wv wrote:

Ok, no heat, no tension from my side. Just disagreement about Russia.

“the Russians use all means of attack available to them to defend and expand their sphere. They are not provoked into it to act 2nd…they do what they are capable of doing, while also expanding what they are doing. They’re not fighting back as if under threat with the need to respond, they’re aggressive in the first place..”

See, you are sure of this. I am not sure of it. I mull it over, but I’m not sure of it. How can we know that Russia would be doing what its doing if it didnt feel surrounded by NATO ? How do we know? All we know for sure is it IS being surrounded by NATO and this huge-amerikan-gangster state. And it reacts.

So we disagree. You are ‘sure’ that Russia is not just ‘reacting’ and ‘fighting fire with fire’. And I am not sure. But i am totally open to the russian explanation that they are just fighting fire with fire, etc.

w
v

I think both empires believe, at some level, they are righteously reacting to external threats. I think the powers that be in Russia believe this, and we do as well. We both have very long histories of this, though America is blessed with two oceans protecting its borders, and Russia has always felt threatened from the south and the west. It lacks those protections.

(One of the best histories of Russia I’ve ever encountered is Martin Malia’s acclaimed (1999) Russia under Western Eyes: From the Bronze Horseman to the Lenin Mausoleum. I highly recommend it)

Of course, there is likely a huge difference between public and private views. Do the Power Elite in either empire really believe each assertion of existential threat is legitimate? Or is it mostly a way of gaining mass support? Likely all kinds of degrees in between, etc.

My take is . . . Russians have acted with extreme aggressiveness (as have we), but where to trace the whys is extremely difficult. I think it’s safe to say, however, that the West, going back to 1917, at least, has been in league to shut down left-populist governments in Russia and around the world, and Russians don’t forget these things. Now that the Russian government is hard right, a different dynamic is in play. But that memory is still there.

I also think Americans forget that we forget everything, that our attention spans are almost non-existent, and our sense of “history” goes back months, while for much of the rest of the world, it’s millennia. We dismiss this, avoid this, or . . . well, forget this at our own peril.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Billy_T.

ZN,

How is any of that objective evidence, when it doesn’t talk at all about South Korea and our own intervention? No mention of the brutal fascist dictator, or his plan to launch an attack against the North?

It strikes me as incredibly one-sided.

This article attempts a far more balanced look:

http://apjjf.org/2011/9/5/Mark-Caprio/3482/article.html

A key section:

“On February 8, 1949, the South Korean president met with Ambassador John Muccio and Secretary of the Army Kenneth C. Royall in Seoul. Here the Korean president listed the following as justifications for initiating a war with the North: the South Korean military could easily be increased by 100,000 if it drew from the 150,000 to 200,000 Koreans who had recently fought with the Japanese or the Nationalist Chinese. Moreover, the morale of the South Korean military was greater than that of the North Koreans. If war broke out he expected mass defections from the enemy. Finally, the United Nations’ recognition of South Korea legitimized its rule over the entire peninsula (as stipulated in its constitution). Thus, he concluded, there was “nothing [to be] gained by waiting.”

And another section from this article from antiwar.com

Who Really Started the Korean War?

We were fighting on behalf of Syngman Rhee, the US-educated-and-sponsored dictator of South Korea, whose vibrancy was demonstrated by the large-scale slaughter of his leftist political opponents. For 22 years, Rhee’s word was law, and many thousands of his political opponents were murdered: tens of thousands were jailed or driven into exile. Whatever measure of liberality has reigned on the Korean peninsula was in spite of Washington’s efforts and ongoing military presence. When the country finally rebelled against Rhee, and threw him out in the so-called April Revolution of 1960, he was ferried to safety in a CIA helicopter as crowds converged on the presidential palace.

and

As to who did in reality fire that shot, Bruce Cumings, head of the history department at the University of Chicago, gave us the definitive answer in his two-volume The Origins of the Korean War, and The Korean War: A History: the Korean war started during the American occupation of the South, and it was Rhee, with help from his American sponsors, who initiated a series of attacks that well preceded the North Korean offensive of 1950. From 1945-1948, American forces aided Rhee in a killing spree that claimed tens of thousands of victims: the counterinsurgency campaign took a high toll in Kwangju, and on the island of Cheju-do – where as many as 60,000 people were murdered by Rhee’s US-backed forces.

