The Trumpening

The rise of Donald Trump is a phenomenon that has certainly exposed the rancid madness that still lurks in the heart of America. As a historian, I can't help but be deeply impressed at how he and his team managed to game the election and steamroll over scandals that would have sunk any other campaign a hundred times over. He took the trend of political campaigns becoming hollow spectacles and took it to its logical conclusion- running his election bid like reality TV. He pulled in ratings unseen in any election and received wide spread coverage from all media, proving once and for all the old maxim that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Team Trump went all in betting against the intelligence of the average American, and we saw the results of that strategy in November.

 

White supremacists now hold positions of high authority in Trump's cabinet. A president now sits up late at night in the White House watching Fox News religiously, tweeting whatever comes into his mind. The pendulum seems to have swung very far this time and we will just have to wait for it to swing back. Democracy is only as good as the majority of the citizens, and in this last election we saw clearly the consequences of the era of social media. People can now sign up for whatever narrative that suits their particular prejudices, and their version of the internet will happily deliver a constant stream of 'news' that backs up that viewpoint.  

I genuinely thought that the baby boomer generation couldn't do any more damage to America, but I was clearly very wrong. It seems that the most dangerous aspect of all this is that the idea of objective reality has been dealt a death blow after years on the defensive. Alternative facts can be concocted on a as needed basis to support whatever the administration sees as expedient. If the media brings up the truth, they can be called fake news and ignored. That the mainstream media has to a large extent become so exceptionally ridiculous and unprofessional that this tactic could succeed so well is depressing. Watching the supposed opposition consistently behave like childish hacks and rather blatantly try to copy the rights media tactics does not bode well for their return to power. 

On the bright side it seems that as a result of the Trumpining the international order is undergoing a major realignment. Seeing as how we are still basically running off the world order agreed upon at Bretton Woods some 70 years ago, that might not be such a bad thing.  

I can't even begin to fully understand who Trump really is, let alone what he actually believes. He is a Tulpa of extreme potency, and one that has seemingly transcended reality through channeling deep seated paranoia, greed, and a fair amount of xenophobic nationalism that has always been a part of the psyche of any great empire. The fact that a candidate ran openly on build a giant wall on our brown border and 'bomb the shit out of them' as serious foreign policy objectives for a complex globalized world that America ostensibly rules, and won a crushing victory on that platform, speaks volumes. Nobody talks of America being the leader of the free world anymore, and many countries, allies included, have essentially said they think the man is at least partially insane, if not a complete sociopath. Even under Bush, there was a ruthless logic and callousness to what he did, that although horrifying, the world could easily enough understand and accept. The most fascinating thing about Trump, in my opinion, is that nobody can anticipate what he will do. His impulsiveness is already the stuff of legend, and he, more so than any other major leader of this century, is just making it up as he goes along. 

I've never been a fan of the Imperial Presidency, even if it was somewhat justifiable at certain points in our history (Civil War, Great Depression, World War II). I just don't trust the concentration of power, and even less so when it becomes one person. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if any single person alive is capable of administering the world that has evolved since globalization made everything so interdependent. In my opinion, Obama was as intelligent and dedicated a president as we have ever had, and even he watched the deficit double because he got extorted into giving billions to predatory banks and passively observed country after country in the MENA region descended into chaotic bloodletting and civil war. Those were not popular moves for Obama to make, but they were probably the best that he had open to him; the alternatives being complete economic collapse on a 1929 scale or endless land wars/nation building in West Asia and North Africa. 

