What Movie Is This?
“MAGA is developing “tech right” fatigue.” — Cernovich on “X”
In this age of info overload, when everybody’s brain has become a memory hole, we’ll see how long anyone remembers Elon Musk’s epic tantrum. The latest news is that Mr. Trump and Wonderboy have scheduled a phone convo for today, Friday, supposedly to “make-up.”
The whole psychodrama looks like an episode out of the Batman movie that America has become. You could see the current plot twist from a thousand miles away. Even back in the summer, Elon’s spastic cavortings on the campaign trail looked suspiciously drug-edged. He’s reported to use ketamine, which induces mood changes from euphoria to anxiety and agitation, as well as slurred speech. Also, altered judgment and disinhibition that might provoke risky behavior. You just have to kind of wonder.
Meanwhile, the fabled Fourth Turning enters full churn. Western Civ, of which we are part, continues to go sideways into history. In case you are distracted by Mr. Musk’s histrionics, we are on a path toward World War, political crack-up, and global bankruptcy.
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Among the strange doings, note former CIA Director Mike Pompeo showing up a week ago at a “Black Sea Security Forum” in Odessa, Ukraine, where — say, what? —he called for called for a "complete victory" over Russia, and advocated for Crimea to be recognized as part of Ukraine (which is not in the folder labeled “Reality”).
A call for “victory” implies that we’re at war with Russia, or seek to enter such a war. Granted, the US neocon-intel-blob sparked the Ukraine-Russia War, starting in 2014, when State Department Cookie Monster Victoria Nuland set off the Maidan color revolution. And “Joe Biden” kept stoking the conflict with cash and ammo — and inflammatory rhetoric. But Mr. Trump has been working this year to put out the fire, difficult as that is, with the EU and the rest of NATO beating war drums offstage.
What was Mike Pompeo up to in Odessa? You can make the case that he was violating the Logan Act: attempting to make freelance foreign policy outside government, and in a rather dangerous way, calling for war, however obliquely. And then you have Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal flying to Kiev to confab with the unelected coke-head running Ukraine’s war machine. . . and alakazam, the next day Ukraine pulls off its long-distance bombing prank deep into Russia, destroying some of its strategic nuclear force. Surely, the purpose of that was to provoke a response that could amount to a casus belli for the EU to launch its (insane and suicidal) longed-for war against Russia.
Why were Pompeo, Lindsey Graham, and Blumenthal not arrested when they flew back to the USA? Everything they were up to in Ukraine had the odor of serious mischief. Mr. Patel of the FBI, a former US attorney who knows how to manage such things, should have personally hauled all three of them into a windowless room for depositions. Who, exactly, does Mike Pompeo purport to represent these days? Who paid for his trip to Odessa, and who went with him? And why isn’t anybody asking these questions?
Elon Musk’s bout of intemperance was supposedly provoked by his disgust over the “big beautiful bill” before Congress, not a budget, really, but a mandatory spending reconciliation package with lots of bells, whistles, and kazoos attached. Of course, you have to ask: what legislation coming out of that animal farm is not a monstrosity? Maybe it takes a monster to fight a monster.
Maybe America needs to transition out of its Batman phase into something like King Kong versus Godzilla. The multitude of little folk underfoot are getting trampled, anyway. And the bankruptcy of America is already presenting itself as a sort of systemic sepsis driving ordinary people and small businesses to ruin, even while the stock and bond markets manage to levitate. No one can feel comfortable in the present situation.
The Democratic Party played the Joker the past ten Batman years, working overtime to throw the country into chaos. That movie’s over. Now, strange to relate, it’s looking more and more like the USA (King Kong) against Europe (Godzilla). Russia is the lady in peril down among the ferns watching the brutes roar at each other. China is something like Ming-the-Merciless from a distant planet (and another movie), waiting off-stage to see what happens.
Europe has a death wish. Its economy is cratering. It’s sacrificing two-thousand years of culture to a new barbarian invasion. The governments of the UK, France, and Germany, have gone full Orwell against their own citizens. The unelected EU has turned into a tyrannical machine grinding up anything that looks like enterprise. And the war drums they’re beating can only bring on a hard rain of Russian hypersonic “hazelnuts,” destroying the only thing they have left: their once-charming cities. If that’s not enough to finish Europe off, wait for the banking and bond market implosion.
Mr. Trump knows that Godzilla is fixing to fall off a cliff. He’s more inclined to take up with that lady down in the ferns and march back into the humid, welcoming jungle. If you really want to rescue what’s left of Western Civ, Russia in its current form, would be your natural ally, not your opponent. Nobody knows how we will get through this movie, but time does not stand still and some day we will be back in a world of nations that have given up acting like monsters. . . and maybe the next movie is something light-hearted like Carey Grant and Kate Hepburn with a pet leopard.
Gallery 16 is UP! Paintings from the 2024 season
Fisherman and the White Boat, Hudson River at Clark’s Mills, NY
JHK’s World Made By Hand four-book novel cycle. A small town in the remnant of the USA in the not-distant future. The community struggles to carry on. . . .
"I started my blog, Clusterfuck Nation, almost twenty years ago to chronicle the week-by-week process of our collapsing civilization… What I had not anticipated in The Long Emergency was how badly the process of collapse would disorder the minds of the whole American population and, with that, the consensus about reality." —James Howard Kunstler, CrazyLand
"What was Mike Pompeo up to in Odessa? You can make the case that he was violating the Logan Act , Why were Pompeo, Lindsey Graham, and Blumenthal not arrested when they flew back to the USA?"
We seem to live in a time where laxity is endemic, even under the current administration. While there are signs here and there that there is a new sheriff in town, the application of our laws on such a high level seems to have largely gone to the wayside. Whether this is a symptom of a deeper cultural malaise, I don't know. Perhaps it's the tacit recognition that sometimes the low road can take you places that the high road doesn't, which is a sobering realization.
What I do know is that once the full force of law withers, so does society. Recall former AG Holder telling state AG's that they should not feel compelled to enforce laws they don't agree with. This isn't a slippery slope; rather, it is a direct fall into the abyss of societal breakdown, where the application of law is a suggestion versus an obligation.
I guess Trump and Musk never learned that you’re not supposed to fight in front of the children.