Crackpot Realism

[Jerome Park]

The US policy is a pragmatic one for the greatest power in world history.
It used Iraq against Iran in the 80s, now it will use Iran against
Iraq/ISIS. Now that Iran is the head of the snake, military force, threats
of bombings, regime change, assassination, sanctions, its Israel alliance,
these are no longer pragmatic, so the US will negotiate with Iran, strip
off the terrorist label, stick it on the tail if the snake in Iran. Off
course, the US will need to keep filling the region with advanced weapons
even as it lets Iran advance, so those that fear and compete with Iran, SA
and the other gulf satellites, who are losing the battle against the US oil
producers for the US market, will shift to military stance as their oil
economic power slips here. Here the battle is more complex because unlike
the battle with the US, where politics and religion and even economics are
subordinated to military forces, the other factors are real, are culturally
and historically real, but we can expect that the US will continue to
complicate, destabilize and contain by whatever works. Same shit different
names.

On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 12:27 PM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think there are more factors to consider besides economic self interest
> in the time right after 9/11. I thought no blood for oil was a rather
> simplistic slogan though you do need those to garner wide support for a
> movement.
>
>
> On Saturday, May 23, 2015, Jerome Park <jeromepark3141 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The irony assumes the US has interest in the region other than to balance
>> its plan to destabilize and contain and keep oil prices under 90.
>>
>>  But the US has no other interest there. Iran will build the bomb. So
>> what. It will assert more power and so will Saudi Arabia. So what. Sounds
>> like a good plan to keep the place unstable and contained. ISIS is the new
>> Iraq. So what?
>>
>> On Sat, May 23, 2015 at 11:45 AM, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I think that came after when they needed to justify the invasion w/o WMD
>>> found. I thought Cheney and co wanted to deter others by being aggressive
>>> and willing to use force. Remember the talk of taking out Assad? Even the
>>> Iranians. Seeing where we're at now one can help seeing the irony. We need
>>> Tehrans help against Isis and we want Assad to stick around.
>>>
>>> rich
>>>
>>> On Saturday, May 23, 2015, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Could be wrong, but I think sociologist C. Wright Mills coined
>>>> "crackpot realism" circa 1960 for the kind of pseudo-realpolitik thinking
>>>> that, e.g., had the Bushies in 2002 envisioning Iraq as a beacon of freedom
>>>> and democracy for the Middle East.
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 8:57 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In an online fragment of a book about some "modern writers',
>>>>> the (minor) novelist Melvin Jules Bukiet---one of whose books
>>>>> pays overt homage to GR, I remember---called writers like
>>>>> Thomas Pynchon CRACKPOT REALISTS long before Wood
>>>>> found his descriptive adjective for REALIST. @1995.
>>>>>
>>>>> Besides exaggerated "reality" in description and characterization, he
>>>>> found the use of coincidence
>>>>> and chance instead of true-to-life plot movements to be a major part of
>>>>> his meaning with the term.
>>>>>
>>>>> I like it better than HYSTERICAL REALISM (which shows Wood's
>>>>> bias via verbal associations of Hysterical.
>>>>> -
>>>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>
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