#*maybe not vietnam maybe bush is more relevant

[ohsalome]

You know what's sad? Because western discourse is shaped by the post-vietnam* attitude towards war and soldiers, his torturous death will have meant nothing for these people. Sure, most westerners feel bad about deaths of Ukrainian civilians, especially children - you have to be a real reptilebrain not to - but when it comes to our soldiers, it's almost as you think that brutal torture comes with the territory. Or maybe it's the poisonous effort of articles slandering Azov, and now people think that the entirety of ZSU is made up of literal ww2 nazis... 😓 I just know that every time our civilians get massively killed, we manage to convince our western partners to send us more weapons. It's like a bloody requisite for the fucking application. But our soldiers? Idk. Why do you think people lose their humanity once they put on the uniform? They defend our homes, they are literally the only reason all of us, myself included, are alive today... Only to feel even more pain, all this pain...

Спочивай, брате

[jkottke]

My Recent Media Diet, The Pandemic Edition

Well, it has been awhile. I have not done one of these since late December. First I was away for a few weeks and then, well, you know. I'm not even sure if anyone wants to read this sort of thing right now -- I barely wanted to write it -- but I know a lot of people are stuck at home, looking for stuff to watch, read, and listen to. Plus, keeping the media diet going feels normal, at least a little.

If you're strapped for time/attention, my top recs are Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Devs, Exhalation, Little Women, Unbelievable, Future Nostalgia, The Overstory, and You're Wrong About.

Devs. Fantastic. I loved every minute of this gem. (A)

Unbelievable. Based on a true story. Excellent performances by Toni Collette and (especially) Merritt Wever. (A)

The Report. Also based on a true story. The Bush presidency still does not get the credit in terms of the harm it did, and continues to do, to America. (B+)

Exhalation by Ted Chiang. Killer collection of tech/science stories. (A)

Slow Burn (season 3). Not just about Biggie/Tupac, but about 90s hip-hop & the cultural reaction to it. (B+)

AirPods Pro. Wearing these feels a little like the future. (A)

Aeronauts. Perfectly fine. (B)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Straight-up masterpiece. (A)

Don't F**k with Cats. How on Earth did I not hear anything about this case when it originally happened and why is it not more widely known? A media-obsessed wanna-be serial killer caught by online sleuths? It seems like fiction. (B+)

How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan. This maybe would have been better at half the length. (B+)

1917. Technically stunning but I never truly got involved in the story because I was trying to see where the cuts were. (B+)

Icarus. Almost unbelievable where the story goes in this. (A-)

Little Women. My choice for the best 2019 movie. (A)

My Brilliant Friend (season 2). The second part of the first season set a high bar to clear, but I'm loving this season so far. (A)

Jojo Rabbit. Like Inglourious Basterds directed by Wes Anderson. (A-)

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. Fittingly finished this on the plane to Vietnam. (B+)

Anthropocene. Typically excellent look at the impact of humans on the Earth by Edward Burtynsky. (A-)

Frances Ha. Baby Adam Driver! (B+)

Catch Me If You Can. Spielberg (and DiCaprio) at their most entertaining. (A-)

Edge of Tomorrow. Love this movie. An underrated gem. (A)

The Overstory by Richard Powers. A wonderful novel about trees and the natural world. (A)

Titanic. A masterclass of blockbuster filmmaking and storytelling. (A)

Good Place (season 4). Loved the ending to this. (A-)

Outbreak. Contagion. Deep Impact. 2012. The Core. I Am Legend. I have been watching all of the disaster movies. They are terrible and I love them. (A/C-)

The Aftermath. The ending of this felt random, a gotcha to the audience rather than the natural end to the story. (B)

Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner. I had medium hopes for this, but the Seth Rogan episode made me laugh harder than I have in months. (B+)

Watchmen. The first three episodes gave me this-is-gonna-end-like-Lost vibes and then they announced there was going to be not second season, so I stopped watching. (B-)

The Farewell. Wonderful. (A-)

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon. Started slow but finished strong. Keep your eyes peeled for all of the sci-fi references. (B+)

Birds of Prey. This was mindless. And not in a good way. (D)

McMillion$. My main takeaway was being aghast at how much time, energy, and money the FBI put into this case, which one of the lead investigators only pursued because it was fun. (B)

Star Trek: Picard. I would have voted against bringing this beloved character back (for fear they'd ruin it) but I enjoyed almost every second of this. (B+)

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson. Another great book from Larson. The Battle of Britain is surprisingly relevant to these pandemic times. (A-)

Onward. Not my favorite Pixar, but solid as always. (B)

Future Nostalgia. Love this album, not a single weak song. (A)

The Mandalorian. It took me too long to realize that this was a western. I don't care that much for westerns. (B)

Star Wars Episodes I II III. I needed some true garbage to watch about two weeks into my self-quarantine. These movies are mostly terrible. (C-)

You're Wrong About. I've mentioned this podcast before, but You're Wrong About has become essential listening for me. The OJ and DC Sniper series are both great, and their episode Why Didn't Anyone Go to Prison for the Financial Crisis was excellent and surprisingly didn't really mention the actual crisis at all. (A)

Iron Man. Iron Man 2. Thor. Captain America: The First Avenger. The Avengers. The kids and I are rewatching all the MCU movies in release order. Some are better than others. (B)

Tiger King. I watched the first episode and...is this anything more than just gawping at yokels? Does this documentary have anything important to say about society or is it just reality TV? (C)

LBJ and the Great Society. A fascinating look at a brief moment in time when our government worked and how that happened. (A-)

The Case of the Missing Hit. You've likely heard this instant-classic episode of Reply All by now, but if you haven't, it's worth the hype. (A-)

Tempest in a Teacup. Outside/In talks to Charles Mann about a passage in 1491 about passenger pigeons, which suggested that their famous abundance was a relatively recent occurence caused by the decimation of indigenous populations in the Americas by Europeans and their diseases. (B+)

The Living Room. The episode of Love + Radio that inspired the Oscar-winning The Neighbor's Window. (A-)

Simulcast. Tycho's instrumental companion album to Weather. (B+)

Minority Report. This was cheesier than I remembered it. Hasn't aged well in some ways. (B)

Pelican Brief. So 90s. But I'd forgotten the star power of Denzel and Julia Roberts, even in a mediocre movie. (B)

Murder on the Orient Express. Rewatch. Branagh sure does chew the scenery, but it is fun to watch. (B+)

Gemini Man. Action. Sci fi. Mostly forgettable. (B-)

Yesterday. Cute flick. (B)

Monsters University. This was the only Pixar movie I had never seen. And now I have. (B)

Dark Phoenix. Slightly more entertaining than I was expecting. (B)

Past installments of my media diet are available here.

