The Divine Mr. M

Putinka is Xi's bitch now. And he has his eyes on Central Asia...and Siberia.

The population of the Russian Federation is barely 40% Russian. The rest are the various ethnic minorities that Imperial Russia conquered. The Russian Federation is the 'rump state' of the Soviet Union, which in turn was the inheritor of the old Russian Imperial State.

Putin is correct in seeing a vibrant and independent Ukraine as a threat. It serves as a model for all those conquered ethnic minorities. He had to try and crush that. But he has failed and accelerated the final collapse of the remains of the leftover Russian Imperial State. And his own fatal fall from power.

One great irony is that Ukraine's pernicious corruption was drowning Zelenskyy. His approval rating was in the 20'a just before 2/24/22. But Putin has not only made him a hero, but given him the power to root out corruption with a ruthlessness he could not have previously gotten away with.

Feb. 19th, 2017 at 2:22 AM

~I keep reading endless numbers of articles and essays about how Trump became president. And none of the them really seem to get it. Chris Hughes comes close, but he seems to have lost his mind. Can't blame him really, as everyone is dancing around the elephant in the room; we are in fact already IN Collapse, eg, The System is in Terminal Failure.

We are in Late Stage Capitalism. What that means is as the profit margins get narrower, The Owners need to squeeze harder to extract said profits. This has been going for a few decades now, but for the general public, the 'balloon went up' with the Crash of '09, which was the direct result of The Big Squeeze. Wall Street et al created a Housing Bubble of insane proportions via all manner of shady and even illegal marketing and accounting games.

When the shit hit the fan, they got their political lackeys to use Tax Payer Money to 'reimburse' them for their loses and left said Tax Payers out to dry. Roughly 40% of the American Middle Class Wealth was lost. FORTY PERCENT. That meant eroded tax bases, gutted pension funds, wrecked state and municipal bond portfolios.

That is what Obama inherited. And, being the Corporatist he is, he bunted economically. The perfect example is the ACA [which originated with The Heritage Foundation, a very right wing think tank]. He'd promised a Public Option over and over and over again on the campaign trail. Withing a month of his Inauguration, it had vanished, forcing thirty million Americans into the clutches of the Insurance Industry. [see The Big Squeeze]

Eight years later, after more and more of that kind of betrayal from the Democrats and the insane slavering obstructionism of the GOP, the American Electorate had come to hate the establishments of both parties. And two Insurgent candidates emerged from outside of each party; Bernie and The Donald.

We all know what happened. The 'undisciplined' Dems suddenly became Very Disciplined and sandbagged Bernie. And the infamously disciplined GOP fielded a slate of total buffoons and got its clock cleaned.

Even then, Hillary should have won. She did in fact 'win' The Vote. But her ground game sucked so badly [arrogance], and the Dems had alienated so much of their own base [more arrogance], she lost four states by roughly 120K votes in total.

And that boys and girls, is how Collapse works. The System becomes so rotten that a Black Swan like The Donald can end up in the White House. [EDIT: 5/5/22 At this point I made some noise about 'The Deep State gaming The System in order to fix the problem and do a reset' but they turned out to be fuckin' gutless and did fuck all, while The Owners, those traitorous scum, got their $1.4 trillion and so didn't give a fuck]

But we are still in Late Stage Capitalism and Collapse is still underway and no one has any real idea what to do about that ...except, of course, More Of The Same, which is a well known definition of insanity.

Toss the now inevitable Catastrophic Climate Change into the mix and one can be certain that the next century or so is going to be 'very interesting times' indeed.

You can kill yourself now if you wish....

“2020 is the first Presidential election since 1860 and 1877 to see a potential situation that could escalate all the way into an outright civil war. I don't think such a thing would remotely resemble 1860 because the scenario is different. I see it as somewhere between Mexican cartel war and the Colombian Civil War in real terms and that it would take a long, long time for the American public to accept the shift from Kyle Rittenhouse and Dylan Roof style terrorism to a full fledged war and to admit that there is one.

1860 was a completely different era and political culture where it was easy to create well armed forces on the fly, if not to command them well and this did a lot to play into just how many people died in the battles that followed precisely because it was that easy. Here? It wouldn't fit that model well but it's the closest scenario of any and I'm not sure what happens, but the civil war prospects have become much starker and more real than they used to be”

~Tamar Denny

“I have been telling Leftists to arm themselves for over twenty years now and got treated like I was David Duke for my troubles. Some are starting to listen now.”

