Back in the early 1980’s when I was a deficit hawk and a foreign policy realist, I favored something I called aggressive withdrawal.*  The idea was the US would begin a phased withdrawal from Europe and a full pullout from Japan and S. Korea, which would include a withdrawal of naval forces from the Western Pacific and redeployment in the Indian Ocean. The idea was that Western Europe and Japan were now strong powers and they could easily afford to the conventional forces in Europe and the Far East necessary to keep the Soviets in check.  The US would focus on making sure the oil routes would stay open and deter any Soviet intrusion into the Middle East or South Asia that had been made more likely by the loss of the Shah and the Soviet intrusion into Afghanistan, both relatively recent events at the time.  It was simply a more cost-effective (for us) way to continue the US containment strategy.

In the wake of Trump’s phone conversation with the Australian leader, his friendliness with Putin and his comments about NATO and Japanese nukes, I have started to wonder if Trump may be pursuing a modern version of aggressive withdrawal.  Russia is objectively weak.  The Europeans can easily deter them, so Trump would get in a huff, started a tweet war with the Europeans order the US to pull out—fuck them!  If Russia then overruns Ukraine and the Baltics, this should serve as a wake-up call to them.
As for Japan, they need to be nudged.  So stir up trouble with China, then pick fights with our allies in the region, which gives you an excuse to take or ball and go home and let them deal with a resurgent China. 
This of course is a ridiculously reckless policy.  But when I thought along these lines I was a twenty-something, “young and dumb and full cum” as the guys in the plant put it.  But I note that Trump seems to take pains to present himself as just as young, dumb, and full of cum as any twenty-something.  Who knows, maybe he’s not pretending.

*The aggressive part comes from coupling the strategic withdrawal with uber-hawkish rhetoric.  Sort of how Reagan was able to turn tail and run like a scared girl from Lebanon leaving hundreds of American’s killed by terrorists unavenged, while maintaining his image as this super aggressive hawk that you do not fuck with.

This is what Republicans do. They uphold corruption. They do everything wrong. They need to be stopped; period.

From my email:

America just witnessed a sitting U.S. Governor overturn the results of a free and fair election.
South Dakota's governor and legislature brazenly repealed the Anti-Corruption Act voters passed just 3 months ago. It's unconscionable. South Dakotans are outraged. So is America.
The fight in South Dakota isn't over.
We're going to fight tooth and nail for the rest of this legislative session to hold politicians accountable and fight to get every provision of the Anti-Corruption Act put back in place, because that is what South Dakotans deserve.
Thanks to your support, we were able to wage an incredibly tough campaign:

South Dakota politicians weren't expecting the hundreds of phone calls, thousands of emails, scrutiny from national media, or angry protesters filling the Capitol. Our campaign was effective. It rattled them so much, they're scrambling to appease angry voters. They just introduced ten new "replacement" bills – but most are riddled with lobbyist-friendly loopholes, and there's absolutely no guarantee politicians will even bring them to a vote.
It's not good enough.
They want us to go away. That's not happening. We're gearing up for the political fight of our lives during the next 6 weeks, as we work together to restore every single provision of the Anti-Corruption Act. We proved that comprehensive anti-corruption reform is incredibly popular among conservatives, independents and progressives. We also learned how far establishment politicians are willing to go to protect the corrupt status quo.
Don't forget, when the people pass laws that upend business as usual, the establishment will always fight back. But they can't stop a movement. We're in this fight for the long haul – state by state, city by city, until we have a government that truly represents the people.
This is only the beginning of our national fight. We're already gearing up for a massive push across the country in 2018 and beyond. Together, with your help, we're building a movement so powerful that no political establishment can stand in our way.
Thank you for being a part of that movement.

http://www.businessinsider.com/book-stev...?r=UK&IR=T

Quote:   President Trump's adviser, Steve Bannon, is on the cover of this week's Time magazine, and in the piece it is revealed that Bannon deeply believes in a theory about America's future laid out in a book called "The Fourth Turning: What Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny."
This fact should concern every American.
In the book, authors William Strauss and Neil Howe theorize that the history of a people moves in 80-to-100 year cycles called "saecula." The idea goes back to the ancient Greeks, who believed that at a given saeculum's end, there would come "ekpyrosis," a cataclysmic event that destroys the old order and brings in a new one in a trial of fire....



http://www.businessinsider.com/book-stev...?r=UK&IR=T

Quote:That's quite true; although there were lots of "men" at the women's marches (including moi of course)

I think you should see this: http://www.booksontape.com/book/252382/t...rican-era/

Quote:The master geopolitical forecaster and New York Times bestselling author of The Next 100 Years focuses on the United States, predicting how the 2020s will bring dramatic upheaval and reshaping of American government, foreign policy, economics, and culture.