[patriotnewsdaily]

New Post has been published on PatriotNewsDaily.com

New Post has been published on https://patriotnewsdaily.com/the-pentagon-and-the-generals-wanted-this-disastrous-war/

The Pentagon and the Generals Wanted This Disastrous War

In early July, Ron Paul penned a column titled “It’s Saigon In Afghanistan,” invoking the imagery of the fall of Saigon in 1975, when US military helicopters scrambled to evacuate personnel from the roof of the US embassy. But Paul suggested that maybe the situation in Afghanistan was “perhaps not as dramatic” as the situation in Saigon forty-six years ago.

But that was six weeks ago.

Now, it looks like the end of the US’s war in Afghanistan may be in many ways every bit as chaotic as the US regime’s final defeat in Vietnam.

When Paul was writing his article in early July, we were already getting hints of the direction things were going. US forces abandoned Bagram Airfield in the middle of the night, and the US didn’t even tell its allies what was going on. Afghan officials discovered the US was gone hours later. Shortly thereafter, looters ransacked the base.

But that, it seems, was just the beginning. Over a period of a mere ten days, provincial capitals in Afghanistan have fallen one after the other. On Sunday, the Taliban entered the strategically key capital Kabul. The Taliban’s reconquest of the country was so fast that even the US regime’s spokesman admitted “the militants’ progress came much more quickly than the U.S. had anticipated.”

Now, after spending twenty years implementing “regime change” in Afghanistan, and after spending more than $800 billion—an official figure that’s likely far smaller than the real monetary cost—the US’s strategy in Afghanistan has completely collapsed.

Indeed, for the US’s local allies, the situation is far worse now than what it was in 2001. Those who were unwise enough to ally themselves with the Americans over the past twenty years now face reprisals from the Taliban. Death will likely be the result for many.

Not surprisingly, then, Afghanis in recent days have flocked to Kabul International Airport, desperate to find some way out of the country as the Taliban closes in. https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=eyJ0ZndfZXhwZXJpbWVudHNfY29va2llX2V4cGlyYXRpb24iOnsiYnVja2V0IjoxMjA5NjAwLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X2hvcml6b25fdHdlZXRfZW1iZWRfOTU1NSI6eyJidWNrZXQiOiJodGUiLCJ2ZXJzaW9uIjpudWxsfSwidGZ3X3NwYWNlX2NhcmQiOnsiYnVja2V0Ijoib2ZmIiwidmVyc2lvbiI6bnVsbH19&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1427260324500148227&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fmises.org%2Fwire%2Fpentagon-and-generals-wanted-disastrous-war&sessionId=c7aa238be4b0d47dc87013eda3ea84a0f1aadee8&theme=light&widgetsVersion=1890d59c%3A1627936082797&width=550px

It’s doesn’t take an immense amount of imagination to recall the images of those who were desperate to escape from the US embassy in Saigon.

Blame the Generals and the Pentagon

So now we reach the stage of figuring out who is to blame for this total strategic failure in Afghanistan.

Some politicians will try and use the US regime’s failure in Afghanistan to score points against the Biden administration. We already see it with some Republicans who still haven’t figured out that the American public long ago stopped caring about the war. 

It’s easy to see the partisan reasons for this, but if we want to honestly focus on who’s to blame for the utter waste of time and resources that was the war in Afghanistan, we have to look far beyond just a handful of civilian politicians.

Yes, much of the blame should go to the civilian bureaucrats, because they share an immense amount of the blame in bringing about this strategic blunder. George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Madeleine Albright are just a few of the politicos who encouraged the continuation of this lost war.

But the fact is the civilian war architects were encouraged and enabled every step of the way by Pentagon bureaucrats (i.e., the generals), who were only more than happy to have an excuse to pad their budgets and increase their relevance on Capitol Hill. As Ron Paul put it this week:

The generals and other high-ranking military officers lied to their commander-in-chief and to the American people for years about progress in Afghanistan. The same is true for the US intelligence agencies. Unless there is a major purge of those who lied and misled, we can count on these disasters to continue until the last US dollar goes up in smoke.

And of course, the Pentagon allied itself with the “private” sector industries that suppled the materiel.

Paul continues:

The military industrial complex spent 20 years on the gravy train with the Afghanistan war. They built missiles, they built tanks, they built aircraft and helicopters. They hired armies of lobbyists and think tank writers to continue the lie that was making them rich. They wrapped their graft up in the American flag, but they are the opposite of patriots.

Or, as Timothy Kudo describes it,

Across two decades, our military leaders presented rosy pictures of the Afghanistan War and its prospects to the president, Congress, and the American people, despite clear internal debate about the validity of those assessments and real-time contradictory information from those fighting and losing the daily battle against the Taliban. Or, to put it in the words of John Sopko, the inspector general who issued a series of reports known as the Afghanistan Papers: “The American people have constantly been lied to.”

Nor did the military officers counsel caution or peace. Douglas MacGregor at the American Conservative correctly recalls:

All that can be said with certainty is that between 2001 and 2021, none of the senior officers expressed opposition to the policies of intervention and occupation strongly enough to warrant their removal. None felt compelled to leave the service and take their opposing views to the public forum.

When it became clear that the collective strategies and tactics in Afghanistan and Iraq were failing, not only General David Petraeus, but most of America’s senior military leaders chose to prevaricate and distort facts in public to show progress when there was none. How many American lives might have been saved had someone only told the truth will never be known.

Moreover, Petraeus and countless military technocrats continued to call for more military action while trying to place the blame on others.1 Doug Bandow sums it up:

Many of those once responsible for U.S. forces in Afghanistan while in authority have taken the lead in trying to perpetuate the mission. For instance, David Petraeus is busy trying to shield his reputation and shift blame to Biden as the Afghan project collapses. Joseph Dunford, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, recently co-chaired the congressionally mandated Afghanistan Study Group, which predictably insisted that the United States should stay in the country. What other conclusion was imaginable? As the entire geopolitical enterprise collapses, its promoters insist that American forces should stick around with no good purpose and no realistic plan of action.

Indeed, the incompetence of the US’s military leadership has been on clear display in recent weeks as the US-trained and US-armed military personnel have been impotent in the face of Taliban advances. The US’s military hierarchy was specifically tasked with training these Afghan forces, yet it’s now clear how well that directive was carried out.

