Friday, March 11, 2022:  The Russian Campaign of Ukrainian Genocide
Genocide: The deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group. Does anyone not see Putin and his army as war criminals?

Saturday, March 5, 2022:  Ukraine Burns And The World Fiddles - A Demagogue's Dream
Over the past few months, I have read numerous articles attempting to analyze in detail our current political, social, and economic situation. There are various theories on the genesis of the rise of the right and the political turmoil we now find ourselves dealing with on a daily basis. Frankly, I think that attempting to explain how we got to this critical point in our short history by theorizing on the motivation of the the average smuck may be great exercise for academia, but in the end it is wasted time and effort. The majority of the analyses focus on the symptoms and not the disease and until we address the underlying disease, it will only get worse.

There was an inflection point in my career, where I started working for a group whose role was planning and budgeting for a Fortune 50 company. The person in charge of the group was a senior manager with years of experience directing the strategic planning for a large multi-national corporation. At the time he took over leadership of the group, its primary focus was micro-analyzing every little detail of the business. What he taught me was that you can effectively and successfully run a large institution using macro analysis. There are key macro indicators that can be used to make the critical business decisions needed for success. Getting mired down in the underlying details will likely result in missing the macro factors that are more critical for long-term survival. I believe the same is true for the social/political environment. There are very big issues currently in play. Diddling around trying to understand why bubba buys an assault rifle isn't going to get us to the reason democracy is about to go down the tubes. But let's start with some background.

What we are experiencing is the long term exploitation of human kind's short comings to the benefit of the rich and powerful. The power brokers and wannabe demagogues know that democracy is their enemy. Their tool to combat democracy is the exploitation of the working class and that exploitation has been around since man first started recording history and likely before recorded history. There are points where the exploitation is interrupted. The primary points being wars, famine, pandemics, and global economic depressions. These events unify the masses and exploitation goes on hold. But for the rich and powerful, these are only temporary setbacks.

Following WWII, America experienced a period of expansion unrivaled in history. That expansion improved the living standards for millions of workers. Public education flourished. More students went on to college. Technology improved lives, livelihood, and health. Wealth started to accrue in the masses, which meant more security and opportunity for the working class. Middle class wealth boosted the collective power of the working class and this in turn led to strong democracies and as we know, democracy is the enemy of the elite.

The elite study history and understand that war, authoritarianism, exploitation, great powers crushing little ones — are the natural state of human societies. History has repeatedly shown that the masses can be easily manipulated by ambitious demagogues, but it requires the use of the fundamental concept of divide and conquer. The first step is to create the basis for grievance and dissatisfaction among the working class – to drive a wedge between them and the educated. To accomplish that end, they have undermined all of the elements of the democratic social/economic system that underpin the working class. The tactics have been multi-pronged and required decades of concerted effort. The primary targets have been education, economic and social security, health and welfare, and man's general proclivity for greed and hatred. There are been numerous opportunities for them to accomplish their end in America specifically: automation, anti union campaigns, the elimination of vocational programs, suppression of wages, elimination of pensions, voter suppression, gerrymandering and under-funding the enforcement of the laws and federal agencies who protect the worker and the environment.

We are not longer a society of one for all. A cult of narcissism has taken hold, with the likes of Donald Trump as their god. Western democracy is now ripe for the picking. Why do you think that Putin believes he can march into Eastern Europe unopposed. He sees a fragmented America and an ineffective European Union. He goes all Hitler on the world and nobody really does anything but talk. Talk is worthless. Demagogues, oligarchs, and megalomaniacs like Putin only understand power.

What the elite haven't learned from history is that in the end, the proletariat will rise up, stand the Putins and Trumps of the world against a wall, and execute them.