Tag: decline and fall

The rise of Trump and the fall of America

Peter Thiel has been on a serious roll of late. His speech yesterday about the upcoming election was less about Donald Trump and more about why the USA is in desperate need of a man like Donald Trump due to the complete failure of its government and its elites.

Only an outbreak of insanity would seem to account for the unprecedented fact that this year, a political outsider managed to win a major party nomination.

To the people who are used to influencing our choices, the wealthy people who give money and the commentators who give reasons why, it all seems like a bad dream.

Donors don’t want to find out why we got here, they just want to move on. Come November 9, they hope everyone else will go back to business as usual. But it is this heedlessness: the temptation to ignore in difficult realities indulged in by our citizens that got us where we are today….

What explains this eagerness to escalate a dangerous situation? How could Hillary Clinton be so wildly overoptimistic about the outcome of work?

I would suggest it comes from a lot of practice. For a long time, our elites have been in the power a long time, our elites have been in the habit of denying difficult realities. That is how bubbles form. Wherever there’s a hard problem but people want to believe in an easy solution, they will be tempted to deny reality and inflated bubble. Something about the experience of the baby boomers, whose lives have been so much easier than their parents or their children has led them to buy into bubbles again and again. The trade bubble says everyone is a winner. The war bubble says victory is just around the corner, but these overoptimistic stories simply have not been true and voters are tired of being lied to.

It was both insane and somehow inevitable that D.C. insiders expected this election to be a rerun between the two political dynasties who let us through the two most gigantic financial bubbles of our time. President George W. Bush presided over the inflation of the housing bubble so big that it’s collapse is still causing economic stagnation today. But what is strangely forgotten is that the last decade housing bubble was just an attempt to make up for the gains that have been lost the decade before that. In the 1990’s, President Bill Clinton presided over an enormous stock market bubble and devastating crash in 2000 just as his second term was coming to an end. That is how long the same people have been pursuing the same disastrous policies.

Now that someone different is in the running, someone who rejects the stories that tell us everything is fine, his larger-than-life persona attracts a lot of attention. Nobody would suggest Donald Trump is a humble man. But the big things, he is right about an amount to a much-needed dose of humility. He has questioned the core concept of American exceptionalism.

He doesn’t think the force of optimism alone can change reality without hard work. Just as much as is is about making America great, Trump’s agenda is about making America a normal country, a normal country does not have a half trillion dollar trade deficit. A normal country does not fight five simultaneous undeclared wars.

America is not exceptional. America is not blessed by God. America is not immune from the patterns of history. Indeed, the United States of America has followed, almost precisely, the pattern of behavior exhibited by every previous fallen power.

America was great, not because it had superior propositions or concepts, but because it was founded by the most adventurous of the Anglo-Saxons, the great race that also established the Empire on which the sun never set. This was not an accident. The USA supplanted its founding power, Great Britain, because it was large, rich, populous, and geographically isolated, thereby insulating it from the debilitating effects of World War I and World War II. Its political culture was initially advantageous, but contained a fundamental flaw in its equalitarian pretensions.

The rot set in with the first wave of European immigration, who partially integrated, but adulterated the nation and the culture. America was further weakened by the second wave of European immigration, when even less suitable immigrants arrived, who only appeared to integrate, and readily took advantage of the opportunity, wealth, and power to which they had access to serve their various tribal interests instead of the original nation. The fatal wounding occurred with the third wave of immigration, the massive global wave, the largest invasion to ever take place in human history to date.

America is not exceptional. America is not blessed by God. America is now a conquered, occupied, overwhelmed nation that doesn’t even know who or what it is. And until both conservatives and liberals come to understand that there never was an exceptional country called the United States, merely a naturally advantaged land mass that happened to be predominantly occupied for two hundred years by one particular high-performance nation, there is absolutely no hope of making America great again. In fact, America will likely only survive in a severely adulterated and geographically limited form.

History never ends, but empires always do.

Immigration and the rise of white identity

Given the long track record of left-liberal policies producing the exact opposite of the result expected, it should come as no surprise that social scientists are discovering that, far from eliminating racism, an increasingly diverse society is creating a cohesive trans-ethnic white identity in the United States:

In a study of white Americans’ attitudes and candidate preferences, we found that Trump’s success reflects the rise of “white identity politics”—an attempt to protect the collective interests of white voters via the ballot box. Whereas racial prejudice refers to animosity toward other racial groups, white identity reflects a sense of connection to fellow white Americans.

