History, not the factual kind but that filtered through emotion provides us with "we won the West", "we won WW2", "we built the Panama Canal after the French failed" and my favorite from my childhood when last it could be said with a straight face: "We never lost a war" and don't forget "tell it to the Marines." Old Glory releases this kind of thinking in a flood.
Pragmatism - we make up our minds and do it where others have floundered. No pussyfooting for America, we get the job done, just as we put a man on the moon and had the Manhattan Project. This is in contrast to the usual turmoil of a democracy, well known in Europe, but only in recent decades coming to be the case here with the breakup of the white Anglo-Saxon male consensus.
In fact, Hitler, who openly despised democracy as a group of people leading who had no idea what they were doing, the ignorant and the incompetent, was admired at first for his can-do, ignore the opposition successes in Germany.
January 6th was a statement: let's stop screwing around and do things right (literally). No less a humanitarian than John Dewey was very impressed by the command economy of WW1 America, though he came to realize his error in believing that wartime efficiency could produce peacetime results.
All this reflects an underlying pride that is very resistant to reality and tends to keep coming back even after a disaster like Vietnam or Iraq. Recall how the 1991 slaughter of the Iraq army brought back an American military standing tall and Reagan's "morning in America" as the shift of wealth to the top got underway.
Far from the pragmatism the country once exemplified, dreamland has taken over. Pragmatists would be on the case of global warming, but we continue to shop til we drop. It's hard to take America seriously but one must with all the lethality we so readily use.
Never come between a man and his paycheck. And we have a lot of powerful people in government whose paychecks depend on us making war on our enemies, real or not.
Great article. and with permission I could say from the military, to race, to women, to LGBT, to indigenous, to Christianity History is so Un-American.
Oh; and in case You were wondering. According to the 04jan23 “The D Brief”:
"THE 9/11 ERA, WHEN FOREIGN TERRORIST-RELATED THREATS DOMINATED…APPEARS TO BE OVER."
That's according to the latest annual survey of worldwide threats published each January by the Council on Foreign Relations. More than 500 U.S. government officials, foreign policy experts, and academics contributed to the results, which focused on "30 contingencies deemed both plausible in 2023 and potentially harmful to U.S. interests," according to CFR's Paul Stares.
New this year: "A cross strait crisis around Taiwan, escalation of the war in Ukraine, and instability in Russia."
Not new, but still on the list this year: "Nuclear weapons development by Iran and North Korea."
Also in the "top-tier risks" category:
"A highly disruptive cyberattack targeting U.S. critical infrastructure by a state or nonstate entity";
"An acute security crisis in Northeast Asia triggered by North Korea's development and testing of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles";
And "Increased violence, political unrest, and worsening economic conditions in Central America and Mexico, aggravated by acute weather events, fuel a surge in migration to the United States."
About that terrorism note: For the first time in the survey's 15-year history, "the possibility of a foreign terrorist organization inflicting a mass casualty attack on the United States or a treaty ally was not proposed as a plausible contingency for the coming year," Stares writes. THAT WOULD SEEM TO REFLECT A WIDER SHIFT TOWARD "GREAT POWER RIVALRIES," INCLUDING THE CHALLENGES POSED BY CHINA AND RUSSIA. Read the full report at https://www.cfr.org/report/conflicts-watch-2023 .
More of a comment than a question: The official last day of the U.S. military's global war on terrorism seems to have passed without much fanfare. That's according to a veteran who used Twitter to flag the formal dates for the Defense Department's National Defense Service Medal, which untold thousands of American troops received automatically upon signing up after 9/11. THE LAST DAY FOR THAT CONFLICT IS LISTED AS DECEMBER 30, 2022.
America's twenty year "Forever War" after 9/11 was, is, and ever will be a half-time show designed to keep the troops occupied, the defense contractors profitable, and the American people comfortably numb to protracted conflicts in places many of them cannot find on a map of the world.
For now, Russia has recovered from the disintegration of European Communism and the USSR ~ and China has recovered from the madness of Mao ~ sufficiently for either [or especially both] to present viable, credible "threats" to America's 30-year reign of global, unipolar hegemony since the end of Cold War I in December, 1991.
For now looms Cold War II, with Ukraine, the South China Sea, and/or Taiwan set to kick it off in fine fashion.
And Karl Rove spoke with absolute confidence back then because ~ back then in 2004 ~ America WAS an Empire: the global, unipolar hegemon “acting again” [and again] and creating all those “new realities.”
And now it is a flailing and failing Empire In decline, at best.
I wonder, Bill: How would a group of Historians get together and write “The Rise, Reign, Decline, and Fall of the American Empire”? And which current Historians would be good to include on that Team? Any thoughts?
