A little more than a week from now, we will observe — or more likely, not observe — a hundred years since the opening bell was rung for the great serial butcheries of the horrible twentieth century. A hundred years, since then, of unprecedented slaughter; makes the Thirty Years’ War look like a walk in the park. But who remembers July 28, 1914? Indeed, who would want to?
Tell me again about progress.
It’s becoming rather difficult to resist the sense that we are once again circling the same drain. And now as then, it’s hard to understand why. Nobody wanted the World Wars — except the people who did; unfortunately, the people who did were calling the shots, then as now.
There was no good reason — no good reason, that is, that ordinary decent people could understand — why the assassination of an inbred Hapsburg halfwit should have plunged the world into an orgy of bloodletting. The shooting-down of an airplane is, let’s say, 250 times better, as excuses go, than useless unloved Franz Ferdinand’s abrupt quietus; but it’s still piss-poor, compared to the consequences.
There’s no good reason — no good reason, that is, that ordinary decent people can understand — why the US and NATO should have decided to stir the pot in the Ukraine, culminating in the February coup; but they did. And now they seem resolved to stay the course. Dial it up to 11. You can’t miss the barely-concealed relief and rejoicing in Washington and on the pages of the New York Times. At last! A casus belli!
Samantha Powers will undoubtedly be happy. Whether Obie will be happy or not is hard to say; he seems so robotic, so calculated, such a creature of contrivance, that it’s hard to believe he has any real feelings at all.
Oh, I know, I’m Eeyoring again. It probably isn’t quite July 1914 yet. This too will pass. Yet it’s hard to resist that good old deja vu. If not 2014, then 2015, or 16.
The depressing thing is that in spite of the Internet, and the human genome project, and Twitter and so on, nothing of consequence has changed since 1914. What’s old is new again.
I SHARE YOUR SENTIMENTS, CAST IN YOUR CHARACTERISTICALLY WELL-TURNED PROSE. (I APPRECIATIVELY RESPONDED TO ONE OF BLUE’S POSTINGS A FEW WEEKS AGO BUT IT WAS NOT POSTED; TOO INANE? – I AM A SIMPLE MAN – OR YOU PERCEIVE I AM NOT “LEFTIST”? – WHATEVER THAT MEANS THESE DAYS…) I KIND OF THINK I AM AN ORDINARY DECENT ETC., AND SO REITERATE MY BEWILDERMENT OVER WHAT THE OLIGARCHS – PLUTOCRATS ARE SO REAMINGLY DOING TO US (I EXPRESSED THIS BEWILDERMENT ANENT USA-RUSSIA ANTAGONISM, AND WAS KINDLY REPLIED TO BY HIGHARKA [AUTHORITATIVELY] AND YOURSELF [TENTATIVELY]).
IN ANOTHER OF MY RARE POSTINGS, I MENTIONED RUSSIA’S PROFOUND CULTURE, AND USA’S SUPERFICIAL SAME. NOW DO LET ME SAY, THAT AS SOMEONE WHO HAD VARIOUS FAMILY MEMBERS SUMMARILY EXECUTED (SHOT, MURDERED) FOR BEING ETHNICALLY (AND PERFORCE, ALMOST, POLITICALLY) IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME (INCLUDING DURING “POST-CONFLICT” PERIODS!), I ALSO APPRECIATE THINGS ABOUT AMERICA THAT SEEM LOST IN THIS BLOG. SOME OF THE ANCIENT CULTURES PRESERVE ANCIENT HATREDS, AND THEORETICALLY AMERICA’S LACK OF DEPTH CAN BE A PLUS. I WOULD NOT GIVE TWO CENTS FOR STALIN OR MAO, AND MAYBE NOT A NICKEL FOR OUR OWN RULING CLASS. I THINK THINGS WOULD BE FINE FOR THE ORDINARY DECENTS IF USA SIMPLY ADHERED TO THE PRINCIPLES OF THE AMERICAN MYTH. MYTH IS SAID BY SOME TO BE INTEGRATIVE, AFER ALL. IN A JUST REPUBLIC AMERICANS WOULD BE PROPAGANDISED IN THE MYTH OF DECENCY AND RESPONSIBILITY, NOT IN THE EXPLOITATIVE DRECK NOW SURGING ABOUT THEM.
I HAVE NOW GAINSAID ANY HINT OF UN-AMERICANISM, THUS FREEING-UP A COUPLE OF NSA MAN-HOURS. THANKS.
(APOLOGIES FOR UPPER-CASE; DEFECTIVE KEYBOARD.)
I don’t what might have become of your earlier comment. I haven’t trashed anything recently, and there’s nothing pending. Code fart, I suppose.
