Colonel,

True.

Interesting that I’ve been around 75 years and I never heard of the Nika Riots before. No doubt, due to English language prejudice and a public education. History ended when Rome fell and began again with the Norman Conquest. Dana Milbank railed yesterday against the Trump Bibi Alliance, “America’s Jews are watching Israel in horror”. The 1980s are coming home to roost. Workers’ rights and environmental protections were tossed aside to import cheap goods from China. Donald Trump’s tariffs negates the basic premise of globalization. Today the money that supports the Atlantic Alliance credentialed class comes from oligarchs, financial scams and globalized trade, not manufacturing.

An Obama political DOD appointee commiserated with those who had to serve with
draftees. The Deplorables exist to be exploited. So what, if things cost more at Walmart. The divide and conquer of society into tribes works until it doesn’t. The tragedy is that Georgetown Prep and Yale alumni have no fear of lampposts or Hiroshima. Unless the elite work to get consent of the governed back again, the future will be one or the other.

VietnamVet

Robert Graves, ex-soldier and poet, writer of "I Claudius" and "The White Goddess," wrote the novel "Belisaurius" precisely about this period and a soldier's role within it.

i like Robert Graves a lot. But for whatever reason I cannot erase the trace of one of his comments on my mind. He offered an example concerning the German imprecise usage of prepositions. ... Made me laugh.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

My favorite poem.

Problem is, no matter who is "elected", our pointless wars continue, and the middle class continues to decline. Politics is broken. What is next?

The middle class is rising economically, not declining.

Another good graph. Growth is not going to the middle class.

https://upload.wikimedia.or...

Another instructive chart is the Total Credit Market Debt/GDP. The inflection point being the early 80s. The analysis my firm has done is that financialization of the economy from that period has gotten deeper and one of the consequences is income inequality as the bottom 90% have a very low percentage of total financial assets.

Once again, Trump was elected in 2016.

Trump was elected in 2016.

One of the consequences of the neoliberal and Keynesian policies that favored financial speculation & government enabled concentration of market dominance is the income inequality seen in your charts. Couple that with the arrogance of the political and media establishment and we see why Trump won the presidency defeating both the Bush and Clinton political dynasties despite an all out assault on Trump by the media and the political & governmental establishment. Note that 500 of the print media endorsed Hillary with only 20 endorsing Trump. That's how lopsided the election coverage was. Yet he wins!

Not to worry, the revolutionary progressives will fix this.

I remember that you were a volunteer but paid lawyer for the CPA in Baghdad. i have to question your judgement about the nature of societies. What role do you play in the occupation government>

And you thought that as a lawyer adviser in Baghdad you would see much of your son who was in a combat unit? Once again, I question your judgment.

He must have been in the 1st Cavalry Division. They could easily have been moved to some other part of the country. How do you know I was politically barred. Was it discussed in the CPA?

The neocons were adamant that i should not be let into what they were intent on doing in Iraq. In any event I would not have lasted long since I would have actively counseled against destroying the structures of the Iraqi state both civil and military. i would also have opposed the idea of putting the Shia in carge of the government, a move that ensured that the Sunni Arabs would never accept the occupation, however brief and that they would turn to groups like Daesh.

It would not have been possible to maintain Sunni control. The demography, the excavation of mass graves, and the freedom of the Shia clerics like Sistani to speak to an Iraqi mass audience made that impossible. It would have taken a level of oppression of the south and Baghdad that would have required 500,000 troops. In the end, Bremer gave power to the ex-Baathist Ayad Allawi not exactly a Shia theocrat.

The Occupation made many mistakes, but the Sunnis in Anbar, Nineveh, Salah ad Din etc passed up opportunities to cut a good deal and instead saw their cities destroyed three times over and their people killed 2004-2017
There were a lot of follies during "the Surge" where Sunni ex-insurgents were flipped temporarily, and were then killed or flipped back.
Maybe now the Sunnis are onboard after ISIS and the brutal war to retake Mosul back.
The Gulfies who were sending money should have paid a price.

I had some conversations with Iraqis both Sunni and Shia on the subject of who would rule. One young Sunni expressed disdain for the Shia cleaners who were all around the palace. He used the Saddam term "rabble."
A Shia told me "we are peaceful people, Sumerian farmers. They are Bedouin killers."

