Reading todays news from GOP26 in Glasgow. They have a plan, it seems, “for otherwise doomed planet”, perhaps even for supply chain crisis:
Prince Charles claims a “vast military-style campaign” is required to marshal a “fundamental economic transition.”

The heir to the British throne warned the audience during his speech at the COP26 climate conference that world governments had no choice but to engage in a “military-style campaign” across an otherwise-doomed planet.
The countries of the world must put themselves “on a war-like footing” to address the looming climate crisis, Prince Charles said in his opening speech to the climate conference in Glasgow on Monday. He warned the assembled heavies that climate change posed “an even greater existential threat” than the Covid-19 pandemic.

Posted by: js | Nov 2 2021 18:48 utc | 103

Karlof1 @ 84
Not quite. Time to read Marx. Just the basic Das Kapital will do. IMO Marx was an aristocrat and a fraud and largely incapable of systematic thought. And a throughly brilliant historian. His work on enclosures is phenomenal and no historian can avoid it. It was occurring in sixteenth century, not all that much. First the monasteries were looted. Then piracy on the Spanish Main. (Capital R Royalist has a different meaning than you think, connects to English Revolution. Elizabeth Tudor was the big sponsor of piracy.) Then the rape of India. And then enclosures.
All part of what Marx called the Primitive Accumulation. Amassing enough wealth to do something with it. Fast track that with theft and plunder.
I got to cheat when I first read Marx. I read nineteenth century newsprint editions while sitting in the offices of Charles Kerr Publishers. This would be when Charles Kerr was Carlos Cortez and Franklin Rosemont. I read the Johann Most version. And versions of the version. Wildly popular in the nineteenth even though there was no formal publication until the twentieth. Everyone read it and it was hugely influential. And hugely readable. The Edward Aveling text is just mush by comparison. Although the straight history parts of Das Kapital survive far better than the political economy.
Last I talked with Franklin that old newsprint had all disintegrated. Antiquarians should have photoed all of it. Carlos and Franklin did not like Marx. They were artists and anarchists. And if official Marxists had ever seen the popular text they would have fits. Johann Most was a complete nut job, easy to discredit. He was Joseph Conrad’s Secret Agent.

