Who will read this?
Those who already see things this way. The rest will object. I haven’t figured out why, or what happened.
A minor objection myself: you mentioned that we *can* talk about the patriarchy (I know, you said it’s beside the point), but really we can’t any more. The number and prominence of women architecting, driving, and promoting every one of the absolute horrors of the last 20-30 years pitches that whole discourse into the burn hole. While again, it doesn’t matter because nobody’s listening anyway and they’re all marching themselves and everyone else into the burn hole, righteously!
The unsolvable mystery I can’t describe. I can only report it:
The West will not pull itself up by its own bootstraps. Recovery when it finally comes will be imported from elsewhere where intellect still lives not just in the margins but where it pervades, makes impact on civilization.
Discapability, the outcome of incapability by design, intentional disabling, is everywhere. Everything in the West after a long decline, is dis-capable. The degradation is so total that the dead wood is burned already, even the dry tinder up in smoke, gone. There’s nothing remaining to rekindle.
Everything is a lie, every institution a hollowed out joke, every persona a clown stooge or criminal grifter. Competence hardly remains in living memory.
From the margins, among the last glowing small embers in a cold stove:
https://x.com/mazzenilsson/status/1746398039105745243
"Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and several others suddenly decided in 2011 that they would overthrow the Syrian government in 2011. This is a typical regime change operation. This is what created the war and the flow of refugees to Europe! Have any of the European leaders said a word? How did they explain this to the public? And now they are wondering why their popularity is so low. Well, if you don't tell the truth to your constituents, then what do you expect? You see, these hegemonic wars of the United States are not in the interests of Europe. And now this is the same as supporting Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip. This is not a question of right or left. This is a question of what is Europe interested in now? And the answer is not that there will be a blitzkrieg war in the Middle East right now.”
Jeffrey Sachs, economist, the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
In the United States, the population went all-in on these things, because “my team” (Obama, Clinton, “not Bush’, later “not Trump”…)
I wrote about this since 2011. This — Syria since 2011, then repeating the same playbook in 2014 in Ukraine — this is why all my decades-long friendships among American liberals at home ended in 2015. Because they supported all of this and I was against it. First they mocked, then attacked me for it.
Well they can all suck a bag of dicks and in fact they DID. They all got jabbed many times. They sucked that jab dick over and over again BECAUSE they believed it inoculated them against TRUMP.
A 7 year (so far) freak out over a bogeyman they made GIANT in their minds. And then they believed Trump didn’t “support ‘the science’” enough so they jabbed themselves over and over and over and over again, and wore masks and locked down….
Intellectual decline to zero.
Recovery is irretrievable.
Blind Drunk on Delusion
Fixated on Global Conquest
Inadequately Equipped (morally, spiritually, technologically, militarily, economically, intellectually) for what they made their raison d’être: Global Conquest
Does this sound like a good combination of civilizational, or personal, attributes?
Maybe it’s OK to be blind drunk on delusion.
But, not so good, in combination with fixation on global conquest.
And it’s OK to be inadequately equipped.
Who isn’t?
But inadequately equipped combined with blind drunk on delusion, yeah, makes bleak forecast, good outcome likely not forthcoming. Is it being very unDude. Or very Dude? What difference does it make? Is anyone in The Big Lebowski not an absolute incompetent, dude or undude?
Todd: The West is about to collapse, Putin's model is more attractive to the world
NOW THEY WILL LOOK FOR A WAY - TO COVER THE DEFEAT - TO MAINTAIN THE STATUS QUO IN UKRAINE, BUT RUSSIA WILL NOT GIVE IT TO HIM
The French sociologist Emanuel Todd cites as the reasons for the decline and imminent defeat of the West: the industrial deficit in the United States, the fictitious nature of the American GDP and the insufficient level of engineering training and the decline in the level of education in general". Also: the disappearance of Protestantism as a value system of Western society
He especially emphasizes: Let's get rid of illusions. Russian pressure will increase. The West's refusal to see Russia's strategy as a whole has led to a general blindness. And the worst in the military sense for Ukrainians and Westerners is yet to come
Emmanuel Todd, widely recognized as one of the greatest living French intellectuals, says the best thing that could happen to Europe is "the disappearance of the US":
"Once the United States agree to withdraw from their empire, from Eurasia and all these regions where they maintain conflicts... Contrary to what we think - we say 'what will we become when the US no longer protects us?' - we will be at peace! The best thing that could happen to Europe is the disappearance of the United States."
