People forget, or maybe they want to. In his time Napoleon was a mass murderer, and not just on the battlefield, killing thousands of prisoners, opponents, casual civilians and so on. He reintroduced slavery to France! Today he's something between a national hero and a funny icon. He was not on the scale of Hitler, but then he had less t…
People forget, or maybe they want to. In his time Napoleon was a mass murderer, and not just on the battlefield, killing thousands of prisoners, opponents, casual civilians and so on. He reintroduced slavery to France! Today he's something between a national hero and a funny icon. He was not on the scale of Hitler, but then he had less to work with. In a century or less the Third Reich could be like that. There are few people left from the 1940s to remind us of what they did.
But regarding the Nazis, maybe we've been looking at Trump's sellout to Putin all wrong. Yes he may be a dope who is willing to give Moscow everything he can, but that doesn't mean he's like Chamberlain at Munich. It is at least possible that the people behind him (Musk and undoubtedly other big money groups) are taking a page from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 when Hitler and Stalin divided up Eastern Europe.
Just maybe the idea is to let Putin take back much of the old Soviet satellite empire, while Western Europe (particularly Germany) is left so weakened that the U.S. can economically dominate it again without the expense of leaving troops there. China, given a free hand in eastern Asia (and propping up Russia), would be happy with this and the U.S. could keep its primacy in the Americas.
This is just an idea of course, and vast conspiracies are never likely anyway. But it does sort of create a parallel to Orwell's tri-polar world in "1984". It's not perfect--India and Brazil, for example, are bigger players now—but it could be considered as one explanation for what is now happening. The sad thing is that even if something like this is true it may not really matter. Without immediate action climate change will destroy the whole world’s political and economic structure no matter what we do. When people fight in a burning house things do not end well.
Interesting that the world domination players are not taking the massive climate change realities into account. There’s that massive ice sheet ready to break off in the Antarctic which will raise the sea level world wide.
If you ditch the TV and most radio and concentrate on the superb reporting in several of the still viable distinguished publications (The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Reason, even Vanity Fair, etc.), you will find much of what you're wishing for - the back stories, the indepth research that requires weeks, months, even years to authenticate. Example: Sometime in the 80s, I read a magazine piece (can't now recall which mag) about Leonard Leo and the GOP plan to rig the court system; but his name appeared in popular media only within the last few years (after the substantial takeover). I doubt that one in ten adult Americans have any idea who Leo is. For the last few years, especially, Nation and Mother Jones have done superb reporting on the origins and likely consequences of the moment we're now in. Do these names ring a bell with you: Russell Kirk? Curtis Yarvin (January 2025 The Nation)? Dr. John Tanton? Chris Pavlovski? Charlie Kirk? Jeffrey Yass? Christopher Polhaus? Did you learn about them on MSNBC? How about Wolfgang Yourgrau? Get his story in the September issue of The Nation. No TV performance art required, and you get the whole story.
I have never owned a TV, but I know about all of these people and many more because I read. But: I am currently encouraged by a plethora of quality podcasts online. I am particularly encouraged by the number of young people podcasting. They are articulate, knowledgeable, and fiercely dedicated to the whole story and to rescue and preservation of our democratic system. They can also be listened to without being glued to a screen.
Uh-oh. I neglected to mention that most of the wrecking ball people take the climate issue quite seriously; it's part of the white supremacy movement. If the planet is going to become increasingly unliveable and will sustain fewer and fewer people, then "they" plan to be the survivors. Technology will bail them out. Dark skins will be sacrificed. The US must control territories for the resources that will be necessary to sustain the technologies and the livelihoods of the superior caste. It's all very simple; see?
I say read or listen to Jeffrey Sachs about how the world works -what is happening with Russia, Ukraine and the US. Putin is recorded saying that he had worked with three US Presidents who devised ideas to work together on Russian issues, only to backtrack when the men in black suits and ties came in to tell the presidents how it would come down. CIA.
Perhaps. There are so many interests crossing each other. I loved what Candidate Obama said but President Obama suddenly changed. Clinton too, I think. Harry Truman wrote an article in December, 1963 basically saying that the CIA had gotten completely out of control (they tried to talk him out of publishing but couldn't). A decade later the Church Committee put on some controls, but you know how long such things last.
You have a point Doc, Time dulls the mind. Napoleon was a proto Hitler, Julius Caesar committed genocide and bragged about it. Alexander the great, on the other hand even manumitted his opponents and treated the populations he conquered with more respect and care than their own kings.