Rhee’s army and national police were drawn from the ranks of those who had collaborated with the Japanese occupation during World War II, and this was the biggest factor that made civil war inevitable. That the US backed these quislings guaranteed widespread support for the Communist forces led by Kim IL Sung, and provoked the rebellion in the South that was the prelude to open North-South hostilities. Rhee, for his part, was eager to draw in the United States, and the North Koreans, for their part, were just as eager to invoke the principle of “proletarian internationalism” to draw in the Chinese and the Russians.

Having backed the Maoists during World War II, in cooperation with the Soviet Union, the US had already “lost” China, and Truman was determined not to “lose” Korea, too. In spite of the fact that he had ample warning of the North Korean offensive, the President used this “surprise attack” to justify sending American troops to Korea to keep Rhee in power, and in doing so neglected to go to Congress for approval – or even give them advance notice.

Thanks, WV.

Good article, and Dick Gregory had a major talent for political aphorisms.

On Korea. We have no objective evidence that pins the “fault” of the war on North Korea alone. None. We have propaganda. Americans have been lied to about that war for decades, and its costs. Western historians and various political hacks never talk about the fact that we backed a brutal, fascist dictator in the South, who engaged in massacres before and during the war. And how many historians speak of the 2-4 million dead Korean civilians? How many speak of the fact that both nations were engaged in a brutal struggle for a united Korea, which never would have been necessary in the first place if America and the allies hadn’t split the country in two?

This is good, too:

How could the current distribution of property and wealth reasonably be expected to emerge from any sort of truly democratic process? And if this is the way regulated capitalism works, what would life under unregulated capitalism be like?

We know the answers. While the system of capitalism itself can’t possibly survive without a ton of “regulation” — standardized currencies, trade agreements, legal systems, contract protections, transaction protections, police, EMT, wars to keep the shipping lanes open, wars to smash open previously closed markets, etc. etc — prior to the Keynesian era, it was “unregulated” where fat cats wanted it to be unregulated. As in, they wanted taxpayers to cover the costs to maintain the system and its infrastructure . . . but they didn’t want government restricting what they could do to their workers, consumers, supply chains or the environment. They wanted to be free to screw over workers, supply chains, consumers and trash the environment, while the taxpayer paid MOST of their business costs.

FDR altered that dynamic here, but he kept in place the mass subsidies for business. Its foundations. This “consensus” remained in place roughly through Nixon, with steps forward and backward along the way. That huge change was allowed primarily because of the Depression, WWII and an actual left scaring the shit out of the powers that be.

Another key reason why they didn’t fight back with much gusto? They were able to maintain their capitalist Dickensian hell-holes overseas, and grow those, enough to offset a bit more humane treatment of workers, consumers and the environment here.

But from the 1970s on, first accelerating with Reagan, capitalism has been able to win the trifecta: Dickensian hell-holes overseas; massive deregulation, tax cuts and privatization here; and the near total acquiescence of the populace.

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Today’s empires, OTOH, after the map has largely been solidified — another aspect of “stability” — are now free to work on behalf of international movers and shakers, without concern for national boundaries. Yes, they have to be careful to give the appearance of patriotic planning, lest their own populations kick them out of power. But I have no doubt that what really matters to the governing class is pleasing the internationalist list of plutocrats and oligarchs, and those a bit below them on the wealth and power ladder. They do their bidding and they craft policy with them in mind. But American officials have a much easier time faking the patriotic stuff for this reason, especially:

Most of the movers and shakers, the plutocrats and oligarchs, happen to BE American. And America’s economy overall is still roughly in the neighborhood of a quarter to a fifth of the total. As in, we still dominate the world on total share of the world’s wealth and economic activities, so it’s much easier for American governments to play the game of appearing to work on behalf of one nation. In reality, that governing class doesn’t care about boundaries. It cares about Capital, which crosses all of them.