Unwarranted Trust in Military Brass

The complicity of the military brass’s role has always been especially damaging, because the generals have long banked on the unwarranted amount of credibility they enjoy with the public. As Kudo notes:

The promise that victory was just around the corner proved intoxicating to presidents and politicians, not to mention everyday Americans, who blindly trusted anyone with four stars on his epaulettes. Despite the partisanship and institutional mistrust of the past two decades, the military consistently has been the most trusted institution in the country, rated highly by roughly 70 percent of Americans. Cloaked in near-universal trust, these officers repeatedly argued that an unwinnable war could be won.

Unfortunately, because of this, military personnel are likely to continue to be shielded from the criticism they deserve.

After all, there is a persistent habit among many Americans to repeat the narrative that all wars will be won if only the politicians listen to the generals, and “let the generals do their job.” One still hears this today from those who still engage in wishful thinking about the Vietnam War and who still cling to the idea that the war could have been won if only the military “experts” had been in charge. In actual experience, however, the lost war in Afghanistan is what we get when we listen to the generals. 

But don’t expect any meaningful reform. In the United States, when bureaucrats fail, they usually get rewarded with larger budgets, such as when the US’s “intelligence community” allowed 9/11 to occur right under its collective nose. The same is likely—at least in the short term—for the Pentagon. The generals will simply “pivot” to argue for ever-larger military budgets in the name of fighting China, Iran, Russia, and other perceived enemies. 

In other words, the generals and the civilian politicians are hard at work planning the next Afghanistan. Let’s just hope the taxpayers who pay for it all may be a little less naïve next time.

1. David Petraeus was the great strategic genius behind the “surge” in both Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which accomplished nothing more than prolonging lost wars. He went on to head the Central Intelligence Agency. He also gave classified information to his mistress and intentionally lied to federal investigators about it. A “normal” person, of course, would have faced years in prison for these transgressions, but since Petraeus is a member of the coddled military technocracy, he received a slap on the wrist.)

Author:

Contact Ryan McMaken

Ryan McMaken is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power&Market, but read article guidelines first. 

[bulldogedition]

Hold the cue cards! The Eagle has landed!

As America quietly--and we mean quietly--marked the 50th anniversary of the moon landing this week, TIME magazine decided to use nostalgia for its cover story on the topic.. Back when the moon was the hot location to get to, when John Kennedy's promise of landing a man  on the moon during the 60s ended with Richard Nixon's Administration celebrating it, and back when they were relevant as a weekly, they featured a 'race to the moon!' article a few months prior to the famed event..

This year on the 50th, they are placed a "next space race" re-do with SPACE X as the main racer.. Business taking over!!

Things have changed since then, obviously.. The ole-timers who lived through this event tell me that the world stopped in its tracks to watch coverage on TV of the moon landing.. The wiser elders of today inform me of the emotions of that time, the amazement and bewilderment so many had as they watched history being made in real time.. on TV sets--a new medium for so many in that era..

Even the  Brits did it their way across the pond.

BBC mounted programming to celebrate the great event. One of the shows featured a live jam by Pink Floyd. The program was a one-hour BBC1 TV Omnibus special with the whimsical title of So What If It’s Just Green Cheese?. It was broadcast on July 20, 1969, at 10 p.m.. The Floyd session eventually came to be called “Moonhead.”

TV GUIDE issued a cover story at the time cementing history: As major a worldwide television event as you can get.. Broadcast live not from our planet but from a satellite of it, the moon..

Children across America watched one small step for man became the giant leap for mankind, and turned to space .. they wanted to be astronauts when they grew up. Neil Armstrong became an American hero--looked up to by countless around the planet..

It was America's moment, the shining example of how WE could make it.. how WE could strive for more.. how WE could get to the moon and maybe one day beyond.

MALAISE DAYS

That brief but albeit amazing American moment of being the first to plant an earthly flag on a desolate space dwelling wore off quickly.

About 50,000+ deaths in Vietnam, Watergate, the Manson murders in Cali, high gas prices, inflation, and other world wide events suddenly forced people into a corner where pride and patriotism was not as evident.. Where we lost our focus on leaving this planet.

Instead, we decided to stay, and fight.. and argue.. Burn bras and protest war!

There was economic turmoil and other vastly amazing and historic moments of political upheaval.. whether it was Richard Nixon resigning before impeachment, or a sweater-wearing Jimmy Carter telling the nation to conserve its energy, it all led to the Reagan Revolution.

He indeed paid for that microphone and he intended on using it..

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rd_KaF3-Bcw&w=935&h=701]

 PATRIOTISM UP IN SMOKE

President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation on January 28, 1986, hours after classrooms and media across the nation watched the Challenger explode on LIVE TV..

He called it a national loss.. He said during that broadcast, "I want to say something to the school children of America... I know it's hard to understand, but sometimes painful things like this happen. It's all part of the process of exploration and discovery. It's all part of taking a chance and expanding man's horizons. The future doesn't belong to the faint hearted. It belongs to the brave."

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa7icmqgsow&w=935&h=701]

There seemingly something about this moment that killed the dreams of space.. The malaise 70s turned into roaring decade of greed in the 80s, and somehow we trashed the notion that space mattered.

By the 1990s, a decade when miraculous and amazing discoveries were being found on Mars and other moons of Saturn, we continued just finding ourselves finding space to be the frontier not worth mentioning..

George W. Bush had a similar moment when he addressed the nation in 2003 when the Columbia exploded after mission control lost contact.. Debris fell from the skies above Texas as the Columbia was lost without survivors..

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT5ecjjXdqw&w=1218&h=685]

And now, 50 years after the moon landing moment, even the business SpaceX cannot get attention unless one of its rockets blows up on the way to the Van Allen Belt.

TAPES AND LEGACIES DESTROYED

I mentioned before the ole' timers.. those who lived through the decade of revolution.. As an 80s child, I only can contemplate the death of space exploration. .When I was just 5, I may or may not have known of the Challenger horror.. when I was growing up in the 90s, my love of space was not because of NASA exploration but instead because of my healthy diet nightly of staying awake late to listen to Art Bell expose and expand on potential alien life and UFO sightings around the world..  But my interviews of those who lived through the live stream -- the true live stream during the 60s of the event -- produce another interesting side effect of the moon landing: I am told the youth of that day were glued to TV sets, but the older Americans had disbelief in what they were seeing..

Hogwash! Man on the moon!? No way!

