The war being waged now is part of the process of the last 400 years. It has taken me all my life to put this together. Connecting the dots has been a process. I will share this with you. A life time of experience that you are free to read or flame.
At sixteen I began collecting antiques because I loved them. Doing that meant learning history. History was my favorite subject. There is only about 400 years of process of furniture which in the grand scheme of things is not much and if you are willing to read maybe five books--you can know it all. It still amazes me how many people even in the business do not know this and can't be bothered to do it. As a result, eventually I made a small fortune, in my eyes, which I lost essentially beginning 30 days after 911.
My putting my life back together parallels the destruction and task of putting the country back together. I could start again if the country was not decimated by operating by fraud. I am too old now to succeed by myself; I like most of dailykos will succeed only as part of group process. I look at all of this as karma.
I have no idea how long it will take to get the overview of four hundred years of war. Right now we all function under the paradigm that war is inevitable and part of the human condition. So we began and so we will end.
Can we change that paradigm?
This is a broad brush presentation with some over simplification to paint a big picture. Doubters can post their own takes and those who want specifics will have to google.
England came to the enrichment by colony too late. Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands were way a head. England spent two hundred years in perpetual war over uniting the British Isles, never extremely successful, with huge remnants of hostility remaining today. Then she was entangled in wanting to rule France or be ruled by France thru much of that time also. So by the 1600s when she was trying to colonize she was left with lands of resources ie: New England but no quick and easy money like Portugal and Spain.
This was a blessing in disguise because the English had to make money the hard way by trade and actually producing something. Thus, they lead the trade and industrial revolution. While Portugal and Spain pissed their advantages away believing the money can last forever and kicking out the highly educated and highly productive of their populations would work out well. The Inquisition which began in Portugal not only destroyed their countries but their colonies as well. From this they have never recovered.
Karma painted powerfully and passionately, if you are well read historically.
In 1755, the largest recorded earthquake and tsunami hit Lisbon on All Soul's Day or Halloween. Lisbon at that time was the world most luxurious and profitable port city of the world. It was also highly regulated. The country was completely and totally dominated by the enhanced and entwined bureaucracy of state and the catholic church. All the catholic churches and their support structures were taken down to their foundations. It was 9AM in the morning at high mass. Huge amounts of people were instantly killed. The earth quake began fires. Those people who survived the earthquakes and the fires ran to the port and the sea to escape. A huge tsunami of 100 feet rose and slammed into the coast of Portugal essentially devastating every port city. The great library of Lisbon burned to the ground and was swept away; taking the most detailed maps of the world with it. The tsunami went around the world 64 times; a huge significance to Buddhists and Hindus.
This was a major world event almost never talked about now. The Dutch simply walked in and took all of Portugal's colonies. Spain had already spent most of their money with almost nothing to show for it. England had no problem making piracy a glamorous national past time. They used it to get national treasury and men to run the slave labor of their ships.
Thus, the English depended on their ships for everything. So they developed navy schools and maritime laws that succeeded so well they set the international standard. The industrial revolution began with focus on making better, faster, ships with standards of ship logging, cargo control, and crew maintenance.
The 1755 event was a focus of international government discussion for years. People still really believed in the Mission of Conquering the World to Save the Heathens. Did God deliver a message in Lisbon? Portugal was known for their brutal treatment of the brown people under their control and their using the Inquisition in Goa to maim and dismember about 30,000 people and starving masses of the poor at the same time. Portugal ripped down every temple they came across in India and Oceania; when the Dutch took over they scrupulously left the remaining temples alone.
So England used the Americas to get rid of all their unwanted and almost essentially do away with their prison system. The answer to debtors was sell them to indentured servitude to the colonies and then tax their production. The problem was this was not fast enough for the English aristocracy to compete with the courts of Europe and the Hapsburg. Their greed for money, as well as, resources from the colonies set them up for the Revolution which they had to fight by mercenaries. This was not that effective or efficient and by the end of the Colonial War they were almost bankrupt.
Meanwhile with their bigger and badder ships, they had gone about blowing the heck out of port cities on the coasts of India and Oceania. Since these cities were almost defenseless against these huge cannons of massive destruction capitulation ensued. The city inhabitants had too much at stake to abandon their cities so deals were made with the aristocracy. It took England a century to occupy significant interior land in India.
