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Reagan was a great president and a leader and visionary to many Americans.
RIP
You're back with a vengeance, Bill. This will take me hours to work through.
Thanks, Harry. I hope it's good reading, nonetheless.
It was good reading, thanks. The things that hit me hardest were the articles on the loss of soft power and mental illness. From what I've seen, crazy people fitter away soft power and resort to force more often than the relatively sane.
They can't make their needs known in a way that sways those who could help and they act out in frustration. They're incapable of working with others in any but the most morally primitive exchanges. They can't build up good will, the most important currency in human affairs.
Their inability to reason, whether as individuals or a polity, inevitably brings them face to face with someone who will hurt them.
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The mentally ill compound their illness with severe drug abuse all too often. Inflicting suffering on others is as much a release and relief as going on a binge. Being part of a movement that does the same lifts the moral burden from the aggressors and their supporters and there's no immediate physical consequence. It's the ugliest form of collectivism.
A sensible person keeps as much of his power, soft and hard, in reserve as possible. Throwing it all away is madness and contraindicated if you wish to survive. We will face a terrible reckoning some day. A debtor nation whose only strength is frequent displays of remorless brutality is on the decline.
Neoliberals and neconservatives are destroying this country and much of the world. I see no way out but a combination of libertarian and socialist policies.
That should be "remorseless".
I came here hoping to find stuff that wasn't solely obsessed with the passing of the greatest political leader the universe has ever seen or will see, because God hath made him in His image. (I.e.—God is a B-movie actor-cum-political flakk for Orange County ideologues.)
You have not let me down. Good job, Bill!
Harry: The things that hit me hardest were the articles on the loss of soft power and mental illness. From what I've seen, crazy people fitter away soft power and resort to force more often than the relatively sane.
Good point. The arrogance with which the US architects have debased multilateral institutions is quite ironic, since the US has risen to an unprecedented position of power through the deft utilization of these entities since WWII.
It's hard to rule the world with an iron fist, particularly one that is increasingly networked. People within the core may be blind and willfully ignorant to imperial ruthlessness, but it's not easy to pull the wool over the eyes of rival imperial centers of power (EU, Russia, China, etc.) or the subjects outside the metropole. It's smarter to take them along for the ride, handing out scraps along the way.
By throwing concers about 'soft power' to the wind, those who long for a 'New American Century' have scuttled the feasibility of just such a project. I'm reminded of a New Yorker article by Josh Marshall from a few months ago, which noted:
"Bill Clinton was actually a much more effective imperialist than George W. Bush,” Chalmers Johnson writes darkly. “During the Clinton administration, the United States employed an indirect approach in imposing its will on other nations.” That “indirect approach” might more properly be termed a policy of leading by consensus rather than by dictation. But Johnson is right about its superior efficacy. American power is magnified when it is embedded in international institutions, as leftists have lamented. It is also somewhat constrained, as conservatives have lamented. This is precisely the covenant on which American supremacy has been based. The trouble is that hard-line critics of multilateralism focussed on how that power was constrained and missed how it was magnified.
Conservative ideologues, in calling for an international order in which America would have a statelike monopoly on coercive force, somehow forgot what makes for a successful state. Stable governments rule not by direct coercion but by establishing a shared sense of allegiance. In an old formula, “domination” gives way to “hegemony”—brute force gives way to the deeper power of consent. This is why the classic definition of the state speaks of legitimate force. In a constitutional order, government accepts certain checks on its authority, but the result is to deepen that authority, rather than to diminish it. Legitimacy is the ultimate “force multiplier,” in military argot. And if your aim is to maintain a global order, as opposed to rousting this or that pariah regime, you need all the force multipliers you can get.
That's a smart way of putting things.
Harry: We will face a terrible reckoning some day. A debtor nation whose only strength is frequent displays of [remorseless] brutality is on the decline.
Neoliberals and neconservatives are destroying this country and much of the world. I see no way out but a combination of libertarian and socialist policies.
Agreed, particularly on this last point. People need to start picking up more anarchist literature, me thinks, if we want to pave the way for a more just, democratically organized world.
Kevin: I came here hoping to find stuff that wasn't solely obsessed with the passing of the greatest political leader the universe has ever seen or will see, because God hath made him in His image...You have not let me down
Thanks Kevin! I've made deliberate attempts to avoid the lionization of the Gipper, and still it seems to permeate the culture like a deep, dark fog. Lots of stuff going down elsewhere, but the beltway crowd and the movement conservatives seem to relish this massive psyops project. Seek cover while you can.
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