Spheres of influence today.. It's a mafia run world. The norms we had prior, sone of which you disclose here, are no more, being replaced by making offers you can't refuse, acting as friends, a friend of mine, a friend of ours, and whacking people (its the person you trust most that does the hit). Thus we are dealing with a new (even though very old) system where mafia codes rule, and others who just don't grasp that the mob took over and is now running the show can't quite grasp those realities. Money, greed, power is all they know, and they will run the world based on codes they designed. This is not a government that cares for peoples opinions or even their votes. This is a mob grabbing, defending or obtaining territory, and saying who gets what, who runs the rackets in those areas, and making sure that money flows upward to the bosses running it. The soldiers get a piece, but the bosses get the lions share of the pie.
Nicely done and terrifying. I hadn't thought that far ahead, but now can't stop thinking about it. I appreciate your writing efforts on US political impact and interpretation.
What I like about your approach is the pull no punches way you lead off by debunking the entertainment factor in all of this, because this is not some iMax film that we’re seeing. It’s about as real as real can get and will be getting ‘realer’….
Yesterday, I spent 2.5 hours staring at CNN in do some else’s house.
Not what I’d have chosen as a source but the news had hit while I travelled there, and I have this warped sense that as an American citizen, choosing to just go shopping or out for supper & to see ‘Forever Wicked’ is a kind dereliction of duty.
I came away feeling heartsick and also addled, like maybe I’m on the wrong side of this. I’m thinking ‘shit, Bari & Larry haven’t even moved into their corner offices at CNN yet and there’s something even more off about their approach to this than the sense of CNN having declared the earth flat whilst careening towards that precipice over the past 6 or so years.
Maybe it was the lack of and ideological or moral alarm in seemingly EVERY conversation except for the interview with Senator Vindman, who DID express alarm and raised more than the possibility that Trump has, um, once again ‘exceeded’ his Constitutional authority. Mr. Vindman was treated with what I’ll call ‘surface politesse’, but it seemed they couldn’t get him off the platform fast enough and that it was all the female anchor-who’s name I cannot track down-to not pull a Scott Jennings eye-roll as she ‘thanked’ him for coming onto the show and cut to the next ‘guest’.
Then later I stumbled on the mentally ill (sorry folks, exercising my endangered 1st Amendment rights here while I have them to call it as I see it with this clown) Senator John Fetterman being interviewed by Sean Hannity on one of Trump’s favorite TV shows, ‘Fox & Friends’ and wailing about why isn’t everyone dancing in the streets, singing ‘The Horscht Wessel Song’ whilst screaming ‘Heil Trump!’ in celebration of this great event.
And then there was the drunken (no apology-same amendment being utilized here) morbidly dishonest and puffy faced love-lorn Senator Graham saying that telling the ungrateful, but not very organized and unarmed Iranian populace that exactly how to follow his heart throb’s directive to stare down and overthrow a million man armed, ideologically furious and bloodthirsty army was NOT said hearth-throb’s ‘job’.
So, here it seems we’ve moved into another iteration of when the even more silent than Jimmy Carter’s tomb and as vacuous as when he was President, the younger Bush issued the ‘No Child Left Behind’ unfounded mandate which made law for education with no fiscal resources to do so. An even more poignant point of irony in this comparative is the dozens of students slaughtered when a cruise missile hit a girl’s school.
As for Mr. Bush, I’m afraid I’ve gone back to viewing him as actually being the village idiot I thought he was during his two not necessarily in good ways consequential terms as Dick Cheney’s proxy doll. Unless there is a ‘Bidenesque’ reason for if, Mr. Bush’s silence is-again, that 1st Amendment thing-frankly, my dear-inexcusable and an abomination. But then again, as W’s presidency was the brain-child of one of those who’s heart’s desire was the Imperial Presidency that we now HAVE (the late Mr. Cheney), perhaps it’s better that the man who, in office, described himself as ‘a pit-bull on the pant-leg of opportunity’ remain silent.
I see also today that the great ‘Prediction’ investment scams like Kashli etc - which the Brothers Trump are helping to run - aren’t showing their potential investors (aka suckers) that chances of this latest adventure working out are looking too good.