Perhaps this is where conspiracy theories were formed.. This could be the beginning times when people just could not believe their eyes..  It was all too perfect a story. Kennedy promised men on the moon before the end of the decade. And suddenly at the end of the decade we were going to the moon, safely on LIVE TV for the world to watch, land then leaving the moon without incident, arriving back at home.. all without injury. All without a situation. Without a disaster...

Also destroyed.. a legacy? This was reported last year:

US astronaut Buzz Aldrin is suing two of his children and his former business manager alleging they stole money from him and are slandering his legacy.

The lawsuit, which also claims they are stopping him from getting married, was filed after his children petitioned to take control of his finances.

They asked a judge to name them as his legal guardians because he is suffering from memory loss and confusion.

 HOAX OR NO

There is still a large amount of people (and actually growing if you see popular opinion polls and compare throughout time) that do not think we actually were on the moon. Some real events may not have helped the NASA defenders over the years..

Back in 2009, media reports told us that Nasa taped over its only high-resolution images of the first moon walk with electronic data from a satellite or a later manned space mission, officials said today  So the most historic event in the agency ever, and someone they managed to record something else over it to save money.. huh!?

Stories like that don't help...

Rumors like this don't help either: Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' was released 11 years after the first landing on the moon. In that movie, Danny Torrance - played by child actor Danny Lloyd - is seen wearing a knitted jumper with an Apollo 11 rocket on its front. In the scene where Danny first encounters Room 237, he is seen playing on carpet that it is said to resemble an aerial photograph of the launchpad of Apollo 11.. When Danny picks up the tennis ball, which is supposed to represent the hoax itself, he then enters Room 237 and comes out of it attacked and bruised. Later, in the climax of the movie, Jack Torrance - played by Jack Nicholson - screams and raves about the responsibility that's been placed on him, and that he has signed a contract to maintain the hotel and that he is responsible for holding its secrets.

The interpretation asserts that 'The Shining' was, in part, Kubrick trying to confess his role in the moon landing, from the carpets up to Jack Nicholson's crazed rants acting as Kubrick's vented frustrations.

Stanley Kubrick's daughter was forced to push back against this in 2016..

Also this.. There was a viral video that was released on the internet where Buzz Aldrin was attending the National Book Fest in Washington DC and was being interviewed by an eight-year-old girl named Zoey.

Zoey asked the astronaut: “Why has nobody been to the Moon in such a long time?”

Aldrin’s eyes grow wide in the video and he says to the little girl:

“We didn’t go there, and that’s the way it happened. And if it didn’t happen, it would be nice to know why it didn’t happen.”

Some have even claimed to see NASA being sloppy and forgetting to censor buildings appearing in moon footage..

And just on Friday night, Ground Zero with Clyde Lewis featured this as the topic for the program.. and also included a strange clip of the astronauts joking to mission control about cue cards and stage hands!!

Mission Control to Neil Armstrong: Is Buzz Holding the cue cards for you… over?

Neil Armstrong: Cue cards have a no. We have no intention of competing with the professionals believe me.

Unidentified voice: yea Ron’s getting to be known as the silent CAPCOM. (unintelligible) OK.

Buzz Aldrin: The only problem Charlie, these TV stagehands don’t know where they stand.

Mission Control: Well he doesn’t really have a union card there we really can’t complain too much I guess.

Neil Armstrong: Hey the restraints here are doing a great job of pulling my pants down.

x x x

NAZI CONNECTION

There are tons of questions that people will constantly ask about whether the moon landing REALLY happened in space or in front of TV cameraman somewhere on some elaborate set directed by Stanley Kubrick..

If you side with the conspiracy theory that the landing was a hoax, suspend your disbelief for a moment and believe.. because there is a whole other conspiracy theory/fact for your enjoyment..

Filmmaker  Aron Ranen got a grant for $65,000.. He got this grant in order to travel across the USA to interview former astronauts, mission controllers, scientists and others, in an attempt to prove that NASA actually sent men to the moon in 1969.

But instead of proving it was real, he was left with countless questions over whether it really happened.. His movie, MOONHOAX, is available for free download on YouTube and other platforms..

Along with the questions that persist whether it was real or not, Ranen asked some other question. If it was real, the set of facts that presents itself may be much more discomforting..

In the documentary, one of the Apollo mission’s few black employees reveals that the Ku Klux Klan operated openly at the Kennedy Space Center during the ’60s.

And more: A retired tracking engineer said that Nazi scientists helped the U.S. test hydrogen bombs in the South Pacific during the ’50s. This was a claim substantiated by recently declassified documents.

A former slave laborer recalls esteemed rocket scientist Wernher von Braun overseeing huge forced-labor camps in Germany during World War II (true).

And, finally, it turns out that all the basic data taped during the Apollo 11 mission has been misplaced--something confirmed in 2009 by NASA itself as we talked about earlier.

For your discernment, all the uploaded segments of MOONHOAX featuring some of the hard to stomach facts that Nazis helped the United States get to the moon, with one allegation that Neil Armstrong was the first to walk on the moon because he was a German, and Nazis assisting the US get there wanted it that way..

PUNCH DRUNK

50 years on... 50 years later. We have not really been back since....

We have been stalled here on this planet. A planet filled with war and mayhem. Instead of reaching for the stars we are just forced to continue grasping at straws that something will change..

If the moon landing really even happened to begin with.

And on that note, we will end with Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon. When he was approached about the factual matters of the moon landing several years ago, he had an interesting response..

Back in 2002, Buzz was approached by a moon landing denier.. Aldrin decided to take action..

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_YM9cCtwz4&w=1218&h=685]

It would have been the punch heard around the world.. but after decades since 1969, everyone stopped listening.

[shawwillsuffice]

Why Do Baby Boomers Hate The Vietnam War But Love All Other Wars?

