Words from an Irish patriot—
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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.
By Darwin Holmstrom
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]e live in a fluid world. The air we breathe is a fast-moving fluid; the ground we walk on is a fluid moving at a more sedate pace. And nothing is more fluid than life itself. We haven’t even properly defined life; the best we can do is protoplasm feeding on protoplasm.Eventually this glutinous protoplasm developed into us humans, the most complex form of glutinous protoplasm, protoplasm with the rudimentary capacity for speech and at least a hint of the capacity for abstract thought. But what really separates us from the simpler forms of protoplasm is the concept of self—we are far more aware of our own selves than, say, a cockroach or a turnip. The projection of self—ego—has motivated pretty much everything that’s happened to the human animal, from the evolution of the first primordial protoplasm into President Donald J. Trump to the creation of market-based capitalism. Human achievement being driven by human ego is not a new idea; Homer’s contemporary Hesiod believed that only jealousy, hatred, and envy spurred mankind to activity, and looking around today, nearly 3,000 years down the road, it would be hard to argue he was wrong.
The thinking that leads to Hesiod’s grim prerequisites for spurring mankind to activity, the thinking that leads to Donald Trump and market-based capitalism, addresses the ego through appeals to fear-based thinking, thinking that Nietzsche might describe as “only night and terror and an imagination accustomed to the horrible.” Fear-based thinking drives us to get weapons to defend ourselves from Nietzsche’s generic terror. It’s what forces us to choose either Donald J. Trump or Hillary Rodham Clinton as the less fearful evil.
Curiosity-based thinking presents a possible alternative to fear-based thinking. If we step back from the ego, if we don’t filter the experience of being alive through the artificial construct of fear, the world becomes a much-more interesting place, not a hell-scape filled with nothing but random terror, but a world that inspires and entertains. Fear-based thinking leads to what the Buddha called “misplaced desires,” desires that mostly fall under the categories of possession and control. When we engage in domineering or manipulative behavior, we’re succumbing to fear-based thinking. When looked at from outside the cage of ego, fear-based thinking doesn’t seem terribly appealing, yet it’s the predominant form of thinking in our world. The earliest organized hierarchical control systems imposed on humanity took the form of religion, which is the ultimate expression of fear-based thinking. Organized religions provided the mythologies that motivate fear-based thinkers to this day. Fluid metaphor might make the curiosity-based thinker go a big rubbery one, but concretized mythology spins the propellers of fear-based thinkers and nothing is less fluid and more concretized than religious dogma.
Constructive science occupies the opposite end of the intellectual spectrum from religion. While the normalcy biases of fear-based thinkers often impede scientific advances—the Catholic Inquisition forcing Galileo to recant his theory of heliocentrism, for example—curiosity-based thinking has been the driving force behind most scientific advancement. Because our understanding of science constantly evolves, any scientific text must likewise evolve. A two-year-old text on computer technology is hopelessly out-of-date. Religious texts are a different kettle of fish. Hebrew priests began writing texts that eventually became the Bible like The First Book of Isaiah in the 8th century BCE. These ancient texts explain at great lengths the rules and procedures that preoccupied 8th century BCE Hebrews, like the proper method for burning stools upon which menstruating women have sat. The need for burning stools upon which menstruating women have sat is not a major concern for most 21st-century humans, nor are most of the other nuggets of wisdom presented in the Bible terribly useful today, yet this book is still considered the Official Word of God™, and God help anyone with the temerity to question His Official Word.
Christianity has remained one of the dominant mythological systems for over 2,000 years because of brilliant marketing to fear-based thinkers. The initial marketers of Christianity addressed the primary consequences of ego by focusing on that which the human animal most fears—death—and that which we most desire: sex. Expiring and begetting are addressed in equal measure in the Official Word of God™, although over centuries the liturgies of most mainstream Christian denominations have moved away from the more entertaining begetting part to focus on the more fearful death part.
Religion was the original product marketed through fear-based thinking, but others followed. By the time feudalism had given way to capitalism, science had advanced to the point where the Catholic Inquisition could no longer force the Galileos of the world to recant without looking like oddly-dressed buffoons and the ruling elite needed something more sophisticated than religion to terrify the peasantry into submission: the organized nation state. Like religion, the nation state marketed its product through fear-based thinking, though in a more sophisticated form than religion: a monopoly on the use of violence. Rather than the fear of burning in a lake of fire for sinning, the nation state offered torture, imprisonment, and/or death for disobeying laws laid down by the ruling elite. It also offered protection from the marauding forces of rival nation states, guaranteeing that any ruling elite with enough gumption to create a nation state would also create rival nation states to provide fear-generating enemies, justifying the existence of their own nation state.
