Eisenhower's farewell address, 17 January 1961: he spoke of his fear of "the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether unsought or sought, by the military industrial complex," and of the "danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."
And where are we now with these predictions, 64 yrs later?
Well, there's a lot more that cd be said abt Teller. In the early 1970s, he was touring the country to promote another nuclear project, his discredited "Plowshare" program. (Yrs later, under Reagan, the "Star Wars"/SDI program was also revealed to be scientifically faulty.) Several faculty members at Rutgers U., myself included, showed up w/a banner that simply said PEACE, and made a short, rather mild statement about the dangers of thermonuclear war. Teller than took the podium and said something like, "I know these people. I have met them before. They are Nazis." That was his idea of an appropriate response. The next day, one faculty wife who hadn't even been at the event told me that what our small group had done was wrong (i.e., immoral in some way; or maybe she just meant impolite--!). My guess was that she spoke for the majority of my colleagues, tho I cdn't be sure (just think how academics sold out to Joe McCarthy 20 yrs earlier). As I've said b4, in America, even the smart ones are dumb; which hardly bodes well for the future, inasmuch as it hasn't boded well in the past. Teller is a prime example of how the psychosis of one individual can become the psychosis of an entire nation, altho his own Manichaean mental illness was preceded by the overall Manichaean mental illness of America in general, going back centuries). As for Nick Cave, Kurt Vonnegut beat him to it, declaring, many yrs ago, "There's a shit storm coming." It seems to me it has finally arrived; that we are living in it rt now.
In the past, when I was asked to give a lecture (as a visiting prof.) in some history or sociology class, I would write Chomsky's name on the blackboard and ask the class--abt 50 students, typically--how many knew who this person was. Usually, only 1 person raised their hand. As to yr pt. #2: there is no question that most Americans have shit for brains. Pt. #3: most Americans regard US power abroad to be a beneficent force. Only a small % see thru the b.s.
Actually, the US has a long history of exactly what Trump is threatening to do; he's just open abt it. Somewhere on YouTube there's a video of Noam Chomsky discussing this ploy in the case of Japan: in effect, FDR gave Japan the choice of becoming an economic colony of America, or else rejecting the offer; wh/took the form of bombing Pearl Harbor. Disastrous for them, of course, in the long run, but in 1941, they felt that the choice was not much of a choice. So FDR cd famously declare the Pearl Harbor attack as "a day of infamy," but in fact he knew what he was doing: playing a chess game, one might say. The American goal has been to dominate the planet economically, and if that fails, militarily. Trumpi is following a well-worn path; wh/ultimately, I believe, will not only fail, but also be part of our undoing.
It's true that a # of Americans have woken up to the fact that their lives are degraded, and decided that they didn't want to live in degradation any longer. And this is, of course, a gd thing. The problem is, if there is a data base somewhere telling us what the % of Americans have come to this realization and left the country, I for one have no idea where it is, or how to access it. My guess is that the % is v. small, because America is quite brilliant/successful at giving its citizens (and very many foreigners) a snow job as to how fabulous the country is. So I suspect that the amt is less than 2%, but I wish there were a way of finding out for sure.
I did write abt him, I think it was in DAA and WAF. But I don't think he felt guilty in any way, or any need to apologize or cleanse his soul. On the level of foreign policy, what he was suggesting was the exact opposite of what we had been doing for at least 200 yrs, wh/C. Wright Mills called "crackpot realism." Jimmy was trying to get the US to opt for sanity, instead. Fat chance. If I were the pope, I wd canonize him; he had one of the cleanest souls around.
Gosh, and here I thought the streets were paved with gold. Were they bullshitting me? Anyway, continuing w/our theme that Bad Is Good, the cluelessness of Americans is hastening our collapse, day by day.
I cdn't find yr last message. I assume that once again, it got buried.
Nick: you give us the microcosm; Jack: you give us the macrocosm. The two of them work together, as I've noted many times in the past. They depict a nation in a state of progressive collapse. Stupidity rules! A buffonic populace can only produce buffonic leaders, and buffonic policies. These in turn can only produce buffoons, in a vicious cycle.
