(Note Russia was knocked out of the war in 1917. The debts shown below were parr of the pre-1917 financial flow orchestrated by London).
I think the real lesson for our times is how Russia was "knocked out" of the war and how it's withdrawal led very quickly to the end of the war, a horrific years long slaughter of the youth of Europe.
If the US was "knocked out" of attacking/provoking Russia through Ukraine, knocked out of supporting the genocide of the Palestinians in Israel, humanity would benefit immensely. So, what was that knock out technique of Russia? That deserves much more attention as we stand looking into the abyss of a nuclear WW3. For your purposes, there was also also a fascinating economic experiment bound up with Russia's exit from WW1.
The history of how the US became US imperialism is interesting, but that history is coming to its logical end. It is undeniable that US imperialism is in an irreversible decline and it's taking its junior partners in Europe down with it, quite quickly. If it goes on like this much longer it will take every living creature on earth down with it.
I see you support the doomed effort to beat nuclear power Russia via the neonazi Ukraine regime. I can only imagine your thoughts on the genocide aided and directed by US imperialism. So, we don't have much to discuss, Steve-O. See you on the barricades.
Done by Russians? Have you heard the news about, Bucha Steve-O? And what do you think of the Ukrainian government? Lotta Nazis aren't there? How do you feel about, Nazis, Steve-O?
Nonetheless, I'm glad you at least wish to dissociate from the Zionist Genocide of the beautiful, heroic and noble Palestinian people. Good instincts on that atrocity.
Good, you're not going to deny that Russia launched a missile attack on a children's hospital. Thanks, I appreciate your honesty on this one important fact.
Russia was knocked out by the Ottoman Empire's control of the Daradanelles and Bosphorus straits which control the entry into the Black Sea. Those were the waterways on which most of Russia's trade flowed. In 1914 the Ottomans entered the war and simply blocked these straits to Russian commerce, denying them hard currency with which they could finance the imports and finally the war. Two and a half years later, in February 1917 Russian got itself a revolution where the revolutionaries demanded bread.
This was the reason the Soviet Union signed the Montreux Convention in the 1930s with all the other Black Sea states: to regulate the access to the Daradanelles and Bosphorus straits. This still remain a foreign policy objective for the Russian Federation today and the reason Turkey is in NATO.
So, you're understanding is that Tsarist Russia removed itself from the war? And the Bolsheviks, not the people, merely wanted bread, not land and an end to the senseless slaughter of their sons for the geopolitical objectives of the ruling class? You don't have to read Trotsky. Even AJP Taylor would tell you that you are dead ass wrong.
But it is interesting how mightily your psuedo explanation of the fact that a social revolution ended Russia's participation in an Imperialist war abroad. Why would you tie your petty bourgeois self in knots trying to cover up an uncontroversial fact of world history?
An interesting analysis of how the US kind of "backed into" its central position where international debts are concerned. A rather less sympathetic narrative can be found in Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire, Third Edition" (the first edition of which came out in 1972) or the early chapters of his "The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism" published in 2022.
To a casual observer it is strange to study the charts and observe the US economic surge in 1940, for that was a time of dire poverty in the US and that poverty lasted for at least another decade. In 1940 our family of four was twice homeless regardless of the fact that both parents were U. of Chicago PhDs. There are huge time lags. The same is true now. The great outpouring of federal funds at this time will not be felt for quite some time, so all assessments of its efficacy other than to procure votes will be sort of questionable.
PS ---- You need a good proofreader and I would be happy to do that for you gratis.
Thanks for this essential context for understanding MAGA. If McKinley is, in fact, a MAGA cornerstone, then the time period picks up Jim Crow and matriarcical voting in addition to isolationism, anti-tax, and pro-tariff beliefs. The oddity is how MAGA seems to dismiss objective evidence that turning our backs on McKinley's policies and other aspects of his era - has been wildly successful!
What do we do that other government's don't envy? Allow military weapons on our streets, don't pay for our pollution, and fuel a perpetual arms race with our massive peacetime defense budge . Not much else.
