Geopolitics Europ: Observations From the Back Row

Sunday, December 17, 2017

Geopolitics Europe: Observations From the Back Row

By Rich Kozlovich

One of the things everyone should easily be aware of - nothing is ever as it appears in politics, national or international. The only constant we can be assured of is - there will be change. Foundational systems for a stable world are crumbling, and although these structures continue to exist who can say for how long and what the outcome will be.

However, there are certain fundamentals that apply that allow for reasonable conclusions and anticipation of world events. One of them is - finances! Eventually everything has to be paid for! And that's not just a problem in the United States with over 20 trillion in outright debt, not to mention the financial obligations regarding Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. That might be a total debt load of over 100 trillion dollars.

This was copied from the blogger blog:  paradigms and demographics. 

The saker Leftist bog.

The Saker

A Saker is a large bird, a falcon.  It is also the name of a popular Leftist blog.  The blogger is anti-American, anti-Israel and quite paranoid: It was of course George Bush who blew up the twin towers.

The Saker is an example of an older Leftist type that precedes the modern-day Democratic party.  As Trump points out, the modern-day Democrats are the establishment, the people in charge of most things in American life. They would still control the Presidency if they had put up Sanders against Trump but the personal ambition and deep pockets of Hillary Clinton derailed that.

But there is an older leftist type that is anti-establishment.  They used to complain about "the system", "The bosses",  "Wall St.", "Big business" etc. They yearned for a "workers' paradise".  They saw themselves as ground-down and the victim of all sorts of conspiracies, including "The capitalist press".

And they still exist.

From Dissecting Leftism

Journaling

I am an enthusiastic and dedicated journal writer. My personal journals have lead to deep understanding of myself. It took many years, but it was worth it. I now understand why I did  the things I did in the past and why I do the things I do now.


Here is an excerpt from an article on journal writing from the University of Iowa. It's conclusion confirms what I have been doing naturally.


https://transformationalchange.pbworks.com/f/stressjournaling.pdf


It's not just what you write about though. How you write plays a role as well. This University of Iowa study showed that journaling about stressful events helped participants deal with the events they experienced. The key, however, was to focus on what you were thinking and feeling as opposed to your emotions alone. In short, you get the best benefits of journaling when you're telling your personal story, not just writing about your feelings on their own. It's a great example of how telling your own personal story can make a huge difference in your well being.

Trump is driving the left insane.

Monday, October 16, 2017 

Copied from Dissecting Liberalism blog @blogspot originally from By Michael A. Cohen Globe Columnist  October 13, 2017

Trump is driving the Left insane

Leftist columnist Michael A. Cohen’s writes in the Boston Globe that "Trump is everywhere and Americans are getting buried". Trump's amazing achievement of getting himself high in the news asgenda every day is deeply painful for the Left.  Some excerpts from Cohen:

It’s impossible to keep up. It’s all-consuming. For millions of Americans, Trump has become an unbearable, infuriating, enraging, and draining presence in our national life. As a political columnist, there’s no escaping him. Going on two years he’s become an omnipresent force in my life. But what about the rest of America? What about those not afflicted by the need to constantly be spinning on the news cycle hamster wheel and those who don’t count themselves part of the MAGA crowd?

I surveyed friends and threw the question out to my Twitter feed about the emotional toll of Trumpism. The responses speak to the extraordinary and largely underreported national trauma — and increasing pessimism about America’s future — that Trump’s presidency is creating.

“There are no grown-ups in charge, no protectors, no one to make sense of things, no one to assure us it will be OK,” said a professor who lives in Las Vegas. “It is so deeply, and continuously, disturbing, that I sometimes doubt our country will survive him.”

A former Obama administration official said, “I am exhausted. All. The. Time. I simply can’t keep up.” A friend and former member of the intelligence community told me he is “utterly exhausted from having my humanity and standing attacked. Wary and anxious that we can’t change it.”

Others struggled for the right words. “Nausea is difficult to describe succinctly,” said an old friend who lives in a blue island in Kansas.

