Listening to Alexander Mercouris and Doug Macgregor today—separately—was depressing if, like me, you’d like to see a revival of American diplomacy and leadership in the world. The takeaway was all too simple. Washington DC, the imperial city on the Potomac, is—if you’re an American patriot—enemy occupied territory. Neocon occupied territory. Mercouris and Macgregor each put it in their own way, one addressing the status of the American war on Russia and the other addressing the collapse of America’s standing in the Middle East, just as we’re on the brink of a possible regional war—with terribly dangerous implications for the the world but also for the US.
Wow! That Steve Sailer piece is hugely eye-opening, especially his list at the end where he states a number of reasons American Jews have traditionally supported diversity, inclusion and immigration. No 4 lept out at me:
“4) An urge to make the Jewish role in American history seem more important by elevating Emma Lazarus’ 1883 “huddled masses” poem to the second most important Founding Document, behind only the Declaration of Independence, and outranking such once-important statements as the Preamble to the Constitution and George Washington’s Farewell Address;…”
When you elevate the “huddled masses” to “nation of immigrants” status, you get the chaos and human suffering we’re seeing at the border. In fact, you won’t have a nation! This strikes me as one of the many contradictions involved here, the notion of letting more immigrants in so as to better blend in (while we live in our gated communities); hewing to tradition (while promoting the latest in progressive malarkey (while sending our own kids to pricey private schools); and maybe waking up one day to find…well, your last paragraph in your post, and in Sailer’s, sums it up…”ironic” is an understatement!
Here's another popular Neocon notion, in addition to the one about "we need a new population" to replace the lazy white people:
"The idea of America as a propositional nation refers to the notion that the United States is founded on a set of ideals, principles, and values rather than on ethnic or ancestral ties."
That's just another way of marginalizing traditional culture--for people who find that culture uncomfortable. Diversity has its uses.
Yes - and look at college campuses, where “diversity” has been put to use, embroiled now in angry protests, with most students supporting the Palestinians (fits with Sailer’s numbers), while the more “traditional” students, whether Jewish or Christian, are left to fend for themselves (or receive no support from the university - “marginalized.” Lovely where all that tuition money has gone!
Totally agree on the unconditional surrender approach from Russia. Previous agreements were used to buy time. Putin now saying "Fool me once, shame on you...fool me twice, shame on me". They will extract their pound of flesh to begin discussions including:
1) nyet to NATO for Ukraine,
2) Karkov, Kiev and Odessa for Russia control. Poland can have what's left....that's how he flips Poland.
3) negotiations with US and EU, not Z
4) rollback of all sanctions
If US doesn't want to negotiate, Putin will be happy to keep playing PacMan with Ukraine territory. He also know that US election timeline has Zhou in a vice and will be happy to take his time.
NATO done, US needs at home require troops in Europe, Syria, Iraq head to AZ, Tx and New Mexico.
I think the comment about standing up to the Israel lobby and the fact criticism is not antisemitism is a big breakthrough in terms of how people are beginning to understand how much influence Jewish money has in our politics. It is not antisemitic to have a different POV.
As for Turkey my brother just returned from a three week trip to Turkey. He left on 10/6 and on 10/7 the events in Gaza unfolded. He says the general mood among the Turks is one of revulsion and anger toward Israel and the Jewish people.
LJ: I learned today from someone who regularly visits Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland that the wards are filling up with U.S. military personnel wounded in recent attacks on those bases. The White House and the Department of Defense are working actively to suppress this information, apparently out of fear that the American public will recoil at news of the losses and step up pressure for the United States to get out of Iraq and Syria.
Ehud Barak, former Israeli PM, admitting a few days ago that Iran is now a "nuclear-threshold state", meaning "it's beyond our capability by any surgical intervention to block them from turning into nuclear power, it's up to them to decide when and how they'll decide to do it [...] It's not up to us."
He also believes that Iran will not be a threat to Israel or the US because standard deterrence would be in play. How did sanctions and sabre rattling work?
"We (the West) did not want to play the military card and hoped to lock down the Russians with sanctions. But the Russians don’t care whether they eat French cheese or not.
Therefore, now there are two options: either supplying weapons to Ukraine - 3-4 echelons every week. Or admit that this is impossible and then begin negotiations with the Russians, realizing that the state “Ukraine” may cease to exist."
