After the American Empire

I've been seeing pieces that say, more or less, that if you don't hate Putin you're a traitor. Funny how the folks that were dancing toe-to-toe with Soviet Commies back in the day and saying that anyone that objected was a McCarthyite are now playing the Traitor Card.

Well, all I can say is, call me a traitor.

I think it is high time the US stopped trying to run the world and start to mind its own fences.

I'm sure that Vladimir Putin is a megalomanic. I suspect that Ukraine has become a puppet. Of someone. Because if Hunter Biden was trolling for million dollar bills in Ukraine with 50 percent for the "big guy" then I don't think we are talking about a sweet innocent virgin any more.

Look, it's only natural for a newcomer on the world scene to start throwing its weight around. As the US did in the Spanish American War in 1898. But, if you ask me it was pure imperialism.

But I fail to see the point of getting into World War I, President Wilson. Except that all the cool kids were dukin' it out in Europe. So, as any college president would do, the former president of Princeton decided he had to get in on the action. College presidents are so into cultural fashion, as we have seen in the last decade.

Then President Wilson decided that we needed a Carthaginian peace to teach Germany a lesson with the Versailles treaty that made the Germans into second-class citizens and set the stage for Literally Hitler. Thanks President Wilson. Only a college president could set up such a disaster.

So let's suppose we had to get into World War II. So that Hitler didn't conquer the world. Because we had screwed up in 1919. But would he have done so? What would have happened in his Russia campaign if the US hadn't been sending Russia lots of Dodge trucks for Solzhenitsyn to drive around in?

Anyway, after World War II we decided it was time to really teach the Germans a lesson so that they would never descend to aggressive nationalism again. Except that the occupying forces in Germany didn't have a clue how to run the place top-down, as Edward N. Peterson related in The American Occupation of Germany: Retreat to Victory. So by 1948 the occupiers just let the Germans take over their own country and ignite a Wirtschaftwunder. Anyway, we needed the Germans to help fight a Cold War against Stalin's Russia.

Anyway, no doubt we had to hold back Soviet Russia in the Cold War. I suppose, what with Europe absolutely devastated and all.

But I think, looking over the current Putin thing, that the Euros can handle this one on their own. I think the current situation is a great opportunity to say: hey, you guys are great, and you are closest to the action, so we'll trust you to do it right.

And then bug out of Europe and bring all the US troops home, and go to work on America. Of course, it will reduce the career opportunities for well-born young men to have careers in the foreign service. That might end up demoralizing the entire educated class.

Notice how nothing has changed. Today we have a new generation of the ruling class, and guess what: they have a top-down plan to rule America and Build Back Better towards a renewable future. Just like the ruling class had a top-down plan to run Germany in 1945.

Hey kids: Remember the Rules?

• Rule One: Don't invade Russia
• Rule Two: Don't invade China
• Rule Three: Don't do top-down

Oh yeah. Remember socialism? Top-down economic management by the experts? Treating people like Newtonian machines? And the New Deal? Top-down economic response to depression? And COVID? Top-down response to an infectious disease?

You know, you educated people, I am sure that you have read all the books and know that the current thing, the fashionable thing, is that mechanics and hierarchy and top-down management are so yesterday, darling. 

Today all the smart people know that the world works by "creative emergence." Something changes, maybe a butterfly in South America, and the whole world changes and we humans deal with it by adaption. Because the one thing we know that cannot work is a top-down program designed and managed by credentialed experts.

That's what I want for the next America. Creative Emergence. Adaption. Ordinary people running their ordinary lives, and credentialed experts keeping the heck out of the way.