Sunday, July 30, 2017

The Party's Over


Even the US military is finally facing facts. The party's over. American dominance, that anyone under 70 has spent their entire life taking for granted, is over. It's not coming back. America's only hope, according to the great minds of the US Army War College is to arrest the slide and that means ever more and better and more costly weapons and ever more soldiers to fire'em.

The only surprise in this report is that anyone could be surprised. Read between the lines in other Pentagon reports and, especially, the past two Quadrennial Defense Reviews and the warnings are all there. The latest report is available free in pdf. here.

We've known for over 15-years that mankind has driven Earth into "overshoot." It actually happened in the early 70s when we broke the 3 billion population ceiling.  What are we at now, 7.5 billion heading in just another two decades to 9 billion? How deep does your Catholicism have to run to think we can avoid one or more truly cataclysmic wars before we would ever get to 9? Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids.

The Pentagon is pitching this more guns/more gunners campaign based on a new world order. The real focus, however, is to maintain America's preferred access to overseas resources that her new rivals also need and ultimately must contest. What they're really proposing  is a military response to the global dilemma of climate change, overpopulation, and rampant over-consumption. They want to try to fight their way out.

And if that doesn't scare the living shit out of you, it should.

This is what can happen when you sit around with your thumb up your butt. Your best options to act slip through your fingers, utterly foreclosed.  Year by year, one by one they're gone. Eventually it comes down to might is right and the military option.  The Pentagon just sent you your invite.


7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The real focus, however, is to maintain America's preferred access to overseas resources !

I will say it again.
Venezuela is next on the list.


TB

Owen Gray said...

It's pointing a gun at a hurricane and thinking that the hurricane will be intimidated.

Dana said...

Dihydrogen monoxide = Canada

Toby said...

Using guns and bombs to solve America's problems hasn't worked for a long time. Escalating same doesn't work. So what's the solution? More guns and bombs, of course. Can somebody remind me - what's the definition of insanity?

Dana said...

Toby, the definition of insanity isn't what you think it is and who you think said it never did.

It first appeared in a 1981 Narcotics Anonymous text.

In this lovely new age we've created for ourselves we're now so inundated with fake shit that we've even begun to pretend some of it is terrible profound.

The Mound of Sound said...


If anyone wants more detail on this US report, I've waded through the whole thing, painful as that was, and posted highlights from the 140-page document.

It does raise some important points that most of us rarely contemplate. I'm not sure why I can't get this Stalin/Beria-Trump/Bannon thing out of my head.

Troy said...

Historically, people like Trump tend to be empire's second-to-last leaders. Leaders who lead their nations into stagnant and ruinous policies. Think Brezhnev. Mehmed V.
It's generally a series of unfortunate coincidences that lead to their installments, and it's usually a series of blundering events they create leading to their empire's decline.
Well, helping to lead to their empire's decline.
The political atmosphere which foster these sorts of leaders helps, too.
Trump crawled fully formed out of a membrane which was vomited onto the floor in the United States during the end of Age of Reagan. I really can't say it was inevitable that Trump would win election in the USA, but it was inevitable that someone much like Trump eventually would.
It's down to the momentum of history, I suppose, that it happened.

To reject Trump, it would involve something people probably aren't comfortable with. It would involve rebuilding the organization which is meant to oppose people such as Trump. It would be rebuilding the Democratic party, booting to the curb much of its incompetent and self-interested leadership, and simply starting over.
That won't happen, however.
Not without an open Democratic Party civil war whereby the new growing Millennial-centric voting bloc, which almost voted into power Bernie Sanders, wrenches power out of the hands of the bloc which handed the most recent Democratic primary to Hilary Clinton.
And that probably won't happen.

It isn't the motivation, I question. Simply the momentum. Things have gone on as they have for far too long. It's simply too late to stop the decline and stagnation from happening.
When things finally come to a halt. When there's a crash. That's when things can start to be rebuilt. But even then, there's probably already bastards positioning themselves so they'll come out on top of the rubble.
It's about timing and luck, I suppose. Hope for the right leaders to show up at the right time, and back them best as possible.