Persiflage & Paroxysm

I hate it when my people support America as the Gold standard of democracy. They seem to forget that America was never a true democracy, it was only ever a democracy for the wealthy and it was and remains a highly structured, ideologically rigid absolutist regime for the poor and for those who are ethnically and religiously different, i.e. not white Anglo Saxon protestants. The political system in the US is not easily accessible by the poor, running for election is not something an ordinary salaried person can contemplate without support from a wealthy patron. The concentration of wealth at the very top of society is increasing poverty across the board in the US. The US educational system and its justice system, which uses the law to send the poor to jail, keeps the working people beaten down and docile.  US democracy is increasing disaffection among the masses in the US and is actually a threat to global economic stability should a revolution break out in the US! And yet so man

No one wants war, only victory and domination over the vanquished, this is the human/mammalian condition, a species driven by the promise and allure of conquest. A war is won or lost in the mind first. The effective use of psychological tools to intimidate an opponent or potential opponent is a key component in the game of carrot-n-stick diplomacy that the West has mastered over the decades since Western Allied victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. The tactic has served the West well, requiring only occasional, small-scale and/or limited military intervention to back up the threat of violence. However, the world has changed and the old victors over Nazi Germany have spent their last round of moral ammunition in, first, the fight against global communism, and second, in their fight against global terrorism, now they seriously intend to challenge the Russians! Today, the world is more alert to the moral ambiguities of Western foreign policy than ever before, especially as it pertains to U