Russophobia: Propaganda in International Politics
“An incisive takedown of the neo-McCarthyite chauvinism that has consumed Western political culture, to the great detriment of honest journalism and global peace"
– Aaron Maté
Propaganda is the science of convincing an audience without appealing to reason. Over the past centuries, anti-Russian propaganda has been founded on juxtaposing the West and Russia as European versus Asiatic, civilized versus barbaric, modern versus backward, liberal versus autocratic, and even good versus evil. Russia has therefore throughout history been allowed to play one of two roles―either an apprentice of Western civilization by accepting the subordinate role as the student and political object, or a threat that must be contained or defeated. While propaganda has the positive effect of promoting unity and mobilizing resources against an adversary, it has the negative effect of creating irrational decision-making and obstructing a workable peace.
None of my commentary is motivated by an interest in doing the right thing, or respecting the rights of others (others not us), or anything like that. Things are well advanced far beyond the point already where any of that matters. No. This is about the fact that we’re being marched into the burn hole by nutjob loser incompetents.
I mean, it’s a combination. You’ve got:
your run of the mill incontinent grifters,
and you got your drug addict actors and various coke sniffing pretenders to ‘power’, today’s neutered/castrated impotent political class high on snort and cash and the chance to act out/read (they did very well indeed on the casting couch), scripts handed to them while lording over their equally midwit brainwashed stupefied dumbass populations who believe in every bit of it.
And you’ve got the nutjob maniacs behind the curtain, the real blind drunk delusional fixated and (also) inadequate
So check this out. I bet you didn’t see this comin’:
Most people understand intuitively that European politicians are absolutely worthless but fail to comprehend the system and mechanism as to why Europe keeps selecting for politicians each more useless than the last. The first step is to look at a vestigial legacy of Europe's past political dispensation, it's remaining monarchs.
Understanding the ceremonial and pro-forma nature of Europe's Kings and Queens is fundamental to understanding the functioning of Europe's so-called elected representatives who fill a similar role though not quite so explicit.
So, that’s describing 1 and 2, grifters and actors, your elected officials — parliamentarians, congress people, ministers and secretaries, presidents and prime ministers — all sitting in the same boat together with Europe’s remaining impotent monarchs in the same role: for show only, powerless, a masquerade hiding those actually wielding power: 3, the nutjob maniacs behind the curtain, the real blind drunk delusional conquest-fixated and (also) inadequate. You can evaluate them accurately enough without any external evidence, relying solely on their own statements of their own goals, objectives, and motivations which are published everywhere everyday, proudly.
Anyone with a mind to evaluate can do that.
The outcomes are very poor. They have been poor for a long time, are worse now, and will continue still with much worse yet to come.
Not Possible.
John Mearsheimer doesn't understand the problem.
It is not just about manufacturing capacity--in theory the US may build, in the next 10+ years, some facilities to increase production of 155-mm shells or drones. But it will not be able to match industrial capacity of Russia in this respect, even with theoretical addition of future, if any, European capacity. The issue here is not just quantity--the target impossible to reach due to utter destruction of US manufacturing base and an extremely complex supply chains for military production. This all is just the tip of the iceberg. The main body of the iceberg is a complete catastrophe that the US military doctrinal and, as a result, procurement development is.
I spoke about it for years--some gaps, such as in air defense or missilery the US will not be able to close, because as I type this, this gap continues to grow. It is measured not in years but in generations. This is, as an example, the result of misguided and illiterate approach to air defense based on... air power. You have to literally undo the whole thing, and this requires not just building some facilities, but a complete rethinking of America's defense or, rather, "offense" philosophy which doesn't work. It never did. This is impossible in the present state of the American geopolitical thought without rethinking the United States as it perceived itself in the last hundred years. The US has no courage, intellect and will to do so because it leads to a destruction of America's mythology.
