Pity the poor souls who signed on with the CIA expecting to experience the world of Sean Connery’s James Bond only to find out they are imprisoned in a gulag of asexual pronouns and a bureaucracy spawned by Dilbert. Those recruited to serve as Case Officers–i.e., the men and women who try to persuade foreigners to betray their countries and work for the United States–are in real danger of not being able to do the job of persuading well placed foreigners to become traitors because of the radical changes shaking America.
In the good old days of the Cold War, the United States enjoyed a moral advantage over the Soviet Union. We had a free press, a wide open economy, an apolitical judicial system and a cornucopia of consumer goods. Recruiting Soviet intelligence officers was not easy but their U.S. counterparts had a decided advantage in finding a disgruntled Soviet who could be enticed to play for team USA.
Those days are over. The United States now resembles the old Soviet Union and, in an ironic twist of fate, modern Russia resembles the old United States. Let’s start with leadership. Do you remember the pictures of the geriatric crowd sitting on Lenin’s tomb during the Soviet May Day parades?
By 1984, the Soviet leadership (which was comprised largely of guys who played key roles in World War II) were old men at the end of their lives. Now compare that with this lineup of current American leadership:
Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi are older than Leonid Brezhnez was when he occupied the big chair in the Soviet Politburo.
We all know who runs Russia today. Can you imagine any of the current U.S. leadership pulling off a pictures like these:
Which gives me an idea–if Nancy Pelosi threatened to go topless unless people paid her not to do so, I bet the United States would have no problem reducing its burgeoning deficit. Anyway, you get the picture–literally. The United States is ruled by senior citizens who should be in assisted living while Russia still has a relatively “young” leader.
The real and frightening Sovietization of America has to do with the transformation of the FBI into the old KGB or German Stasi. The KGB and Stasi (the East German secret police) gained deserved notoriety for persecuting perceived political opponents of the Communist regime. Well, guess what boys and girls, the United States now has more political prisoners rotting in jail than does Russia.
As of the beginning of 2020, the number of political prisoners in Russia was estimated at 308. The largest share of those was represented by persons jailed because of the realization of their right to religious freedom. Since 2015, the political prisoner count in the country rose by more than six times.
The United States has at least 700. And I am ignoring the other damning fact that the United States has more people in prison per capita than any other country in the world. Home of the Free? Not so much.
Tucker Carlson reported on this last night:
My friend, Joe Hoft, provides a list of the 700 political prisoners that have been persecuted unjustly by the FBI–BIDEN’S AMERICA: Tucker Carlson Provides High-Level List of Political Arrests by Biden Regime. To restate the obvious–America has twice as many political prisoners as Russia. And it is a sickening fact that the FBI has been politicized in a shameful, dangerous way.
Justice in America is no longer blind. If you are Hunter Biden cavorting with hookers, buying crack, lying on a firearms application and operating as an unregistered foreign agent you get a pass. If you are Doctor Simone Gold, who entered the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 and DID NOT COMMIT ANY ACT OF VIOLENCE, you are arrested and put in jail. The rich and powerful gaming the judicial and financial system for their own gain was one of the disgusting characteristics of the corrupt Soviet Union. Now, it is the United States that is emulating the old Soviets. It is a dangerous time.
This kind of corrupt behavior by the Government of the United States is creating an enormous counter intelligence problem. What do I mean? The injustice and unfairness that now defines how politics are played in America makes it easier for foreign intelligence services to recruit disgruntled intelligence officers who feel betrayed by their government. The fruits of America’s Sovietization are yet to be harvested, but when those crops are collected it will be ugly.
I beg to differ. What we laughingly call “leadership ” in the US today does not belong in assisted living, they belong in a hospital for the criminally insane, Hannibal Lector Wing.
👍
I shudder to think of the challenges facing people who want to be intelligence professionals acting on behalf of the US. Is honest and intelligent analysis really welcome if it cuts against predetermined biases or desired conclusions? How good can security be in a “woke” environment where people are consumed with the minutiae of political correctness. These unspoken frustrations, assuming I am correct, become assets for foreign intelligence officers when it comes to devising a recruiting approach.
The media is another example of how the US is like the Soviet Union. With Pravda and Izvestia, the old Russian saying about no truth in one and no news in the other pretty much sums up US mainstream and tech controlled media today with their endless censorship. Otherwise there is no way the US could have disintegrated to the degree it has.
Absolutely. I will expand the piece later to make that most salient point.
