War can be fascinating, but if you ever want to understand the why and not just the what, you need to step back just a tiny bit and look at the larger forces driving it.
So the old adage about following the money does need to be considered. Now most will think that's just pointing the finger at the MIC, but it goes a lot deeper than that.
Government, as executive and regulatory function, is analogous to a central nervous system of the society, while money and banking, distributing value around the society to where it is most productive, is analogous to blood and the circulation system.
Now humanity has evolved to the point, somewhat reluctantly, of recognizing government works best as a public utility, but haven't yet considered the same principle will eventually have to apply to banking. Otherwise we will have to go back to some form of private government, to maintain the balance of power, between the centripetal forces of government and the centrifugal forces of banking.
Which is what Russia has done, with Putin.
When the medium enabling markets is privately held, we are all just tenant farmers to the banks.
Given the banks don't have the same level of oversight as government and don't have to work around election cycles, they have, over time, gained the upper hand and can pretty much dictate to anyone aspiring to public office, the limits of what they can and can't do.
Now if you step back just a little further, you will notice the one thing those in office seem able to do, no matter what, is create more public debt.
Then if you turn around and look at the banks, you will notice that public debt is foundational to their functioning. The stock markets might get the attention, but the real money is in bonds.
People are linear, goal seeking creatures in a cyclical, circular, reciprocal, feedback generated reality, so while markets need money to circulate, people see it as signal to extract and store.
The problem is a medium and a store are not the same thing. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. Roads are a medium, parking lots are a store. The hallway is a medium, the hall closet is a store.
While we assume money is some commodity to mine from the economy, the fact is it's a social contract and accounting device enabling it. We own it like we own the section of road we are using, or the air and water flowing through our bodies. It's not our picture on it, we don't hold the copyrights and most importantly, we are not responsible for its value, like a personal check.
Since we insist on pulling it out and "saving" it, ever more has to be added and ever more metastatic methods of storing what has been extracted have to be devised. Think of derivatives as a form of parimutuel wagering, keeping enormous amounts of notational value perfectly balanced, like an upside down pyramid.
So in order to store the asset side of the ledger, a debt has to be generated. Which gets us back to all that public debt. The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth.
What gets done with that debt is unfortunately almost irrelevant. Basically the MIC is the trophy wife of the banks.
The Federal debt really started to grow with the New Deal, so not only was Roosevelt putting unemployed labor back to work, but unemployed capital, as well. Then World War 2 came along, as history's greatest public works project and the die was cast.
That's why basically all the wars since have been so monumentally inept and poorly thought out. Their real purpose was simply to burn the money, so more could be borrowed.
If you have any actual knowledge of military history, can you think of any other time in history where those responsible for such epic fails as this country has been subject to, would not have been taken out and shot? Not given cushy jobs and chests of medals.
The problem now is that government is the decision making function, while banking only serves needs and appetites, so this dynamic has all the strategic aptitude of bacteria racing across a petri dish.
That is why the media can't keep the story straight and has to cut and paste on a daily basis.
Why the nitwits behind the teleprompter don't realize depriving Germany of the energy to run their industry will make what's going on in England currently look like a tea party.
We are talking Europe and these people don't have a long history of getting along and when push comes to shove, those dreams of European unity will go up like the Hindenburg. I give the EU a couple more months.
Consider that if the Republicans win both House and Senate, we will see Russiagate played in reverse, from Hunter to Hillery. Which will be hard to reconcile with the current Zelensky as Churchill meme.
Leaving a lot of armchair generals scratching their heads, as the middle part of Ukraine crawls back to Russia and a lot of extremely well armed Ukrainian gangs join up with all the other gangs in Europe. Many of whom are refugees from our various other military misadventures.
The armored cars of the rich and tactical vehicles of the police won't look as intimidating when the gangs have antitank weapons.
The jungle is coming for Borrell's garden.