I remember the former CG of 1st Armored, the one with the Italian name, telling me after he rotated that all this business about communal strife in Iraq was wrong because the Iraqis always told him that all they wanted was to be Iraqis together. He was as gullible as you with the Sumerian goat herder crap. ME people know what you want to hear and they feed it to you perhaps even believing it at the moment. I guess you missed my lecture about emic and etic information. The Sunni side of Islam (90% of all Muslims) ruled what is now Iraq from the Battle of Qadisiyah until you and the CPA set out to install majority rule and destroy sunni hegemony. Ummayads, Abbasids, various Turkic rulers and sultans, the Ottomans, the Hashemites - all Sunnis. somehow they had always managed to rule Iraq, but you fixed that. Satisfied with the result? It is interesting to see that you are still propagating the various CPA/Israeli/neocon IO lines about Iraq.

You belonged in the CPA. All of that is self serving nonsense to justify what you and your pals did. this reminds me of a senior DoD official who told me that parts of the Iraqi army could not be stood back up because it no longer existed. Rubbish. you are a neocon.

You ARE a neocon. The army you people set up after killing the real one fled in terror from IS. The government you created still can't perform with any stability. you destroyed a country that had been in the making since since the Turkish tanzimaat and you still don't see it. the line about my "affection" is telling. The Israelis say things like that all the time. you are done here. you had a long run.

Far, far way, in a large country that has never tolerated factions (OK, twice, and they caused 500 miserable years), is focused on getting 100% of the population a home, a job, plenty of food, education, safe streets, health and old age care by July 1, 2021.

On that day there will be more homeless, poor, hungry and imprisoned people in America than in China and 450,000,000 urban Chinese will have more net worth and disposable income than the average American–who will defend political factions to the death.

O brave new world that hath such people in it.

Barack Obama, liberator of imprissoned black men. Okay, maybe not. I'm sure the new non-Mao is doing a great job in China and CNN is just reporting 'fake news":
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08...

Correctamento! As they did with Tibet and Iraq and Vietnam...

The 82nd Airborne v. Antifa ? Some would crawl over broken glass to be in that very short event, but I suggest it will never happen.

However, two Generals, and a Eunuch (plenty of candidates for that job) bearing gold v. The Resistance ? Will your own Theodora, or her step-daughter, call 'Stand To !' ?
The parallels are very interesting. Provided that the FBI can arrest a bunch of internal high level subversives and crooks (not hard to find..) as an initiating event, and a USSC member or two provides a legal opinion as a basis for action, and the Constitution is followed, and the affair ends with a Presidential and Congressional election to reset the board, it could turn out very well.

Timing ? I think Trump will win in 2020, whether he makes it to 2024, who knows ? One thing I'm confident of is that the POTUS after Trump will need to heed the people who elected Trump if their issues are still unresolved - and if not then hold on for the ride.

"which were in turn backed by the aristocratic families of the city" I wonder who is backing antifa, though they are perhaps only the most visible?

Nice turn.

The asymmetry between military and antifa may be matched by the asymmetry in various areas between cities and all other locales--given in terms of cultural value, expertise, innovation, and wealth creation.

If the military industrial complex chose sides could the deplorables afford to seriously degrade cosmopolitan, blue, striving classes?

Would such a civil war set urban son against urban father?

In the aftermath, what is to be done about the future demographic challenge?

In the aftermath, if the individualist, 'personal responsibility,' trickle-down, anti-collectivist, evangelical, ideology--having earned the favor of the military--is to dominate forevermore, how is compliance to be enforced going forward?

New constitution? Empty out the cities? Set birth rates?

It would be a question of the loyalties of THE MILITARY, not Lockheed-Martin or the like. Have you ever been in the military?

No. Point taken. Thank you.

Nevertheless, is there an interesting question about the security of the supply chain of arms and materials--should the military start fighting a war in American cities against the 'blue' revolutionaries and other armed 'tribes?'

The reality of life in the US is that the Blues are largely unarmed schemers who are afraid of guns. the guns are in the hands of civilian deplorables as well as the police and military who are also deplorables.

Hmmm, I wonder what are the actual details because it seems there would be a lot of non-deplorables in the military and police, since both are obviously (and thankfully,) open to minorities. How do these various minorities tend to vote?

(By the way, that most deplorables are garden-variety Republicans seems clear enough, albeit, there has arisen a kind of mythic narrative about the genesis of their angry vote against elites and the status quo in 2016.)

"The "actual" details. you are done here.

".... what is to be done about the future demographic challenge?"
Stop unrestricted immigration and race based discrimination that disfavors the majority population solely because of thier race. Return to a "mythos" of an American race rather than dividing the country into competing ethnic groups the like the left has been doing for generations.