Hi Jeff: I like my colleagues at TomDispatch. People like Andrew Bacevich, Adam Hochschild, and Alfred W. Crosby. For past historians, got to get Edward Gibbon on the team. He wrote the book(s) on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
Hi Bill. Yeah; having Gibbon on The Team to conceive, plan, implement, and execute THE RISE, RULE, REIGN, DECLINE, AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE would be invaluable.
But i was thinking more in terms of 20th and 19th century American Historians like Richard Hofstadter, Frederick Jackson Turner, Gordon S. Wood, Bernard Bailyn, William Appleman Williams, and Eric Foner.
Or some of the other 45 that are on the List that a Google search for “most important American historians” came up with, including Dennis’ nominee, Howard Zinn.
My nominees ~ and their works that i base their nominations on ~ are:
C. Wright Mills: THE POWER ELITE
Carroll Quigley: THE ANGLO-AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT and TRAGEDY & HOPE
Antony Sutton: WALL STREET AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION;, WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, and WALL STREET AND FDR
Murray Rothbard: CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY and HISTORY OF MONEY AND BANKING IN THE UNITED STATES
It will be interesting to see how History judges this. And those who haven’t been following this need to while the opportunity still presents itself…:
CAPSULE SUMMARIES OF ALL TWITTER FILES THREADS TO DATE, WITH LINKS AND A GLOSSARY
For those who haven't been following, a compilation of one-paragraph summaries of all the Twitter Files threads by every reporter. With links and notes on key revelations by Matt Taibbi
It’s January 4th, 2023, which means Twitter Files stories have been coming out for over a month. Because these are weedsy tales, and may be hard to follow if you haven’t from the beginning, I’ve written up capsule summaries of each of the threads by all of the Twitter Files reporters, and added links to the threads and accounts of each. At the end, in response to some readers (especially foreign ones) who’ve found some of the alphabet-soup government agency names confusing, I’ve included a brief glossary of terms to help as well.
In order, the Twitter Files threads:
Twitter Files Part 1: December 2, 2022, by @mtaibbi
Good observation.
History, not the factual kind but that filtered through emotion provides us with "we won the West", "we won WW2", "we built the Panama Canal after the French failed" and my favorite from my childhood when last it could be said with a straight face: "We never lost a war" and don't forget "tell it to the Marines." Old Glory releases this kind of thinking in a flood.
Pragmatism - we make up our minds and do it where others have floundered. No pussyfooting for America, we get the job done, just as we put a man on the moon and had the Manhattan Project. This is in contrast to the usual turmoil of a democracy, well known in Europe, but only in recent decades coming to be the case here with the breakup of the white Anglo-Saxon male consensus.
In fact, Hitler, who openly despised democracy as a group of people leading who had no idea what they were doing, the ignorant and the incompetent, was admired at first for his can-do, ignore the opposition successes in Germany.
January 6th was a statement: let's stop screwing around and do things right (literally). No less a humanitarian than John Dewey was very impressed by the command economy of WW1 America, though he came to realize his error in believing that wartime efficiency could produce peacetime results.
All this reflects an underlying pride that is very resistant to reality and tends to keep coming back even after a disaster like Vietnam or Iraq. Recall how the 1991 slaughter of the Iraq army brought back an American military standing tall and Reagan's "morning in America" as the shift of wealth to the top got underway.
Far from the pragmatism the country once exemplified, dreamland has taken over. Pragmatists would be on the case of global warming, but we continue to shop til we drop. It's hard to take America seriously but one must with all the lethality we so readily use.
Never come between a man and his paycheck. And we have a lot of powerful people in government whose paychecks depend on us making war on our enemies, real or not.
Hubris. My word for it is Amerogance.
You've described it perfectly, Bill.
Keep it up until Nemesis catches up.
Great article. and with permission I could say from the military, to race, to women, to LGBT, to indigenous, to Christianity History is so Un-American.
Oh; and in case You were wondering. According to the 04jan23 “The D Brief”:
"THE 9/11 ERA, WHEN FOREIGN TERRORIST-RELATED THREATS DOMINATED…APPEARS TO BE OVER."
That's according to the latest annual survey of worldwide threats published each January by the Council on Foreign Relations. More than 500 U.S. government officials, foreign policy experts, and academics contributed to the results, which focused on "30 contingencies deemed both plausible in 2023 and potentially harmful to U.S. interests," according to CFR's Paul Stares.
New this year: "A cross strait crisis around Taiwan, escalation of the war in Ukraine, and instability in Russia."
Not new, but still on the list this year: "Nuclear weapons development by Iran and North Korea."
