> [wrt Iraq and Afghanistan]
> The U.S. is _acting_ like a World Cop, and other capitalist nations
> (core and would-be core) are (and have been) going along.
Going along, sure, no disagreement there. But with what degree of enthusiasm? I don't pretend to know. It's not hard to imagine, though, that Bearzilla's masters may be enjoying some Schadenfreude at seeing the US caught in the same trap that the US inveigled the Sovs into back in the Sunday school class of Jimmy Carter.
The picture that's slowly coming into focus in my head is of a heterogeneous international elite class. Its various components have different interests and sometimes have to depend on different state structures -- one could think of these dependencies as illiquid investments, perhaps.
But of course they also have a great deal in common. For example, they all live by exploiting the rest of us in one way or another.
The net is that they don't behave as if they had some rational farsighted oversoul or general will. They're more like one of those multicellular organisms without a central nervous system -- a Portuguese man-o-war, perhaps. Quite a successful organism, you know -- they've been around for a while.
The various tentacles drift with the current. When one of the nematocytes touches something, it stings it. The jellyfish doesn't plan or strategize or set a course. It has a sail, but it doesn't tack or gybe. It doesn't resent insults or *decide* to sting you when you brush against it. But you get stung all the same.
All this is quite unintelligent but works pretty well for the jellyfish.
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Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org