One of the differences between us is that you have people consciously doing these things, and then consciously hiding them. That’s still old conspiracy theory to me. I don’t see that. I don’t think it ever works that way. It always seems, instead, to be driven by fears, visions, and haunting beliefs. So the people with power are just as much victims of ideological beliefs as anyone else in the process is.

I also think that if we ignore the effects of post-coloniality in all this, it just means we end up with a false picture. No one in the first world can just directly count on being able to economically and/or militarily dominate anymore. They are in constant negotiation/conflict with the many-headed forms of resistance, counter-movement, and conflict that shakes the post-colonial world in various ways and places all at the same time. Telling an all western story, even a leftist one, is just one more western ideological vision.

I see wealthy and powerful people consciously trying to increase their wealth and power, and I see an economic system that makes it easy for them to do this, once they reach a certain critical mass of capital. I see the legal structure set up to make it so they don’t really have to be “consciously” secretive, because they’re protected from the get go. The laws and rules are written with their “privacy” in mind, not ours. We don’t get to see into their boardrooms and their lobbyists meetings and their international conferences. They get to ask us for tons of information, or they just take it, and we don’t get to know much at all about them. ISPs, Google searches, Facebook, etc. etc. They take from us what they want, whether we want them to or not. We don’t get to do the same to their head honchos.

The government keeps tabs on the masses, but asks very little about the movers and shakers, primarily because they pull the strings, fund their campaigns and provide lucrative revolving door opportunities after their public careers. A judge recently said it was okay for the Trump DOJ to do this:

Trump’s DOJ Demands Personal Info on 1.3M Visitors to “DisruptJ20” Inauguration Protest Website StoryAugust 18, 2017 Watch iconWatch Full Show

I think you misread me, when you say I see this as a conspiracy. I see it as a horrifically immoral economic system, that is so obscenely tilted toward the wealthy and the powerful, they rarely have to play at cloak and dagger to get what they want. It’s baked in. It’s a natural evolution of a system that concentrates massive wealth and power at the top, and broadcasts a dangerous message far and wide that neck-breaking hierarchies are “natural” and fighting against them is anti-American, blah blah blah.

I think the part in bold is especially . . . well, questionable. I see no evidence that this is true. In fact, the gap between the Haves and the Have nots has never been greater. Right now, just six humans hold as much wealth as the poorest half of the world combined, and most are Americans. That’s on the individual level. On the corporate level, most of the companies with the biggest cash reserves, overall wealth, power and sway are still American and few fall outside the West. None that I know of come from the so-called Third World.

And when it comes to the military, we still hold a ginormous edge. Firepower, technology, communications, a thousand military bases around the world, our empire stretches across the globe. We are the sole super power in the world. Yes, we’re the hegemon. But we have an empire and we’re the hegemon. It’s both/and.

An aside:

What I’m talking about is basically an attempt at the Big Picture, the bird’s eye view, the system and systems in play. It’s not meant to dismiss individual actors who do their own thing for quite different reasons. Logically, with 320 million Americans, you’re going to have a host of different motivations, rationales, strategies, backgrounds and so on . . . and with 7.5 billion worldwide, all of that blows up even more.

That said, we humans have a lot in common, and it’s possible to overvalue our differences and undervalue our commonalities. But, the bottom line is, for me, systems and environments and so on have a huge impact on all of that, so it’s fair game to talk about them.

I think another interesting topic to toss around is the frequent difference in worldview between leftists, on the one hand, and liberals and conservatives on the other, with their respective views on “individualism,” “free will,” “collectivism,” the impact of systems and so on. It’s one of the major schisms between what might be called the far left . . . and the center-left, center, center-right and far-right. Nothing is as easy as a simple left to right progression or regression, but I think the impact of systems is taken far more seriously by those left of liberal, and as you move rightward, less and less seriously until they seem to be almost rejected out of hand.

