KENYA
Population: 50 million accomplices to US presidential fraud
Top Export: US presidents
Chief Industries: Birth-certificate forgery
Federal Organization: 57 counties
Economy: Spreading the wealth around
Health Care: If you like your doctor, you can keep him
National Motto: You Didn’t Build That
US Stance: Positive until the truth was revealed in 2009
NORWAY
Population: A horrifying sea of small tyrants who drown sensitive men in their typhoons of misery
Government: Foolish men and women who put on their suits one button at a time to pretend they don’t stare at the maw of death with whatever niceties standing in their way
Economy: Mixed melancholy/command economy
Exports: Authors who write five-hundred-thousand-page autobiographies that track every argument they ever got into with their parents, Nazi occult blogs, dried fish spine
Most Popular TV Shows: My vulgar parents did not allow a television, instead wishing to fill the gaping pit of entertainment with small psychic wounds and inadequacies, The Never-Ending Rainy Walk, Sir You Already Paid for Your Coffee (top-rated comedy for the last twenty years)
Suicide Rate: 112 percent
Maximum prison sentence: Forty-five days
US Stance: Pity
CHINA
Population: 1.4 billion socialists with Chinese characteristics
Government: Under the dynamic leadership of President Xi Jinping, the full party has united in full confidence in the path, theory, and system of Chinese socialism
Economy: Socialism with Chinese characteristics is the integration of the theory of scientific socialism and the social development theories of Chinese history. This conclusion is the result of historical exploration and the will of the people.
Mao Zedong’s Thought: An enduring spirit currently being upheld both in the building of the party and the advancement of the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics
The Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation: A dream shared by all Chinese
National Defense: A people’s armed forces that follows the Party’s commands and is able to win and is exemplary in conduct
US Stance: Anxiously checking rearview mirror
Schlock Doctrine
* * *
After a half century of gridlock, we finally got the upper hand against our big governmental rival in Russia. The breakthrough came in the late 1980s after the Soviets tried to regulate small businesses in Afghanistan. Seizing the opportunity to innovate, we created a new platform for warfare that empowered independent contractors known as Mujahideen, who were looking to thrive in the gig economy. The inflexible bureaucracy of the Red Army, bogged down by licenses and worker benefits, simply couldn’t compete. The beauty of our strategy lay in its simplicity: We could spend almost unlimited sums of money and create a whole slew of new jobs for self-motivated freelancers with very little screening or oversight. Sure, this led to our fair share of PR setbacks, including one-star reviews for unreliable contractors like Mohamed Atta, but that came further down the line.
Then, in 1989, Ronald Reagan finally ended Communism by boldly declaring, “Mother, where are my jelly beans?” shitting himself, and karate-chopping the Berlin Wall exactly four times. (The combined pressures of falling oil prices, the invasion of Afghanistan, nationalist movements, and the internal contradictions of the Soviet system may also have played a role.) With collapse on the horizon, Mikhail Gorbachev was stuck with a serious crisis. Thankfully for everyone, the West was eager to lend a helping hand. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to free the East from the tyranny of planned economies and government jobs. Thanks to the ambition and corruption of Boris Yeltsin, US policymakers, and the chaos god Loki, the Soviet Union splintered into dozens of new, independent start-ups, while America and her allies carried out an aggressive strategy for the acquisition of Eastern Europe’s state assets.
Yeltsin woke up on a snowmobile in 1999 with no memory of the previous ten years. When he got back to his office in the Kremlin, his staff informed him that he’d sold off all Russia’s resources to pirates, mob bosses, and Western corporate interests. (Damning, to be sure, but don’t act like you haven’t done worse while drunk.) Yeltsin facilitated a “shock therapy” economic liberalization program, otherwise known as private equity, assisted by American whiz kids like Jeffrey Sachs and Larry Summers. It led to the largest drop in peacetime life expectancy of the twentieth century. But they got McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, so it’s a wash. Why live past fifty-five when you’ve already fulfilled your greatest dreams?