This is exactly how the war will end - the Nazi state of Ukraine will cease to exist.
Sen. Sen. Tim Scott says our "vital interest in Ukraine" is "degrading the Russian military. We have been very effective using our resources and our weaponry and the incredibly high price of Ukrainian blood to achieve that objective."
I have a juxtaposition question of the "which is worse?" type in mind:
A) on the one hand, Senator Tim Scott credibly believes his quote "degrading ... blood to achieve that objective" or
B) that he was unable to resist forces that demanded he make that horrid sickening statement
Lindsay Graham and other sitting US Congress-people have said much the same this past year. The bloody cold-bloodedness in either case is both alarming (we all have or know those with military age sons and/or children in service) and morally grotesque. How broken our politics? This.
Interesting discussion between DD and MacGregor. 1000 troops sitting in Syria is a speed bump for the Turks unless we have overwhelming AirPower. Would we have air supremacy against the Turks with their S400s? Are we back to having tripwires all over the world when all we have is the tripwire and nothing to back it up? Well there are always nukes. The Turks could just isolate our troops in Syria with a pocket cauldron and move the main body along. Or perhaps use out troops if they were forced to surrender as human shields. Would we or would Israel go whole hog with air power while hitting our own people? If terrible things happen and this goes hot then we can all rest assured that the Zhou Crew is on the job! People don’t want to talk to Blinken because of his overwhelmingly intimidating presence. Or does his presence invite aggression? Hope all are well and for peace.
I don't see Netanyahu halting any action or plans in this conflict as long as Zhou admin. is in charge. He could have been controlled by Trump but not Zhou for he lacks any credibility. Further, if Zhou said tomorrow he's dropping out of the Presidential race I predict US Naval presence and other US forces leaving the region almost immediately. This would leave Blinken, Sullivan, and Nuland in the lurch and I assume they would quit. Bibi would be left to stand on his own with only the EU to rely on. Further, probably why Zhou's donors won't allow him to quit the Presidential race as they too predict this would happen. Hence, the Israel gov't will continue to ignore Zhou's admin.
I think it would be a lot more interesting if you engaged in a conversation here rather than re-directing the commenters to your writings elsewhere. Not very subtle.
This satire piece on Netanyahu's psychiatrist suicide had me LMAO.
The reason why is I don't think what his Pshrink said about him causing the event was too far off.
And by the way, you can substitute just about any NeoCons name in for Bibi and it'll work.
Excerpt-
A suicide note at his side explained that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been his patient for the last nine years, had “sucked the life right out of me.”
“I can’t take it anymore,” wrote Yatom. “Robbery is redemption, apartheid is freedom, peace activists are terrorists, murder is self-defense, piracy is legality..
OT: On the unrelated subject of what ails us, I have been thinking today, perhaps simplistically, that a big part of our problem is the growing proportion of humans whose work 'doesn't matter' compared to work which does matter. Nothing focuses the mind on what matters like having a job where you have to sell something that someone else wants and values for a profit in order to produce food or clothing or maintain shelter or obtain money to buy food, clothing or shelter. This certainly doesn't apply to our political leaders or university professors. There are numerous other categories. In our 21st Century corporate-ocracy many jobs no longer have to generate a 'profit' in order to survive. So they exist for other reasons. All kinds of mischief materialize when the job doesn't really matter and the paycheck is urelated to basic needs and goods.
This reminds me of an essay written in Commentary Magazine some time ago by Norman Podhoretz (the dean of the early Neocons when they were pro-American and not yet the neocons we know today) about his differences with Alan Ginsburg of the beat poets. This line speaks to your comment above and to what we are seeing today with the aggressive push of the left to turn our children into gender confused LGTBQ adherents and angry radicals:
"It was about 3 A.M. when Kerouac and I left together. He walked me to the subway station in Sheridan Square and we parted with pleasant words which stood in the sharpest possible contrast to the ominous parting words Ginsberg had flung at me a few hours earlier just as I was leaving his apartment: “We’ll get you through your children!”
How eerily true this statement was and demonstrates how long this has been in the making since this took place in 1958.
