During the Iraq War, the Washington Post correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran wrote a sharply observed book about the Green Zone, depicting it as a sealed-off fantasy realm.
My sense of it is that a super majority of Americans are fed up with the self-appointed "ruling class." Everyone, including a fast growing subset of those who were formerly their most stalwart supporters, is abandoning them. They should have died a well-deserved death in 2020. But so long as we let the arrogant class cheat at the polls, their stupidity will continue to reign.
These motherfuckers are on my last fucking nerve, is the way I'd put that. If we can't detach these vampire squids from our lives, there will be blood. It's miserable.
As your comment illustrates, even the most thoughtful among us are fast reaching the point where "live free or die" sounds more like a prescription than a motto.
The rise of this essentially performative type of politics seems to be largely a function of television. During the print era, politicians tended to be skilled orators and writers; a more intellectual type of statesman was selected for.
Trump was the first social media president. His entire campaign was a trolling operation conducted for the lulz, and it blew these prefabricated, focus-grouped, message-controlled corporate PR specialists out of the water. To a large degree, that's why they're terrified by him. His every tweet made them feel the chill of the grave.
Over the past 50-70 years the ever-growing bi-coastal government-managerial industrial complex at least had the strength of being able to recruit a lot of genuine talent into the machine - standardized testing and GI-Bill tuition sent a lot of good people to the Ivys.
The worship of Diversity-Inclusion-Equity has substantially derailed the talent machine. That has the twin effects of denying the ruling class the services of quality people who might have otherwise advanced their progress and creating a cadre of talented disaffected outsiders who know what mischief the increasingly mediocre insiders are up to.
That is a combustible mix; we can pray that the resulting revolution is a good one overall.
For sure. After all, things didn’t go so well post “let them eat cake!” in revolutionary France. (I know, was more a symbolic thing than ever actually said.) Hopefully our “let them drive a Prius” moment ends with less guillotine and more sense and decency.
Absolutely correct. The elites live in their own protective bubble and siphon up the fat of the land while doing little more than constantly preaching at the productive masses about their sinful backwardness, while they run the USA like their private hedge fund, mortgaging what few productive assets remain and paying themselves fat bonuses. But to borrow phrases from Yeats "The Second Coming," the center cannot hold; things will fall apart. Indeed, they already are.
Very true, but things have often gone differently during empire collapses. These elites are as incompetent as they are full of hubris, so chances are they will overreach and bring the whole house of cards crashing down. But it will be chaotic and unpredictable, so anything could happen.
That Liz Cheney is seriously braying about Trump and “democracy,” while ignoring the war crimes and shady dealings of her dad is laughable. That the so-called liberal laps this up as it’s fed by way of a corporate, state run media, just means we’re over. Alas, eras end.
It really is odd how the same thing can be observed up here. All power has been funnelled into the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). They and the Cabinet not only are insulated from the Caucus but the general public. This explains why governance seems so detached from the will of the people and reality. Justin Trudeau is the epitome of this problem and is detached deranged dimwittedness personified.
Of course everything you wrote is spot on, and in a way I should leave it at that, so good that I really have no need to comment, but then you have the clip from Caddyshack. It is too much, too apt, you turned it up to eleven.
When I saw the Green Zone in DC* I saw our present and future fate here and all my other fellow alumni veterans agree.
You need to understand that outside the Green Zone its the Red Zone. So most of 🇺🇸 is Red Zone, in Ireland this was called “Beyond the Pale.”
You should also understand its working, just understand it works. It works very well for them, in most ways it has worked for most of history, that 🇺🇸 was exceptional and is being normalized.
For your next project Mr. Bray you can check out “In the Red Zone: A Journey into the Soul of Iraq” - by the deceased Stephen Vincent (they whacked him, probably Mahdi army, who knows).
You (Mr. Bray) remind me of Stephen Vincent, what got him going was seeing 9/11 live in NY.
He was the real deal, but Iraq at the time was so dangerous I don’t know how to describe it, basically a gangster movie by HBO where everyone dies, surrounded by a zombie apocalypse movie where the zombies have guns and bombs too.
*(I saw the original Green zone one day in Iraq on a trip from the provinces, I believe I was the dustiest fellow they’d seen in some time).
I've come to the undeniable conclusion that if the entire federal government were forced to work remotely, we wouldn't have the problems we're having today. DC is a cesspool; detached from reality. I speak from experience. Turn the entire city into a museum.
They (mostly women) have all gone to the same university with the same major (samfundsvidenskab).
I went to school with one of them, now the second in command of what's supposedly our conservative party (their no.1 is a gay man, it's in many ways quite bizarre), she already sounded scripted back then. It was wierd listening to a 17 year old who would sit and giggle with the other girls and then suddenly switch to politician speak.
