This one was interesting. I had an idea for a couple historical comparison videos in light of Trump’s second term and the assassination of Charlie Kirk. My typical practice is to then spend months or weeks developing them before publishing a finished product. But I have too many of those projects already. So I figured I should just push this one and next week’s videos out in unproduced form without too much introspection or overthinking. It’s not as produced as I might like, but the ideas are out there. What do you think?
Folks have been asking me about this Ryan McBeth video for ages now. He claims that the Military Industrial Complex doesn’t exist. I don’t think it’s surprising that I’d disagree. At a little more length that was perhaps necessary.
It’s surprising how little time I’ve spent talking about the drug war on this channel. It was actually the first topic the MFF addressed, all the way back in 2011. Back then we all thought that Mexico’s drug war had reached a horrific peak, but since then it seems to have only escalated. Today’s video covers a lot, from the reason why half the congress seems to be chomping at the bit to invade Mexico all of a sudden, the true unacknowledged sources of the Mexican catastrophe, and a really, really important data point that everybody is ignoring, and I didn’t even notice until I was halfway through the editing process.
It’s been a while since I’ve looked at US involvement in the Middle East in depth. I’ve been doing a deep dive into the history of Yemen for months now, but that was mostly pre-1983, when the US decided to make the Middle East our daily problem with the founding of Centcom. Over the past month or so I’ve dived deep, not just into the “Greater War For the Middle East” (as Andrew Bacevich calls it) but also into the unified combatant command structure that is solidifying US empire all over the world. My view on all of this is… somewhat grim. I hope the video isn’t too much of a downer.
I feel like I’m weirdly a lot more optimistic about American power today than most of the US media is. Today I lay out why I think that may be. The US is reacting to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as some inexplicable horror, another step back towards history’s chaos, and another sign that the American world order is falling to pieces. As more of a cynic, and a student of foreign relations, my sense is that the US world order has been falling apart since at least 2003. What Russia has done in Ukraine, is give us a second chance. By conclusively setting himself up as a more destructive and dangerous actor than the US government, Putin has given the US world order a new lease on life.
What’s vital in this moment is that we seize that opportunity. Europe is now back on our side in ways it hasn’t been for two decades. What we should do now, is try to win over the rest of the world by improving our relations with old enemies that no longer matter. To it’s credit, the Biden administration is already trying to do this with Iran and Venezuela. Unfortunately, they are being blocked by their efforts to do so, and not just by Republicans. I think it’s a failure of understanding. US government and media don’t understand just how bad the situation was, and how valuable a window Russia has given us. Today’s video is my attempt to explain the situation.
As it becomes more and more clear that getting out of Afghanistan was the right thing to do, we should look to apply these lessons elsewhere… like Syria.
One of my favorite description’s of journalism is “writing the first draft of history”. I would certainly never presume to call myself a journalist, but I am definitely interested in history drafting. That’s definitely what I’m attempting with today’s video. I have already published a fair amount on Afghanistan, first in short angry bursts, and then in a longer live version. This is my first attempt to reckon with the legacy of Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal with a full, produced video. Among foreign policy nerds like me, there is a growing consensus that Joe Biden saved both the Afghan and American people from decades of horror by biting the bullet and dragging the US military out of there. The problem is that nobody is publicizing this emerging consensus. What the voters, and the pollsters every president listens to, will remember is the two week media freak out that we all saw in late August and Early September. That’s a very bad thing, if we ever want a US president to end a war again. No matter how disappointed I am in other areas (Yemen!), I think it’s vital to celebrate Joe Biden’s Afghanistan success. So that’s what today’s video does.
I have been reading a lot about China lately, and the more I read, the more disturbed I get about the way Taiwan is currently discussed in the United States. For half a century this topic has been understood as the mother of all red lines when it comes to US-China relations. That is no longer the case for discussions in the United States. I am pretty sure it’s still a massive red line for China. Uncharacteristically, I now do think there is a chance of war between the US and China. But because of US aggression, not US withdrawal…
This one is less about concrete ideas around India and Pakistan than it is a call to arms (or a call against arms) for everybody to learn more about the topic. The gap between the importance of this conflict and the amount of knowledge analysts, let alone the general public, have about it is vast. India and Pakistan are some of the largest countries on the planet, they have nuclear weapons, and they have the sort unsettled borders and over-powerful militaries that make further conflict more likely than not. Today’s video makes the case for making the region the channel’s next big project.
Heeere we go! With this channel’s 500th video, we’re asking the audience to decide what we should cover next! Should it be Israel and Palestine? Should it be Afghanistan, Pakistan and India? Should it be US Empire? This isn’t a question of what I’m covering next week, but what my next, big, multi-year project will be. It’s the 2$ and up patrons that get to pick between these three options…
