Love this piece. You pretty much captured the philosophy that is the base of European subservience.
It like to add that Europe elite (all old money) sees eye to eye with American old money. Their interests are the same and we can not expect any meaningful changes sprouting from them. Just recall the laughable 'inclusive capitalism' which they tried to launch. Which leaves the European political class.
I used to dabble in politics and have seen up close and personal how the left (the right was already infected) has been corrupted by Washington for decades. Decisions that made no sense were dictated from a desk somewhere in Washington. Which only benefited the US and the politicians involved.
Pretty much everybody who in anybody in European politics is now a member of some transatlantic institution which carefully manages his or her career in Europe to further American interests. Which explains the poor caliber of Europe's ruling elite these days.
Arguably even worse is that this European political class is utterly dependent Washington's goodwill once their time in office inevitably comes to an end. If 'those who have fallen from grace' want to cash in with comfy jobs at the UN, Think Tanks or Academia the US calls the shots. This blatant network corruption is firmly embedded in Europe in our age.
A departing official from the US State Department recently bragged that no politician (feel free to add Eurocrats to that group) could be bribed as easily and as cheaply as in Europe. Which is quite understandable if you take in consideration that the European decision making class has already been captured for a generation.
Even if the current generation that is in power in Europe is being replaced, those replacements will be mostly made up of American stooges as well. It will take time and considerable political upheaval to root out (trans-) Atlanticism in Europe.
And Atlanticism must be cut from Europe's body if we want to stop that cancer from killing us all.
"A departing official from the US State Department recently bragged that no politician (feel free to add Eurocrats to that group) could be bribed as easily and as cheaply as in Europe. Which is quite understandable if you take in consideration that the European decision making class has already been captured for a generation."
Slaves don;t need to be bribed, and there are no chains so strong as the ones forged in the slave's mind.
Good luck getting anyone in Europe to accept this. Their mentality is that of house slaves, relatively pampered, compared with the field hands, and now that General Sherman has come and the field hands buggered off, they still hang around the plantation house because they've been slaves their entire lives and literally cannot imagine life without Master.
In my world, the closest thing is a dog. A dog needs a Master and will obey even an abusive master. Hell, many of the most obedient dogs have cruel masters.
And yeah, Europeans worshipped (that is the proper verb) Clinton and Obama
Note how the antiwar movement disappeared without a trace, the moment those wars became Obama's wars.
Yes. Right now, the European elite attitude seems to be one of increased servility not rebellion. It will take a new generation to alter that, and even then it may not change. Although the cold logic dictates that it should.
I think a key element is that US cultural power is so strong, and not showing obvious signs of reducing. Elites still (even increasingly perhaps) want their offspring to study in the US, and so forth. This drives personal behaviour. Whatever the national interest of European countries might be.
To your point about Obama: I attended a conference in a European capital a couple of years ago and he was interviewed by VC. Most of the audience were senior European players in the firm I was part of. The managing partner was the interviewer. The total fawning from both him and the audience was really something to behold.
Europe has been under US policies since the post WW2 Breton Woods agreement. Plenty of Americans are sick of footing the war bills. We're also mad that the Biden regime has weaponized the US dollar to use as a political bludgeon which has made others not trust us. I think the US should have offered Russia some kind of Marshall plan and trade agreement back in the 90's. Stalin sucked more ass than Hitler, but Russia fought against Hitler. The Eu could be enjoying cheaper gas if Nordstream hadn't been destroyed. Plus you've got Ursula von den LIAR calling for the de-industrialization of the EU while at eh same time China is pigging down all the coal and keeping there people out of poverty. Sorry if we have to choose between humans starving or energy related CO2, I'll take CO2 because on the bright side plants love CO2.
Biden weaponized the US dollar? Really? Ya it's a first. Never been done before. Before Biden America played fair - purer than the driven snow.
As for CO2 and having to choose, no one on planet earth has had that choice taken away as long as they had the means.
Your ignorant American conservative talking points are as boring as they are ignorant and unoriginal. You don't know shite about CO2.
Another American climate denier (is there any other kind?) infects another comment section.
................................
*Rising carbon dioxide levels are turning rice and fish into junk food*
Posted: Jun 08, 2018
"Increased CO2 in the atmosphere reduces the nutritional value of rice, the world's most plentiful and valuable crop, as well as wheat and many wild plants. But CO2 also has a negative impact on the nutrition we take from the oceans, and that starts at the base of the food web with the harm it does to the microscopic phytoplankton."
Hmmm I wonder if TOO MUCH of other life giving substances -H2O- can also damage {or worse} human's crops??? If some is good, more must be better ......right?
*Record Rainfall Spoils Crops in China, Rattling Its Leaders*
"After weeks of drought, farmers in the typically arid agricultural belt in northern China were ill prepared for the torrential rain that inundated fields earlier this summer and decimated their crops of eggplant, cucumbers and cabbage."
Increases in precipitation is a decades old {no brainer} climate science prediction that has come to pass and the record smashing precipitation events (rain, snow, hail) have been ongoing for the last decade. For every 1C increase in global temperature the atmosphere holds approximately 7% more moisture (evaporation & the hydrological cycle) so expect bigger and more destructive precipitation loaded disasters. In a few instances record snow fall has replenished dangerously low snow packs in a number of locals, but they will continue to drop and it will be costly as many places count on snow melt, in whole or part, for drinking water, hydro electrical generation and crop irrigation.
............