My mother asked me the other day if she had always sounded so grown up, didn’t know what to say, just laughed. Instead of being a girl scout or doing sports or riding horses she was a member of the convative youth party, it was her club.
They are trained from a young age and follow the exact same educational route and picks the political party with the best chances of granting them success.
Initially I believed the fencing that went up around the Capital Building in 2021 in Washington DC was pure theatre and symbolic messaging of how dangerous the conservative half of the country was. I have concluded that the fence must have a real sense of reassuring security to real fear. Their isolated bubble distances them enough to have a caricatured impression of danger from the population, regrettably, and a heightened sense of their own heroic efforts. This ensconced elite is likely surprised it has not received more practical pushback beyond, just talking points via televised appearances or printed argument.
This hits on a cultural divide in our society between the Frankish and Gaelic modes and manners. The elite moneyed class has Frankish manners and the professional class (what the author calls Today's Ruling Class) emulates the manners of those whose society they wish to maintain: the very super rich. The super rich export their Frankish manners downward to the professional class. In contrast to this contest of manners and social propriety are the Gauls...with their grain of Gaelic salt...and their coarse smutty jokes...and vulgarity. The Gauls speak against the polite manners of the Frankish class because they repel against the ethics of the elites. Those super rich people had to do super evil things to get their money and their place in society, so maintaining a course vulgar sense of humor is a way of fighting against the Franks and their polite rhetoric and social propriety...which they use to cover the canker hole where their human ethics should be.
The only question for me is, at what point have they isolated themselves so much, and their policies have become so disconnected from reality and so very destructive to the majority, that the whole thing comes crashing down around them while most of us shrug like it doesn't matter.
My sense of it is that a super majority of Americans are fed up with the self-appointed "ruling class." Everyone, including a fast growing subset of those who were formerly their most stalwart supporters, is abandoning them. They should have died a well-deserved death in 2020. But so long as we let the arrogant class cheat at the polls, their stupidity will continue to reign.
These motherfuckers are on my last fucking nerve, is the way I'd put that. If we can't detach these vampire squids from our lives, there will be blood. It's miserable.
As your comment illustrates, even the most thoughtful among us are fast reaching the point where "live free or die" sounds more like a prescription than a motto.
Yes. Exactly that. Why sugar coat it?
Chris? 🥹
Lol
Its new Pirate Chris ☠️
Let me put you in “the mood”
http://free-our-fobbits.blogspot.com/2007/05/not-so-straight-path-perhaps-god-still.html?m=1
http://free-our-fobbits.blogspot.com/?m=1
We will let them
The rise of this essentially performative type of politics seems to be largely a function of television. During the print era, politicians tended to be skilled orators and writers; a more intellectual type of statesman was selected for.
Trump was the first social media president. His entire campaign was a trolling operation conducted for the lulz, and it blew these prefabricated, focus-grouped, message-controlled corporate PR specialists out of the water. To a large degree, that's why they're terrified by him. His every tweet made them feel the chill of the grave.
That book mentioned The Green Zone was totally accurate, it was a bizarre bazaar of buzzards.
(I’m practicing to be the next Jesse Jackson). 😉
Over the past 50-70 years the ever-growing bi-coastal government-managerial industrial complex at least had the strength of being able to recruit a lot of genuine talent into the machine - standardized testing and GI-Bill tuition sent a lot of good people to the Ivys.
The worship of Diversity-Inclusion-Equity has substantially derailed the talent machine. That has the twin effects of denying the ruling class the services of quality people who might have otherwise advanced their progress and creating a cadre of talented disaffected outsiders who know what mischief the increasingly mediocre insiders are up to.
That is a combustible mix; we can pray that the resulting revolution is a good one overall.
For sure. After all, things didn’t go so well post “let them eat cake!” in revolutionary France. (I know, was more a symbolic thing than ever actually said.) Hopefully our “let them drive a Prius” moment ends with less guillotine and more sense and decency.
Absolutely correct. The elites live in their own protective bubble and siphon up the fat of the land while doing little more than constantly preaching at the productive masses about their sinful backwardness, while they run the USA like their private hedge fund, mortgaging what few productive assets remain and paying themselves fat bonuses. But to borrow phrases from Yeats "The Second Coming," the center cannot hold; things will fall apart. Indeed, they already are.
Sir - every other time in their lives our elites made things fall apart they got richer, more powerful and more smug.
Remember “Disruptive Technologies “?
“If it works break it”?
“Who moved my Cheese?”
This is what they do. They are a plundering swarm of barbarians with pens and lawyers.
Very true, but things have often gone differently during empire collapses. These elites are as incompetent as they are full of hubris, so chances are they will overreach and bring the whole house of cards crashing down. But it will be chaotic and unpredictable, so anything could happen.
There’s no extant alternative to Team Elites and Team Government- they made sure.