We’re not the first to tie Trump’s candidacy to white identity politics. But our data provide some of the clearest evidence that ongoing demographic changes in the United States are increasing white racial identity. White identity, in turn, is pushing white Americans to support Trump.

When we talk about white identity, we’re not referring to the alt-right fringe, the white nationalist movement or others who espouse racist beliefs. Rather, we’re talking about everyday white Americans who, perhaps for the first time, are racially conscious.

The concept of “garden variety” white racial identity stands in contrast to conventional wisdom. In the last three decades of scholarship on whiteness as a race, the prevailing view has been that most whites fail to notice their own whiteness. In a society dominated by white people, whiteness simply fades into the background. Just as fish fail to notice the water around them, whites are unlikely to think about how they are members of a distinct group.

Our research shows that the era of “white invisibility” is coming to a close.Endorsement of white identity politics was highest in heavily Hispanic neighborhoods and was strongly correlated with white racial identity. These results suggest that America’s growing ethnic diversity is creating a politicized form of white identity that has clear repercussions for future elections….

Why does it matter that whites’ politics are driven by concerns about the interests of their racial group? It suggests that racial bias increasingly reflects attention to the welfare of one’s own group rather than animus toward other groups. These collective concerns are only going to become more pronounced as the nation becomes more diverse.

Recent research in social psychology suggests that when whites engage in discrimination based on their perceived collective interests, it’s hard to convince them that such discrimination is wrong. After all, doesn’t every group have a right to prioritize its own members? We believe our results portend increasing difficulty in achieving the democratic aim of getting race out of American politics.

Once more, we see that the Alt-Right perspective is supported by science, logic, and history. It’s conceptual models are predictive. The conservative perspective is not, and its conceptual models reliably fail to correctly predict future events, except occasionally disaster for the left-liberal models, which is rather like trying to take credit for predicting that gravity will still be operative tomorrow.

That is why Point 8 was included in the 16 Points of the Alt-Right.

The Alt Right is scientodific. It presumptively accepts the current conclusions of the scientific method (scientody), while understanding a) these conclusions are liable to future revision, b) that scientistry is susceptible to corruption, and c) that the so-called scientific consensus is not based on scientody, but democracy, and is therefore intrinsically unscientific.


Any movement that aligns itself with science, history, and correctly applied logic is much more likely to take positions that will eventually prove popular, even if they are initially despised, because events are always going to move in ways that favor their interpretations. This is why the Alt-Right is on the rise along with the development of white political identity in the USA. The only way to get race out of American politics is to deny the other races the ability to participate in the political process.

Also notice that it shows my interpretation of white identity as an American phenomenon appears to be correct, as Europeans are not facing anywhere near the same level of racial pressure, particularly not in a political sense. Here in Europe, the pressure is cultural and religious in nature, so I expect a cultural Christian identity to gradually arise in the lands that were once collectively known as Christendom.

The demographic conquest of America

In two pictures:

You may not see race. But race sees you. There is another, more accurate term for “proposition nation”. And that is “not-a-nation”.

Let reason and conservative principles shut the fuck up when observable consequences falsify their conclusions. People of color are not protecting America from fascism, they are turning Americans into ultras.

Meanwhile, in response to a previous post, a reader admits that a mixed-race background does not negate the historical patterns, it merely complicates their consequences:

Some hard truths in this one for me personally, but ones which have been demonstrated by own mixed Han/Caucasian family. Two adult children who can each pass for one race but not the other. They have sorted themselves accordingly with one moving to a Han-majority country and the other to a Caucasian-majority country. They each date exclusively from the race that matches their appearance. This was accomplished without any prodding from my wife or myself.

That’s what it means when they say “your skin is your uniform”. The problem is that as the level of ethnic strife rises, one’s ability to make these decisions is constricted by the willingness of groups to accept those on the margins. I expect there will be hundreds of thousands of families riven and ruined by their past racial indifference and virtue-signaling.