Posted by: Oldhippie | Nov 2 2021 19:10 utc | 105

https://tinkzorg.wordpress.com/2021/11/02/2740
The Decisive Battle
By: Malcom Kyeyune
In recent days, the phrase ”Let’s go Brandon!” has taken on a life of its own. At one point, four out of ten songs on the Spotify top 10 list were called ”Let’s go Brandon”. People are saying it as a form of greeting, or wearing it on t-shirts. For some, this is just a funny gag. For others, it is a source of significant and growing dread; dread about what is happening politically in the United States, and what the future now looks to have in store for them.
For those of you who don’t know the context: at a recent NASCAR event in New Jersey, the crowd could be heard chanting ”Fuck Joe Biden!” after the race. During an interview with the winner of the race – a man named Brandon Brown – the flustered reporter, hearing the chant, then says on camera that the crowd must be very enthused for Brandon, as they’re all chanting ”Let’s go Brandon!” in his honor. Of course, they crowd is doing no such thing, and she and everyone else knows it. This little episode, on its own, is hardly very remarkable or significant. Others slowly pick up on the story and mock the journalist involved. But at this point, it is merely just another day of ”fake news”, another day of the liberal media being the liberal media.
However, like a dangerous respiratory virus, this little ”Brandon incident” then incubates for a week or two, before blossoming out into something far more serious, into a true social event. People start saying ”Let’s go Brandon!” at random, both as a mockery of the sitting president, but also as a way to mock the now increasingly toothless media apparatus, who fewer and fewer seem to take seriously at all. And this is where things become truly interesting: as at least one pilot then tells his passengers ”Let’s go Brandon!” before takeoff, liberal America starts to actually freak out. At this point, think pieces are produced by NPR and others claiming that there’s a new form of conspiratorial ”code speak” that ”racists” are now using to note their displeasure with the sitting president. Others demand the offending pilot be fired, as it is obvious that he isn’t really saying ”Let’s go Brandon!”, he’s actually saying ”Fuck Joe Biden!”. The irony here should be quite obvious, as liberals are now decrying people for playing along with the very same cover story they invented out of thin air to cover up what is clearly growing dissatisfaction with president Biden.
Some have taken this to be just another funny episode of ”internet humor” leaking into the real world. But this is, to put it frankly, the delusions of an intellectual class who themselves enjoy being ironic on the internet, and who then quite myopically assume that everyone else must think and act the way they do. Middle aged female nurses, as a rule, do not use 4chan, nor are they versed in, or at all interested in, the finer points of ironic ”internet humor”. Political humor, coming from normal, working class people, might superficially resemble that of irony-poisoned college graduates. But in reality, they have very little in common.
Moreover, there’s a very large, very obvious flaw in this explanation of events. Again, the crowds at that NASCAR race weren’t chanting ”Let’s go Brandon!” they were chanting ”Fuck Joe Biden!”, and by all accounts, they certainly weren’t being ironic about that. No coded language was intented, no mental jiu-jitsu performed. Only when the media tried to use its incredibly hollow and thoroughly unimpressive powers of ”mind control” did people start with ironic mockery, and that mockery was aimed both at the president as well as the clear powerlessness of the chattering classes to control the narrative or get people to believe them. And so, perhaps unsurprisingly, when airplane passenger hear the phrase ”Let’s go Brandon!” spoken over the intercom, they don’t necessarily hear just a joke, but also a reminder that a political conflict they had tried to suppress is very much still real.
But even with all this said, many a reader will probably want to ask a simple question: why does any of this matter? Though I would argue that the sudden explosion of ”Let’s go Brandon!” in American culture actually means a very great deal, to truly explain why this joke is so funny to some, and so unnerving to others, we have to do so by way of a metaphor. To truly understand why many liberals are so scared of what others consider to still be merely a harmless joke, we have to talk a bit about a concept known as Kantai Kessen, the Japanese naval war doctrine during World War II. Do not worry, the relevance of this concept to today’s America will hopefully become clear as we go along.
Kantai Kessen translates literally as ”naval fleet decisive battle”, but in western parlance it is often simply called the ”Decisive Battle Doctrine”. To understand this doctrine, it’s worth talking for a second about why the Japanese attacked the US at Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Japan had been an incredibly isolationist country for hundreds of years until – ironically enough – it was the Americans who forced them to open up in the middle of the 19th century. The Japanese at that point wished for nothing more than to be left alone on their island forever, but the American navy told the Japanese quite bluntly that unless they agreed to trade with them, the American ships would open fire on the city of Edo (a city which has since then been renamed to Tokyo), using their very modern guns that the isolationist Japanese had absolutely no way of defending against.
The Japanese quickly realize that while they’ve been living in splending isolation on their island for several hundred years, the rest of the world has changed dramatically. The rest of Asia is now being colonized by Europeans, and even great China – the ancient middle kingdom itself – is completely powerless to stop the barbarians. At this point, the Japanese adopt the attitude that they can either themselves become imperialists like the westerners, or they can become colonized, like China. Or, as the Japanese themselves so prosaically put it: jakuniku kyoshoku. This phrase can be translated a few different ways (most often it is translated as ”the law of the jungle” ) but its literal meaning is ”the weak are meat, the strong eat”. Having the choice between eating their fill or being the main course at someone else’s dinner party, the Japanese quickly opt for the former.
A civil war or two and a very painful process of industrialization and modernization later, the Japanese now have a modern army, a very powerful navy, and a growing industrial base. And so they start eating their neighbors, invading and annexing first Taiwan, and then Korea, while setting their sights on further expansion. At first they encounter little resistance; they have been very eager students of the westerners, and are now just as dangerous to the unprepared as the other colonial powers. But as the Japanese empire grows, they increasingly come into friction with the US, which is clearly beginning to see Japan as a rival that needs to be taken down a peg or two.
This is the runup to Pearl Harbor. Not long before the attack itself, the Japanese have invaded yet China again, in order to carve out even more ”meat” for themselves. While all imperialists come up with various pretexts to justify their actions, the Japanese truly do believe that they must never become weak enough for others to push them around like Commodore Perry once did. As a response to this latest bout of japanese expansionism, the US then begin embargoing oil shipments to Japan. Without that oil, Japan will figuratively and literally starve. And the Japanese are not about dismantle their own empire and leave themselves to rely on the kindness of America – the weak are meat, and the strong eat, after all. Guided by this national logic, Japan then must attack, and they must attack soon.
Of course, the Japanese know that a fight against America is a total nightmare. The countries simply are not comparable: Japan is an island nation quite poor in the resources needed to run a modern military, while the US by comparison has nearly unlimited manpower and fully unlimited natural resources. Japan can be bombed, encircled, and starved into submission easily by the Americans, while the Japanese, no matter how well prepared, will never be able to touch the continental United States. But still, the japanese must attack, because standing still is impossible and retreating means becoming weak, and thus food for someone else.
As such, the Japanese put their unlikely hopes of winning over the Americans in forcing a ”decisive battle”, a fight where the utter inferiority of Japan in a long-term struggle hopefully won’t have time to matter. To brutally simplify the Japanese military thinking behind this doctrine, the Japanese hope at the start of the war is to attack Pearl Harbor and do as much damage as possible to the unprepared Americans, to tilt the odds in the short term heavily in their favor. Then, the Japanese hope that the Americans will be so enraged at this surprise attack that they fairly quickly gather what forces they have lying around, send them to battle against the Japanese navy, which will then destroy the less trained and technically inferior American force in detail. At this point, after having sustained heavy casualties in one large set piece battle, the Japanese hope the Americans will simply conclude that fighting with Japan is just too much trouble for too little reward, and agree to simply leave Japan alone to do as she wants in southeast Asia.
It should be noted that many people inside the Japanese high command think this plan will never work. But nobody can actually come up with a better idea; this method of forcing a large, decisive battle and then having the Americans agree to call the match there is the only way a war against the US can succeed.
Unfortunately for the Japanese, Kantai Kessen quickly fails. The attack on Pearl Harbor itself goes swimmingly, and the Americans are indeed incredibly angry as a result. So far so good, but after that, things go catastrophically awry. Roosevelt goes on radio and predictably promise the Japanese pain and suffering, and then… then nothing happens. The Americans are furious, yes, but they don’t seek the quick and decisive battle the Japanese are hoping for. Instead they simply wait, and wait, and wait, focusing on the land war in Europe while building ships and preparing plans for when they will eventually take the war to Japan. And this is of course precisely the scenario in which the Japanese simply cannot win. If the Americans make this war about production and manpower, Japan will crumble; it is only a matter of time. The Imperial Japanese Navy isn’t defeated at Midway – it has in fact already lost the war the second the Americans refuse to follow the script the Japanese had – quite naively – hoped they would.
Now, consider the political situation in the United States in 2021, and what has transpired during the last twelve months. In a way, we have all been witnessing the execution of a modern political form of the Kantai Kessen, a decisive shock-and-awe campaign that is now clearly starting to run out of steam. To quickly recap the lead up to the current moment: in 2015, the Republican party was all about ”business as usual”, and the primary lineup was hailed as the most impressive crop of politicians on stage since those halcyon days of Ronald Reagan. Then, Trump descended that escalator, and he quickly upended the stable order of things completely. The impressive candidates were defeated quickly, almost effortlessly, by a notorious showman and an army made up of the angry, forgotten people of middle America.
