Cat Show 8/13/2021
Friday 13, 2021. Black Cat Edition of the Cat Show.
VG: So I guess, Hobbs has to start today, so go on with your cynical finest. Tell us something that we don’t know about our war-mongering nation. War on drugs, war on terrorism, war on climate, war on virus. Will it ever end? When this loud mouth idiot who is smart enough to rake money from the gullible NYT readers while marrying the heir of some real estate mogul, begged the country to give war a chance, he never expected to get that successful.
HOBBS: What’s there to say? When modern wars are viewed as “the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan” and then greeted as “one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad,” all bets are off. People are killed, people are betrayed, tons of money wasted, and yet, this black hole of American exceptionalism is sold to intelligent and educated people as “the noblest thing” by some penguin pretending to be a journalist, while Assange is being shipped from jail to jail, there is nothing much to add.
ALICE: Come on, people make mistakes. You guys like enthusiasm and you always get carried away by this or that. The crux of the matter is simple. Afghanistan did its job of dragging Soviet Union down. We went through the years of spectacular NATO growth, of EU expansion, of the whole world getting Americanized. Should we really be concerned with some small failures of one insignificant military campaign in Afghanistan. We’ve just shown the world the audacity of our hope, and that we can. We can invade, bomb, destroy, betray, make stupid decisions and so on. Exactly like the rest of the world. And that’s what makes us exceptional. We are like others, and yet, we stand tall on the giant shoulders of wealth. Remember Marx talking about the magical power of money. That money makes ugly man look attractive, sick man – healthy and so on. With our giant budget that is wasted and wasted and is still growing and growing, we are ordinary men, which have turned exceptional.
VG: That’s a good point, Alice. Highly ordinary individuals, like this ignoramus Blinken, this bully, Nuland, this senior citizen, Biden, this goody-two shoes lawyer, Mueller, have been turned into the most powerful figures on earth. I always thought it was because of propaganda. But you are right: money talks, bullshit walks. Propaganda always loses to a good old lobbying or monetary contribution.
HOBBS: Wars are meant to be continued, not won, as we all know from the classics. In general, I would say, had nasty things never existed, they should have been invented. Only when there is a war, we can appreciate peace. Only when there is betrayal and incompetence, we can appreciate loyalty and expertise. Just imagine that Ukraine didn’t exist? What would other countries, which are run on greed, incompetence, corruption and hatred, do? They would have been forced to improve. But now they all point to Ukraine, and tell their own citizens: you see. So don’t complain, it can always be worse. And so United States provided a tremendous favor to all other idiotic projects. Can you imagine how badly would any country feel, had they invaded someone, wasted trillions of dollars and countless lives, and then had nothing to show for all these sacrifices. Nothing! But now this country can always point to US, and say to its own population: stop complaining, we could have wasted even more, just look at US in Afghanistan.
VG: Nice point as well. US has always been ahead of the rest of the world. When they practiced free speech other countries tried to follow. Now they practice freedom of FB and Twitter instead of freedom of speech. And the rest of the world is following as well. You don’t like the opinion, just deplatform it, or ban it, or put it at the very bottom of the newsfeed, or drown it in useless advertisement. There are so many spectacular methods, that the rest of the world can emulate. Hack, spy, monitor, collect data…
ALICE: Well, that just proves superiority of American model one more time. We always leave others in the dust and keep them confused and guessing. When there was a suppression of speech, we practiced freedom. Well, now everyone has freedom of speech, people in Russia enjoy the diversity of opinions and outlets never dreamed before in their land of censorship. Yet, one more time we got ahead of them, and began to practice benign supervision, and noble suppression of fake opinions, and public shaming, and state bullying and all other forms of liberal coercion. Gee, what I country. For the next election, I’ll use all my nine lives and cast all my nine votes for democrats, since only they can combine the best of Russia and US, of fascism and liberalism, of pomposity and humility, of corruption and sacrifice.
HOBBS: Alice, not all the combinations are good. I know you like to combine fresh food with yesterday’s throw up, but a lot of other cats find it repulsive. So the fact that Democrats are combining the worst of Conservatives with the worst of Progressives, is hardly worthy even of one vote, let alone nine. Furthermore, if you gonna persist in your corrupt Democratic ways, we can always introduce a bill demanding black cats’ votes counting for two.
VG: Well, we have to win by the strength of our ideas, not the ingenuity of our corruption. Besides, in this latter category, no one – not even Karl Rove --will ever beat Ukraine, the country of Gogolian imagination and inventiveness.
HOBBS: Finally I understood why the US is forging special relations with Ukraine. If a country can peddle murderers and nazi collaborators as national heroes, the sky is the limit. Israelies, skillful as they are, can’t peddle illegal settlements as freedom villages, or double standards as equality and democracy. Ukraine, however, pulls such stunts every day. We can never allow Chinese or Russians to become that good! So in the meantime, let’s proclaim our twenty year long adventure in Afghanistan as “the most glorious exercise of democracy building ever since we nuked Japan.”