Now it COULD happen but that requires risk and Americans don’t care for that sort of thing
That Liz Cheney is seriously braying about Trump and “democracy,” while ignoring the war crimes and shady dealings of her dad is laughable. That the so-called liberal laps this up as it’s fed by way of a corporate, state run media, just means we’re over. Alas, eras end.
It really is odd how the same thing can be observed up here. All power has been funnelled into the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). They and the Cabinet not only are insulated from the Caucus but the general public. This explains why governance seems so detached from the will of the people and reality. Justin Trudeau is the epitome of this problem and is detached deranged dimwittedness personified.
Ye on are the American system now. Canada 🍁
Of course everything you wrote is spot on, and in a way I should leave it at that, so good that I really have no need to comment, but then you have the clip from Caddyshack. It is too much, too apt, you turned it up to eleven.
When I saw the Green Zone in DC* I saw our present and future fate here and all my other fellow alumni veterans agree.
You need to understand that outside the Green Zone its the Red Zone. So most of 🇺🇸 is Red Zone, in Ireland this was called “Beyond the Pale.”
You should also understand its working, just understand it works. It works very well for them, in most ways it has worked for most of history, that 🇺🇸 was exceptional and is being normalized.
For your next project Mr. Bray you can check out “In the Red Zone: A Journey into the Soul of Iraq” - by the deceased Stephen Vincent (they whacked him, probably Mahdi army, who knows).
You (Mr. Bray) remind me of Stephen Vincent, what got him going was seeing 9/11 live in NY.
He was the real deal, but Iraq at the time was so dangerous I don’t know how to describe it, basically a gangster movie by HBO where everyone dies, surrounded by a zombie apocalypse movie where the zombies have guns and bombs too.
*(I saw the original Green zone one day in Iraq on a trip from the provinces, I believe I was the dustiest fellow they’d seen in some time).
Actually blogged about it next day lol
http://free-our-fobbits.blogspot.com/2007/03/bon-mots-new-spartans-battle-drills.html?m=1
I've come to the undeniable conclusion that if the entire federal government were forced to work remotely, we wouldn't have the problems we're having today. DC is a cesspool; detached from reality. I speak from experience. Turn the entire city into a museum.
No, their mischief will not end being metastasized
The nice danish politician lady who wrote the famous https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/welcome-to-2030-i-own-nothing-have-no-privacy-and-life-has-never-been-better-ee2eed62f710
Is the Danish arch typical politician of our day.
They (mostly women) have all gone to the same university with the same major (samfundsvidenskab).
I went to school with one of them, now the second in command of what's supposedly our conservative party (their no.1 is a gay man, it's in many ways quite bizarre), she already sounded scripted back then. It was wierd listening to a 17 year old who would sit and giggle with the other girls and then suddenly switch to politician speak.
My mother asked me the other day if she had always sounded so grown up, didn’t know what to say, just laughed. Instead of being a girl scout or doing sports or riding horses she was a member of the convative youth party, it was her club.
They are trained from a young age and follow the exact same educational route and picks the political party with the best chances of granting them success.
That's our current danish breed of politicians.
Initially I believed the fencing that went up around the Capital Building in 2021 in Washington DC was pure theatre and symbolic messaging of how dangerous the conservative half of the country was. I have concluded that the fence must have a real sense of reassuring security to real fear. Their isolated bubble distances them enough to have a caricatured impression of danger from the population, regrettably, and a heightened sense of their own heroic efforts. This ensconced elite is likely surprised it has not received more practical pushback beyond, just talking points via televised appearances or printed argument.
This hits on a cultural divide in our society between the Frankish and Gaelic modes and manners. The elite moneyed class has Frankish manners and the professional class (what the author calls Today's Ruling Class) emulates the manners of those whose society they wish to maintain: the very super rich. The super rich export their Frankish manners downward to the professional class. In contrast to this contest of manners and social propriety are the Gauls...with their grain of Gaelic salt...and their coarse smutty jokes...and vulgarity. The Gauls speak against the polite manners of the Frankish class because they repel against the ethics of the elites. Those super rich people had to do super evil things to get their money and their place in society, so maintaining a course vulgar sense of humor is a way of fighting against the Franks and their polite rhetoric and social propriety...which they use to cover the canker hole where their human ethics should be.
The only question for me is, at what point have they isolated themselves so much, and their policies have become so disconnected from reality and so very destructive to the majority, that the whole thing comes crashing down around them while most of us shrug like it doesn't matter.
No, it crashes on us.
That’s the reality now, the one we’re detached from -
When the Soviet Union fell, it did indeed fall on all those under it's sway - but a lot of people shrugged too, and got on with life.
But then, the average Soviet was more prepared for such adversity than the typical American.
The DDR had Kohl and FRG ready to catch them, the rest had well 🇺🇸 and the rest
Trump as Al Czervik is ssssooooooo spot on.
Spot on analysis. Trump is not "one of us" therefore he must be expelled like a parasite!