'...either country is sufficient to stand up to [the U.S.]... together they overmatch [America's] military capability. Due to the arrogance that resides in Washington, the would-be overlords of the world are not aware that Russia and China are not Iraq and Libya. If the moronic idiots in Washington bring us into war with these powers, the U.S. will disappear from history.....with the rest of the world.'
It is perhaps appropriate that the last word herein should go to Thorstein Veblen, the under-appreciated Norwegian-American economist and social theorist, and noted critic of the excesses of capitalism and the free market. He was the man who at the time correctly presaged the consequences of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles (another world war twenty years later), and interestingly, also coined the phrase 'conspicuous consumption'.
Although in what follows Veblen was referring to the prevailing mindset in Europe and Britain that brought us the Great War of 1914-1918, he might well have been talking about the Beltway Bedlamites in 2017.
'Temperamentally erratic [people] such as are schooled by special class traditions or predisposed by special class interest, will readily see the merits of warlike enterprise and keep alive the tradition of national animosity. Patriot-ism, piracy, and prerogative converge to a common issue. [When someone] gifted with an extravagant congenital basis of this [type] is at the same time exposed to circumstances favorable to the development of truculent megalomania and is placed in a position of irresponsible authority and authentic prerogative as will lend countenance to his idiosyncrasies, his bent may.. gather vogue, become fashionable, and with persistence and shrewd management come so ubiquitously into habitual acceptance as to throw the population....into an enthusiastically bellicose frame of mind.'
Notwithstanding Veblen's 'syntactically tortured' observations, he was 'mos' def' onto something. Might we suggest in concluding, that it is in few other areas occupying prime real estate within the overarching U.S. body politic beyond the rarefied milieu of the U.S. national security state/military industrial complex, where the 'tradition of national animosity', 'excesses of capitalism', 'conspicuous consumption', 'truculent megalomania', 'patriotism, piracy and prerogative', [the] purported 'merits of warlike enterprise', and 'irresponsible authority', intersect and fuse so seamlessly.
And so ominously! Well might we lament the absence of a more optimistic, peaceful, cooperative and productive future for ourselves, our families, communities, countries, and the rest of humanity. For the Bedlamites, this is decidedly not in the brochure. Even if Trump was inclined to address and remedy this--a not entirely realistic expectation by any measure--the power elites aren't going to entertain such ambitions.
Greg Maybury,
20 January, 2017
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
6
5
4
