Rare Earths

First, you have to love the U.S offering "protection" at the right price, which just happens to be valuable minerals. That's some straight-up mafia-style transactional-break the kneecap shit. When we use the term "naked" aggression it means it is not veiled, not supplied with an acceptable covering of diplomatic civility. Notice the liberal aversion to naked nationalism, the AmericaFirst agenda that dispenses with any pretense of leveling or aid or charity. How dare they abandon our precious narrative! We were helping the world "develop" so that the wealth gap wouldn't be so uneven. Sorry. Time to embrace the cruelty: Let Them Eat Mud Cookies! Now it is straight-up, out in the open smash and grab. All of it fueled by fossil fuels because that's where the profit is. No more "transition" bullshit. This "drill baby drill" mantra gets lost in the noise but I think it is exactly where you want to focus. It explains much of the rest because the new technologies which they are betting will save capitalism requires ungodly amounts of energy (and water). A changing climate will not be allowed to limit this expansion. Except that it will. This is not a Real that anyone wants to face. So we disavow. Otherwise we would have to face the far more traumatic reality of a greedy and self-enjoying a-subjective system of which no one is really or fully in control, namely Capital. Soy bean farmers in Iowa nervous about "export policy". "A thousand telephones that will not ring." The dessicated corpses of migrants who got lost in the Arizona desert. Laughing hyenas and clapping seals as the Naked King delivers punch lines and hands out treats to the audience. Israel’s foreign ministry saying on X on Tuesday night that Mr. Trump’s idea was “an opportunity for the Gazans to have free choice based on their free will. This should be encouraged!” What he didn't say was: And Enjoyed!

Big Other: Society and State

You have to love the names for some of these Think Tanks: “The role of pro-Russian politicians is to introduce divisive topics into society,” said Oleh Saakyan, a political analyst at the National Platform for Resilience and Social Cohesion, an independent think tank. Those in power see planetary social/political/economic relations as a card game. It is all about what cards you hold, who you can bluff, what you are willing to risk. A terrifying way to organize the globe. Everyone is now talking about Trump as the transactional president, as if this is wholly unprecedented, as if it hasn't always about what you could get. Think East India Company, United Fruit Company, C&H Sugar, Dole, Standard Oil, etc. etc.. Capitalism is a system of transactions for labor and commodities and finance. The cards you hold are power you have at your disposal. “It doesn’t mean anything about a two-state or a one-state or any other state,” he (Trump) said at a White House news conference. Nothing throws off the liberal intelligencia like post-rational performance art: Frank Bruni of NYTimes: My belief is that his shamelessness has mattered more than his personality. He has a truly unusual willingness to be as dishonest, disloyal and vulgar as necessary to get what he wants. brushing off a question about whether he still considers the Ukrainian leader a dictator. “Did I say that?” Mr. Trump asked. “I can’t believe I said that. Next question.” Mr. Trump expressed a mix of optimism and fatalism about his chances of making peace. “I think it’s going to happen, hopefully quickly,” he said. “If it doesn’t happen quickly, it may not happen at all. Trump on Kier Starmer: “He earned whatever the hell they pay him over there.” And by kissing the ring and presnting Trump with a gold embossed invitation to dinner with the King, Starmer avoided a lecture, unlike Zelenski, who insisted on arguing with The Donald on The Donald's own TV show. Ooops! We are told not to normalize Trump, like we are not supposed to normalize perversion or obscenity or pornography. We are supposed to hide and repress these things, keep them taboo or hand them off to a fetish.That way we can pretend to have Resilience and Social Cohesion! Trump actively establishes the terms of a new Big Other. He promises enjoyment while undermining the authority of knowledge. Disavowal married to conspiricy theory (denial of the real).