So, I appreciate what seems down the boiled down clarity of your writing on this, because I’m old enough to remember 444 days & the bomb-laden jeep being driven into the U.S. military compound & the odd lack of WMD’s in 2001. I also recall my comment to a friend, who because he was more conservative, gave me a ‘what an asshole’ look when I said of the 9/11 attacks that those who masterminded this would never face to do another thing as it was my prediction from having watched the build-up to that disaster that we would now proceed to rip ourselves to shreds as a country from within. Sorry - again, that inconvenient First Amendment thing: it was the sense that grew for me out of the smoke rising from the Twin Towers rubble. It has. Ever left me as the trajectory of our involvements has never given me any reason to abandon it.
I will never say ‘I told you so’, but please-just look at where we are today both around reworks and here ‘at home’….
Meanwhile the Epstein thing continues to metastasize unabated like the cancer you’ve written of ut as being.
And while some foreign governments are starting to issue pink slips with criminal charge codicils for Team Jeffery players in their ranks as well as royal families, meanwhile back at the ranch our ‘government’ is selling ‘Wehrmacht’ ideology as a chemotherapy cum immunotherapy for that cancer whilst saying said cancers is nothing but a freckle.
So to the extent that ‘ physician heal thyself’ in our governance is exemplified by RFKJr. doing his ‘let ‘em eat cake’ thing with regard to unaffordability NOT being a hoax by preaching that we should all just eat liver because it’s so cheap….going to war is a way cheaper cut of healthy self assessment.
And besides, Young Bobby and Pam Bondi are just way, way too busy sitting for a series of ‘my favorite moments with Donald’ utterly cringe-worthy propaganda videos being released by Team Suzy Weils, in which they are filmed lavishing ass kissing praise on their floundering leader instead of actually doing their jobs. But, if that’s what Donald says is ‘doing your job’ that is what currently is-what else?-doing your job. You know the song: 🎵🎶’Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets’🎶🎵. In this case, do not confuse ‘Lola’ getting what she ‘wants’ with, um, a collective ‘Lolita’ not getting justice.
Then there are The Clintons doing their best Sgt. Schultz ‘Ve know nussing’ routines re: The Expanding Epstein Universe.
Mrs. Clinton I can cut some slack to. But Bill ? Never mind the ‘Ask what you can do for your country’ iconic moment of his own professed ideological heartthrob, JFK, who was a lucky man that he’s not President today with the ‘#MeToo’ issues that would’ve arisen from HIS unzipped antics, being treated with the same dexterity as Mr. Clinton’s definition ‘sex’-as in ‘I did NOT have sex with that woman’. How that all plays out remains to be seen.
For folks described as having spoken as if they’d nothing to lose, it sure struck me that the lawyering up the Clintons have no doubt done is still to play that shit as close to the vest as the bark on a tree.
This could go on ad-nauseam, but it all seems part of the fireworks display being unleashed.
I guess what I’m wondering most about is what happens if or actually WHEN an Iranian cruise missile hits a NATO target, or a Chinese one, or an Indian one or a Pakistani one.
And then there’s the whole thing of his thus plays out in the theater of ‘You don’t have elections in wartime’ things as exemplified by the laughably titled ‘SAVE’ Act.
It’s all like that old credit card saw-the ones where the jingle goes ‘The options are endless….’ & makes the Oscar Best Picture Award winner ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ seem prophetic. Well, Bobby K would like that one, because if our fingers all become hot dogs, well, sone brands of those are at least STILL affordable.
In short, per the late John Lennon, ‘I read the news today, oh boy….’
That number’s a ditty that I can only describe as ‘Deja vu-all over again.’
I don't think the people under Trump running stuff understand 'otherhood' almost at an object permanence level they're so arrested. They think their will can triumph or must because, well, aren't they the center of something if not everything? I've had experiences with individuals with paranoid tendencies and these surface in my mind and scenes from movies and entire movies that seem to capture the myopia and possibilities for consequences they don't see. Yeah there's crime and corruption but the political, tribal and religious angles are another thing ...
