When Texas decides to follow your advice I will definitely move there. FWIW: I subscribe to all the views you suggest are “left wing progressive” and some of those you suggest as “right-wing conservative”. Should I hate myself ?
Were Texas officials to “nationalize” (say) ExxonMobil assets located in the Permian Basin, this would not only give Washington, D.C. a legitimate grievance, but would alert global investors that the new country was a banana Republic to be shunned.
The term “banana Republic”, historically, actually refers to dictatorships that where highly favorable to banana corporations, and other plantations owners, rather than to their people, enacting policies such as:
* selling large amounts of land to banana companies (and other plantation owners) without the consent of the people living on that land, even to the point of leaving almost no land left for the peasantry
* various types of forced labor policies (the other plantation owners actually had more to do with this one that the banana companies, at least in the case of Guatemala)
* making it legal for employers to kill their employees
* genocide (in the case of Guatemala after they tried to replace the banana republic with an anti forced labor, pro land reform leadership)
So, a better analogy would be:
Were Texas officials to give most of the Texas people’s farmland and ranchland to (say) ExxonMobil, and enact forced labor policies forcing Texans to go work for ExxonMobil and other oil companies, and kill Texans suspected of resisting this new policy (or intensification of existing policies allowing oil companies to steal people’s land), this would not only give Washington, D.C. a legitimate grievance, but would alert global human rights activists that the new country was a banana Republic (or oil Republic, in this case) to be campaigned against.
Also, if such a thing were to happen, we might reasonably suspect it of being a CIA plot. The CIA played a major role in the Guatemalan genocide, by overthrowing the anti-forced labor, pro land reform government that briefly existed before the Guatemalan genocide, and by continuing to support the genocidal regime they replaced that government with. (Note that the land reform was necessary because the banana company and other plantation owners had stolen so much of the land, that merely trying to abolish legalized forced labor wasn’t enough to save the people from extreme abuse.) Many of the genocidaires were trained in the United States.
When reading the document about PBSuccess, note that “communists” in this context in theory means “people who were against forced labor and in favor of land reform (i.e. returning land stolen from the peasantry back to the peasantry).” (Which is actually much more consistent with actual Marxist thought than the way the term “communist” is usually used in the United States.) In practice, since there weren’t any trials or other procedures to actually determine people’s political views, “communists” ended up meaning, “the Guatemalan peasantry and Maya people, regardless of their political views”.
Anyway, in that document, they actually admit:
A. Objectives
1. To remove covertly, and without bloodshed if possible, the menace of the present Communist-controlled government of Guatemala.
2. To install and sustain, covertly, a pro-US government in Guatemala.
The “without bloodshed if possible” part is painfully ironic, given that they ended up sponsoring a genocide. However, they did admit to planning to overthrow the Guatemalan government and replace it, covertly, with a pro-US government.
Efraín Ríos Montt, the dictator who lead the Guatemalan genocide, was trained at the infamous School of the Americas, known as the School of Assassins by many critics, which is run by the US Department of Defense. Montt was one of a number of evil Latin American dictators and other atrocity-committers trained by the school.
The distinctly American brilliance of our Founding Fathers had its roots in British history, common law tradition, and political philosophy. (Indeed, English-born Thomas Paine didn’t even move to the American colonies until late 1774.) But from its British roots, the American system emerged as the world’s best attempt so far to bring the kingdom of God to earth. The attempt failed, to be sure, as all manmade political systems rely on coercion in an attempt to safeguard liberty, and thereby suffer from an internal contradiction.
Most of the good stuff in the US constitution has its roots in the Iroquois constitution — which was far superior in every respect and included women’s rights — and also in Machiavellianism. Incidentally, the US Senate *finally* acknowledged Iroquois influence on the US constitution in 1988. Machiavelli, despite his reputation, was a torture survivor who championed a system of checks and balances that he hoped might restrain the worst excesses of bad government, even if he was unfortunately quite willing to give advice to dictators (or “princes” to use his word).