At first, the democrats cheered, seeing this orange clown as easy prey for their putatively ”impressive” candidate, Hillary Clinton. But then Clinton lost, and this unlikely orange tribune of the deplorables became the most powerful person in the world. Large parts of the republican establishment refused to accept what had happened; the credentialed classes of America, almost to the last genderfluid xhe/xhim, violently refused to accept it. From day one, the election was widely seen as illegitimate, a result of ”Russian interference”, and at every turn, the Trump administration was met with bitter resistance from all corners of the media, the deep state, and the NGO world.
By mid-2020, it was clear that no one in America’s ”email job caste” would accept Trump winning another election. And from the death of George Floyd, until the aftermath of January the 6th, the email job caste of America put their own doctrine of Kantai Kessen into action. They gathered their strength and prepared for a mighty showdown, looking to strike such a ringing blow against the intruding plebeians and flyover deplorables that they would simply never be able to even think of fighting back again.
The George Floyd riots were famously hailed as ”fiery but mostly peaceful” by reporters standing in front of burned and destroyed buildings. And here, like a Japanese carrier group preparing to strike Pearl Harbor, all elements of the liberal ”woke” battle line now came together: they controlled the universities, they controlled the media, they controlled the NGOs, the upper echelons of big business, the tech companies, and command great majorities in such important professions such as judges, doctors, and teachers. In the runup to the elections, all elements of this war machine came toghether to make sure – by fair means or foul – that the election simply could not be won by Trump. Huge sums of NGO money flowed into various activist organizations, and the CEOs of some of the largest American companies eagerly lent their aid and economic clout to the war effort itself.
And just like the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, they succeeded. The overwhelming power behind this mighty fusion of media power, corporate buy-in, limitless NGO money, radical activists taking the battle to the streets, and constant political backup from the Democratic party and various state legislatures, city mayors and state governors was laid bare for the entire world to see. The social media companies banned the sitting president from having a platform, and censored stories (such as the Hunter Biden laptop) that were potentially harmful to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ chances.
Every sector of America’s ”knowledge worker” caste came together from the middle of 2020 up to the election and into its aftermath. Every single one. And it worked, in fact it worked perfectly – Joe Biden was, after a few interrupted vote counts here and there, hailed as the single most popular president in American history. Nobody could dispute this, and the sorry people who did (if they could even be called ”people” at all) were swiftly denounced as terrorists and traitors to the nation. The vote totals spoke for themselves, after all! In other words, the ”woke” really did it; they scored a perfect victory, just as the Japanese scored a perfect victory at Pearl Harbor. In 2016, the ”forgotten people” of America had, incredibly, used the power of their votes to narrowly push Trump over the finish line. In 2020, the very much not forgotten people of America’s urban cores and prestige institutions gathered all their might and routed the deplorables from the field.
Or so they hoped. It turns out that the liberal Kantai Kessen suffered from the same fatal flaw as the Japanese one: it is all well and good to sink all the ships in Pearl Harbor, but what do you do if the enemy then refuses to concede defeat? The significance of ”Let’s go Brandon!” spreading like wildfire outside the jaded internet set in this context is that it reveals for everyone just how powerless the media machine has now become. Nobody believes Joe Biden is the most popular president ever – nobody among the ”chuds” and the ”deplorables” would believe the likes of CNN about pretty much anything. And rather than being humiliated and broken, the American plebs are now acting just like the American sailors and soldiers did during World War 2: though none can deny that they have lost some battles and suffered real losses, surrender doesn’t seem to be forthcoming any time soon. Maybe surrender isn’t coming at all, ever. The ”decisive battle” that was the 2020 election was indeed decisive enough, but it increasingly looks like that simply doesn’t matter.
In a world where nobody is actually convinced by the media, the fact that you control the media doesn’t actually help you. Moreover, just like the Japanese in WW2, the ”email job caste” of America has a war machine that has already been maxed out. There are no reserves of fence-sitting journalists that can be drafted to fill in the holes and somehow make the message control more far-reaching or effective than it already is. There are no huge reservoirs of apolitical, unwoke university professors that can be drafted into talking some more sense into the chuds. What we all saw in 2020 represents, to some fairly significant extent, the full scope of the political, social and economic power of team blue in America today. And that team took its best shot in 2020, only to find out in 2021 that all that power has now decisively failed to settle any issues or end any conflicts in America. Team red is still there, and like the ”sleeping giant” that was America in 1941, they are now slowly waking up and starting to use their own power, on their own terms, in order to fight back.
And here we come to the real imbalance in the class war that currently rages in America, because it is now clearly very much a war between a great many people who have ”email jobs”, and the people who have jobs that keep the lights on, the garbage from piling up, that make sure that the fires are extinguished and the planes are flown. This imbalance of power is in some sense even more crippling than the one between Japan and America in World War 2, and one only needs to look at the growing number of empty shelves in America’s supermarkets, the stranded planes in her airports, and the growing mountains of garbage piling up on the streets of New York to see why.
In the conflict between the ”woke” and the ”deplorables”, the latter by and large work the kind of jobs where if people walk off the job, it takes days or even hours before one or more critical parts of modern society starts shutting down. If pilots call in sick, planes simply do not get flown. If truckers quit their jobs, every facet of the entire productive economy – from the smallest bakery to the biggest car manufacturer – will quickly become paralyzed and then starts to suffocate. If firemen refuse to go to work, the cities will quite literally burn down in short order.
But what happens if people at the average NGO stop showing up to work? What happens if an university professor in Gender Studies refuses to come into the office until this or that issue is solved? How many months or years will it take for the average citizen in flyover America to notice that this person is missing? And when they finally do notice that some gender commissar is refusing to show up at work, will they even care?
Here, the average member of America’s credentialed classes might point out how ridiculous such an argument is, that only a philistine, a luddite or a white supremacist would consider their jobs within academia, the media, and middle management to be useless. These jobs are really completely vital to a modern economy, and the fact that I even dare to question their necessity makes me a racist, a nazi, and a white supremacist. And maybe this is all true, but it actually doesn’t matter. I may be the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler himself, but this will not change the fact that the guy who handles garbage collection is simply much, much more willing and able to go for long stretches without the oh-so-necessary Critical Race Theory commissars, than these commissar are able or willing to go without any garbage pickup. The HR manager might be ”just as important” as the truck driver on the level of platonic forms, but the truck driver is still willing and able to carry on forever without the HR manager showing up to work, while the HR manager will quite literally start starving to death in short order if the trucker doesn’t do his job. No moral hectoring or impotent crying about racism and white supremacy will ever change that basic imbalance between these two groups.
In 2020, the HR manager and CRT commissar pulled off their own little Pearl Harbor attack on the trucker and the pilot, and it was a very well-executed attack. All the targets were hit, all the objectives fulfilled. But when the trucker now refuses to go to work over Joe Biden’s vaccine mandates, and the pilot openly mocks the power and legitimacy of the media and the credentialed classes over his airplane intercom, the utter hopelessness of the woke position is increasingly made manifest. They had hoped for a decisive battle, after which the ”forgotten people” would go back to being forgotten. Instead, the email job caste of America now finds itself locked into a hopeless conflict against people whose work and toil they rely on, but who do not need them to anything close to the same degree. The media has failed at controlling the narrative or shaping public opinion, but there’s no more media that can be used. Censorship on social media platforms has failed to stop the spread of forbidden thought and subversive opinion, but there aren’t any big platforms left that didn’t partake in some way in 2020. The email job caste has almost exhausted all the tools in their arsenal, and the more traditional means of tyranny – such as sending in the armed forces – are clearly incredibly dangerous to use, given the demographics of the lower ranks of the armed forces. The power that’s been used thus far has not been enough, but it’s increasingly unclear where the email job caste will get more power from.
On the other end of the barbed wire, however, the sleeping giant of America’s ordinary working men and women, her shopkeepers, firemen, nurses and train drivers, are now slowly freeing themselves from their torpor. Today, they are once again beginning to use muscles that some had forgotten were there all along. Unlike the email jobs caste, this caste of people are far from being ”maxed out”, indeed, they seem to have almost no limit on their potential power at all. It is by their work alone that the big cities where the email caste lives can keep going, and the more they are willing to use this power to fight back, the more doomed the email caste becomes.
Having spent much of their stored power on a shock and awe campaign that neither shocked nor awed the working men and women of America, the woke now increasingly hunker down for a long political war of attrition that they on some level must know they structurally cannot win, no matter how disciplined, fanatical, or moral they may be. So please, have some understanding if they choose not to find the humor in the simple phrase ”Let’s go Brandon!”. They have all the right in the world to not find any of this particularly funny.
After all, they know what that phrase really means.