*Climate change behind sharp drop in snowpack since 1980s, study shows*
.
"Now, a new Dartmouth study cuts through the uncertainty in these observations and provides evidence that seasonal snowpacks throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere have indeed shrunk significantly over the past 40 years due to human-driven climate change. The sharpest global warming-related reductions in snowpack—between 10% to 20% per decade—are in the Southwestern and Northeastern United States, as well as in Central and Eastern Europe.
The researchers report in the journal Nature that the extent and speed of this loss potentially put the hundreds of millions of people in North America, Europe, and Asia who depend on snow for their water on the precipice of a crisis that continued warming will amplify."
Oil is a finite resource, that to date has been in abundance. When peak oil will hit, I cannot say, but I can definitely say that most are still going to have to choose, but it will be a choice between eating Raman noodles and hot dogs for the month and buying medicine or buying the highest quality (nutritionally) food available and skipping the medication, or electric bill, insurance, etc.
To date, no one has chosen to give up oil and it's by products. The tiny few who have given up or greatly reduced their dependence on oil, sorry but your sacrifice has gone unnoticed - statically insignificant.
I have long know that all environmentalists claims of successfully fighting climate change are the same as those who whine and belly ache over their fossil fuel freedom being taken away (OMG it's Greta come to take away your god given hydrocarbons) - complete bull shit. I know this because I look at the data which has said the same thing year after year after yearsand tells the tale - no talk required. Tiny, 1 years dips from Covid and the GFC.
~~~~
Same Shit, Different Year
.
*2023 Set Records in Global Fossil Fuel Use and Carbon Dioxide Emissions*
"In 2023, the world consumed more oil, coal and natural gas than any time in history, according to the Energy Institute’s “Statistical Review of World Energy.”
Further reading will only result in having to read this years spin how this time it's different bla bla bla the hopium is still there and so is the spazoid fake threats of Greta-N-Gore coming to steal your fossil fuel freedom - that canard is the bread and butter for Alex Jones and American talk radio hosts. They have got more mileage out of their hysterical fake environmentalist threats than last years oil got for planes trains and automobiles.
Without going into the class character of 1789, as long as the 1% are United, they will never lose power, because they control the levers of power and because they will do whatever it takes to hang onto power.
One of the defining features of the head first plunge of what’s left of the left, has been that the current debris field is littered with folks my age, once ardent anti-warriors…because of course it was personal; t’was our generation that had been designated to slaughter Vietnamese, and die doing so. Who needs that we thought…among less selfish things. Fast forward, and these same have forgotten the essence of the anti-warrior is being anti-war, not a selective accounting based upon whether it’s our balls getting chopped or not.
Even as this purity of idea seemed still alive circa 2003 when Iraq had its turn, the Clinton-Obaman experience helped us to understand. Anti war is a useful idea sometimes; it’s the other party reigning during the “intervention”. The idea of what is war has morphed. Anti war always subjected the adherent to social and political contempt. Being anti interventionist is even worse.
Some 35 year ago I had the opportunity to study in the US on an exchange program. I landed in a rural Pennsylvanian college and proceeded to be completely shocked. Where was the America I knew from all the sit-coms? Instead I found a weird place where everybody was a religious fanatic, overweight, poorly educated and dirt-poor. Still all these people were absolutely convinced there was no actual world outside of the US; that the US was superior in any field discussed and all non-US citizens were dumb and backward. Having experienced the discrepancy between the reality and the US perception of themselves, I went home less one illusion and plus one experience. It has since amazed me that American "culture" and the American way of thinking was adapted so readily by my fellow-Europeans. Didn't they see they were casting out their sold foundations for something that was infinitely less refined, less worthwhile? I guess not. Maybe it isn't too late yet. Maybe the loathing I perceive here for Trump will finally open their eyes to see that their own culture and inheritance is quite good enough, and probably even better, thank you very much.
Did you ever see the movie "Idicoracy"? That's why we're getting rid of the Department of Education. Americans are way less educated than they used to be with "no child left behind", the stupid Marxist garbage schools are pushing, and "common core math". I put my kids in a charter school because the local public school had poor test scores and a gang liaison officer. We're pulling the fluoride out of the water to because it neurotoxic and lowers IQ.
As an American who speaks 4 languages and lived in Germany for several years, it annoys me when Europeans say "culture" in quotes. You put more than 3 people together and you get a "culture", which is a system of shared values and unspoken rules. Are you creating "culture" by writing, music, painting, drama, dance or music composition? Or are you just consuming?
It's kind of silly that anyone would believe that TV shows represent the reality of poverty and every single country has poverty.
I also think you are wrong to criticize their religion. I was a lifelong atheist, but recently have been baptized as an Orthodox Christian because I came to see the value of religion, which the EU has turned away from.
Finally, Americans live in a big country with a lot of diverse people, so if we are going to be unified as a country, with citizens loyal to our country, we need a unifying language and culture so I don't hold it against my fellow Americans that they all speak only 1 language.
Being overweight sucks. We blew up in the 90's after they decided to put cereal/sugars at the base of the food pyramid instead of at the top. I gained weight when I moved back to America and I can't lose it. I went to Italy and felt like a hippo next to svelte chic Italians, but when I got back to the US, I was middle of the fat pack.
Shared values? Looking from afar it seems that the biggest issue in America is that you DON'T share values. You are deeply divided and that division is tearing your country apart. There is little sharing and a lot of insisting that one set of values is right, while the other is utterly wrong.