Also in the "top-tier risks" category:
"A highly disruptive cyberattack targeting U.S. critical infrastructure by a state or nonstate entity";
"An acute security crisis in Northeast Asia triggered by North Korea's development and testing of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles";
And "Increased violence, political unrest, and worsening economic conditions in Central America and Mexico, aggravated by acute weather events, fuel a surge in migration to the United States."
About that terrorism note: For the first time in the survey's 15-year history, "the possibility of a foreign terrorist organization inflicting a mass casualty attack on the United States or a treaty ally was not proposed as a plausible contingency for the coming year," Stares writes. THAT WOULD SEEM TO REFLECT A WIDER SHIFT TOWARD "GREAT POWER RIVALRIES," INCLUDING THE CHALLENGES POSED BY CHINA AND RUSSIA. Read the full report at https://www.cfr.org/report/conflicts-watch-2023 .
More of a comment than a question: The official last day of the U.S. military's global war on terrorism seems to have passed without much fanfare. That's according to a veteran who used Twitter to flag the formal dates for the Defense Department's National Defense Service Medal, which untold thousands of American troops received automatically upon signing up after 9/11. THE LAST DAY FOR THAT CONFLICT IS LISTED AS DECEMBER 30, 2022.
Source: https://link.govexec.com/view/632cde87e62c2e12f402d9cahy3zo.ym8/e7673c31 [EMPHASES added.]
As i stated last March here on BV:
America's twenty year "Forever War" after 9/11 was, is, and ever will be a half-time show designed to keep the troops occupied, the defense contractors profitable, and the American people comfortably numb to protracted conflicts in places many of them cannot find on a map of the world.
For now, Russia has recovered from the disintegration of European Communism and the USSR ~ and China has recovered from the madness of Mao ~ sufficiently for either [or especially both] to present viable, credible "threats" to America's 30-year reign of global, unipolar hegemony since the end of Cold War I in December, 1991.
For now looms Cold War II, with Ukraine, the South China Sea, and/or Taiwan set to kick it off in fine fashion.
[https://bracingviews.substack.com/p/orwells-1984-holds-many-lessons-for-the-new-cold-war]
And Karl Rove spoke with absolute confidence back then because ~ back then in 2004 ~ America WAS an Empire: the global, unipolar hegemon “acting again” [and again] and creating all those “new realities.”
And now it is a flailing and failing Empire In decline, at best.
I wonder, Bill: How would a group of Historians get together and write “The Rise, Reign, Decline, and Fall of the American Empire”? And which current Historians would be good to include on that Team? Any thoughts?
Hi Jeff: I like my colleagues at TomDispatch. People like Andrew Bacevich, Adam Hochschild, and Alfred W. Crosby. For past historians, got to get Edward Gibbon on the team. He wrote the book(s) on the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.
Hi Bill. Yeah; having Gibbon on The Team to conceive, plan, implement, and execute THE RISE, RULE, REIGN, DECLINE, AND FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE would be invaluable.
But i was thinking more in terms of 20th and 19th century American Historians like Richard Hofstadter, Frederick Jackson Turner, Gordon S. Wood, Bernard Bailyn, William Appleman Williams, and Eric Foner.
Or some of the other 45 that are on the List that a Google search for “most important American historians” came up with, including Dennis’ nominee, Howard Zinn.
My nominees ~ and their works that i base their nominations on ~ are:
C. Wright Mills: THE POWER ELITE
Carroll Quigley: THE ANGLO-AMERICAN ESTABLISHMENT and TRAGEDY & HOPE
Antony Sutton: WALL STREET AND THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTION;, WALL STREET AND THE RISE OF HITLER, and WALL STREET AND FDR
Murray Rothbard: CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY and HISTORY OF MONEY AND BANKING IN THE UNITED STATES
And the views of which Historians in the past would also be good to have on the Team?
It will be interesting to see how History judges this. And those who haven’t been following this need to while the opportunity still presents itself…:
CAPSULE SUMMARIES OF ALL TWITTER FILES THREADS TO DATE, WITH LINKS AND A GLOSSARY
For those who haven't been following, a compilation of one-paragraph summaries of all the Twitter Files threads by every reporter. With links and notes on key revelations by Matt Taibbi
It’s January 4th, 2023, which means Twitter Files stories have been coming out for over a month. Because these are weedsy tales, and may be hard to follow if you haven’t from the beginning, I’ve written up capsule summaries of each of the threads by all of the Twitter Files reporters, and added links to the threads and accounts of each. At the end, in response to some readers (especially foreign ones) who’ve found some of the alphabet-soup government agency names confusing, I’ve included a brief glossary of terms to help as well.
In order, the Twitter Files threads:
Twitter Files Part 1: December 2, 2022, by @mtaibbi
TWITTER AND THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY
Continued at https://taibbi.substack.com/p/capsule-summaries-of-all-twitter