The Masochism Tango

Few people seem to remember the comic genius that was Tom Lehrer, though many have probably heard his greatest hit, "National Brotherhood Week."  But today, we are inspired by one of his many laugh-out-loud tunes called "The Masochism Tango."

What brought it to mind was a pair of well-matched headlines.  One the one hand, the Philippines' president Duterte told Obama to keep his cotton-pickin' nose out of their internal business, and on the other, the US spooks are investigating Russia's perceived meddling in US elections.

It has never ceased to amaze me that America, and by this I refer to both the political and cultural entities, can live with such a stark contrast in thought.  On the one hand, the country has never had a problem marching into and dictating to other nations, but on the other hand, they are constantly shocked when the favor is returned.  It is a classic case of "do as I say, not as I do."

As Joseph Farrell has pointed out many times, it takes two to tango.  The Americans are acting out of complete naivete and self-delusion if they think that their century-long effort to manipulate the world would not/could not come home to roost.  What is good for the goose will cook the gander.

I say self-delusion because for the most part Americans are thoroughly convinced that they are doing good by forcing the world to gag on its political, cultural and corporate hegemony.  Americans think it is quite OK to plaster McDonalds and Starbucks and KFC all over the world's rich tapestry of diversity, but gods forbid Russia or China want to clog US malls with their brands.

Just because the insane form of corporate personhood works for an enslaved and drone American populace doesn't mean the rest of the world wants predatory boards and executives chewing up their landscapes for illusory profits.

It's OK for America to think that 'democracy' is a good thing, and maybe it works for an uneducated and clueless mass, but shoving that brand of insanity down the rest of the world's throats is bound to lead to a violent and reactionary backlash.  Just because America likes lye soap doesn't mean the rest of the world wants to bathe in it.

I have experienced American-style exceptionalism first-hand around the world.  I have seen America's NGOs in action, its CIA puppeteering, its corporate raiders.  Trade treaties, such as the TTIP and TPP are not about improving trade, they are about changing all the rules to suit American interests.  America's exported 'democracy' is not about bringing rights to people, but about installing political systems that the US has become expert on manipulating.  American-style 'diversity' is not about celebrating the world's wonderful differences, but replacing real culture with America's Disney-style fantasies of what culture should be.

There are two ways to fight this kind of manipulation: one is to fight back in a way that destroys the manipulator, and most of the world with it (a la World Wars 1 and 2); or to fight fire with fire, by learning and using the same tactics against the usurper.

When I see articles spouting America's paranoia that Russia and/or China are manipulating US elections and infiltrating its institutions, I am reminded of the tactics used for decades by the American hegemon on those very same countries.

When I see Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, I am reminded of Sen. Thomas J. Walsh (Teapot Dome), Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) and Woodward and Bernstein (Watergate).  Prying open dirty secrets is patriotism, not traitorous.

For decades, US propaganda media has buried the world in a marketing campaign from hell, making not only the country's own citizen believe the official line about "enemy" states, but duping the rest of the world too.  When RussiaToday turned that same manipulation back on the US, it infuriated the political hacks who had come to believe their own hogwash.

Finally, the US exported its financial system, arguably one of the most corrupt ever devised by Man, to the world, backed up by military strength and space assets.  As the world caught up, it was only a matter of time before Russia and China, along with the BRICSA bloc, would mount a separate-but-equal system to challenge it.  Once again, the US hegemon went into paroxysms of fear-mongering and anti-Russian hype to try to stem the tide, but it may well be too late.

Of the world's great religions, the Buddhist paradigm of kharma is one of the Great Truths that has objectively and overtly proved itself throughout history.  It was only a matter of time before the world got tired of one country doing its utter best to reshape the world in its own image.  It has been tried many times before and with similar results: eventually the world turns the table back on the empire and dines from the privileged setting.

The US is behaving exactly like the neighborhood bully.  After dominating the local kids for years and stealing their lunch money, one kid has stood up to the brute and used his own force against him.  Once challenged, and ultimately vanquished, the bully runs yelping to his mother, saying what unfair and ungrateful beasts those other kids are.