A college professor I had, a man who came of age in the 1960's, once told me that he thought what his generation objected to about the Vietnam War wasn't war on principle, the way the pacifist movement of that time is now portrayed. What they resented was the fact that their elders had given them a "bad war." He thought if they had gotten a "good war," like World War II, most of them would have been fine with that. After 16 years of war in Afghanistan, it's a discussion that haunts me a little more every day. I was 15 when 9/11 happened and the US dived head-first into war without a moment's hesitation. At that age, I had long since learned that adults didn't believe most of the shit they told kids about morality and ethics and two wrongs not making a right, so it wasn't really a surprise that the "Give Peace a Chance" hippie nostalgia I'd been brought up on was just as disingenuous. Still, there was a sting that came with it, because I genuinely believed (and still do) that war is almost never the answer to international disputes, and was certainly not the answer in this case. There was another angle to that sting too, though, because in the case of the anti-war movement, the history books were full of material evidence that my elders really had believed in pacifism, at least back then. I had to wonder, what had happened? Had they changed? How was this Bad War different from their Bad War? A year and change later, when the US invaded Iraq, a move that was clearly even more sketchy and dishonest than the invasion of Afghanistan, that was based on obvious lies and no material evidence of any danger, there were a few token stirrings of protest. I watched a few of my neighbors voice their quiet, passive Midwestern opposition with signs politely held on street corners, but there wasn't any kind of substantive movement. My high school class organized a "walk out" to protest. I asked some of the kids who were involved, "What are we going to do? March to the Statehouse? Block the street?" No, we were just going to stand outside the school, maybe hold up a few signs. All of it together was little enough for President Bush to dismiss on national TV as "irrelevant." And the Baby Boomers, so proud of their self-described role in ending the Vietnam War through protest, were still decidedly behind him. Now, with the Baby Boomers still forming the dominant base of the political status quo and a corporate media culture that creams itself with delight every time the government bombs somebody, anybody at all, I think I finally get why that remark by my professor strikes me as so relevant. I don't think the Baby Boomers have ever been anti-war in any kind of general sense, and their opposition to the Vietnam War had more to do with their own cultural mythology about themselves than their overall feelings about warfare itself. If anything, I think the Baby Boomers have always loved the idea of war. They grew up on their parents' and grandparents' stories about the two World Wars and the righteous glory and sacrifice popularly attributed to them. To hear my professor tell it, his generation wanted a Good War almost more than anything else in the world. Being given a Bad War felt like a betrayal to them, not just because of the death and destruction and trauma it left behind, but because it could not fit with their persistent need, as a generation, to be the Best At And Most Deserving Of Absolutely Everything. That mythology, of the Baby Boomers as The Very Best (Like No One Ever Was) has come to be far more visible to my generation, the Millennials, than any anti-war sentiment they might ever have held. For us, they have long since ceased to be the anti-war generation as they occupy themselves daily howling out the hollow mythology of their own inherent superiority. They do this to the point that all of the successes of my generation, our progress toward frugality and environmentalism and away from the allure of capitalism, must be phrased as failures through comparison to them. Reduced reliance on fossil fuel? "Why Aren't Millennials Buying Cars?" Disinterest in corporate chain retail and food service that treats its workers like shit? "Millennials Are Killing Applebee's." Finding happiness while rejecting materialism? "Why Aren't Millennials Buying Diamond Engagement Rings?" Their need to be the best is so all-consuming that they have to turn shitting on their own children into a full-time occupation just to keep us from outshining them. And I don't think this twisting of the narrative to suit their pride started with us, either. When I remember what my professor told me, about his generation's resentment over getting a Bad War, I think they did this with Vietnam too. Because they couldn't stand to be fighting a Bad War while their elders had gotten such a very, very Good War, they had to twist the narrative so that war itself was bad, and their opposition to that war was more righteous than anything anyone else had ever done. I think many people really did believe in pacifism, and the culture of the time gave the true believers the opportunity for a lot of good work and progress which we have all benefited from. But on the whole, I don't think very many of the participants really believed it on a core level; war, to them, was only bad insofar as it allowed them to claim a moral high-ground over people who otherwise would have been and done better than them. There's no way to prove this, of course, but look at the way the same people exist in our culture today. Millennials, with our increased interest in inclusivity and fighting oppression, are faced with a massive backlash by our elders against "PC culture" that they swear is nothing more than us "trying to make them feel guilty" and "wanting to feel like we're better than them." Which, I mean, they would know. And then there's our invasion of Afghanistan, the longest continuous military engagement in US history, which they have never been anything but fond of. Anyway I hope everyone enjoyed the eclipse.

[evilelitest2]

100 Days of Trump Day 65: Apocalypse Now

Welcome Back to 100 Days of Trump, where we try to explain WTF happened in 2016 in 100 recommendations, and today we are going to talk about a movie I am presuming all of you have seen, the seminal Vietnam movie Apocalypse Now.  

     So we all know its based on Heart of Darkness and how the Vietnam War was awful and the type of experiences people go through, and the utter chaos of that war, but I want to focus on a specific aspect, the knowledge of a country doing something it knows is wrong.  

    Anybody who isn’t 5 or an Alt Rightist knows that the US has done a lot of bad things, hell we were founded on three big ones, but core to our national identity is this notion of being morally righteous, its this puritan notion that the US is a country who fights for justice, who tries to serve as a city on the hill for the rest of the world, and who act as a moral bulwork against the forces of evil.  I think it comes from being a land of religious fanatics and also being the only democracy in a world of oppressive monarchies and then watching France go to fucking crazyland, but it really really matters to us that the US is “The Good Guy” or at least “Tries to be the Good Guy”.  So there is really shocking problem when the US’s self image is smashed against something which makes it impossible to reconcile.  And every time that happens the countyr goes a little bit....crazy.  I can think of 4 major incidents of this, the Occupation of the Phillipines, the Occupation of Cuba/Haiti, the Vietnam War and the Iraq War, where the American public was like “Wait....I don’t think....I don’t think we are the good guys here”. And in all of those incidents the country went just a tiny bit....insane.  

    Cause when you really believe in the ideals of America (and I do for the record) it can be so.....disappointing when you see that crash into us acting in such a way that is such a betrayal of who we are.  Like Britain’s empire was so long and so open that it is much easier to ideologically go “oh yeah, we did this horrible thing, I get that a lot” but America’s entire goal as a country has always been “We justify our actions���....like in the American Revolution John Adams served as defense council for the British involved in the Boston massacre to ensure they got a fair trail.  We didn’t fall into French Revolution style bloodbaths after the war and as far as revolutionary conflicts go, the American Revolution....well it was no Glorious Revolution but it certainly wasn’t the English Civil War.  There is this very entrenched notion of America as a value nation, and when something like Vietnam happened, everybody in the country started to seriously doubt the foundations of America.  For some people they came disillusioned entirely, for others they dug in their heels and tried to find any excuse to rationalize what was going on, because that is better than the Alternative of admitting that the US, in particular the military might not be an absolute moral standard.  This attitude btw is a large reason why the US military really didn’t want to invade Iraq, because unlike the bush administration they were smart enough to see where this leads.