Rawls defines an “outlaw state” as a polity that systematically refuses to honor the reasonable constraints of the Law of Peoples, especially the duties of non-intervention, respect for basic human rights, and compliance with the norms of international cooperation. Under Rawls’s framework, such a state pursues its rational interests without regard for the legal and moral limits that bind societies in a stable international order.
In 2025–26, U.S. policy exhibits precisely that pattern. Domestically, executive immigration actions have overridden due process and core human rights protections, sidestepping legal constraints and normal legislative oversight. Externally, the United States has launched a unilateral military assault that resulted in the abduction of Venezuela’s president without international mandate, asserted claims over Venezuelan oil and revenue streams, and subsequently escalated into sustained military operations against Iran, including joint U.S.–Israeli combat strikes on Iranian territory while productive negotiations were underway. Meanwhile, the U.S. has resisted war powers oversight and shown a willingness to subsume or override multilateral constraints in pursuit of its strategic aims.
Taken together, this constellation of actions — persistent external force without clear defensive justification and systematic internal rights violations — aligns with the very criteria Rawls associates with outlaw states: policies that reject the binding force of shared legal and moral international principles in favor of unilateral pursuit of power and interests.
Indeed. The perverse structure of incentives with respect to proliferation--developing nuclear weapons or not--just got a lot more perverse. You can almost hear the popcorn kernels of countries--from Japan and South Korea to Germany and Sweden... all the way to Brazil--begin popping as they break out into the open as newly nuclear capable (again). Wouldn't you if you were them? Suddenly, instead or one problem, we have many problems raised to the Nth power-- "N" being unimaginable.
What I like about your approach is the pull no punches way you lead off by debunking the entertainment factor in all of this, because this is not some iMax film that we’re seeing. It’s about as real as real can get and will be getting ‘realer’….
Yesterday, I spent 2.5 hours staring at CNN in do some else’s house.
Not what I’d have chosen as a source but the news had hit while I travelled there, and I have this warped sense that as an American citizen, choosing to just go shopping or out for supper & to see ‘Forever Wicked’ is a kind dereliction of duty.
I came away feeling heartsick and also addled, like maybe I’m on the wrong side of this. I’m thinking ‘shit, Bari & Larry haven’t even moved into their corner offices at CNN yet and there’s something even more off about their approach to this than the sense of CNN having declared the earth flat whilst careening towards that precipice over the past 6 or so years.
Maybe it was the lack of and ideological or moral alarm in seemingly EVERY conversation except for the interview with Senator Vindman, who DID express alarm and raised more than the possibility that Trump has, um, once again ‘exceeded’ his Constitutional authority. Mr. Vindman was treated with what I’ll call ‘surface politesse’, but it seemed they couldn’t get him off the platform fast enough and that it was all the female anchor-who’s name I cannot track down-to not pull a Scott Jennings eye-roll as she ‘thanked’ him for coming onto the show and cut to the next ‘guest’.
Then later I stumbled on the mentally ill (sorry folks, exercising my endangered 1st Amendment rights here while I have them to call it as I see it with this client) Senator John Fetterman being interviewed by Sean Hannity on one of Trump’s favorite TV shows, ‘Fox & Friends’ and wailing about why isn’t everyone dancing in the streets, singing ‘The Horscht Wessel Song’ whilst screaming ‘Heil Trump!’ in celebration of this great event.
And then there was the drunken (no apology-same amendment being utilized here) morbidly dishonest and puffy faced love-lorn Senator Graham saying that telling the ungrateful, but not very organized and unarmed Iranian populace that exactly how to follow his heart throb’s directive to stare down and overthrow a million man armed, ideologically furious and bloodthirsty army was NOT said hearth-throb’s ‘job’.
So, here it seems we’ve moved into another iteration of when the even more silent than Jimmy Carter’s tomb and as vacuous as when he was President, the younger Bush issued the ‘No Child Left Behind’ unfounded mandate which made law for education with no fiscal resources to do so. An even more poignant point of irony in this comparative is the dozens of students slaughtered when a cruise missile hit a girl’s school.