At the Unz Review, Ron Unz has a series call American Pravda. It’s definitely not for the politically correct.
Well the writing is on the wall.
With the upcoming specter of Taipei hosting the Eurovision song contest (after a close and exciting finish in Mariupol next year). One should not doubt that Larry and Harry’s game is going to get a little harder to play.
“…more people in prison *per capita* than any other country…” ? Correction: more people in prison – period. Even more than “evil” China, more 4x the population. The US is a true police state.
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_United_States_incarceration_rate_with_other_countries#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20has%20the,per%20100%2C000%20population%20in%202016).
I bet if the US demographic was 100% Chinese, we would have way less people in prison. Just saying…. 🙄
A pic of a couple of corruptors who are doing all they can to sovietize america:
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2022-06-30_11-02-38.jpg?itok=qFpYSnHx
These deep state transatlantic types have a certain look… a shriveled up testicle. You’d think these skin-walkers would have more variety in their people suits!
someone here who frequent SST before coming here , could you please explain what happening to col lang ? he used to follow and praise Tucker Carlson , now he derided this guy in SST’s comment section..
did someone or something changed col lang’s brain or gender ? i find it bizzare a person can become more neocon-nish and more warmonger-ish due to dementia or old age..
Pardon the question but what is SST?
Jacob Dreizin made the comment a couple of nights ago on You Tube (to paraphrase) that the arbitrary and extra legal way that the US is running countries / activities in places such as Ukraine is cutting and pasting back into the US and the broader west.
I fear this is true. Arendt argued similarly that the late nineteenth century imperialism that included arbitrary rule and illiberal behaviour in colonies had a similar effect on many European polities and helped pave the way for totalitarianism.
Example: If one accepts the extra judicial incarceration of foreign nationals for more than a decade in a US base in Cuba on the grounds that they must be vile people, then it is simple read across to start doing the same to US citizens. The treatment of Julian Assange, a foreigner who owes zero allegiance to the US, is similar too. All of these spurious state activities have domestic implications.
i would avoid dreizin all together , he seem like so random and emotionally unstable
He’s young. That said, the quality of his analysis has gone downhill. Sad.
In the host country of the NATO summit, Spain, the country where I live, it is a crime to PRAY in the street for the souls of aborted babies.
You can be sentenced from three months to one year in prison for the crime of violence and coercion against women.
Welcome “Señor” Orwell
It is fascinating the way totalitarian liberalism within Spain seamlessly continues the fascist foreign relations of the Franco regime with Ukrainian Nationalists. In 1941 when the Nachtigal Battalion marched into Lviv with the Nazi’s and Stetsko declared Ukrainian statehood in the name of Bandera, he sent personal brotherly greetings in the name of the New Europe to Franco. Afterwards, throughout the cold war Franco’s government continued to recognize Stetsko as the legitimate Premier of Ukraine. Now we see the unchanged attitude towards Bandera and his followers. It raises the question of how far Spain has really come since the days of the Franco dictatorship.
Impeach Joe Biden!
This reminds me of a joke that I read. A Russian and American are flying to the U.S. The American asks, ‘what brings you to the U.S.?’
Russian, ‘I’m here to learn the art of propaganda’
American, ‘but we have a free press, we don’t use propaganda’
Russian, ‘That is exactly what I need to learn’
Most excellent joke! 😁
There is widespread misunderstanding across the political spectrum regarding why the federal government, and especially the Congress, are so grid-locked. This is especially true regarding the Democratic Party. Republicans had been the party of the financial sector since its founding shortly before the Civil War. The relationship reached its apex when the Democratic Party under Franklin Roosevelt imposed severe restrictions on the sector’s influence on the economy in the 1930s in the wake of the Great Depression. Those constraints remained largely in place until the early 1980s, when Reagan began dismantling them.
The 1984 elections were a disaster for the Democrats. A major reason was the success of the right’s long running efforts to emasculate organized labor’s ability to act politically. From the 1930s on into the ‘70s the labor movement had been the engine of the Party’s grass roots activism and financial support, but that was now in steep decline. After the election some high profile Democratic senators, members of the House, and state governors founded the Democratic Leadership Council to nudge the Party in a direction that would make it more “friendly” toward the business community and thus increase their take of campaign contributions from that quarter. Bill Clinton, the governor of Arkansas, was not then nationally prominent enough to be included among the DLC founders but he soon signed up and became an enthusiastic supporter.