Somehow, an epic deal like “consumer goods in exchange for the privatization of your entire economy” wasn’t good enough for many Russians, and Yeltsin faced a difficult reelection campaign in 1996. A Communist Party candidate threatened to return Russia to the Bad Old Days of guaranteed employment, free housing, and low infant mortality rates. Luckily, some American lanyards (and a few billion dollars from oligarchs and Western interests) helped swing the election for Yeltsin. He repaid the good faith of his country’s citizens (and the loans of his benefactors) with more privatization, eventually handing power to former KGB officer and competitive CrossFitter Vladimir Putin.
Putin proceeded to turn Russia into a supercharged version of America, with all the bigotry, inequality, and sham-democracy that went along with it. When Putin’s new souped-up national-capitalist aggro-state sought to reclaim the sphere of influence it had lost after the fall of Communism, was the US proud of the precious, rapacious child it had raised? No! First, Mitt Romney identified Russia as America’s biggest global threat in 2012, and then, four years later, all the liberals who had giggled at that bit of backward-looking hysteria decided that Mitt was right after all and that a good way to #resist President Cheeto would be to send antiaircraft missiles to the Babi Yar Reenactment Society in Ukraine. Some people and some countries just can’t take yes for an answer.
Euro-America
* * *
With the former Soviet Union foreclosed on, the last real threat to American global hegemony had been eliminated.I The future looked bright enough to necessitate shades, so to speak. The final piece of the project was to create a single market out of the hodgepodge of fractious cheese-producing nations in Europe.
Once the danger of Soviet invasion was gone, the ruling classes could begin turning Europe into a slightly grimier version of EPCOT. All the continent’s distinct nationalisms, with their meatballs and blackface Santas, would be preserved as local flair, while economic and political power were centralized in the headquarters of the new European Union. Unfortunately for the globalist schemers, European national identity proved more resilient than anticipated—something Slobodan Milošević could have told them in between genocides. So instead of going forward with political unification (dead-on-arrival), they went through the back door with a currency-based union, figuring that with time, the political institutions would catch up with the reality on the ground.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the End of History: a financial crisis in 2008 that the Euro system was completely incapable of handling. You can’t totally blame them; they were told that capitalism had won, and this kind of thing really wasn’t supposed to happen anymore. Despite that, the European Central Bank responded to the ’08 crisis with a Wahhabist-style neoliberal austerity that even the moderate consensus-makers in Washington didn’t have the stomach for. Cue permanent immiseration in the peripheral states of the Euro (the so-called PAWGs) who couldn’t devalue their currency to boost exports, and aid so-called labor reform in the rest of Europe. Today Europe can be divided into the countries with sun, good weather, great food, and sex but terrible economies and those with great economies but total darkness, awful food, and even worse sex. However, all of Europe remains strongly united against male circumcision, and as such is still far, far ahead of America.
> All this economic hardship, coupled with a spiraling refugee crisis and the continued inability of political institutions to address any of it, has led to a big retro-trend across the continent: That’s right, the thirties are back! Dance marathons! Art Deco! The rise of organized fascist political movements!
EMPIRES: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
BRITISH EMPIRE
1913
* * *
LAND AREA: 13,000,000 sq mi (approx.)
LEADER: His Majesty George V, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India
CAREER OPPORTUNITIES: Cannon Fodder, Sepoy, Colonial Officer Pedophile
LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH: Running straight into a hail of machine-gun fire because an inbred Etonian who looks like Nigel Thornberry ordered you to
MOTTO: The sun never sets on the British Empire
DOWNFALL: World War II
UNITED KINGDOM
2018
* * *
LAND AREA: Everything between the Tesco and the Chunnel
LEADER: Co-Emperors Noel and Liam Gallagher
CAREER OPPORTUNITIES: Hooligan, Bloke, Radio DJ Pedophile
LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH: Heart attack while posting “id give theresa a good rogering, shame corbyn wants to put her in a burka” in the Daily Mail comment section
MOTTO: Winter is coming
DOWNFALL: British accent no longer considered smart by rest of world
ROMAN EMPIRE
117 AD
* * *
SIZE: From Britannia to Persia, Lusitania to Axum
LEADERS: Augustus Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Trajan
MOTTO: Senatus Populusque Romanus
GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS: Built roads, amphitheaters, and aqueducts that stand to this day; killed Christ
DOWNFALL: Vandalism
ITALY
2018
* * *
SIZE: Boot
LEADERS: Bunga bunga master who owns a TV network, anyone in the “sanitation business”
MOTTO: When you’re here, you’re family
GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS: “I am, ehhh, how you say, artista. Come to my appartamento, I show you my cazzo.”