Misreadings on all sides, of course. From right to left and back again. Misunderstandings even within the various parts of the political spectrum. But, generalized, I think the way we see systems and individuals in context is one of those dividing lines. A topic for another day, perhaps.

wv wrote:

Fair enough. You dont see anything new. I do. I see more and more concentration of media power and things like what Moyers pointed out:

“..Since 2007, two bridges carrying interstate highways have collapsed due to inadequate maintenance of infrastructure, one killing 13 people. During that same period of time, the government spent $1.7 billion constructing a building in Utah that is the size of 17 football fields. This mammoth structure is intended to allow the National Security Agency to store a yottabyte of information, the largest numerical designator computer scientists have coined. A yottabyte is equal to 500 quintillion pages of text. They need that much storage to archive every single trace of your electronic life….”

w
v

I guess I’m being really confusing in my posts. My fault. I’m not saying things haven’t accelerated along Wolin’s inverted totalitarianism spectrum. They have. I’ve actually mentioned several times that since the neoliberal era kicked in, major privatization of public goods, services and assets keeps accelerating. Deregulation and massive tax cuts for the rich have as well. I’ve also mentioned that consolidation is accelerating, and that the powers that be are more sophisticated and better organized than they once were — especially since the Powell Memo.

But I see this as the natural progression of the capitalist system itself, as what it does when it’s left to its own devices. And I’m saying the secretive aspect of this has always been there. I’m not seeing a sudden explosion of new covert programs or a desire to conduct more business in the shadows. That really has always been there.

The thing that puzzles me the most, WV, is that you seem to place this big change, this major shift, as kicking in in the last few years. That’s what I don’t get. I’m just trying to understand why you think the “deep state” has suddenly become an issue recently, when we’ve had the Power Elite for generations, and the elements of a “permanent government” going back two centuries.

From my reading of Moyers, he’s not saying this suddenly took off in the past few years. And he’s been writing about media consolidation and corporate consolidation overall for a coupla decades now — as have Chomsky and others, as you know. To me, the main reason it seems so horrible now is a cumulative effect, not a sudden turning point just a few years ago. It’s the result of this onslaught to privatize, deregulate and consolidate going back to at least the early 1970s . . . . matched up with the decision to ignore the peace dividend after WWII.

Anyway . . . it may just be that you, ZN and I are just talking past each other on this issue. I don’t know. Or, maybe you and he are fine, and it’s just me in the dark. Regardless . . . we’ll survive the confusion. No harm, no foul.

A telling list of corporations and their cash reserves, which are essentially taken out of the economy, and much of this, out of the country. If these people actually had even an ounce of “patriotism,” and if our government were really concerned with doing what is best for America, they would all reinvest these massive reserves in jobs, higher pay, capital improvements, etc. etc. In short, production.

They don’t, and our government turns a blind eye to it, because it’s real concern is to protect, defend, pump up, bail out and expand the power of capital, regardless of nation.

These 17 US companies have the biggest piles of cash Graham Rapier Aug. 22, 2017, 6:11 AM

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

My view is that calling something a “nation-state” is a good way to sanitize history

I wish you wouldn’t frame things that way. My own view is to always prefer analysis, and one of my complaints about the present left–speaking from inside as a virtually lifelong member of the left–is that it sometimes gets into PC “whose the more pure” kinds of in-fighting.

So no one is “sanitizing” history here. We are however debating the ways in which historical narratives are framed, and what their relative value might be. My claim is that the narratives for the past don’t fit the present.

Not looking for lectures or offering any. Just putting hard pressure on analytic concepts. Which to me is always one of the best things about leftist discussion. Discussion being the goal.

..

That was meant as a general comment and not directed at you, personally. Sorry if it came across that way.

Yes, I agree we need to always update for present circumstances. I see my own analysis as including those updates.

Anyway, good talking with you. Hope we can continue this over the weekend.

Oh, and speaking of France and its formation. Some more book recommendations:

Graham Robb’s excellent The Discovery of France, and a solid reminder of how we, in the modern world, often forget how nation-states form out of seriously disparate cultures, and never “voluntarily,” or via majority vote.

I also loved his The Discovery of Middle Earth, not to be confused with Tolkein. It’s a fascinating study of Celtic culture and its connection to the stars.

