One Flew Over The (West) Cuckoo’s Nest

In 1975 Jack Nicholson starred in a masterpiece of a movie, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, about a criminal who dodges conviction by faking insanity. Unfortunately, he rapidly finds out that the insane institutions of the day were much worse than being in a prison. The psychiatric staff start escalating their treatment of this “problematic” patient until they lobotomize him. One of the patients then takes pity on him and ends his sorry existence, showing more humanity and insight than any of the psychiatrists. Thankfully, psychiatry has come a long way since those days.

The more I observe the actions of Western governments, the more I wonder whether the phrase “the lunatics have taken over the asylum” is applicable and the general population are the sane people living in the asylum. Unfortunately, the lunatics have very powerful propagandist techno-media capabilities to trick the sane into believing their imagined fake worlds – a kind of societal schizophrenia. In this fake world, climate change actions can be put off for another year because of more “pressing” issues such as growth, Russia-hating, treating Nazis as the new victims, seeing rich spoilt brats as having a hard life because of “identities”, and that all white people are born racists. The Nazis as victims bullshit reminds me of Ronald Reagan in the 1980s celebrating the murdering, raping terrorist “Contras” as freedom fighters, while he was also telling us that “Star Wars” would magically shoot ICBMs out of the skies as if we lived in the movie of that name, and describing scenes from movies as if they had really happened. But then, he did at least get dementia after he took office unlike the man who has difficulty remembering that he is Joe Biden without assistance.

But are they really mad, or just stupid? I think that some of them are actually quite mad, most definitely in the case of “Cookies” Nuland who is most definitely possessed of an insane paranoid hatred of everything Russian; an insane paranoid hatred that seems to be a requirement for office currently. Then again, they are the ones in front of the curtain that have been chosen by those behind the curtain. If you want to crush Russia/China/Iran etc. then best to select a squad of true believers who will spend 24/7 trying to implement your wishes. For the behind the curtain people it’s not personal, “it’s just business”, to crush any upstarts who won’t pay their “protection” dues and kiss the ring. But when a group has been at the top for a long time it gets lazy, forgetting that actual highly competent technocrats are required to run an Empire rather than mediocre ass-kissers. If there is one thing worse than being a schizophrenic, its being an incompetent schizophrenic. Then again, John Nash was a high functioning schizophrenic and he directly influenced the lunacy of post-WW2 nuclear strategic planning and provided a “game theory” that insanely assumes that human decision makers are completely rational. An assumption shared by the utterly lunatic imaginary world of mainstream economics that also assumes that the ecology (i.e. the Earth) is simply part of the human economy.

As industry has been offshored, scientists and engineers have fallen from their 1960s pedestal, while lawyers, public affairs specialists, financiers, MBAs, and other dilletantes and carpet baggers and so-called “academic” specialists have risen up the hierarchy and partaken of an orgy of self-aggrandizement and profiteering. More through telling the important people what they want to hear, message manipulation, corruption, deviousness and careerism than any actual technocratic competence. The current US Vice President seems to be the pinnacle of such achievement, overcoming an utter lack of voter support in the Democratic primaries through advertising her willingness to do whatever the people behind the curtain want her to do (something she had previously displayed by refusing to prosecute Steve Mnuchin and his company against the wishes of her own staff). There is also that “identities” thing, although there was a plethora of gifted highly competent black women candidates, perhaps they weren’t so accommodating to the unseen powers that be. To say that the VP has been an untold diplomatic disaster and seems to display little or no capability would be an understatement. But that does not stop the approval of the elite consigliere Obama who probably sees her as an easily controllable puppet, but I would question if she would even be competent in that role.

Kurt Vonnegut’s words with respect to the GW Bush administration ring so true today of the current Democratic administration, brought to us by an election marred by widespread media and security services malpractice and bias (“Russia, Russia, Russia”, “The pee tape”, “Biden’s son’s laptop doesn’t exist”, “Joe’s brain is in tip top condition”, “Joe isn’t creepy around young women” etc.):

In case you haven't noticed, as the result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war-lovers with appalling powerful weaponry - who stand unopposed. In case you haven't noticed, we are now as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazi's once were. And with good reason. In case you haven't noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound 'em and kill 'em and torture 'em and imprison 'em all we want. Piece of cake. In case you haven't noticed, we also dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class. Send 'em anywhere. Make 'em do anything.

