All your life you’ve known, so it seems, that one day this might all disappear in an instant of white light, intense heat, blessed oblivion.
Look at the facts: the Americans were prepared to drop an untried device on a densely populated area of Japan, quite some time after Japan’s threat was neutralised. They didn’t really know what would happen. They were very keen to find out.
And the enthusiasm didn’t seem to have diminished, much, even when the first details back from the bombed site were being analysed, so this time when knowing in broad details what the consequences would be like, they did it again.
Americans. Using American planes.
Ever since there have been periodic reminders of this, of the danger that it would happen again and… Here Is How Fucking Bad It Will Be. Mostly in American films. Go take a look at the series Fallout. An American film. Filled with American characters willingly carrying out wholesale slaughter both at close quarters and at several removes (you know: the shy ones?). It’s slyly witty and knowing about it too.
Consider why.
To keep you scared of course. Showing in ever more lavish detail and highest resolution yet what might happen if Americans, again, go crazy enough to try the same highest-stakes gamble.
All those little wars? Especially the completely-nothing-is-off-limit wars waged by the Israeli Occupation Force, with lovely American tech? Those ones? They’re the experimental labs where new forms of agonising violence are tried out, filmed and broadcast too, to make it completely clear what absolute madness is going on. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Because the Americans, the decision-makers among them I mean, have already staged a grand reception for the leader of that madness. Dozens and dozens of standing ovations. So it’s really quite clear what response those same “decision-makers”, with some golly gee shrugs and that apologetic smirk, would authorise if anyone, really anyone, is deemed to be difficult.
All of which makes it easy to stroll on over and steal the other man’s stuff. Maybe give his kids some chewing gum. And no one puts up much resistance because they know the history, they’ve seen the films, they know that a cur that snarls and snaps at you, then snarls and snaps at you again, chances are ~ that same cur ~ next time, is going to snarl and snap again.
As the small outbreaks of chaos start to hold hands, the next crisis comes shuffling onto the stage before the last one has even had the decency to disappear from the Breaking News sections of those American news sources, the notion occurs that that same cur is resentfully licking it’s old wounds.
The safest thing has been to pay for the protection, just like in Godfather Part 2. Remember how Don Corleone gets to be the guy who collects the rent? You don’t want to be the old rent collector, bleeding out at the bottom of the stairs. Much safer, almost enjoyable, to do small favours for the rent collector, no? Remember to send compliments and an occasional ibanselo to the wife and kids. You don’t waste any time trying to propose a reasonable alternative to his suggestions.
This has certainly worked very well for the soft countries, really for quite a long time. France, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Greater London, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and all the rest. They’ve let themselves go a bit. They barely even spend any money on artillery these days, so busy are they with patting there-there for the relatable freaks, and locking up the trouble-makers, keeping the rest of the population on-hold for a lot of the time.
A long winter of cold dark evenings like in Kiev, maybe? This will put some backbone into them.
And the rent has gone up. Did you hear? The Racket’s spokesperson Mr Rutte has let it be known that the rent has gone up by 50%.
Remember that bit where the animals gaze in through the steamy window at Jones Farm to see the pigs drinking cider with some humans? They glance from one to the other and then back again but they can longer tell the difference? That bit?
I invite you to consider that we’re at that bit.
Almost all my life... we used to talk about it among ourselves at school in Greater London in the 50s.
It is still insufficiently remarked here that the RAF put up 100s and on one occasion 1000 bombers to destroy German cities. The Americans did something the same to Tokyo.
We see the return of 'total war' big time in Palestine / Levant. Craig Murray, (anti-genocide) former UK Ambassador filming in Lebanon has a pretty good analysis of events that he frankly says he did not expect 6 weeks ago.
I put a comment / note fwiw at Ugo Bardi's 'Seneca' (his excellent latest post btw) on the back story / history / empires, resource extraction and wars.