try it.

find some fucking snot-nosed little kid, and make them listen to this. don't tell them when it was made - even let on that it's brand new. ask them what they think...

is this the future of music?

(pompeii was '72. but, saucerful of secrets was '68, and the song is older.)

the actual truth is that if you were to play a selection of late 60s psych, fusion and prog - and you could probably get as mainstream as pink floyd and have few of them really know what it is - to a group of teenagers or 20-somethings nowadays, a substantial percentage of them would think they were listening to futuristic sounds that will define music in the next century.

now, some of the music of the 60s and 70s was brilliant. sure. you'll get minimal pushback from me on that point.

but, what it really demonstrates is that we're in the midst of a period of cultural stagnation and social regression that set in with the the thatcher-reagan revolution (and perhaps much later in canada with stephen harper). obama did not reverse this, but normalize it. and, trump is set to accelerate it.

it's really surreal to see it: these digital natives that hear sixty year-old pop music and think it's futuristic and get excited by it. do they have the same dreams as their great-grandparents, when they hear it?

it's really across the board: the so-called liberal press (like the toronto star, or the guardian) is universally supporting the islamic fundamentalist rebels over the secularists in the assad regime.

it's just a reminder that the press serves the interests of capital, and has little interest in promoting politics, except as a pragmatic tool to serve it's masters.

if it was about ideology and maximizing freedom, you would expect these sources to support assad over the rebels. this is, after all, the reason the rebels can't win: the syrian people (rightly) see them as a bunch of tyrannical terrorists that want to enforce sharia law. they're fully aware that they'll have more freedoms under assad than they will under any combination of islamic rebels that may take over and start slaughtering the infidels and cleansing the population by ethnicity.

but, it's not about ideology and it's not about what is best for the syrian people, as the syrian people themselves have very clearly decided. it's about acting as an arm of propaganda for an aggressive military machine that wants to push the russians out of the middle east at any cost.

they use terms like 'measured' and 'decisive', which are only meaningful within this delusional framework of manifest destiny - as though america has some obligation, let alone a mandate, to rule the world by the threat of benevolent force.

the syrians didn't vote for donald trump. the only winner of any elections there is assad.

the rhetoric will fly in a certain circle, but that circle is exactly the circle of liberal elitists that think it is their birthright to rule.

this is language that has some logic when applied to donors. but, to think you're going to sway the population by convincing them of the merits of some kind of benevolent aristocracy is...it's indicative of the closed-loop thinking that produces it.

they're making a classic french or russian style revolution necessary. the kind that cuts off the head of the inherited classes....

no, i'll say this again - and i was consistent all the way through the cycle.

trump's foreign policy sounded better, or at least it did in bullet form. if you let him try and explain it, it became obvious that the reality was that he didn't have the slightest idea of what he was talking about. so, it meant nothing. in the end - once he was properly briefed - his foreign policy would basically be indiscernible from clinton's, because clinton's foreign policy was just a reflection of the existing status quo in the first place.

the difference was that clinton would repeat what the wonks had said and then try and market it, whereas trump would just go play golf instead.

no, i said that - i told you he'd spend most of his time playing golf.

so, yes, the military-industrial establishment and the neo-cons are reasserting themselves. they work with the big banks to push the contracts through.

trump's viewpoints during the cycle were a reflection of his ignorance and "evolved" as a consequence of being briefed. had he been briefed, he'd have sounded just like jeb, who sounded like he did because he'd been briefed.

i want to clarify that when i said the russians were going to react, that didn't mean i expected that they were going to launch missiles or invade poland or something.

the russians are not nearly as stupid as the americans are, and they fully understand that war in the 21st century is largely fought off of the battlefield.

what i meant was that you can expect that they are going to find a way to frustrate the situation.

here's an example: when obama put sanctions down on russia after crimea, the russians reacted by installing air defense systems in iran, which eventually forced obama to pull out of the iran deal (the so-called iran deal is just a face saving mechanism to obscure the reality that the russians closed the door). that was a major retaliatory measure, but nobody died in the process.

the russians have already indicated that they are going to be increasing their air defenses in syria. that is itself a provocative retaliatory step. and, i would expect further subtle actions meant to slow down and screw up the containment policy.

i apologize if you misunderstood what i meant, but this doesn't make the situation any less serious. the war is in motion. it is hot. it will get messy. and, much of it will escape the understanding of "analysts".