You’re welcome and I too was once a subscriber until 2017. In fact, during the Obama years, I also visited their blog site and Jennifer Rubin was a regular contributor and I liked her. Then she became insane. Her time at WAPO allowed her true character to come out and her hypocrisy was exposed. I struggled for a period trying to figure out why the Jewish people were so hostile to Trump and then after re-reading Hannah Arendt’s “Origins of Totalitarianism” did the light go on. He was hostile to the very thing they are most adamant about……..government especially the deep or dark state if you will. It's protects them and they use their wealth to buy the government they want which is their protector. Trump was a threat to their schemes. I appreciate your comments regarding Ginsburg and the neocons in general. Yes, they have made this sort of a class thing which plays well among those who see themselves as our betters, financially or intellectually. They may not have opened the border, engineered the lockdowns, weaponized the IRS, organized the Trump Stalinist show trials, or even taken over Ukraine in 2014, but they cheered all of this on and used the power of media to destroy anyone who disagrees with them. I agree you can see the ghost of Ginsburg and all that anti-Christian/white animosity, and the globalist take over. You offered more than $.02 worth, a generous portion of truth. Thanks!
I sometimes dive into what my wife thinks is annoying self-effacement. I don't really think its oversimplification. I do think many of our problems in the West are pretty basic: Loss of meaningful work, the work ethic and self-reliance; destruction of the family and family values; deterioration of physical and mental health; decline in birthrates; excessive income inequality; loss of decency and normalization of deviant behaviors; reverse racial and employment discrimination; increasingly authoritarian and dishonest government; disrespect for constitutional precepts and rule of law; debasement of the currency; growng militarism. I could go on. End of Times stuff.
And yes, in his way, as others here have noted, Donald Trump has run on many of these issues. I pray he can successfully overcome the noise and make his case.
I think you're over the target Cass, Cast. A large part of the problem is that way too many people are dependent on the State's buck. It's a welfare system for the PMC.
Richard Sennett wrote about this in The Corrosion Of Character (US-focused, and twenty-plus years old now) and, more recently, David Graeber who entitled his book Bullshit Jobs. His original article is here: https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
Killer extract: "How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one's job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment. Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way [...] to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one's work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it."
Graeber died rather suddenly during the scamdemic. I am quite certain he would have highlighted the obvious difference between the laptop class cowering at home, which included me (shaking with rage rather than cowering) and most of my colleagues (in Higher Education...) while the food delivery folks, checkout operators, street cleaners, garbage crews, etc etc kept working. In the UK many were reduced to part-time hours (fewer people queuing up for their lunch, fewer rail pasengers, less people to clean up after) but were paid their full wage. Take a bow Rishi Sunak.
The cops and other street level bureaucrats were kept busy with make-work, especially enforcing fictional crimes: mask compliance, 'covidiots' sitting in the park, and looking the other way during those peaceful BLM protests.
He that feeds you is he that can starve you, of course, so hypnotically screeching about how dangerous the world has become for a certain segment of the elite is a wise strategy for professors, social workers, whole layers of administration, etc. Those that step out of line are pushed out to encourage the others but there just aren't enough chairs left around the table now. Peter Turchin says the bubble burst already.
The essentialness of meaningful work as part of one's life cannot be overstated, it seems essential to a healthy human condition. The absence of such at a broad economic level gives way to increased risk of, well, cultural nuttiness. Eric Hoffer has much cogent to say on these topics (from the 1950's through 70's no less)
Thanks for the tip, Hoffer sounds worth following up (a new name to me). In the broadest sense, yes, work is central to a solidly-based sense of identity. Grift, make-work, all the varied forms of selling yourself, etc, not so much.
If you don't mind a little free association, it sounds to me like one might read Bullshit Jobs and Bowling Alone together. The combination of meaningless jobs and isolation in broken communities is devastating.
Then add in the prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse, obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease, depression and anxiety, and the breakdown of the family...and you've got...well, you've got a picture of what post-industrial, modern life looks like for a lot of people.
Its a terrible portrait of civilizational decline. I'm one of those people who believes Donald Trump's political policies are closer to being right than most of the others, but I'm not sure even he has put his finger on the real issues...yet.
Sounds like a solid suggestion. Bowling Alone is in my to-read virtual stack. Although Graeber was an anthropologist, the Putnam book sounds more ethnographic than Graeber's.