~Nebris

~A woman or a PoC can most certainly be a 00 agent. They just cannot be "James Bond", who is a *very specific* product of a *very specific* social and cultural environment, a male from the British White Upper Middle Class. Being female and/or non-white would *radically* alter the entire inner life of that person.

James Bond has a sense of Entitlement and Belonging that profoundly shapes his persona. Even today, it is highly unlikely that a woman and/or a PoC would be able to truly feel that way in the British Intelligence establishment. They are still Other for the most part and that has to shape who they are and how they interact with the world.

Just slapping the name 'Bond' on them and expecting them to be the same type of person is a lie. And also narratively boring. Now, if James Bond was their father...? Well, *that* would be bloody fuckin' interesting. ;)

~I keep reading endless numbers of articles and essays about how Trump became president. And none of the them really seem to get it. Chris Hughes comes close, but he seems to have lost his mind. Can't blame him really, as everyone is dancing around the elephant in the room; we are in fact already IN Collapse, eg, The System is in Terminal Failure.

We are in Late Stage Capitalism. What that means is as the profit margins get narrower, The Owners need to squeeze harder to extract said profits. This has been going for a few decades now, but for the general public, the 'balloon went up' with the Crash of '09, which was the direct result of The Big Squeeze. Wall Street et al created a Housing Bubble of insane proportions via all manner of shady and even illegal marketing and accounting games.

When the shit hit the fan, they got their political lackeys to use Tax Payer Money to 'reimburse' them for their loses and left said Tax Payers out to dry. Roughly 40% of the American Middle Class Wealth was lost. FORTY PERCENT. That meant eroded tax bases, gutted pension funds, wrecked state and municipal bond portfolios.

That is what Obama inherited. And, being the Corporatist he is, he bunted economically. The perfect example is the ACA [which originated with The Heritage Foundation, a very right wing think tank]. He'd promised a Public Option over and over and over again on the campaign trail. Withing a month of his Inauguration, it had vanished, forcing thirty million Americans into the clutches of the Insurance Industry. [see The Big Squeeze]

Eight years later, after more and more of that kind of betrayal from the Democrats and the insane slavering obstructionism of the GOP, the American Electorate had come to hate the establishments of both parties. And two Insurgent candidates emerged from outside of each party; Bernie and The Donald.

We all know what happened. The 'undisciplined' Dems suddenly became Very Disciplined and sandbagged Bernie. And the infamously disciplined GOP fielded a slate of total buffoons and got its clock cleaned.

Even then, Hillary should have won. She did in fact 'win' The Vote. But her ground game sucked so badly [arrogance], and the Dems had alienated so much of their own base [more arrogance], she lost four states by roughly 120K votes in total.

And that boys and girls, is how Collapse works. The System becomes so rotten that a Black Swan like The Donald can end up in the White House. Now The Deep State has to game The System [delegitimatizing it even more] in order to fix the problem and do a reset, eg a Pence White House, which while ugly, will at least be relatively stable.

But we are still in Late Stage Capitalism and Collapse is still underway and no one has any real idea what to do about that ...except, of course, More Of The Same, which is a well known definition of insanity.

Toss the now inevitable Catastrophic Climate Change into the mix and one can be certain that the next century or so is going to be 'very interesting times' indeed.

You can kill yourself now if you wish....

"Okay, Bernie has a sit down with POTUS and Smilin' Joe. He's talked with Hillary. And he's staying in the race until Philadelphia even though he seems to know she's gonna take it. As I've said, he's made a heavy investment in the Democratic Party and I suspect he plans to call in all his chips in order to play ball. He also said “Donald Trump cannot be president,” more than once.

That sends him back to the Senate with a lot of juice. From here on in, whenever he talks, a large number of Americans will listen. So expect him to hold Hillary's feet to the fire...if of course, she can actually beat Trump, which is not a sure thing in my books.

As I'm in California, I possess the luxury of not having vote for her. She'll win the state no matter what. I might vote for Jill Stein. I might sleep in. Too early to tell...."