     The Vietnam War is something that a lot of Americans really don’t want to talk about, because unlike the World Wars or the Civil War or the Revolutionary War, it isn’t something which has a very clear legacy.  Its a war which....didn’t really need to happen, it accomplished nothing positive, it could have been easily avoided, and all it did was make the world an objectively worse place for Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and our soldiers.  And it is really disquieting to think “Wait....we did something like that”. Cause it isn’t the evilness of it that makes so many Americans uncomfortable, I mean that a factor, but its the stupidity.  WIth the release of the Pentagon Papers there was this suddenly knowledge that our leaders had no fucking idea what they were doing,   THis is why I think 9/11 Turther argument bullshit are so popular, because for a lot of people, the idea that we are ruled by a cabal of shadowy plutocrats is far preferable than the knowledge that we are ruled by an idiot.  

    The War on Terror has been going on for 16 years, the longest war in US history by a mile, and US involvement in Iraq has been going on for 14 years.  The whole thing just seems pointless, inept, and without any real way out.  I think most of us understand that we really shouldn’t have entered this war in the first place but a lot don’t want to say it because if we do then....all the death, all the destruction, all the trauma and sadness would have been for nothing.  So we dig in further and hope that if we act more violent, it will eventually pay off.  And that is why Islamaphobia is increasing, because as the greatest military and economic power in world history consistently and publicly fails over and over again, many Americans come to resent “Islam” (which of course they don’t even understand so they imagine it as a singular thing) for making America look so bad, and it turns into a clash of culture thing.  Since many people buy into the whole “America or bust” mentality, if “The Islam” is defeating America....does that mean that Islam is the real superpower..

    Which of course it...isn’t because Islam isn’t a unified thing, but a lot of Islamophobia in the US comes out of this essential horror that A) The US is going to lose its superpower status B) That the US is going to lose it not because of fading but instead because we just fucked up royally C) That maybe....we were the bad guys”  Europe’s Islamophobia is coming from somewhere difference, but screw Europe we are talking about America, a country that really really wants to be as we are depicted in West Wing, and keeps getting uncomfortable when we realize that we look more like we do in...Apocalypse Now.  

   One of the problems with being a world Super Power (Ok English and French listeners, you can be included here too) is that there isn’t really any way as a country you can say “Well....we fucked up there”.  Like we barely do it towards slavery and Civil Rights.  When you are the most powerful country in the world and everybody else is sort of your bitch, you really want that power to come out of you’re superior moral virtue.   Because otherwise you kinda realize that a nations power is more dependent upon economic and military and social policies and morality doesn’t really determine the world and oh wait its our old friend

Just World Fallacy

   So any time something makes us question “Why is the US the most powerful country” we don’t have this instinct instilled into use to go “Well...the US isn’t perfect, but we also have a lot of positive qualities and  we have done a lot of great things, and questioning our superpower status doesn’t necessarily mean we should give up on that status”  But if “America is the best” is such a base assupmtion that quesitoning it makes you uncomfortable then....a 16 year long war where you have to question that every day is gonna make our country a little bit insane. 

    So yeah, good movie, go watch it, its relevant to what I talked about.  

[diaryofanangryasianguy]

Entry #60: MLK Day + Quotes

01/16/17

Dear Diary,

In honor of Martin Luther King and his precious day, I will share some of my favorite quotes by him (only one quote per speech). MLK has been my biggest idol for a very long time so I hope you enjoy his words as much as I do. Expect this to be a very long post.

***

• “…racism is a way of life for the vast majority of white Americans. Spoken and unspoken. Acknowledged and denied.” -Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, 1968

• “…the problem that we face is that the ghetto is a domestic colony that’s constantly drained without being replenished. You always telling us to lift ourselves by our own bootstraps and yet we are being robbed everyday…” -Where Do We Go From Here, 1967

• “…it’s a nice thing to say to people that you oughta lift yourself by your own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he oughta lift himself by his own bootstraps.” -The Other America, 1967

• “We cry out against welfare handouts to the poor but generously approve an oil depletion allowance to make the rich richer.” -The Three Evils of Society, 1967

• “The real problem is that through our scientific genius we’ve made of the world a neighborhood, but through our moral and spiritual genius we’ve failed to make of it a brotherhood.” -Rediscovering Lost Values, 1954

• “The success of communism in the world today is due to the failure of democracy to live up to the noble ideals and principle inherent in its system.” -Loving Your Enemies, 1957

• “The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people.” -Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence, 1967

• “The nations of the world are engaged in a bitter and tragic contest for supremacy.” -A Knock at Midnight, 1967

• “If I lived in… any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions… But somewhere I read, of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read, of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read, of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read, that the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights.” -I’ve Been to the Mountaintop, 1968

• “Freedom only comes through persistent revolt, through persistent agitation, through persistently rising up against the system of evil.” -The Birth of a New Nation, 1957

• “There is a dire need today for a liberalism which is truly liberal. What we are witnessing today in so many northern communities is a sort of quasi-liberalism which is based on the principle of looking sympathetically at all sides. It is a liberalism so bent on seeing all sides, that it fails to become committed to either side.” -Give Us the Ballot, 1957

• “The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy of brotherhood, the normalcy of true peace, the normalcy of justice.” -Address at the Conclusion of the Selma to the Montgomery March, 1965

• “…if you have never found something so dear and so precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.” -But If Not, 1967

• “Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be the sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or you fail. Be the best of whatever you are.” -What is Your Life’s Blueprint?, 1967

• “You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom, and you reach over for a bar of soap, and that’s handed to you by a Frenchman. You reach over for a sponge, and that’s given to you by a Turk. You reach over for a towel, and that comes to your hand from the hands of a Pacific Islander. And then you go on to the kitchen to get your breakfast. You reach on over to get a little coffee, and that’s poured in your cup by a South American. Or maybe you decide that you want a little tea this morning, only to discover that that’s poured in your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you want a little cocoa, that’s poured in your cup by a West African. Then you want a little bread and you reach over to get it, and that’s given to you by the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. Before you get though eating breakfast in the morning, you’re dependent on more than half of the world.” -The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life, 1967

• “I go back to the South not with a feeling that we are caught in a dark dungeon that will never lead to a way out. I go back believing that the new day is coming. And so this afternoon, I have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.” -Speech at the Great March on Detroit, 1963

• "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'" -I Have a Dream, 1963

***

It is with great satisfaction that I could quote some of King’s greatest words and at the same time, a shame that they are so relevant to today.