As for Mr. Bush, I’m afraid I’ve gone back to viewing him as actually being the village idiot I thought he was during his two not necessarily in good ways consequential terms as Dick Cheney’s proxy doll. Unless there is a ‘Bidenesque’ t
reason for if, Mr. Bush’s silence is-again, that 1st Amendment thing-frankly, my dear-inexcusable and an abomination. But then again, as W’s presidency was the brain-child of one of those who’s heart’s desire was the Imperial Presidency that we now HAVE, perhaps it’s better that the man who, in office, described himself as ‘a pit-bull on the pant-leg of opportunity’ remain silent.
I see also today that the great ‘Prediction’ investment scams like Kashli etc - which the Brothers Trump are helping to run - aren’t showing their potential investors (aka suckers) that chances of this latest adventure working out are looking too good.
So, I appreciate what seems down the boiled down clarity of your writing on this, because I’m old enough to remember 444 days & the bomb-laden jeep being driven into the U.S. military compound & the odd lack of WMD’s in 2001. I also recall my comment to a friend, who because he was more conservative, gave me a ‘what an asshole’ look when I said of the 9/11 attacks that those who masterminded this would never face to do another thing as it was my prediction from having watched the build-up to that disaster that we would now proceed to rip ourselves to shreds as a country from within. Sorry - again, that inconvenient First Amendment thing: it was the sense that grew for me out of the smoke rising from the Twin Towers rubble. It has. Ever left me as the trajectory of our involvements has never given me any reason to abandon it.
I will never say ‘I told you so’, but please-just look at where we are today both around reworks and here ‘at home’….
Meanwhile the Epstein thing continues to
metastasize like the cancer you’ve written if it being.
And while some foreign government are starting to issue pink slips with criminal charge codicils for players in their ranks & royal families, meanwhile back at the ranch our ‘government’ is selling ‘Wehrmacht’ ideology as a chemotherapy cum immunotherapy for that cancer. So to the extent that ‘ physician heal thyself’ in our governance is exemplified by RFKJr. doing his ‘let ‘em eat cake’ thing with regard to unaffordability NOT being a hoax by preaching that we should all just eat liver because it’s so cheap….going to war is a way cheaper cut of healthy self assessment.
And besides, Young Bobby and Pam Bondiare way too busy sitting for ‘my favorite moments with Donald’ utterly cringe-worthy videos in which they are filmed lavishing ass kissing praise on their floundering leader instead of actually doing their jobs. But, if that’s what Donald says is ‘doing your job’ that is what currently is-what else?-doing your job.
Then there are The Clintons doing their best Sgt. Schultz ‘Ve know nussing’ routines re: The Expanding Epstein Universe.
Never mind the ‘Ask what you can do for your country’ iconic moment of Bill Clinton’s own ideological heartthrob, JFK, who was a lucky man that he’s not President today with the ‘#MeToo’ issues that would’ve arisen from HIS unzipped antics, being treated with the same dexterity as Mr. Clinton’s definition ‘sex’-as in ‘I did not have sec with that woman’. How that all plays out remains to be seen.
For folks described as having spoken as if they’d nothing to lose, it sure struck me that the lawyering up there no doubt done is still to play that shit as close to the vest as the bark in a tree.
This could go on ad-nauseam, but it all seems part of the fireworks display being unleashed.
I guess what I’m wondering most about is what happens when an Iranian cruise missile hits a NATO target, or a Chinese one, or an Indian one or a Pakistani one.
And then there’s the whole thing of his thus plays out in the theater of ‘You don’t have elections in wartime’ thing….
It’s like that old credit card saw-the ones where the jingle goes ‘The options are endless….’
In short, per the late John Lennon, ‘I read the news today, oh boy….’
That number’s a ditty that I can only describe as ‘Deja vu-all over again.’
Spheres of influence today.. It's a mafia run world. The norms we had prior, sone of which you disclose here, are no more, being replaced by making offers you can't refuse, acting as friends, a friend of mine, a friend of ours, and whacking people (its the person you trust most that does the hit). Thus we are dealing with a new (even though very old) system where mafia codes rule, and others who just don't grasp that the mob took over and is now running the show can't quite grasp those realities. Money, greed, power is all they know, and they will run the world based on codes they designed. This is not a government that cares for peoples opinions or even their votes. This is a mob grabbing, defending or obtaining territory, and saying who gets what, who runs the rackets in those areas, and making sure that money flows upward to the bosses running it. The soldiers get a piece, but the bosses get the lions share of the pie.
