President Trump’s flagrant moves to create an American nomenklatura of cowed, obedient appointees in all positions of influence - military, economic, educational and cultural - is creating outrage in those noticing it. As argued in the previous post, “Cooperating with the enemy,” a frequent counter to such anger is to distract the public with war, a strategy often entailing covert negotiations with the “enemy.”
Tuesday, August 12, 2025
There's precedent
Trump is not the only leader who has been in need of such distraction. The situation is reminiscent of the lead-ups to the first two world wars, in which leaders surreptitiously sought conflict to escape from the mounting pressures of peace.
Here are two examples:
World War I: On June 28, 1914, just before the war broke out, a Serbian partisan, who was opposed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire's domination of Serbia, assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the Empire's throne. In a harsh ultimatum to Serbia, the Empire issued demands that, according to many historians, were so extreme they appeared designed to produce the intense Serbian response that, through multi-national alliances on both sides, triggered major war throughout Europe. Leaders took advantage of their populations' misguided belief that war would free them from their frustrated and futile seeming lives (see Aldous Huxley's 1928 novel, Point Counter Point).
World War II: In 1940, before the U.S. entered the war against Japan, Admiral James O. Richardson, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, warned President Roosevelt that mooring the fleet at Pearl Harbor would place it threateningly close to Japan, where it would be highly vulnerable to surprise aerial torpedo and bombing attack, and that Hawaii was too far from mainland US to be adequately supplied. According to Richardson, Roosevelt replied that Pearl Harbor should be the base because, “If the Japanese attacked Thailand, or the Kra Peninsula, or the Dutch East Indies, or even the Philippines, we would not be able to enter the war” (Human Smoke, 2008, by Nicholson Baker).
It should be noted that, while the first two world wars sought realignment of power and silencing of popular discontent, the next world war's purpose will be to replace traditional human culture and physiology with a bioengineered and AI managed new type of "human." Thus, while the manipulative strategies that have tricked people into war will be largely the same for World War III, the goals will be different. At least after the last two world wars we were still human.
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