Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Getting to Even


It's not even with that group:



Not a peaceful sign for Syria...

Echoed by Pence commemorating the anniversary:




Mattis and Kelly both Marines...

26 comments:

John said...

First draft of that tweet: "Whatever their names were, they knew what they were signing up for! The worthless chumps should have been working in high finance or inheriting fortunes from their daddy."

Yes, I know, that's more than 140 characters, which may be also how many secretary's of state Drumpf will go through, unless he can find someone of his intellect to fill the post. Enter stage left she staggering cretin that is Nikki Haley.

Matt Franko said...

"they knew what they were signing up for"

That was given to him by Kelly (Marine) so I'd assume it to be true...

Though to your point probably not what the female wife/mother wants to hear at that moment....

This Beirut one is probably sticking in their craw for a long time ... never could say we got even for that one Reagan withdrew pretty quickly Iirc..... there probably is a score to settle there...

I don't ever remember this anniversary being promoted as much...

They might want to start freshening up the spider holes just in case....

Kaivey said...

A war gets started and people on both sides die. Then the rulers say we can't have peace because we must remember those that died. They mustn't have died in vain they tell us. So thousands more die, and then millions.

John said...

As we all know, evidence is irrelevant for the Washington mafia, but any reasonable person would find almost no evidence to substantiate Trump's claim that Hezbollah carried out the bombing, let alone Pence's that Iran was behind it. Suspicion is not evidence, and in the Middle East any number of groups look suspicious but are in fact innocent parties. Even Greenpeace would arouse hostile suspicion in the West if they were in the Middle East.

But Matt's right about the promotion of the anniversary. The madmen in Washington want another war, which will empower the jihadis. At least the families of the 9/11 attacks know which side Washington's is on.

Matt Franko said...

Kaivey I would surmise John and yourself are not Warrior class...

Tom Hickey said...

"Getting even," applies especially societies close to the tribal level where taking revenge for one's tribe is a matter of honor that falls on the shoulders of future generations. This is the old cycle of feud, immortalized in literature in Romeo and Juliet, and manifested through history in tribal warfare, which then grew into national warfare.

Liberal internationalism is an attempted to get beyond this, which resulted in the (failed) League of Nations and UN, as well as the establishment of the Common Market, Eu, and EZ.

The Common Market, EU, and EZ have delivered Europe to the control of Germany without shedding blood, and that is resulting in a dialectical reaction.

Moreover, liberal interventionism extends it, and it is also provoking a reaction resulting in "endless war."

This is all going to come to a head before a new cycle begins. That is how dialectic works.

Eventually humanity may get beyond tribalism and war, but being an evolutionary trait this involves a long historical process.

Kaivey said...

I was a Quaker for many years. I vowed to pacifism. I see the warrior class as "useful idiots" for the ruling elite to make a pack of money.

John said...

Kaivey, nicely put. I'm not a pacifist, but the burden of proof is on those wanting war, not those advocating peace or peaceful solutions. The fact that the burden has almost never been met in thousands of years and countless wars is passed over and not commented on. Instead we hear shrill gibberish about "supporting the troops" or "loving/hating your country". Apparently "patriotism" is contracting out your moral beliefs to thugs you ordinarily wouldn't bother to urinate on if they were on fire. Really, if Nancy Pelosi or John McCain were on fire, would you waste your time and piss on them?

Peace out.

Matt Franko said...

Kelly said the other day the warriors are the top 1%...

As opposed to you guys saying the top 1% of acquirers are the 1%...

Which one is it?

Matt Franko said...

There is no “ruling class” Kaivey it rotates among the different types...

Obama: rule by intelligentsia

Trump: rule by acquirers

John said...

Kelly's a general, so he would have an inflated opinion of himself. But if Kelly thinks his elite military comrades are on the same level as the elite financiers and industrialists, he needs seriously strong medication. Large business interests pretty much determine policy, though this isn't always the case when state interests don't tally with business interests. To the extent that the two tally - and they nearly always do - policy is then determined by the moneyed interests. Kelly and co are powerful people. no doubt, but all the Kellys in the world are no match for Boeing, Lockheed, Raytheon, let alone the huge energy companies or the newly emerging superpowers of tech and biotech.

Tom Hickey said...

The rulers always tend to be warriors because of the struggle for power that is involved. The top .001% seldom retire, when they easily could.