In a similar sort of vein I greatly admire Studs Terkel's book, I think it's called Work or Working, one or the other. Pierre Bourdieu and associates wrote a broadly similar ethnography of French under-class called The Weight Of The World.
<<...add in the prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse, obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease, depression and anxiety, and the breakdown of the family...and you've got...well, you've got a picture of what post-industrial, modern life looks like for a lot of people.>>
Exhaustion, running on the spot, and the crushing truth of being interchangeable parts in the machine doesn't encourage much else. (Fiddling with smartphones eases yet amplifies the 'non-stop inertia' h/t Ivor Southwood.) More tragic still is that even poorer people watch us with envy, and clamour to flood through sloppily guarded borders.
Another element of job and life satisfaction and good physical and mental health is the aspect of stress. It seems like there is a lot of stress in modern life.
Dr Robert Sapolsky is an author and professor of biology, neurology, neurological sciences, and neurosurgery at Stanford. He has written and lectured extensively on his research into the associations between chronic stress, 'control' (as in control over one's life), and physical and mental health. Suffice it to say that many who hold jobs where they have little control over their time or their job responsibilities complain extensively, while others with similar jobs and greater control do not complain of stress. To Sapolsky it is all largely a matter of our environment and our biochemistry, although again I may be oversimplifying.
One wonders how these idiots can possibly think that there is any face-saving “easy way” out of the historic disaster they have created? American prestige is in tatters, our CIC is a joke to the leaders of the world. We have alienated and infuriated our friends and antagonized our enemies on multiple fronts.
The hapless house of cards that passes for American diplomacy and foreign policy is collapsing on every front and yet Zhou, along his feckless handlers, persists with the delusional idea that “Hey, we got this, no problem”. Anyone with even one functioning brain cell can see that this is a slow motion train wreck which entails dire consequences for the US and quite probably the entire world.
Putin will absolutely make certain that Biden and his halfwitted “experts” are publicly humiliated and ridiculed, exposing them for the pathetic amateurs that they are.
Macgregor: "I think John Mearsheimer has tried to do just that and, of course, in many of the more extreme circles inside the Israel Lobby he's regarded as a self-loathing Jew."
Did Macgregor really say that? I think he is wrong about Mearsheimer. To be a self-loathing Jew, you have to be jewish in the first place. I very much doubt John Mearsheimer is jewish. If I'm wrong I would be happy to be corrected.
I am so devoted to Douglas Macgregor and hs efforts to speak the truth. I don't want him to misspeak. I depend on him to be always right because I don't want his critics to have any extra ammunition to discredit him.
Yeah, I had doubts about that, too. "Anti-Semitic" is pretty much boilerplate characterization of Mearsheimer, but I've never seen him described as a self-loathing Jew. I was never interested enough to try to find out his background. I suppose Mac was just repeating the standard tactic that's routinely used by Neocons to try to keep fellow Jews on narrative.
Wow! That Steve Sailer piece is hugely eye-opening, especially his list at the end where he states a number of reasons American Jews have traditionally supported diversity, inclusion and immigration. No 4 lept out at me:
“4) An urge to make the Jewish role in American history seem more important by elevating Emma Lazarus’ 1883 “huddled masses” poem to the second most important Founding Document, behind only the Declaration of Independence, and outranking such once-important statements as the Preamble to the Constitution and George Washington’s Farewell Address;…”
When you elevate the “huddled masses” to “nation of immigrants” status, you get the chaos and human suffering we’re seeing at the border. In fact, you won’t have a nation! This strikes me as one of the many contradictions involved here, the notion of letting more immigrants in so as to better blend in (while we live in our gated communities); hewing to tradition (while promoting the latest in progressive malarkey (while sending our own kids to pricey private schools); and maybe waking up one day to find…well, your last paragraph in your post, and in Sailer’s, sums it up…”ironic” is an understatement!
Here's another popular Neocon notion, in addition to the one about "we need a new population" to replace the lazy white people:
"The idea of America as a propositional nation refers to the notion that the United States is founded on a set of ideals, principles, and values rather than on ethnic or ancestral ties."
That's just another way of marginalizing traditional culture--for people who find that culture uncomfortable. Diversity has its uses.
