American Narcissism

Alastair Crooke

Alastair Crooke is one of my favorite analysts-- and one you should follow if you can.

He is a former British diplomat, MI6 officer and EU diplomat and is the founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum, an organisation that advocates engagement between political Islam and the West.

His book Resistance: The Essence of the Islamist Revolution, provides strategic insights into the origins and logic of Islamist groups which have adopted military resistance as a tactic, including Hamas and Hezbollah. He lives in Beirut and speaks fluent Arabic.

I am indebted to him for citing my writing.

Why are Israel and the West unravelling in tandem?

Recently, he has written this article: Why are Israel and the West unravelling in tandem?

So why are Israel and the West unravelling in tandem? Well, it is firstly because they have become so inter-connected at the level of power structures (in both U.S. and Europe) to a point that it is difficult to know who has more heft within these power and media structures: Tel Aviv or the White House.

This means interdependency in terms of each’s international standing, and by extension, vulnerability to any collapse in Global standing.

So, whilst the West today ostensibly eschews literal settler colonialism (other than that practiced by Israel), it nonetheless has pursued a form of rent-seeking, financialised colonialism since WW2. That process also has become a permanent framework to the western political and geopolitical ecosystem.

The consequence is that as settler colonialism in Gaza moves starkly and darkly into view, the global majority sees both Israel and the West as explicitly colonial. No distinction is made – the Rules-Based Order is seen as just another iteration of the colonial eco-system. Thus, events in Gaza, amongst other things, have sparked a new wave of anti-colonial sentiment across the globe.

The Genetics of Modern Cultures

I'm now writing two special articles for coffee buyers which began as one—an analysis of Biden’s State of the Union address—which then expanded rhizomatically.

My conclusions are similar to—although not identical with Crooke’s —as well as those of Michael Hudson and Giovanni Arrigh, the economist sociologist and world systems analyst who nobody much mentions but is hugely influential. There seems to be general agreement on basic points

Economic systems evolve along with technology . But these changes are always based on culture.

Think of it this way….

We are told that life forms depend upon DNA and RNA algorithms which determine their characteristics through genetic coding.

So we talk a lot about genes and gene expression, assuming physical characteristics passed on from one generation to another.

We also assume that organic evolution is slow. At the same time we think that technology changes in revolutions such as the Industrial Revolution, independent of evolution.

Keep in mind, however. that technologies are just tools. They have function and utility but how they are used depend on values and assumptions inherited over time.

Crooke writes:

The war in Gaza has precipitated and sharpened the latent schisms within in the West. It too can be hidden no longer. On the one hand, there is an (illiberal) social engineering project posing as liberalism. And on the other, a project to recover the ‘eternal’ values (however imperfect) that once lay behind European civilisation.

But there is more to it than that.

Your Great Great Grandparents are to blame!

The ‘eternal’ values (however imperfect) that once lay behind European civilisation” are still here!

Zionists talk about “eternal values’ given by God-- or at least by hundreds of years of history. They still matter, obviously.

Cultural values and assumptions are passed on from one generation to another, just like genes in an organism, with some degree of genetic drift but essentially the same.

This is my great, great, great something Granddad, Walter Macfarlane, after whom I am named, my first name being “Walter”.

Walter was an historian and something of a contrarian, a friend of Samuel Johnson. He was known for doing things “differently”.

He obviously doesn’t look like me—at least superficially .

Yet we have the same narrow face, the same forehead, the same eye shape and color— grey blue. He died in 1867.

Richard Dawkins calls cultural genes“memes , Biosemioticists, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Kalevi Kull and Claus Emmeche just call them “signs”

Whatever you call them—they are heritable.

The Puritans are mostly gone but their beliefs live on and even American atheists somehow think Americans are the "chosen people"-- exceptional.

Exploitation

Crooke says secular neoliberal neocolonialism looks different from religiously inspired settler colonialism, but, in the end, they have one defining feature—exploitation.

That is what is what is behind the genocide being carried out by both the US and its Zionist love child

You may look different from another person and have different attitudes and behaviors but if you are both brought up in the same cultural setting, you are still creatures of that culture, however different you might seem on the surface. Most modern cultures insist upon conformity. They educate you for that. You learn psychopathy in pre-school.

Trump, Biden-- and Obama all look different— but each believes Americans— and therefore Zionists are “chosen”-- exceptional, better, more deserving of all things.That Americans if not chosen by God are chosen by Destiny—which is as important as a deity in many cultures.

Neocolonialism has different forms. But it is essentially old-school colonialism which inherits many —although not all of its values —from feudalism . What feudalism and colonialism have in common is the idea that some people have more right to life than others.

This was implicit when I looked at Biden’s State of the Union address and its meta-meaning. He was talking to the elite —not to those at the bottom.

Exploitation is about taking without having to give back; it is about privilege—just because you think you are better.

Ichi

Ichi likes my extra computer because there is enough space for him to sit between my keyboard and the screen and he can tell me what to write. I want you to know that all the typos are his fault! Oh, my middle name is Julian. I hated both Walter and Julian. so as a kid I never thought of myself by my name—just as “me”.

If you like this article please buy me a coffee. That will also put you on the list for the current special article!

I wish I could get a doggy friend for Ichi.