Featured Post

Another New Book Available: States of the Union, The History of the United States through Presidential Addresses, 1789-2023

Mount Greylock Books LLC has published States of the Union: The History of the United States through Presidential Addresses, 1789-2023.   St...

Friday, October 24, 2014

This week's post

 Dear readers,

           This week's post, my first on the Time site, can be found.here.   Comments welcome here, or there!

David K

4 comments:

Energyflow said...

Congrats on time. I was reading about dulles brothers. It seems USA over self confidence in own concept, ignorance of cultural realities abroad always led to catastrophes. One walks blindly into catastrophe, "fools rushing in where angels fear to tread". Perhaps this is due to firepower, biggest military on earth, USA just organically growing its role of global cop over decades from region to region. Almost no wars successful. Lots of failed CIA coups, with massive blowback right away or decades later. I bet dozens of books are written on all these coups, wars, with massive enemies globally against USA, CIA.

The result of usa expansionism by business, media, military, all tied together in networks, expanding systematically, controlling population through propaganda is what we see now, rich ever richer, military spending and bank welfare expanding, seeking new markets through war, coups. Problem is control by usa elites over usa, w. europe, e. asia disintegrating with economy and failing success militarily. Everybody loves a winner and western countries are bankrupt.

WWII, depression brought daring solutions:keynesianism, military-industrial complex to wage total war, international bretton woods system, nato, social welfare state. Now this paradigm is everywhere nearing end of its rope. USSR went bankrupt by central planning, military spending. We have similar problems, high %state spending and military, low investment in future,plus consumer debt culture ignoring resource depletion, climate problems.

New paradigm comes by self caused implosion or external military, economic defeat. USA , West has to reduce spending, cosumption, growth, colonialist mind set to avoid confrontation. World population growth, 6th extinction, high CO2 makes perhaps agriculture untenable relatively soon, see California drought. Indians lived in peace, sustainably technologically for thousands of years. I have to retrain for new tech every couple years, and disposability of goods, tech, people, cultures is preprogrammed to guarantee profit. This is the problem, "be fruitful and multiply, subdue the earth...then when it's all dead conquer the stars if you can get there.


Gloucon X said...

“Brzezinski, known for his hardline policies on the Soviet Union, initiated in 1979 a campaign supporting mujaheddin in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which was run by Pakistani security services with financial support from the Central Intelligence Agency and Britain's MI6. This policy had the explicit aim of promoting radical Islamist and anti-Communist forces.” -Wikipedia

A 35 year long march of folly of supporting radical Islamist forces. Perhaps the hope was that we could bribe these radical Islamists into becoming cooperative tyrants like the Saudi royal family. The notion that we ever cared about democracy in the Middle East is absurd. American foreign policy in the Middle East is not designed to make readers of TIME feel good. It is designed to make sure that the oil flows, and that no one messes with Israel. That’s all, and nothing more. TIME’s policy is to make its readers believe that the US government has idealistic aims despite the evidence that they are completely Machiavellian.

Bozon said...

Professor
Great synoptic essay. Summarizes well what has passed for an intellectual discussion here.

I would add it has been more an 'ideological' than an intellectual discussion, but the term ideology itself is ambiguous.

I don't think of Fukuyama, at the time he wrote The End, as very much of an intellectual.

Huntington certainly was, although he clearly had an ideological agenda.

Bobbitt is an intellectual of sorts.... Michael Howard, with whose positions I have generally agreed more, perhaps more so.

All the best,

Energyflow said...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Luce

surely a fascinating figure. One wonders how involved the current time publishers, editors are in the power apparatus created by dulles, rockefeller, etc. to cement and expand usa power hegemony and what use they see in having this blog on their site. Certainly mr. Kaiser is moderate, intelligent. After reading certain books I myself fear involvement with any mainstream media as controlled by, beholden to certain power circles. I suppose however that this is not the 50s or stalinism and TPTB are flexible in allowing people to let off steam in order to maintain control better, this being intelligent psychology. The president himself is just a tool of the "Deep State".