My view is that calling something a “nation-state” is a good way to sanitize history and confuse people into thinking they aren’t empires. They are. If you go back through history, there is little difference as to how they gained and held territory. It’s just that in the modern world, with the exception of world wars and the reshaping of boundaries — usually inflicted upon non-European peoples — these huge chunks of real estate have mostly stabilized. The chessboard is set. With that stabilization of physical maps, the next aspect of empire is economic, and the battlefield is owned by the capitalist system . . . the world’s first global empire.

Capital controls the entire globe. It’s one economic system, worldwide, for the first time in history. No other economic system has ever done this, and no other economic system has ever had the internal impulse and drive to rule the roost everywhere.

Nation-states fight over pieces of the empire, on behalf of capitalists, but borders no longer really matter. They’re not after specific territory anymore, one place at a time. They’re after market share, which includes dozens of populations — rather, sub-populations, never an entire citizenry.

This is what makes it different, because empire is now “virtual” in both senses of that word. Not just in the Internet sense, but in the non-state, no-borders, invisible border line sense.

And the hegemon of all of this? Us. The USA. It used to be Britain, now it’s us.

So, we have an established mass of land that qualifies as “empire” in the ancient sense, and the new kind, which doesn’t care a whit about national borders. It just wants more market share, resources, finances, investment and cheap labor. All of those things together mean “empire.” And the desire to expand the capitalist system overall, or to stuff the pockets of key players — that’s a part of the deal.

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

But we’ve been an empire from the moment we added new “states” beyond the original thirteen.

I think it’s a messy situation and deserves an analysis, which would not be easy, that fully accounts for its messiness.

Going by modern, 17th-19th century versions, empires are extensions of commerce and don’t justify themselves much if they are expensive and not profitable. So leaving out the Romans and Chinese and the Mongols and the Persians and so on, looking at modern versions, they grab land and resources, and come along with various justifications having to do with progress, Christianity, and modernity and so on. But they turn a profit.

That does not describe Afghanistan. Among many other things it does not describe.

So to me there’s something too crude and simple to the notion that this is an empire. If it is it’s a completely different thing and the whole concept of “empire” has to be re-thought accordingly.

Another example is Nicaragua in the 80s. There was no profit in it. It was driven by something else. Or Saudi Arabia. Old versions of empire, if you craved a resource (oil) you just took it on the ground. Went in, took it. Like the Ottomans. That does not describe the american/saudi (complicated) neo-alliance.

So to me the key is ideological motives, not crude simple easy to understand ordinary “they profit and therefore act this way” views.

And when you enter into ideological motives, you are at the level of fears and wishes and so on. Not material gain. You’re inside people’s eyes seeing how they see the world.

I’m not seeing the difference. In the ancient empires you mentioned, “profit” was selectively made and held. Oftentimes, fought over within the ruling class of each empire, while various levels of crumbs were handed down the line to keep “lower” houses happy to various degrees. There has never been an empire that acted to provide “profit” across the board, and that didn’t involve destroying this house or that group, elevating this one, crushing that one, and most had major conflicts all the way up to sibling rulers. The Byzantine Empire might be the apogee of that, with endless assassinations within immediate families, including mothers and sons, etc.

So, your “it’s messy” is very true. But that’s been a constant throughout the history of empires.

When it comes to our own, I think sometimes people just look at the map and see the United State stretching from sea to shining sea, and think, “This can’t be an empire. It fits so naturally between oceans.” But as you well know, we wouldn’t have been able to push west and south (or try in the north) without massive military power, government spending on infrastructure, especially railroads, private armies and police, genocide of Native peoples, slavery, indentured servants, debtor’s prisons and so on. In that mix were winners and losers, mostly the latter, and “profits” were ginormous. That was the end goal. Government acted in large part under pressure to enable, empower and protect the profits of the few, and push for the globalization of the empire of Capital.

As mentioned, extend this to the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean, East Asia, etc. and profits for the few continued to be massive. If the military was necessary to open things up — and it always was — that’s profits for the MIC as well. Nicaragua? Profits for American capitalists who desired natural resources and new markets, like sugar. Central and South America? Everything from rubber (rubber barons, etc) to more sugar, to slaves, to oil, to new markets for capitalists in a host of different fields.

