| It was tattooed on my mind when I was told a few years ago now by a friend that a one-time mutual friend of ours, a “non-interventionist conservative,” had become a shill for calling on the Trump administration, in league with a beer-guzzling libertarian, to avoid “boots on the ground” in Venezuela. But instead, to “tighten the screws on the Venezuelan people” with more sanctions “until they scream” (my words). Migrating to the US is their way of “screaming,” just as migrating to Europe (and the US) was the same for the people of the Mideast and Afghanistan after years of our “serial killing” of their friends and families. Instead of recognizing that as one more reason to end the US/NATO wars, the “New Right,” like Trump(ism), and the European fascist oriented parties, most recently it seems likely Brothers of Italy, rode that meme into political power with revealed operations/plans to impose more despotic/draconian extra-legal measures on their respective societies. And to escalate the wars we are currently in with Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, the Palestinians, making the cross-borders “New Right” the fulfillment of Michael Ledeen’s and the 1930s “Universal Fascism Movement” more of a reality. To the collective cheers of Conservatives. That call for tightening sanctions on the poor Venezuelan people, along with the cheers that went up for Trump by libertarians when he cut Oligarchical taxes, hidden under the veneer of meager tax cuts for the rest of us designed to boost the government deficit as legitimization for even greater domestic spending cuts, and always, vastly greater military spending for the Nietzschean militarists who set our inseparable foreign/military policy, fully revealed the utter vacuousness of the so-called "non-interventionist Conservatives” and their soulmates, libertarians. Both of whom could always be counted on to let out a collective cheer for Trump “ending the endless wars” every time a Military Servicemember was redeployed to a different theater of war from the Mideast; whether to USEUCOM, or USNATOCOM, or USINDOPACOM, for “near-peer competitor warfare.” Now fully going on in Ukraine, if not Russia itself, as Trump’s encirclements of Russia and China neared completion, leaving Biden (who played his own part in the war as continuing policies begun by Bush (political warfare, like pulling out of treaties, etc.), the same with Obama, and then accelerated as if “putting the pedal to the metal” by Trump) to get “credit for it.” As can be seen here by the ever-warmongering Bret Stephens, a “Conservative,” who wrote: "As the war enters a new phase, it will inevitably bring new dangers. No danger is graver than failing to prevail. Full credit to Biden for getting, and acting on, the point.” But let’s give “credit where credit is due,” to Trump, who with the Republicans as a whole, and some Democrats, precipitated the vast increase in military spending begun with Trump’s first budget as a “war provocation,” (see WW I) with help from the dying McCain to boost military spending $100 billion + in perpetuity from the baseline 2016 budget. Which was denounced by Trump and Republicans as not only too little, but actually representing "defense cuts!” It is said that “soldiers win battles, logistics win wars.” And military spending is the “spearhead” of that. The US saw that in the Civil War and ever since, except for Vietnam and the anti-Muslim wars of the past 20 years where it might be amended: “but populations can deny victory.” Which goes to the “politics of feelings,” a largely unstudied element of warfare, with a book chapter on that attached: |
Attachment:
A Political Grammar of Feelings.pdf
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BLUF: "For Bedorf, feelings are not political per se but can become political, provided that three criteria are met: The moment of activation, when feelings become mobilizing; the moment of community formation, when feelings are collectively shared; and the moment of articulation, meaning that affects are not simply translated into the cognitive but also need to be articulated within the symbolic order (ibid., 250–264).” Clausewitz was on to this two centuries ago but as Peter Paret wrote, didn’t have the language to put it into, which Edmund Husserl would provide a century later as the “science of consciousness,” or what became known as Phenomenology. Today, it is the basis of Israeli/US/NATO "cognitive warfare” at a level far beyond anything the Russians, Chinese, Iranians, can even dream of. Read that quote above again. It explains the sources of “terrorism,” and our reaction after 9/11, Pearl Harbor, or any political violence up to nuclear war. But "feelings” can be manufactured, as Goering understood, and it takes little propaganda to instill fear into one’s own population to incite them to war against the “Enemy.” As we saw against Russia since the end of the Cold War, by Gingrich and his gang and his Contract on America, with that influence passed down through succeeding administrations, to where Trump created a “Mighty Fortress is Our God” in Eastern Europe, with the “fortress” in Poland intended to be named Camp Trump. But Trump was denied “victory” in his quest to continue that expansion of war against Russia, with what would have been Camp trump now having passed into Biden’s hands for ‘Final Execution.” Which Stephens attributes "credit” for to Biden. But all that military weaponry like the HIMARs, etc. weren’t put together just since January 2001. Production must be assumed to have been accelerated under Trump’s “Greatest Military Buildup in American History.” So this is where “escalation" into full-scale war against Russia actually began; in the Logistics/Combat Support Systems, which include out intelligence/electronic surveillance systems, which Trump escalated into Phase Zero of the current wars: Trump Calls For "Greatest Military Buildups In American History" Trump: US Needs World's 'Strongest Military' So when I hear someone say Trump was “ending the endless wars,” before Biden came along, Rep. Joe Wilson’s immortal words immediately come to my mind; “You Lie!" “Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.” — Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
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