The American Revolution was clear to most of the aristocracy of England. The American Colonies were not nearly as profitable as their East India and Oceania holdings. They could hold one or the other but not both. American Indians were destroyed because their commitment to their land and to their personal freedom did not allow them to be entangled in British culture. They would die to be true to their own culture and values. And the Americans were for the most part British descendants that could eventually be brought to heel.
Fast forward one hundred years, Britain now has most of Portugal's and the Netherlands colonies as well as substantial parts of Afica and China. It is 1857, and the British know that the Civil War is brewing and they will be faced with the same equation. They can have one of the other but not both. Is it possible to have both?
They have spent a 100 years developing, disciplining, and growing a massive "sepa" army in India. China has not cooperated in the usual way. China wants nothing from the British who want their tea, their silks, and their porcelains just for starters. China will only trade for British silver. While the British have forced the opium trade on China and been made more wealth making India produce the opium for trade, they have not been able to get a real foot hold in the interior and they are ready to go to war. The big question is can they now get their Indian army to fight the Chinese for them? Long story short the answer is no. The Indian Revolt of 1857 takes place and Britain has to occupy and kill maybe a million more Indians to put that one down. They cannot join the South to take down the Union.
----Personal Aside which can be skipped---
I have been writing a novel about Ceylon/Sir Lanka for two years. I learned much of all this by going from link to link on the internet. Ceylon was conquered by the Portuguese in 1502, taken by the Dutch a hundred and fifty years later and then by the British a hundred years after that. There still remains on Sri Lanka descendant colonies of these three colonial powers. In almost 500 years of colonial rule way passed any kind of personal human memory, these people have tried to maintain their culture and wanted their freedom. Sir Lanka got its independence in 1972. This is the essence of people that the aristocracy infested with the Anglican Disease of Imperialism fails to recognize still. It is the basis of my hope that the American people like me will beat back the ideological descendants of this disease.
When Ceylon was discovered it was said you could smell the island 8 leagues out to sea. The Portuguese tried to keep the nature and where abouts of the Island a secret for almost a century. Originally, it was the only place in the world where cinnamon and nutmeg were found. They had also developed plantation farming for tea in 900AD. If you think about it Europe had neither the land or climate for plantation farming. This kind of horticulture was learned from the Indian people who were essentially well fed and reasonably prosperous prior to the European conquests. They also planted and harvested based on a lunar calendar and they slept in the heat of the day and did a lot of planting and harvesting at night. The Portuguese tried to make them work 24/7 in the fields.
The British successfully transplanted these trees to other islands but when they wanted to destroy a people they not only drove the people into the sea but tore up every single tree on these small islands.
---end of aside---
Those who have seen Glory with Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman know that at the end as they pan over the total destruction of an entire regiment, you are pulled back to observe the fort on a hill on the coast and told it never was taken nor was it of any military strategic advantage or significance and that the sole purpose to this fight was to prove that a black man was a man with the same sense of honor and glory as a white man.
In 1965, I toke the history of military strategy at Texas A & M one of the first thirteen women to be admitted. It was taught by a retired general who was the great grandson of a major confederate general. I assure you I never opened my mouth in that class. This was ten years before women were admitted to the academies. I think I did my part by keeping silent, but I never thought they would allow women in or be in combat positions. Because my epiphany in that class was that because women bear children and all the labor in raising them they value life in a way men never will. I learned a lot of battles were fought for a lot of really stupid reasons that had nothing to do with winning a war. On the big sand tables of military reconstruction and moving lead men in positions, I saw gross stupidity that I would never and could never imagine a woman buying into.
On July 3, 1863, General George E. Pickett, a handsome arrogant man leading a regiment nicknamed the Gamecocks, took the orders from General Lee to lead the charge across one mile of open field to the foxholed union army ensconced in the high ground of Cemetery Ridge at Gettysburg. In one hour, over 5,000 confederate soldiers were killed or wounded. They had marched one mile wide so close together that one cannon shot killed ten men or more at a time. Now all the common soldiers thought this was a crazy no common sense idea. But they all marched down to "Death before Dishonor."
Both Lee and Pickett were West Pointers so it can be assumed they reflected what they were taught besides their personal beliefs. Pickett loathed slavery and was stationed in Oregon when the war began but resigned his commission like Lee to serve his state of Virginia. They both had instilled and instilled in their men l. a sense of duty, 2. love of country/state, and 3. love of men in arms.
