Over Easy: Dmitry Orlov
Dmitry Orlov is an engineer or rather and ex-engineer who had the experience of living on the former Soviet Union and the US at the time of the USSR collapse. He got to see and experience first hand what happens and how a major economic system self destructs over time and has written many books on the subject as well.
In the process he also was able to witness the same or very, very similar circumstances happening to this country. His blog Club Orlov contains essays by himself as well as others. Though I do not agree with all he has to say, I do find his writings to be both insightful as well as humorous. Like this on on the Inmates running the asylum. In which he concludes with:
Uncontrolled ranting—previously suppressed through confinement in mental institutions and medication—is now encouraged via social media, with an ever-expanding menu of rantworthy topics just a click away:
• 9/11 inside job
• global warming a government conspiracy
• contrails
• peak oil
• MMR vaccine causing autism
• rising ocean levels
• Obama being a space lizard
• the Federal Reserve undermining the country’s financial system
• the plastics plague
• Putin taking over the USSR
• near-term human extinction due to Arctic methane releasePick and choose, mix and match—it doesn’t matter which of these have a basis in consensual reality, and which don’t, because, you see, you are all “crazy people” now, and everything you say (on social media, because unmediated face-to-face access to other humans is now a rarity) is automatically a mad rant.
Taken to its logical conclusion, this progression ends in the gadgetization of the human brain itself—through neural implants. Then the choice of rantworthy topics, such as the ones listed above, would be controllable through a centralized administrative interface. So, for instance, if it turned out that Obama were indeed a space lizard (how embarrassing!) the administrator would simply click on “conspiracy theories,” click on the checkbox next to “Obama is a space lizard,” and click “uninstall.” Suddenly, Obama would no longer be a space lizard, or so the “crazy people” (the population at large) would be forced to immediately admit.
Or this on why the neocons lament the fall of The USSR. And the major differences between our collapse and that of the Soviet union.
During the existence of the USSR, the multi-ethnic composition of the country was given much emphasis. Numerous small nations had their languages written down for the first time, using the ever-expanding Cyrillic alphabet, and endowed with a national literature. National languages were included in school curricula, and various nations used them in their local self-governance, to enlarge their autonomy and improve social cohesion. In essence, the Russian Federation provides for ethnic sovereignty—each nation can claim a measure of sovereignty for itself, rule itself and create its own laws, provided they do not conflict with the larger whole. A prime example of this is modern Chechnya: Moscow is content to let it prosecute its own anti-terrorist campaign, to put down the remaining foreign-financed jihadis.
Imagine the principle of ethnic sovereignty being applied to the US, where one’s ethnicity is of no consequence provided one looks, sounds and behaves sufficiently Anglo. In the US, ethnicity has been reduced to questions of music and cuisine, with perhaps a festival here and there, but always with the tacit understanding that “ethnic” means “other”: there is no such thing as an “ethnic Anglo.” Since ethnicity is essentially taboo, the completely artificial construct of race is used instead, with artificial, discriminatory labels attached to categories of individuals. The label “Latino” is particularly bogus, since there is very little in common between, say, a Cuban and a Bolivian, except that both are likely to face discrimination, neither being considered sufficiently “white”—Anglo, that is. But imagine if the Mexicans or the African-Americans were to be granted a similar level of autonomy within the US? It would blow the country to pieces!
A country predicated on protecting “white privilege” cannot possibly survive such a corruption of its founding principles. The US fought a revolution to keep slavery legal (it was about to be abolished by the British); then it fought a civil war to change slavery from one form to another (there are more African-Americans in US jails now than there were slaves in the Confederate South prior to the Civil War).
The last bit I have brought up a few times myself. 🙂
Worth checking out Dmitry Orlov’s blog on occasion for a different take and some wry wit.
23 Comments
thanks, cmaukonen, I particularly like that Orlov throws into his rant category things I also credit, such as peak oil. Very good to shake folks up sometimes.
Good Morning All and thanks for the post, CM….very interesting. Still big coverage of the McKinney, TX debacle….child abuse by police…..makes us so proud.
I like Orlov’s take on a lot of things. Particularly The Ukraine and Russia.
