"Without firing a shot"
So, I get my ideas for this blog from far and wide. But yesterday, I got it right from here, right from my co-bloglord Proud Establishment Democrat.
It began with my posting this:
Yes, our favorite looney lefty is losing part of her grift. It couldn't happen to a more deserving person.
And then, your co-enlightened monarch had this to say:
Singham also funds Hasan Piker.
History books will be written about the type of foreign influence campaigns from countries like China and Russia that essentially paralyzed the United States without ever firing a single shot.
And as if to prove his point, but from the other end of the horseshoe:
This is why the American Empire is dying. Morons like these, on both left and right.
— Liberal Librarian, Son of Cuban Immigrants đŸŸ¦ (@liberallibrarian.bsky.social) August 12, 2026 at 1:37 PM
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The most powerful empire in world history—powerful not only because of its military, but also because of its cultural and financial strength—is being governed by people like the above woman who beg the question of how they make it through an ordinary day without immolating themselves.
One of my mutuals had this to say:
No one could take down American militarily, so they said OK, we'll use your flaws against you: racism, hatred of women/ LGBTQ+/immigrants/ education. I've had family members with Russian disinfo pipelines installed in their brains. One labeled conservative, the other far-left. Same sewage.
— Kat4Obama (@kat4obama.bsky.social) August 12, 2026 at 2:08 PM
Without firing a single shot, as PED says, Russia and China have disarmed the US and much of the West, setting their citizens against each other, feeding on their bigotries and blinkered beliefs, each camp having 49%, with that 2% remaining vacillating between the two sides, the future of democracy hinging on their whims. Our two adversaries, inoculated against the poison of democracy, able to wield unquestioned domestic power, are smug in their psyops. They are right in this sense: America and the West, grown fat from victory in the Cold War, are ripe to be disrupted by propaganda and misinformation, as they no longer have a unifying enemy to confront. Neither Russia nor China could hope to defeat America and her allies militarily. But they are heirs to a century of Communist subversion operations, and are using them to an effect which has an even greater return on investment than Ukraine's use of drones to strike deep into enemy territory. For a mere pittance, from the safety of their borders, they have done to America and the West what decades of Cold War posturing were unable to do. Nikita Khrushchev's prediction is coming true. Nukes are not necessary; democratic openness and liberality were always our access points.
But why is it working to such effect now, when it didn't before? The internet, of course.
While Russia and China are girded from outside contamination, in most of the rest of the world the internet, and social media in particular, are open and accessible and allow all sorts of speech. Social media platforms are subject to few if any restrictions. And so-called "influencers" are relatively cheap and easy to buy. They'd rather be online from their bedrooms doing the bidding of their case officers than work in the real economy and have to go into an office job.
That is what is so enervating. Old-school Cold War traitors had to provide something which put them at personal risk if and when they were caught for their treason. They either died in prison, or had to flee to the sweet embrace of their Soviet comrades. Today's useful idiots merely have to spew out propaganda during six-hour Twitch sessions and rake in millions. Nothing says "working class hero" like a nepobaby from Turkey living in a million-dollar mansion in Los Angeles. It reminds me of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, where the human military was rendered inoperable by a virus introduced by a hubristic human scientist who was honey-potted by a human-looking machine. One flick of a switch, and thus began the end of that civilization.
We are not becoming slaves to our machines; we already are. We sit on our phones and computers and ingest the torrent of garbage being directed at us, and do so gladly, freed from the need for thought or critical assessment. It is much easier to let someone else think for you, and for you to docilely accept it. Vote for Donald Trump in 2024, and then for a Socialist in 2026. Nothing matters. You hate everything, and you will not be wanting in finding those who agree with you and commend you on your clear-sightedness. All the while what you are actually doing is what people who wish to wreck you and your world want you to do. You are fellow-travelers to dictators, and you don't even realize it.
The West needs to come to an immediate realization that it is at risk of falling. It needs to find a way to balance democratic openness, which has fueled its power and wealth, with the fact that its enemies are using that very openness to undermine it. We need leaders who recognize this threat, and are not, in fact, the same types of pawns as the great lumpenproletariat are. The West became complacent in its Cold War victory, seeing no rival on the horizon. In that it was much like the Allies at Versailles: shortsighted to such an extent that they laid the groundwork for an even greater charnel house. We dare not repeat their mistakes, if we want a human life worth living.