Thank you for saying what needed to be published and for us to share with our communities.
Nicely done and terrifying. I hadn't thought that far ahead, but now can't stop thinking about it. I appreciate your writing efforts on US political impact and interpretation.
Yes.
Thanks, this is a great article.
It just actually makes sense.
What I like about your approach is the pull no punches way you lead off by debunking the entertainment factor in all of this, because this is not some iMax film that we’re seeing. It’s about as real as real can get and will be getting ‘realer’….
Yesterday, I spent 2.5 hours staring at CNN in do some else’s house.
Not what I’d have chosen as a source but the news had hit while I travelled there, and I have this warped sense that as an American citizen, choosing to just go shopping or out for supper & to see ‘Forever Wicked’ is a kind dereliction of duty.
I came away feeling heartsick and also addled, like maybe I’m on the wrong side of this. I’m thinking ‘shit, Bari & Larry haven’t even moved into their corner offices at CNN yet and there’s something even more off about their approach to this than the sense of CNN having declared the earth flat whilst careening towards that precipice over the past 6 or so years.
Maybe it was the lack of and ideological or moral alarm in seemingly EVERY conversation except for the interview with Senator Vindman, who DID express alarm and raised more than the possibility that Trump has, um, once again ‘exceeded’ his Constitutional authority. Mr. Vindman was treated with what I’ll call ‘surface politesse’, but it seemed they couldn’t get him off the platform fast enough and that it was all the female anchor-who’s name I cannot track down-to not pull a Scott Jennings eye-roll as she ‘thanked’ him for coming onto the show and cut to the next ‘guest’.
Then later I stumbled on the mentally ill (sorry folks, exercising my endangered 1st Amendment rights here while I have them to call it as I see it with this clown) Senator John Fetterman being interviewed by Sean Hannity on one of Trump’s favorite TV shows, ‘Fox & Friends’ and wailing about why isn’t everyone dancing in the streets, singing ‘The Horscht Wessel Song’ whilst screaming ‘Heil Trump!’ in celebration of this great event.
And then there was the drunken (no apology-same amendment being utilized here) morbidly dishonest and puffy faced love-lorn Senator Graham saying that telling the ungrateful, but not very organized and unarmed Iranian populace that exactly how to follow his heart throb’s directive to stare down and overthrow a million man armed, ideologically furious and bloodthirsty army was NOT said hearth-throb’s ‘job’.
So, here it seems we’ve moved into another iteration of when the even more silent than Jimmy Carter’s tomb and as vacuous as when he was President, the younger Bush issued the ‘No Child Left Behind’ unfounded mandate which made law for education with no fiscal resources to do so. An even more poignant point of irony in this comparative is the dozens of students slaughtered when a cruise missile hit a girl’s school.
As for Mr. Bush, I’m afraid I’ve gone back to viewing him as actually being the village idiot I thought he was during his two not necessarily in good ways consequential terms as Dick Cheney’s proxy doll. Unless there is a ‘Bidenesque’ reason for if, Mr. Bush’s silence is-again, that 1st Amendment thing-frankly, my dear-inexcusable and an abomination. But then again, as W’s presidency was the brain-child of one of those who’s heart’s desire was the Imperial Presidency that we now HAVE (the late Mr. Cheney), perhaps it’s better that the man who, in office, described himself as ‘a pit-bull on the pant-leg of opportunity’ remain silent.
I see also today that the great ‘Prediction’ investment scams like Kashli etc - which the Brothers Trump are helping to run - aren’t showing their potential investors (aka suckers) that chances of this latest adventure working out are looking too good.
