"The First Shall Be Last"
by Bill Bonner
WEST RIVER, MARYLAND – "The new Biden bunch will be full of meaningless “firsts.” Kamala Harris will be the first female vice president. She will also be the first “Woman of Color” in that post. And the first person of South Asian descent. Janet Yellen will be the first woman to head the Treasury Department. Another first will likely be a woman as Secretary of Defense.
Since the origin of the species, men have done almost all the fighting. They might be better at it; they are bigger, stronger, faster… And those who were bad at fighting may have been killed, or perhaps denied the right to mate. In some primitive societies, a man had to prove himself in combat before he was allowed to take a wife. So it almost seems natural to have a man at the head of a group of fighters.
New Era: But this is a new era. If you’ve been following our Diary for very long, you know that nature has her cycles… her patterns… her birth announcements and obituaries. Great empires come and go, just like the rest of us. The newspapers report these comings and goings as the work of men. But men cannot defy nature… or the gods. And it appears to us that at the end of the 20th century, the gods decided to take the U.S. empire down a peg. Bush, Obama, Trump – all have played their parts, each with his cockamamie projects and foolish ideas. Biden must continue the work. How better than to appoint the last people as the firsts?
Limiting Diversity: Janet Yellen is one of the last people we’d have in charge of our money. So has Biden selected one of the last people who should be in charge of the armed forces. Today, there is no reason to think that a woman can’t do the top Pentagon job just as well as – or better than – a man. After all, it mostly consists of bullying small countries and lobbying for more money for the arms suppliers of Northern Virginia. God forbid that any real “defense” comes into play. If it does, America – with its gold-plated, lard-butt military – will probably be in big trouble.
Besides, diversity is the most important thing now, not national defense. And diversity seems to be becoming more popular everywhere. Like “stimulus” and fake money, diversity is another delusional desideratum for the 21st century.
Here’s CEO News: "The growing drumbeat on ESG [Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance] in corporate America sounded louder than ever Tuesday, as Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman announced a new effort to require the boards of all Nasdaq-listed companies to have at least one female director and one director who is an underrepresented minority or LGBTQ – or explain publicly why they have not."
But the call for “diversity” is not aimed at increasing variety, but limiting it… to a few “acceptable” categories. No, “diversity” is not really about diversity… It’s about sameness – having the same opinions… the same ideas… and the same people, worshipping the same ersatz gods. You put them on your corporate board – or in your cabinet – not to promote a variety of points of view, but to limit them to a few, faddish ones.
Same, Same, But Different: Speaking of underrepresented minorities… how many polygamists are there in the nation? For obvious reasons, it’s hard to say for sure… But you will score no “diversity” points by putting a man with six wives on your board. And what could be rarer than a man who had murdered every one of them? Though “off the charts” on diversity, no one would want him on their board of directors… or in the presidential cabinet.
But at the Defense Department, how about a woman with the blood of thousands of men on her hands? Biden might have chosen Hillary Clinton for the job. But in Michèle Flournoy, he gets his Deep State martinet… his warmonger… without the political baggage. Is this a breath of fresh air? A new direction? Shall we say goodbye to the Bush/Obama/Trump forever wars? Will the gods be thwarted?
Oh, Dear Reader, don’t be so naïve. You know as well as we do that Joe Biden is not going to shake things up. He won’t even stand up to the teachers’ unions, let alone the armed wing of the Deep State. He’s been one of its major supporters for the last four decades. And both Flournoy and his choice for Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, are democratic hacks… Swamp critters, who swim back and forth between the government and the arms industry. When their party is in power, they promote war. When it is out of power, they advise defense suppliers on how to cash in.
This from The Grayzone: "Since the 1990s, Flournoy and Blinken have steadily risen through the ranks of the military-industrial complex, shuffling back and forth between the Pentagon and hawkish think-tanks funded by the U.S. government, weapons companies, and oil giants. Under Bill Clinton, Flournoy was the principal author of the 1996 Quadrennial Defense Review, the document that outlined the U.S. military’s doctrine of permanent war – what it called “full spectrum dominance.” Flournoy called for “unilateral use of military power” to ensure “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.”
As Bush administration officials lied to the world about Saddam Hussein’s supposed WMD’s, Flournoy remarked that “In some cases, preemptive strikes against an adversary’s [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities may be the best or only option we have to avert a catastrophic attack against the United States.”
Was Iraq about to launch a “catastrophic attack” against the U.S.? Of course not. Instead, the U.S. launched a catastrophic attack against Iraq! The Grayzone continues: "As Iraq was plunged into chaos and bloodshed, Flournoy was among the authors of a paper titled “Progressive Internationalism” that called for a “smarter and better” style of permanent war. The paper chastised the anti-war left and stated that “Democrats will maintain the world’s most capable and technologically advanced military, and we will not flinch from using it to defend our interests anywhere in the world.”
Full Spectrum Dominance: What do you do if you want to keep America on track towards its own destruction? You just need to make sure the trillion-dollar forever wars continue… along with the money-printing to support them. Biden has both of those imperatives covered. With Janet Yellen as Treasury secretary, he is assured that the fake cash will continue to come hot off the presses. And with Michèle Flournoy as secretary of defense and Tony Blinken as secretary of state, he’s found his “full spectrum dominance” jackasses. Now, he can be sure that the country will continue its costly, clumsy misadventures overseas.
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