America doesn't need to save the world, it needs to save itself.  It should also be ready for the fact that those who have been bullied in the past will likely want revenge, and when it comes, America should be brave enough and honest enough to realize that its suffering is of its own making.

The world is littered with the graveyards of empires, and their deaths have never been quiet or dignified.    The world cannot expect America to suddenly realize the errors of its ways and contritely retract within its rightful domain.  It will fight and it will drag many down with it.  One does not easily give up the mansion for the cardboard box, no matter how well deserved.

Of course, Tom Lehrer put it much more succinctly:

It's here that I must be.
My heart entreats,
Just hear those savage beats,
And go put on your cleats
And come and trample me.
Your heart is hard as stone or mahogany,
That's why I'm in such exquisite agony.
My soul is on fire,
It's aflame with desire,
Which is why I perspire
When we tango.

The Pyongyang Polka

You'd think that with North Korea being just a couple thousand miles from Indonesia, folks here would be all balled up in fear that at any moment the whole region would get lit up with the glow of nuclear night.

*YAWN!*

Wake me when Kim Jong-un looks serious.

You know what folks around here are really scared of?  They are scared that the US will use N. Korea as an excuse to come in an colonize the region once again.  'Colonize' because the US is a colonial power, though it may refuse to address itself as such.  And 'again' because it has taken over various parts of the South Pacific at least two other times in the past 150 years.

N. Korea is the barest slip of land sandwiched between two massive economic powers.  Because the country is little more than the jewel in the crown of a megalomaniacal family.  Granted they have a couple of nuclear pop guns, but compared to what would be raining down on their heads if they used one, even the Kim family isn't that stupid.

So they much be getting provoked.  In other words, someone is poking a stick in the hornet's nest in order to stir up the critters into a fighting mood.  And right now, there is only one power in the entire world that has shown the willingness and ability to use military might to get what it wants: Washington DC.

Now I use 'Washington DC' as opposed to 'America' because the country is not represented by its government.  The powers that slither through the halls of DC are a rogue bunch of banksters and oligarchs who have little or no connection to the average person in the rest of the country, save for the few that actually buy the propaganda, and they are relatively few.

The US, after World War 2, was the last man standing, based mostly on the fact that it had no land bridge to the rest of the world, and so was protected by the expense of projecting power that far at that time.  To a certain extent, South America enjoyed the same benefit, though it didn't have the technological infrastructure to become a surviving power at the time.

As such, the US felt it had the right of the conqueror, and to some extent the moral responsibility, to rebuild the world in its own image.  This position offered certain advantages in business dealings, which one can hardly blame them for exploiting.  And since America's culture was built on the mass-produced repeatable experience (McDonald's, Holiday Inn, etc.), it was ready-made for export to the prostrate world.  The world accepted with open arms, as something was better than nothing.

As a consequence, the US economy boomed like none before it.  Being fueled with loot and technology captured from Nazi Germany, and fanned by the City of London banksters and ex-colonialists looking to recapture past glory, the US quite easily took over the world, especially since its only major rival was the Soviet Union, whose political system was antithetical to most people's sensibilities.

All was good until the world started to recover.  By the end of the 20th century, a great many nations had grown technologically and economically to the point they were ready to find alternatives to the one-sided trade deals offered by the now-imperialistic US-UK axis.

Groups of nations found it in their interests to trade within their regional groups, thus by-passing the US-UK system of control, which tended to scrape a healthy bit of cream off the top of everything.  Enter trade blocs such as the BRICS now threatening the US-UK hegemony over world affairs.

Thus, a clash of interests.  The US-UK axis built a system in which they pictured themselves atop a global pyramid, while the rest of the world saw themselves as building a bunch of smaller pyramids where more folks could enjoy being on top.

These outsiders had copied and improved on the technology that the US-UK axis had exported when exploiting the cheap labor and lack of regulation in these client states.  As such, they had built themselves into booming economies that were increasingly outside the control of the US-UK colonialists.  Furthermore, these nations were limited by having to deal with each other in dollars, which not only gave the US-UK axis a cut of the pie, but injected control mechanisms into the burgeoning economies.