As a American who has lived his entire life in the 'Red' states I can say with a moderate level of certainty that the main reason that people vote for Trump is that he insults and belittles other politicians. It created a opportunity to have a anti-establishment vote. Something that hasn't existed in the USA in our lifetime.
Most people really hate the government and media and what has been going on for years now with all the wars and heavy handed social engineering and such. They are tired of it and just want to be left alone. Trump is the only thing that comes close to offering any sort of alternative.
Trump support (and much of Trump hate) has little to do with policies; rather, it is more akin to a cult of personality.
This is not entirely irrational. In a system which is rigged not in your favor, in a system dominated by entrenched interests, Burn It All Down is a reasonable response.
Back in the mid 1800s through the end of mass European migration to USA around a century later, a LOT of "old world craftsmen" arrived in the USA where many ended up in less skilled factory jobs, their children also largely ended up working in a mass production culture. Those immigrants transmitted far less of their craft traditions and knowledge of methods in handwork (which their ancestors and guild masters had developed over centuries). It was a huge loss of European cultural and artistic capital, exported to North America and then seldom passed on to children or apprentices as it had been in prior generations, mostly dieing out with the first generation of immigrants who had held it.
Now, the US centered political/entertainment/academic cultures are managing to inflict a similar extinction of traditional knowledge and belief systems on the descendants of those who stayed behind?
Automation has edged out handwerk skills, like factory made porcelain is as fine as Meissen or Limoges. There are some groups in America that practice handiwork. My nephew is a welder and he also welds art pieces. My brother can do general contracting. My husband has done most of the construction work on our home built in 1907. The US has different architecture as well. We do balloon frame engineering of homes which is different than EU homes. I grow and can some of my own foods.
Clean water, power and sewer systems are critical.
Losing tech isn't unusual, Greek fire, muslin linen and Roman concrete has been lost.
"The problem is, it’s not clear what the alternative actually is now, or where it might come from."
Do you mean to say TINA - that is quite a let down from your usual, and seems to indicate lack of thought and imagination
There are many alternatives to TINA - or do you mean to be hard headed and say none are practical
I do not suppose you have mentioned the possibility of looking East - given that the west will 'lose' the war, especially the EU and NATO will lose the war, and the liklihood some kind of peace being imposed on the Ukraine
"a decisive, and quite possibly final, step in the alienation of European elites from the United States"
Good Riddance? & don't let the door hit 'em on the way out?
and said European elites are alienating the populations of Europe too, hopefully!
Aurelian, you've got to be joking? The problem is NOT American attitudes affecting Europe, it's old European-elite attitudes infecting the USA and being used to maintain control of European electorates!
Continuation of the French Revolution continent-wide is long, long overdue.
Let them eat windmills? Rather, methinks royalty is back on the menu.
ps: what you think is the American "model" of politics is actually a reinfection of UK Politics
I'm even beginning to wonder if Aurelian is at heart a shill for the UK Upper Looting Class.
We're back to the same issue from 200+ years ago.
We de-Britified the USA once. Gotta do it again, before it's too late.
It is difficult to think strictly about contemporary European servility to the USA, taking into account that:
1) Italy and Germany are countries still occupied by the USA after WWII. They do not have a peace agreement, but a ceasefire. This allows the USA to have the largest number of military bases on their territory, whether they want it or not. They do not have much room for manoeuvre in things like political, military and economic independence, not to mention cultural independence.
2) As for Germany, we have already seen what happened with Stream 2: it was supposed to be a long-studied initiative to achieve greater economic independence, which would extend to the whole EU. In fact, before the sabotage there was always the idea of a Russian-European union, in which there was doubt as to who could exercise leadership, Russia (military and energy power) or Germany/EU (technological and demographic power...although in decline). As far as we know, it was sabotaged directly or indirectly by the USA.
3) The fact that most of the current politicians in the UK and EU are puppets/protectors of US interests rather than European or their own countries is due to a careful selection of personnel by the European elites, because in Europe, little wealth is extracted from work, instead it is obtained from financial products and monetary speculation, and in this respect the SWIFT system does not allow the European elites to distance themselves from the US. In fact, the Russian, Chinese and other elites want to distance themselves from this dependence by promoting alternatives
4) The fact that the European left has become elitist was inevitable when the great majority of its cadres have stopped having direct contact with manual labour. It was not necessary that instead of defending the massive and illegal arrival of immigrant workers, they should have managed their legal arrival and taken charge of the conditions of exploitation of this immense wave of wage workers that exists throughout the West. In fact, a large left-wing party that defends work is still expected. On this last point, Aurelien, I agree with you, they have made a mockery and catastrophic imitation of the struggle of the Democratic Party (although also Republican, since TRUMP, the winner, is not strictly Republican but has his own MAGA movement in which there are not many Republican senators).
Hi, I love your essays! As an American who voted for all the left wingers all my life, I changed my vote to Trump because I'm sick of the war-for-profits scheme, the incompetence and corruption. Obama, the ridiculous Noble peace prize winner, dropped more drone bombs than Bush. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction and we got the Patriot Act getting rid for the 4th amendment due process, the TARP act bailing out criminal bankers and spending printed money that's leading to bankruptcy and inflation. We're sick of incompetence, pork barreling and grift. we had leftists calling for censorship and Americans aren't having it.
Foucault sucks ass. Not only is he a child rapist, but if anyone tries to tell you there is "moral relativism" the best counter argument is punch them in their face, steal their stuff and say their moral objection is relative. The 10 Commandments are the embodiment of morality. If everyone followed those rules many of our self-made problems would evaporate.