Afghanistan? Same thing. Vast mineral wealth, plus military profits. Saudi Arabia? Vast oil profits for Exxon Mobil (and its peers) and the military.

I think you can easily trace back ALL of our foreign military ventures directly to capitalist profit and the expansion of the system itself. It doesn’t have to be for the entire economy. All that’s needed is a few key players, movers and shakers, with the right connections and the right pressure on the right people to make it happen.

IMO, we definitely have an empire. And I don’t see that view as “ideological.” To me, it’s just self-evident and empirically based.

wv wrote:

There is no one, simple, agreed-on definition. Its a messy concept, for a messy, shadowy, dynamic. But some of us obviously think its a useful term. I think the term is related in some ways to the notion that the US is now an “Empire”. The Deep-State ‘agenda’ seems to have a lot in common with ‘Empire’. It has something to do with spreading War, buying and selling weapons, and controlling resources abroad. It’s not so much a ‘domestic’ thing — it seems to have something to do with Empire. The secret politics and secret technology and secret economy of Empire.

This confuses me, WV. Cuz I think it’s pretty clear that America has had an “empire” for two centuries, at least. Even if we limit it just to the North American continent, it’s an empire. It was formed through obscene use of force, genocide and slavery, and we didn’t stop there. We added Pacific Islands, parts of the Caribbean, parts of East Asia, tried to add more all over the world, and when we couldn’t, we made sure we rammed capitalism down the throats of nations who dared try to decide on their own economic forms. We followed hard on European colonial powers, and then basically took the reins from them.

I’m just not seeing anything unique about this, if we’re narrowing it down to the last few years. Yes, it would appear there is basically no pushback whatsoever anymore, regarding the mass privatization of formerly public goods, services and assets. But that started in the early 1970s, and prior to FDR in the 1930s, the scope of “the Commons” was even smaller. We just had this anomalous period of time, a freakish (though selective) break from all out private plunder, from roughly 1933 thru 1973, and then the Empire Struck Back. Along the way, it took advantage of all kinds of crises, like 9/11, to extend the covert and overt side of things, but, again, that’s always been there. It’s just a hell of a lot more sophisticated now, much better funded, and has much better tech.

But we’ve been an empire from the moment we added new “states” beyond the original thirteen.

I’d be really interested in your thoughts on why you think this is unprecedented, as of just the last few years. I think we both agree it exists, and that it shouldn’t. I’m just not so sure I buy the idea that it’s a recent development.

ZN,

I can see a lot of that as possible. And another thing in favor of your reading is that most of his novels have a single-person perspective, in turns. He gives his characters their own space for that, if memory serves. So that what we read is limited to what they can know on the ground. They don’t get the bird’s eye view — or the dragon’s eye — with exceptions. I’d have to reread them to refresh my memory, and I don’t really have the desire to do that right now . . . but I think that’s the case. I don’t think he does the omniscient narrator stuff all that often, and definitely not as the main method of story telling — though I won’t swear to R’hllor, the Lord of Light, that I have the correct mix.

In short, yeah. It’s quite possible he has it all (or mostly) mapped out and is just giving us glimpses, primarily because his characters can’t ever see the whole. He likely hopes readers put enough together to make it work. And judging from all the print spent on this or that theory, he’s definitely piqued a ton of interest. We wouldn’t be talking about it here if he didn’t get a lot of stuff “right.”

zn wrote:

nittany ram wrote:

My take? Jon downplayed the story that he was brought back from the dead. He said that was an exaggeration. The scars say otherwise.

Yes but what’s the big deal about THAT. That is, it’s not clear what the issue is for Daenerys. Unless it;s high school and only the really cool kids get brought back to life. I mean, she has dragons, is immune to fire, and has dealt with warlocks and witches. So why not a resurrection.

It may have something to do with the prophecy regarding her inability to have kids, until . . . The TV show shortened it to a riddle about the sun rising in the west, but the books make it seem like Khal Drogo could be resurrected if she gives birth to a living child again. It’s not fleshed out, but her certainty that she will never have kids, and that the dragons are it . . . may have a loophole. And that loophole apparently could bring back her Khal.