When he was elected president in 1992 Clinton chose Robert Rubin, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, as Treasury Secretary, and Rubin tilted the economic policies of the new administration strongly in Wall Street’s direction. As the ‘90s proceeded, one such bill after another became law – think NAFTA, welfare reform, killing the Glass Steagall restraints, etc. – the money from the business community, and especially the financial sector, rolled in. By the end of Clinton’s second term the Democratic Party became addicted.
This presented the Dems with a dilemma. Their working class grass roots voters and activists were being decimated by the effects of the neoliberal economics framework that their big donors got in return for their mega dollars. Jobs were flying across the Pacific, labor unions were being crushed, wage growth was stagnant at best, and ever more costs of living were being inflated by economic rent. What to do?
The Democratic Party now addresses this dissonance with a modus operandi built on distraction, fecklessness, and when these don’t work well enough, mendacity. They talk endlessly about the issues their base cares about, such as living wages, affordable housing, women’s reproductive rights, gun control, police brutality, etc. But they get little done, and the reason they don’t is their paymasters don’t want them to. The endless controversies serve the financiers’ interests by keeping the public discourse well away from the fact they they now own both parties’ establishments. They’d never admit it but I suspect the Democratic establishment’s hive mind preference is they have the presidency and a majority in one house of Congress but not both. That way they can blame their lack of accomplishment for their supporters’ policy preferences on the Republicans. When they have the presidency and both houses, as they do now, they have to resort to the revolving villain scam. Enter Senators Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema.
Unfortunately we are finding out the hard way that an ultra neoliberal society, led by financiers with their inherently short time horizon, breeds both myopia and sociopathy. Domestically the combination leads to the breakdown of the social glue holding the society together. Internationally, when confronted by societies that have managed to avoid sliding very far down the slippery slope to this trap, neoliberal societies are found to have lost the ability to do the sort of long horizon strategic thinking and planning, although their leaders seldom have the self-reflective insight to recognize this fact. As we are seeing, the USA’s inciting of the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine has triggered the beginning of the end of 170+ years of American imperialism. Bismarck once said the job of the statesman is to put his ear to the ground, listen for the hoof beats of the horse of history, figure out which direction he’s running and be prepared such that when he comes by you can jump on his back and hang on for dear life. The end-of-imperialism horse left the stable during World War I. It’s time we finally get aboard before he runs us over.
I agree and disagree with a lot of what you said. As someone who believes in freedom and free markets, I disagree with your notion that FDR somehow fixed the economy. Rather Europe was bombed out and we benefitted. We also had the reserved currency that we aggressively exploited. Government control of the economy is what allows crapitalism. Where big business and big government are in cahoots screwing the little guy. Business competing against one another in a free market is what allows for innovation and reduced prices. Big business dont like to compete because they often lose. That is why they love government regulations, so they can pay off legislators to write regulations that push the little guy out of the market.
I’m not saying I’m against government regulation. Rather I’m saying it should be constructed to allow for the most open and honest free market. Unfortunately, the calibre of our leadership can barely tie the shoes let alone construct good legislation. They’re just there to grift.
Tucker Carlson is the only guy I watch on the MSM. It’s a wonder he hasn’t been purged yet.
I do beg to differ in that I believe that the situation in the US has been bad far longer than most people realize. Look at Walter Duranty getting a Pulitzer for writing glowing reports about Stalin. Look at FDR’s administration full of Soviet spies and the vilification and destruction of Joe McCarthy. Look at the murder and deflection of Gen. Patton, James Forrestal, and JFK. How much press coverage did the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty get? And the country was marched off to war numerous times for no good reason.
In the 1950s, social norms and respect for institutions held back speculation about the nefarious dealings of our government. Also the news was more tightly controlled by the 3 major networks. I think the internet helped many people wake up by unleash information which was otherwise very hard to find.
The relaxing of the social norms to question our institutions is a mixed bag. It is a good thing to question the wisdom of our leaders and to hold them to task. However, the current disrespect and wholesale destruction of our political institutions threatens to have the country spin out of control. A perfect atmosphere for the rise of a strong man. Hopefully we will get a Putin and not a Stalin.
And how could I miss multiculturalism and diversity. We no longer have a country of people with a common heritage and common vision for the future. We have a multitude of different groups vying for special favors and handouts at the government troughs. As the boobtube preaches, it’s all about immediate gratification and getting yours NOW! Hard work and sacrifice is for chumps.