“The Native American Government That Inspired the US Constitution”
history [dot] com/news/iroquois-confederacy-influence-us-constitution
Also, for a discussion of Machiavellian influence on the US Constitution, please see:
scholarworks [dot] law [dot] ubalt [dot] edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2044&context=all_fac
Please note that, being a torture survivor, Machiavelli was an incredibly complex person. In modern terms, we might say he was experiencing dissociative identities. I believe dissociation is most likely a coping mechanism used by many survivors of torture. The many apparent contradictions in Machiavellian philosophy most likely have something to do with his mental condition as a torture survivor.
However, much of the evil in the US constitution probably did in fact come from the English, who apparently were responsible for centuries of genocidal policies against the Irish, as documented by Chris Fogarty in “Ireland 1845-1850: the Perfect Holocaust, and Who Kept it ‘Perfect'”. (In that book, Chris Fogarty argues that the period from 1845-1850 was actually only an intensification of a centuries-long genocidal policy, and I find his argument persuasive.) Note that it was primarily members of the English upper class and army who were responsible for this, and that they were also very oppressive against the English poor (see, for example, the brutal enclosures, followed by centuries of forced labor policies) and the Scottish (see, for example, the clearances).
For an example of the evil of English common law, as adopted in the United States, see coverture, which, prior to advances in feminism, made a woman more or less legally (but not morally) the property of her husband. In the case of racial sl*very, in Maryland at least, there was a time when if a (legally) free woman married an ensl*ved black person, coverture was interpreted to mean that the woman legally (but not morally) became the sl*ve of her husband’s (legal but not moral) owner. (Not moral disclaimers are mine. Many people enforcing these systems probably believed they were moral.)
Until very recently in US history, coverture allowed husbands to legally rape and otherwise physically abuse their wives, in addition to placing a number of other restrictions on what wives could do. The long history of coverture in the US probably explains why so many men in the US still feel it is acceptable to sexually and physically abuse their wives.
“How Government Codified Patriarchy”
americasfuture [dot] org/how-government-codified-patriarchy/
“Coverture: The Word You Probably Don’t Know But Should”
womenshistory [dot] org/articles/coverture-word-you-probably-dont-know-should
A number of the so-called “Founding Fathers” were very evil people. For example, George Washington was a genocidaire, guilty of genocide against the Iroquois people, the ones with the far superior constitution which inspired the rather watered down US constitution. Forty Iroquois towns were destroyed on the orders of the genocidaire George Washington.
Consider, for example,
“The immediate objects are the total destruction and devastation of their settlements and the capture of as many prisoners of every age and sex as possible. It will be essential to ruin their crops now in the ground and prevent their planting more… It should be previously impressed upon the minds of the men wherever they have an opportunity, to rush on with the war and fixed bayonet — Nothing will disconcert and terrify the Indians more than this.” – Letter To Major General John Sullivan by George Washington May 31, 1779
“Destroying not only the men but the settlements and the plantations is very important. All sown fields must be destroyed and new plantations and harvests must be prevented. What lead can not do will be done by hunger and winter.” – Orders by General George Washington to attack the Iroquois Confederation, June 1779
Thomas Jefferson was another very depraved so-called “Founding Father”. Although it has long been known that Thomas Jefferson was a sl*veholder, evidence has recently come to light that he was a much crueler in his treatment of those ensl*ved people than we were formerly lead to believe. For example,
And this world was crueler than we have been led to believe. A letter has recently come to light describing how Monticello’s young black boys, “the small ones,” age 10, 11 or 12, were whipped to get them to work in Jefferson’s nail factory, whose profits paid the mansion’s grocery bills. This passage about children being lashed had been suppressed—deliberately deleted from the published record in the 1953 edition of Jefferson’s Farm Book, containing 500 pages of plantation papers. That edition of the Farm Book still serves as a standard reference for research into the way Monticello worked.