The words “proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war-lovers with appalling powerful weaponry” seems perfect for an administration that is happy to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian to weaken it and has a record post-Soviet military budget. Although the weaponry is more turning out to be an incredibly expensive profiteering pile of garbage when used against a peer competitor in Ukraine, or just attempted to be used in the case of the F35. An administration “now as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazi's once were”, i.e. by the 7/8ths of the world population outside the West and their cronies who have refused to sanction Russia. Biden didn’t just vote for the Iraq war, he wholeheartedly pushed it forward. Then as VP to Obama, he oversaw the massive expansion of the murderous drone program (“Turns Out I’m Really Good At Killing People” Obama quipped to his aides – the man with the Nobel “Peace” Prize), destroyed the prosperous middle-income nation of Libya, instigated the Nazi coup in Ukraine, and supported the destabilization of  Syria, “We wound 'em and kill 'em and torture 'em and imprison 'em all we want”.

But another Vonnegut quote sums up the sheer psychopathic incompetence of the US administration:

I was once asked if I had any ideas for a really scary reality TV show. I have one reality show that would really make your hair stand on end: "C-Students from Yale."
[The President] has gathered around him upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography … and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or PPs, the medical term for smart, personable people who have no consciences.
To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete's foot . . . PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose! . . . So many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick. They have taken charge of communications and the schools, so we might as well be Poland under occupation.

They might have felt that taking our country into an endless war was simply something decisive to do. What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. They are going to do something every fuckin' day and they are not afraid. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reasons that they don't give a fuck what happens next. Simply can't. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! … There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

A bunch of delusional careerist psychopaths filled full of their own importance but fundamentally incompetent through their own lack of any experience outside the institutions of politics, corruption and mutual back scratching. Aided by “journalists” who are more interested in their own munificent paychecks and twitter followings than journalistic integrity. Within this world, fake battles over pretty much nothing are fought to present the appearance of diversity among a dreary conformity. One deep state oligarch buys a social media platform from another, but instead of lamenting the ownership of the media by a small group of such oligarchs we are directed to either lament the new owner’s lack of Wokeness or see him as a champion of a free press – depending on the media of choice.

In Europe, the delusional careerist psychopaths have also taken over – Ursula Von der Layen being the prime candidate of the utter vacuousness, mediocrity and cunning that comes from a background of privilege, but there are so many more one loses count. BoJo, Macron, Scholz, Duda, Stoltenberg, and now a Finnish PM who thinks that being a member of NATO on Russia’s doorstep will make her country safer and wants to do it without a referendum. Their deep descent into delusion is shown by their belief that they could steal Russia’s assets, arm her opponent, stir an ethnic hatred of Russians, and implement “sanctions from hell”, and not see any blowback. As their economies descend into depression, and their industries become utterly uncompetitive, the cold winds of reality will start whistling through the door. Some of that reality has now arrived in a Poland which thought that it could continue to receive Russian gas while not paying for it (which paying in Euros means given the financial sanctions) and sending battle tanks to Ukraine that will be used to kill Russian soldiers. At the same time the Russian Ruble has returned to its pre-conflict level after a very short-lived crash and Russia is working with the other 7/8ths of the world to replace Western markets and goods that it cannot replace itself.

In his book A Man Without a Country, from which the above quotes are taken, Vonnegut laments being a sane person in the asylum, feeling very much like a man without a country. A country that he felt left him, rather than the other way around. I look at the Canada that I emigrated to in 1994 and I have some of the same feelings, it is hard to recognize the Canada of 1994 in its current reality – especially the lack of ethics, competence, nationalism and even a connection to reality of its politicians. It is sad when the PM of the 1990s Jean Chretien looks like a nationalistic, ethical, competent genius compared to the pathetic leadership class the country currently has, across the political spectrum.

The Western elites are faced with opposing elite classes that have been hardened through the fire of personal and societal hardships and lengthy processes of education and practical training. Compared to the Russian, Chinese and Iranian technocracy the Western leadership class are akin to mediocre spoilt children. As the Western position continues to deteriorate the people behind the curtain may change the members of the team, but the reality is that the whole pool of talent is supremely deficient. This will provide the behind the curtain dwellers with only two possibilities; whinging, wining retreat or escalation. They need to understand that the latter course will place them in direct and very personal danger, it will be the organ grinders who pay with their lives first not the monkeys that they control. The destruction of the deep weapons bunkers in Lviv by Russian hypersonic missiles provided a service to humanity here, as it showed that the organ grinders can be targeted by conventional warheads with little or no warning provided. A full war crimes trial after the Russian victory, that lays out in detail the culpability of senior US operatives would also help serve such a purpose. Even psychopaths can feel fear, and only that personal level of fear will stop them from dangerously escalating and putting the rest of us in harm’s way; it would be murder suicide to end the human race.