RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.

Countrymen,

Engine running full speed.  Linkage to propellor disengaged.  Linkage to rudder disengaged.  Helmsman on vacation.  Navigator asleep.  Engineer passed out drunk.  Captain missed putting to sea.  Crew fighting over rations.  Happy, Madrassa Harvard?

My friend Bob Belvedere posts today a thoughtful essay on Russia.  Upon which I commented:

Lots of food for thought here, thanks for posting.

Here’s a factoid for the mix: Russians today speak Russian of the gulag, not Russian of 1850 or even 1920.  This is comparable to Americans speaking only ebonics.  Clear, subtle, reasonable thought is impossible with such language.

Another factoid: the world is diversifying and decentralizing at the same time fascist bureaucracies, movements and individuals are trying to compress it together into one system they control.  But every narrowing produces even more counter-pressure for expanding decentralization.  Independence.  Freedom.  Drudge today has a laundry list of examples particularly in the Latinate countries, where the most violent, determined fascists are operating, inside and outside governmental structures, because Latinate culture is the most opposed to their impulses.

Another factoid: almost every country today lacks a grand national strategic goal.  Putin is sort of struggling to find one.  0 wants one not and will not have one.  EU is too flaccid to even consider one, though they would like to have one.  China has a grand national strategic goal.  India seems to have one.  Iran says they do but really they do not.  Febrile Persians and all that.  And this near universal lack of grand national strategic goals means, among other things, that the world is fit to come to pieces, that national boundaries and interests are jostling for a new homeostasis few have thought about, few have tried to anticipate or prepare for, few have polled their wishes regarding their place in the next stabilization.

Almost everyone — including fascists — is being batted about by stories, most of them psyops, like ships adrift at sea, stormed this way and that, some even running engines at full speed but without engaging linkage to the rudders and even without helmsmen on duty.

What is missing is grand national strategic goal.  USA studiously will not have one under any imaginable Democratic Party leadership.  So in this country, reason is in exile.  That’s fine, so long as opposition personalities and then parties actually produce a grand national strategic goal-in-waiting that satisfies the simple requirement to defend and protect the Constitution of the USA.  While my awareness is anything but panoptic, only three Republican Party leaders I see would I trust to recognize and install a grand national strategic goal that defends and protects the Constitution of the USA: Sarah Palin, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz (and here).   I do not see any Libertarian Party leaders who appreciate the importance of formulating a USA grand national strategic goal.  Tea Party is a movement, not a party, that has evinced zero interest, much less competence, in experimentation or formulation towards a USA grand national strategic goal.  Ditto so-called conservatives.  This is not an order of battle to inspire confidence, much less in victory.

Whatever it should be, a proper USA grand national strategic goal is going to accept national boundaries and interests considerably unlike those we are accustomed to assuming and seeing.  Mr. Kerry and Mrs. Merkel are right, we are in a new century.  But they are trying to drag the forms of the old century into the new, ones they think they made, thinking that is smart, possible and desirable.  It is not.  They are fascists, along with their adversary today.  The world is decentralizing and diversifying.  Those vectors of power will achieve colorful arrays of political success despite desperate efforts by fascists to narrow them into nothingness.  A spiritual uprising is afoot, and we will see more individual heroism expressing and leading it.  Economic and police power are bathetic forces to oppose spiritual power, the urge for freedom.  Watch for heroism and skill.

Final factoid:  Russians are masters of deception, misdirection and the role of agent provocateur.  Triple check over time any story about them.  For example, the snipers in Kiev were FSB.  Putin was pushing the crowd and police to drive out Yanukovych for him.  Sets up justification for entering Crimea, because of the naval base.  Sorry, this turned into a post-length comment.

Update 1: On 27 January 2015, Marine GEN (Ret.) James N. Mattis addressed the United States Senate Armed Services Committee on the subject A New American Grand Strategy.  At Hoover Institution, who published an adapted version of General Mattis’ address, I commented — with edits here — as follows:

Not that it matters, but, I both appreciate and despond over General Mattis’ address here. Appreciate because (1) as a genuine warrior he says what he sees and eloquently and (2) his heart is unalloyed courage and compassion. Despond because (1) his address reflects lack of situational awareness — half his auditors at least regard the nation state, including USA, as obsolete and perishing — and (2) his address, although latterly specifying or implying serious tactical weaknesses of current operations, transits the periphery of his title: grand national strategy.

It is rare for a military leader to grasp and execute the several strands — principally diplomatic, economic and military, but others as well — of grand national strategy sufficiently to create a rational grand national strategic *goal* that is also inspirational. It is rare for anyone to be able to do that. General David Petraeus has that ability, which is why the Anti-American, Globalist-partisan US Justice [so-called] Department is persecuting/prosecuting him. Asking Congress or a bureaucracy to develop that ability and execute with it compares with asking a herd of cats to organize an expedition to summit Annapurna. Distilling and serving a happy grand national strategic *goal* is a personal, leadership thing few can do, but some definitely can and do accomplish. Their thoughts merit discovery and attendance.

The cynosure of a nation is not her grand national strategy. It is her grand national strategic *goal.* Given what we see now, project and anticipate — always expecting the unexpected, as General Mattis mentions, thankfully, in his address — where and what do we want to be as a nation three, five, ten, etc. years hence? What is our goal? What do we really, truly — as a nation — want for and of ourself to be, to do, to think? What is our inner necessity as a nation? What are we on this earth to accomplish as a national presence? And why do members of Congress not live in the states from which they were selected for office?

Related: On 04 March 2015  Marine GEN (Ret.) James N. Mattis wrote for Hoover Institution under title Using Military Force Against ISIS.  I commented:

I am content that GEN (Ret.) Mattis’ thinking, clear and compelling, be expressed in public.  Thank you, General!  Our countrymen are working their way towards how they will think and what they will do when they are quit of the hag riding their back.  And they will be that.  This exercise in preparation for the restoration of national sovereignty and wealth flowing from national moral and intellectual strength is what should be happening and what is happening.  I am content.

Update 2: What is Putin about?  Also here.

Update 3: The Jihadis’ Master Plan To Break Us

AMDG – VICTORY