| It was worth reviewing and is, so I hope everyone here reads this of Chas’s speech. But put your partisan/ideological eyes to rest so it can be read in its “plain meaning,” in the dictionary meaning of “objective.” Not as criticism but only to draw attention to some of the factors pointed out here which I think are overlooked in general, and in particularly by the “Right,” of what is driving this mad, suicidal path we’re on, I beg to ask a couple a questions which arise. And being in full agreement with criticism of Biden’s and the Democrat’s embrace of the militarism of what was self-identified in the 1950s as the "New Right,” that is, the “Conservative Movement,” with its all-out advocacy of a militaristic foreign policy and a vast buildup of military industries and the armed forces/CIA to put them on an even higher “war-footing” than they already were, I want to be sure that “credit” is given “where credit is due,” in recognition that the Republicans always “owned” US militarism, down to the present day. So just to a couple points which if I were a Chinese gentleman in the audience I would ask questions of out of curiosity, beginning with “How did the U.S. come to be what is described here, and as a follow-up to that, if I were an astute Chinese “political theorist,” or Intelligence Analyst, “Isn’t a form of fascism being described here? 1. Chas: "The notion that “great power rivalry” is the core feature of international relations is best understood as a distillation of American militarism. It is a fantasy of the military-industrial complex. “Great power rivalry” is a concept that provides a rationale for unbounded defense spending by analogizing interactions among nations to those on a battlefield. It reduces foreign policy to zero-sum games between great powers, while denying agency to middle-ranking and smaller powers in shaping the world order or determining their own destinies. Positing “great power rivalry” as the central feature of world affairs is an _expression_ of nostalgia for the global feudalism of the Cold War when lesser nations were necessarily caught between competing overlords and forced to defer to alien agendas.” (TP-so perhaps we should look to the "ideological source” of such militarism to better understand it, and to work against it? But that might offend some people here, who prefer placing all the blame on the “Neocons” and Democrats, and like with some on the Right, implicitly or explicitly denounce that as a “Jewish” creation, while ignoring that so much of its actual ideological roots originated in what one Conservative ideologist claimed, meaning himself, "between the Appalachians and the Rockies.” Or more precisely; the CIA, which was largely concealed. But falling on fertile Republican “soil” as the already existing McCarthyite “Who Lost China” crowd, now fully resuscitated in the “Non-Interventionist Conservative” China Hawk crowd. So, I would also be curious of the ideological “sources” of their “political/legal” ideology in its underlying “theory, as Germans like Ernst Frankel examined the ideological/legal theory “origins” of that German party which attained power in 1933? But that might offend some here so never-mind.) 2. Chas: "The erosion of constitutional democracy in the United States appears to be the result of a tragic combination of many factors, including” (a list of “material factors"). (TP- But as Germans like Ernst Fraenkel (in opposition to Carl Schmitt and friends) knew, to “know them, it was necessary to know their political ideas, “theory,” like knowing Carl Schmitt’s fascism building legal theory (and Leo Strauss’s as he and his OK friend would disseminate when they met and became collaborators. As “good German,” and Jewish, (as opposed to the proverbial “Good German) Hannah Arendt understood was the role and task of “political theorists” (but as opposed to ideologues Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and that Oklahoma friend of his who also described “himself as a “political theorist”). With that role as a political theorist, Arendt in her study of The Origins of Totalitarianism, studied what began as “ideas,” preceding the “actions” of totalitarianism. With our current militaristic “ideas” of Imperialism, as Arendt connected to the “acts” of totalitarianism , having deep roots in US history, nevertheless, coming out of WW II, a “new dimension” to them was added, and escalating its inherent militarism, Leading directly to the ideological creation and rise of what Eisenhower called, and warned us of, the "Military Industrial Complex.” Whose ideological ideas are even more fervent in the Republican Party with their even greater lust for war than the “weaker” Biden is. Add in as many of its “component parts” as you wish, but today, that “Complex” is a fully developed “System,” permeating all of American life with the “militaristic idealism” and “culture” so valued by its ideological founders, whom I’ve named in the past, and whom fully achieved their objective of turning the US into what it is today: a Global Predator. And now Conservatives once again offer up apologetics and openly call for “Colonialism,” as The American Conservative has recently! (More on that later.) ****************************************** 3. Chas: "But there is no evidence that Xi Jinping and the 92 million Communist Party members he leads are trying to erase democracy beyond China’s borders. They are on the defensive against suspected homegrown and foreign efforts to discredit them, subvert their political economic achievements, and topple them from power.” (TP - Who should I believe? Chas, or the particularly virulent Conservatives/Republicans leading the charge of the anti-China, China War First Hawks like Matt Gaetz, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, the “42” (or so) Republicans who voted against aid to China on the basis of their self-admitted belief that China was the “Main Enemy” whom we must be prepared to engage militarily with first, with building on the vast military spending increases Trump began with in 2017.) 