Tears of a Cuck

David French demonstrates that he definitely wasn’t the man for the job as he cries about how mean the Alt-Right is to NPR, of all places:

In September or mid-September of last year, I had noticed that Ann Coulter, who is a very prominent supporter of Donald Trump, was tweeting out a lot of thoughts that are common to this part of the right – even though I hate to even call them part of the right, they call themselves part of the right – called the alt-right that were explicitly white nationalist in their tone and tenor. And so I wrote in our group blog on National Review called The Corner that Ann Coulter was deliberately appealing to these people. And I – and basically and politely said this is something that’s inexcusable and it has no place in the conservative movement.

And then I had no idea what was about to happen next. My Twitter feed basically exploded. I have – did not have that many followers – in the thousands, certainly not like the more prominent folks in politics, but it was unbelievable. I began to see images, for example, of my youngest daughter, who we adopted from Ethiopia many years ago, who at the time was 7 years old – images of her in a gas chamber with a – Donald Trump in an SS uniform about to push the button to kill her. I saw images of her Photoshopped or, you know, artist’s rendering of her face in slave fields.

I was called all manner of unbelievable names, which is kind of par for the course for Twitter, but among them was this term that has gained currency in recent years called cuckservatives. Cuckservative is somebody who’s been cuckolded by the establishment, by the liberal elite. And then people began to refer to my wife as having sex with black men when I was deployed to Iraq in 2007, 2008. And it just descended from there. And that’s a side of Twitter I know that others had experienced, but I had certainly never experienced it before. And then it just got worse.

GROSS: So this was all because you criticized Ann Coulter?

FRENCH: Yes, it was because I – not just criticized Ann Coulter. I mean, that happens all the time. I mean, she’s a frequent target of criticism. It’s because I criticized this group called the alt-right. It’s – and for, you know, those who don’t know what the alt-right is, it’s a collection of mostly younger people who are rebelling against mainstream conservatism, rebelling against progressive liberalism and have really began to adopt white nationalism, white identity politics.

All I did was politely try to John Birch conservatism’s most popular writer out of conservatism! And then they were mean to me! They sent me pictures!

The horra, the horra…..

What all this whining indicates is that the ruthless, relentless meming of the Alt-Right is effective. When they cry racist, send them King Kong and field hand memes. When they cry anti-Semitism, send them swastika and oven memes. The reason they are attempting to ban memes from social media is because it is powerfully effective rhetoric. It is rhetoric that resonates and persuades.

White nationalism and white identity politics are the future for whites. The inescapable future. There is no future for “I don’t see color” posing anymore, because even if you want to pretend you don’t – and we all know you do, because you make such a particular point of your faux moral preening – every single black, Muslim, Jew, Japanese, Han, Mexican, and Pakistani most certainly does. They see more than color, they see culture and creed too. Even if you’re unwilling to accept that your color, culture, and creed is your uniform, all of those things will be their target.

And if we’re lucky, you will be what you’ll superficially pass for.

I understand this is difficult to accept for those with mixed blood or mixed families. It doesn’t matter. Human nature has not changed. The patterns of history have not changed. Ethnic conflict and ethnic cleansing are going to happen in the United States just as they have happened in almost every other polity that allowed itself to become seriously mixed. Homogeneous societies do not appear ex nihilo, they are born from heterogeneous societies.

Guess how?

In fact, the primary reason the ethnic conflict now taking place in the USA is happening at a relatively low level is because the ethnic cleansing is still voluntary. We call it “white flight” and “Hispanization”, but the effect is still the same. Don’t delude yourself. The socio-political disintegration of the USA is already underway. By the time the mainstream notices and is willing to admit what it is and why it is happening, it will be far late to even slow the process down.

In the meantime, enjoy this confession:

I know journalist after journalist, writer after writer, public figure after public figure who literally dreads opening their Twitter app right now.

Give them the gift of fear. They deserve it, for they are the 999 lying mouths of the Devil.

Missing: US air supremacy

With the addition of their small naval force, Russians are creating a you-can-fly-but-you-probably-shouldn’t zone over Syria.