Posted by: Masked Marvel | Nov 2 2021 19:27 utc | 107

It’s difficult to know who to address my comment to @107, Malcom or Masked Marvel, although my hope is that Malcom posted his own essay, which I found very good. Yandex tells me Malcom is Swedish via its translation of OM BLOGGEN OCH FÖRFATTAREN and confirmed further by this, Ange din e-postadress för att följa denna blogg och få meddelanden om nya inlägg via e-post.
I read his previous blog entry about the significance of the ideas espoused in the movie Jurassic Park, which confirms Malcom’s intellectual prowess. As an analytical essay, IMO given the writer’s vantage point from Sweden, he comes close to getting the political basis for his essay correct and uses an apt allegory in its presentation. I know many barflies will scroll past the essay because of its length, but that would be an unfortunate error. I wonder what Grieved, psychohistorian and William Gruff would comment. I do know WG is all for Let’s Go Brandon!

Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 2 2021 20:33 utc | 109

Masked Marvel #107
Thank you for that post. I was catching up on rumble ‘lets go brandon’ videos yesterday as they had all been banned on utoob. Funny and informative. My guess is that the MAGA logo has been eclipsed and updated beyond the republican expectation.
The ‘lets go brandon’ meme has immense potential to trigger an entirely new political course in US politics but I suspect the next weeks will see it appropriated or discredited by the traditional means of a antisemitic or racist slur trick or a shooting.
The mayor of New York is among the first petri dish off the rank this week and it will be interesting to observe the progress of the anti mandatory vax campaign. This will have immense repercussions for the dems as they are forced to chose between Butterboy and Karma Harris. Now the Biden popularity numbers have tanked and independent media have the temerity to talk about it, there is a sniff of demise in the air.
Not that there is any promise of betterment coming from any quarters that the people of the USA could rely on! The US century of anti communist, anti collective propaganda and attacks have severely disabled the space for discourse. It is indeed a shitshow.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Nov 2 2021 20:59 utc | 111

@Jackrabbit (73) As Caitlin Johnston likes to say, the main function of the Democratic Party is to prevent leftward movement towards a government with genuinely progressive policies and programs. This is why the Party is so bad at politics: It refuses to give people what they want. Some might say that this is the fault of just two obstructionists, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. No, there are 8 to 10 others ready to play the same role, should the need arise. And if not them, then the Democratic Congressional leaders will somehow manage to throw sand in the gears of progressive movement. This is why the US is such a mess and the Republicans are likely to gain control of the entire government in 2022 and 2024, possibly on a permanent basis, which seems to be their plan.

Posted by: Rob | Nov 2 2021 21:03 utc | 113

karlof1 @112:
my point exactly! It’s the latest politician syndrome of the USA as best I can tell.

Posted by: Oriental Voice | Nov 2 2021 21:05 utc | 115

@George W Oprisko #83
There is no labor shortage in the US. There’s a living wage shortage.

Posted by: fnord | Nov 2 2021 21:38 utc | 117

@Oriental Voice #110
Trump didn’t even have the majority of his own political party behind him, much less the Democrats.
Is/was Mitch McConnell cooperative with Trump? I don’t see it at all.