This charge became a legend not for its absolute stupidity or futility but as an example of the finest heroism. We almost did it. And we did it nobly--a glorious loss. This remains the mind set of the confederacy of America. A state of mind that still drives the ideals of too many of us.
That the lives of others for even a failed idea means nothing to you unless it is you who bleeds and dies. The South lost and suffered terribly for the nonsense of slavery that most never participated in nor believed in. They fought side by side as man of arms for the idea that other man could be bred and sold and enslaved because their skin was black. And if it wasn't racism then it was property rights. One person could belong to another because that is the breaks of the sperm lottery.
The sperm lottery is the war that we are fighting now. The belief of the aristocracy that there is such a thing as divine rights granted from birth. That they are entitled to pass this down to their children while maintaining the right to enslave yours.
When I returned to Texas in 1990 and met with my neighbors who were the elite of Hagee's church, I found out they were all for slavery again which is biblical. The Bible does not condemn it. They acknowledge their big mistake was making it black instead just all stupid and poor. The first step has been prison privatization. But they built the fema camps for a reason and they build them all during the Bush administration for a reason. Many of these neighbors had their homes listed as assets of living trusts that were the HQ of prison ministries--thus, they paid no property taxes on them. I saw no evidence of these people ministering to any one. A couple used to sort of giggle to me about it; they thought it so clever. And these were expensive houses.
We had a brief historical moment of meritocracy in this country to which I got to participate up close and personal. Achievement, talent, and out of the box creative thinking was encouraged and welcomed because our elite was not sure how much their elite had from the technology of war that Hitler had developed.
I spent years at Stanford interacting with the historical community led by Gordon Wright and personally living with Fullbright scholar recently back from Cambridge. 80% of my peers were the children of the aristocracy. Those of us not born to this position were fascinated to some extent by them. Some of us fawned over them and some of us enjoyed jousting intellectually with them. Those that fawned made life time friends that became social assets of profitability. These people are represented by the Phil Gramms, Condi Rice, the Clintons, and Gingrich. Those that liked to see how far they could hold their own with respect due to equal education by merit are represented by people like Bill Moyers, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, ...
The Kennedys and Soros of the world are not threatened by either side and like watching the interaction. Gingrichs of the world are mean and nasty because they know they are a mile wide and inch deep. They feel the only way they can have more is to make someone else have less. They tell the rich what they want to hear not what they need to hear. They mirror one another. The young rich I met then still wanted it all without doing much about it. They were at Stanford just being there meant they deserved an A. Thus, the standard A minus. They make fun of other people's speech, dress, and accents and/or place of education. You came from Texas.....of course you couldn't possibly know anything worth knowing etc. But if you talk to these people specifically about what they know, you find out that know nothing but how to parrot.
Even in the 70s, they were clear they did not want to pay taxes, supporting the poor only made more of them. They cheated in many ways because they "deserved something, they weren't getting." ie: many declared themselves emancipated so they could get money, grants, scholarships that they did not qualify for economically as their "clawbacks." They also got subsidized housing by lying about their status. This was just all good bull. Had I stated this even a few years ago, I would not be believed but now we see people like Palin and Miller who have done this all their life for the same reasons.
If Social Security survives, they will have to pay for it because they used the money to fight these wars and simply give money away whether in bales in Iraq or non competitive bid contracts, or government consult fees and jobs that they have no qualifications for other than knowing somebody.
They know what they have done and they fear too many will also know it. They are moving as fast as they can to get it all now before the next looming crisis. When things move this fast, and ever faster, it is the time to realize you are under attack. They are going for psychic suicide. They are going to lie to your face. "I trust Boehner to keep his word."
No one is coming. They want you to quit, turn away, die...anything but continue to work to hold them accountable. It is a joyless task. All war is. The reality is that the longer you fight the longer you live. Die with a purpose if you must from stress. But we have to take these bastards down. Once and for all. No glorious, heroic defeat. Common sense day by daylight by truth. Nothing these people believe works. They only make money on your work. They make more money gambling how long you will let them.
This is psychic and economic war. It is not going away. I fear something really bad happening soon because they are trying so hard to do so much now while everybody else just wants a peaceful holiday. This is the time for this site to be seriously active and aware. All my inner alarm bells are ringing.