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]s the industrial revolution gave birth to our current system of market-based capitalism, fear-based marketing likewise evolved. By this time the fear of the nation state’s monopoly on the use of violence was sufficiently ingrained to keep the peasantry more-or-less compliant with the dictates of the ruling elite, so fear-based marketing evolved from an outright control mechanism into an effective tool for turning peasants into reliable consumers, generating capitalism’s capital. Fear-based marketing now convinces us that we have to dress a certain way, drive a specific vehicle, and purge ourselves of the all the scents of humanity by using the correct toiletry products if we ever hope to engage in coitus again. Even then at least half of us had best consume the correct pharmaceutical products for maintaining erections if said coital act is to be considered even marginally successful.
As market-based capitalism took over, the propaganda broadcast by corporate media supplanted religious dogma as the primary source of concretized mythology. Corporate media presents an immutable reality that we can use to identify our team. If we get our propaganda from Fox, for example, we are on Team Red and think Trump is the second coming of Christ. If we get our propaganda from MSNBC, we are on Team Blue and Obama makes our putters flutter. (By now Hillary Clinton just sort of makes everyone uncomfortable.) Which team we identify with is irrelevant; the important thing is that we identify one team as “ours” and internalize all the fear-based propaganda associated with that team, thus making it easier for the ruling elite to tickle our hot buttons.
Substituting fear-based thinking with curiosity-based thinking could lead humanity down a different path, but we seem preternaturally disposed toward relying on fear-based thought as the defining factor in our lives. To get past this, we might need to repackage concretized mythology in a fashion that propagates curiosity-based thinking instead of fear-based thinking. Perhaps that means inventing a new curiosity-based religion.
Inventing a curiosity-based religion means inventing a curiosity-based God as its figurehead. The ancient Greek philosophy of Cynicism, which stresses living in accord with nature and opposing convention, could be an appropriate foundation for a curiosity-based religion that embodies the zeitgeist of the 21st century, and that most illustrious of Cynic philosophers Diogenes of Sinope would make an allegorically perfect God to invent. Otherwise known as Diogenes the Dog because of his insistence on publicly defecating and engaging in autoerotic activities in the marketplace, he lived in a clay pot called a pithos and earned his living as a beggar. Diogenes abhorred conformity. He advised people to abandon the artificial desires that chain the masses to a continual state of madness.
Diogenes might be a tough God to sell to the current masses who are nothing if not chained to a continual state of madness by artificial desire because, well, he was sort of a dick. When a listener demanded that Diogenes convince him to accept the philosophy of Cynicism, Diogenes responded, “If I could convince you of anything, I’d convince you to hang yourself.” Still, this masturbating philosophical dog gained such a reputation that he garnered the attention of Alexander the Great, who traveled to Athens to visit Diogenes. Alexander was so impressed with this brilliant philosopher that he offered to grant Diogenes whatever he desired.
“I will give you anything,” the great man said as he towered over Diogenes, who was sunning himself on his clay pithos. “What do you want?”
Diogenes, who seemed utterly incapable of fear-based thought, replied, “I want you to move and stop blocking the sun.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Darwin Holmstrom has written, co-written, or contributed to over forty books on subjects ranging from motorcycles and muscle cars to the role of goats in mythology and Gibson Les Paul guitars. His books include American Muscle Cars, Let's Ride: Sonny Barger's Guide to Motorcycling, and The Complete Idiot's Guide to Motorcycles. He's currently working on his latest book, How to Build a Guillotine from Upcycled Pallets and other Ecologically Sound Tips for the Environmentally Conscious Revolutionary. Illustration: Hell panel from H. Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, a triptych probably painted between 1490 and 1510, when the painter was in his late middle age, possibly around 50 years old.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
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Things to ponder
While our media prostitutes, many Hollywood celebs, and politicians and opinion shapers make so much noise about the still to be demonstrated damage done by the Russkies to our nonexistent democracy, this is what the sanctimonious US government has done overseas just since the close of World War 2. And this is what we know about. Many other misdeeds are yet to be revealed or documented.
Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
 In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
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  The Daily Shakespeare
 After a fitful fever (1) of debates and round-tables, often packed with common sense and sometimes with uncommon nonsense, the dust of antique time (2) may gradually settle on the memory of the 1917 Russian Revolution.
In 2117, assuming but not given that schools may still teach history, a question in a standardized test may read, “Which of the following countries is associated with the 1917 Revolution? (mark one) – Bangladesh, Denmark, Russia, Vanuatu, Uganda.”
But this year the controversy was still agitated with great vehemence, and some disputants seemed to be walking upon ashes under which the fire is not yet extinguished – especially those addicted to the radicalization of inequality. Anti-egalitarians, corrupted by ill-gotten wealth, and fearful of even a remote threat to their privileges, employed all the force of ingrained malevolence and sarcastic contempt to berate the event and its memory.
On the other hand, sections of whatever is left of the Left of old, continued to pace through their dialectical labyrinths, and to argue whether the shortcomings of the revolution were Stalin’s fault for having confined Communism to one nation, instead of striving for global Communism, as advocated by Trotsky.
It should be noted that while people make history, their lives (of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Nicholas II, Kerensky, etc.), can only be reliably written from personal knowledge, which grows less every day, and in a short time is lost forever. Unfortunately what is known in the present (I refer to the actual times of the Russian Revolution) can seldom be immediately told; and when it might be told, it is no longer known. With the obvious conclusion that historical truth can be at best acknowledged in the gross, with much latitude left for conflicting interpretations.
In the circumstances, rather than telling my twentyfive readers what they already know or have already heard, I will here examine the mechanism, the similarity, the differences and the circumstances that affected the major revolutions that we know of – however narrow be the limits of a blog.
Two different situations may break up a regime. Skepticism may alter established beliefs and disrupt mental habits. If so, only naked power can maintain social cohesion. Or a new ideology, involving new modes of thought, filters through the minds at large. Eventually, the new ideology becomes strong enough to establish a government in tune with the new convictions, replacing those become obsolete.
If so, the new revolutionary power is different both from traditional and naked power. The adherent of a new ideology are not (usually), power-grabbing adventurers. Their effects and actions are more important and more permanent.
The first revolution of our era, historically defined as Christian, has indeed to do with Christianity, considered as a social organization rather than a religion. From what we know, at its inception, Christianity was apolitical, a characteristic of most small sects. But the Christians gradually increased in numbers, and the Church in power. They became a group and group-power directly or indirectly ends up influencing the State.
[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hy emperor Constantine converted to Christianity is unknown – which is why myth is a tolerable substitute for uncertainty of information – in the instance, the appearance of the Cross in the sky, during Constantine’s victorious battle against Maxentius in 312 AD.
That myth, however, also means that Christianity had become influential. And given the antithetical difference between the doctrines of the Church and of the Roman State, Constantine’s adoption of Christianity as a state religion, may be the most important revolution in the history of Western civilization.
“The Protestant Revolution”)
Luther could not succeed in his struggle without the support of secular princes. Which explains why the Lutheran Church remained always loyal to non-Catholic princes.
As an example, the revolutionaries of the “Peasants’ War”, erupted in Germany shortly after the Reformation, appealed to the Gospels for the relief of oppression. But Luther firmly opposed them, and inveighed against those who wish to “strike, smite, strangle and stab” established authority. And a “(reactionary) prince can better merit Heaven with bloodshed (of the peasants), than another prince who instead uses prayer.” He also added, “No one should think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody.”
Tawney, author of “Religion and the Rise of Capitalism” wrote,
“… the axe takes the place of the stake. The maintenance of Christian morality is to be transferred from the discredited ecclesiastical authorities to the hands of the state. Skeptical as to the existence of unicorns and salamanders, the age of Machiavelli and Henry VIII found food for its credulity in the worship of that rare monster, the God-fearing Prince.”
As a result of the Reformation, the Church ceased to exist as an independent power and it became part of the machinery enforcing submission to the secular government. Then, through its Calvinist strain, the Protestant Revolution further evolved and ended by giving social and theological grounds and reasons for the triumph of capitalism.
History has a long tail – it’s not hard to see a Calvinist connection in the addition of “under God” to the American dollar bill, in 1954.
The inventive Henry VIII, by making kings and queens of England the keeping equivalent of Rome’s pope and popesses, made religion secular and national, while keeping most of the rituals that previously helped maintain obedience to the Catholic Church among the masses.