Additionally, Jefferson was cruel towards an ensl*ved man who attempted to escape at least twice. Jefferson is quoted as saying, “I had him severely flogged in the presence of his old companions, and committed to jail.” Jefferson mortgaged the people he ensl*ved in order to build Monticello, and refused a donation from someone named Thaddeus Kosciuszko, who was willing to donate to the cause of freeing Jefferson’s sl*ves. Jefferson also repeatedly raped an ensl*ved child named Sally Hemings.
Jefferson’s pro-sl*very depravity extended internationally, and when he was Secretary of State in 1795, according to apnews “he gave $40,000 and one thousand firearms to colonial French sl*veholders in Haiti in an attempt to defeat Toussaint L’Ouverture’s sl*ve rebellion.”
There were other so-called “Founding Fathers’ of the United States besides George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but those two, at least, were evil.
From those evil roots, came not “the world’s best attempt so far to bring the kingdom of God to earth”, but rather, what is possibly the most evil Empire to ever curse the earth. Granted, other empires made a sincere effort to be the most evil, but no other possessed so many bombs and other military might.
As Matthew Karp documents in “This Vast Southern Empire: Sl*veholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy”, up until the election of Lincoln and the US Civil War, the US pursued an aggressively pro-sl*very foreign policy. (I would argue that this continued even after the US Civil War, but Matthew Karp’s book only deals with the time period up until the US Civil War.) One of the more well known examples is the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848 was waged by the United States as a pro-sl*very war against Mexican abolitionists.
You can read a summary / review of Matthew Karp’s book here:
reviews [dot] history [dot] ac [dot] uk/review/2106
The pro-sl*very campaign against the Seminole Nation in what is now Florida, as described by William Loren Katz in “Black Indians”, supports Matthew Karp’s argument that for a significant portion of US history, the US had a pro-sl*very foreign policy.
archive [dot] org/details/blackindianshidd0000katz/
I believe this pro-sl*very policy continued after the Civil War, but was disguised afterwards an anti-communism. Two examples to support my belief are the Guatemalan Genocide, sponsored by the United States after an anti-sl*very government temporarily took power in Guatemala before being overthrown by the CIA, and the removal the Congo’s democratically elected anti-sl*very Prime Minister Lumumba by the CIA and his replacement with Mobutu, who was only able to hold power with CIA support. Both these actions were justified with the rhetoric of fighting communism.
I believe I already gave some links regarding the Guatemalan genocide above. For information about Lumumba’s removal from power by the CIA and subsequent assassination by the Belgians, see “The Assassination of Lumumba” by Ludo de Witte. For information about the Belgian system of forced labor in the Congo prior to Lumumba becoming Prime Minister, see books by Jules Marchal, Osumaka Likaka, and Samuel H. Nelson. For information about Mobutu’s regime afterwards, see “America’s Tyrant: The CIA and Mobutu of Zaire” by Sean Kelly. Note that Mobutu renamed the Congo Zaire, although it’s now called the Congo again. For information about how the Congo still hasn’t recovered from Mobutu’s disastrous dictatorship, see “Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa” by Jason Stearns.
“Dancing in the Gory of Monsters” is a good term to describe people who celebrate the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. When one pays honor to genocidaires and brutal ensl*vers, one is dancing in the glory of monsters.
The term “dancing in the glory of the monster” has it’s history in Congolese politics, when Laurent Kabila condemned Mobutu’s supporters as follows: “Who has not been Mobutist in this country? Three-quarters of this country became part of it! We saw you all dancing in the glory of the monster.” Jason Stearns titled his book “dancing in the glory of monsters” in recognition of the fact that Mobutu was hardly the only monster in Congolese politics. However, I think it is excellent language to describe anyone who glorifies genocidaires, brutal ensl*vers, or brutal dictators.
I don’t see an independent Texas. I see a divided nation, with the states across the south and mountain area as one nation. and the Coasts as another nation divided by the Midwest. The Midwest a patchwork of left and right, states attached to the new and old nations.