Posted by: c1ue | Nov 2 2021 21:53 utc | 119

c1ue@112:
You’re right, Trump only has Senate controlled by his own party. But for all practical purposes, House went along with him all the time except for partisan politics. In any case, my point was the US has kept up with Imperial policies from president to president, regardless of party affiliations for a while. The unfortunate thing is many problems we are facing with have logical solutions, most of which requires some real reform within our government. But presidents after presidents failed to address these problems, let alone tried solve them, either due to inaptitude or due to political selfishness(like, being bought by special interests).
Mitch McConnell was cooperative with Trump 120%. His wife (in legal sense I suppose, considering McConnell’s age) was in Trump’s caninet from date 1 through day finalo.

Posted by: Oriental Voice | Nov 2 2021 22:13 utc | 121

@vk – generally most comments of yours.
I expect one day we shall dance till one of us drops.
I have no personal animosity.
I can only say as I did to myself as a 16 year old and any number of earnest friends through the decades to do me a favour about belief in God – please imagine just for half an hour there is no such thing!
That is where SCIENCE begins.
Many couldn’t manage it – believing that I was the devil incarnate asking them to risk their Immortal Soul – which was something they couldn’t discuss either because it was a given of their THEORY of GOD.
Marxists and their love of the THEORIES OF MARXISM have replaced that easy target for me in recent years.
I ask you can you for a day or so accept that it is all bunkum?
Just as the Bible is made up? Or any other religious text which isn’t just an esoteric ancient scientific text on astronomy?
Scientific Theories are proved or disproved and they have made the modern world what it is.
Capitalism and Marxism was an invention just as much as the Catholic Church was to keep the Forever Powers in place as they have been for millennia. Once you give that concept room in your mind you will easily see how it was constructed.
It’s not that difficult. His family. His university. his arranged marriage to a Westphalian ‘Jewish’ Princess. His placement in England of JS Mills who was charged with producing the corollary theory. His minder and financial manager from the Slave mills of Manchester. And of course his Theories and Work which was mostly ‘edited’ by Engels.
I’m sorry if it is such a mind bender, as much as when a priest loses their faith. I don’t mean to be cruel. But life is shorter daily and irrational beliefs in made to befuddle theories is not going to improve Life on Earth.
Peace.

Posted by: D.G. | Nov 2 2021 23:05 utc | 123

@ Posted by: D.G. | Nov 2 2021 23:05 utc | 123
Capitalism is not a theory. The closest you can come to that are the political economists (classical economists), but capitalism is an object, not a theory.
Marxism is both a scientific theory and a method.
The Bible is not a scientific work, but a religious one.
So, you’re actually comparing three completely different things.

Posted by: vk | Nov 3 2021 0:25 utc | 125

@109 karlof1 – “I wonder what Grieved, psychohistorian and William Gruff would comment.”
I guess it’s my turn. You hooked me, karlof1, because of course I scrolled past that huge mess of copy-paste, but I went to read it at the link, from your recommendation. It was well recommended but I don’t admire a writer who could say things in a shorter way and indulges instead in taking a languorous afternoon over it.
Masked Marvel could have done us the service of summarizing an exceptionally long and self-indulgent essay, but I will do it now to save other readers the waste of their time.
~~
The author illustrates the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as a desperate gambit that counted on an immediate response by an unprepared US fleet, in a battle that Japan might have won. Instead, the US did nothing immediate, but engaged with Europe, and ramped up production of materiel while considering its ultimate attack on Japan. At this, the Japanese realized they had lost the gambit and would lose the war. Thus, the author.
He compares this event to now, when the Woke faction made its attack and bullied everyone into compliance over COVID, but as we have previously discussed here, that wave of petty tyranny has perhaps now crested and broken, and may recede. Meanwhile the attacked – the essential workers, the ordinary and sane people, the hard-pressed and the hapless – have held their water and evaded as much punishment as possible, waiting it out. Trying to wait it out and survive. And now the time to respond to the attack may be preparing, and gathering itself, and getting ready to kick some ass.
~~
The essay is longer than those 2 paragraphs, and as karlof1 says, it’s a good point and made with a good analogy. I’m sure it contains excellent points my speed reading didn’t catch. So if you have time to read the more than 4,000 words of an inconsiderate author, I recommend it. I don’t know anyone with that time.
And yes, I am annoyed that someone would make such an excelent case in such a tedious way. All it took was two paragraphs of summary – “sheesh!” indeed.

Posted by: Grieved | Nov 3 2021 1:09 utc | 127

Masked Marvel @ 107
Thanks for that great essay by Malcolm Kyeyune.
He was cogent, insightful, credible throughout.
Like Oriental Voice, I have saved it (for future deployment).
Looking forward to the Revenge Of The Deplorables.

Posted by: kiwiklown | Nov 3 2021 4:11 utc | 129

A.L. @ 78 — “Covid is just the scratch that busted open this festering puss pool…. I find it remarkable some posters would believe if manufacturing is somehow brought back on shore then all ills of the world would be solved…. There are more people, more factories, more engineers and simply a more synergistic environment for production in China. One day in the distant future this may go to India or Africa but its not changing anytime soon….”
America is suffering a fatal structural implosion which the return of manufacturing, even if it could be done, will not heal. In any case, manufacturing will never come back. Not in our lifetimes. Not even in our grandchildren’s lifetimes.
Remember the famous Flying Geese pattern of economic development, where Asian nations develop one after another in what looks like a pass-the-baton marathon? After Japan, there was Taiwan, then South Korea, then Singapore, then China. After China there will be many Vietnams, many African nations, India, and so on.
Just as Japanese and Taiwanese firms moved their factories to China to exploit cheap, intelligent workers, so China will move theirs into the Vietnams, et al, for the same reason. And to escape US / Western sanctions. This game will go on for the next 2 or 3 generations.
Better to get your grandkids to learn Mandarin now. Jim Rogers and other ahead-of-the-curve super-rich are doing it already.

Posted by: kiwiklown | Nov 3 2021 4:28 utc | 131

Grieved | Nov 3 2021 1:09 utc | 127
I comment only to caution …it seemed a beta-test of Artificial Intel.