It followed that in England the king could alter dogmas essentially at will and execute those who objected. The attendant dissolution of the monasteries increased the crown’s revenue, which also proved useful to repress revolts by rewarding the repressors.
 Henry VIII: a dangerous and treacherous fellow, like most medieval potentates. Compared to modernity, things haven’t changed that much, as corruption and self-seeking continue to rule the power game albeit with a touch of democratic “dilution”. In comparing the Church of England with the Church of Rome, the king was functionally equivalent to God, while the Archbishop (of Canterbury), performed the Papal function – in Rome the Pope served God, but in England the king was God. A setup that proved the job of any Archbishop of Canterbury to be quite hazardous to his life and safety.
Henry VIII’s penchant for changing wives, and his quarrel with the Pope for refusing to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon, have obscured a more important issue. Namely the similarity or even identity, in England, of the root causes of the Reformation Revolution that had just occurred in Germany. Namely, the corruption of the Church, in turn associated with its wealth and the independent administration of that wealth.
But those who hoped that the English Reformation be true to its reforming objectives were sorely disappointed. The dissolution of the monasteries was similar (allowing for changes in time and circumstances), to the rape of the Soviet resources in 1991, literally stolen by sordid profiteers, instantly turned billionaires.
In England, the wealth of the dissolved monasteries attracted a similar strain of profiteers, thieves, greedy merchants, speculators and usurers, who drove the majority into poverty and despair, especially those employed in agriculture. Rebellions comparable to the Peasants Wars in Germany were quickly crushed in blood.
The original sincere Reformers could not believe their eyes. Martin Bucer, tutor of Edward VI, Henry VIII’s son who briefly reigned before dying of illness, wrote a manual for the young king. Appalled at the turn of events, Bucer outlined in the manual what an orderly reformed kingdom should be. Just one quote is illustrative,
“It (the kingdom), is to take a high line with the commercial classes. For, though trade itself is honorable, most traders are rogues – indeed, next to sham priests, no class of men is more pestilential to the Commonwealth.”
Make minor lexical changes and it’s like reading about Wall Street.
Still, the religious arrangement with the King as God was shaky, but then with Elizabeth I, it became necessary to defeat Spain, a very Catholic empire – wherefore Church-of-England Protestantism become associated with a new form of nationalism.
A few decades later, the Left, represented by Cromwell, sprang into action, leading to the English Revolution and the Civil War of 1642-1648. Though Cromwell’s Protectorate was defeated and King Charles II returned, the situation could not satisfy the growing number of Independents who rejected both State and Church as theological authorities.
They claimed the right to private judgment and religious toleration. That ideological trail led to a revolt against secular despotism. Hence the Glorious (English) Revolution of 1688. ‘Glorious’ because England was still tired from the Civil War and the shift from the Stuarts to the Hanoverian (German) royal dynasty was essentially bloodless.
But if everyone has a right to his own theological opinion, may he not have other rights as well? How far could a government intrude into the life of an individual? These ideas, developed and matured in the 18th century, issued in the Rights of Man. Those very ideas, already carried across the Atlantic by Cromwell’s defeated followers, were embodied in the American Constitution by Thomas Jefferson, and were brought back to Europe via the French Revolution.
 The British’s hatred and fear of Napoleon (shared by the rest of the crowned heads of Europe and passed on as a value to America) was like today’s hatred of communism by the privileged classes. Napoleon and the threat of spreading French revolutionary ideas, was for a while what Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Castro, represented to the wold’s plutocrats in our time. The anti-Napoleonic propaganda generated by the British against Napoleon has even informed several Hollywood movies. In a sense, the French Revolution was the Revolution of the Rights-of-Man. It produced a bloody Civil War, just as the Civil War in Russia that followed the 1917 Revolution. And, just as in Russia, foreign powers gathered their forces to defeat the French and their new ideology.
They finally succeeded at Waterloo, but unlike in England immediately after Cromwell, the restoration of the old regimes did not go according to plan. For by 1848, the Rights-of-Man movement transformed itself into nationalism, in Germany and throughout Europe. And in the end, the idea of nationalism overpowered that of the Rights-of-Man. Overpowered, but not dead, for we still enjoy today the freedoms it helped to win. Including the principle that no man should be deprived of life or liberty without due process of law.
Similarly, the forces of reaction managed to end the Soviet Union and to reduce Russia for a while to the brink of starvation. But the spirit of egalitarianism that was the cornerstone of the USSR is not dead.