Trump is going to face similar tough choices during his presidency, and although he is clearly capable of outmaneuvering American politicians, I doubt he can do the same when going up against Russia, Iran or North Korea. Iran is close to having a land route all the way to Beirut that will create a Shia crescent from the borders of Pakistan to the Mediterranean. This amazingly bold play by Iran and its Shia brethren is being backed up by a resurgent Russia, which is objectively a lot more effective at dissuading Western intervention than any nuclear program the Iranians could have managed. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are desperate to counter the rise of Shia power in the region. They have and will continue to support movements like Islamic State and al-Nusra (now known as Organization for the Liberation of the Levant or HTS) in order to thwart the Shia apostates that they have hated for well over a hundred generations. This is the greatest challenge to the world order that we have seen in the post-1991 era, and has all the makings of an all out regional war, if not a global one. How much of this Trump fully comprehends is anyone's guess. His speech in Saudi Arabia was rather interesting for two reasons. One, he openly said America no longer cares about spreading Democracy, which although something that the US has probably not really cared about since the 1950's, was still a fundamental part of our foreign and domestic propaganda. He then went on to essentially say that regardless of the horrors that radical Sunni organizations have brought to the Levant, the real issue is the fact that the Shia, led by Iran and protected by Russia, are winning on all the fronts, except perhaps Yemen. It is a moment of historic realignment taking place in the crossroads of three continents and no one is in control of where it will lead. 

Trump is a lot of things, but an idiot isn't one of them. He managed to outsmart the Republican Party, then turn around to stomp the Democrats more ferociously than anyone since Reagan. You can hate the guy, and many do, but you should never fail to appreciate the man's genius for grandstanding and his unrivaled penchant for insult. Still, Machiavellian as the man may be, I truly doubt that he can manage the evolving crisis. The fall of the Islamic State is but a small element in the shifting sands of power in the region, and isn't likely to slow the Shia-Sunni conflict at all. The thing that I can't help but love about Trump is that the man is utterly unpredictable and will say absolutely anything that works its way into that strange mind of his. For all we know he could tweet at 3am tomorrow: We no longer need the oil, so why not let the Muslims kill each other and sell weapons to both sides? #jobs #winning #maga 

Let no one say that we do not live in interesting times.

The Stage Is Set

Ever since the guns fell silent in 1945 it seems that many people have been waiting anxiously for another great war to round out the trilogy. Shockingly, however, the United Nations has managed to fulfill its mandate and avert this third-times-a-charm attempt at collective suicide.  Say what you will about the UN's failures to enforce human rights and prevent smaller scale wars, it has managed to achieve its primary goal of avoiding WWIII amazingly well.
When Turkey shot down that Russian jet I couldn't help but physically cringe. We all knew that the shitstorm in the Levant had the potential to spiral out of control, but this situation felt like someone just capped Archduke Ferdinand. The airspace over Syria has become absurdly crowded with American, French, Australian, Russian, Turkish, Syrian, Saudi, Jordanian, Emirati, Israeli and Qatari warplanes all vying for the chance to bomb people on the ground. Its no minor miracle that an incident similar to this one didn't take place sooner. Now that Assad is actually winning, various forces are considering even more drastic measures, like giving the mujahideen missiles capable of shooting down airplanes; an idea so stupid even the Americans know its insane, at least this time around.
What once was just a civil war has now evolved into a amazingly complicated sectarian proxy war. It's a pretty classic geographical setting for a showdown of biblical proportions. It seems that all the countries in the world that felt the call to chaos just decided that the Levant was a good convenient meeting spot and have thus turned it into a full on barbarity preserve for atavistic savagery. With the possible exception of the Russian and Spanish Civil Wars, I can't think of any other civil war that involved so many outside powers. Its like a cage fight with multiple people in the ring, and a audience that is constantly throwing weapons into the ring, sometimes to help a fighter, other times to hurt one.
The so called 'refugee crises' in the EU, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon is so classic cause and effect that it blows my mind that no one is owning up to their responsibility in the matter. From the perspective of many regions of the world, the past half a millennium could be described as mass migration of Europeans to all corners of the planet, precipitated by war in their countries of origin and economic pull factors. Obviously that is not how European have spun that story, history being written by the victors and all.
There are no easy answers to the problem of displaced and desperate people migrating when necessity makes them abandon their ancestral lands. Under its veneer of civilized sophistication and social conscience, many Europeans still have a deep seated superiority complex over the rest of humanity. Even though migration from Mexico to the United States has statistically stopped as more are returning than arriving, Trump has whipped up an absolute frenzy of nativist rage that once again has demonstrated the ignorance of the far right in America. Really the entire developed world is showing their true colors and dropping the pretense of humanitarianism, albeit, rather gradually.
We are entering into a pivotal moment in human history in which climate change will present a challenge the likes of which civilization has never before confronted. The reality of this is now at least widely accepted, yet, only half measures and empty promises have appeared thus far. When the hard times truly begin, which judging by the data on water supplies wont be long, the current global migrations of the forsaken will seem insignificant compared to the deluge that comes. As horrible as it sounds, a major war, famine or plague just culling a huge chunk of humanity is the most likely solution for the pressures we are putting on the planets environment. The notion that at the 11th hour the global elites will close ranks and martial their respective thralls to the task of completely reorganizing human society along lines that are somehow sustainable is laughable. Only slightly less likely is that the masses will finally rise up against the system and manage to cobble together a new economic order that will save our species.
I'm not advocating nihilism or despair, quite the contrary. What is needed now is steely eyed realism to stare down what we are facing. Anything that divides us, like nationality, ethnicity and religion needs to be thrown overboard forthwith. If some refuse to let go of this tired and burdensome heritage, throw them over too. As things grow more dire in the years to come I predict rational people the world over will be far more willing to jettison this dead weight when it is becomes clear to them that it is necessary for survival. Of course the assholes that benefit from the myriad of divisions that cut through humanity like terminal cancer will do their best to convince them otherwise. They will obviously have to be dealt with in no uncertain terms if we are going to make it into the next century.

