Strangelove In the Jungle

The prospect of Dr. Oz turning Medicare and Medicaid Services into his own private snake oil emporium seems almost beneficent compared  to the truly terrifying reality of Dr. Strangelove in the Jungle.

Biden is using his waning days in power to wreak all the global havoc at his disposal. This vicious, vacuous, vindictive old fool couldn't even travel all the way to the Amazon to announce deployment of American long-range missiles into Russia without shielding himself with a  cheap portable presidential podium. That, and his casual military style jacket and the sinister ubiquitous aviator shades made him a worthy successor indeed to General Jack D. Ripper in  Stanley Kubrick's satiric Cold War masterpiece. 

If Biden has ever seen this movie, he probably thought it was an instruction manual - the difference being that in the film, they started World War III by accident, and Joe Biden is doing it deliberately.

It's enough to make you count down the days until Trump's inauguration, not with trepidation, but with the faint hope that his regime will be somewhat an improvement over  the current disaster.

You have to hand it to Trump - unlike Biden, he knows how to use satire. His cabinet appointments are specifically designed to send the establishment into conniption fits. It doesn't matter if most of them will never survive confirmation in the Senate. It's the theater that counts. The liberal media-political complex is already overwhelmed as the targets of a massive trolling campaign. Unable to keep up the outrage,many elites have already given up even pretending. Witness MSNBC's Joe and Mika already traveling to Maga-Largo to make nice with theirmanufactured nemesis.

This not-too-painful readjustment the elite class to the reality of Trump is, of course, just the sort of enteraining intrigue to distract us from the prospect of total global war.

War is capitalism's fever dream. It's a hugely profitable enterprise for the select few, who insanely believe that retiring to a private island, a mega yacht or even to outer space will save them. Or perhaps they're like Joe Biden - so old that since they're bound to die sooner rather than later, they may as well take the rest of us with them.

Follow the money, even if it leads directly to a mass grave. War, as General Smedley Butler so correctly observed, is a racket. The organized crime cartel running the enterprise makes Tony Soprano look like a choirboy.

Take, for example, the Biden administration's decision to deploy landmines to Ukraine. As the New York Times so euphemistically explains, these "anti-personnel" explosive devices are banned in most advanced countries, tending as they do to blow off the limbs of innocent passersby, often decades after a war has officially ended.

Without a hint of irony or satire, the Times helps the racket justify the carnage by gruesomely insisting the devices are aimed solely at the Russian and North Korean "foot soldiers" who are currently infiltrating Ukraine territory. The landmines will blow those feet right off.

But since the United States is the good guy, the Paper of Record notes that these modern day landmines are "smart" landmines. They are apparently designed to simply self-destruct, all by themselves, if nobody steps on them during actual war-time.

This is a crock of crap right on its face, given that war profiteer Raytheon won the  contract for an anti-anti-personnel system that purports to detect and destroy unexploded landmines.

 So which is it? Landmines so smart that they blow up themselves, or landmines so stupid that they need outside help to do the trick?

To be fair, it is possible that not so long ago, the US planted landmines in places like Southeast Asia that were so stupid and inhumane that they continue to blow the feet off children to this very day. 

So that a merchant of death like weapons manufacturer Raytheon would now be rewarded for fixing the atrocities it has helped cause in the first place should not be deemed at all surprising. It's the neoliberal American way of disaster capitalism. It is the same mindset that decreed that the very bankers who caused the 2008 financial collapse would be tasked with "fixing" their own crimes by being given carte blanche to commit more crimes. In a smarter, more modern way, of course.

And that is why outgoing defense secretary Lloyd C. Austin III will no doubt be re-welcomed with open arms to his old corner office at Raytheon, if a competitor has not already snagged him.

It was Austin himself who announced the deployment of the landmines to Ukraine. His company stands to rake in even more protits if its smart detection devices if it is forced to manufacture even more of them.

The Raytheon system can also be used for detecting hidden tunnels in places like, say, Gaza. Did I mention thatL loyd Austin is a huge supporter of Israel's genocide in that locale? The hardware to find all those tunnels does not come cheap. 

So although on first glance, Joe Biden's war proclamations in the middle of the Amazon  might have seemed out of place, it was really quite appropriate. Thee platitudes and euphemisms of the military-media complex are them peeing on our heads from a rain forest canopy absolutely dripping with lies.

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To my readers: My annual fundraiser is off to a very slow start, for which I largely blame myself. I had meant to write extra "content" until a flu-like illness laid me low for the past week. So I will keep this appeal notice going for awhile longer. Even a $5 or $10 donation would be immensely helpful and much appreciated. Thank you in advance!