As regards the Trump Putin world. I think it is more along the lines of George Orwell,
People forget, or maybe they want to. In his time Napoleon was a mass murderer, and not just on the battlefield, killing thousands of prisoners, opponents, casual civilians and so on. He reintroduced slavery to France! Today he's something between a national hero and a funny icon. He was not on the scale of Hitler, but then he had less to work with. In a century or less the Third Reich could be like that. There are few people left from the 1940s to remind us of what they did.
But regarding the Nazis, maybe we've been looking at Trump's sellout to Putin all wrong. Yes he may be a dope who is willing to give Moscow everything he can, but that doesn't mean he's like Chamberlain at Munich. It is at least possible that the people behind him (Musk and undoubtedly other big money groups) are taking a page from the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 when Hitler and Stalin divided up Eastern Europe.
Just maybe the idea is to let Putin take back much of the old Soviet satellite empire, while Western Europe (particularly Germany) is left so weakened that the U.S. can economically dominate it again without the expense of leaving troops there. China, given a free hand in eastern Asia (and propping up Russia), would be happy with this and the U.S. could keep its primacy in the Americas.
This is just an idea of course, and vast conspiracies are never likely anyway. But it does sort of create a parallel to Orwell's tri-polar world in "1984". It's not perfect--India and Brazil, for example, are bigger players now—but it could be considered as one explanation for what is now happening. The sad thing is that even if something like this is true it may not really matter. Without immediate action climate change will destroy the whole world’s political and economic structure no matter what we do. When people fight in a burning house things do not end well.
Interesting that the world domination players are not taking the massive climate change realities into account. There’s that massive ice sheet ready to break off in the Antarctic which will raise the sea level world wide.
If you ditch the TV and most radio and concentrate on the superb reporting in several of the still viable distinguished publications (The Atlantic, The Nation, The New Yorker, Mother Jones, Reason, even Vanity Fair, etc.), you will find much of what you're wishing for - the back stories, the indepth research that requires weeks, months, even years to authenticate. Example: Sometime in the 80s, I read a magazine piece (can't now recall which mag) about Leonard Leo and the GOP plan to rig the court system; but his name appeared in popular media only within the last few years (after the substantial takeover). I doubt that one in ten adult Americans have any idea who Leo is. For the last few years, especially, Nation and Mother Jones have done superb reporting on the origins and likely consequences of the moment we're now in. Do these names ring a bell with you: Russell Kirk? Curtis Yarvin (January 2025 The Nation)? Dr. John Tanton? Chris Pavlovski? Charlie Kirk? Jeffrey Yass? Christopher Polhaus? Did you learn about them on MSNBC? How about Wolfgang Yourgrau? Get his story in the September issue of The Nation. No TV performance art required, and you get the whole story.
I have never owned a TV, but I know about all of these people and many more because I read. But: I am currently encouraged by a plethora of quality podcasts online. I am particularly encouraged by the number of young people podcasting. They are articulate, knowledgeable, and fiercely dedicated to the whole story and to rescue and preservation of our democratic system. They can also be listened to without being glued to a screen.
Uh-oh. I neglected to mention that most of the wrecking ball people take the climate issue quite seriously; it's part of the white supremacy movement. If the planet is going to become increasingly unliveable and will sustain fewer and fewer people, then "they" plan to be the survivors. Technology will bail them out. Dark skins will be sacrificed. The US must control territories for the resources that will be necessary to sustain the technologies and the livelihoods of the superior caste. It's all very simple; see?
I say read or listen to Jeffrey Sachs about how the world works -what is happening with Russia, Ukraine and the US. Putin is recorded saying that he had worked with three US Presidents who devised ideas to work together on Russian issues, only to backtrack when the men in black suits and ties came in to tell the presidents how it would come down. CIA.
Perhaps. There are so many interests crossing each other. I loved what Candidate Obama said but President Obama suddenly changed. Clinton too, I think. Harry Truman wrote an article in December, 1963 basically saying that the CIA had gotten completely out of control (they tried to talk him out of publishing but couldn't). A decade later the Church Committee put on some controls, but you know how long such things last.
You have a point Doc, Time dulls the mind. Napoleon was a proto Hitler, Julius Caesar committed genocide and bragged about it. Alexander the great, on the other hand even manumitted his opponents and treated the populations he conquered with more respect and care than their own kings.
As regards the Trump Putin world. I think it is more along the lines of George Orwell,
Oceania, Eurasia, East Asia and Islam here is a wikipedia rendering of that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_geography_of_Nineteen_Eighty-Four#/media/File:1984's_Geopolitics.png