Have you ever thought of factoring in the depopulation agendas into you analyses? 2 good ones are the Jaffe Memo pushing feminism and homosexuality as a means to decrease population and the Kissinger memo. The "elites" have openly stated their Malthusian goal of 1 billion people on planet earth, themselves and their heirs included.
As one of millions grappling with the furious pace of geopolitical developments around the world to make sense of where it's all heading, I struggle daily to draw a deep breath. This is one of the most refreshing articles I have come across in a long time. Not just well written but well thought out.
'Washington Myth' is an apt encapsulation of the hubris and follies of the American Empire which, in reality, is a fluke of history. One of those rare aberrations like the Mule in Asimov's Foundation series of novels. Sheer power of propaganda through the medium of English, the tacitly accepted international language, would have everyone believe the empire is here to last forever. The myth is unraveling steadily in Ukraine, with Israel and Taiwan lining up to grease the skids.
I hope you will write another piece to link back the American Empire to the past five centuries of European colonial empires. It is, after all, the denouement of a world rule delusion long in the making.
Yes, it is soo hard to think and analyze things with one's brain, and it is hurtful even, to have to go to the basics and re-evaluate the fundamentals and the working assumptions. Plus, it can take one in directions that are undesirable, because it can undermine the existing power structures and reduce the slice of the benefits to accrue for the elites...
“Labour was cheated of victory, against all expectations” they weren’t cheated. Kinnock’s “triumphant” procession into the Sheffield “gala” was too much for many Brits to stomach it was arrogance personified and he paid the price.
I find that a lot of criticism of the mainstream 'left' essentially falls into the "they don't represent the working class anymore" argument, without any apparent recognition that the problem is as much that the "working class" as it was when these parties began, no longer exists. The problem is that society has changed, while the parties, at least in name, have not. Of course they have had to adapt to the changing circumstances.
The question is, why have they done so in the way that they have? The answer seems obvious. Because our political systems have always been prone to 'capture' by the dominant forces in society. Once, the organised working class was one of these. Now, it isn't, for a variety of complex reasons.
The dominant forces today are finance and the ultra-wealthy, of which there are several factions who fight each other, but all of them support some sort of neoliberal approach to economics. That our political parties are now under their influence should not be a surprise. Left or right, this is true of all flavours of mainstream party.
The real struggle is between the elite factions, some who favour an openly authoritarian approach, while others are more supportive of a managed 'democracy'. The parties have internal factions for both of these, so are conflicted. But what they do NOT represent is the bulk of the population's interests. Populists are just a useful tool for disciplining the mainstream - or an opportunity for the authoritarian tendency to steal a march. Nobody, other than the more fringe parties with little prospect of power, seriously tries to represent the interests of ordinary people. They just go through the motions enough, they hope, to gull people into voting for them. But, this is true of left, right and centre.
> 'And curiously, even the bitterest critics of Washington, and the “alt-media,” unhesitatingly take the influence of the United States at its own evaluation.'
Not quite Aurelien standard, this article, I think. It too much focus on what was going on in the lofty ideological spheres, as if there were no solid material things they had to communicate with.
And the thing that happened in the 60s and 70s was, if I am to believe Alfred Chandler, this doyen of business historians as he is called on wikipedia, was that the great big industrial empires grew so efficient that they could produce much more goods than the public wanted to (or could) buy. We got an over-production crisis.
Up to then they had been able to finance themselves through earned profits. But now they had to turn to the finance sector, to the rentiers, for money. And these people had other priorities than the industrialists. They were uninterested in long term build up, and even of production, they wanted returns on their money immediately. And the best way to guarantee that was that no politics got in the way of ”the markets” as they called themselves.
With rentiers in control of the economy, there was not much for politicians to do, except serving them with ”market-friendly” deregulations (or re-regulations). Earlier generations at least tried to marry popular and industrialist interests, and build long-term improvements, but rentiers would have none of this. They considered everything that went outside their own clique as a dent in their earnings.
Their hands tied, the only thing the politicians and their hangers-on were left do was to run moralizing campaigns. To label people Evil, or Good. Otherwise, they would seem superfluous.
George Orwell explained the stupidity that ruled British politics in the 1930s with ”they have such a thick padding of money between themselves and reality that they don’t need to know how things are.” He talked about the rentiers that dominated the economy then, and the rentiers of today are no different. Except that they now dominate not only Britain but the whole North-Atlantic global region.
So the stupidity of the European ruling elites is no import from the US, I think, it's something grown both there and here quite independently, if in tandem, for identical reasons. The disgusting subservience to US interest that European elites show is rather based (I believe) in the fact that the biggest EU state has a GDP of 4500 billion while the US has 27000 billion – and even the EU combined is smaller in these terms than the US is.
Love this piece. You pretty much captured the philosophy that is the base of European subservience.
It like to add that Europe elite (all old money) sees eye to eye with American old money. Their interests are the same and we can not expect any meaningful changes sprouting from them. Just recall the laughable 'inclusive capitalism' which they tried to launch. Which leaves the European political class.
I used to dabble in politics and have seen up close and personal how the left (the right was already infected) has been corrupted by Washington for decades. Decisions that made no sense were dictated from a desk somewhere in Washington. Which only benefited the US and the politicians involved.
