In June 2001, George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin ended their first face-to-face meeting with an outdoor news conference beneath a craggy mountaintop in Slovenia. "Is this a man that Americans can trust?" Bush was asked, as Putin glared at the reporter.
"Yes," Bush replied<http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/europe/06/18/bush.putin.transcript/>, before allowing Putin to answer a separate question. A few minutes later, the American president elaborated: "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country," Bush said, adding a few sentence later, "I wouldn't have invited him to my ranch if I didn't trust him." Putin hadn't the experience then that he has now and by that I don't mean he hadn't enough gravitas. Any leader of the largest country on earth has automatic gravitas and Russia's got the Real Estate. Power comes and goes but Acreage is permanent. No, I mean Putin hadn't had yet the experience of seeing America's reactions and actions in this post-war age. To the extent the US "won" the cold war, a certain power was given to wield her powerful economic system toward a better world of open democratic freedom. I'm sure the world was watching to see if, in fact, the nation could live up to it's purported ideals. But if the US could ask for a less-likely representative of our collective love of freedom, than George (W) Bush, It would have been somebody else from Texas. Texas as a regional power of North America flies a unique flag. Unlike all the other states, except California, Texas was first it's own Republic. A republic that had had more fighting and fiercer Indians and a constant enemy just over the border and cut-throat capitalism to outsiders and a fierce loyalty to friends. The cold war was ended by a Californian - but the opportunities gained, for a world worth living in, were all lost by his vice president's scion - that Texas Jungle Capitalism combined with Yankee ingenuity. I was especially sensitive when all this happened because as a Californian, I'd felt the harsh end of the stick with Texas on the other end beating us like a gong. The California electricity crisis, a situation in which the United States state of California had a shortage of electricity supply caused by market manipulations, illegal shutdowns of pipelines by the Texas energy consortium Enron, and capped retail electricity prices. We in California couldn't do a FERCing thing about it since W he won the election and the regulatory board of the Federal Energy Regulation Committee all understood - there's a new sheriff in town. Nobody remembers much about 2001 except 9-11, but that attack showed up the shenanigans of companies like Enron and then the corruption of companies like Halliburton. Not that it did any permanent harm to Halliburton. They did pretty well off the wars, I'd say. and that process you've heard about? Fracking? That's a Halliburton invention. Such openly naked grabs for power are obvious to anybody who has not been brain-washed by the corporate media conglomerates and Putin isn't stupid. The thing called "moral license" is given by example. "Do as I say, not as I do" does not happen in the real world. Russians always love a strong leader and the more Putin gets in the face of Americans the more they love him for expressing their disappointment in America's politics and self-serving foreign policies. Or I should say, coporate -interest- serving. And since America does enjoy an enviable material comfort - which all people desire, she inspires emulation of her worst traits and little understanding the true underpinnings of freedom and democracy. To a thinking man, able to read the signs, America has suffered a huge moral failure and I mean that in the MoQ meaning of the word. People who worship social celebrity and denigrate intellectual pursuits, like philosophy, are actually following a philosophy. A social-oriented philosophy, altho they don't know it. At the root of this Socially -oriented philosophy lies (!) A Subject/Object Metaphysics which helps guide a world filled with subjects to authority who spend their mental energy competing for objects. In this world, all intellectual pursuit is pragmatic - aimed at social goals. Such naked self-interest is catching. When you show self-interest to be your guiding motive, you inspire others to do the same - and quickly you have destructive conflicts between competing states and that is in nobody's interest. America has become an ineffectual giant. Sure, she can roar and swat at terrorist flies, but she can't do anything effective to help bring a better world. Her words are empty and her emotions, shallow. I fear a reaction. I fear Obama was all along, a mere scapegoat and next election it's going to be another Texan and this time its going to be a complete disaster - like when LBJ told the boys going to Vietnam, in effect, "you good ole boys come back and we'll nail them coon's skin up on the wall" Putin learned the lesson of the Texan power policies. He owns the NatGas supply that runs throughout Europe and with his hand on the shut-off valve, he gets his way - especially within the formerly Soviet States. He's operating by new rules. If the normal rules of war are no longer expedient, throw them out. the important thing is results and whatever it takes to get me and my people in power, is good. Once Ukraine is back in the fold, Belarus would be next. Belarus would love to rejoin Russia and trade "Belarusian kisses for Russian Oil" and from then on, all it would need is some sort of popular uprising, soon to be supported by Russian tanks and state by state and empire would be rebuilt. Nobody would care. Or if they cared, it would pass quickly. Once the gruesome videos are switched to another showing, people forget the past. Once upon a time, this country broke up the monopoly of the railroad. 1988, Texas bought SP and controlled the rails. In 1982, the country broke up the monopoly of ATT over then nation's phone system and slowly Southen Bell bought up the baby bells one by one and then finally the old parent company - ATT. A monopoly reborn. But now in the hand of Texas. I'm just glad Texas doesn't own many tanks and it's pretty easy to quickly block the few passes over the Sierras. We're safe for now, but I don't hold out much hope for Ukraine. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