"Let nothing be called natural
In an age of bloody confusion,
Ordered disorder, planned caprice,
And dehumanized humanity, lest all things
Be held unalternable!"             -Brecht

"We shall need a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive." -Einstein

Kakistocracy

Its really an interesting to think about how leadership has evolved. For a very long time families, clans and tribes collectively decided who among them was most likely not to get them all killed. Then after that it was whoever was best at outmaneuvering other ambitious sociopaths (frequently their relatives) to take the reigns of state; very often over the dead body of their predecessor. 
That last one is actually still pretty popular in the equatorial regions. 
What capitalism brought to the table is really rather amazing. A public spectacle of ridiculous proportions where the masses are pitted against each other in electoral combat and get into a sporting frenzy about who will wield power. I've never been able to get into it much, cynical bastard that I am. It's rather adorable how flustered some people I know get when they find out that I'm not one of the voters. 
"How can this be?!" they howl indignantly. 
Its pretty awesome actually. I don't like telling kids there is no Santa Klaus or religious adults their is no God, that shit is sad. However, telling an avid believer in democracy, especially the American variety, that its a complete farce intended to placate them into buying into the apocalyptic nightmare into which we are now descending... delightful! 
They'll always fight it, but the facts are an incredible cudgel to beat that nonsense out of people, assuming they don't retreat completely from reality. It almost always ends in the same argument, what I like to call the 'lesser of two evils' dodge. Not a bad fall back position. Much more defensible than the democracy is morally right and the only legitimate form of government position.
The problem with the whole vote for the not so openly evil people thing is that it still leads down the same path, it just lubricates the gears with false hope and naive bullshit instead of fiery nationalism and intolerance.  Obama doesn't speak about the "Axis of Evil" and invade two countries over made up shit, but he does use robot armies to massacre civilians and lock up people whose only crime was to tell the truth. The big difference then is that Obama spoke of hope, gave some people some more rights in the US and was a bit harder to hate as a person. 
At the end of the 8 years though, the world will still be no closer to anything substantial other than complete environmental collapse leading to an inevitable WWIII for sheer survival. 
Which brings me to the crux of my antipathy for the cult of democracy. We live in a world run by money, and the more money you got, the more power you can purchase. The whole voting game is as rigged in the US as it is in Zimbabwe, its just that the people in America have a lot more money spent on them to buy into the system. 
You don't vote for a position, you vote for a party or a person. No one would vote for corporate rule, massive pollution, the bombing of civilians in countries the government doesn't even care about enough to properly invade; yet that is what people vote for over and over again.   
I must concede though, I get pretty caught up in the drama of it all sometimes too. The elections in Turkey next week have me absolutely captivated. Erdogan pretty much started a war against the Kurds in an attempt to get them to lose an election. Ukraine's election that will be tallied and told in a day or two is also pretty good sport, with Pereshenko trying to out maneuver various Oligarchs in order to maintain a mandate to govern the partially disintegrated country. 