Just heard about this document on a Republic of Texas meeting. Would love to read it as we are writing a new Declaration of Independence
Click the “released this” hyperlink and you’ll get the pdf
Brilliant!
When Texas decides to follow your advice I will definitely move there. FWIW: I subscribe to all the views you suggest are “left wing progressive” and some of those you suggest as “right-wing conservative”. Should I hate myself ?
Nice Podcast on Tim Pool!
It would be nice if you released this also in formats for reading on small screens, such as a blog post, epub, mobi, etc., plus audio.
Is this intended to be anonymous? I don’t see your name anywhere on it…
Bob Murphy wrote,
The term “banana Republic”, historically, actually refers to dictatorships that where highly favorable to banana corporations, and other plantations owners, rather than to their people, enacting policies such as:
* selling large amounts of land to banana companies (and other plantation owners) without the consent of the people living on that land, even to the point of leaving almost no land left for the peasantry
* various types of forced labor policies (the other plantation owners actually had more to do with this one that the banana companies, at least in the case of Guatemala)
* making it legal for employers to kill their employees
* genocide (in the case of Guatemala after they tried to replace the banana republic with an anti forced labor, pro land reform leadership)
So, a better analogy would be:
Were Texas officials to give most of the Texas people’s farmland and ranchland to (say) ExxonMobil, and enact forced labor policies forcing Texans to go work for ExxonMobil and other oil companies, and kill Texans suspected of resisting this new policy (or intensification of existing policies allowing oil companies to steal people’s land), this would not only give Washington, D.C. a legitimate grievance, but would alert global human rights activists that the new country was a banana Republic (or oil Republic, in this case) to be campaigned against.
Also, if such a thing were to happen, we might reasonably suspect it of being a CIA plot. The CIA played a major role in the Guatemalan genocide, by overthrowing the anti-forced labor, pro land reform government that briefly existed before the Guatemalan genocide, and by continuing to support the genocidal regime they replaced that government with. (Note that the land reform was necessary because the banana company and other plantation owners had stolen so much of the land, that merely trying to abolish legalized forced labor wasn’t enough to save the people from extreme abuse.) Many of the genocidaires were trained in the United States.
The CIA operation to overthrow the anti-forced labor, pro land reform was called “PBSuccess”, and is documented here. Note that the document is very biased.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1952-54Guat/d65
When reading the document about PBSuccess, note that “communists” in this context in theory means “people who were against forced labor and in favor of land reform (i.e. returning land stolen from the peasantry back to the peasantry).” (Which is actually much more consistent with actual Marxist thought than the way the term “communist” is usually used in the United States.) In practice, since there weren’t any trials or other procedures to actually determine people’s political views, “communists” ended up meaning, “the Guatemalan peasantry and Maya people, regardless of their political views”.
Anyway, in that document, they actually admit:
The “without bloodshed if possible” part is painfully ironic, given that they ended up sponsoring a genocide. However, they did admit to planning to overthrow the Guatemalan government and replace it, covertly, with a pro-US government.
Efraín Ríos Montt, the dictator who lead the Guatemalan genocide, was trained at the infamous School of the Americas, known as the School of Assassins by many critics, which is run by the US Department of Defense. Montt was one of a number of evil Latin American dictators and other atrocity-committers trained by the school.
spiremagazine [dot] com/2017/09/04/the-school-of-the-americas-how-the-united-states-has-trained-latin-american-dictators-in-corruption-and-genocide/
derechos [dot] org/soa/guat-not.html
truthout [dot] org/articles/the-school-of-the-americas-the-cia-and-the-us-condoned-cancer-of-torture-continues-to-spread-in-latin-america-including-mexico/
Montt was finally brought to trial in 2013.
nsarchive2 [dot] gwu [dot] edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB419/
Also see the documentary, “Granito: How to Nail a Dictator” for some evidence concerning Montt’s guilt.
vimeo [dot] com/19051986
Bob Murphy wrote,
Most of the good stuff in the US constitution has its roots in the Iroquois constitution — which was far superior in every respect and included women’s rights — and also in Machiavellianism. Incidentally, the US Senate *finally* acknowledged Iroquois influence on the US constitution in 1988. Machiavelli, despite his reputation, was a torture survivor who championed a system of checks and balances that he hoped might restrain the worst excesses of bad government, even if he was unfortunately quite willing to give advice to dictators (or “princes” to use his word).
