"Anything goes and nothing matters"

Fever Pitch

James Howard Kunstler,

10 August, 2019

Those in the USA who have not been driven plumb insane by President Donald Trump are probably scratching their heads down to the subdural cavity this week with his imposition of more severe sanctions on Russia only a month after he went to Helsinki to repair tattered relations with Russia’s president, Mr. Putin. The official reason: payback for the poisoning in Wiltshire, UK, of Sergei Skripal, retired UK/Russia double agent, and his daughter Yulia.

Really? For that? For a botched assassination with one of the world’s most potent military nerve agents which, by the way, failed to kill its victims. (Somebody please go inform the Russian military that they may have batch problems over at the nerve agent lab.) Oh, also, by the way, there’s less evidence that whatever-it-was on the Skripal’s doorknob, or in the bubble-and-squeak they ordered at that restaurant, came from Russia than from the UK’s own military poisons lab at nearby Porton Down.

This new mystifying chapter in US foreign relations raises some beguiling questions. For instance: why exactly do we give a fuck about a Russian spy who sold out to the UK at the same moment in history that we (that is, the American public and their news media) hardly heaved a sigh over the joint US – Saudi bombing of a school bus in Yemen that killed 43 people, mostly children, this week?

Want to see the dishonesty of The New York Times in action? Read this story from Thursday’s (Aug 9) paper about the school bus bombing. The lede says: “An airstrike from the Saudi-led coalition struck a school bus in northern Yemen on Thursday and killed dozens of people, many of them children….” Got that? A “coalition.” Guess what? Nowhere in the story does the Times explain that the US is part of that coalition. “The strikes were “carried out in accordance with international humanitarian law….” The Times concluded the story. Szh-yeah, I’m sure….

Our President, who I like to call the Golden Golem of Greatness for his role in restoring this limping nation to something like a 1947 Jimmy Stewart movie — all Christmas and kittens — might be accused of overplaying the sanctions blame-game in order to demonstrate to our own Deep State how much he doesn’t love Russia and its leader, Mr. Putin, a verified agent of Satan. Next thing you know, Mr. Trump will don evangelical robes and hurl bibles at a photo of Vladimir P on Don Lemon’s CNN show. That’ll get Ole Horseface Mueller off his back, won’t it? And those pesky Dem-Progs drooling for impeachment.

Alas, this sanctions gambit may lead to serious consequences — a nearly unthinkable outcome in our culture of Anything-Goes-and-Nothing-Matters. Mr. Putin responded to the latest sanctions talk by saying he might withdraw Russia’s ambassador from Washington. (I’m not even sure what he’s still doing there, since the Michael Flynn incident established the new notion in DC that speaking to ambassadors from foreign lands is somehow against the law.) If you read a little history, you may notice that the withdrawal of diplomats is usually one of the last political acts before war.

We need a war with Russia, right? Well, it’s possible that the Deep State’s factotums want one — since they’ve been hollering about the wickedness of Russia at a deafening pitch for two years now. I’m wondering just what their fantasy of this war might be. Anything like the great victory over Grenada back in 1983, our most successful military venture since the surrender of Japan in 1945? Code-named Operation Urgent Fury, this campaign against one of the Caribbean’s most dangerous nations, took only four days to wrap up — and notice, we haven’t had any trouble from them Grenadian bastards ever since.