in any US election, it’s demagoguery (democrats and the so called left) vs. greed (the others). it actually boils down to the same thing (greed as the ultimate motive in every politician, demagoguery as the vehicle), both of these things. as a result, there’s no real democracy and corruption reigns supreme.

so, the dems would win because they are skilled demagogues. they feel our pain. yeah, right, and i have a bridge to sell real cheap.

in other words, most people in the US can’t put two and two together. isn’t it obvious to anyone with a nerve cell in the brain that, indeed, the retired officers have connections and loyalty to the Pentagon and that their loyalties to the truth and their independence are suspect? and that probably something like what was described in the nyt article is indeed going on, but even if it isn’t they have connections to the military, they have their consulting business with the military, conflicts of interest etc. why do you need a nyt article to tell you that? isn’t it obvious from the get go?

Or when the human species becomes extinct. Whichever comes first. Better keep shopping, I guess.

…all five Republic Presidents of the postwar period had a détente policy and that all but Reagan in his first term reduced military spending. All four Democratic Presidents prior to Bill Clinton raised military spending, each quite substantially, and all had serious confrontations with the Soviet Union.

…The Republican Party found it politically useful to balance its pro-détente policy with hard-line rhetoric toward the Soviet Union and defense, while the Democratic rhetoric emphasized arms control and global cooperation. The difference between rhetoric and real policy in both parties was a stabilizing factor in foreign policy, but the reunification of Germany left both parties with rhetoric alone.

The author, Jerry Hough shows how even the President most despised by liberals, Richard Nixon “favored the moderate and pro-détente foreign policy of Eisenhower” in 1960 elections. By comparison, the supposedly less bellicose John Kennedy favored a massive buildup of nuclear capability (to close the imaginary “missile gap”, and which resulted in more than 32,000 nukes under inventory by 1967) high-tech weapons systems, Special Forces deployment, and James Bond style escapades.

‘In one way or another, they (Republicans) had emphasized the themes of patriotism and nationalism while actually following a policy of détente when in office’. ‘Nationalism was central’ in their campaigns, ‘yet the Republicans had always supported détente in practice: Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and George H.W. Bush.’

This foreign policy pattern–in which a “liberal” government compensates for the perception of “soft” social policies at home by wilful escalation of Manichean violence overseas–has been has been borne out over long stretches in other imperial democracies such as Britain under successive Labour governments and France under the Socialists as well.

No, I don’t mean doing it the way an authoritarian regime or a capitalist hegemon would do it – by allowing people to be killed or displaced, etc. – I mean small-scale, localized methods of destabilizing opponents and utilizing destabilizing events to acheive goals.

I recently experienced this by accident – a series of events took a local institution’s unaccountable leadership by surprise and made it much easier for us community members to push forward a long-standing agenda for radical change in the institution. Unfortunately, we community members were not quite prepared for the sudden opportunity and therefore fell short of many of our goals, while the opposition had time to re-group and build up its defenses again.

But it did cause me to ponder ways we could be more prepared next time an opportunity arises – or is instigated – while we continue to work away for the time being.