Pretty much everybody who in anybody in European politics is now a member of some transatlantic institution which carefully manages his or her career in Europe to further American interests. Which explains the poor caliber of Europe's ruling elite these days.
Arguably even worse is that this European political class is utterly dependent Washington's goodwill once their time in office inevitably comes to an end. If 'those who have fallen from grace' want to cash in with comfy jobs at the UN, Think Tanks or Academia the US calls the shots. This blatant network corruption is firmly embedded in Europe in our age.
A departing official from the US State Department recently bragged that no politician (feel free to add Eurocrats to that group) could be bribed as easily and as cheaply as in Europe. Which is quite understandable if you take in consideration that the European decision making class has already been captured for a generation.
Even if the current generation that is in power in Europe is being replaced, those replacements will be mostly made up of American stooges as well. It will take time and considerable political upheaval to root out (trans-) Atlanticism in Europe.
And Atlanticism must be cut from Europe's body if we want to stop that cancer from killing us all.
"A departing official from the US State Department recently bragged that no politician (feel free to add Eurocrats to that group) could be bribed as easily and as cheaply as in Europe. Which is quite understandable if you take in consideration that the European decision making class has already been captured for a generation."
Slaves don;t need to be bribed, and there are no chains so strong as the ones forged in the slave's mind.
Good luck getting anyone in Europe to accept this. Their mentality is that of house slaves, relatively pampered, compared with the field hands, and now that General Sherman has come and the field hands buggered off, they still hang around the plantation house because they've been slaves their entire lives and literally cannot imagine life without Master.
In my world, the closest thing is a dog. A dog needs a Master and will obey even an abusive master. Hell, many of the most obedient dogs have cruel masters.
And yeah, Europeans worshipped (that is the proper verb) Clinton and Obama
Note how the antiwar movement disappeared without a trace, the moment those wars became Obama's wars.
Yes. Right now, the European elite attitude seems to be one of increased servility not rebellion. It will take a new generation to alter that, and even then it may not change. Although the cold logic dictates that it should.
I think a key element is that US cultural power is so strong, and not showing obvious signs of reducing. Elites still (even increasingly perhaps) want their offspring to study in the US, and so forth. This drives personal behaviour. Whatever the national interest of European countries might be.
To your point about Obama: I attended a conference in a European capital a couple of years ago and he was interviewed by VC. Most of the audience were senior European players in the firm I was part of. The managing partner was the interviewer. The total fawning from both him and the audience was really something to behold.
House slaves tell themselves how good they have it, relative to the field hands.
Didn't Borrel himself liken Europe to a "garden" and the world of the field slaves fo a "jungle"?
Europe has been under US policies since the post WW2 Breton Woods agreement. Plenty of Americans are sick of footing the war bills. We're also mad that the Biden regime has weaponized the US dollar to use as a political bludgeon which has made others not trust us. I think the US should have offered Russia some kind of Marshall plan and trade agreement back in the 90's. Stalin sucked more ass than Hitler, but Russia fought against Hitler. The Eu could be enjoying cheaper gas if Nordstream hadn't been destroyed. Plus you've got Ursula von den LIAR calling for the de-industrialization of the EU while at eh same time China is pigging down all the coal and keeping there people out of poverty. Sorry if we have to choose between humans starving or energy related CO2, I'll take CO2 because on the bright side plants love CO2.
Biden weaponized the US dollar? Really? Ya it's a first. Never been done before. Before Biden America played fair - purer than the driven snow.
As for CO2 and having to choose, no one on planet earth has had that choice taken away as long as they had the means.
Your ignorant American conservative talking points are as boring as they are ignorant and unoriginal. You don't know shite about CO2.
Another American climate denier (is there any other kind?) infects another comment section.
................................
*Rising carbon dioxide levels are turning rice and fish into junk food*
Posted: Jun 08, 2018
"Increased CO2 in the atmosphere reduces the nutritional value of rice, the world's most plentiful and valuable crop, as well as wheat and many wild plants. But CO2 also has a negative impact on the nutrition we take from the oceans, and that starts at the base of the food web with the harm it does to the microscopic phytoplankton."
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/june-9-2018-rising-co2-levels-make-food-less-nutritious-neonics-and-bees-tricking-facial-recognition-1.4696119/rising-carbon-dioxide-levels-are-turning-rice-and-fish-into-junk-food-1.4696123
Hmmm I wonder if TOO MUCH of other life giving substances -H2O- can also damage {or worse} human's crops??? If some is good, more must be better ......right?
*Record Rainfall Spoils Crops in China, Rattling Its Leaders*
"After weeks of drought, farmers in the typically arid agricultural belt in northern China were ill prepared for the torrential rain that inundated fields earlier this summer and decimated their crops of eggplant, cucumbers and cabbage."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/02/world/asia/china-rainfall-crops.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Increases in precipitation is a decades old {no brainer} climate science prediction that has come to pass and the record smashing precipitation events (rain, snow, hail) have been ongoing for the last decade. For every 1C increase in global temperature the atmosphere holds approximately 7% more moisture (evaporation & the hydrological cycle) so expect bigger and more destructive precipitation loaded disasters. In a few instances record snow fall has replenished dangerously low snow packs in a number of locals, but they will continue to drop and it will be costly as many places count on snow melt, in whole or part, for drinking water, hydro electrical generation and crop irrigation.
............
*Climate change behind sharp drop in snowpack since 1980s, study shows*
.