The combined capabilities of the Russian naval task force and the S-300/S-400 missiles deployed in Syria give the Russians a world-class air-defense capability. If needed the Russians could even throw in A-50 AWACs from Russia protected by MiG-31BMs. What most observers do not realize that is that SA-N-6 “Grumble” which forms the core of the air defenses of the Peter the Great is a S-300FM, the modernized naval variant of the S-300. It is also capable of the amazing Mach 6 speed, has 150km range, an added infrared terminal capability, a track-via-missile guidance system which allows it to engage ballistic missiles and an altitude envelope of 27,000m. And, guess what – the Peter the Great has 48 such missiles (in 20 launchers), roughly the equivalent of 12 S-300 batteries (assuming 4 launchers per battery).

One of the major weaknesses of the Russian deployment in Syria has been the relative low number of missiles the Russians could fire at any one time. The US/NATO could simply saturate Russian defenses with large numbers of missiles. Frankly, they can still do it, but this has now become much, much harder.

Can the Russians now stop a US attack on Syria?

Probably not.

But they can make it much harder and dramatically less effective.

First, as soon as the Americans fire, the Russians will see it and they will warn the Syrian and Russian armed forces. Since the Russians will be able to track every US missile, they will be able to pass on the data to all the air defense crews who will be ready by the time the missiles arrive. Furthermore, once the missiles get close, the Russians will be able to shoot down a lot of them, making it necessary for the Americans to conduct battle damage assessment from space and then re-strike the same targets many times over.

Second, stealth or no stealth, I don’t believe that the USN or the USAF will risk flying into Russian controlled airspace or, if it does, this will be a short-lived experiment. I believe that the Russian presence in Syria will make any attack on Syria a “missile only” attack. Unless the Americans take down the Russian air defenses, which they could only if they want to start WWIII, US aircraft will have to stay outside the Syrian skies. And that means that the Russians have basically created their own no-fly zone over Syria and a US no-fly zone is now impossible to achieve.

This marks the first time that the USA has lost air supremacy in an active conflict in decades. It is yet another sign of a crumbling empire with declining military power. The danger of a Hillary presidency is that she is likely to make the mistake of past crumbling empires in military decline, which is to fail to recognize the significance of that decline, and, through overconfidence, order military action that will lead to defeat.

Neither the US military nor the USA itself is what it was in the 1980s. It is no longer the nation nor the country that won the Cold War. Donald Trump recognizes this, hence his call to Make America Great Again, which is another way of saying Make the USA American Again.

Mailvox: the righteous need no allies

Clearly the reader’s concerns are misguided. After all, America is the exceptional nation and superpowers need no friends.

In the meantime, while the major news networks are getting the vapors over whether Trump said something rude about women eleven years ago and their utter horror at his refusal to promise to be a better loser than Al Gore was in 2000, the President of the Philippines has announced that his country is breaking away from the United States and realigning with China.

That’s right. One of our oldest and best allies in the Pacific Rim has decided to sever ties with the U.S. and ally with China instead. Obama has lost the Philippines.

You’d think someone in the American news industry would take notice. At least, they might pick up on that loud rumbling in Norfolk, Virginia, where General Douglas MacArthur spins like a lathe in his grave.

The American Empire is crumbling, within and without.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced Thursday that he was “separating” from the United States and embracing China as the new best friend of the Philippines. The 71-year-old president, famous for blunt, often profane rhetoric, announced his country’s realignment in a state visit to Beijing, where he was hailed as China’s new “brother.’’

“Your honors, in this venue, I announce my separation from the United States … both in military, but also economics,’’ Duterte said to thunderous applause at a forum inside the Great Hall of the People, the bastion of the Chinese Communist Party. Without the United States, he said addressing the Chinese audience, “I will be dependent on you.”

During the visit, China and the Philippines are signing agreements for $13.5 billion in trade deals. The Philippines also said China had committed itself to $9 billion in low-interest loans. And the Philippines offered to open negotiations with China over disputed fishing waters in the South China Sea, a surprising change of policy given that an international tribunal in The Hague had ruled in July against China’s claim of historical rights to the waters.

Duterte, who took office July 30, had other choice words for the United States during his Beijing visit. He said that “America has lost now” and suggested that he was also eager to cozy up to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world — China, Philippines and Russia,’’ he said.

On the plus side, at least Obama lowered the seas and healed the nation’s racial scars.

“It cannot be saved”

Fred Reed is correct. The USA cannot and will not be saved. The Mandate of Heaven has been lost. God has, quite rightly, damned America.