We still have the Constitution. This is what needs to bind us together.
Responding to David Habakkuk’s comment on another post regarding Operation Barbarossa.
I’d like to suggest a couple of books that might add to your perspective on the matter. The first is “Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia,” by Gabriel Gorodetsky. I read it not long after it was published 23 years ago. The author was able to do much of the research behind the book in Moscow during the brief period in the early ‘90s when many USSR archives were open to western scholars. IIRC he wrote Stalin had plenty of warnings from army commanders on the ground that the Germans were preparing for an invasion but refused to believe them. The second is “Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War,” by Frank Costigliola. Among the more controversial this revisionist history of the post WWII years presents is that as the war progressed FDR’s relationship with Churchill withered over the issue of the post war future of British colonialism whereas the relationship with Stalin thrived. According to the author FDR envisioned a post-war partnership with Stalin and the USSR overseeing colonies severing their tethers to their European masters to become independent countries. This is just one of the fascinating facets of this book.
One of Costigliola’s major sources was “As He Saw It,” by FDR’s son Elliott Roosevelt. Elliott had been an airline entrepreneur before the war, as well as a member of the Army Air Force reserve. Like many such civilians with pre-war reserve experience, he rose quickly and by war’s end was a brigadier general overseeing all aerial reconnaissance in the European theater. FDR made it a priority to meet up with him personally during his two trips to the theater, as well as the several times Elliott returned to the states as part of his job. The president knew his son had no ax to grind when reporting the thinking of the levels of command of which he was a part, and in return confided in him to a degree he did with no one else.
Thanks for the suggested readings. But, let me make some observations for your consideration.
1. Do you really think Gabriel Gorodetsky is unbiased? Jews and Hitler don’t mix and to suggest he is unbiased and didn’t have an agenda (whether self recognized or not ) I find hard to swallow. McMeekin’s book claims to use the same source material and he provides a very different interpretation.
2. When one begins a large arms build up on the boarder of a country, one invites attack. Whether there is a long term plan to invade a country or not. It is just a matter of time. One strikes when they has the advantage. (Just like Putin attacked Ukraine)
3. Stalin’s actions were aggressive towards his neighbors. He invaded part of Finland, Poland, the Baltic countries and part of Romainia. He was threatening Bulgaria until Hitler stepped in. After the war, he grabbed half of Europe. He grab the Kuril island and had plans to capture Hokkiado. Sounds like a land grabber to me.
4. Why is it so important to believe that Stalin was an innocent victim of German aggression? I know your national myth of the great patriotic war was hammered into you growing up, but really. Isn’t it possible to step outside your cultural bias for a second. Might it be that Stalin was an aggressive A-hole?
5. I do believe it was just a matter of time before Hitler turned on Stalin because Hitler always saw Bolshevism as the enemy. I also believe Stalin saw Hitler as a threat, because Mein Kampf made it abundantly clear Hitler hated Bolshevism (as most thinking people do) and his lebensraum plan pointed East. But this is not to suggest Stalin didnt have his own territorial designs (as his actions clearly indicated)
‘gman’,
It seems sensible to answer your latest response to me here, even though it was on previous thread.
You adduced, in support of your claims, a book called ‘Wolf of the Kremlin’, by a ‘nephew’ of ‘Lazar Kagonovich.’ Actually, the title of this book, published in 1987 by the American journalist Stuart Kahan, is ‘Wolf of the Kremlin: the First Biography of L.M. Kaganovich, the Soviet Union’s Architect of Fear.’
Anyone who has the faintest knowledge of Soviet history knows that the name is ‘Kaganovich’ rather than ‘Kagonovich.’ So, it seems a reasonable inference that you lack such knowledge, and also have not read the book.
When I checked with the ‘Wikipedia’ entry on this figure, I found the strongest possible evidence that, as I put it in my response to you, Stuart Kahan is no more the ‘nephew’ of Kaganovich than I am Winston Churchill’s great-grandson, and the book is a tissue of fabrications.
So, you simply go on and reiterate the claim, not even changing ‘Kagonovich’ to ‘Kaganovich.’
But then, you are clearly into the fabrication business yourself. So, you told me, ‘As I believe you said, no one knows Stalin’s intent, except Stalin.’
I said nothing of the kind, and it is emphatically not what I think. What the available literature clearly shows is that there are some matters on which the mass of evidence which has emerged over past decades leaves ample room for continuing disagreement about Stalin’s intentions, and others where it does not.