The delusion that most Americans share is that The Republic can be saved. I'm a fat old man and I support Bernie because he could make the last few decades of my life moderately comfortable, whereas the other two will make it a living hell. But beyond that, The Republic is doomed. What shall follow I cannot say.

It is doomed due to a confluence of social, economic and technological factors that are more or less irreversible. Many of our citizens are 'surplus' to economic requirements and more are becoming so every day. That trend is not going to be changed and it *will* lead to social collapse. Catastrophic Climate Change is already upon us. We'll survive it as a species [we're like fucking cockroaches] but it will be 'a very rough transition' and Capitalism will be crushed in that as it will be rightly seen as the primary cause of that catastrophe.

Truth is, The Republic has been effectively dead for a while now. We're an Empire and have been since the end of WW2. The Republic began to die with the passage of the National Security Act in 1947. The Republic's Obituary was written two years ago:

"The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.

So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page.

This is not news, you say.

Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here's how they explain it:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power." http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

In essence most Americans are now debating over the division of table scraps.

The Dems and the GOP are both ‘owned’ by Corporate Money. Corporate interests nearly always get their legislative needs met, while We The People get shined on.

Each party 'makes the proper noises’ to its respective bases, but their campaigns, and the jobs they get when they either lose or retire from office, are wholly dependent upon Corporate largess. One does not bite the hand that feeds.

So for example, the Dems will 'fight for gun control’ and the GOP will 'fight for expelling the illegals’, but note that almost nothing has happened with either. That is because those are issues that help divide the Electorate and therefore keep each party in power because we’re too busy fighting each other over 'table scrapes’ while The Corporations eat their full.

That was okay when the economy was in decent shape, but for most Americans, the Crash of '09 has never really ended. The average American is still struggling to get by, while The Rich have apx $36 Trillion Dollars stashed in offshore accounts.

So the core base of each party has rebelled.

For the GOP, this has produced Donald Trump. For the Dems, Bernie Sanders. Whatever one thinks of their respective platforms and ideologies, it is very apparent that each party establishment hates them and has done its best to derail their campaigns. That is because they each truly represent the Will of Their Party Base and that is not what The Corporations want.

Trump is pretty much a lock at this point. And Sanders is closing in on an increasingly hapless Hillary. If the GOP does a 'political maneuver’ and steals the nomination from Trump, expect bloodshed. If the Dems squeeze Sanders out, I expect that Hillary will still win in November. The GOP simply does not have the numbers anymore.

But the Democratic party will be ripped open. Too may of us are sick of being lied to by Center/Right Corporatists who pretend to be Liberals [Hillary & Obama] and having a 'social issues' bone tossed to us to shut us up while they feed the Corporations every single thing they want.

Capitalism is in its Terminal Phase where it is now devouring its host. As I Posted/Tweeted a few years ago, “No domestic industry left. Massive unemployment. Crushing personal debt. The bankers still free. Drone strikes. Drug war. Social violence. Paralyzed politics. Diminishing public services. 65 US vets committing suicide every single day. 200,000 homeless children nationally.

I could go on and on. That is what Collapse looks like, not tattooed barbarians racing along the highways. The steady slide downward.”

Hillary talks 'incrementalism', but as we say in AA, “Half measures availed us nothing.” ...and time IS running out.

"Unconditional love is at best a romantic fantasy and at worse a deceitful lie. All relationships are conditional. All relationships are based upon the fulfillment of needs."

"While I agree that The Rulers will engage in every single one of the cynical manipulations you have listed, I would warn them that they should should be careful what they wish for.

Out here, on both sides of the political divide, we're all very fucking angry. Even Leftists are buying guns. You can 'thank Obama' for that via his near total neo-liberal betrayal of his 'progressive' campaign rhetoric.

If The Rulers derail Trump and/or Sanders, things are going to get very unpleasant for them. Not saying Revolution per se, but certainly a lot more political violence aimed directly at the One Percent and their servants.

I suspect The Rulers forget that FDR did in fact save their bacon by defusing what could have been a serious collectivist Revolution of some sort back in the mid 1930's. That forgetting is going kill and maim some of them...and I shall not shed a single fucking tear."

~my comment here: http://www.thepolemicist.net/2016/01/what-does-bernie-want-part-2.html