and if they’re kinda dim on team red it’s not much of a problem. After all representatives from Louisiana are all racist loons by default and that sort of diatribe just makes Chuck Schumer look progressive. Jeebus! Kennedy made Trump look diplomatic and magnanimous during Xi’s visit.
But look, there a precedent for cray-cray at the end of an empire. After an empire’s peak, its inability to adapt to declining power leads to increasingly desperate attempts to compensate, combined with an increasing inability to implement strategies appropriate to reality. Which brings us back to our feral elite who are never going to change because they are still wedded to the strategies from 1991, when the US was at the height of its post Cold War power. The money is good too because the inappropriate strategies continue to make these powerful stakeholders money. For Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the military/industrial/complex, these are the best of times.
Halloween is coming and there are numerous yards decorated with goblins, vampires, werewolves and aliens in scary poses. I’m tempted to decorate my yard with replicas of real monsters like Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Madeline Albright, Senator Kennedy, Victoria Nulled and her monstrous husband Robert Kagan, Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, etc.
With monsters like these who needs imaginary ones?