In all the responses I received to this query there was extraordinary and debilitating sense of hopelessness that I’ve never seen before in American politics. “My sense of political efficacy of being able to have any larger impact in the world individually or even as part of a group, has been radically diminished,” a close friend and fellow New Yorker vented. That is, she said, “a bad thing for me and a very bad thing if it gets multiplied out to all of us.”

Many expressed fears of nuclear conflict; others of losing their health care if Republicans succeed in gutting Obamcare. Some talked about moving out of the country, while some compared Trump’s presidency to being in an abusive relationship. People report weight gain, increased anxiety and depression, and sleeplessness.

SOURCE

After all the frustrations and heartburn the Left have visited on everyone else with their insatiable demands for political correctness, it is deeply pleasing to hear that the Left are getting some of their own back

The Marxist Model

Sunday, August 06, 2017

The Marxist model

Copied from "Dissecting Liberalism" blog of Sunday, August 6, 2017

I have received the following comments from an American  reader.  I think they nail Leftism well

Marx himself did not believe in Marxism. He laughed at people who believed in it.

If we want to understand how the great totalitarian machine is able to morph and shift and change with the times, we must go to its soul. At bottom Marxism is a strategy behind which stands a pathological desire for absolute power and global destruction.

The outward phenomenon of Marxism is merely the intellectual camouflage of the politically self-actualized psychopath. Here is the outward expression of his rationalization for murder, for seizing power.

This outward expression has changed time and time again, but its spiritual essence is always the same.

And we always seem to miss the point of it. We always seem to address the inner thoughts and intentions of people who are assumed to believe or not believe in a set of “principles.”

But this is an error. We do not understand these people at all! The communist does not take ideas seriously. He is serious only about power and strategy.

A mask is not an idea. A strategy is not a principle. These are tools, weapons, methods.

Marx did not believe in his tools. He used them, and his followers used them, until the tools of the hour no longer served their purpose.

Then the old tools, the old weapons, were discarded for a new set of weapons – “new lies for old.”

Those who talk about belief or disbelief are only talking about the superficial shell of the thing, which can be replaced with a new shell – a new outward appearance.

If Marx did not believe in Marxism, then the true Marxist should not believe in it either. It is a sorry swindler who believes in his own swindle.

Behind the shell of the communist's outward pretenses we find the same core phenomenon: the malevolent soul of the destroyer, the envious lusting for power and revenge, the hatred of the good for being the good.

And in this soul’s self-affirmation we find, curiously, a reformulation of the same old totalitarian themes; the same old bag of tricks for debasing and leveling humanity.

All that being said, the outward shell of the supposedly debunked Marxism is by no means out of the game. Out-and-out communism could return to power at any time.

The various outer shells – the rationales and swindles – may change and shift as circumstances require; yet the driving force from within remains ever constant, ever alert to new opportunities. Marxism is strategy, not belief.

That is why Mao Zedong said, “Marxism is better than a machine gun.”

One does not believe in a machine gun. One uses it, merely, to neutralize an enemy.

One must keep in mind the usefulness, in this regard, of ideological mortars and howitzers and atomic bombs – the whole arsenal of political correctness.

A simple truth. From http://pcwatch.blogspot.com/

A simple

A Toast to California Secssion

Thursday, February 09, 2017

Dissecting liberalism blog

A Toast to California’s Secession

Robert Ringer has a "modest proposal"

There’s been a lot of talk recently about California seceding from the union. It’s akin to Hollywood celebs vowing to move out of the country if a Republican wins the White House. Meaning that it’s all bluster. Those who extol the virtues of the People’s Republic of California love to make hollow threats, but they possess neither the courage nor the financial resources to back them up.

If California were ever on its own, within six months of its “independence” it would be unable to function at even a survival level. Though it boasts the sixth largest economy in the world (larger than that of both Brazil and France!), there’s no economy big enough to keep a Marxist country afloat. This has been demonstrated time and again in such failed nations as Cuba, the Soviet Union, Mozambique, and every other country that has experimented with socialism/communism in any of its hideous forms.