DOWNFALL: Mistress refused to have third abortion
AMERICAN EMPIRE
2018
* * *
PRESIDENT: Donald Trump
GREATEST CITIES: New York, Los Angeles, Orlando
OPPOSITION LEADERS: Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Jimmy Kimmel
MOTTO: E Pluribus Unum
MILITARY: $639,000,000,000 budget, over one million under arms, bases in over 150 countries
DOWNFALL: Read the rest of the book, dummy
N E 0 M E R I C @
2041
* * *
PROCONSUL: Logan Paul
GREATEST CITIES: SeaSteadia, the Walmart in Columbus, Ohio, that isn’t completely flooded, New York (still the #1 greatest, classiest city in the world, baby. Go Yanks, Mets, Giants, Jets, Knicks, Nets, Rangers!!)
OPPOSITION LEADERS: The Morlock Conclave, Immortan Musk, the second coming of Jesus Christ
MOTTO: No Xans, No Lean, Smoke Purp
MILITARY: Three gigantic biomechanical beings known as “Evangelions,” or “Evas” for short, piloted by three unique and gifted teenagers who possess nervous systems capable of melding with the cybernetic creatures
DOWNFALL: Shinji refuses to pilot his Eva
You WoT, Mate?
* * *
Let us put aside this corporate fable of the American Century and turn now to the world you know and love. At the time of this writing, the War on Terror is now in its seventeenth year, becoming, as NatSec intellectuals like to put it, “a generational commitment.” It has gone from the unprecedented, epoch-defining focus of our national destiny to something we all just meekly accept and largely tune out as it hums along in the background as kids born in September 2001 reach military age. US policy currently involves allying with the “moderate” elements of Al Qaeda and the Taliban against newer, evil-er kinds of terrorists and their state sponsors. Outside of this very easy and base irony, one can assess the value of the war by entertaining a simple thought experiment: How much safer would both America and the rest of the world be right now if our government’s response to 9/11 was to pretend it didn’t happen and do absolutely nothing?
Would the Middle East be the cauldron of violence it is today? Would ISIS exist? Would we witness the same number of terrorist attacks in Europe? Would a million or so people have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan? Almost certainly not. But remember, for the national security class and the small cadre of Ford administration has-beens who came to power before 9/11, all these details are features, not bugs, of the War on Terror. The cascade of atrocities and disasters that issued forth from this US-led crusade, from ISIS snuff films to sectarian bloodletting to institutionalized torture to mass surveillance to the refugee crisis to an American culture warped by militarism and troop worship, is just further justification for why we must stay the course. Your ability to safely work in an office building, go to a concert, run a marathon, take mass transit, or fly in an airplane free from any unplanned inconveniences is at best incidental, and at worst actively hostile, to the goals and logic of the War on Terror.
The thing we call the War on Terror is, like pretty much every other war, a crude land grab for control of resources, oil pipelines, and good old-fashioned access to markets. The national security state used the pretext of 9/11 and the blowback from the Cold War as ways to drum up a chintzy version of the war economy from World War II and replace our fucked-up retail-debt economy after we killed the golden goose of American industry and manufacturing.
Infobox: Terms for NatSec Wonks in Other Countries
* * *
The world lay in ruins in the aftermath of the Second World War. The Allied victors knew mankind could not survive another cataclysm. In order to skirt destruction on a biblical scale, postwar leaders would resort to an affront to God even more devastating than nuclear weapons: wonks.
When tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States flared in a divided Berlin immediately after the war, both powers and their respective allies began stockpiling as many wonks as they possibly could. These technocrats were given the task of advising presidents, prime ministers, or really anyone who had similar backgrounds to the wonks themselves.
Now they’re a staple of modern government. Across all nations, wonks’ identifiable traits are social ineptitude and physical disagreeableness. Their habitats are foundations and think tanks. The only way they differ is in how they’re named. Below are samples of different wonk-nomenclature from across the globe.
RUSSIA: Mysl’ truslivyy (Thought Coward)
CHINA: Cèsuǒ tàijiàn (Toilet Eunuch)
JAPAN: Hiretsuna akushū basutādo (Dishonorable Stench Bastard)
FRANCE: Crétin fétiche (Fetish Moron)
UNITED KINGDOM: Spreadsheet Cunt
POLAND: Francuz (Frenchman)
SWEDEN: Skogsidiot (Forest Imbecile)
SOUTH KOREA: Laeteuwa mun saiui geunchinsang-gan chulsaeng-ui geeuleun adeul (Lazy Son Born of Incest between Rat and Moon)
INDONESIA: Pantat basah (Wet Ass)
GERMANY: [banned]
ISRAEL: בתולה שימושית (Useful Virgin)
BRAZIL: Pé obsessivo (Foot Obsessive)
SPAIN: Error en el blog (Blog Failure)
DENMARK: Frosne kønsorganer (Frozen Genitals)
SAUDI ARABIA: Alyahudi (Jew)
NORTHERN VIRGINIA: Tier-One Operator
Now, we don’t want to give you the impression that it’s all just simply blood for oil. A great deal of the blood is indeed being exchanged for oil, but the people who dreamed up this never-ending story think American control of the world’s oil supply is but a perk compared to restoring America’s martial spirit and imperial vigor. The fact is, we’ve been gun-shy
about being a great power since Vietnam and pathetically idle since the end of the Cold War robbed us of a worthy adversary. The Twin Towers imploding on national television was just what we needed to put some fire in our bellies, spring in our steps, and vengeance in our hearts. For a Straussian, endless and aimless struggle against evil is just what the doctor ordered for our hyperindividualized and alienated culture, not to mention a great way to keep military budgets and their pleated trousers swole. The War on Terror is the bathtub our empire lies in, surveying a sunset over a wheat field in the Cialis commercial that is our twenty-first-century international statecraft.
While pretty much any president—including the one who actually won the 2000 election—would have attacked Afghanistan after 9/11, only George W. Bush and company were in the right place at the right time to really get this bigger project off the ground. In the words of Donald Rumsfeld: Afghanistan lacked any “good targets” to obliterate—and so it was off to Iraq. They wanted a twenty-first-century world stage dictated by American military might, and refused to accept a multipolar world in which powers simply used diplomacy to jockey for advantage. For the neocons and the defense establishment, though, that would be heresy, because we have the biggest military in the world, and, in the words of Madeleine Albright, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” Sure, America can “negotiate” with other powers, but always “from a position of strength”—i.e., a big military presence where all the oil is.
Anyway. There’s no point in litigating the Iraq War too much. It’s the defining disaster of this new American Century. It should be sufficient to say that the justifications for it, from WMD to any supposed concern for the freedom and well-being of the Iraqi people, were obvious confabulations that fooled only those who wanted to be conned and those who just didn’t care because the thought of war excited them so much. This included pretty much all the media, government, and cultural elites of this country, and it remains the gold standard for how we should judge them. (One demographic decidedly not fooled was black Americans, almost 70 percent of whom opposed the war out of some sense that America is actually kind of bad.II) Meanwhile, our thought leaders in the government and media stuck with it as bravely as they could through the rising body counts and the Abu Ghraib revelations until around 2007, when they were finally forced by Bush’s top-to-bottom incompetence to give up the ghost.
The Chapo Guide to Revolution Page 3
