Doug's Darkworld

I’ve lately been tripping on just how much the world has changed in the past ten years, or more specifically, how the USA has changed. The “War on Terror” has been going on for nearly ten years now, and it’s reached new heights of transcendental absurdity. Absurd on many levels. Absurd in that the threat posed by terrorists is exaggerated to a point that it’s hard to believe anyone falls for it. Yet tens of millions of Americans are apparently convinced that hordes of terrorists will descend on us and blow us all up in our sleep if we don’t take every conceivable precaution no matter what the cost. I mean, we’re spending more on “defence” now when we we preparing for the possibility of nuclear war with Russia. Al Qaeda is more dangerous than thousands of Soviet nuclear missiles? Give me a break.

And secondly, so much of what we are doing to “fight” terrorism is clearly going to create far more terrorism down the road. Our involvement in Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen for starters. And why are we still in Iraq? And Afghanistan, my God, what are we doing fighting the Taliban? We should have sent in our special forces, captured Osama Bin Laden, and left. The Taliban sure as shit couldn’t have prevented us, instead, and this was either stupid or deliberate, we sent in Afghan fighters to capture him. Afghan fighters who not only  had no quarrel with Osama Bin Ladin, they are from a  culture that requires guests to receive the utmost in protection from their hosts.  So he wasn’t captured, and apparently we haven’t tried to capture him since?

Add to this the cost, and the “War on Terror” is all some kind of acid inspired fantasy. The USA is broke beyond all meaning of the word, and yet we think we are going to be able to continue to police (if not rule) the entire fucking planet? See map above. Even the Brits or Spanish at their height didn’t pretend the entire planet was their bailiwick. It’s beyond madness, it’s comic book absurdity brought to life.

And all to keep a tiny handful of people getting ever richer, and keep two of the most corrupt political parties in history clinging to power. I mean, “terror alerts” just before elections are so common now as to be predictable. And they get more absurd every time. This latest one with the packages on the planes has so many loose ends and holes that it’s silly, they aren’t even trying to make a convincing fake. This was either some amazingly amateurish plot, or it was simply faked by the US or one of our pawns to give Obama anti-terror creds. Yet tens of millions of Americans are no doubt thinking that somehow once again we barely managed to protect ourself from some terrible threat, and my god those foreigners and Muslims are all crazy fanatics and anything our government does in the name of “fighting terror” is OK. Which apparently includes stripping us of our constitutional rights and letting bankers steal our very homes.

On the plus side, I realize that I no longer need to worry about the zombie apocalypse. That’s because it’s already happened! There’s no way tens of millions of Americans (hundreds of millions?) could keep dutifully falling for this crap and lining up to vote for the parties that have not only set us on a course to endless war, national bankruptcy, and a gutted Bill of Rights … unless they were already zombies. The founding fathers are spinning in their graves at what their creation has become. And what’s kind of weird about it, as Americans get ever more somnolent and zombie like, the horrors we are creating outside our borders grow ever more violent and out of control. Sooner or later something has to give.

So my comments on world events are going to get rarer and rarer unless something exciting happens. There’s lots of other people happy to chronicle the antics of the American Empire, and Empire that is already dead like a snake with its head cut off. The body is going to thrash for awhile, but we made the classic mistake many empires have made in the past, we didn’t invest in the future. Our country has a decaying infrastructure and produces nothing, all our wealth is mined overseas with guns and cruise missiles, or internally through corruption and theft. It’s not a matter of if the tree is going to fall, it’s rotten to the core, sooner or later even a breeze might topple it. Or …  I could be completely wrong. Time will tell.

Moving right along, some new historical photographs coming up, and space exploration never gets boring. I’m still trying to write a post on the afterlife, but am having a real hard time finding any scientific empirical evidence for same. I’m having the same problem with God too, that’s probably worth a post or two down the road. I once again want to welcome my new readers, my silly quickly dashed off post about the five days in October thing got more traffic than any post I’ve ever written, and some of them liked what they saw.  At least one more post on cosmology is coming up. The world, if anything, is getting weirder by the day. A blogger’s delight I suppose.

Have a great week everyone.

(The above image is from Wikipedia and is being used legally yadda yadda yadda. It’s like a 1960s sci fi movie, except it’s real. I am once again reminded of the words of  Frederick II:  “He who defends everything, defends nothing.” He should get a post again, I’m beginning to suspect that monarchies have an advantage over republics,  at least once and awhile you get someone good in charge. And if he/she rules for decades, a lot can get accomplished.)