“How the Iroquois Great Law of Peace Shaped U.S. Democracy” by PBS
https://www.pbs.org/native-america/blogs/native-voices/how-the-iroquois-great-law-of-peace-shaped-us-democracy/
“The Native American Government That Inspired the US Constitution”
history [dot] com/news/iroquois-confederacy-influence-us-constitution
Also, for a discussion of Machiavellian influence on the US Constitution, please see:
scholarworks [dot] law [dot] ubalt [dot] edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2044&context=all_fac
Please note that, being a torture survivor, Machiavelli was an incredibly complex person. In modern terms, we might say he was experiencing dissociative identities. I believe dissociation is most likely a coping mechanism used by many survivors of torture. The many apparent contradictions in Machiavellian philosophy most likely have something to do with his mental condition as a torture survivor.
However, much of the evil in the US constitution probably did in fact come from the English, who apparently were responsible for centuries of genocidal policies against the Irish, as documented by Chris Fogarty in “Ireland 1845-1850: the Perfect Holocaust, and Who Kept it ‘Perfect'”. (In that book, Chris Fogarty argues that the period from 1845-1850 was actually only an intensification of a centuries-long genocidal policy, and I find his argument persuasive.) Note that it was primarily members of the English upper class and army who were responsible for this, and that they were also very oppressive against the English poor (see, for example, the brutal enclosures, followed by centuries of forced labor policies) and the Scottish (see, for example, the clearances).
For an example of the evil of English common law, as adopted in the United States, see coverture, which, prior to advances in feminism, made a woman more or less legally (but not morally) the property of her husband. In the case of racial sl*very, in Maryland at least, there was a time when if a (legally) free woman married an ensl*ved black person, coverture was interpreted to mean that the woman legally (but not morally) became the sl*ve of her husband’s (legal but not moral) owner. (Not moral disclaimers are mine. Many people enforcing these systems probably believed they were moral.)
Until very recently in US history, coverture allowed husbands to legally rape and otherwise physically abuse their wives, in addition to placing a number of other restrictions on what wives could do. The long history of coverture in the US probably explains why so many men in the US still feel it is acceptable to sexually and physically abuse their wives.
“How Government Codified Patriarchy”
americasfuture [dot] org/how-government-codified-patriarchy/
“Coverture: The Word You Probably Don’t Know But Should”
womenshistory [dot] org/articles/coverture-word-you-probably-dont-know-should
A number of the so-called “Founding Fathers” were very evil people. For example, George Washington was a genocidaire, guilty of genocide against the Iroquois people, the ones with the far superior constitution which inspired the rather watered down US constitution. Forty Iroquois towns were destroyed on the orders of the genocidaire George Washington.
Consider, for example,
milwaukeeindependent [dot] com/featured/dear-america-heroes-not-necessarily-heroes/
usnews [dot] com/news/national/articles/2008/06/27/town-destroyer-versus-the-iroquois-indians
Thomas Jefferson was another very depraved so-called “Founding Father”. Although it has long been known that Thomas Jefferson was a sl*veholder, evidence has recently come to light that he was a much crueler in his treatment of those ensl*ved people than we were formerly lead to believe. For example,
Additionally, Jefferson was cruel towards an ensl*ved man who attempted to escape at least twice. Jefferson is quoted as saying, “I had him severely flogged in the presence of his old companions, and committed to jail.” Jefferson mortgaged the people he ensl*ved in order to build Monticello, and refused a donation from someone named Thaddeus Kosciuszko, who was willing to donate to the cause of freeing Jefferson’s sl*ves. Jefferson also repeatedly raped an ensl*ved child named Sally Hemings.