"In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme." -Aristotle 
"Democracy is the road to socialism." -Marx
"The new community which the capitalists are now constructing will be a very complete and absolute community; and one which will tolerate nothing really independent of itself." -G.K. Chesterson 

The Armenian Genocide

"He was so depressed, he tried to commit suicide by inhaling next to an Armenian." -Woody Allen

After living with the Armenians for 8 months I have come to know them fairly well. I've slept in their houses, ate at their tables, worked in their schools and spoken their language. For someone from California who spent the previous several years mostly living in Europe, Armenia is remarkably homogeneous country; both ethnically and psychologically. They are a big Caucasian tribe that the collapse of the Soviet Union unexpectedly turned into a country after centuries under the heel of great empires. 

A prouder people I have never met, nor one more obsessed with their history. They tend to wallow in it more than they revel in it sadly. As a historian I don't really think any people have the right to say they had it so much worse than other peoples that they deserve special sympathy. Sometimes, it almost feels like they love their misery and tragedy, that it gives them strength, binds them closer together, makes the hardships of the present easier to bear. Nationalism is a complex beast, and it definitely doesn't take to all lands equally. By channeling centuries of getting the shit end of the stick, they have, if nothing else, firmly defined what it is to be Armenian; and suffering is a fundamental component of it. Even the Armenian Diaspora, whose tie with their roots is often merely conceptual, have proven remarkably loyal to the national identity.
All this was on full display as these people observed their 100th anniversary of the most recent round of large scale slaughter in their history, which is widely known as the Armenian Genocide. After a massive display of unsatisfied rage they convinced the Soviet government to build them a memorial after the 50th anniversary. Thus is there now a massive basalt fortification surrounding an eternal flame with a big obelisk next to it meant to signify something that is suitably somber and serious.

So now, a 100 years after the Armenian population living in the late Ottoman Empire got caught up in the most violent period of human history (1914-1945) and as a result got slaughtered en masse, the Armenian Nation meditates on death. I think the horrific truth of the matter is that the Turkish leadership knew they would lose the war and with it their Empire, so they figured they might as well purge as many Christians as possible from their future country; it would just make things simpler in the long run. Given that Europe had colonized hard in all non-Christian lands, their ruthless extermination of Assyrians, Greeks and Armenians was as pragmatically in line with the logic of the time as it was savage.
Nowadays, after all those people who lived through those dark days in 1915 are taking their eternal rest, the holiday has become a very odd combination of honoring the fallen, pretending they can get retribution from modern Turkey, and just an all out nationalistic frenzy. For a country of 3 million with no natural resources and an economy that is just plain broke(n) to speak belligerently about the 90 million Turkic peoples living on either side of their country takes some balls. Most people here really seem to have a deep seated passionate faith in the cult of Blame-the-Turks. Their most recent confrontation with Turkic speaking people has rather ironically led to them actually gaining some territory, that of Nagorno-Karabakh, from neighboring Azerbaijan in the early 1990's. Of course that now means that Azerbaijan has been spending double the GDP of Armenia on its military and bidding its time until it sees a moment ripe for reconquest. Only thing really preventing it now is Armenia being satellite state of Russia, whose forces control the border with Turkey. 
The horrid truth is that to the south of Armenia things have become more barbaric and war torn than usual, and north of the Caucuses a tense ceasefire barely keeps Ukraine for resuming its civil war and potentially getting Armenia's protector, Russia, bogged down in so much shit that it wont be able to come bail out its little buddy if the Azeris make their move. Given the half assed response of the West to the rise of the Islamic State, pretty sure they wouldn't do a damn thing to a good old fashioned blood feud in the Caucuses. 
Its an amazing thing to get to know a people who are so cognizant of the horrors they have suffered but still willing to antagonize its larger more powerful neighbors all whilst being seemingly unaware of what terrible costs they might incur by doing so. Guess after so many times going down the consequences-be-damned road its almost instinctual for them.