4. Chas: "Democracy may be doing itself in here and there, but there is no league of foreign autocrats or “authoritarian ideology” seeking to obliterate it.” (TP-No foreign “authoritarian ideology,” except for Yoram Hazony’s National Conservatism and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likudism, to include Kahaneism, so intersected now with American Conservatism. Which itself began as a “home-grown authoritarian ideology,” first formulated as the “Conservative Movement Ideology,” (choosing who was, and was not, qualified to call themself a “Conservative.” Like Peter Viereck was not, who was a “Liberal,” as one person here denounced him as), now fully integrated into what can properly be called “Universal Fascism.” With the irony being that our war on Russia with Ukrainian proxies has now led to the “liberal” Biden joining together with other fascists who pay obeisance to Netanyahu as well, and whom benefitted from “election interference” by private Israeli “influence specialists” like PsyWar, etc. As Trump did, and was part of that “Fascist International” gathered around Trump and Netanyahu of Modi and Duda, to name just two, now happily part of the US bi-partisan “War Party Coalition” against Russia, as are these guys: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/azov-battalion-neo-nazi/ (leaves a little to be desired but sound on the fascism of the Azov Bed. [I won’t engage in the deception of calling it Biden’s War, when it is as well seen as Trump’s War, who escalated it from what Obama left, as Mearsheimer knew, and what Sen, McConnell makes clear is the Republican’s War: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c5073741/senator-mcconnell-raises-concerns-defense-spending-ukraine-supplemental ******************************* 5. Chas: "Democracy is not celebrated for the wisdom of its decision-making. It is revered as an antidote to social and political repression that, when tempered by the rule of law, enables levels of individual self-governance and orderly succession processes that no other system can match. Democratic norms appear to require many generations to establish themselves in human societies. The 20th and 21st centuries provide many examples of how quickly and thoroughly these norms can be discarded.” (TP - and how eagerly “rights” necessary for “genuine” self-governance such as Free Speech and Freedom of Thought are so eagerly discarded as “Postliberal” Patrick Deneen does in this article, picking up from where Willmoore Kendall left off: “J.S. Mill and the Despotism of Progress: On the futility of Right-Liberals who look to Mill for refuge from the progressivism that Mill helped create (https://unherd.com/2023/05/js-mill-and-the-despotism-of-progress/, published on the neo-fascist UnHerd webpage.) 6. Chas: "Foreign policies based on wistful remembrance of past supremacy and the misperception of contemporary infirmities are doomed to fail. They are hallucinations that preclude successful navigation of the world’s newly fluid geopolitics, frustrate those who adopt them, and vex those to whom they are applied. They are not a basis on which to reaffirm U.S. global leadership.” (TP - But it’s what called “Conservatism,” as so many Conservatives denounce anyone who might point out Vietnam was unwinnable from the beginning as we quickly adopted “war crimes” as a “strategy,” as well described in numerous books, and remembrances. 7. Chas: "Post-colonial stress disorder is today a major driver of foreign policy in every region touched by imperialism, including Eastern and Central Europe, where the humiliation was done by the Russian-dominated Soviet Union. It plays an outsized role in Hindu nationalism and Great Han chauvinism. Post-colonial hangover is a major explanation for phenomena like the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran and the Arab uprisings of 2011. "European colonialism has locked Africa into a love-hate relationship with its colonizers that is now coming home to roost through illegal migration. Latin America continues to resent ongoing interventions by “the Colossus of the North” in places like Bolivia, Cuba, and Venezuela, even as many from the region look north for a better life. Southeast Asians, too, bear the scars of having been subjugated by European, American, and Japanese imperialism. Most of the world outside the United States and Europe sees the ongoing Israeli ethnic cleansing and settlement activity in Palestine as the last gasp of racist colonialism. Islamists identify “the West” with it and see it as justification for reprisal through terrorism. "The operative division in global politics is manifestly not that between democracy and autocracy but that between former colonizers and the colonized.” (TP - and Western Colonialism isn’t finished, if The American Cpnservative magazine has anything to say about it (see next email).
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