If you believe that life holds no intrinsic value, then it’s only natural to think of yourself as a hero for trying to wipe it all out. The rational behavioral mandate for a society built around randomized evolution is atomized transient pleasure maximization. That’s all well and good for a while, but Antilife can’t stand even that, because even when afflicted individuals are powerful in a worldly sense, they’re still afraid. They long to end that fear by extinguishing the self, and all other selves, thereby altruistically ensuring that no one else ever needs to suffer the pains of life’s chance.
You ask how it all can happen, and try to take refuge in, “Oh, they’re greedy.” And they are indeed greedy, but if they didn’t war with other tyrants, they would have even more time and resources available for temporal pleasure. The deliberate attempt to provoke nuclear war on the part of those who have so many resources–and who could be stroking escorts all day long if they weren’t busy with “politics”–is only explainable this way.
“Aaahhh, why do elites keep doing this? Don’t they realize they’re risking everything they have, too?”
Yes, Virginia, they’re actually trying to end it all. We are facing a true evil; a force that tries to end beginnings. We need to stop pretending that these behaviors are the irrational actions of people who want more wealth or more historical potency, for they are not. They are the rational actions of those who want to extinguish all light.
From Eric Bogle’s fine antiwar song, No Man’s Land.. Willie McBride is the main character in the song, and in it he dies in the trenches during WW1:
Ah, young Willie McBride, I can’t help wonder why,
Did all those who lay here really know why they died?
And did they believe when they answered the call,
Did they really believe that this war would end war?
For the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain,
The killing and dying were all done in vain,
For, young Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again and again and again and again.
Has anyone out there read the book, Human Smoke? About WW2. Now it’s 2014. How much has changed? I wonder how long before we have to change Gramsci’s words to “Pessimism of the Intellect, Pessimism of the Will”?
I love the version of this song by the Furies. It’s the musical equivalent of “Johnny Got His Gun.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntt3wy-L8Ok
Thanks, Sean. I didn’t know of this version. It’s a good one. One line stood out for me this time: “man’s blind indifference to his fellow man.”
I will comment when I digest a few bits more of this.
Don’t worry, the Russians have learned some lessons over the last quarter century and possibility of things getting out of hand in that arena are a bit slim (not least courtesy of the likes of Boeing and GE that are doing brisk business there):
http://www.towardfreedom.com/33-archives/globalism/3507-brics-and-the-tendency-to-sub-imperialism
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/07/03/even-with-sanctions-u-s-sales-to-russia-hit-new-high/
I can’t think of any reason the anti-Nazi forces would want to down an airliner deliberately, though an accident is always possible. For the Nazis and their handlers in the US, this seems to fit in will with their established use of false flag attacks to create pretexts for war. That they are trying to provoke Russia seems beyond question at this point.
What they hope to accomplish by engineering a war with Russia is anyone’s guess. But I reject the leftist tendency to underestimate the ruthless effectiveness of our rulers in achieving their aims, even if they often appear to be completely insane and acting against their own interests to the rest of us. Chaos itself may well be the goal as Arka suggests, or there may be method to their madness that is simply beyond our ken. Suffice it to say that no matter what they do or why, these vultures are enemies of humanity, and that is all anyone needs to know.
There was no good reason — no good reason, that is, that ordinary decent people could understand — why the assassination of an inbred Hapsburg halfwit should have plunged the world into an orgy of bloodletting.
And he can see no reasons,
‘Cause there are no reasons,
What reason do you need to be shown?
One good reason would be that there’s only room for one hegemon in this world. No empire worth its salt goes in halfsies with anyone else. That was true when Britain noticed the German Navy. That was true when Big Dawg expanded NATO east.
If your social order requires huge armies to be built and rebuilt on ever grander scales, they must be justified by Enemy Evils and, occasionally, actually used. So, things do indeed remain what they were. Getting the Rooskies back as a bear-in-the-woods would be a major win for corporate capitalism/market totalitarianism.
The unmentionability of the roaring core hypocrisy is enough to rob one of sleep. Russia is 100 percent responsible for DNR. Israel, meanwhile, doing worse and continuing crimes, is unrelated to the sainted USA.
You give the people with their hands on the levers far, far too much credit. All those responsible for WWI were convinced that their plans were the ideal plans, that they would win in a matter of weeks and then there would be eternal peace under the flag of France, Germany or whomever. Then they surrounded themselves with sycophants who only told them how wonderful their plan was despite all the evidence to the contrary (including copies of the actual plans of other combatants that indicated using other strategies), and then when the bombs started falling, how close they were to total victory, in spite of actual stalemate on the ground. Those who set into motion the gears of war will continue remain as far from the consequences of their decisions as anyone on earth, physically, mentally and psychologically. Any decision made to “go to war” will be a rash, domestic political decision. There is no fucking end game, just a bunch of idiots buying into their own propaganda.