So, the US is stuck. So, it is good that John Mearsheimer understands parts of it, but he doesn't understand the heart of the matter. After the US strategically and operationally "planned" VSU's "counteroffensive", the question of the competence of the US military establishment arose and was answered--it is incompetent! It will take a generation or two to even teach those who are currently in the plebe years in US service academies to think properly and within the framework of America's REAL military and industrial capability. This REAL capability has nothing in common with the US halcyon years of WW II and after and it is not coming back. Russia will not allow the US to unleash the war in Europe while thinking that the US can sit this one out again behind the ocean. Doesn't work like this anymore, especially with the construction tempo of Russia Navy's subs such as 3M22 Zircon carriers Yasen-class subs and frigates which already have Zircons deployed. These are technologies the US simply doesn't have and are nowhere near of getting them. China can rely on them, and much more from Russia in case of the US deciding to commit suicide, the US cannot.
It is grim picture of corruption, financial and, most importantly, intellectual within the US military and foreign policy establishment, and what John Mearsheimer fails to understand--these are not just some pieces of hardware whose utility the US suddenly recognized. Nope, the REAL experience of SMO is way more than technological, it is above all operational and strategic, which made Russia's General Staff a well-oiled machine which merely uses 404 as a trap and a junkyard for NATO's military capacity, because Russia fights not Ukraine, she fights NATO, and NATO, and the US, are in panic. In the end, Washington cannot do strategy, it has no real strategists--only whiteboard doctrine mongers, who will fail again to learn proper lessons, because one has to have a proper tool kit. The US doesn't have one. Good luck "containing" China.
P.S. I'll probably do podcast with my friend Colonel Vladimir Trukhan, and possibly with my other friend Colonel Oleg Shalandin fairly soon. I may also twist hands of some of my classmates--they are very humble people--to drag some of them to the podcast too. That depends, though.
British Officers...
... who write all kinds of "analysis" for British tabloids (everything in Britain IS tabloid, even The Times) they really DO have issues with grasping a simple difference between tactical and operational. I guess this is the result of 44-week long "study" in Sandhurst and being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan where there never was a single occasion of conducting a REAL combined arms operation of scale. Forget about colonel Kemp, who became a meme. Here is another one with alarmist crap titled The West Could Soon Hand Putin The Keys To Europe.
Firstly, somebody, explain to these morons in London that Russia DOES NOT NEED Europe. Russians are done with it. If they buy Russia's energy and other things, sure, but that's about it. Secondly, I have news for Robert Clark who penned this nonsense, so here is reiteration of the point many of us have been making since the start of SMO:
British General Staff and its cadres have about zero competencies and experience with modern war of scale, period. That is why British military and its "analysts" parade themselves as a bunch of amateurs whose only marginal competencies extend to the middle-tactical level at best. They may know how to C4 a tank company, battalion max, but that's about it. They DO NOT understand how modern corps and army level formations fight in the XXI century and how General Staff plans and operates. No surprise, UK Army can deploy about one combat ready maneuver brigade after 2025, if they get lucky. And again, Russians do not want to deal with Europe--watch my today's comments to a remarkable statement by French soldier, who didn't lose his integrity and honor... Yes, Russia and Putin do not need these keys, please, Europe, keep them.
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/01/british-officers.html
French Soldier's Epiphany.
My latest video.
https://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2024/01/french-soldiers-epiphany.html
The vile insanity has been growing for centuries, chopped back at times by various uprisings and confluences. 9/11 was where the game was lost - to the inside/outside Zionist jobbers - where reality was taken over once and for all, the false narrative permanently installed, the vast fraudulent domestic security state erected, further concretized by trillions invested in decades of illegal fraudulent genocidal Mideast wars of terror causing some million deaths and millions more refugees, while all activism became moot. Occupy was the best we could do? Covid and Gaza are the brutal denouement of the collective takeover of consciousness begun centuries ago, with 9/11 the blow never recovered from.
I heard an interview with Willie Nelson's harmonica player. There was a rule in the band that if you took cocaine, you were out of the band. The reason was that people on cocaine can't communicate and play together. They were just busy doing their own thing. And that is intolerable in a band.