To ensure that it is, the usual spit-lickers, on the occasion of the 1917 anniversary, have resurrected the ghost of Stalin’s repressions, that caused “100 million victims” – one pundit said. Citing millions of unsubstantiated victims for political purposes is established practice.
Nor they spared nonsense and deformations about life conditions in Eastern Europe, as if they had been better before the Revolution, under Czarist, Hapsburg, or Ottoman autocracies. While conveniently omitting that currently, in Eastern Europe, there is some longing for the older times and remorse for having believed as true what proved false about the West.
Nor mention was made of the structure of advanced societies and the social protections developed during the XXth century. Protections and social advancements that owe their existence to the presence of a Communist entity. Entity powerful enough to frighten the ruling bourgeoisies into granting concessions otherwise impossible. Proof being that as soon the USSR was gone, the same bourgeoisies have launched a furious aggression against the previously conquered rights.
Looked-at in the same spirit adopted with those previously reviewed, the Russian Revolution preached doctrines, like early Christianity, which were international and, at least at the beginning, anti-national. Like Islam, but unlike Christianity, the Revolution was essentially political and it challenged Liberalism.
Paradoxically, until 1917, only reactionaries challenged Liberalism. Marxists advocated democracy, free speech and free press. But when the Soviet Government seized power, it adopted the teachings of the Catholic Church in its days of splendor. Namely that it is the business of authority to propagate truth, by positive teaching and by suppressing rival doctrines.
Invitably, this led to establishing an undemocratic dictatorship in the name of democracy. Though we should consider that the Western bourgeoisie kept Russia under siege, but for the short and brutal five years of WW2.
For what is worth, historians who make a living by repeating the establishment’s line, usually omit referring to the conditions arising from a siege mentality. Equally, they conveniently disregard some social and psychological traits, uniquely Russian, which had a significant weight in the prelude, the preparations and the denouement of the 1917 Revolution. Those interested may watch my video of the “Historical Sketches” series, “The Historical Roots of Russian Communism – part 1”
Also, new and unique to the Russian Revolution was the amalgamation of political and economic power, which gave unlimited rein to government control. On the other hand, the Revolution’s rejection of Liberalism was extraordinarily successful and enthusiastically imitated, in Italy at first and then in Germany, thanks to Mussolini and Hitler. And even in countries that remained ‘democratic’, Liberalism lost much of its popularity.
For example, true Liberals maintain(ed) that if terrorists destroy public buildings, a serious effort should be made by the police and the law courts to discover the actual culprits. The new political executive(s) of the 1930s believed that the guilt should be attributed, through manufactured evidence, to whatever party, personality or state they dislike. As it happened with the fire of the Berlin’s Reichstag.
But in similar circumstances, the American neo-Liberals, when dealing with 9/11, behaved very un-liberally – when they attributed to 19 Saudi bunglers the organization and implementation of the operation. An operation that could be conducted only by a State or Entity with a direct interest in its bloody and apocalyptic success – and with sufficient weight, power and cover, already established in the targeted country, to make the venture feasible.
In summary, we can say that, common to all revolutions, the impetus to reform springs in every age from realizing the contrast between the external order of society and the moral standards recognized as valid by the conscience or reason of the individual.
Finally, a (probably) neglected point of personal psychology. When Mark Twain said that “In all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane,” he said more than he thought he did in jest.
For it may happen that after reaching our personal conclusions on historical, social or psychological matters, we may say to ourselves, “yes… but,” or “yes… however.” That ‘but’ or ‘however’ are the Doors of Doubt. And here doubt is the tip of a curiously slippery slope.
It starts with “There is nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Hamlet). It continues with “Truth is in the eye of the beholder” (anonymous), “Truth is a matter of style” (Oscar Wilde), “There are no facts but only interpretations” (Nietzsche) etc. And at the bottom of the slide we find Pascal’s “To understand everything is to forgive everything.” Which, following Pascal’s discovery to its logical conclusion, makes a mockery of our established notions of good and bad, and of good and evil.
In a similar spirit, at the end of our brief meditation on past revolutions, readers may concur with the idea that history resembles the number π (‘pi’), where every new added digit increases accuracy without reaching precision, for π is an irrational number, with an infinite number of decimals.
