It’s The Big Turkey, Cooter Brown!

Happy Thanksgiving Day and/or Week, Americans and others outside the South! Oftentimes, we have so much that gladly calls out for our thanks. I’m thankful for all of you, beloved readers, and much more. Sometimes it may not look like it, but we have other things to be thankful for—things that don’t call as loudly or as gladly. Yet we are well-advised to be thankful for whatever comes our way: “Always rejoice. Pray without ceasing. In all things give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you all. Extinguish not the Spirit. Despise not prophecies.” 1 Thessalonians: 16-20. The events of the past four or so years have clarified the division between the Good, the True, and the Beautiful and the Wicked, the False, and the Ugly in stark terms and high definition. And the delineation continues. As hard as it is to believe, all of this is beneficial. I will therefore frame today’s discussion of events in grateful terms.

A Worthy Life and An Honorable Memory

Rosalynn Carter died the other day at the age of 96. She, with her husband and independently, had a full and meaningful life. She was the only American First Lady I ever met, and her husband the only Chief Executive. In the late winter or early spring of 2003, President Carter delivered a speech to the hive of incompetence known as the Georgia General Assembly. I watched and listened from the balcony. While I found them interesting at the time, I simply cannot recall what his remarks involved. But by then, I had begun to change my opinion of Carter, discarding the stock GOP lies about his amateurish incapabilities. In my view, he was perhaps the last of the genuine American Presidents who loved America, a man thrust into a nearly impossible situation. He did the best he could in politics and life. Mrs. Rosalynn was an integral part of his many trials, tribulations, and successes. 

Just before the speech ended, I determined that if it was possible, then I wanted to meet Carter. I calculated that he entered and would exit the Gold Dome via the Governor’s secure entrance, a door which by various friendships I was acquainted with. I immediately made my way down, outside, and to that door. Soon thereafter, Jimmah and Rosalynn emerged with but a small escort of state troopers and secret service agents. With me being the only other person present, we three instantly gravitated together. It was like meeting a third set of grandparents. Perhaps due to the passage of time rather than genetics, the Carters were smaller people. Short in stature, but enormous in Christian, human warmth and generosity. Unlike most others of the political class I have had the misfortune of meeting, they simply exuded a good and decent aura. In purely Southern terms, they were just “sweet” people. Also, like a couple of walking, talking teddy bears, they were adorable. When our brief, happy exchange ended, I, delighted, was somewhat tempted to pick them both up and squeeze them. There was the matter of decorum and the presence of armed guards, so I let the notion die in conception. Now, one of my teddy bear friends is gone with it and I suspect—as is too often the case with 77-year(!) marriages—the other will too soon pass. It was, if I can correctly remember, a day gray but pleasant; I will forever be thankful for it. 

Bifurcated Economics

Please take the time to watch or listen to the following interview discussion between Michael Hudson, Alexander Mercouris, and Glenn Diesen:

Hudson does most of the talking, in a way giving an abbreviated dissertation on many of his written works. While I am no fan of the age of post-literacy, I am thankful there are alternative means for reaching the postliterate should they dare to partake. This is one of them. Pay attention to how the divided world emerged, the financialized ruin of the West, the now obvious lies we’ve all been taught, China and Russia’s similar but still different approaches to handling the separation, and how any American Remnant might embrace a new practice comparable to the Sino-Russian model(s). For those trapped in the fog of the economic past, ever concerned about phantom chaos (as the real thing reigns around them) and the necessity of “legality,” pay extra attention to Xi’s dilemma concerning the banks and real estate and his likely simple solution. Breaking up and out is difficult, but not nearly as difficult or as damaging as staying down and in.