In his riveting new book, noted forecaster and bestselling author George Friedman turns to the future of the United States. Examining the clear cycles through which the United States has developed, upheaved, matured, and solidified, Friedman breaks down the coming years and decades in thrilling detail.
     American history must be viewed in cycles—particularly, an eighty-year "institutional cycle" that has defined us (there are three such examples—the Revolutionary War/founding, the Civil War, and World War II), and a fifty-year "socio-economic cycle" that has seen the formation of the industrial classes, baby boomers, and the middle classes. These two major cycles are both converging on the late 2020s—a time in which many of these foundations will change. The United States will have to endure upheaval and possible conflict, but also, ultimately, increased strength, stability, and power in the world.
     Friedman's analysis is detailed and fascinating, and covers issues such as the size and scope of the federal government, the future of marriage and the social contract, shifts in corporate structures, and new cultural trends that will react to longer life expectancies. This new book is both provocative and entertaining.

For those of us who see the Trump Presidency as a regime instead of a 'mere' Administration

Jailbreak, roughly 300 million people, January 20, 2021...

I understand that many here are allergic to Fox News but Judge Andrew Napolitano is in fact a libertarian.  I must say Trump's choice comes at a bit of a surprise but it is a pleasant one.

Here is what the left devolved into.  Perhaps it is appropriate and ironic that free speech should be opposed so violently in the place where the Free Speech movement got started.  Here is how one person planning to attend Milo's speech was treated.






I also suggest that you listen to what Molyneux has to say.






This all looks like brown-shirt behavior from the thirties.  Makes me wonder who the real fascists are?

From David Kaiser's blog, and well worth reading: (Updates to recognize expiration of time or subsequent events in blue)


Donald Trump took office on Friday January 20,  and the world has held its breath.  Has a major nation ever been led by such a man—a flighty, unstable narcissist, self-indulgent to the core, who acts on impulse, wears his emotions on his sleeve, and bullies his subordinates with pithy, brief comments?  How exactly will the presence of such a man in the White House challenge the American people and the people of the world?

There is a very important historical precedent for Trump, dating from more than 100 years ago, on the other side of the Atlantic.  The leader in question was German—but not the Austro-German whose name seems to be on so many people’s lips.  The man in question was the German Emperor William II, the famous Kaiser Wilhelm, who ascended to the throne in 1888 at the age of 29 and ruled until driven into exile in the midst of defeat and revolution in November 1918, at the end for the First World War.  That war grew out of the biggest obsession of William’s imperial career: to make Germany not simply great, but greater—not merely the leading European nation, which it already was, but also a world power on the scale of the British Empire or the United States.

To illustrate the profound similarities between William and Donald Trump, I would like to begin with an appreciation written in 1897, when William was 38.  The author, Philip Eulenburg, was a nobleman and one of his intimate friends; the recipient was Bernhard von Bülow, a diplomat who had just become foreign minister and who would serve from 1899 until 1909 as Chancellor, the leading official of the empire.  Eulenburg’s advice on how to handle the emperor would undoubtedly serve the leading figures of the new administration very well.

“Wilhelm II takes everything personally. Only personal arguments make any impression on him.  He likes to give advice to others but is unwilling to take it himself.  He cannot stand boredom; ponderous, stiff, excessively thorough people get on his nerves and cannot get anywhere with him. Wilhelm II wants to shine and to do and decide everything himself.  What he wants to do himself unfortunately often goes wrong.  He loves glory, he is ambitious and jealous.  To get him to accept an idea one has to pretend that the idea came from him. . . . Never forget that His Majesty needs praise from time to time.  He is the sort of person who becomes sullen unless he is given recognition from time to time form some one of importance.”  (I owe this quote and much of the data here to the wonderful, multi-volume biogarphy of William by the British historian John C. G. Rohl.)

