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Category Archives: Geo-Politics

Just Go Away, Dubyah

23 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Geo-Politics, The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

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2008 Financial Crash, American nationalism, Dubya, George W. Bush, Guns and Butter, Jim Langcuster, Western Culture

The American people got treated to some Dubyah ruminations recently after a rather extended hiatus.

I apologize in advance for what I am about to say. No offense to my evangelical and other orthodox Christian friends, but I think that Dubya is an empty shirt who exchanged a drug addiction for a Jesus addiction in the 1990’s. He spent a decade furiously digging out of a deep pit of his own making – and partly succeeded only because he was the son of an ex-president.

I’ve had an extended dialogue with someone who has overcome drug and alcohol addiction. He contends that Dubya is a classic example of the millions of addicts who struggle furiously to overcome years of wasted time and deep-seated guilt.  I hope that Dubya has acquired some measure of peace from his struggle, but it is a travesty that he acted out this psychological drama on a national and world stage and on our time and tax dollars. And, yes, I’m to blame along with millions of other Americans because I voted for him and drank generously of his rhetorical Kool-aid.

In my humble opinion, Bush is responsible for a lot of this country’s current fiscal woes, which stem from his ill-conceived guns and butter policies. He acutely lacks any sort of intellectual curiosity. He thinks in absolutes.  He would be far better off keeping his mouth shut and concentrating on his newfound affinity for portrait painting.

As for his discussion of American culture and nationalism – yes, many people of many different ethnic and racial backgrounds have contributed to American culture and civilization. Even so, American culture is discernibly Western and when it ceases to be Western – well, we will be in a helluva lot of trouble, because the freedoms we take for granted in this country are inextricably bound up in our Western cultural inheritance.

Frankly, anybody contends that we can continue to enjoy our current material and cultural advantages in a society that is no longer grounded in the cultural values of the West is selling you a bill of goods.

In the meantime, Dubya, just stick to your portrait painting and leave the lofty thoughts to someone else.

America’s Coming “Identity Awakening”

05 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American Federalism, Federalism, Geo-Politics, Localism, U.S. Politics

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Alvin Toffler, Centralized States, Demassification, Devolution, European Union, Identity Awakening, Jim Langcuster, Nationalism, secession

Catalan-demonstration

A Demonstration of Catalan Nationalists.  Photo: Courtesy of Sergil.

Identity Awakening.  I like that term.

It’s a term that geopolitical analysts and commentators have improvised to account for how globalization has produced a sort of paradoxical effect.

“Everywhere we see regionalism, nationalism as well as religious devotion growing in intensity, sometimes morphing into intolerance. It’s the great paradox of globalization: Far from erasing the peoples’ identitarian and cultural claims, it reinforces them,” writes Li Figaro’s Renaud Giraud.

Technology in the form of digitalization has played a role, too. This takes me back to the writings of the recently deceased Alvin Toffler, a futurist who wrote extensively about the the implications of digital technology, especially in terms of how it would transform society, culture, politics and the economy.

Toffler perceived demassification as one very palpable effect of digital technology.  Mass media would no longer be, well, a mass phenomenon.  There would be no more news anchormen of the stature, not to mention, with the temerity, of Walter Cronkite ending newscasts with the hyper-confident pronouncement:  “That’s the way it is…”

As bandwidth expanded, Toffler predicted that media would scale down to accommodate smaller, more defined audiences.

Remarkably, though, this demassification is not only affecting media but also entire nations.

Demassification seems to have played a major role in the “identity awakenings” occurring throughout the world, particularly in Europe.  It even appears that identity awakenings soon will be playing out in America.  Judging from what’s occurring in California, Texas, Vermont,and Cascadia, they already are.

And why shouldn’t they?  If the Toffler’s musings drove home one realization to me, it’s that national identities based on strong, highly centralized governments are a relic associated with 20th century industrialism, just as mass media are – were.

While I am a great sympathizer with and proponent of identity awakenings, I’m no rigid ideologue.  We are urgently in need of decentrism in America, but  we also depend on a common American market and a common defense, much as Europeans require a common continental market and defense apparatus. But to demand that continents as culturally diverse as America and Europe march in cultural and even political lockstep? It’s madness, as more and more people are coming to realize.

Sooner or later, our institutions will reflect that new reality.  Let’s hope that this occurs as a result of peaceful evolution.

Russia: A Geo-Political Paper Tiger

15 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Geo-Politics, Uncategorized

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Demographics, Donald Trump, Election Hacking, Jim Langcuster, Politics, Russia, Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin

russian-presidential-standards

Presidential Standard of the Russian Federation

Whether or not Russia hackers influenced the presidential election, I, a mere layman in geopolitical terms, will venture out on a limb and assert my genuine doubts that Russia poses a dire threat to American liberty or geopolitical security.

Russia is a basket case, a shell of its former self.  And that speaks volumes about the current state of the Russian Federation because even in its earlier guise as the Soviet Union and the seat of global socialist revolution it was little more than “painted rust,” to borrow a phrase from the Cold War movie classic “The Good Shepherd.” With 35-year hindsight, the late West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s characterization of the old Soviet Union as “Upper Volta with missles” was really spot on. Uruguay with computer hacks is arguably an apt description of 21st century Russia. 

 

Russia arguably doesn’t even match the old Soviet Union in its soft-power capacity, ranking below tiny Finland in at least one international survey. Appealing to a universal egalitarian ideology, the Soviet Union at least posed a serious threat to the United States and the West within much of the developing world. The present hidebound, counterrevolutionary doctrine of Putin’s Russia has little, if any, appeal outside its borders.

 

Russia possesses a GDP smaller than that of New York State, but its population is in a deep downward spiral. Demographers predict a further steep population decline from the present 144 million to 120 million by mid-century.

To complicate matters, in a few more decades, ethnic Russians will be outnumbered by other ethnic groups. Moreover, Russia already is dealing with a serious illegal immigration problem from China. Some 2 million Chinese currently reside illegally in Russia, mostly in the vastly underpopulated region of Siberia. Some geopolitical experts have even speculated that China, which already deeply invested economically in Siberia, ultimately may attempt to annex large swaths of the region, to which it has maintained longstanding territorial claims.

 

Under the circumstances, there’s every reason to speculate that the Russia Federation will implode much as its Soviet predecessor did in 1991.

 

Aside from its nuclear arsenal, Russia’s antiquated military sector poses little threat to the United States. Indeed, in geopolitical terms, the United States holds virtually all the cards. In the event of an international showdown, we have to the capacity to inflict all manner of misery on this beleaguered country, including seizing the assets of Putin and his cronies, interdicting Russia’s trade – roughly 40 percent of its food supply is imported – and wreaking havoc within its communications sector.

 

With Putin, we are dealing with a desperate man whose only hope is to hold a fraying,if not terminally ill, society together by struggling to maintain the illusion among his people that Russia remains a significant global power.

 

Yes, there is some evidence, albeit still speculative at this stage, that Russia hacking influenced the 2016 presidential election. And if this is true, the United States has every right to retaliate through economic sanctions and other measured responses.

I wonder, though:  Given Russia’s desperate condition, is it possible that this 21st century paper tiger deliberately being inflated into something bigger, actually much bigger than it really is?  Is it possible that sick, pathetic Russia is serving, however unwittingly, as the basis for a new form of McCathyism, one cooked up as an act of desperation by U.S. elites who perceive an even bigger threat to their vital interests: a Donald Trump presidency?

Perhaps all will be revealed over time – but then, perhaps not.

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