"Now, a new Dartmouth study cuts through the uncertainty in these observations and provides evidence that seasonal snowpacks throughout most of the Northern Hemisphere have indeed shrunk significantly over the past 40 years due to human-driven climate change. The sharpest global warming-related reductions in snowpack—between 10% to 20% per decade—are in the Southwestern and Northeastern United States, as well as in Central and Eastern Europe.
The researchers report in the journal Nature that the extent and speed of this loss potentially put the hundreds of millions of people in North America, Europe, and Asia who depend on snow for their water on the precipice of a crisis that continued warming will amplify."
https://phys.org/news/2024-01-climate-sharp-snowpack-1980s.html
~~~~~~~~~~~
Oil is a finite resource, that to date has been in abundance. When peak oil will hit, I cannot say, but I can definitely say that most are still going to have to choose, but it will be a choice between eating Raman noodles and hot dogs for the month and buying medicine or buying the highest quality (nutritionally) food available and skipping the medication, or electric bill, insurance, etc.
To date, no one has chosen to give up oil and it's by products. The tiny few who have given up or greatly reduced their dependence on oil, sorry but your sacrifice has gone unnoticed - statically insignificant.
I have long know that all environmentalists claims of successfully fighting climate change are the same as those who whine and belly ache over their fossil fuel freedom being taken away (OMG it's Greta come to take away your god given hydrocarbons) - complete bull shit. I know this because I look at the data which has said the same thing year after year after yearsand tells the tale - no talk required. Tiny, 1 years dips from Covid and the GFC.
~~~~
Same Shit, Different Year
.
*2023 Set Records in Global Fossil Fuel Use and Carbon Dioxide Emissions*
"In 2023, the world consumed more oil, coal and natural gas than any time in history, according to the Energy Institute’s “Statistical Review of World Energy.”
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/international-issues/2023-set-records-in-global-fossil-fuel-use-and-carbon-dioxide-emissions/
Further reading will only result in having to read this years spin how this time it's different bla bla bla the hopium is still there and so is the spazoid fake threats of Greta-N-Gore coming to steal your fossil fuel freedom - that canard is the bread and butter for Alex Jones and American talk radio hosts. They have got more mileage out of their hysterical fake environmentalist threats than last years oil got for planes trains and automobiles.
~
I don't doubt that this is entirely true of the Europe's "misleadership" class. I cannot say with certainty it is true of all of its peoples.
True, but since when did the people count?
Well, I'll admit it's rare, but 1789 comes to mind ...
Without going into the class character of 1789, as long as the 1% are United, they will never lose power, because they control the levers of power and because they will do whatever it takes to hang onto power.
One of the defining features of the head first plunge of what’s left of the left, has been that the current debris field is littered with folks my age, once ardent anti-warriors…because of course it was personal; t’was our generation that had been designated to slaughter Vietnamese, and die doing so. Who needs that we thought…among less selfish things. Fast forward, and these same have forgotten the essence of the anti-warrior is being anti-war, not a selective accounting based upon whether it’s our balls getting chopped or not.
Even as this purity of idea seemed still alive circa 2003 when Iraq had its turn, the Clinton-Obaman experience helped us to understand. Anti war is a useful idea sometimes; it’s the other party reigning during the “intervention”. The idea of what is war has morphed. Anti war always subjected the adherent to social and political contempt. Being anti interventionist is even worse.
Some 35 year ago I had the opportunity to study in the US on an exchange program. I landed in a rural Pennsylvanian college and proceeded to be completely shocked. Where was the America I knew from all the sit-coms? Instead I found a weird place where everybody was a religious fanatic, overweight, poorly educated and dirt-poor. Still all these people were absolutely convinced there was no actual world outside of the US; that the US was superior in any field discussed and all non-US citizens were dumb and backward. Having experienced the discrepancy between the reality and the US perception of themselves, I went home less one illusion and plus one experience. It has since amazed me that American "culture" and the American way of thinking was adapted so readily by my fellow-Europeans. Didn't they see they were casting out their sold foundations for something that was infinitely less refined, less worthwhile? I guess not. Maybe it isn't too late yet. Maybe the loathing I perceive here for Trump will finally open their eyes to see that their own culture and inheritance is quite good enough, and probably even better, thank you very much.
Did you ever see the movie "Idicoracy"? That's why we're getting rid of the Department of Education. Americans are way less educated than they used to be with "no child left behind", the stupid Marxist garbage schools are pushing, and "common core math". I put my kids in a charter school because the local public school had poor test scores and a gang liaison officer. We're pulling the fluoride out of the water to because it neurotoxic and lowers IQ.
As an American who speaks 4 languages and lived in Germany for several years, it annoys me when Europeans say "culture" in quotes. You put more than 3 people together and you get a "culture", which is a system of shared values and unspoken rules. Are you creating "culture" by writing, music, painting, drama, dance or music composition? Or are you just consuming?
It's kind of silly that anyone would believe that TV shows represent the reality of poverty and every single country has poverty.
I also think you are wrong to criticize their religion. I was a lifelong atheist, but recently have been baptized as an Orthodox Christian because I came to see the value of religion, which the EU has turned away from.
Finally, Americans live in a big country with a lot of diverse people, so if we are going to be unified as a country, with citizens loyal to our country, we need a unifying language and culture so I don't hold it against my fellow Americans that they all speak only 1 language.
Being overweight sucks. We blew up in the 90's after they decided to put cereal/sugars at the base of the food pyramid instead of at the top. I gained weight when I moved back to America and I can't lose it. I went to Italy and felt like a hippo next to svelte chic Italians, but when I got back to the US, I was middle of the fat pack.