George Soros is a good example. He is bent on shaping the destiny of the world in his image. That is exerting power. It is what powerful kings and chieftains have done. If he were a pure acquisitor he would not have this obsession.

According to Batra's analysis, the four social classes now are not determined by birth, as in the caste system of India that is his model, but rather by disposition and the behavior, part of which is hereditary.

It's really a matter of values and motivation that determines one's feeling, thought and action that is determinative. Some of this is innate (disposition, temperament) and some acquired (upbringing, education, environment).

There are four great motivators — fame, fortune, power and pleasure. The four social categories can be viewed in terms of primary motivation. The intelligentsia is motivated by fame, the acquisitors by fortune, the warriors by power, and the laborers by pleasure.

All are subject to these motivations. Personality types can be categorized by the distribution of these four priorities.

Not everyone in the military is a warrior. There's a pretty large percentage of admin and support people in the military. And not all warriors are military people.

And as in the Indian caste system, where are mixed castes, there are various mixtures such as warrior-acquisitive, etc. in other societies.

Matt Franko said...

It’s a good breakdown structure imo Tom...

Kaivey said...

"The 1% are the warriors".

It's very rare for the 1% to do the actual fighting.

Kaivey said...

It looks like I'm destined to be a labourer.

John said...

"Not everyone in the military is a warrior. There's a pretty large percentage of admin and support people in the military. And not all warriors are military people."

Excellent. I would add that it is probably the case that many within the combat roles within the military are also not warriors either, at least not in the sense we're thinking. They're probably just decent people who think they're protecting their country, rather than the shock troops of the imperial elites. The warrior class are elites too, although they're more often than not at loggerheads with the traditional military elite: MacArthur/Patton versus Eisenhower/Bradley, Petraeus/Kelly versus Fallon/Clark are not bad examples of the conflict within the elites, although it is said that even Kelly isn't so deranged as to support Trump's (and Pence's) wish for war with Iran.

Tom Hickey said...

It's very rare for the 1% to do the actual fighting.

1. Capitalism is based on competition. It's pretty ruthless out there.

2. There's a difference between management and leadership.

3. The predominant organizational model is the hierarchical model developed by the military historically and adapted to corporate organization and operations.

4. American business recruits former military officers for management positions.

5. Business prefers mandated universal conscription as a free-training program in discipline.

The list goes on.

Tom Hickey said...

There are oppositional elements in everything, which is why reality is dialectical.

For example one cohort of the military is motivated by honor and another by glory.

Matt Franko said...

Well maybe it’s dialectical if you have two in opposition... if they are not in opposition then it wouldn’t be dialectical...

Iow here you might see a dialectic between acquirers and warriors if they both asserted that the one was greater than the other... then they would proceed to hash it out via some sort of dialectic method...

If they just respected each of the others role, you wouldn’t have a dialectic ...

Matt Franko said...

This gets back to the 2 for envy and 3 for jealousy....

A dialectic requires 2....

Matt Franko said...

You have to have 2 for a War also...

Tom Hickey said...

Reality is dialectical, operating through opposites, which may be complementary as the positive and negative poles in electro-magnetism. Knowledge of this opposition gives power through its application.

In human life, there are many opposites, some are opposite forces that can be conflicting as well as complementary through excess and defect, or are naturally conflicting, a dialectical process ensues to resolve the conflict of opposites.

When a constellation for forces is opposed by another constellation of forces, then a dialectical process gets underway, e.g. between capital and labor.

The way geopolitics is going presently, two opposing forces are emerging in terms of the US and it allies, and China and its allies.

Matt Franko said...

Well maybe you guys could just look at war as a cruder form of a dialectic?

Tom Hickey said...

War is one expression of historical dialectic.

Kaivey said...

Does anyone know what George Soros is trying to do? He wants to destroy Russia and he doesn't like Israel. He supports Democracy Now and the Real News Network which seem to have become more radical left wing again recently. He wants to flood Europe with immigrants. I don't think he is a progressive, he is up something, but what?

Tom Hickey said...

Soros is a liberal internationalist/interventionist, which to him means imposing freedom and democracy, along with open borders, etc., by any means. This eliminates national sovereignty and replaces it with international institutions that are under the control of transnational capital as a kind of totalitarianism masquerading as meritocracy. It's capitalism on steroids, where "freedom" is equated with freedom of contract. It's another form of paternalism.