Jefferson’s pro-sl*very depravity extended internationally, and when he was Secretary of State in 1795, according to apnews “he gave $40,000 and one thousand firearms to colonial French sl*veholders in Haiti in an attempt to defeat Toussaint L’Ouverture’s sl*ve rebellion.”
smithsonianmag [dot] com/history/the-dark-side-of-thomas-jefferson-35976004/
apnews [dot] com/article/europe-france-united-states-da3c7dc183b54359934f77d07a41bddf
There were other so-called “Founding Fathers’ of the United States besides George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but those two, at least, were evil.
From those evil roots, came not “the world’s best attempt so far to bring the kingdom of God to earth”, but rather, what is possibly the most evil Empire to ever curse the earth. Granted, other empires made a sincere effort to be the most evil, but no other possessed so many bombs and other military might.
As Matthew Karp documents in “This Vast Southern Empire: Sl*veholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy”, up until the election of Lincoln and the US Civil War, the US pursued an aggressively pro-sl*very foreign policy. (I would argue that this continued even after the US Civil War, but Matthew Karp’s book only deals with the time period up until the US Civil War.) One of the more well known examples is the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848 was waged by the United States as a pro-sl*very war against Mexican abolitionists.
You can read a summary / review of Matthew Karp’s book here:
reviews [dot] history [dot] ac [dot] uk/review/2106
The pro-sl*very campaign against the Seminole Nation in what is now Florida, as described by William Loren Katz in “Black Indians”, supports Matthew Karp’s argument that for a significant portion of US history, the US had a pro-sl*very foreign policy.
archive [dot] org/details/blackindianshidd0000katz/
I believe this pro-sl*very policy continued after the Civil War, but was disguised afterwards an anti-communism. Two examples to support my belief are the Guatemalan Genocide, sponsored by the United States after an anti-sl*very government temporarily took power in Guatemala before being overthrown by the CIA, and the removal the Congo’s democratically elected anti-sl*very Prime Minister Lumumba by the CIA and his replacement with Mobutu, who was only able to hold power with CIA support. Both these actions were justified with the rhetoric of fighting communism.
I believe I already gave some links regarding the Guatemalan genocide above. For information about Lumumba’s removal from power by the CIA and subsequent assassination by the Belgians, see “The Assassination of Lumumba” by Ludo de Witte. For information about the Belgian system of forced labor in the Congo prior to Lumumba becoming Prime Minister, see books by Jules Marchal, Osumaka Likaka, and Samuel H. Nelson. For information about Mobutu’s regime afterwards, see “America’s Tyrant: The CIA and Mobutu of Zaire” by Sean Kelly. Note that Mobutu renamed the Congo Zaire, although it’s now called the Congo again. For information about how the Congo still hasn’t recovered from Mobutu’s disastrous dictatorship, see “Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa” by Jason Stearns.
“Dancing in the Gory of Monsters” is a good term to describe people who celebrate the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. When one pays honor to genocidaires and brutal ensl*vers, one is dancing in the glory of monsters.
The term “dancing in the glory of the monster” has it’s history in Congolese politics, when Laurent Kabila condemned Mobutu’s supporters as follows: “Who has not been Mobutist in this country? Three-quarters of this country became part of it! We saw you all dancing in the glory of the monster.” Jason Stearns titled his book “dancing in the glory of monsters” in recognition of the fact that Mobutu was hardly the only monster in Congolese politics. However, I think it is excellent language to describe anyone who glorifies genocidaires, brutal ensl*vers, or brutal dictators.
I don’t see an independent Texas. I see a divided nation, with the states across the south and mountain area as one nation. and the Coasts as another nation divided by the Midwest. The Midwest a patchwork of left and right, states attached to the new and old nations.