Shared values? Looking from afar it seems that the biggest issue in America is that you DON'T share values. You are deeply divided and that division is tearing your country apart. There is little sharing and a lot of insisting that one set of values is right, while the other is utterly wrong.
As a American who has lived his entire life in the 'Red' states I can say with a moderate level of certainty that the main reason that people vote for Trump is that he insults and belittles other politicians. It created a opportunity to have a anti-establishment vote. Something that hasn't existed in the USA in our lifetime.
Most people really hate the government and media and what has been going on for years now with all the wars and heavy handed social engineering and such. They are tired of it and just want to be left alone. Trump is the only thing that comes close to offering any sort of alternative.
Trump support (and much of Trump hate) has little to do with policies; rather, it is more akin to a cult of personality.
This is not entirely irrational. In a system which is rigged not in your favor, in a system dominated by entrenched interests, Burn It All Down is a reasonable response.
He promises to put Americans first. maybe we can get our country cleaned up.
Back in the mid 1800s through the end of mass European migration to USA around a century later, a LOT of "old world craftsmen" arrived in the USA where many ended up in less skilled factory jobs, their children also largely ended up working in a mass production culture. Those immigrants transmitted far less of their craft traditions and knowledge of methods in handwork (which their ancestors and guild masters had developed over centuries). It was a huge loss of European cultural and artistic capital, exported to North America and then seldom passed on to children or apprentices as it had been in prior generations, mostly dieing out with the first generation of immigrants who had held it.
Now, the US centered political/entertainment/academic cultures are managing to inflict a similar extinction of traditional knowledge and belief systems on the descendants of those who stayed behind?
Automation has edged out handwerk skills, like factory made porcelain is as fine as Meissen or Limoges. There are some groups in America that practice handiwork. My nephew is a welder and he also welds art pieces. My brother can do general contracting. My husband has done most of the construction work on our home built in 1907. The US has different architecture as well. We do balloon frame engineering of homes which is different than EU homes. I grow and can some of my own foods.
Clean water, power and sewer systems are critical.
Losing tech isn't unusual, Greek fire, muslin linen and Roman concrete has been lost.
"The problem is, it’s not clear what the alternative actually is now, or where it might come from."
Do you mean to say TINA - that is quite a let down from your usual, and seems to indicate lack of thought and imagination
There are many alternatives to TINA - or do you mean to be hard headed and say none are practical
I do not suppose you have mentioned the possibility of looking East - given that the west will 'lose' the war, especially the EU and NATO will lose the war, and the liklihood some kind of peace being imposed on the Ukraine
Which will prove, perhaps, infectious
"a decisive, and quite possibly final, step in the alienation of European elites from the United States"
Good Riddance? & don't let the door hit 'em on the way out?
and said European elites are alienating the populations of Europe too, hopefully!
Aurelian, you've got to be joking? The problem is NOT American attitudes affecting Europe, it's old European-elite attitudes infecting the USA and being used to maintain control of European electorates!
Continuation of the French Revolution continent-wide is long, long overdue.
Let them eat windmills? Rather, methinks royalty is back on the menu.
ps: what you think is the American "model" of politics is actually a reinfection of UK Politics
I'm even beginning to wonder if Aurelian is at heart a shill for the UK Upper Looting Class.
We're back to the same issue from 200+ years ago.
We de-Britified the USA once. Gotta do it again, before it's too late.
Quite brilliant - context is everything and the USA is and never has been England, let alone Scotland
It is difficult to think strictly about contemporary European servility to the USA, taking into account that:
1) Italy and Germany are countries still occupied by the USA after WWII. They do not have a peace agreement, but a ceasefire. This allows the USA to have the largest number of military bases on their territory, whether they want it or not. They do not have much room for manoeuvre in things like political, military and economic independence, not to mention cultural independence.
2) As for Germany, we have already seen what happened with Stream 2: it was supposed to be a long-studied initiative to achieve greater economic independence, which would extend to the whole EU. In fact, before the sabotage there was always the idea of a Russian-European union, in which there was doubt as to who could exercise leadership, Russia (military and energy power) or Germany/EU (technological and demographic power...although in decline). As far as we know, it was sabotaged directly or indirectly by the USA.
3) The fact that most of the current politicians in the UK and EU are puppets/protectors of US interests rather than European or their own countries is due to a careful selection of personnel by the European elites, because in Europe, little wealth is extracted from work, instead it is obtained from financial products and monetary speculation, and in this respect the SWIFT system does not allow the European elites to distance themselves from the US. In fact, the Russian, Chinese and other elites want to distance themselves from this dependence by promoting alternatives
4) The fact that the European left has become elitist was inevitable when the great majority of its cadres have stopped having direct contact with manual labour. It was not necessary that instead of defending the massive and illegal arrival of immigrant workers, they should have managed their legal arrival and taken charge of the conditions of exploitation of this immense wave of wage workers that exists throughout the West. In fact, a large left-wing party that defends work is still expected. On this last point, Aurelien, I agree with you, they have made a mockery and catastrophic imitation of the struggle of the Democratic Party (although also Republican, since TRUMP, the winner, is not strictly Republican but has his own MAGA movement in which there are not many Republican senators).