Donald Trump could "end" Soros in a tweet .......... if he WANTED TO.
So why doesn't he?.... Soros is Rothschild's property and Trump is too ....
Did George Soros disclose his Nazi collaboration on his USA immigration papers? https://www.youtube.com/wat...
I guarantee he did NOT, because he would not have been admitted to America.
Therefore he LIED on his immigration forms and his "admittance" to America is NULL & VOID.
Item No. 56 on the form I-485 to adjust immigrant status to that of permanent resident which must be signed and sworn to under oath before a U.S. immigration officer.: During the period from March 23, 1933 to May 8, 1945, did you ever order, incite, assist, or otherwise participate in the persecution of any person because of race, religion, national origin, or political opinion, in association with either the Nazi government of Germany or any organization or government associated or allied with the Nazi government of Germany? Yes______ No______
Deport Soros & his SPAWN to their native Hungary (which has an arrest warrant for WWII out on him).
ALL the Soros Family money should be forfeit it was founded on money stolen from Jewish victims of the Holocaust and should ALL be handed over as reparations - Or was there NO holocaust?! -- if there had been Israel & Jews everywhere would be DEMANDING George Soros be HANGED. Soros' multi $BILLION fortune was started on stolen Jewish property, and yet NOT A PEEP out of Israel?! Why are janitors and clerks persecuted but Soros walks free and BRAGS about it!? FUNNY there are no Israeli demands Soros' money be turned over to holocaust survivors?!

Soros will cease to be a billionaire if Trump tweets mean words about the old man's past? That's a good one. Perhaps you should speak to zaphod beeblebrox's other head to get a new idea.

illiterate ..... SAD

I do believe Soros' coup de grace, in his mind, is leaving this earth having done the impossible, that being the taking down of the largest game the world has ever seen, the USD.

Fred may be wrong:
If my memory serves me right there was some reference that member of Antifa were sponsored [paid for attending] by Soros after one of the major riot between legally permitted conservative marchers and not permitted antifa marchers a.k.a attackers

Which city and which party controls the city government? I think I don't even need to ask the latter part of that question.

Just to cheer people up the Eastern Roman Empire and Constantinople did survive for almost another thousand years before finally collapsing.

Who needs soccer hooliganism when Liverpool Football Club plays revolutionary attacking football, is coached by a wonderfully humane German protestant, led on the field by a open-hearted Muslim and an old-fashioned incredibly hard-working Englishman, and whose fans spend as much time relieving poverty in their own communities as cheering on in the stands. (And LFC has the greatest roar in the world).

Its high time Liverpool became the capital of England over London. It is filled with human beings (largely Catholic) rather than androids.

The Eastern empire survived for so long because people like Belisarius and Theodora existed.

With respect can I say that I would have thought a more accurate historical parallel would have been the late Roman Republic where the Populares (deplorables) were in conflict with the Optimates (progressives). The latter used every measure they could devise, including assassination, to prevent their opponents passing legislation that might improve the lot of the people. This of course was simply capping the Volcano and when it eventually erupted it destroyed them all and Imperial Rome arose out of the ashes. So it will be here. Democracy in the United States is perishing in the internecine warfare of Washington DC. Eventually Caesar will arise and put an end to the Republic.

Does the Trump EO 12473 of this March on military trials have any impact on this? Or was it just targetted at pedos?

A friend of mine was deployed to Detroit in 1967 as a member of the 82nd Airborne Division in order to put down one of the worst urban uprisings of the period. As I recall, other American cities had very severe riots, New York, Newark, LA, during which I believe National Guard units were used to bring them to an end, but I don't remember regular Army units being engaged although I could be mistaken about that.
I do know that the FBI was very active in efforts made to investigate these groups that advocated and promoted domestic violence for purportedly political purposes. There were programs designed to infiltrate them with informants and undercover Agents and disrupt them either with prosecutions, or otherwise. It was the otherwise that led to some decided unpleasantness for the FBI in the post Watergate meltdown/reckoning, some of it justified, much of it political posturing by the uninvolved and the unexposed in the wake of a deposed President. Whatever. It resulted in the rules of the road when it comes engaging Domestic terror groups being significantly changed; and, no doubt, they have been tightened further.
Nevertheless, it certainly appears that today's FBI has been entirely MIA when it comes to the ANTIFA style guerilla groups and other paid disruptors that have outside organizations engaging them to disrupt political rallies, occupy government buildings, and even bring chaos to Congressional proceedings.
All in all, unless I've been missing something, Federal Law Enforcement either totally is lacking in imagination or else has been sitting on its hands for some other reason.
As far as I am aware, there have been zero cases. Not a good job.

Sir

In your opinion how should one compare our current political and social environment vs the 60s?

The National Guard was used then to quell unrest including the Kent State shootings.