Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
BCF : We are living in a material world, after all
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made it clear that what Boris
Yeltsin in the 1990s called “the cold peace” has given way to Cold War
II.
The first Cold War was a struggle not only of nations and alliances
but also of systems—capitalism versus communism. The second Cold War is
already a struggle among systems as well, pitting countries that focus
on manufacturing (China) and resources (Russia) in the physical world
against an alliance led by the United States, which for the last
generation has sacrificed much of its own manufacturing and mining to
specialize in global leadership in finance, services, and entertainment.
To put it another way, the contest of models in Cold War II is not
about ownership of the means of production; it is about material
production versus immaterial service provision.
The
other side in the new Cold War is very good at making things, mining
minerals, and growing food. In contrast, the U.S. economy, although it
still manufactures many products and is highly productive in energy and
agriculture, rewards and celebrates those who make apps and loans—after a
generation in which American business and financial elites made
fortunes by offshoring industrial jobs and facilities to China and
Taiwan.
Beginning
in the Clinton years, policymakers and economists of both parties
celebrated the shift of the United States to a “post-industrial
economy.” In a speech titled “The Challenges of Success”
to tech executives and investors in San Francisco on April 28, 1998,
the neoliberal economist Larry Summers, then deputy secretary of the
treasury, celebrated the allegedly immaterial information economy: “The
twin forces of information technology and modern competitive finance are
moving us toward a post-industrial age,” he said.
Silicon Valley and
Wall Street, not manufacturing or agriculture or oil and gas, symbolized
the “new economy.” Summers listed examples of this new economy—“AIG in
insurance, McDonald’s in fast food, Walmart in retailing, Microsoft in
software, Harvard University in education, CNN in television news.” Let
backward, old-fashioned East Asians and Germans make cars and TV sets
and telephones and computers; America will sell insurance and
infotainment to the world.