I think it is important that Jack Smith's report got released. It shows that Trump managed to turn reality upside down only because he got re-elected, and that if that had not happened, he wd have been convicted and gone to jail. Of course, Trumpites don't care one way or the other, but I think it was crucial that the empirical evidence be made public, and become part of the public record. That Trump's version of the Jan. 6 rioters will hold sway, and that he will pardon those people as "heroes," is of course shameful; but such an action, as well as the inversion of the truth, is part of America's decline. And I believe History will record this fact. As we say on this blog, Bad Is Good; but this Bad is indeed very bad. Of course, American democracy was an ideal; it never was a genuine democracy. But even if that democracy was only "theoretical," it nevertheless was a fine ideal, and Trump is, beyond doubt, a besmirching or blackening of that ideal, in addition to being a disgusting human being. His administration will be a fraud, a Potemkin village, having only a fake legitimacy, as America enters a complete charade. Let's applaud Jack Smith for saying this, loud and clear.
3. In future, pls send messages to the top of the thread, and not w/in the thread. Inside means I hafta search around for it, wh/sometimes proves to be difficult. Thank you.
Allen-
One obvious question is, Is this terrible event connected in any way w/climate chg?
Black-
Your (non)family experience is v. sad, but is really the American Dream (hustling) in an extreme form. It's finally come to this: nonfamilies, noncommunity, and a noncountry. As neoliberalism accelerates, we are headed toward a very bleak future. For an apt comparison, check this out: Colin Turnbull, "The Mountain People."
First, let me say that so many people need to be beaten to w/in an inch of their lives, and then thrown on a dung heap, that I get dizzy just thinking about it. Second, Alan, I've actually written a fair amt abt American loneliness, and cited numerous sources that report the phenomenon in extenso. Also try Googling "loneliness in America." Third, Joe, hustling is woven into our DNA; it was present in a large % of those who originally settled on the American continent, 400+ yrs ago. As a result, ours is a society that annoys you at every turn. I barf on their heads.
p.s. I’m surprised, Doctor, that these emails, initially before these myriad annoying survey requests, haven’t hit me with the usual phony disingenuous “How are ya doing?” line. But I guess that question for the time being still is reserved here only for the obedient retail cashiers. The useless company ass kissers from the “human resources” departments here in the corporate U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.! will have these pawns fired from their jobs if they don’t robotically ask it. The whole thing ( this country and its capitalist corporate mindset) is quite pathetic when you think about it.
Well, maybe; but I tend to think that Trumpola has no idea as to what he is doing, esp. in the Middle East. He lives by impulse, after all.
All you or I or anyone needs to know abt what is going on politically is the following :
1. Blinken, Schminken. The guy is a turkey; everything he does is theater. He is empty. He has no self, no inner reality. He's a buffoon.
2. The US Gov't consists of simplistic, genocidal scumbags. They too are buffoons. Jimmy Carter represents the last shred of decency that our gov't possessed.
3. The American people are sad and stupid. They also contain a lot of repressed anger, and so are potentially violent. Well, not just potentially, as the daily news media shows us. They are killing each other off at a fantastic rate. On average, there are 1.1 massacres a day--no kidding. "Clueless" doesn't even begin to describe them.
4. The tectonic shift theory suggests that the country has no future; that power and energy are flowing from West to East, as Mao Zedong predicted many yrs ago. Our time is up; the "scepter" is passing from us to Russia, India, China, BRICS, and some of the Islamic nations. Trump's historical function is to make this happen, tho he, like the American people, hasn't the foggiest idea of what is going on, in a substantial and empirical way.
5. The root cause of our decline is buffoonage, at every level of our existence. A new world is coming into being, as will be obvious by 2030.
6. But America keeps trying to deny all this, in the same way that England did (and does) after she lost all genuine power and influence in the world. England looks silly, as a result. In a few yrs, America will look the same--at least to the rest of the world.
He's a douchebag. He's always been a douchebag. What else is there to say? All of these billionaires are boy emperors, really: completely immature. Arrested development, children who never grew up.
As for yr 2nd comment: I deleted it, because you put it inside, not at the top. From now on: only at the top, chico.
Eisenhower's farewell address, 17 January 1961: he spoke of his fear of "the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether unsought or sought, by the military industrial complex," and of the "danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."
And where are we now with these predictions, 64 yrs later?
Move Over Keats Dept.:
Americans are living lives that are slated
To become increasingly degraded.
With their heads up their ass
They have absolutely no class
And from their lives all meaning has faded.