William also held grudges.  Although Donald Trump spent much of his life within the eastern establishment, he has now developed a hatred for the liberal elite and lashes out against anyone who dares question him on twitter.  William resented anyone who questioned his imperial authority.  Even though Germany had had a constitution since 1866 and his chancellors could not govern without the support of the Reichstag or parliament, he saw himself as a divinely ordained absolute ruler.  He frequently threatened to stage a coup d’etat and do away with the Reichstag altogether, and he regarded the two largest parties—the Social Democrats and the Catholics—as subversive elements whose leaders, he frequently said, should be shot.  

Like Trump, William could not control himself.  In Chancellor Bülow’s own memoirs, he told how he frequently accompanied the emperor on visits around Germany and had to beg the press not to print his latest intemperate remarks.  His famous “marginal notes” on state papers—his comments in his own handwriting—read like Trump’s tweets.  He frequently excoriated his own ministries and officials, as well as foreign leaders and domestic political opponents.  He also made commitments to foreign leaders without consulting his subordinates, and sometimes created European crises by insulting them in public.  He was sure he knew what foreign leaders intended, and his certainty that Russia would go to war with Germany as soon as it felt ready—an idea with very little basis in fact—played a big role in his aggressive policy in July 1914, which led to the First World War and his own and Germany’s downfall.  In one marginal note he actually claimed that sovereigns like himself could see the future in ways that statesmen and diplomats very rarely could.  And while these remarks were for the eyes of his leading subordinates alone, Trump has already stated or tweeted similar criticisms of military leaders and the intelligence committee for all to see.

The First World War might easily have broken out at various times between 1905 and 1914, but William’s civilian, military and naval leadership held him back during several previous crises.  That was not all.  In a famous passage in his memoirs, Bülow—who knew him as well as anyone—insisted that William did not want war, “if only because he did not trust his nerves not to give way in any really critical situation,” and knew that he could never command an army, lead a naval squadron, or even captain a ship. Whether Trump, another bully, will also prove to be a blowhard in office remains to be seen.  

William came to power at the age of 29 at the end of an age of confidence and stability, and reigned for 30 years before he fled to Holland in disgrace.  Trump is already 70, comes to power in the midst of a world political crisis, and knows he cannot remain in office for more than 8 years.  He seems in more of a hurry to put his own stamp on events—and the Republican Congress shares his feeling of urgency.  As a modern President of the United States, with Congressional majorities behind him, he is much closer to enjoying the absolute power that William only dreamed of.  Some subordinates inevitably will try to curry his favor by telling him what he wants to hear, while others may try to make him see reason and restrain his emotional impulses.  Trump is a commentary on the wretched state of our political life.  William II inherited his throne, but the American people elected Donald Trump.  William’s example suggests that Trump is truly a grave danger to our future as a nation. His tenure may well force his subordinates—whom he will select—to make difficult choices, and could force the Congress to choose between partisanship and fidelity to the Constitution.  Let us hope they are all up to the task.

I am working on a paper that seeks to achieve some sort of synthesis between the generational cycle concept proposed by S&H and others with the secular cycle concept proposed by Turchin and others.  I am having all sorts of difficulties, particularly with the interface between what Sean Love dubbed saeculum I and saeculum II, that is, the transition from generations that averaged 26-27 years in length with the more recent generations that averaged 20 years in length. Anyways, that is not the issue for this thread.  The issue is how this 4T may play out, assuming the S&H concept is valid.

I start with the observation that the previous six 4Ts fall into only three categories. As 4T's all fit the definition of a secular crisis: a period when society focuses on reordering the outer world of institutions and public behavior.  Four of the historical 4Ts produced a reordering of the state achieved through either a civil war or a revolution.  Another (Depression & WW II) accomplished the same politically though crushing electoral defeats.  Finally, one 4T (Armada) did not involve an internal reordering of the English state (as would happen in the next 4T), but rather a reordering of the position of England in European politics, in that England became a great power.

Some guy (I believe) proposes this third (Armada) type.  That is, this 4T won't achieve major changes in the state domestically, but rather in the US position in the international order.

I believe that this 4T (if the concept is valid) will involve a domestic re-ordering to be accomplished politically, not through internal war (that is, the Depression & WW II model).

Many have pointed out a similarity of tone to the Civil War 4T.  I see the similarity, but are they saying this 4T will be resolved through internal military conflict (i.e. civil war/revolution)?

Please weigh in.