Paul Craig Roberts' insightful point — about reflexively anti-Kapernick Americans — and the potential beginnings of World War III

© 2017 Peter Free

 

29 September 2017

 

 

Background — regarding Colin Kaepernick's (anti-racism) protest

 

Fox Sports (First Things First) host, Nick Wright has admirably explained:

 

 

what former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick was trying to accomplish with his anthem-kneeling, anti-racism protest last year

 

and

 

how stupidly point-missing the reaction to it, including President Trump's, has been.

 

 

Wright's explanation includes a brilliantly crafted hypothetical that, if honestly engaged, exposes the hypocrisy of the former quarterback's point-evading critics. The hypothetical begins at about 4:25 minutes into the video clip.

 

 

Paul Craig Roberts' perceptive contribution

 

Could the American public's anti-Kaepernick, idiot-patriotism begin World War III?

 

If you are someone who is capable of national self-reflection, you may delight in Mr. Roberts' imaginative extrapolation of today's tumult:

 

 

I sometimes wonder if America’s greatest threat is the population’s hyper-patriotism.

 

The bulk of the population is now at work shutting down the NFL players’ First Amendment rights, and none of the incensed censors are capable of understanding that it is they, and not the NFL players, who are attacking the U.S. Constitution.

 

The military/security complex, the hegemonic neoconservatives, and the Israel Lobby are sitting there, licking their chops. They know what to do with this display of ignorant patriotism.

 

They will turn it against Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia.

 

Their profits will flow even higher, neocon ambitions will be realized, and Israel will have the US eliminate another country — Iran — in the way of its expansion. Or so they think.

 

Russia cannot afford a vassal of Washington in Iran or the type of chaos in Iran that now engulfs Iraq and Libya. It is a short distance from Iran through Azerbaijan or Turkmenistan into Muslim areas of Russia and former Muslim provinces of the Soviet Union. If Iran falls, Russia is the next to be destabilized.

 

China depends on Iran for 20 percent of its oil supply. China was forced out of its Libyan oil supply by Washington’s overthrow of Gaddafi. Losing Iran would be a blow.

 

At some point these two powerful countries will have to realize that their national existence is at stake.

 

On the Russian and Chinese side[s] what can be done is a tri-party mutual defense pact between Russia, Iran, and China that is made public. This would tell the psychopaths in Washington and Israel that an attack on Iran means World War III.

 

© 2017 Paul Craig Roberts, Patriotism Is A Two-Edged Sword, PaulCraigRoberts.org (28 September 2017)

 

 

Being a once-historian

 

I am persuaded that the combination of innate human dopey-ness and tribalized greed causes the majority of unnecessarily deadly conflicts.

 

So, it is today with the United States.

 

 

The moral? — In even small mirrors, we can see ourselves

 

If only we look.

 

Related to this, is the recent flow of historically accurate criticisms of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's Vietnam War documentary. (See criticism here and here, for example.)

 

According to Burns and Novick — those evidently business-as-usual corporation-pleasers — Vietnam was just a sad and well-intentioned mistake. One made by both sides.

 

How saleably convenient such an overview is for us today. The slanted series encourages not seeing the United States' typifying racist imperialism in the Vietnam War's large mirror. Much less in the long series of similarly inspired "interventions" since.

 

As Mr. Roberts writes, "Here we go again."