Cold War: mutually assured destruction. It worked (barely), because decision-makers were relatively sane persons.
What happens when a sociopathic narcissist hands a psychopath the keys to the most powerful military on Earth?
It's a movie trope: I may go down, but I'm taking you, all of you, w/me.
As a big fan of this work I can recommend Nathaniel Philbrick’s ‘Why Read Moby Dick’. Written pre-trump, nonetheless insightful and relevant
'From Hell's heart I stab at thee! For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee!' is not, however, directed at the whale, but at all of us, his followers included, or perhaps especially.
But don't call me Ishmael. Because no deity will hear.
Black and white sketch ink sketch of what one artist envisions of Captain Ahab of Herman Melville's great novel Moby Dick. I know what the sketch is a close-up of Ahab who is holding a long scope in both hands,. His pants are lined as is his face. He looks haggard and insane like he hasn't slept in days. Behind him in the sketch is the main mast of the Pequod in various sailing ropes and lines going to and fro.
One reason Moby Dick is one of the great novels of the Americas. In particular, the US. It is a constantly changing and yet apt metaphor.
In our time, he is Ahab, and the whale is his own psyche.
We are all on the Pequod, as prisoners and idiot crew...
Cold War: mutually assured destruction. It worked (barely), because decision-makers were relatively sane persons.
What happens when a sociopathic narcissist hands a psychopath the keys to the most powerful military on Earth?
It's a movie trope: I may go down, but I'm taking you, all of you, w/me.
Everyone such watch or listen to this latest episode of The Rest is Politics with Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell. www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxX5...
Their contradictory apocalyptic world view — which blends end times divine violence, a magical rapture, and a bizarre late-stage capitalism materialism — is sending the world into a paralytic frenzy.
They have a death wish for the very society that allowed them to prosper and it may kill us all.
Absent the white evangelical vote, none of this would be happening.
Once a subculture, they took over the Republican party and we are experiencing the consequences...
“I didn’t vote for THIS,” say the manosphere podcasters who simply had no way of knowing that Trump would lie about being a populist to get into office and then govern like a autocratic lunatic once in power, other than the fact that he did it for 4 entire years before that.
Tell me again about the ethical and moral high ground, you vile evangelicals who elected a sociopath who appointed a psychopath to run the Pentagon, who the sycophants in the Senate waived on ahead with nary a sound as he passed through their corridors.
So if the 'STDs were my Vietnam' and 'some people are going to die' Magaist supreme leader restarts the military draft, watch mindless Magaist millions suddenly stop their cheerleading for the Ninth Holy Crusade to bring about the mythical Armageddon.
It just keeps accelerating. The Republicsn-Magaist fascist regime is like Nicolas Cage in 'Leaving Las Vegas', and determined to take the entire country down with it in a narcissistic-self-destructive rampage. www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8sp...
You got to have some R & R after lighting the fuse for WWII.
Subpoena all of it. And him, too. The FBI found this witness credible enough to interview her four times. Enough with this cover up.
He really is as detached from reality as his evil Christian evangelical acolytes like Albert Mohler, Robert Jeffress, and Franklin Graham that put him in power. Fundamentalism, like fascism, destroys everything in its path. Both have the final aim of destruction itself.
"...and military service he sees principally, indeed exclusively, in terms of a training to achieve maximum physical potential.
"For Hitler, the development of character quite explicitly has to take second place..."
- Victor Klemperer, Language of The Third Reich, Introduction, 1946
So much for Saint Augustine's just war requirements.
Boy, Tom Holland, you really nailed that one with Dominion, didn't you? (This is sarcasm.)
It is a truth not universally acknowledged, but nevertheless factually so, that without Rupert Murdoch's evil media empire, the sequence of events and personalities that have led to the current US madness would not exist at all.
Yep , for all of the limp cock bluster, this is spot on.
Also nuclear is an anagram of unclear.
FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?
I once hiked 200 miles over ten days without food, drinking only water, and sleeping on the ground with only an emergency blanket as shelter.
In ‘33 there might be an *as if*, by ‘36, after the Olympics, it’s GTFO
Place yourself in 1933 Germany. You are isolated and alone, because your relatives and some former friends support the man in power who you know is as close to evil incarnate as anyone has ever been. Do you interact with them as if nothing is amiss?
In your mind, dress these guys — Johnson, Trump, Hegseth, etc. — in 12th century English villager attire. Then their comments and their appearance begin to seem of a piece. And their comments then make a sort of fucked up 12th century sense.
Two books: Norman Cohn's Pursuit of the Millennium and @medievaljay.bsky.social's Armies of Heaven. We've been here before. Just not with nuclear weapons.
Multiple choice & essay:
What country is ruled by a theo-authoritarian/fascistic regime propped up by a radical reactionary fundamentalist minority who believe their messiah is soon returning for his chosen few? Discuss.
A. Iran
B. United States
C. Both of the above.
#evangelicals #Iran
The similarity between the apocalyptic world views of the US Magaist evangelicals and Iran's radical Shiite clerics is jaw dropping. And since both sides believe their Messiah is coming soon to destroy evil, it's going to make one hell of a Marvel movie.
Our world just got a lot more dangerous.
I hate feeling relevant
Also @joelbaden.bsky.social and John Collins from Yale discussing the book of Daniel. Astounding, or maybe not, the Idiocy (theodicy? ;) of modern Peter the Hermits who reject what is known about ancient texts.