Love, Angry Asian Guy

[gsmatthews95]

the tech of travelling

Let me take the time out of my busy day to regale you, my beloved readers, with a little tale of how my day has gone and fit it into a rather larger thought I've harboured for years. Yes, this is not just a "what have they been up to today" piece but one where I pour my thoughts and feelings into the blogosphere so all of you can share in my musings and arguments. This is not such a controversial topic, it is one that everyone knows but takes little  notice of as it is so engrained in the modern day backpacker. Anyhow, I'm in a bus, shock, and have dour and a bit hours to kill before we enter Bulgaria after a brief time here in Macedonia that has been plagued by illness and a lack of time. I'll write another post about Macedonia I think, although there wasn't much to our time here sadly. We'll see. Yes we're on the autobus to Sofia, capital of Bulgaria now, I am as tired as I have ever been, Alina feels sick and the bus driver has told us we can't eat on this journey, wicked. Urgh. I also just finished "a brief history of time" for maybe the third time as I pursue my scientific education.

So, today was supposed to be a chilled day as we went to the matka canyon for the day before our bus. It started smoothly, we got there, the bus trip took an hour not 40 mins, no worries, and we went on the half hour boat trip. It was pretty. Afterwards I wanted to walk to a monastery to get a nice view on the canyon. Alina didn't fancy it so chilled as I embarked on the half hour trip up followed by a 40 minute walk back. Alina took the phone so I was going blind. I ran up the hill and made it up in no time. Got the pics and saw the views before heading down. Firstly I almost went the wrong way, luckily I asked some people which way to go and they told me the right way and told me to just follow the path all the way round and down. Simple. I ran down, semi running semi speed walking. I got to a fork, hmmm. I went for the one that looked more direct and had a sign pointed towards the monastery, a simple choice I thought. I ran down, all the way down till I heard the water, bangin I'd made great time. I wandered down over the bridge along the dam and then the path stops. Literally it stopped. I couldn't cross the river. OK I looked around, there was no choice, no other path along the water. I panic, no phone so I couldn't just check the route. Ok so I went back and found a fork. Perfect. I followed the alternate path. Sprinted up it. At this point scared wed miss the bus back to Skopje and miss the consequential bus to Sofia and thus restricting our time further and missing our hostel reservation that had been paid in full (literally for the first time ever). I was panicking. I continued to run up. And got to a point I recognised. Bollocks. I ran back down, I couldn't retrace my steps all the way back. I had to find another way. I was back at the river. And climbed over the fence to follow the river thru the undergrowth. This was a mistake. First: I was lacerated by thorns across my bare chest. Second: I tried to duck under a bush and the entire bush, its leaves, dirt and rubbish moulted on me. Third: my foot sank into to sinky mud. Wet and muddy and smelly, horrible. I turn back. Time for plan c. I climb onto the wall bordering the river. Its like a tightrope... Ok its not that thin but you get the gist. I wander along wondering how to get back across the water I get to the end if the wall and climb down to the river (my makeshift path has disintegrated). I have one choice, wade across this relatively shallow part of the river. I embark. Shoes in my hand, socks off, water bottle in hand and go pro and sunglasses in pocket. I wade. The rocks are slippy, the water is wet, it is also cold. Slow progress but no slips. We're half way. It gets deeper, thigh height, and is tougher to keep myself dry. I keep going and make it to the other wall. Next issue getting to the "steps". I follow the wall back. The water gets deeper, waist high. The steps are a meter away. The metre is long tho because the water is much deeper for it. I brace myself and leap. Semi swimming semi jumping I make the bottom "step" with relatively dry shoes, jumper and socks. Success. Next I have to clamber up the metre high steps (each step was a metre high) and get to the electricity plant, definitely trespassing at this point. I climb up. Then need to climb down, proper parkour. I make it to the road and sprint to the cafe agreed as our meeting point. I get there. What time is it I gasp. 2 o clock. It had been 1 hour. What??? I thought it was maybe 4. Wow. I was proud, but dead.

What is the relevance of this little anecdote I hear you cry? Ah very good question. Yes, so it got me thinking as I sat silently on the bus back, so energy less i t felt like I was back at school having just finished cross country. If I'd had a phone, literally any phone, this whole ordeal would have been avoided easily (this thought was confirmed as I checked on maps.me and saw the trails marked on there clearly). And I thought lucky we have phones, but then, I thought: do you know what? While it was a stressful, tiring hour, it was a hilarious story. It also provided me some adventure, something unlikely to happen at home or Australia... I thought, this is one of the beautys of being away. Phones have, sadly, changed travelling I think, a lot. In s america all I had was an iPod and in c america I had a phone which  was as useful as an iPod as I couldn't use anything without internet and consequentially I found my self in a lot more tricky situations as I got lost, got ripped off and wandered so blindly around these alien places. It was scarier but it also held the merits of giving you a sense of achievement as you completed relatively simple tasks like finding a hostel, or the peak of a mountain. The increase prominence of phones, the widening 4G coverage, the increase in mobile plans that allow for use in foreign countries and the app maps.me have all, together, eroded much of the adventure of being in a foreign country and so as to say "in the stick".When we went to Vietnam we got internet for Christians phone so we could use google maps on our bikes. Then whenever we were lost or in a dodgy situation we always had the safety blanket of having our phone. In Australia I had 3G the WHOLE time except in the outback, coincidentally making that the period that included BY FAR the most adventure of the whole trip. It was literally directly proportional. The less phone coverage I had the most adventurous the trip became. Now here in Europe we haven't got internet so we have found ourselves in sticky situations however the having of maps.me (an app that allows you to use maps without internet, just location settings) has made life so much easier. You don't get lost on walking trails. You find the hostel. You know when the bus driver drops you in the wrong place. You know when to get off the bus. I remember in s america I would literally be reading every road sign in an attempt to work out where we were and when to get out. I'd have to speak to the driver and ask him to tell me when we were there. I even took a photo of the map and our route and tried to follow the route as we drove it (this led to me missing my boat to Uruguay and ending up in Boca when I was in Buenos Aires, so maps.me would have been a beautiful addition to my life here).Its hard to say that phones are wrecking travelling, especially as they're just gonna gain more influence and prevalence over our lives but I do sometimes look back in nostalgia at the times of old when being away really felt like you were against the world with no help, now I feel we have our ever present little helpers in our pockets.

Lol look at me talking about back I'm the day at the age of 23 haha. Anyway, just some food for thought for y'all. Meanwhile, the sun has set and its dark here, I'm dreading having to find the hostel in the dark when we get there.... Oh wait we have maps.me it'll be easy.Back to restart Stephen hawking for me. G.