Also - why does MAGA enable scriptural literalists when almost no credible theologians, or even the Pope, do? How does MAGA read history to deny lfreedom of religion as the raisson d'etre of America? My only decent hunch is that Darwin-denial has dead ended with these archiea-evolved American's heads in the sand.
> The oddity is how MAGA seems to dismiss objective evidence that turning our backs on McKinley's policies and other aspects of his era - has been wildly successful!
Succesful in creating today's mess.
The US got a lot of money for a short historical period, favored by two things: European powers were exhausted after WWI and WWII, and the rest of the world was not in great shape (most of it european colonies, protectorates, and such, and easily controllable).
When this was challenged in the 70s, it managed to power through for another few decades through the killing of the Bretton Woods system and tying the world to the dollar.
This easy source of power made it complacent, fat (this literally), and careless. It moved tons of its production abroad for easy profit, it bloated with rules and regulations that thwarted actual innovation, it printed and handed out money through cheap loans to financial instritutions which ended up financing useless VC spending (the various "startup booms"), accumulated huge debt and bureucratic tiers, etc.
McKinley's policies successed the way an up and coming boxer whose opponents beat up each other up in a bar fight and got exhausted "won". The boxer then loaned them money, and had them by the balls, making him give him money for steroids. He got bigger, but also less healthy, and even forgot how to actually box. Now those old opponents that "owe" him are a bunch of increasingly irrelevant older losers that don't matter (and can't help him), and the rest of world is tired of his shit, him having bit the biggest bully all this time.
Future post on the sources of America’s vast accumulation of finances, manufacturing capacity and raw materials would be another great avenue to go down. The “domestic” story.
European wars gave rise to beginnings of U.S. hegemony. The U.S. did not create wars to become the world leader. Once created, we needed to maintain it in the face of rising enemies. It's really very sad
I think the main reason for the US entering WWI was the danger of Germany winning the war after the Russian Revolution started in February 2017. Not the sinking of the Lusitania, not the U-Boat campaign. Those were pretexts. If Germany won, Europe's resources and knowledge could be assembled, a strong Navy created and the US threatened with invasion eventually. This is also today the US goal in Europe: to prevent any European power of controlling the entire continent.
The essence of fascism is that the only thing that matters is force and violence. Fascist arguments are often deliberately illogical and self-contradictory, so as to assert that no rules bind them, they are unconstrained by a need for consistency or logic.
And of course the MAGA movement is deeply anti-intellectual, so seeing intellectuals express puzzlement at their illogic and inconsistencies is a source of amusement to them.
I disagree. Realism is the study of reality. Liberalism is belongs in the subset under idealism, great for art and stuff but not something you want to craft policy around.
Trump is an idiot grifter but it wasn't for him it'd be someone else, maybe someone more articulate. Force is really the only thing that decides what the order will be and the intelligence agencies and geopol think tanks know it well.
What if I am? Maybe I could point fingers at you and say you're a Francis Fukuyama advocate. That you really believe in the "The end of history". The guy is sniffing his own farts. Let's wait a few years and see where things settle, idealists live in their own bubbles.
I'm trying to have a discussion. You are trying to insult me and thus framing my replies as insults because you think this is the kind of discussion we're having. I'm steering away from that.
It's really juvenile how people in the idealist liberal camp frame everyone else as being emotion and illogical while they're exhibiting this kind of exact behavior.
Guess you missed the bullshit quotes? Here it is again: "realist".
Sorry, I don't know what to make of the rest of your comment, I get that it's intended to be insulting, but I'm probably just not smart enough to figure out how.
(Note Russia was knocked out of the war in 1917. The debts shown below were parr of the pre-1917 financial flow orchestrated by London).
I think the real lesson for our times is how Russia was "knocked out" of the war and how it's withdrawal led very quickly to the end of the war, a horrific years long slaughter of the youth of Europe.
