THE WEST'S TRUE WEAKNESS

    Predictably, the situation in the Middle East is escalating, though reading the American Media one would get the impression that the only real fighting going on is between Republicans and Democrats. Actually, the last few days have seen both some serious diplomatic and military repercussions.

    Turkey has gone against the NATO bloc and severed diplomatic relations with Israel; today Chile, Colombia, and Bolivia recalled their ambassadors. On the military front, Israel has deployed warships to blockade Gaza and engaged in further border clashes with Lebanon and few 'accidental' incidents on the Egyptian border. The Government of Yemen---which recently defeated a heavily US-backed attempt at its overthrow, went even further and actually announced that a State of War exists between themselves and Israel. This shouldn't be dismissed too lightly: Yemen proved its mettle and some extraordinary ability in fighting asymmetrical warfare against a superior force. Though passed over in discreet silence by the US Media, Russia (you know: the country that's losing in Ukraine and running out of men and material according to 'experts') has deployed ballistic missiles all along its Middle Eastern borders and issued a strong warning to Israel to the effect that further aggression against Syria might have some unpleasant consequences. 

    It's evident that the Corporatists and their puppet-governments are becoming increasing isolated internationally. Even before the Uprising in Gaza, we saw growing defiance towards the New World Order spreading throughout Africa and the Middle East, and now apparently in South America as well. There's a strong undercurrent of resistance swelling in Europe, although the assorted Regimes there have a fairly firm grip on power. This situation has led to a choir---all singing in unison throughout the Anglosphere---among the symbolic Conservative opposition that our current leadership's alleged weakness is leading to this loss of prestige. 

    The idea that the growing international backlash against our Corporate Deep State reflects our weakness is half-true. It is a response to our weakness, but not in the sense that the Alpha-Neocons mean it. 

    Since the first Bush Administration, our entire Foreign Policy has been based on the ethos of the schoolyard bully. Bullies are usually only strong when attacking individuals. As I recall from my schoolyard days, most bullies met their downfall when their individual victims decided to unite and win by the force of numbers. That's exactly what's happening to US Foreign Policy on a wider geopolitical scale. The Uprising in Gaza, like the Ukraine Conflict and the Canadian protests, were started by people who simply had nothing left to lose. Today, foreign governments are realizing that the US can't attack everybody---all of Africa, the Middle East, South America, Russia, China, and North Korea---all at once, so they feel more confident about standing up to the International Bully and saying 'no.' That; and they've come to realize that they'll go on being victims if they continue to submit, so they've nothing to lose by fighting back. 

    This is why all of the claptrap about "lack of willingness to respond with overwhelming force" and similar slogans coming from the so-called Right are nothing but illusions. They are in willful denial of the Reality that their own arrogance and bully-boy tactics have been the cause of these worldwide reactions; and---contrary to what many on the Right say---nobody really respects or envies 'Alphas' but instead despise them for what they really are: a bunch of swaggering punks who can't succeed at anything except through force and fraud. 

   The American Public by and large is willfully ignorant of the same facts of life. If the majority were still capable of doing simple math, they would look at the billions that our so-called leadership is expending to prop up thugs like Zelensky and Netanyahu---as well as those fools in Taiwan---and compare it to the amounts needed to rebuild our own infrastructure, gain some control over our crime and drug epidemics, improve our schools, our health crisis, and the growing poverty levels, they might understand that the money could be better spent elsewhere. 

   There seems to be a strange Cognitive Dissonance among many on the Right, however, when it comes to how tax dollars should be appropriated. It seems that there is a general belief that investing in our own country is an immoral 'wealth-redistribution' scheme; while spending unlimited amounts for our military and espionage machine to conquer or destabilize foreign countries on behalf of Big Business is completely justifiable.

    We often hear mantras like "Why should we be taxed for other people's bad choices?" Or, "It's up to them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps!" What these people don't realize is how much things like our crumbling infrastructure and out-of-control crime are already costing us through sheer neglect. Billions are lost every year---not through inflation alone---but also by the added costs of traffic congestion, poor roads, outdated air and rail transport, and the pathetic state of our inland waterways. On top of that is our Government's complete inability to deal with natural disasters like droughts, floods, and pollution because there has been no significant investment in dams, desalination plants, wastewater treatment or levees in over 50 years. Billions are also lost every year because of the crime brought about by poverty and drugs. Somehow these things don't factor into anybody's calculations.

   An even bigger looming crisis comes from neglect of our school system, the unwillingness of regulators to stop dangerous chemicals in our food, water, and medical supplies, and our declining fertility rates. These cost us billions now, but that's nothing compared to what it will cost when the younger generations most effected by it become the majority. Other countries see it too: and the only real fear they have of America is that our Exceptional Democracy might get exported to their countries as well.

   Of course, if our self-righteous leadership manages to maneuver us into a Third World War, we can multiply all of those problems by about ten times what they are now. To say that we're headed in the wrong direction is a gross understatement.