Just like any new addition to our historical knowledge, augments perspective without nearing truth – one of the several paradoxes of life. Paradoxes that tend to fill an individual with uncertainty or anxiety, and at times make him feel “like one upon a rock, surrounded with a wilderness of sea, who marks the advancing tide grow wave by wave, expecting ever when some envious surge will, in its brinish bowels, swallow him.” (5)
Which may be why many prefer dogmatic certainty to articulate uncertainty, even when certainty is absurd.
Reference:
** 1. Macbeth
** 2. Coriolanus
** 3. King Henry V
** 4. Hamlet
** 5. from Titus Andronicus
Image Source: goo.gl/Ck3yz2
About the author
 Jimmie Moglia is a Renaissance man, and therefore he's impossible to summarize in a simple bioblurb. In any case, here's a rough sketch, by his own admission: Born in Turin, Italy, he now resides in Portland, Oregon. Appearance: … careful hours with time’s deformed hand, Have written strange defeatures in my face (2); Strengths. An unquenchable passion for what is utterly, totally, and incontrovertibly useless, notwithstanding occasional evidence to the contrary. Weaknesses: Take your pick. Languages: I speak Spanish to God, French to men, Italian to women and German to my horse. My German is not what it used to be but it’s not the horse’s fault. Too many Germans speak English. Education: “You taught me language and my profit on it Is, I know how to curse.” (3); More to the point – in Italy I studied Greek for five years and Latin for eight. Only to discover that prospective employers were remarkably uninterested in dead languages. Whereupon I obtained an Engineering Degree at the University of Genova. Read more here.
Excerpt
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EXPOSING CAPITALISM'S MULTITUDE OF VICES AND INCURABLE PROBLEMS
Educated in the classics, philosophy, literature, theology, and sociology, I teach sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. My writing on varied topics has appeared widely over many years. I write as a public intellectual for the general public, not as a specialist for a narrow readership. I believe a non-committal sociology is an impossibility and therefore see all my work as an effort to enhance human freedom through understanding.
World crises often force strange displacements in the tectonic plates separating various political outlooks, and so it is with this turbulent age, in which globalists do their best to dumb down and sow massive confusion among the populace. People opposing this fetid excrescence are coming now from both the right (traditional conservatives) and the genuine left (not the centrist-right addled-brained liberals who normally mass around phony imperialist formations like the Democrats, yea it IS confusing). Many traditional conservatives (and libertarians, like Dr Ron Paul) are found fighting the neoliberal project, and its offshoot of endless wars and inexorable immiseration of the masses. It is in that framework that we find one of them, Dr Steve Turley, who, it should be noted, still very much supports many things that remain anathema to traditional leftists. That said, his critique of the US-led empire is healthy, lucid and spot on, and that's why we we bring it to your attention. The moment requires we focus and prioritise our enemies by their degree of malignancy, we must look at the broader and more important issues that bind us, instead of the less urgent issues that separate us, and which, in terms of practical politics, have no way of being resolved before the planet collapses, and perhaps do not need to be resolved, merely declared part of a wise truce between the disputants. Mental agility and flexibility is a necessary condition to dispose of the chief enemy theatening us all with depraved barbarism.—PG
The problem is we’re struggling with ghosts. We’re lead to believe that there will be a technocracy which will reduce and eliminate sickness, even death, and that includes war. That is the Great Reset. I think the final war is in process and it is the elimination of much of humanity, but not through nuclear war. Nuclear war, like so-called bio-weapons, are weapons of terror. They cannot be controlled.
I think global capitalism is at its “end-time”. It can’t go on. The system demands a reset if any of it is to continue for those who benefit the most – the elite and the technocrats. “We” have become with more and more technology useless to this power. Our labor is not needed, nor even our bodies as cannon fodder. All of this is now automated and requires very little human intervention.
To be clear, the current “war” is between the US and Russia, Ukraine is simply a mercenary proxy. But why? What is to be gained? Access to Eurasia and its natural resources? A belief in the story that those who possess Eurasia own the world? Well if that were the case Russia would be the owner since it occupies much of Eurasia and has for centuries.
Again, while some sort of massive bombing that could find its way cross the ocean may be upon us, it should be clear that those we think are in power, are not. The powerful are invisible. We on the other hand may have a choice if we realize what we’re up against, and through a method of walking away, of building a totally different world order, intentionally and organically we may actually escape the madness that has prevailed for thousands of years – even when it was met with direct violent confrontation. The arrangement has been called civilization – rule by a few over the many.