As I pointed out to you, an economical way of ‘catching up’ with the current state of research on contentious issues in international history is to look at the ‘Roundtables’ which the ‘h-diplo’ site devotes to important new works.
And I recommended a discussion in March 2019 of the second volume of Stephen Kotkin’s biography of Stalin, entitled ‘Waiting for Hitler’, published in 2017, and another on September 2020 of the complete edition of the diaries of Ivan Maisky edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky, also published in 2017.
(See https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/3839846/h-diplo-roundtable-xx-30-stephen-kotkin-stalin-waiting-hitler ; https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/6402047/h-diplo-roundtable-xxii-1-abriel-gorodetsky-ed-complete-maisky .)
From the summary of the account given by the most significant modern Western biographer of Stalin by Cynthia Roberts:
‘Like other notable historians, Kotkin dismisses persistent unsubstantiated claims that Stalin was preparing his own offensive that was pre-empted by the German invasion. It is true that Soviet war planning had long envisioned bold offensives westward against the imperialist powers under favorable conditions. However, revisionist writers who, in contrast to Kotkin and others, see only Soviet offensive-mindedness miss the key point that in the spring of 1941 Stalin was fixated on avoiding war, not launching a pre-emptive strike or strategic offensive. When Zhukov and Timoshenko proposed a preemption option, Stalin’s fear about triggering an inadvertent German attack reportedly led to an emotional outburst: “What, have you lost your mind? You want to provoke the Germans?”
‘Crucially, Stalin gravely misjudged Hitler as well as the kind of threat he faced. In Stalin’s view, if war came in 1941 it would not be the result of Germany’s premeditated aggressive intentions but rather a preemptive response to some inadvertent provocation. Because his threat identification was incorrect, he adopted the wrong remedy.’
So, there has been unambiguous evidence available for many years that, when they concluded that Hitler was bent on attack, Zhukov and Timoshenko did suggest that pre-emption was the ‘least worst option’ – and Stalin asked whether they had ‘lost their minds’.
Despite this, you and your like continue to disseminate ‘persistent unsubstantiated claims’ that Hitler, as it were, only beat Stalin to the punch.
I then come to your ignorant and arrogant dismissal of Schulenberg, Herwarth, and Hilger – men who tried desperately to prevent Hitler leading their country to destruction. The first paid for it by being strung up with piano wire, the last lost his only son.
As I much doubt whether you have the intellectual stamina to read the kind of books I have recommended, I can perhaps recommend you an article on Hilger published in ‘Palladium Magazine’ by Matt Ellison in April 2019, headlined ‘The German Strategic Mastermind Behind America’s Post-War Order.’
(See https://palladiummag.com/2019/04/12/the-german-strategic-mastermind-behind-the-post-world-war-ii-liberal-order/ .)
Such a shame that the architects of post-war American strategy allowed themselves to be ‘led by the nose’ by someone so totally ‘gulled’ by Stalin. Really, they should have listened to Wilhelm Keitel.
And, to cap it all, you tell me:
‘It sounds like you are Russian and thus you have grown up believing a certain perspective which puts Soviet dealings in a positive light.’
You might perhaps care to look at a website which is dedicated to the memory of the Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, which reproduces the whole of his reporting on what is now called the ‘Holodomor.’
His niece, who created it, included a page on his father – her grandfather – Major Edgar Jones, who was for thirty-four years headmaster of the ‘County School’ in the seaport town of Barry, in South Wales, turning it into one of the best schools in Wales.
(See https://www.garethjones.org/margaret_siriol_colley/edgar_william_jones.htm .)
Item number six is a piece by that figure on the history of the school. Among the pupils mentioned, as well as his son, who was murdered in Manchukuo in 1935, very possibly at the instigation of the NKVD, are Evan Guest Habakkuk and Hrothgar Habakkuk – my grandfather and father.
In the spring of 1933, about to follow Gareth Jones on a scholarship to Cambridge, my father attended a talk at the chapel the family attended at which that figure described what he had seen in Ukraine.
So, that is part of the ‘certain perspective’ which I ‘have grown up believing.’
Another part, however, are the struggles in my which my father and close associates of his were intimately involved, later in the decade, first in preventing people of your views making a Second World War inevitable, and then in preventing them causing us to lose it.
People who held the views defended by Rezun/’Suvorov’ and McMeekin almost led us to total disaster then – we were saved purely by the fact that Hitler was too stupid to take Schulenberg’s advice.