So, I appreciate what seems down the boiled down clarity of your writing on this, because I’m old enough to remember 444 days & the bomb-laden jeep being driven into the U.S. military compound & the odd lack of WMD’s in 2001. I also recall my comment to a friend, who because he was more conservative, gave me a ‘what an asshole’ look when I said of the 9/11 attacks that those who masterminded this would never face to do another thing as it was my prediction from having watched the build-up to that disaster that we would now proceed to rip ourselves to shreds as a country from within. Sorry - again, that inconvenient First Amendment thing: it was the sense that grew for me out of the smoke rising from the Twin Towers rubble. It has. Ever left me as the trajectory of our involvements has never given me any reason to abandon it.
I will never say ‘I told you so’, but please-just look at where we are today both around reworks and here ‘at home’….
Meanwhile the Epstein thing continues to metastasize unabated like the cancer you’ve written of ut as being.
And while some foreign governments are starting to issue pink slips with criminal charge codicils for Team Jeffery players in their ranks as well as royal families, meanwhile back at the ranch our ‘government’ is selling ‘Wehrmacht’ ideology as a chemotherapy cum immunotherapy for that cancer whilst saying said cancers is nothing but a freckle.
So to the extent that ‘ physician heal thyself’ in our governance is exemplified by RFKJr. doing his ‘let ‘em eat cake’ thing with regard to unaffordability NOT being a hoax by preaching that we should all just eat liver because it’s so cheap….going to war is a way cheaper cut of healthy self assessment.
And besides, Young Bobby and Pam Bondi are just way, way too busy sitting for a series of ‘my favorite moments with Donald’ utterly cringe-worthy propaganda videos being released by Team Suzy Weils, in which they are filmed lavishing ass kissing praise on their floundering leader instead of actually doing their jobs. But, if that’s what Donald says is ‘doing your job’ that is what currently is-what else?-doing your job. You know the song: 🎵🎶’Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets’🎶🎵. In this case, do not confuse ‘Lola’ getting what she ‘wants’ with, um, a collective ‘Lolita’ not getting justice.
Then there are The Clintons doing their best Sgt. Schultz ‘Ve know nussing’ routines re: The Expanding Epstein Universe.
Mrs. Clinton I can cut some slack to. But Bill ? Never mind the ‘Ask what you can do for your country’ iconic moment of his own professed ideological heartthrob, JFK, who was a lucky man that he’s not President today with the ‘#MeToo’ issues that would’ve arisen from HIS unzipped antics, being treated with the same dexterity as Mr. Clinton’s definition ‘sex’-as in ‘I did NOT have sex with that woman’. How that all plays out remains to be seen.
For folks described as having spoken as if they’d nothing to lose, it sure struck me that the lawyering up the Clintons have no doubt done is still to play that shit as close to the vest as the bark on a tree.
This could go on ad-nauseam, but it all seems part of the fireworks display being unleashed.
I guess what I’m wondering most about is what happens if or actually WHEN an Iranian cruise missile hits a NATO target, or a Chinese one, or an Indian one or a Pakistani one.
And then there’s the whole thing of his thus plays out in the theater of ‘You don’t have elections in wartime’ things as exemplified by the laughably titled ‘SAVE’ Act.
It’s all like that old credit card saw-the ones where the jingle goes ‘The options are endless….’ & makes the Oscar Best Picture Award winner ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ seem prophetic. Well, Bobby K would like that one, because if our fingers all become hot dogs, well, sone brands of those are at least STILL affordable.
In short, per the late John Lennon, ‘I read the news today, oh boy….’
That number’s a ditty that I can only describe as ‘Deja vu-all over again.’
I’ve been waiting for you to weigh in.
I don't think the people under Trump running stuff understand 'otherhood' almost at an object permanence level they're so arrested. They think their will can triumph or must because, well, aren't they the center of something if not everything? I've had experiences with individuals with paranoid tendencies and these surface in my mind and scenes from movies and entire movies that seem to capture the myopia and possibilities for consequences they don't see. Yeah there's crime and corruption but the political, tribal and religious angles are another thing ...
https://youtu.be/2HkdmonRprQ?si=4GSOPvS8P9z3_HQD
𝕎𝕙𝕥𝕤𝕒𝕡𝕡𝗠𝔼➕𝟙⤈5𝟠5⤈𝟞𝟚3⤈𝟢𝟙33⤈𝗞𝗲𝘆𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵 𝗧𝘀⤈
Rawls defines an “outlaw state” as a polity that systematically refuses to honor the reasonable constraints of the Law of Peoples, especially the duties of non-intervention, respect for basic human rights, and compliance with the norms of international cooperation. Under Rawls’s framework, such a state pursues its rational interests without regard for the legal and moral limits that bind societies in a stable international order.