Yes - and look at college campuses, where “diversity” has been put to use, embroiled now in angry protests, with most students supporting the Palestinians (fits with Sailer’s numbers), while the more “traditional” students, whether Jewish or Christian, are left to fend for themselves (or receive no support from the university - “marginalized.” Lovely where all that tuition money has gone!
PS Just saw this at rcp on the subject of DEI:
https://www.thefp.com/p/end-dei-woke-capture
Totally agree on the unconditional surrender approach from Russia. Previous agreements were used to buy time. Putin now saying "Fool me once, shame on you...fool me twice, shame on me". They will extract their pound of flesh to begin discussions including:
1) nyet to NATO for Ukraine,
2) Karkov, Kiev and Odessa for Russia control. Poland can have what's left....that's how he flips Poland.
3) negotiations with US and EU, not Z
4) rollback of all sanctions
If US doesn't want to negotiate, Putin will be happy to keep playing PacMan with Ukraine territory. He also know that US election timeline has Zhou in a vice and will be happy to take his time.
NATO done, US needs at home require troops in Europe, Syria, Iraq head to AZ, Tx and New Mexico.
I think the comment about standing up to the Israel lobby and the fact criticism is not antisemitism is a big breakthrough in terms of how people are beginning to understand how much influence Jewish money has in our politics. It is not antisemitic to have a different POV.
As for Turkey my brother just returned from a three week trip to Turkey. He left on 10/6 and on 10/7 the events in Gaza unfolded. He says the general mood among the Turks is one of revulsion and anger toward Israel and the Jewish people.
LJ: I learned today from someone who regularly visits Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland that the wards are filling up with U.S. military personnel wounded in recent attacks on those bases. The White House and the Department of Defense are working actively to suppress this information, apparently out of fear that the American public will recoil at news of the losses and step up pressure for the United States to get out of Iraq and Syria.
Ehud Barak, former Israeli PM, admitting a few days ago that Iran is now a "nuclear-threshold state", meaning "it's beyond our capability by any surgical intervention to block them from turning into nuclear power, it's up to them to decide when and how they'll decide to do it [...] It's not up to us."
He also believes that Iran will not be a threat to Israel or the US because standard deterrence would be in play. How did sanctions and sabre rattling work?
" ... not be a threat ...". !! A case of 'who are you going to believe, me or your lie-ing eyes (that absorbed all that history?)'

Victor vicktop55
@vicktop55
Colonel from Austria Markus Reisner on DW:
"We (the West) did not want to play the military card and hoped to lock down the Russians with sanctions. But the Russians don’t care whether they eat French cheese or not.
Therefore, now there are two options: either supplying weapons to Ukraine - 3-4 echelons every week. Or admit that this is impossible and then begin negotiations with the Russians, realizing that the state “Ukraine” may cease to exist."
This is exactly how the war will end - the Nazi state of Ukraine will cease to exist.
at this point the former 'option' would require supplies of both more/new weapons and new non-Ukrainian fighters. Double plus impossible
Sen. Sen. Tim Scott says our "vital interest in Ukraine" is "degrading the Russian military. We have been very effective using our resources and our weaponry and the incredibly high price of Ukrainian blood to achieve that objective."
I have a juxtaposition question of the "which is worse?" type in mind:
A) on the one hand, Senator Tim Scott credibly believes his quote "degrading ... blood to achieve that objective" or
B) that he was unable to resist forces that demanded he make that horrid sickening statement
Lindsay Graham and other sitting US Congress-people have said much the same this past year. The bloody cold-bloodedness in either case is both alarming (we all have or know those with military age sons and/or children in service) and morally grotesque. How broken our politics? This.
Count Tim Scott among the war mongers and the witless senate idiots who think we are stupid enough to believe the crap they are peddling.
Republican Debates: Candidate Tim Scott says as President his primary foreign policy will be to launch war on and "destroy Iran"
Diplomacy? No problems here at home? Who owns these candidates?
Jewish donors and the MIC......
I used to rep a company located in S.C. and they love their two senators because they get a nice number of military supply contracts.