If the US was "knocked out" of attacking/provoking Russia through Ukraine, knocked out of supporting the genocide of the Palestinians in Israel, humanity would benefit immensely. So, what was that knock out technique of Russia? That deserves much more attention as we stand looking into the abyss of a nuclear WW3. For your purposes, there was also also a fascinating economic experiment bound up with Russia's exit from WW1.
The history of how the US became US imperialism is interesting, but that history is coming to its logical end. It is undeniable that US imperialism is in an irreversible decline and it's taking its junior partners in Europe down with it, quite quickly. If it goes on like this much longer it will take every living creature on earth down with it.
If the US was "knocked out" of attacking/provoking Russia through Ukraine...
You mean "provoking" Russia by providing the Ukrainians with the weapons they need to defend themselves? (Have we had this argument before?)
I see you support the doomed effort to beat nuclear power Russia via the neonazi Ukraine regime. I can only imagine your thoughts on the genocide aided and directed by US imperialism. So, we don't have much to discuss, Steve-O. See you on the barricades.
You may be surprised to learn I'm anti-genocide, whether it's being done by Israelis or Russians. Both bomb hospitals:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/childrens-hospital-damaged-massive-russian-attack-kyiv-cities-rcna160655
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/17/middleeast/israel-gaza-rafah-crossing-week-2-tuesday-intl-hnk/index.html
Done by Russians? Have you heard the news about, Bucha Steve-O? And what do you think of the Ukrainian government? Lotta Nazis aren't there? How do you feel about, Nazis, Steve-O?
Nonetheless, I'm glad you at least wish to dissociate from the Zionist Genocide of the beautiful, heroic and noble Palestinian people. Good instincts on that atrocity.
Good, you're not going to deny that Russia launched a missile attack on a children's hospital. Thanks, I appreciate your honesty on this one important fact.
Russia was knocked out by the Ottoman Empire's control of the Daradanelles and Bosphorus straits which control the entry into the Black Sea. Those were the waterways on which most of Russia's trade flowed. In 1914 the Ottomans entered the war and simply blocked these straits to Russian commerce, denying them hard currency with which they could finance the imports and finally the war. Two and a half years later, in February 1917 Russian got itself a revolution where the revolutionaries demanded bread.
This was the reason the Soviet Union signed the Montreux Convention in the 1930s with all the other Black Sea states: to regulate the access to the Daradanelles and Bosphorus straits. This still remain a foreign policy objective for the Russian Federation today and the reason Turkey is in NATO.
So, you're understanding is that Tsarist Russia removed itself from the war? And the Bolsheviks, not the people, merely wanted bread, not land and an end to the senseless slaughter of their sons for the geopolitical objectives of the ruling class? You don't have to read Trotsky. Even AJP Taylor would tell you that you are dead ass wrong.
But it is interesting how mightily your psuedo explanation of the fact that a social revolution ended Russia's participation in an Imperialist war abroad. Why would you tie your petty bourgeois self in knots trying to cover up an uncontroversial fact of world history?
An interesting analysis of how the US kind of "backed into" its central position where international debts are concerned. A rather less sympathetic narrative can be found in Michael Hudson's "Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire, Third Edition" (the first edition of which came out in 1972) or the early chapters of his "The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism" published in 2022.
To a casual observer it is strange to study the charts and observe the US economic surge in 1940, for that was a time of dire poverty in the US and that poverty lasted for at least another decade. In 1940 our family of four was twice homeless regardless of the fact that both parents were U. of Chicago PhDs. There are huge time lags. The same is true now. The great outpouring of federal funds at this time will not be felt for quite some time, so all assessments of its efficacy other than to procure votes will be sort of questionable.
PS ---- You need a good proofreader and I would be happy to do that for you gratis.
Vohl: vohl@aol.com
Thanks for this essential context for understanding MAGA. If McKinley is, in fact, a MAGA cornerstone, then the time period picks up Jim Crow and matriarcical voting in addition to isolationism, anti-tax, and pro-tariff beliefs. The oddity is how MAGA seems to dismiss objective evidence that turning our backs on McKinley's policies and other aspects of his era - has been wildly successful!