So they decided to break away and form their own trade blocs.  Perfectly reasonable and sensible under a capitalist system.  One always seeks deals that provide greater benefits to one's self.  This increases profits and overall well-being, which is the centerpiece of capitalism.

But the US-UK axis didn't see things quite that way.  They liked skimming profits from deals they had nothing to do with, and they enjoyed exerting control over nearly every transaction in the world.  Gee, who wouldn't, but that doesn't serve the interests of all parties, which again, is a central part of capitalism.

In order to protect their status, the US-UK axis had to exert force in order to maintain privilege.  Since the instrument of control was increasingly backed by nothing but hot air (i.e., the dollar), the banksters and oligarchs turned to the only tool they had left to maintain dollar hegemony -- the military.  Their chosen means of injecting their military power was to create tensions and conflicts where they didn't exist before in order to justify intervention and re-orientation.

Enter N. Korea.

It is no mistake that this latest flap in Southeast Asia occurs on the heels of the BRICS announcing the formation of a trading bank to compete with the IMF and World Bank, know as the International Development Bank.  It is little mystery that this new international bank will not trade in dollars and will actively seek the membership of as many emerging world economies as possible.

What to do if you are a US-UK bankster facing thsi sort of rebellion to your global system of control?  You could use the Libya/Egypt/Syria option, but Russia, China and India are a bit large and intimidating for that sort of direct interference.

Planted in the heart of the occident is a tailor-made situation.  The N. Korean leadership is...shall we say, unstable?  They have nukes as a result of left-over technology from Japan's WW2 development efforts.  And they have an ongoing war that has never been resolved.

Few folks think about the fact that the Korean War (1950s) never ended.  It was fought to a cease-fire, but neither side surrendered.  Thus, hostilities have simmered for lo these 60-odd years.

Enter the stick in the hornet's nest.

Stir up Pyongyang with covert threats, possibly even actual boots on the ground doing what covert ops do best.  Get Pyongyang to saber-rattle and move toys around in overtly belligerent maneuvers.  Use these events as justification to move your toys into Southeast Asia and position them in ways that would otherwise be roundly castigated.  Finally, use all the bluster and thinly veiled threats to distract attention away from other pursuits, such as, oh you know, setting up rival banks of international development that don't benefit the US-UK axis.

Sure, Kim Jong-un is a wild-eyed lunatic (runs in the family), but even he knows that people who don't eat or have productive labor soon rebel en mass.  He also knows his little firecrackers and underfed army are little match even for his southern neighbors.  The only thing that would provoke his current actions would be a direct threat.

That the aforementioned direct threat serves the purpose of the US-UK axis makes this scenario all the more credible.  There has been a low-level war going on between the US-UK and the BRICS for some time.  They poke and prod each other's defenses and test the sensitive underbellies looking for weaknesses.  N. Korea is just another poke and prod in that effort, but one designed to be a little bit hotter, so as to enable the US-UK to position some hardware in the area and demonstrate their resolve to be the only economic playground in the neighborhood.

What is disturbing about all of this is not whether or when the dollar will be deposed.  That is inevitable.  It is that all these events belie a sort of maneuvering of the global chess board for some major onslaught.  At some point, one side or the other will feel the time is right, or at least won't get better, to strike in open conflict to protect their back board.

If the US-UK axis feels that it is sufficiently losing its control over global trade and economics, it will strike at its best possible opportunity.  If the BRICS or other group grow frustrated enough and feel ready to challenge the existing structure in hot conflict, they will strike.  In the meantime, we will continue to see massive cyber attacks, regional conflicts, saber rattling, and positioning of belligerent hardware in strategic locations.

It is a given that the US-UK axis will not concede quietly.  It is also a given that the rest of the world is ready to stretch and do things their way, for a change.  These two polar opposites cannot co-exist and the boundary between them will continue to shift and change.

When one positions one's self as king of the mountain, whether in a child's game or in geopolitics, one is ripe for challenge.  Ultimately, whether game or global, the king is always toppled and new powers emerge, and they in turn are toppled as new powers emerge.  It is the nature of humanity to want to be on top even though history tells us that the top is the target.

So we close with one final question...

Have you ever noticed that every major city on the face of the planet has a China Town?