Interesting discussion between DD and MacGregor. 1000 troops sitting in Syria is a speed bump for the Turks unless we have overwhelming AirPower. Would we have air supremacy against the Turks with their S400s? Are we back to having tripwires all over the world when all we have is the tripwire and nothing to back it up? Well there are always nukes. The Turks could just isolate our troops in Syria with a pocket cauldron and move the main body along. Or perhaps use out troops if they were forced to surrender as human shields. Would we or would Israel go whole hog with air power while hitting our own people? If terrible things happen and this goes hot then we can all rest assured that the Zhou Crew is on the job! People don’t want to talk to Blinken because of his overwhelmingly intimidating presence. Or does his presence invite aggression? Hope all are well and for peace.
I don't see Netanyahu halting any action or plans in this conflict as long as Zhou admin. is in charge. He could have been controlled by Trump but not Zhou for he lacks any credibility. Further, if Zhou said tomorrow he's dropping out of the Presidential race I predict US Naval presence and other US forces leaving the region almost immediately. This would leave Blinken, Sullivan, and Nuland in the lurch and I assume they would quit. Bibi would be left to stand on his own with only the EU to rely on. Further, probably why Zhou's donors won't allow him to quit the Presidential race as they too predict this would happen. Hence, the Israel gov't will continue to ignore Zhou's admin.
The Zionists have run the US since they brought the US into World War I in exchange for the British Balfour Declaration that effectively handed Palestine over to them. Check out my article on how this happened: https://www.unz.com/article/review-against-our-better-judgment-by-alison-weir/
This article also includes an account of the $2 million bribe of cash in a suitcase handed to President Truman for recognition of Israel in 1948.
Also check out my new book on the rise and fall of the American empire: https://www.claritypress.com/product/our-country-then-and-now/
I think it would be a lot more interesting if you engaged in a conversation here rather than re-directing the commenters to your writings elsewhere. Not very subtle.
The cuck stops here! Uh huh.
This satire piece on Netanyahu's psychiatrist suicide had me LMAO.
The reason why is I don't think what his Pshrink said about him causing the event was too far off.
And by the way, you can substitute just about any NeoCons name in for Bibi and it'll work.
Excerpt-
A suicide note at his side explained that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been his patient for the last nine years, had “sucked the life right out of me.”
“I can’t take it anymore,” wrote Yatom. “Robbery is redemption, apartheid is freedom, peace activists are terrorists, murder is self-defense, piracy is legality..
Link-
http://www.miftah.org/display.cfm?DocId=22267&CategoryId=5
OT: On the unrelated subject of what ails us, I have been thinking today, perhaps simplistically, that a big part of our problem is the growing proportion of humans whose work 'doesn't matter' compared to work which does matter. Nothing focuses the mind on what matters like having a job where you have to sell something that someone else wants and values for a profit in order to produce food or clothing or maintain shelter or obtain money to buy food, clothing or shelter. This certainly doesn't apply to our political leaders or university professors. There are numerous other categories. In our 21st Century corporate-ocracy many jobs no longer have to generate a 'profit' in order to survive. So they exist for other reasons. All kinds of mischief materialize when the job doesn't really matter and the paycheck is urelated to basic needs and goods.
So much for over-simplification.
I think this every time I see a clip from "The Aspen Security Conference" or "Jackson Hole Summit"
"Just like the targeting of the family"
This reminds me of an essay written in Commentary Magazine some time ago by Norman Podhoretz (the dean of the early Neocons when they were pro-American and not yet the neocons we know today) about his differences with Alan Ginsburg of the beat poets. This line speaks to your comment above and to what we are seeing today with the aggressive push of the left to turn our children into gender confused LGTBQ adherents and angry radicals:
"It was about 3 A.M. when Kerouac and I left together. He walked me to the subway station in Sheridan Square and we parted with pleasant words which stood in the sharpest possible contrast to the ominous parting words Ginsberg had flung at me a few hours earlier just as I was leaving his apartment: “We’ll get you through your children!”