[crazyoldactivist-blog]

Present at the Destruction: How Rex Tillerson Is Wrecking the State Department

I worked in Foggy Bottom for 6 years. I’ve never seen anything like this.

WASHINGTON AND THE WORLD By MAX BERGMANN - Politico

The deconstruction of the State Department is well underway.

I recently returned to Foggy Bottom for the first time since January 20 to attend the departure of a former colleague and career midlevel official—something that had sadly become routine. In my six years at State as a political appointee, under the Obama administration, I had gone to countless of these events. They usually followed a similar pattern: slightly awkward, but endearing formalities, a sense of melancholy at the loss of a valued teammate. But, in the end, a rather jovial celebration of a colleague’s work. These events usually petered out quickly, since there is work to do. At the State Department, the unspoken mantra is: The mission goes on, and no one is irreplaceable. But this event did not follow that pattern. It felt more like a funeral, not for the departing colleague, but for the dying organization they were leaving behind.

As I made the rounds and spoke with usually buttoned-up career officials, some who I knew well, some who I didn't, from a cross section of offices covering various regions and functions, no one held back. To a person, I heard that the State Department was in “chaos,” “a disaster,” “terrible,” the leadership “totally incompetent.” This reflected what I had been hearing the past few months from friends still inside the department, but hearing it in rapid fire made my stomach churn. As I walked through the halls once stalked by diplomatic giants like Dean Acheson and James Baker, the deconstruction was literally visible. Furniture from now-closed offices crowded the hallways. Dropping in on one of my old offices, I expected to see a former colleague—a career senior foreign service officer—but was stunned to find out she had been abruptly forced into retirement and had departed the previous week. This office, once bustling, had just one person present, keeping on the lights.

This is how diplomacy dies. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. With empty offices on a midweek afternoon.

When Rex Tillerson was announced as secretary of state, there was a general feeling of excitement and relief in the department. After eight years of high-profile, jet-setting secretaries, the building was genuinely looking forward to having someone experienced in corporate management. Like all large, sprawling organizations, the State Department’s structure is in perpetual need of an organizational rethink. That was what was hoped for, but that is not what is happening. Tillerson is not reorganizing, he’s downsizing.

While the lack of senior political appointees has gotten a lot of attention, less attention has been paid to the hollowing out of the career workforce, who actually run the department day to day. Tillerson has canceled the incoming class of foreign service officers. This as if the Navy told all of its incoming Naval Academy officers they weren’t needed. Senior officers have been unceremoniously pushed out. Many saw the writing on the wall and just retired, and many others are now awaiting buyout offers. He has dismissed State’s equivalent of an officer reserve—retired FSOs, who are often called upon to fill State’s many short-term staffing gaps, have been sent home despite no one to replace them. Office managers are now told three people must depart before they can make one hire. And now Bloomberg reports that Tillerson is blocking all lateral transfers within the department, preventing staffers from moving to another office even if it has an opening. Managers can’t fill openings; employees feel trapped.

Despite all this, career foreign and civil service officers are all still working incredibly hard representing the United States internationally. They’re still doing us proud. But how do you manage multimillion-dollar programs with no people? Who do you send to international meetings and summits? Maybe, my former colleagues are discovering, you just can’t implement that program or show up to that meeting. Tillerson’s actions amount to a geostrategic own-goal, weakening America by preventing America from showing up.

State’s growing policy irrelevance and Tillerson’s total aversion to the experts in his midst is prompting the department’s rising stars to search for the exits. The private sector and the Pentagon are vacuuming them up. This is inflicting long-term damage to the viability of the American diplomacy—and things were already tough. State has been operating under an austerity budget for the past six years since the 2011 Budget Control Act. Therefore, when Tillerson cuts, he is largely cutting into bone, not fat. The next administration won’t simply be able to flip a switch and reverse the damage. It takes years to recruit and develop diplomatic talent. What Vietnam did to hollow out our military, Tillerson is doing to State.

What we now know is that the building is being run by a tiny clique of ideologues who know nothing about the department but have insulated themselves from the people who do. Tillerson and his isolated and inexperienced cadres are going about reorganizing the department based on little more than gut feeling. They are going about it with vigor. And there is little Congress can seemingly do—though lawmakers control the purse strings, it’s hard to stop an agency from destroying itself.

At the root of the problem is the inherent distrust of the State Department and career officers. I can sympathize with this—I, too, was once a naive political appointee, like many of the Trump people. During the 2000s, when I was in my 20s, I couldn’t imagine anyone working for George W. Bush. I often interpreted every action from the Bush administration in the most nefarious way possible. Almost immediately after entering government, I realized how foolish I had been.

For most of Foggy Bottom, the politics of Washington might as well have been the politics of Timbuktu—a distant concern, with little relevance to most people’s work. I found that State’s career officials generally were more hawkish than most Democrats, but believe very much in American leadership in international organizations and in forging international agreements, putting them to the left of many Republicans. Politically, most supported politicians that they thought would best protect and strengthen American interests and global leadership. Many career officials were often exasperated by the Obama administration and agreed with much of the conservative critique of his policies—hence the initial enthusiasm for Tillerson. By the end of my tenure, many of my closest and most trusted colleagues were registered Republicans, had worked in the Bush White House or were retired military officers. I would have strongly considered staying on in a normal Republican administration if asked.

I don’t believe my experience is unique: When you see a lot of Bush-era veterans attacking the Trump administration, it’s likely because they had a similar experience. In government—and especially in the foreign policy and national security realms—you work for your country, not a party.

What is motivating Tillerson’s demolition effort is anyone’s guess. He may have been a worldly CEO at ExxonMobil, but he had precious little experience in how American diplomacy works. Perhaps Tillerson, as a D.C. and foreign policy novice, is simply being a good soldier, following through on edicts from White House ideologues like Steve Bannon. Perhaps he thinks he is running State like a business. But the problem with running the State Department like a business is that most businesses fail—and American diplomacy is too big to fail.

What is clear, however, is that there is no pressing reason for any of these cuts. America is not a country in decline. Its economy is experiencing an unprecedented period of continuous economic growth, its technology sector is the envy of the world and the American military remains unmatched. Even now, under Trump, America’s allies and enduring values amplify its power and constrain its adversaries. America is not in decline—it is choosing to decline. And Tillerson is making that choice. He is quickly becoming one of the worst and most destructive secretaries of state in the history of our country.

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