"History does not always repeat itself. Sometimes it just yells, 'Can't you remember anything I told you?' and lets fly with a club."

-John W. Campbell Jr.

Insanity means you believe in sanity.

It's a bit insane. I'm ready to admit that right up front. I read the news and I like it. 

I know, that is not a socially acceptable response to the current state of affairs. You are supposed to read it, be indignant about the stories found therein, then go about your daily life slightly depressed that you took the time to inform yourself about the most recent chapter in this rambling tragedy called human history. 

For me however, just can't help myself, I really like the news these days. Sure, its some really twisted, convoluted madness and contains many horrors and few hopes, but its reality and its picking up steam. 

I think its horrible and terrifying for most people because they are blissfully ignorant of history, and thus how truly in line recent events truly are with this 6,000 year old adventure we got going here. The further down the road we go the higher the stakes, and the more interesting the wager.  

I'm the first to admit that humanity is strutting itself down a path to almost certain doom in a fashion that is one part supercilious runway model and another part jingoistic goose stepping lunatic. Its a sincerely distressing time and place to take stock of, but I say it must be done. It is just this dire situation that we have gotten ourselves into that makes me think we have some chance to reach escape velocity and launch into a new direction that might not be so savage and hard to accept. 

One thing is for sure though, ignoring/hiding/circumventing what sort of world we live in isn't going to help. So here is a daily dose of reality for you:

People are dying by the thousands at the hands of Neo-Caliphate in Syria, Iraq and Nigeria. As is typical, the West responds to this by aerial bombardment, giving people weapons and denouncing violence as wrong when other people do it. All meteorological indicators show that climate change is officially here and is going to really fuck with how all creatures survive through this century. The war in Eastern Ukraine is clearly escalating and Russian forces are for the first time openly operating there. The plunging price of oil has radically changed the geopolitical scene on many fronts, threatening instability for many nations that rely upon it for staying afloat financially. Its not getting discussed much but this is also likely to  cause some serious problems for America too, because the fracking oil boom is completely dependent upon oil being about $80 a barrel (it's down to below $50 currently) and the companies engaged in extracting oil in this way are borrowing massively to finance it; in so doing they have created another bubble that is certain to wreck havoc in the financial markets. Add to all this that global wealth is now so concentrated in so few people that around 80 people own more than 3 billion.
This is but a taste of the realness, there are many more courses. 

Truth, and that would be a capital T even if it hadn't started the sentence, is crucial at any phase, and especially so right now. My affinity for the news stems from my love of history. Every day I have the pleasure of sitting down to my computer and checking out whats going on in the world is an honor for me. It is possible that this wild ride we are on will end in complete annihilation, but the view out the window is breathtaking. What else you got going on in your life that could be even half as interesting as this incredible point in time where the fate of our species, and really all species, hangs in the balance?   

"Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of our imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This my friends, is the crux of our solitude." 