In 2025–26, U.S. policy exhibits precisely that pattern. Domestically, executive immigration actions have overridden due process and core human rights protections, sidestepping legal constraints and normal legislative oversight. Externally, the United States has launched a unilateral military assault that resulted in the abduction of Venezuela’s president without international mandate, asserted claims over Venezuelan oil and revenue streams, and subsequently escalated into sustained military operations against Iran, including joint U.S.–Israeli combat strikes on Iranian territory while productive negotiations were underway. Meanwhile, the U.S. has resisted war powers oversight and shown a willingness to subsume or override multilateral constraints in pursuit of its strategic aims.
Taken together, this constellation of actions — persistent external force without clear defensive justification and systematic internal rights violations — aligns with the very criteria Rawls associates with outlaw states: policies that reject the binding force of shared legal and moral international principles in favor of unilateral pursuit of power and interests.
Indeed. The perverse structure of incentives with respect to proliferation--developing nuclear weapons or not--just got a lot more perverse. You can almost hear the popcorn kernels of countries--from Japan and South Korea to Germany and Sweden... all the way to Brazil--begin popping as they break out into the open as newly nuclear capable (again). Wouldn't you if you were them? Suddenly, instead or one problem, we have many problems raised to the Nth power-- "N" being unimaginable.
Yes.
Thanks, this is a great article.
It just actually makes sense.
What I like about your approach is the pull no punches way you lead off by debunking the entertainment factor in all of this, because this is not some iMax film that we’re seeing. It’s about as real as real can get and will be getting ‘realer’….
Yesterday, I spent 2.5 hours staring at CNN in do some else’s house.
Not what I’d have chosen as a source but the news had hit while I travelled there, and I have this warped sense that as an American citizen, choosing to just go shopping or out for supper & to see ‘Forever Wicked’ is a kind dereliction of duty.
I came away feeling heartsick and also addled, like maybe I’m on the wrong side of this. I’m thinking ‘shit, Bari & Larry haven’t even moved into their corner offices at CNN yet and there’s something even more off about their approach to this than the sense of CNN having declared the earth flat whilst careening towards that precipice over the past 6 or so years.
Maybe it was the lack of and ideological or moral alarm in seemingly EVERY conversation except for the interview with Senator Vindman, who DID express alarm and raised more than the possibility that Trump has, um, once again ‘exceeded’ his Constitutional authority. Mr. Vindman was treated with what I’ll call ‘surface politesse’, but it seemed they couldn’t get him off the platform fast enough and that it was all the female anchor-who’s name I cannot track down-to not pull a Scott Jennings eye-roll as she ‘thanked’ him for coming onto the show and cut to the next ‘guest’.
Then later I stumbled on the mentally ill (sorry folks, exercising my endangered 1st Amendment rights here while I have them to call it as I see it with this client) Senator John Fetterman being interviewed by Sean Hannity on one of Trump’s favorite TV shows, ‘Fox & Friends’ and wailing about why isn’t everyone dancing in the streets, singing ‘The Horscht Wessel Song’ whilst screaming ‘Heil Trump!’ in celebration of this great event.
And then there was the drunken (no apology-same amendment being utilized here) morbidly dishonest and puffy faced love-lorn Senator Graham saying that telling the ungrateful, but not very organized and unarmed Iranian populace that exactly how to follow his heart throb’s directive to stare down and overthrow a million man armed, ideologically furious and bloodthirsty army was NOT said hearth-throb’s ‘job’.
So, here it seems we’ve moved into another iteration of when the even more silent than Jimmy Carter’s tomb and as vacuous as when he was President, the younger Bush issued the ‘No Child Left Behind’ unfounded mandate which made law for education with no fiscal resources to do so. An even more poignant point of irony in this comparative is the dozens of students slaughtered when a cruise missile hit a girl’s school.
