All apologies to the style of Emil Cioran.

With the neocons as much in ascendancy under Trump as any other being made apparent by recent actions in Syria, some general observations:

When, ever, on an issue of strategy have these people ever been right? Aside from boosting contractor stock portfolios I mean. They have never been right, yet the horrifying thing is that I increasingly sense this is not intentional by most, but the result of true ideological faith. American Exceptionalism meets Jonestown and Waco. The last desperate gasp of a dying and discredited ideology. The death rattle of the neoliberal world view.

The fear of internal upheaval has shifted the neocon/neoliberal center (the true and most long term powerful enemy of strategists and critical thinkers) from the GOP to the DNC and the fifty disproportionately influential ‘Never Trump’ Republicans that exist in the universe that the Democrats are convinced hold the fate of the nation and whose seduction is the most pressing issue in politics today (for them). To fight this cancer, one cannot be partisan but rather entirely against both major parties. Bolton on the right, the Clintons in the center, Power on the left. If this foe is a bipartisan alliance than an alliance which is much *more* than simply bipartisan must rise to fight it. Horseshoe theory may be the most laughable and childish of liberal self-congratulatory ideas, but it may be time to consider some amount of coming together against the center on foreign policy, at least. Divisions that cannot be overcome domestically certainly can and will always exist, but so long as over-funded think tanks and media conglomerates set the discourse, temporary issue-specific alliances may bear fruit. This is the ultimate lesson of realism, after all.

The Democratic establishment knows chasing the GOP for a vanishing and ineffectual center of wine moms and dealership dads is easier than internal reform, as they are just as dependent on mega wealthy donors as their opposition and any reform threatens their coffers. Hence MSNBC becomes the Fox of last decade in war cheer-leading and misdirection. The more right the Dems can go, they think, the bigger the donor share. Therefore you will see no meaningful opposition to disastrous intervention from their power-brokers than the purely performative. Legal quibbles but no alternatives. In effect you have a party controlled by the old industries of gas, oil, and coal-and an opposition party controlled by the new industries of Silicon Valley, entertainment, and established charity. Both, however, are equally enthralled to Wall Street and defense contracting. It is therefore at those two targets, that the primary offensive must be directed.

The phrase ‘welfare queen’ dominated the hollow discourse of the euphoric 1990s, but to no people does this accusation ring more true than against the Pentagon and the private contractors that eat the fat from its haunches. And to no nation is this phrase more true than that of Israel. Even the wretched husk of Saudi Arabia, easily the most odious of American allies, pays its own way in a sense. Israel as welfare queen-now that is at least a memorable talking point.

Idealism, however, is not the solution. These problems call for a sober and realist pragmatism. To see an enemy clearly is not to rail at his morality but rather to respect his success and seek to one-up it and undo it in new and more clever ways. To learn from the parasitic infestation of neoconservatives first, in order to build up both the antibodies and the keys to their eventual extermination. Study their methods of media discourse. To understand them is to undo them. It is not in my interest, and I would argue neither in yours whoever you are, to replace them with something equally detached from reality-but rather to replace them with something objectively better in a measurable cost/benefit calculation. A return to the realism of history as managed chaos and not teleology. The end of history (of humanity) will not come about due to consensus or transcendence but through the natural and inevitable extinction of the species. Until that point, however, we could at least try to reduce the net amount of misery within achievable parameters. This would, of course, require the maturity to acknowledge that these parameters would be both variable and potentially hostile to competition. There may be many different solutions going their own way rather than one.