-Galleano

Torture

"The purpose of torture is not getting information. It's spreading fear." -Galleano

"The coward wretch whose hand and heart

Can bear to torture aught below, 

Is ever first to quail and start 

From the slightest pain or equal foe"

-Bertrand Russell

It never fails to amaze me how the people of the planet seem to have always managed to be surprised at the actions of those who rule them. You'd think sometime during the 400 odd generations of history we would have managed to realize that power is never an end in itself, nor is it in the habit of showing restraint. Guess it's all about that plausible deniability. 

One would also logically think that after The Trail of Tears, Mai Lai, Abu Ghraib and the horrors perpetrated by the many violent regimes the US helped establish, fund and advise, people the world over, and in America in particular, would be incapable of the slightest surprise at the things revealed in the recently released torture report. 

The oblivion that has become the American psyche is so staggeringly impenetrably that it seems almost to be a granite monolith when I think of it. As a historian perhaps it is especially difficult for me to grasp the paucity of memory that so many people today are working with. They sound and seem like senile ostriches that bury their heads in the sand, and when they pull it out occasionally are perpetually shocked at what they see and thus go back to their subterranean safety after making some absurd noises and incoherently running about for a bit. 

Another salient example of this is the drama surrounding the murder of several black folks by the cops, and the subsequent pardoning of the murderers. How incomprehensibly ignorant of the black experience in North America do you have to be to be shocked by this? For fucks sake, sit your naive ass down to read the autobiographies of Fredrick Douglas, Malcom X or Mumia Abu Jamal. Perhaps then you will wake up to the horrendous history that you have apparently managed to stumble through reality without bothering to learn. 

How people can say things like 'Black Lives Matter' and at the same time not even know about the Second Congo War speaks to the profound depths of the ignorance that I find so impossible to fathom. For me the attempt to understand it is mentally like throwing a rock down a well and listening intently for minutes, only to hear nothing but the heartbreaking silence. I suppose it is all part and parcel to the alienation that is the foundation of the modern consumer society. Everything is experienced independently, personally, within an invisible existential cell that renders almost impossible the consideration of the whole overarching reality that dictates our existence. 
I do understand that it isn't easy to stare the brutal soul crushing truth in the face and chart your course from that nauseating point. That it is far easier to psychologically slumber in the organs of the beast that perpetrates the horrors that you occasionally denounce than to wrench yourself from everything easy and comfortable. I just feel that somewhere hidden away among all humans is something commonly called a conscience and that true happiness and contentment will never be possible while that is being betrayed. For me, I think that the first step in dealing with reality, is to admit that it isn't something new, nor is it a secret, but a reoccurring nightmare that has been following us for at least 400 generations. 

"To protest in the name of morality against 'excesses' or 'abuses' is an error that hints at active complicity. There are no 'abuses' or 'excesses' here, simply an all pervasive system." 

-Simone de Beauvoir  

"The greatest torture in the world for most people is to think" -Luther Burbank

Shifting Sands

"We were making the future," he said, "and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making. And here it is!" -H.G. Wells

Indeed, here it is. Brazen, brutal, barbaric and beautiful, it lumbers on down the sordid path. It doesn't seem that any people could have anticipated it a century ago. Most estimates saw us living in some advanced technology driven utopia or falling off the tightrope of progress into the abyss of oblivion. Amusingly, people today seem even more certain of these two disparate futures, with more favoring the latter as time goes on and our inability to get our shit together becomes starkly contrasted to the challenges we face as a species.    

H.G. Wells had a really interesting theory about what was needed to give humanity a chance. His project was to get all humans to acknowledge our collective history, not as a divided chronology of petty identity, but as a sprawling mosaic that unites us all. Living as he did during an era of unprecedented nationalism, he said "our true nationality is mankind".  

This was coming from an Englishman at a time when England owned an absurd amount of the worlds surface and controlled a staggering percentage of its population. For this reason English is still dominating globally, and the heirs to the Anglophone Empire still hold preeminent power globally in the two things that have always mattered on such a scale- the ability to get what you want and vanquish those who oppose. 