How eerily true this statement was and demonstrates how long this has been in the making since this took place in 1958.
https://www.commentary.org/articles/norman-podhoretz/my-war-with-allen-ginsberg/
Castelletto,
You’re welcome and I too was once a subscriber until 2017. In fact, during the Obama years, I also visited their blog site and Jennifer Rubin was a regular contributor and I liked her. Then she became insane. Her time at WAPO allowed her true character to come out and her hypocrisy was exposed. I struggled for a period trying to figure out why the Jewish people were so hostile to Trump and then after re-reading Hannah Arendt’s “Origins of Totalitarianism” did the light go on. He was hostile to the very thing they are most adamant about……..government especially the deep or dark state if you will. It's protects them and they use their wealth to buy the government they want which is their protector. Trump was a threat to their schemes. I appreciate your comments regarding Ginsburg and the neocons in general. Yes, they have made this sort of a class thing which plays well among those who see themselves as our betters, financially or intellectually. They may not have opened the border, engineered the lockdowns, weaponized the IRS, organized the Trump Stalinist show trials, or even taken over Ukraine in 2014, but they cheered all of this on and used the power of media to destroy anyone who disagrees with them. I agree you can see the ghost of Ginsburg and all that anti-Christian/white animosity, and the globalist take over. You offered more than $.02 worth, a generous portion of truth. Thanks!
@Castelletto
I sometimes dive into what my wife thinks is annoying self-effacement. I don't really think its oversimplification. I do think many of our problems in the West are pretty basic: Loss of meaningful work, the work ethic and self-reliance; destruction of the family and family values; deterioration of physical and mental health; decline in birthrates; excessive income inequality; loss of decency and normalization of deviant behaviors; reverse racial and employment discrimination; increasingly authoritarian and dishonest government; disrespect for constitutional precepts and rule of law; debasement of the currency; growng militarism. I could go on. End of Times stuff.
And yes, in his way, as others here have noted, Donald Trump has run on many of these issues. I pray he can successfully overcome the noise and make his case.
I think you're over the target Cass, Cast. A large part of the problem is that way too many people are dependent on the State's buck. It's a welfare system for the PMC.
Richard Sennett wrote about this in The Corrosion Of Character (US-focused, and twenty-plus years old now) and, more recently, David Graeber who entitled his book Bullshit Jobs. His original article is here: https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
Killer extract: "How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one's job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment. Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way [...] to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one's work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it."
Graeber died rather suddenly during the scamdemic. I am quite certain he would have highlighted the obvious difference between the laptop class cowering at home, which included me (shaking with rage rather than cowering) and most of my colleagues (in Higher Education...) while the food delivery folks, checkout operators, street cleaners, garbage crews, etc etc kept working. In the UK many were reduced to part-time hours (fewer people queuing up for their lunch, fewer rail pasengers, less people to clean up after) but were paid their full wage. Take a bow Rishi Sunak.
The cops and other street level bureaucrats were kept busy with make-work, especially enforcing fictional crimes: mask compliance, 'covidiots' sitting in the park, and looking the other way during those peaceful BLM protests.
He that feeds you is he that can starve you, of course, so hypnotically screeching about how dangerous the world has become for a certain segment of the elite is a wise strategy for professors, social workers, whole layers of administration, etc. Those that step out of line are pushed out to encourage the others but there just aren't enough chairs left around the table now. Peter Turchin says the bubble burst already.
The essentialness of meaningful work as part of one's life cannot be overstated, it seems essential to a healthy human condition. The absence of such at a broad economic level gives way to increased risk of, well, cultural nuttiness. Eric Hoffer has much cogent to say on these topics (from the 1950's through 70's no less)
Thanks for the tip, Hoffer sounds worth following up (a new name to me). In the broadest sense, yes, work is central to a solidly-based sense of identity. Grift, make-work, all the varied forms of selling yourself, etc, not so much.
I hope you find time spent in Hoffer's direction enjoyable and elucidating. His voice is a rarity, self-taught, total non-elite, aphoristic/essay-style, emminently readable. Besides his books ( https://www.britannica.com/biography/Eric-Hoffer & http://www.hofferproject.org/HPhoffer.html) there is a five part series of tv interviews between Hoffer and Eric Sevaried available on youtube (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kTcv4HyEY3w)
Sounds like David Graeber was over the target, too, and moving in for the kill. I'll take a look.
Have you read Bowling Alone? https://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/1982130849/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=bowling+alone+robert+putnam&sr=8-1
If you don't mind a little free association, it sounds to me like one might read Bullshit Jobs and Bowling Alone together. The combination of meaningless jobs and isolation in broken communities is devastating.
Then add in the prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse, obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease, depression and anxiety, and the breakdown of the family...and you've got...well, you've got a picture of what post-industrial, modern life looks like for a lot of people.