A New Argentine Chapter

About a year before I met the Carters, in one of my first published columns I pondered the monetary and economic turmoil in Argentina. That was the heyday of my conservative libertarianism, and, boy, did it show. While I got the gist of the currency and inflation issues right, I had to throw in a hearty exhortation of capitalism and freedom, and I even included a ubiquitous Adam Smith quote. In my defense, even as I had just experienced a wake-up call about the wickedness controlling America, I had yet to fully accept the differences between real capitalism and financialized fakery. My Smith quote was off because I (and he) had perhaps not fully comprehended what happens when public and private prodigality and misconduct meld together. I had also not accepted the extreme damage already done to America, which at the time, I thought was still salvageable. (I was young and idealistic!) But I did manage to correctly access large parts of the Argentine problem:

The government must back out of industries where it has no business and concentrate on those few issues truly central to government. … [banal talk about money supplies, history, and the gold standard] … What Duhalde needs to do is put the breaks on spending and turn off the printing press.

-Lovett, Perrin, “Cry For Argentina,” Broadly Speaking, Volume 7, Issue 2, January 2002.

My title was a take on Julie Covington’s song “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina,” as re-popularized by Madonna Ciccone in 1996. I’m thankful I still have the ability to remember past tripe I’ve cobbled and that some of it still makes a modicum of sense! At the time, I had a vague idea of the changes needed to salvage the economy in Buenos Aires. Today, I think I have a better understanding. It’s difficult to apply the breaks and turn off anything when the situation is largely in nefarious international hands. Over two decades later, the South American nation is still in much the same shape it was in back then. It still has the burden of illicit debts. It still has yet to control its monetary base. It is still mired in postmodern neoliberal necromancy. The great question for 2024 and beyond is whether Javier Milei is the long-awaited answer. He, a talking mop head, is known to his supporters as “the Crazy.” So crazy he just might work? Time will tell. Many of his position statements sound interesting and good. Others sound mildly alarming. But statements are mere rhetoric and there is little evidence at this time to dialectically support any of them. He has also won praise from many of the wrong people. He is a self-styled libertarian and I’m not sure of any regional specifications for that label. In general, libertarianism is just smiley-faced globalism by and for stoners. I have grave doubts and would caution anyone about getting too excited. Still, we will keep alive the Spirit.

The Hardest Call

As predicted by me some time ago, videos of dead and mutilated Ukrainian female soldiers are now available for viewing. I will not link to any and I do not advise seeking them out. But they exist. As we account for the probable one million-plus Ukrainian KIAs, we must now annotate in terms of men and women. Who knows what the total casualty count is and what it will be by the time Russia accepts Kiev’s unconditional surrender? What it all amounts to is a huge war crime, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Via their usual machinations, the usual suspects have managed to depopulate Ukraine by over 50% since February of 2022, and 60% since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The living demons in Brussels, London, and Washington will answer for their evil, on earth or beyond. For that, I am thankful.

Of course, they’re not finished yet. They won’t be until Moscow declares victory and installs a new government in the Clown’s failed Banderaite experiment. The new rumor is that Zelensky, the ultra-nationalist military junta around him, and the NATO Nazis behind him are now beginning to conscript boys as young as fourteen. This is very likely the truth, as the official narrative, told in a manner of preemptive and deflective cover, brags about forcible enlistment of eighteen-year-old boys. As Kiev’s stated figures are always off by a considerable margin, it stands to reason that minors will soon join their elders dead in the fields and trenches. It is elementary but it bears repeating: if all of the children and the young generations capable of having children are killed, then the subject population will go extinct. This may very well have been the plan for Ukraine all along, and a model for the greater annihilation the Clowns would have visited upon Russia. These prospects make the blood boil. Still, we may be thankful for another exposition of the depths of depravity the wicked will quickly delve into. We should also be grateful for the positive example of stalwart Russian awareness, will to resist, and manful ability to fight and defeat evil. 

It’s an odd assortment of stories and sentiments. But we should be thankful for all of them. Please enjoy Thanksgiving Day, the weekend of shopping, recovery, and football, and the coming Christmas Season. 

Deo vindice!