These days it seems to me that nationalism is fraying at the edges, and in some places getting torn apart. It was always a questionable concept, this large scale sanctified tribalism. Especially so when we consider were most of the worlds nations came from. There was a chance during the era of decolonization to build a world more focused on commonality than conflict, but that was very cleverly diverted by the cunning of Western businessmen and the ruthlessness of vested power in the recently liberated regions.

Today there is very little indication we have learned anything from history, but somehow there seems to be a growing awareness in some areas that all the things we were so convinced made us different was all a lie. I find a lot of hope in the message Wells tried to get across all those years ago.  

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe... Yet, clumsily or smoothly, the world, it seems, progresses and will progress."

Our collective inability to surmount the primordial problem of Oligarchy is surely of primary importance. In connection with this is the need to start working towards eliminating borders, not so much on the ground, although this is important as well, but in our minds. The longer we keep thinking of this person as this or that nationality, or that somehow the border between two countries is anything more than a dirty trick, the more we work against ourselves. 

It's a hell of a struggle to forget what we have been taught for ages and to learn that which is currently only an idea. Somehow I get the feeling that people are starting to realize more and more how stupid most accepted things truly are, and this makes me think that perhaps this absurd political map of the world that one sees so on so many walls will someday be relegated to its rightful home, the museum. 

"There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope."

"A time when all such good things will be for all men may be coming more nearly than we think. Each one who believes that brings the good time nearer; each heart that fails delays it."

Dead Dogs

"In modern war... you will die like a dog for no good reason." -Hemingway

It is a strange direction that modern warfare has taken in the last decade or so. A lot of people saw this coming a long way off, and just hoped we would sort our sick psychology out before things got this far, but such hopes are foolish in the extreme given our past and present. We have officially entered into an era where the machines do the killing for the elite and they will soon not even need the poor for cannon fodder, only enemies for the slaughter.

It is an absolutely horrifying development that chills me to the bone and makes me realize how truly unforgivable the system that produced it is. The USA has invested a genuinely incalculable amount of resources into becoming the preeminent purveyors of death on this silly little space ball we call home. This led to some truly impressive stuff like nuclear weapons, stealth technology, weapons orbiting our planet and now the rise of the drones.

Drones are historically a very significant development. This is especially the case as they have been introduced not in a time of actually full blown state warfare, but during an era in which the West is trying to maintain its dominion over humanity through a complex web of fabricated states, economics and selective violence. It is almost certain that already fully automated drones roam the skies of areas deemed hostile and have programming on who to kill. I assume this because usually any time the US military makes a point of saying they wont do something it means they are already doing it.

The way I see this developing drones will mostly replace human soldiers for rich countries fairly soon. This will lead to an extremely brutal war of genocidal proportions as the global haves make sure the have nots don't fuck up their centuries long orgy of excess. As fresh water gets privatized like all other resources have been and climate change severely disrupts food supplies it will become necessary to foster many wars in order to keep people from directing their anger and action towards the root cause of such catastrophe. The fact that such wars can now be waged using robots on the side of the haves will make such a proposition far more acceptable for the American public (I'm not so sure about all the European nations for I suspect some of them have developed a conscience).

Killer robot armies is a huge deal in the places where death rains down without warning or even the decency of a declaration of war or admission of guilt. Recently John Oliver's show ran a proper story on the subject, perhaps the first in mainstream media. This was surely seen by millions of Americans, and every damn one of them probably got upset, maybe even downright indignant. Then they all promptly went on with living their lives, paying their taxes and letting such atrocities be carried out in their name. 

Why you may ask, because it was simply easier than doing otherwise. As early as 2011 an American citizen, a minor none the less, was killed by a drone overseas. This should have been a big deal, but it was not. Modern history has seen a lot of people killed like dogs for no reason, but the ruthless reasoning behind theses drone deaths rot my heart and make me feel that the end is closing in on us, and the curtain must soon fall on this ferocious phantasmagoria of an era we all live in.   

"Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power other than self interest backed by force."     -GB Shaw