As for Mr. Bush, I’m afraid I’ve gone back to viewing him as actually being the village idiot I thought he was during his two not necessarily in good ways consequential terms as Dick Cheney’s proxy doll. Unless there is a ‘Bidenesque’ t
reason for if, Mr. Bush’s silence is-again, that 1st Amendment thing-frankly, my dear-inexcusable and an abomination. But then again, as W’s presidency was the brain-child of one of those who’s heart’s desire was the Imperial Presidency that we now HAVE, perhaps it’s better that the man who, in office, described himself as ‘a pit-bull on the pant-leg of opportunity’ remain silent.
I see also today that the great ‘Prediction’ investment scams like Kashli etc - which the Brothers Trump are helping to run - aren’t showing their potential investors (aka suckers) that chances of this latest adventure working out are looking too good.
So, I appreciate what seems down the boiled down clarity of your writing on this, because I’m old enough to remember 444 days & the bomb-laden jeep being driven into the U.S. military compound & the odd lack of WMD’s in 2001. I also recall my comment to a friend, who because he was more conservative, gave me a ‘what an asshole’ look when I said of the 9/11 attacks that those who masterminded this would never face to do another thing as it was my prediction from having watched the build-up to that disaster that we would now proceed to rip ourselves to shreds as a country from within. Sorry - again, that inconvenient First Amendment thing: it was the sense that grew for me out of the smoke rising from the Twin Towers rubble. It has. Ever left me as the trajectory of our involvements has never given me any reason to abandon it.
I will never say ‘I told you so’, but please-just look at where we are today both around reworks and here ‘at home’….
Meanwhile the Epstein thing continues to
metastasize like the cancer you’ve written if it being.
And while some foreign government are starting to issue pink slips with criminal charge codicils for players in their ranks & royal families, meanwhile back at the ranch our ‘government’ is selling ‘Wehrmacht’ ideology as a chemotherapy cum immunotherapy for that cancer. So to the extent that ‘ physician heal thyself’ in our governance is exemplified by RFKJr. doing his ‘let ‘em eat cake’ thing with regard to unaffordability NOT being a hoax by preaching that we should all just eat liver because it’s so cheap….going to war is a way cheaper cut of healthy self assessment.
And besides, Young Bobby and Pam Bondiare way too busy sitting for ‘my favorite moments with Donald’ utterly cringe-worthy videos in which they are filmed lavishing ass kissing praise on their floundering leader instead of actually doing their jobs. But, if that’s what Donald says is ‘doing your job’ that is what currently is-what else?-doing your job.
Then there are The Clintons doing their best Sgt. Schultz ‘Ve know nussing’ routines re: The Expanding Epstein Universe.
Never mind the ‘Ask what you can do for your country’ iconic moment of Bill Clinton’s own ideological heartthrob, JFK, who was a lucky man that he’s not President today with the ‘#MeToo’ issues that would’ve arisen from HIS unzipped antics, being treated with the same dexterity as Mr. Clinton’s definition ‘sex’-as in ‘I did not have sec with that woman’. How that all plays out remains to be seen.
For folks described as having spoken as if they’d nothing to lose, it sure struck me that the lawyering up there no doubt done is still to play that shit as close to the vest as the bark in a tree.
This could go on ad-nauseam, but it all seems part of the fireworks display being unleashed.
I guess what I’m wondering most about is what happens when an Iranian cruise missile hits a NATO target, or a Chinese one, or an Indian one or a Pakistani one.
And then there’s the whole thing of his thus plays out in the theater of ‘You don’t have elections in wartime’ thing….
It’s like that old credit card saw-the ones where the jingle goes ‘The options are endless….’
In short, per the late John Lennon, ‘I read the news today, oh boy….’
That number’s a ditty that I can only describe as ‘Deja vu-all over again.’
Oman has been hit at least twice as of this morning per Malcolm Nance and Jakob Kaarsbo.
Hmm I’m obviously not up to date then on my news. That piece was written last night by 9pm central
So true.