Posted by: chu teh | Nov 3 2021 5:46 utc | 133

Posted by: Grieved | Nov 3 2021 1:09 utc | 127
Thanks for that Grieved. That ‘tedious’ piece came in at bedtime here and it’s nice to wake up and not feel it necessary to start the day there, even if some recommend it.
I’m sure it had points worth considering too, but as with all analysis of history the points can be arranged in many ways. Did Mao’s leadership in confronting the Japanese in China tip the balance in favor of the US? Did Hitler make a mistake by looking East before West? On and on, a million books, a zillion facts and little more sense made than the right way to raise a child or what’s going to happen post-Covid. All interesting and why we’re here, tho’.
@ Posted by: D.G. | Nov 2 2021 23:05 utc | 123
It is complicated. In #60 D.G. equated Marxism with anti-capitalism. Would it not be more accurate to posit socialism in opposition to capitalism? Marxism just gives us a way to sort things out and capitalism is what needs to be sorted, as that is the system in use at present. (Marxism would be a way to discuss socialism too, were we to have that.) Economic analysis is fundamental to ALL understanding of the human condition. Asking one to give up God(s) is merely to ask them to throw off bonds that restrict their thinking. Asking one to give up analysis is to ask them to stop thinking.
Hitting on Marx is wasted energy. It’s like saying if there was no Darwin there would be no understanding of evolution or if we kill another Al Qaida leader or get rid of Trump all will be well. What’s labeled as Marxism is the basis of what Michael Hudson and Richard Wolff teach.
Of all the comments in this thread it is vk’s analysis of the supply chain ‘crisis’ that is the most comprehensive. Comments about port dredging, chassis, wages, toilets, and such, are like the blind men feeling parts of the elephant. (And Buttigieg is up on the elephant thinking like he’s on a 10-cent horsey-ride in the entryway of a Walmart store.) I appreciate that vk spends the time to comment here, obviously having spent the time to be in a position to use the tools Marx, Engels, Lenin, et al. developed. Who else besides them? Milton Fried man? Tom Fried man? Paul Krug man? Davey Stock man? Get Cereal man!

Posted by: waynorinorway | Nov 3 2021 9:25 utc | 135

@ Posted by: vk | Nov 3 2021 0:25 utc | 125
@ waynorinorway | Nov 3 2021 9:25 utc | 135
Ok – let’s dance.
I am asking you to posit that Capitalism/Anti-Capitalism are INVENTIONS by these who are the forever Power holders across ‘western’ history.
‘They’ invented these two new ‘religions’ because ‘they’ were unable to keep the masses under control any longer with the fairytales ‘they’ had told the masses for centuries – such as there being a ‘creator’ and how ‘they’ were the creators ‘chosen’ upon the Earth to ‘own’ everything and everyone as ‘their’ vassals and property.
The failure to comply would be punishable by torture and death on Earth and failure to reach Heaven and to go to Hell forever!
Once Copernicus’s teachings spread and the ‘facts’ became self evident that the World/Earth was NOT the centre of the Cosmos and the Sun didn’t turn around it – all the brainwashing was threatened.
How would the minority ‘they’ be able to retain their lordship and power? How would their proxy for power – MONEY/ Wealth – be kept safe and still be always under ‘their’ control?
Well a new religion had to be created that would not be threatened by evolving science. A whole new credo. A new god/Satan , new heaven/hell , new believer/disbeliever etc
Something that would insulate ‘them’ and their ‘power’ from hoi polloi. ( The Chinese when they found they weren’t part of the celestial empire went into purdah and hid so they couldn’t see they weren’t alone! Is taken half a millennia for them to realise what a catastrophe that was for them and humanity.)
The something that was decided on was a new religion that would keep the lesser mortals occupied forever fighting about it between themselves – Capitalism/Anti-Capitalism
The smartest thinkers would be found and employed to write the new credos under the new ‘prophets’ that would be the namesakes that would write the new ‘bibles’ . New churches and priests would be needed – banks, companies, capitalists, employees etc.
It was of course the Money/ Bankers , the ancients , the City of London and European cousins who did this.
So JS Mills was tasked to produce Capitalism and
Karl Marx tasked with producing anti-Capitalism.
The theories and economics are THEORIES – they are not SCIENCE. They are not rigorous. They are BELIEFS.
Real science is not what economic ‘theories’ do.
If you do not understand that basic difference between scientific and economic theory, then there is no point having a discussion. It is as I said in my comment impossible to discuss the FACTS of the universe with these who believe in irrational THEORIES of Gods or Economics.
Such delusions used to lead to human sacrifices to assuage the gods of volcanoes as much as to the current sacrifices of believing Taxes Pay for Public Services, for example.
So kindly take your ancient certitudes somewhere where they stop doing harm to future humanity and never again see the light of day. This time I mean it.

Posted by: D.G. | Nov 3 2021 10:39 utc | 137

c1ue @Nov2 17:04 #90: You say it is conspiracy, I say it is chickens coming home to roost.
I get push-back like this when I make ‘meta’ observations about our ‘managed democracy’.
But there is no push-back about establishment media-pushed narratives that are psyop or half-truths like W, Gruff’s summary @Nov2 17:09 #91:

Butt-gig is CIA, and conspicuously so. He was supposed to be PotUS 46, at least before the American voters screwed up the CIA’s plans. Butt-gig was supposed to be the pinnacle of the “Identity Revolution”, but those plans are all in disarray now.
PotUS 44 = female identity representation
PotUS 45 = Black identity representation
PotUS 46 = gay identity representation
Stupid voters screwed those plans all to pieces.

