A post-history strip tease

[unhappycamper]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-post-history-strip-tease-by-Pepe-Escobar-130427-281.html



This is an abridged version of a lecture this week at the 13th Seminary of Political Solidarity Don Juan Chavez in memoriam at the University of Zaragoza, Spain.

A post-history strip tease
By Pepe Escobar
OpEdNews Op Eds 4/27/2013 at 21:33:45

How cozy it would be to summon the retro-spirit of Burt Bacharach to define our geopolitical future and start singing, "What the world needs now/is love, sweet love".

~snip~

The disintegration and balkanization of Iraq, detonated by the Pentagon's Shock and Awe 10 years ago, was a sort of prelude for this Brave New Disorder. The neo-con worldview, from 2001 to 2008, advanced the project with its ideology of Let's Finish Off The State, everywhere; once again Iraq was the best example. But from bombing a sovereign nation back to the Stone Age, the project moved to civil war engineering -- as in Libya and, hopefully for the engineers, Syria.

When we have armchair analysts, influential or otherwise, paid by flush foundations -- usually in the US but also in Western Europe -- pontificating about "chaos and anarchy," they are just reinforcing a self-fulfilling prophecy. If "chaos and anarchy" turns them on, it's because they are just reflecting the predominant libidinal economy, from reality TV to all sorts of what De Cauter describes as "psychotic games" -- inside a room, inside an octagon, inside an island or virtually inside a digital box.

So welcome to the geopolitics of the young 21st century: an age of non-stop war (virtualized or not), sharp polarization and a pile-up of catastrophies.

[Newest Reality]

1. Edgy and relevent!

I like the writing style and the author embraces a host of issues with creative and punchy, concentrated prose.

Casino capitalism -- aka turbocharged neoliberalism -- is ruthlessly destroying the last vestiges of the welfare state and the egalitarian consensus in the industrialized West, possibly with the odd Scandinavian exception. It has established a "New Normal" consensus, intruding into private lives, dominating the political debate and institutionalizing for good the marketization of life itself -- the final act of fierce corporate exploitation of natural resources, land and cheap labor.

Turbocharged neoliberalism. That's a good way to put it.

And the Simulation is running very well as we slog around, dream-logged in the wakes and eddies of hyperrealism -- more real than real.

[Junkdrawer]

2. You may want to repost in Good Reads....

GD doesn't do well with such posts.

[unhappycamper]

3. Thanks!

I just posted to the GR forum.