What do we do that other government's don't envy? Allow military weapons on our streets, don't pay for our pollution, and fuel a perpetual arms race with our massive peacetime defense budge . Not much else.
Also - why does MAGA enable scriptural literalists when almost no credible theologians, or even the Pope, do? How does MAGA read history to deny lfreedom of religion as the raisson d'etre of America? My only decent hunch is that Darwin-denial has dead ended with these archiea-evolved American's heads in the sand.
> The oddity is how MAGA seems to dismiss objective evidence that turning our backs on McKinley's policies and other aspects of his era - has been wildly successful!
Succesful in creating today's mess.
The US got a lot of money for a short historical period, favored by two things: European powers were exhausted after WWI and WWII, and the rest of the world was not in great shape (most of it european colonies, protectorates, and such, and easily controllable).
When this was challenged in the 70s, it managed to power through for another few decades through the killing of the Bretton Woods system and tying the world to the dollar.
This easy source of power made it complacent, fat (this literally), and careless. It moved tons of its production abroad for easy profit, it bloated with rules and regulations that thwarted actual innovation, it printed and handed out money through cheap loans to financial instritutions which ended up financing useless VC spending (the various "startup booms"), accumulated huge debt and bureucratic tiers, etc.
McKinley's policies successed the way an up and coming boxer whose opponents beat up each other up in a bar fight and got exhausted "won". The boxer then loaned them money, and had them by the balls, making him give him money for steroids. He got bigger, but also less healthy, and even forgot how to actually box. Now those old opponents that "owe" him are a bunch of increasingly irrelevant older losers that don't matter (and can't help him), and the rest of world is tired of his shit, him having bit the biggest bully all this time.
Future post on the sources of America’s vast accumulation of finances, manufacturing capacity and raw materials would be another great avenue to go down. The “domestic” story.
European wars gave rise to beginnings of U.S. hegemony. The U.S. did not create wars to become the world leader. Once created, we needed to maintain it in the face of rising enemies. It's really very sad
I think the main reason for the US entering WWI was the danger of Germany winning the war after the Russian Revolution started in February 2017. Not the sinking of the Lusitania, not the U-Boat campaign. Those were pretexts. If Germany won, Europe's resources and knowledge could be assembled, a strong Navy created and the US threatened with invasion eventually. This is also today the US goal in Europe: to prevent any European power of controlling the entire continent.
The essence of fascism is that the only thing that matters is force and violence. Fascist arguments are often deliberately illogical and self-contradictory, so as to assert that no rules bind them, they are unconstrained by a need for consistency or logic.
And of course the MAGA movement is deeply anti-intellectual, so seeing intellectuals express puzzlement at their illogic and inconsistencies is a source of amusement to them.
That's some fancy language you got there.
I disagree. Realism is the study of reality. Liberalism is belongs in the subset under idealism, great for art and stuff but not something you want to craft policy around.
Trump is an idiot grifter but it wasn't for him it'd be someone else, maybe someone more articulate. Force is really the only thing that decides what the order will be and the intelligence agencies and geopol think tanks know it well.
Oh, you're one of those, a "realist."
What if I am? Maybe I could point fingers at you and say you're a Francis Fukuyama advocate. That you really believe in the "The end of history". The guy is sniffing his own farts. Let's wait a few years and see where things settle, idealists live in their own bubbles.
I have to say "You're Francis Fukuyama" is the weirdest insult I've ever received. So... um... thanks?
I'm trying to have a discussion. You are trying to insult me and thus framing my replies as insults because you think this is the kind of discussion we're having. I'm steering away from that.
It's really juvenile how people in the idealist liberal camp frame everyone else as being emotion and illogical while they're exhibiting this kind of exact behavior.
Guess you missed the bullshit quotes? Here it is again: "realist".
Sorry, I don't know what to make of the rest of your comment, I get that it's intended to be insulting, but I'm probably just not smart enough to figure out how.