Vlad's Oscar

Column by Jim Davies.

Exclusive to STR

Everything they say, these Pols, is scripted and rehearsed. I find it really, really difficult to tell whether their endless stream of dicta is serious, or just theater. It's always theater, of course, but sometimes it's also truly meant, and that usually means big trouble, but how does one know when they're kidding and when, not?

Clearly, the gabble that led up to the two wars this century, mouthed by Bush-II, was serious. When he promised endless war back in 2001, he meant it. Even in that case, though, how was one to be sure of it at the time?

It's a fine judgment, and opinions will differ and must be respected until much later, when alone one can be sure. Last Fall, for example, I think (but you may disagree) that Kerrybama did mean it, when they threatened to make war on Syria. Having lost two mid-East wars, I think they seriously intended to have a third, in hopes of getting lucky, and of positioning US forces next to Iran, their current pet-hate. What a deft piece of statesmanship, when Assad's friend Putin of Russia (or his helper Lavrov) caught hold of an off-the-cuff remark by Loose-Cannon Kerry and arranged that yes, Assad would surrender his chemical WMDs. That's what years of experience in the KGB, with competitive chess playing, can do for you.

Thus outsmarted on the world stage, Kerry seethed and set in motion a plan (A real, serious plan? Or just a pretend plan? Who can tell?) to thrust US influence deep under Russia's Southern belly, in revenge for the humiliation. He and his boss noticed stirrings in Kiev to get rid of Putin's puppet Yanukovich, and so sent Victoria “FEU” Nuland to hand out cookies in Independence Square.

In February, that worked, to the great pleasure of the courageous demonstrators there; and for a whole weekend there was peace in Kiev without sign of any government. Alas, that didn't last; it turned out to be yet another “revolution” by which one government replaced another. Since Kerrybama could take some credit (they had, after all, stolen the money that bought the cookies), the score now was even between Obama and Putin; 15-all, as they say in tennis.

Then came Vladimir Putin, through massive golden doors built in Tsarist times, to announce that in response to overwhelming (96%) popular demand, Crimea had been added to the Russian Federation. Kaboom; an ace serve. Score, 30 - 15.

Thus Ukraine has been divided; its Crimean peninsula, granted to it after a drunken orgy in 1954 by Nikita Kruschev, has been severed. Kerrybama may have gained a friend (an indigent one, it seems) in the rest of the country, but its naval base has returned to Mother Russia. And so he gets the Oscar, does Vlad Putin. His acting was way above Kerry's class.

The posturing has so far served its purpose; Putin has delighted Russian patriots, while Kerrybama have excited all Americans who can see “American interests” in terms of success by a world bully; from El Rushbaugh Leftwards. Happily, that subset of boobus Americanus is shrinking. The Libertarian view that the FedGov has no valid function as World Cop has been gaining serious ground recently.

Update: as I write this, a headline appeared: “Russian troops may be massing to invade Ukraine” says The Guardian. Well, of course they may; they may be massing to invade Poland. Or are they just marching up and down along the border, singing that priceless ditty from another Crimean War? Who's to know? But if they do actually invade non-Crimean parts of Ukraine, I'd say Putin will have seriously over-acted, and the score will change, we may be in deep water. But if you can read this and are still not vaporized, all may yet be well.

That, then, is the trouble: We cannot tell when they're kidding. Spinning and acting are all very well, they may provide entertainment for a dull weekend, but sooner or later, these psychopathic actors do actually begin a killing war. Their dangerous posturing underscores yet again the lethal nature of government and hence the urgent need to be rid of the lot of it before we are all destroyed.

That task is vital just from a consideration of self-defense, as I reasoned a while back in The Duty to End the State. The rational ethic of the anarchist is to preserve and enhance the self; most obviously, therefore, the true anarchist has an ethical obligation to terminate the outfit that threatens to destroy him.

That task is obvious: to remove them altogether from human society. I've no patience at all with the utterly crass idiots, some of whom can be found even on STR, who imagine it's sufficient to live under government radar (by itself, a fine objective) but to take no deliberate, rational action to end its lethal existence.
 

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Jim Davies's picture
Columns on STR: 243

Jim Davies is a retired businessman in New Hampshire who led the development of an on-line school of liberty in 2006, and who wrote A Vision of Liberty" , "Transition to Liberty" and, in 2010, "Denial of Liberty" and "To FREEDOM from Fascism, America!" He started The Zero Government Blog in the same year.
In 2012 Jim launched http://TinyURL.com/QuitGov , to help lead government workers to an honest life.
In 2013 he wrote his fifth book, a concise and rational introduction to the Christian religion called "Which Church (if any)?" and in 2016, an unraveling of the great paradox of "income tax law" with "How Government Silenced Irwin Schiff."

Comments

Log from Blammo's picture

I suspect that Chinese politicians are watching carefully, working frantically to engineer a remotely plausible mechanism to achieve a 96% positive secession and annexation referendum on an unpopulated group of islands in the South China Sea.

The state is always pondering what you may have that can be taken from you profitably. The health of the state rests upon what it can take by force. Putin can take an entire peninsula on the Black Sea, even with the supposed "protection" of another government. As long as states hold incredibly powerful reservoirs of violence, no one can be secure in their own property. And as violence is required for the state to exist, they will always hold them.

As long as states exist, you can only keep what freedom and property you have because no one backed by the power of the state has yet decided to take it from you. The one and only thing that creates restraint in such a person is the willingness for people to resist.

Thunderbolt's picture

You are correct, Jim. The really scary thing is that all the bluster may lead to the death of the planet. No longer is hubris and posturing just entertainment. There are enough nukes to make these psychopaths extremely dangerous to everyone, including their own families. McCain wants war with Russia. Israel wants war with Syria and Iran. Obama is probably content to murder a few wedding parties, but he is being pushed to think big. Perhaps those photographs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima should be included in every government communication.