Today, your sort seem hell-bent on leading us to disaster again, and it would I think be unwise to be confident that people in Britain and United States can rely on the kind of good fortune we had eighty years ago.
David,
Magnificent as always. I think it would be valuable for you to comment as well on the fact that Stalin tried to secure a pact with Churchill and France in early August 1939, but was rebuffed. We might have a radically different history had that agreement been concluded.
Great article. I think we can turn this around starting in November. It is discouraging that so many republicans were supporting this ignorant and evil war against Russia. We will have to let these morons know that this stupidity and corruption will not be tolerated.
From Chile to Nicaragua to Vietnam and the heartless tragic brutal bombing of Cambodia, and the assasination of Kennedy’s,King, X, the United States of America and the CIA (Herbert Walker’s jokers!) have never had any ethics or moral ground to justify ANY of its military operations. NONE. The industrialists make war so the plebs can eat shit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtYU87QNjPw
Love your work, Larry. Keep tryin’ to school ’em
In Germany, persons who critzicise for example Covid lockdowns or vaccins are pursued by justice. Not for this, but they alway find something to set him up for.
One example: Dr. Hockertz, had sharply criticised the vaccins. One early morning 10 policemen in civil come in his house and searched.
They took away his computers and other documents. A few days later,
they gave him back a computer. This seemed strange to him. He had somebody analyze it: there was spy software installed !
The pretext of that all, was a ridiculous tax issue, which tax authorities had already cleared some years ago.
Hockertz fled to Switzerland.
There is no freedom here.
And 90 year old grandmothers are locked in prison for having a different take on history.
Oh wait! It ok because she’s a nazi, and they deserve what they get.
701. Julian Assange extradition to the US has just been approved by the devious Brits.
Another contrast. Countries offering him asylum include Russia even though wikileaks leaked stuff on them too.
701 still per population ratio on par with Russia.
However depends how you count it, Guatanamo, Trump gang, abortion activists for or against, proud boys, Jan 6 bunch.
Do you count CIA black sites.
Wouldn’t those not just captured but killed tell a story. Journalists bombed in US wars, Gadaffi killed for wanting pan Africanism and African currency. Wesley Clarke’s declared planner political wars.
The US imprisoned and captured entire countries using the 1970’s on British policy of divide and rule and milk and control and rinse and repeat.
That needs to be added up to. That’s all political. Not legitimate defence.
The number in US jurisdiction and control likely far far higher than 300’s.
FYI. I’m sure some people that frequent here may enjoy this site.
https://katehon.com/en/about-us
please stop posting spam links
He did not post spam. It is a valid blog.
Greetings, Mr Johnson.
I feel your pains through your writing. I feel the same way you do about your country the same way I do about mine, Nigeria.
Like the former Great USA, Nigeria of my birth/youth was on upward trajectory, with optimistic citizens looking forward to building a better and more progressive society.
Alas, years of insane kleptomaniac rules by military and civilians have reduced the country to a Hobbesian state where life is short and brutish!
Tragic!
Who would have imagined that the country of Giants like FDR and JFK will be reduced to a state where insentient mannequins like Biden, surrounded by mental midgets and intellectual Lilliputians like Blinken, will be in charge!
Please, permit me to point out one omission in your piece – the role that privatization played in the racket called Justice system in the USA.
I wrote about it in an article for the New African magazine in 2016.
Here are extracts: “THE PRIVATISATION OF PRISON
It is difficult to imagine that prior to the 1980s, there were no private prisons in the US. The Reagan administration introduced the system whereby private companies were allowed to run what hitherto had been state’s facilities.
Of course, the impetus to make more money underlines private enterprise. The abdication by the state of its responsibility to correct and reform errant citizens, led to the urge to sentence more and more citizens, to lengthier jail terms in what has now become a for-profit industry.
A 2011 report by the American Civil Liberty Union (ACLU) claimed that: “the rise of the for-profit prison industry is a ‘major contributor’ to mass incarceration, along with bloated state budgets. Louisiana, for example, has the highest rate of incarceration in the world with the majority of its prisoners being housed in privatized, for-profit facilities. Such institutions could face bankruptcy without a steady influx of prisoners.”
A 2013 Bloomberg report states that in the past decade the number of inmates in for-profit prisons throughout the U.S. rose 44 percent.”
Full article is here: http://alaye.biz/the-american-gulag/