Optera-
Well, there's a lot more that cd be said abt Teller. In the early 1970s, he was touring the country to promote another nuclear project, his discredited "Plowshare" program. (Yrs later, under Reagan, the "Star Wars"/SDI program was also revealed to be scientifically faulty.) Several faculty members at Rutgers U., myself included, showed up w/a banner that simply said PEACE, and made a short, rather mild statement about the dangers of thermonuclear war. Teller than took the podium and said something like, "I know these people. I have met them before. They are Nazis." That was his idea of an appropriate response. The next day, one faculty wife who hadn't even been at the event told me that what our small group had done was wrong (i.e., immoral in some way; or maybe she just meant impolite--!). My guess was that she spoke for the majority of my colleagues, tho I cdn't be sure (just think how academics sold out to Joe McCarthy 20 yrs earlier). As I've said b4, in America, even the smart ones are dumb; which hardly bodes well for the future, inasmuch as it hasn't boded well in the past. Teller is a prime example of how the psychosis of one individual can become the psychosis of an entire nation, altho his own Manichaean mental illness was preceded by the overall Manichaean mental illness of America in general, going back centuries). As for Nick Cave, Kurt Vonnegut beat him to it, declaring, many yrs ago, "There's a shit storm coming." It seems to me it has finally arrived; that we are living in it rt now.
-mb
Derek-
In the past, when I was asked to give a lecture (as a visiting prof.) in some history or sociology class, I would write Chomsky's name on the blackboard and ask the class--abt 50 students, typically--how many knew who this person was. Usually, only 1 person raised their hand. As to yr pt. #2: there is no question that most Americans have shit for brains. Pt. #3: most Americans regard US power abroad to be a beneficent force. Only a small % see thru the b.s.
-mb
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/07/canada-politics-trump-tariffs-trudeau
Actually, the US has a long history of exactly what Trump is threatening to do; he's just open abt it. Somewhere on YouTube there's a video of Noam Chomsky discussing this ploy in the case of Japan: in effect, FDR gave Japan the choice of becoming an economic colony of America, or else rejecting the offer; wh/took the form of bombing Pearl Harbor. Disastrous for them, of course, in the long run, but in 1941, they felt that the choice was not much of a choice. So FDR cd famously declare the Pearl Harbor attack as "a day of infamy," but in fact he knew what he was doing: playing a chess game, one might say. The American goal has been to dominate the planet economically, and if that fails, militarily. Trumpi is following a well-worn path; wh/ultimately, I believe, will not only fail, but also be part of our undoing.
-mb
Joe-
It's true that a # of Americans have woken up to the fact that their lives are degraded, and decided that they didn't want to live in degradation any longer. And this is, of course, a gd thing. The problem is, if there is a data base somewhere telling us what the % of Americans have come to this realization and left the country, I for one have no idea where it is, or how to access it. My guess is that the % is v. small, because America is quite brilliant/successful at giving its citizens (and very many foreigners) a snow job as to how fabulous the country is. So I suspect that the amt is less than 2%, but I wish there were a way of finding out for sure.
-mb
MS-
Come on; tell us how you *really* feel!
-mb
Andrew-
I did write abt him, I think it was in DAA and WAF. But I don't think he felt guilty in any way, or any need to apologize or cleanse his soul. On the level of foreign policy, what he was suggesting was the exact opposite of what we had been doing for at least 200 yrs, wh/C. Wright Mills called "crackpot realism." Jimmy was trying to get the US to opt for sanity, instead. Fat chance. If I were the pope, I wd canonize him; he had one of the cleanest souls around.
-mb
David-
Gosh, and here I thought the streets were paved with gold. Were they bullshitting me? Anyway, continuing w/our theme that Bad Is Good, the cluelessness of Americans is hastening our collapse, day by day.
-mb
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jan/16/everything-we-were-taught-about-success-is-wrong-how-to-find-true-fulfilment-in-your-life-and-career
I've been saying stuff like this for more than 20 yrs now. And this too (well, for 5 yrs):
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/16/i-knew-one-day-id-have-to-watch-powerful-men-burn-the-world-down-i-just-didnt-expect-them-to-be-such-losers
At the heart of our decline: buffoonage, in every walk of American life.
-mb
ps: Michael: "dodo" is indeed the operative word here.
David-
I cdn't find yr last message. I assume that once again, it got buried.
Nick: you give us the microcosm; Jack: you give us the macrocosm. The two of them work together, as I've noted many times in the past. They depict a nation in a state of progressive collapse. Stupidity rules! A buffonic populace can only produce buffonic leaders, and buffonic policies. These in turn can only produce buffoons, in a vicious cycle.
