Radio War Nerd EP #583 — America, América; Monroe, Donroe (feat. Greg Grandin)

It is in fact very hard to not believe that Israel didn’t blackmail Trump and others into bombing Iran but I know it has a lot more to do with overall corruption and campaign finance.

Greatly enjoyed this episode. I have to buy the book. plenty interesting stuff

Being mad at the spy museum because there wasn't a part of the tour where you got to chop farmers' heads off

I remember 80% of the Spy Museum’s gadgets were miniature office supplies that could fit up your ass. Really opened my eyes to what espionage really entails.

Greg Grandin, the GOAT 🐐

Excellent episode but also very depressing. A lot of “what could have been” moments.

An excellent episode. One of those after which I once again think, "I had no idea!" Thank you!

This was a great episode. I need to start a new campaign in Tropico 6. A lot of these things were new to me.

Book ✅. Great interview

Vacation in DC? My god man

The CIA was founded in 1947. By 1948 most of Latin America was back under dictatorahip or right wing "democracies". Hmmm...

Europeans and their postcolonial successors are such stunning barbarians. They’ve just exchanged their cruelties to less bloody but more persistent methods like starvation and cultural annihilation that doesn’t just destroy the present but the past and future, too. It was a savage backwater of civilization until 500 years ago and will be one again in another 500.

one can also read the enlightenment as an attempt to translate what the native american people thought of the world into a theological sociology palatable to the tiny minded peasants of the western world

Once again, RWer Auron McIntyre is correct. The side that wants to win will always defeat the side that wants to be left alone. The U.S. was founded as an expansionist empire, an unchecked hegemony that could have taken the entire western hemisphere if it weren't so racist that it stopped expanded because it could not reign over non-whites and it couldn't exterminate because they had a de minimus amount of civilization in them thanks to previous colonizers. But the U.S. has spent the last 80 years occupying and managing Europe, East Asia, Iraq, and so why aren't we doing that to our own neighbors? The Project for a New American Century isn't just a clever name. The problem is China. China will do business with anyone. It is the utopian ideal of neoliberalism where it conducts trade with anyone and offers technology transfers and capital assistance for countries to self-improve because China receives reciprocal benefits if more resources can be shipped to China because a country has developed its industrial ecosystem from resource extraction to refining and processing to internal distribution to international shipping. And if the country happens to develop its own industry and economic and social well-being, then that's a bonus. Meanwhile, the owners of U.S. don't even want domestic developments. They just want rent extraction. They can continue to extract rent from vassals like Germany and they only see the Americas as further sources of rent. The wealthiest and most powerful slumlords in human history. And the best part is that the people of the Americas are accustomed to 500 years of being slum dwellers. It's just a matter of getting the agents of economic, social, and physical violence totally under U.S. control so that there is no dissent or friction, and there is no alternative. And that is something that the U.S. government and its owners are entirely willing and capable of doing because you just need to find the right vassals who would rather be the rancher's cowboys than the livestock. And as it happens, the right wing is always full of those people because their entire ideology is based on being the people who are above the petty ethics and morals of the subhumans around them and are willing to do violence because might makes right. And that's where Carney's and Rubio's speeches come in. International law is no longer an effective cover. The rules-based international order has forsaken all rules. So, we go back to what has worked for all of human history: might makes right and there is no country in history that has more might than the U.S. China will not fight for strategic dominance. It wants to be left alone. That's its raison d'etre: survive. Russia cannot do anything because it does not have the strategic capacity for global influence and history has shown that it is an unreliable ally, at best. It wants to be left alone.

I was so sure Dr. Dolan was going to go for Saint Laurence ("flip me over, I'm fully cooked on this side") but he pulled Epictetus. Nice. Looking forward to the rest of the ep!

So glad to hear Greg grandin on my favorite geopolitics podcast

Whenever I hear about Russian interference, the image of an NFL umpire pops into my head, throwing a flag in Steve kornacki’s war room

oh hell yeah

Greg Grandin ep, this is huge

DC is a good place to be vaporized when WWIII breaks out