Guff asserts that the establishment/Deep State *DOES* conspire against us, *DOES* manipulate elections via media and political operatives but THEY FAIL EVERY TIME. LOL.
Democracy prevails! The sanctity of the democratic process can’t be foiled! I can almost hear the “USA! USA! USA! chorus.
And in Gruff’s latest thinking, the faux populist political operatives like Trump, Obama, Sanders, and Hillary are not only ineffective (but not in any noticeable way in Gruff’s POV) but IRRELEVANT, as he explains @Nov3 0:26 #126, we should look past these media-generated ‘heros’ to the people themselves:

… people are starting to realize that Trump’s upset victory in 2016 was never about Trump. The chant “Let’s go Brandon!” is about neither Biden nor Trump. The chant translates roughly to “Fuck you establishment!”
Cheer on the working class. It’s your best hope.

That the working class and all lower classes are clearly manipulated is something we are supposed to ignore?
Yet no push-back.
<> <> <> <> <>
When the establishment pretends to champion working-class/’deplorables’, everyone shuts up. And those who make such observations are called ‘conspiracy theorists’ even as their critics talk openly about establishment political conspiracies!
!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Nov 3 2021 12:16 utc | 139

@JackRabbit #139
I don’t bother with the Gruffster because truly inane idiocy stands on its own.
I actually agree with the premise of “managed democracy” – where we differ is that I have direct access into at least some of the oligarchy’s memes. The oligarchy is neither ultra-competent or intelligent.
It is filled with exactly the same self-serving, solipsist, jealous assholes as the other side is depicted as. The notion that these idiots can conspire on anything is ludicrous. Most of what they’re good for is getting prodded along to do what they’re paid to do, by a handful of somewhat less socially moronic billionaires.
Nor have you responded to my assertion that what we are seeing is a consequence of chickens coming home to roost: as I type this, McAuliffe has lost the Virginia governorship and the NJ race is tied. McAuliffe is not only a past governor, he is a Democrat heavy on the finance side. The Democrats won full control of the Virginia state congress last year and Biden won Virginia by 10%.
Even Silver noted that the present environment heavily favors the GOP.
Between lockdowns, vaccine mandates, shortages and the woke bathroom rape thing – all I care about is the Fed is likely to be forced to act this time, instead of being pressured to let the party keep going as normal.

Posted by: c1ue | Nov 3 2021 13:05 utc | 141

From Naked Capitalism: Restaurant Supply Chain woes in Washington DC
Note the detail: amounts ordered are less than arrive; they arrive late. Prices are up double digits. Many items are unavailable such that menu items are disappearing.
At least some of this is COVID lockdown induced: the lockdowns that shut down “eat-out” public food providers left the “eat-out” supply chain high and dry. Should we be surprised that they switched to “eat-in” supplying (i.e. grocery stores)? Other parts of this are clearly a function of the supply chain problems.
Again, the stop-start-stop nature is to blame.
A national or even state economy is like a train company. You can’t just arbitrarily stop, start, stop operations without enormous and multiplying effects across the entire system. There is no way this is getting fixed in a short time barring a nation-wide program of self-enforced non-consumption for a period of time.
And that will happen the 2nd of never.

Posted by: c1ue | Nov 3 2021 13:14 utc | 143

Proof that our resident bunny is a paid shill for the establishment: “Guff asserts that the establishment/Deep State… FAIL EVERY TIME“
Did I? Have I ever?
In fact the post I was responding to was the quote of the essay by Malcom Kyeyune which detailed the success of the establishment installation of Biden in the White House. How could I possibly assert the establishment “fails every time”, as the bunny disingenuously claims that I do, if I was posting in overall agreement with that analysis?
No, the bunny knows he is full of shit with that claim, but like all of the “woke” servants of the establishment, he thinks he is smarter than those “deplorables” he is tasked with gaslighting.
On the contrary, it is the bunny who asserts that the establishment never fails: everything happens according to their plans, as if they were the Illuminati or some other fictional organization with mystical super powers.
Is the bunny really smarter than you, dear Reader?

Posted by: William Gruff | Nov 3 2021 13:22 utc | 145

D.G. @142
From the evidence of your own posts you are ignorant of what science is. I don’t care how big you claim your muscles are on the Internet. You are a fraud and a moron.

Posted by: William Gruff | Nov 3 2021 13:25 utc | 147

@ VK and troll goat gruff (who leapt out from under the bridge to intervene where he/she was not invited – but welcome to my little scientific experiment to suss our who is what here)
Humanities are not science
Economics is not science
Religion of almost every sort isn’t science except when it was based on astronomy.
Don’t tell me what is science – I’ve forgotten more than most people will ever know. Ok that’s enough about me.
You (both) are not making any scientific or logical response.
Both of you have completely ignored the main part of my thesis statement – Economic is a Religion – and the why, how, when, where and who of its creation.
Any reader of the exchanges will see that preserved in posterity.
You have instead chosen to make ad hominem attack upon me – that has shown you to be a troll in a sheepskin – Billy Goat Gruff – I didn’t expect that but it does explains the MO you use.
If either of you wish to dance further on that particular subject we shall do so again I am sure. In the meantime I am leaving your abject troll posts to stand as they are. GOTCHA.

Posted by: D.G. | Nov 3 2021 14:21 utc | 149

https://asiatimes.com/2021/11/sleepwalkers-in-the-south-china-sea/
I read the Asia Times for Andrew Goldman, pepe escobar and reprints of Indian punchline. Goldman, because his financial analysis is solid and because he represents the perspective of American imperialism.
I recommend his latest piece which is basically a roundtable discussion with other US imperialists, brainstorming about what can be done about china vis a vis Taiwan, and what is not feasible to do. the piece is thankfully free of MSM propaganda. it really is a roundtable thinking thru US strategy

Posted by: mastameta | Nov 3 2021 14:51 utc | 151

@ Grieved | Nov 3 2021 1:09 utc | 127
Excellent comment imo Grieved.
Your commentary is much appreciated. Not only have you mastered silken language but you use it to benefit others. Thanks.
I did plod through the essay yesterday b4 anyone had commented on it, finding it points to something noteworthy — but too self indulgently. And so, as you say, the writer is not very considerate of his readers.
===
When one reads the educational and employment bio of the new VIrginia governor elect, I wonder if push back by regular people thru the system yields anything other than the satisfaction of defeating, rejecting one elite over another. The same old yo-yo-ing in a failed system. It helps that people can keep a spirit of unity and perseverance with good humor.

