In 1989 Francis Fukayama declared that we had reached “The End of History.” Democracy as a form of government would, in fact, be the end of the evolution of human interaction. The West had triumphed and that the rest was ‘just a chase scene,’ to borrow a phrase from Neal Stephenson’s brilliant dystopian novel “Snow Crash.”
But, this past week’s events in the Middle East tell me that autocracy has replaced democracy and the trans-national parliamentary system of the European Union that Fukayama championed in his 2007 article in The Guardian.
The EU no longer practices representative Democracy today. Diktats come down from unelected technocrats in Brussels. They are wholly-owned by stateless rent-seeking oligarchs (i.e. George Soros). Everyone in and around the EU is expected to obey or face tanks in the streets (Spain) or endless legal entanglements from captured international courts (Poland).
If you circumvent the rules, the EU will change them to suit its masters’ needs. Just look at any proposed Russian pipeline into Europe over the past five years.
In the U.S. we have been subjected to the worst form of operant conditioning by an unelected Deep State and its quisling media for a year. They created the mass delusion that President Donald Trump is a secret Russian agent.
The goal was to overturn a democratic election, which itself the people had to overcome systemic voter fraud to win.
When, in fact, everyone who is involved in creating this mass delusion are covering up their collusion with Russia in ways that are espionage and treason.
So, consider me unimpressed with Fukayama’s assessment of history. History is one of the praxeological disciplines. Economics is another. Any historical analysis bereft of economic imperatives is worthless.
And Fukayama’s end of history argument is the height of worthless history because it doesn’t ask the basic question “Cui Bono?” Who benefits?
The End of Saudi Arabia as We Know it
Saudi Arabia has simply replaced one group of autocrats with another, Crown Prince (and soon to be King) Mohammed bin Salman. There is not one democratic impulse in his body. But he is the tip of the spear that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are wielding to remake the landscape in the Middle East.
Bin Salman’s moves have been stunning in their severity and swiftness. But, if you are going to move against the most powerful people in the world, act fast or be destroyed.
There is a full-court press on to bring to light the extensive corruption of our political class from Washington to Tel Aviv, Brussels to Beirut. And while barred from openly coordinating policy or even talk with each other, Putin and Trump are supporting each other’s moves while looking like they aren’t.
The status quo in Saudi Arabia is over. It’s bin Salman’s country now. Thank Putin and Trump for this. The old alliances between it and Israel are now out in the open, creating cognitive dissonance in a whole new class of people. It’s reach into governments around the world has been severed.
Hundreds of billions in assets frozen. Dozens of family members jailed, many major donors to the corrupt-to-the-bone Democratic National Committee.
A major pillar of U.S. control atomized with the arrest of Prince Alaweed.
The coincidence cannot be ignored. Everything happens in politics for a reason.
And for every pundit confused by what is happening, worried that this is a prelude to regional war I remind you that there are always multiple interpretations of the same events. Such is the grist for history’s mill.
For example, that missile fired from Yemen at the Saudi capital conveniently had ‘proof’ of its Iranian origin. Was this bin Salman’s false flag or someone else’s?
As Zerohedge pointed out this morning:
The narrative is familiar: just as European terrorists conveniently commit suicide and always dutifully bring along their passports so they can be identified, so Iran always makes sure it leaves identifying marks when it illegally sells its weapons to Houthi rebels in Yemen.
Lingering Questions
What if bin Salman’s purge was a reaction to a false-flag to gin up a war with Iran?
Israeli and U.S. Deep State forces have motive. They are on the verge of losing everything? Certainly it’s as plausible as it being the opening act of bin Salman’s next foreign intervention.
Why was Donald Trump greeted by China’s leadership in a way that no foreign leader in the past 60 years was ever treated?
Could it be that despite his ham-fisted rhetoric, Premier Xi Jinping knows that Trump is, in fact, sincere in dismantling that portion of the U.S. Empire that no longer serves anyone’s interests except the very favored few who meet in Davos and Jackson Hole every year?
And that Trump will come to embrace China’s One Belt, One Road Initiative as good for the U.S. as well as the rest of the world?
Trump went out of his way to greet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Vietnam at the beginning of APEC, despite intense pressure for him not to do so. Again, why?
Is this the behavior of a man about to go to war? Be impeached?
Multiple Ways to Drain a Swamp
The path to draining the swamp is a circuitous one but, in my mind, it’s hard to argue where things are headed. They are not headed towards confrontation with Iran but actually the opposite.
The most rabidly anti-Iranian segment of the Saudi Royal house is impoverished and imprisoned.
CNN will be sold and go out of business to allow for the Time-Warner/AT&T merger. Jeff Zucker is out. Add another scalp to Steve Bannon’s belt along with Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey and so many to come.
Will the vestiges of the neoconservative establishment in the U.S. and Israel continue to sabre-rattle and try to undermine what is happening? Yes.
They’ve been doing that since the day Trump was elected just over a year ago, but it hasn’t stopped the momentum. Why? Because Putin was on the job outmaneuvering them at every turn.
Trump made a deal with the neocons back in August to cede them control of foreign policy and, in effect, outsourced cleaning up the Middle East to Putin. But, predictably they also didn’t follow through with their end of the bargain.
Trump learned, like Putin did, the John McCain’s of the world don’t keep to their deals. They are ‘not agreement capable.’ And, as such, since the last failure to repeal Obamacare Trump has gone after every pillar of support these people had.
It will end with Hillary Clinton’s indictment. But in the meantime it will look like the world is on the brink of world war.
And History’s Just Fine
Eventually, Saudi Arabia looked at the game board and saw that it was alone. King Abdallah saw the changes that had to be made. He met with Putin, they agreed on slightly-higher oil prices. China offered to buy an Aramco stake but that would mean cutting ties completely with the U.S.
I believe that offer was a bluff. It was meant to send bin Salman to Trump who agreed to get the Aramco IPO done in New York but he had to take control and end the royal family’s support of evil around the world.
Pat Buchanan’s latest column laments that no one listens when the U.S. barks anymore. But, at the same time, what the U.S. is barking hasn’t been worth the air it disturbed in more than twenty years since the End of History.
This is what happens when you ‘Cry Wolf’ too many times.
Benjamin Netanyahu is finally going to learn that lesson in the coming weeks.
The extent of bin Salman’s purge and its effects on not just the Middle East but the U.S. and the EU can only be assessed in hindsight by historians. A future Fukayama will come along and see this and declare another end to history.
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