Let’s not delude ourselves. America is ruled by the Five Cities, Boston, New York, Washington, Tel Aviv, and Hollywood. The rest of us just pay taxes. The heart of the beast is New York, the Ivies being its nursery and Washington its  storefront.

To a practicing curmudgeon, the presidential contest is amusing but unimportant. Hillary will win, whether she wins or not. She is just the wave front of deep and fast-flowing currents of decay that cannot be stopped. Trump may try, but he cannot succeed. We live in a dying culture and, soon, a diminished country. It cannot be saved.

Not true? Add up the bits and pieces. We laugh in horror, some of us, primarily the older, at the decline of schooling, the courses like Batman and the Struggle for Gender Equity. Comic, yes. Yet in aggregate these constitute an academic and civilizational collapse both profound and irreversible. Enstupidation does not happen in a healthy country. Who even wants to reverse this onrushing night? Not the universities, nor the teachers unions, nor a professoriat gone as daft as the “students,” nor the banks battening on student loans.

It is over. Hillary may start wars in her six months before going into a sanatorium. Trump may build walls. But the rot will go on.

Does that mean you should give up? It depends. You should give up any thoughts of reviving what is already dead; you cannot fix a corpse. But you should not give up on the vision of building something better.

None of this should come as any surprise. You were, after all, warned at least 12 years ago by a certain nationally syndicated WND columnist.

You Can’t Fix a Corpse
July 12, 2004

Tibetan religious tradition has it that when the Dalai Lama dies, the Buddha of Compassion leaves his body and incarnates in the body of a young child. The monks immediately go out in search of this blessed child, and when they find him – as they inevitably do – he is tested by a group of high lamas and enthroned as the reincarnation of his successor.

Imagine, however, if the lamas refused to recognize that the Dalai Lama was, in fact, dead. Suppose that instead of going in search of the Buddha’s new carnal home, they hooked the corpse up to a life support machine and waited patiently for the Holy One to awake and rise up. It’s not hard to see that they would be doomed to disappointment, and furthermore, would fail to find the next Dalai Lama as well.

This is precisely our dilemma today, for America, as envisioned by the Founding Fathers, is dead. By every measure, large and small, the original vision of limited government by, for and of the people has been folded, spindled and mutilated beyond recognition. When one reads the Constitution, one simply marvels at the distinct difference between its words and our present reality.

Our paper Federal Reserve Notes are not Congress-issued gold and silver coins. Our direct taxes are not apportioned. We are entangled in a veritable web of foreign alliances, Congress shamelessly makes laws regarding speech, religion and guns, and the judicial branch has arrogantly assumed for itself unchecked supremacy over the other two branches.

Regardless of whether one see these changes as blasphemous treason against the Constitution, or as reasonable and necessary modifications to what was designed to be a living document that evolves with the times, it is impossible to deny that they have been made. It is likewise impossible to assert that a massive central government possessing eminent domain, owning over a third of the land and claiming more than a third of all income is either limited or small.

For many years, conservatives and other freedom lovers have placed their trust in the Republican Party, hoping that it would fulfill its promises to return America to its national birthright of freedom and individual liberty. Those promises, unsurprisingly, were broken by the party of Abraham Lincoln, who is most famous for converting what had been a voluntary Union of free association into a forced Union by military might.

Any last vestiges of hope in the Republican Party have been shattered by the current regime, wherein a Republican President, Republican House, Republican Senate and Republican-nominated Supreme Court have demonstrated that they have zero interest in the timeless vision of America’s founders. Supporting them in the hopes that they will revive American liberties is akin to hoping that shock paddles will suffice to revive a month-old corpse. American freedom is not only dead, it has been rotting for some time.

There are those who say that a vote for a third-party candidate, such as the Libertarian’s Michael Badnarik or the Constitution Party’s Michael Peroutka, is wasted. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, these are the only votes that are not wasted, for positive change will only come from those outside the corrupt bi-factional system. After all, it was neither the Tories nor the Whigs who fought for American independence.

Like the Tibetan lamas, we must go in search of those in whom the spirit of freedom and liberty burns. The revival of American liberty is still in its infancy, as only 482,451 people voted for the Libertarian and Constitution presidential candidates combined, 0.96 percent of those who voted for the victorious Republican, George W. Bush. But that is 482,395 more people than the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, and as for those who believe our present bipartisan system is eternal, well, tell it to the Whigs.