Posted by: suzan | Nov 3 2021 15:55 utc | 153

Twenty-three years ago I wrote an essay dealing with historiography entitled The Quest For Objectivity that ought to be the foundation for the study and writing of history–facts not our biases ought to be what we record regardless of where they lead. That’s why I’m adamant about naming the USA the Outlaw US Empire because objectively that’s exactly what it is and has been since 1945.
Another related issue is what’s known as economics–a field that never existed until it was contrived in the early 20th Century. What came before it and still endures is Moral Philosophy that was merged/melded into political-economy as exemplified by Adam Smith’s two outstanding volumes that ushered in the modern era of such studies. As most know, philosophy attempts to have an empirical basis like a science but wavers immediately when Metaphysics becomes the topic, particularly the question about the existence of god, gods, goddess, and goddesses. Anthropology is the scientific study of human history in its physical, cultural and social spheres, and has numerous sub-fields such as anthropological linguistics and cognitive psychology. All attempt to have an empirical/objective basis. Then there’s the issue of what exactly is a theory. A theory is a factually proven hypothesis–A Theory is a Fact. It is not a guess; a guess is an unproven hypothesis, yet another fact lost on too many people due to very poor education that’s further embedded by dubious journalists. In almost all its areas, what’s called modern economics fails the Theory/Fact Test as most of it’s built on Straw Man premises. Rigor is what’s lacking in all too many academic areas, which often results from what’s known as reductionism–the ever thinning salami slicing of areas of academic study that results in numerous departments and PhDs, but much less overall understanding on a Big Picture scale.
To properly know and write about history requires the most extensive array of knowledge encompassing all of what are called the Social Sciences, but very few historians ever get that far in their educational breadth as it’s very intensive and extraordinarily time consuming–I quit university with 168 credit hours after 4 full years of very intensive, beyond fulltime study and still knew I needed more. And 20 years after quitting, I know I’m at a deficit in too many areas because I aim at understanding it all, not just a tiny selection that leaves me disconnected to the whole. And it’s because I want to be connected to the whole that led me to read all of Malcom’s essay despite its length–synopses and abridgements don’t always work for me. When it’s clear the full story’s not being told, I ask why; what’s being omitted? I want the whole truth, for the truth doesn’t scare me.

Posted by: karlof1 | Nov 3 2021 16:46 utc | 155

Karlof1 @ 155
There is antiquarian history and synthetic history..
Antiquarian history is “Just the facts, ma’am.” It involves all of the historians time for all of his life. Determining what is fact can be labor intensive to say the least.
Synthetic history is “what does it all mean?”. To indulge in synthetic history it should be necessary to have at minimum the accomplishments of George Lefebvre or Fernand Braudel. Mostly what we get is crap like Niall Ferguson. Which is ideologue for hire.
Looking for an honest historian is like looking for an honest man.

Posted by: Oldhippie | Nov 3 2021 18:57 utc | 157

Grieved | Nov 3 2021 1:09 utc | 127
Within the last year I considered why the Japanese leaders in the late 1940s, especially the military leaders, took the risk of attacking the US knowing Japan couldn’t win a protracted war. The subject intrigued me because it appears that US geopolitical strategy requires an unbeatable military force and the will to use that force. That force does not exist today.
In WW2 the Soviets defeated the Germans and inflicted 80+% of German casualties with the loss of 25+ million of its own citizens. Russia has declared that it has developed the means to ensure that a hot WW3 will not be fought on Russian soil.
The US military knows this and is aware that it has not faced a peer military force since WW2, but US geopolitical “thinking” reminds one of the Japanese situation leading up to the decision to attack the US. If the US insists on its global primacy the analogy to the Japanese view back in the day seems most apt. US policy makers in public declare the need to put Russia and China in their place because each is a great threat to US hegemony. Each of them is facing US bases, missiles and US plans to build up more of the same.
My speculation is that the US will make the same miscalculation as did the Japanese and will do so soon, because the US understands that its enemies are getting stronger by the day. The US does not appear to be able to entertain an alternative to war. Neither did the Japanese.
See also:

Colonel Cassad has an update with a video made by the Iranians (the video includes a movie music soundtrack 😀 )
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7188233.html
Posted by: Victor | Nov 3 2021 18:07 utc | 83

Posted by: pogohere | Nov 3 2021 20:29 utc | 159

I just came across this story about Maine voting for a constitutional amendment for a “right to food”.
imo, a damn fine proposal and should be considered by everyone everywhere. The multinationals will probably get this struck down but you gotta try.

Posted by: dan of steele | Nov 4 2021 9:59 utc | 161

@pogohere #159
I don’t think you are considering the actual situation in early/mid 1941.
The economic blockade of Japan on oil was a very severe problem. It is very possible that the Japanese government felt it would either have to decide on whether to capitulate or declare war.
Furthermore, the Japanese aren’t morons. They knew full well the manufacturing capability of the US as Japanese diplomats and engineers had been touring American factories for decades. That’s why they struck at Pearl Harbor: they believed (correctly) that if they could take out much of the US Pacific fleet, it would be years before said fleet could be replaced. And in fact, they did take out the US fleet with the exception of the fleet carriers.
The situation in the Atlantic was also dire. The London Blitz was late 1940 to early 1941. Let’s not also forget that German Uboat attacks off the US East Coast started in January 1942 – a coincidence? even as Uboat attacks in 1940 and 1941 were having a severe impact on the UK.
So yes, Japan attacking a larger, wealthier, more industrialized country was foolish – but less clear to me that the choice was so clear cut.

Posted by: c1ue | Nov 4 2021 18:27 utc | 163

There is significant inflation masquerading on Wall St. that will be felt once its put into goods and services.

Posted by: D0ng | Nov 13 2021 1:20 utc | 165