Hi, I love your essays! As an American who voted for all the left wingers all my life, I changed my vote to Trump because I'm sick of the war-for-profits scheme, the incompetence and corruption. Obama, the ridiculous Noble peace prize winner, dropped more drone bombs than Bush. Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction and we got the Patriot Act getting rid for the 4th amendment due process, the TARP act bailing out criminal bankers and spending printed money that's leading to bankruptcy and inflation. We're sick of incompetence, pork barreling and grift. we had leftists calling for censorship and Americans aren't having it.
Foucault sucks ass. Not only is he a child rapist, but if anyone tries to tell you there is "moral relativism" the best counter argument is punch them in their face, steal their stuff and say their moral objection is relative. The 10 Commandments are the embodiment of morality. If everyone followed those rules many of our self-made problems would evaporate.
Have you ever thought of factoring in the depopulation agendas into you analyses? 2 good ones are the Jaffe Memo pushing feminism and homosexuality as a means to decrease population and the Kissinger memo. The "elites" have openly stated their Malthusian goal of 1 billion people on planet earth, themselves and their heirs included.
https://archive.org/details/henry-kissinger-population-control-document
https://jaffememo.com/
As one of millions grappling with the furious pace of geopolitical developments around the world to make sense of where it's all heading, I struggle daily to draw a deep breath. This is one of the most refreshing articles I have come across in a long time. Not just well written but well thought out.
'Washington Myth' is an apt encapsulation of the hubris and follies of the American Empire which, in reality, is a fluke of history. One of those rare aberrations like the Mule in Asimov's Foundation series of novels. Sheer power of propaganda through the medium of English, the tacitly accepted international language, would have everyone believe the empire is here to last forever. The myth is unraveling steadily in Ukraine, with Israel and Taiwan lining up to grease the skids.
I hope you will write another piece to link back the American Empire to the past five centuries of European colonial empires. It is, after all, the denouement of a world rule delusion long in the making.
Excellent essay!
Yes, it is soo hard to think and analyze things with one's brain, and it is hurtful even, to have to go to the basics and re-evaluate the fundamentals and the working assumptions. Plus, it can take one in directions that are undesirable, because it can undermine the existing power structures and reduce the slice of the benefits to accrue for the elites...
“Labour was cheated of victory, against all expectations” they weren’t cheated. Kinnock’s “triumphant” procession into the Sheffield “gala” was too much for many Brits to stomach it was arrogance personified and he paid the price.
I find that a lot of criticism of the mainstream 'left' essentially falls into the "they don't represent the working class anymore" argument, without any apparent recognition that the problem is as much that the "working class" as it was when these parties began, no longer exists. The problem is that society has changed, while the parties, at least in name, have not. Of course they have had to adapt to the changing circumstances.
The question is, why have they done so in the way that they have? The answer seems obvious. Because our political systems have always been prone to 'capture' by the dominant forces in society. Once, the organised working class was one of these. Now, it isn't, for a variety of complex reasons.
The dominant forces today are finance and the ultra-wealthy, of which there are several factions who fight each other, but all of them support some sort of neoliberal approach to economics. That our political parties are now under their influence should not be a surprise. Left or right, this is true of all flavours of mainstream party.
The real struggle is between the elite factions, some who favour an openly authoritarian approach, while others are more supportive of a managed 'democracy'. The parties have internal factions for both of these, so are conflicted. But what they do NOT represent is the bulk of the population's interests. Populists are just a useful tool for disciplining the mainstream - or an opportunity for the authoritarian tendency to steal a march. Nobody, other than the more fringe parties with little prospect of power, seriously tries to represent the interests of ordinary people. They just go through the motions enough, they hope, to gull people into voting for them. But, this is true of left, right and centre.
> 'And curiously, even the bitterest critics of Washington, and the “alt-media,” unhesitatingly take the influence of the United States at its own evaluation.'
Do you have any examples of this?
Not quite Aurelien standard, this article, I think. It too much focus on what was going on in the lofty ideological spheres, as if there were no solid material things they had to communicate with.
And the thing that happened in the 60s and 70s was, if I am to believe Alfred Chandler, this doyen of business historians as he is called on wikipedia, was that the great big industrial empires grew so efficient that they could produce much more goods than the public wanted to (or could) buy. We got an over-production crisis.
Up to then they had been able to finance themselves through earned profits. But now they had to turn to the finance sector, to the rentiers, for money. And these people had other priorities than the industrialists. They were uninterested in long term build up, and even of production, they wanted returns on their money immediately. And the best way to guarantee that was that no politics got in the way of ”the markets” as they called themselves.
With rentiers in control of the economy, there was not much for politicians to do, except serving them with ”market-friendly” deregulations (or re-regulations). Earlier generations at least tried to marry popular and industrialist interests, and build long-term improvements, but rentiers would have none of this. They considered everything that went outside their own clique as a dent in their earnings.
Their hands tied, the only thing the politicians and their hangers-on were left do was to run moralizing campaigns. To label people Evil, or Good. Otherwise, they would seem superfluous.
George Orwell explained the stupidity that ruled British politics in the 1930s with ”they have such a thick padding of money between themselves and reality that they don’t need to know how things are.” He talked about the rentiers that dominated the economy then, and the rentiers of today are no different. Except that they now dominate not only Britain but the whole North-Atlantic global region.
So the stupidity of the European ruling elites is no import from the US, I think, it's something grown both there and here quite independently, if in tandem, for identical reasons. The disgusting subservience to US interest that European elites show is rather based (I believe) in the fact that the biggest EU state has a GDP of 4500 billion while the US has 27000 billion – and even the EU combined is smaller in these terms than the US is.