Its a terrible portrait of civilizational decline. I'm one of those people who believes Donald Trump's political policies are closer to being right than most of the others, but I'm not sure even he has put his finger on the real issues...yet.
Sounds like a solid suggestion. Bowling Alone is in my to-read virtual stack. Although Graeber was an anthropologist, the Putnam book sounds more ethnographic than Graeber's.
In a similar sort of vein I greatly admire Studs Terkel's book, I think it's called Work or Working, one or the other. Pierre Bourdieu and associates wrote a broadly similar ethnography of French under-class called The Weight Of The World.
<<...add in the prevalence of drug and alcohol abuse, obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease, depression and anxiety, and the breakdown of the family...and you've got...well, you've got a picture of what post-industrial, modern life looks like for a lot of people.>>
Exhaustion, running on the spot, and the crushing truth of being interchangeable parts in the machine doesn't encourage much else. (Fiddling with smartphones eases yet amplifies the 'non-stop inertia' h/t Ivor Southwood.) More tragic still is that even poorer people watch us with envy, and clamour to flood through sloppily guarded borders.
@Karen
Another element of job and life satisfaction and good physical and mental health is the aspect of stress. It seems like there is a lot of stress in modern life.
Dr Robert Sapolsky is an author and professor of biology, neurology, neurological sciences, and neurosurgery at Stanford. He has written and lectured extensively on his research into the associations between chronic stress, 'control' (as in control over one's life), and physical and mental health. Suffice it to say that many who hold jobs where they have little control over their time or their job responsibilities complain extensively, while others with similar jobs and greater control do not complain of stress. To Sapolsky it is all largely a matter of our environment and our biochemistry, although again I may be oversimplifying.
Here's a link to a good video of Sapolsky on stress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYG0ZuTv5rs
Speaking of alcohol abuse, my wife was reading me a list of countries where binge drinking was most prevalent:
https://nypost.com/2023/11/09/lifestyle/denmark-tops-list-for-booziest-country-in-the-world/
Britain was third.
One wonders how these idiots can possibly think that there is any face-saving “easy way” out of the historic disaster they have created? American prestige is in tatters, our CIC is a joke to the leaders of the world. We have alienated and infuriated our friends and antagonized our enemies on multiple fronts.
The hapless house of cards that passes for American diplomacy and foreign policy is collapsing on every front and yet Zhou, along his feckless handlers, persists with the delusional idea that “Hey, we got this, no problem”. Anyone with even one functioning brain cell can see that this is a slow motion train wreck which entails dire consequences for the US and quite probably the entire world.
Putin will absolutely make certain that Biden and his halfwitted “experts” are publicly humiliated and ridiculed, exposing them for the pathetic amateurs that they are.
Hey Blutto, you like how things are working out?
Damn this is a colossal disaster!
Macgregor: "I think John Mearsheimer has tried to do just that and, of course, in many of the more extreme circles inside the Israel Lobby he's regarded as a self-loathing Jew."
Did Macgregor really say that? I think he is wrong about Mearsheimer. To be a self-loathing Jew, you have to be jewish in the first place. I very much doubt John Mearsheimer is jewish. If I'm wrong I would be happy to be corrected.
What Mearsheimer has been accused of, repeatedly, is antisemitism, including by many inside the 'more extreme circles inside the Israel Lobby'. See, for example, Jeffery Golderg in a blog post in the Alantic in 2011: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/09/john-mearsheimer-endorses-a-hitler-apologist-and-holocaust-revisionist/245518/.
And, just for the record, here is Mearsheimer's (through his co-author, Steven Walt) response: https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/09/26/mearsheimer-responds-to-goldbergs-latest-smear/
I am so devoted to Douglas Macgregor and hs efforts to speak the truth. I don't want him to misspeak. I depend on him to be always right because I don't want his critics to have any extra ammunition to discredit him.
Yeah, I had doubts about that, too. "Anti-Semitic" is pretty much boilerplate characterization of Mearsheimer, but I've never seen him described as a self-loathing Jew. I was never interested enough to try to find out his background. I suppose Mac was just repeating the standard tactic that's routinely used by Neocons to try to keep fellow Jews on narrative.