Or, for that matter, to the optimates and populares of Rome. The choice is simple, if not easy. A revival of liberty or the continued stink of an extinct republic as it decomposes into dictatorial empire.

America is dead. Let us go, then, and find her.

A failed and fearful establishment

Pat Buchanan observes that the Establishment is terrified. And rightly so:

What explains the hysteria of the establishment?

In a word, fear.

The establishment is horrified at the Donald’s defiance because, deep within its soul, it fears that the people for whom Trump speaks no longer accept its political legitimacy or moral authority.

It may rule and run the country, and may rig the system through mass immigration and a mammoth welfare state so that Middle America is never again able to elect one of its own. But that establishment, disconnected from the people it rules, senses, rightly, that it is unloved and even detested.

Having fixed the future, the establishment finds half of the country looking upon it with the same sullen contempt that our Founding Fathers came to look upon the overlords Parliament sent to rule them.

Establishment panic is traceable to another fear: Its ideology, its political religion, is seen by growing millions as a golden calf, a 20th-century god that has failed.

They should be afraid. From America to New Zealand, they have gradually backed the people of the West into a corner from which there is only one way out. We do not accept their legitimacy. We do not accept their authority, moral or otherwise. They have lost the Mandate of Heaven.

Soon the hour will be upon us. Given the growing fear of the Establishment, they will probably strike first. And, in doing so, they will spark the very revolution that terrifies them.

Donald Trump is not the savior. Donald Trump is not the movement. Donald Trump is the warning. It makes very little difference if he is elected or not. Because, as Mike Cernovich points out in the bestselling MAGA MINDSET, Trump is merely the symbol of the moment. There will be more to come.

Who are the Nazis?

It’s always remarkable how the Left never realizes it is projecting:

Gov. Pat McCrory Sunday called the weekend firebombing of a North Carolina Republican headquarters “an attack on our democracy,” while one GOP official called it an act of “political terrorism.”

In a tweet, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump blamed “Animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina.”

Hillsborough police said somebody threw a bottle of flammable liquid through the window of Orange County’s GOP headquarters, setting supplies and furniture ablaze. A swastika and the words “Nazi Republicans get out of town or else” were spray painted on the side of an adjacent building.

The Left is making it increasingly clear there is not room for both them and the Right in theUSA. One of these days, they’re going to attack the wrong person, or the wrong people, and then they’ll discover that their fears didn’t do the real thing justice.

The reason the Right behaves well is for the same reason that a well-armed society is a polite one. It understands the costs of civil conflict. But that doesn’t mean the costs are never worth paying when the other side keeps upping the ante.

USA contemplates WWIII

It may not sound that way. At least, not yet. But keep in mind the Pentagon’s doctrine concerning cyberwarfare announced in 2011.

The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.

The Pentagon’s first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to U.S. nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country’s military.

In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” said a military official.

Now consider yesterday’s announcement concerning the Obama administration’s desire to launch a cyberattack on Russia:

The Obama administration is contemplating an unprecedented cyber covert action against Russia in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the American presidential election, U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.

Current and former officials with direct knowledge of the situation say the CIA has been asked to deliver options to the White House for a wide-ranging “clandestine” cyber operation designed to harass and “embarrass” the Kremlin leadership.

The sources did not elaborate on the exact measures the CIA was considering, but said the agency had already begun opening cyber doors, selecting targets and making other preparations for an operation.

So, by the USA’s own logic:

  1. Cyberwarfare is an act of war.
  2. Acts of war can legitimately be responded to by traditional military force.
  3. The Obama administration is considering cyberattacks on Russia.
  4. If Russia responds to those cyberattacks with traditional military force, its response will be legitimate.
Translation: the neocons are trying to launch a war with Russia in revenge for Putin bringing the oligarchs to heel and threatening the increasing instability of the US Imperium. They won a Pyrrhic victory in Ukraine, they’re losing badly in Syria, and now they’re desperate to reverse a trend that has the potential to build into an avalanche.

Fortunately, as the article reveals, more sober and experienced CIA hands are dubious about the idea. Personally, I doubt the Obama administration will do anything at all before January, because Obama doesn’t want to do anything but play out the string before hitting the links and the lucrative speech circuit.

And in his position, isn’t that exactly what you would do?