-mb
Black-
I think it is important that Jack Smith's report got released. It shows that Trump managed to turn reality upside down only because he got re-elected, and that if that had not happened, he wd have been convicted and gone to jail. Of course, Trumpites don't care one way or the other, but I think it was crucial that the empirical evidence be made public, and become part of the public record. That Trump's version of the Jan. 6 rioters will hold sway, and that he will pardon those people as "heroes," is of course shameful; but such an action, as well as the inversion of the truth, is part of America's decline. And I believe History will record this fact. As we say on this blog, Bad Is Good; but this Bad is indeed very bad. Of course, American democracy was an ideal; it never was a genuine democracy. But even if that democracy was only "theoretical," it nevertheless was a fine ideal, and Trump is, beyond doubt, a besmirching or blackening of that ideal, in addition to being a disgusting human being. His administration will be a fraud, a Potemkin village, having only a fake legitimacy, as America enters a complete charade. Let's applaud Jack Smith for saying this, loud and clear.
-mb
David-
1. Yes, the irony is real.
2. Hope you enjoy my bk.
3. In future, pls send messages to the top of the thread, and not w/in the thread. Inside means I hafta search around for it, wh/sometimes proves to be difficult. Thank you.
Allen-
One obvious question is, Is this terrible event connected in any way w/climate chg?
Black-
Your (non)family experience is v. sad, but is really the American Dream (hustling) in an extreme form. It's finally come to this: nonfamilies, noncommunity, and a noncountry. As neoliberalism accelerates, we are headed toward a very bleak future. For an apt comparison, check this out: Colin Turnbull, "The Mountain People."
-mb
Joe, Alan-
First, let me say that so many people need to be beaten to w/in an inch of their lives, and then thrown on a dung heap, that I get dizzy just thinking about it. Second, Alan, I've actually written a fair amt abt American loneliness, and cited numerous sources that report the phenomenon in extenso. Also try Googling "loneliness in America." Third, Joe, hustling is woven into our DNA; it was present in a large % of those who originally settled on the American continent, 400+ yrs ago. As a result, ours is a society that annoys you at every turn. I barf on their heads.
-mb
p.s. I’m surprised, Doctor, that these emails, initially before these myriad annoying survey requests, haven’t hit me with the usual phony disingenuous “How are ya doing?” line. But I guess that question for the time being still is reserved here only for the obedient retail cashiers. The useless company ass kissers from the “human resources” departments here in the corporate U.S.A.!, U.S.A.!, U.S.A.! will have these pawns fired from their jobs if they don’t robotically ask it. The whole thing ( this country and its capitalist corporate mindset) is quite pathetic when you think about it.
Black-
Well, maybe; but I tend to think that Trumpola has no idea as to what he is doing, esp. in the Middle East. He lives by impulse, after all.
All you or I or anyone needs to know abt what is going on politically is the following :
1. Blinken, Schminken. The guy is a turkey; everything he does is theater. He is empty. He has no self, no inner reality. He's a buffoon.
2. The US Gov't consists of simplistic, genocidal scumbags. They too are buffoons. Jimmy Carter represents the last shred of decency that our gov't possessed.
3. The American people are sad and stupid. They also contain a lot of repressed anger, and so are potentially violent. Well, not just potentially, as the daily news media shows us. They are killing each other off at a fantastic rate. On average, there are 1.1 massacres a day--no kidding. "Clueless" doesn't even begin to describe them.
4. The tectonic shift theory suggests that the country has no future; that power and energy are flowing from West to East, as Mao Zedong predicted many yrs ago. Our time is up; the "scepter" is passing from us to Russia, India, China, BRICS, and some of the Islamic nations. Trump's historical function is to make this happen, tho he, like the American people, hasn't the foggiest idea of what is going on, in a substantial and empirical way.
5. The root cause of our decline is buffoonage, at every level of our existence. A new world is coming into being, as will be obvious by 2030.
6. But America keeps trying to deny all this, in the same way that England did (and does) after she lost all genuine power and influence in the world. England looks silly, as a result. In a few yrs, America will look the same--at least to the rest of the world.
-mb
Black-
He's a douchebag. He's always been a douchebag. What else is there to say? All of these billionaires are boy emperors, really: completely immature. Arrested development, children who never grew up.
As for yr 2nd comment: I deleted it, because you put it inside, not at the top. From now on: only at the top, chico.
-mb