Seeing a grown man, in uniform, sit on a kid just astonishes me, the smallest amount of training should have prevented that kind of misbehavior.
Incidentally I am thinking of putting together brief Friday OE posts when I do Saturday Art posts, just have a preview scheduled to go up since otherwise Fridays are a scramble – and really, folks just want a place to say hi.
Good morning pups. Cooling begins today. Yesterday temperature extremes in Oregon showed a range from 105°F (!) in Medford, (south of here on I5) compared to 68F in Manzanita on the coast.
Thanks Chris for the post. I’ll have to look at Orlov’s blog. Does he include himself in that rant category?
Are all white people Anglo Saxon? I’m not, by a long shot.
https://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090218225626AA5XA8Z
However, I am a native north american, which even my Cherokee friend admits to. Native but not indigenous?
Interesting, not sure the Serbo-Croats are at all Angles or Saxon, either. Guess it’s just a catchword.
Good morning everyone.
Thank you for the post cmaukonen.
I am not. Not on my father’s side. My mother’s side is mutt. Some German and some ? Tried to trace my grandfather’s heritage [mother’s father] back but could only get to Kansas city MO in the late 1800s and then it disappeared. Poof. No record at all.
Not sure what actually all the blood lines are, and my sister has done some geneology research, constantly runs into stories that are just plain wrong. My hispanic name is a bit of fun, it is thru marriage and my own family had Cajun, not Creole, in it. As far as I know.
morning, I guess school is out now?
have pumpkin calling my name
thanks for good company
Sure is Ruth. I missed all of you when I was in school and did sub for 6 weeks but it went really fast and the young lady had a beautiful baby girl.
I get to talk to you this morning as when I get here you have just left to tend to the garden and it looked really good in the picture last week.
You and spuds are a good team on that garden.
There is no doubt for me. I am second gen Slovak and Polish.
As the push has always been on Anglicisation the term Anglo-Saxon was useful.
Whiteness (in its expanded form) was and continues as another useful concept for the ruling class to divide the European serfs from the Africans and indigenous people.
My mother’s mother was Scots-Irish, her father was French Huguenot, my father’s mother was German, his father was English. Not a Catholic in the mix that I have learned of.
The Cherokees were a fascinating but of course tragic story. Andrew Jackson was a scoundrel for the Indian Removal Act.
The entire nation was founded on slavery and genocide.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-cherokee-leader-who-paved-the-way-for-mlk/2015/05/28/7325d05c-ffef-11e4-833c-a2de05b6b2a4_story.html?tid=sm_tw
Uncontrolled ranting.
I came by this a few days ago and found it interesting. It seems like a right-wing rant but with left-wing moon-battery built in. I don’t know what to make of it.
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/spring01/nuclear_power.html
Obama being a space lizard
nice to read praise for Obama.
Thanks for the link to John Ross.
Nice rant…. CM! Only kidding! Well done! I’m sure “dubz” will put me into that rant category. Problem is he has not been around here long enough to see how I’ve been rather, on point. I remember when EW asked what “nut” of coffee I prefer? I’ll rant here……….
This was way before Snowden was even employed……
I would warn of Savak, its intent and purpose in Iran, as set up by US and British Intelligence Services….
Then came Snowden, just like Chris Pyle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Pyle
I wonder why such a different response to Snowden’s revelations compared to Pyle’s exposure of an illegal intelligence gathering program employed against Americans? I guess for some it is just a silly question?
Did not the Soviets collect data on everyone, in every conceivable way to protect the Communist Party?
Did not work out to well for Soviets, it will not work here in America, or has it? I can’t tell anymore???
I tend to not put anyone on a pedestal these days. We all have our own built in biases that highly influence any pretext to reasoning. Orlov is one of the more entertaining reads though.
“Hey, it beats BAU Nooz” – Shill Team Six (Agnotology: The Surge – 17).
He is a favorite of mine too. These essays should be read by any who think Putin will continue to eat the West’s sh…poo for eternity
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2015/01/peculiarities-of-russian-national.html
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2014/08/how-can-you-tell-whether-russia-has.html