The greatest trick the devil ever pulled…

…was convincing the world he was God.

To paraphrase the classic phrase a bit, that is what the United States keeps on being able to do with the rest of the western world.

My theory is that it’s because the rest of the world is cynically focused on their own short-term self-interest. Nothing much has changed in that regard. They simply continue to pretend that they’re doing whatever they do for wholly virtuous reasons, but they really have no principles at all.

Look at a country like Switzerland, which has capitulated the least of the continental countries:

• It has levied sanctions against Russia, vowing to tag along with EU sanctions wherever they may go
• It has never been moved to sanction the United States for any of its dozens of invasions nor even raised its voice in that direction
• It has never sanctioned Israel for running an open-air prison in Gaza and the West Bank
• It is purchasing new jet fighters United States weapons manufacturers

None of the European countries seems to care that they have joined the U.S. in playing a giant game of chicken with Russia and China. China and Russia want to continue to exist and grow and use their resources and strengths. The United States wants a unipolar world. Europe and Switzerland have fallen in with the U.S. on wishing for a unipolar world, because that is the world from they currently benefit the most (or so they think). They cannot see beyond simply keeping the world going exactly as it is so that they, personally, can reap the giant rewards that this arrangement has historically provided to their elites.

Unprincipled

The threat of COVID barely moved the needle. The same for the threat of the climate crisis. They are moved to care for a fleeting moment and then just drop back to the default position of grubbing money and power for themselves.

This is clear. It is unsurprising. It is also wildly unprincipled and completely uninterested in the welfare of the other 99.99% of the planet’s people—to say nothing of the untold trillions of as-yet unborn people.

Do not believe a word that anyone says about taking a principled stance against bad behavior on the part of nations. That is not what they are doing. You cannot ignore all of the bad behavior on the part of your allies and focus only on the bad behavior of whichever enemy your Lord and Master has directed your ire at.

No, what is happening is that the U.S. has, once again, selected the countries they would like to take control of next, and sicced its hounds upon them. And its hounds sprint across the field, heedless of their own well-being. That is Europe. That is, sadly, also Switzerland, at least for now.

The U.S. is too late, of course. It has capitulated all of its manufacturing power. All of its infrastructure is in a shambles. Its economy is a hollow joke, running on fumes. Everything it accuses China of—being a surveillance state, being a carceral state—it does even more. It’s a terrible, awful joke.

Still, the corpse of the U.S. empire twitches. It will cause a lot of damage on its way down, its thrashing limbs mimicking the motions of a healthy empire, but really just a faded shadow of them.

Colossal stupidity

The people in charge of the western world—the existing empire—are nearly shockingly stupid. Not just stupid—incapable of comprehension or reasoning at a higher level—but ignorant. They either ignore obvious things that they should know (e.g. the machinations of NATO over the last 30 years) or they are simply unaware of them.

They just literally don’t know that the president of the U.S. essentially declared war on Russia 10 days ago on a nationally aired American news show. He said that the U.S. (he didn’t even bother say NATO now) would continue to arm and financially support Ukraine until all its territory had been wrested from Russia. That includes Crimea.

That is a declaration of war because Russia very much considers Crimea to be part of Russia, just as it now considers the freshly minted easter oblasts of Ukraine to be Russian territory as well.

It may not be right or just for Russia to feel this way, but it does, and it is prepared to back up its beliefs with military force. It has even recently re-stated that it will use atomic weapons, if necessary.

These are the ravings of another mad and fading empire. However, we are forced to take them seriously because the Russian corpse twitches just like the U.S. one. We can’t ignore the rabid bull in our midst. It is mad, but still powerful enough to cause a lot of damage.

Hypocritical

NATO (Europe and the U.S.) is focused laser-like on its hypocritical stance: when we do it (e.g. with the destruction of Yugoslavia and extraction and immediate recognition of Kosovo, all without a security-council resolution or as much as a by-your-leave from the UN), it’s a morally sacred endeavor to bring the light of democracy to peoples long benighted by the pall of communism.

When Russia does the same thing to “free” culturally Russian people in the east of Ukraine from a very Russophobic government installed by a coup in Kiev, it’s the epitome of evil and against all principles. However, NATO is also very willing to do the exact same thing with Taiwan and China.

There is no principle here. There is only the self-seeking madness of empire, the absolute bloodlust of elites blinded to everything but the arrogation of more lucre and power to themselves.

That goes not just for Europe and the U.S, but for Russia as well. They are all children, playing at war games to distract us from how much power they have—and want.

We have to recognize that it is the U.S. that could have prevented this from ever having started—and which has the power to end it all overnight. It simply chooses not to, because the situation right now is very much to its liking—or, at least, to the liking of the mad, stupid, historically and strategically ignorant elite that is currently in charge.

If the U.S. were to call for peace talks, Ukraine and Russia would both attend. It would get done. There are points of agreement. We know this because, in late April, they had a 14-point agreement already, but the U.S. and England torpedoed it, in favor of continuing the war and pressing their purported advantage. Many, many more people have died and much, much more has been destroyed.

The West does not care because it pleases itself thinking that it can blame everything on Russia, but the world is not convinced. The rest of the world knows that the West could end this anytime it wants. Instead, it promulgates for the benefit of a mad, tiny elite.