Our world is burning down around us, but we’re so accustomed to smoke and flames we only feel the heat warming us. Every day for a decade now I’ve researched and analyzed the media, geopolitics and public relations, and I’ve decided we cannot save Earth. For a moment there was hope. The defiant strength of Russia’s Putin against the liberal order, it seemed for a brief instant that truth and decency might prevail. It cannot happen though, for the coming inferno of discontent is truly biblical, alas.
I know the reader is questioning now. “What is he saying? America’s economy has never been stronger,” I can just hear the Trump triumphant begin to chant angrily. In Russia, the voices will be saying; “But Putin has won. He showed them in Syria. Didn’t he destroy ISIS for the world?” No, my friends, I fear the war for peace and decency is a lost cause even with these small victories in view. Let me explain, as best I can, how the cataclysm will come no matter what.
I was reading this morning a Sputnik story on the peculiar case of the U.S. Ambassador to Greece, Geoffrey Pyatt. While I don’t usually pay Sputnik a sideways glance these days, the focus on America’s worst diplomat made me do it. Read Sputnik, that is. The piece spoke volumes about a man who should rightfully have been drummed out of America’s diplomatic corps after Ukraine. For those unfamiliar with Pyatt, who is busy sellout out the Greeks today, he helped foment a coup d’etat in Kyiv in 2014, and then he and Victoria Nuland joked about “fucking the EU” and danced on the graves of thousands of Russian speaking Ukrainians.
Now Pyatt is cementing the Greek oligarchs and mafiosos into a controlling force for Trump. Greece, just as she was before World War II, is a pawn in the Great Game for global domination. Only America has supplanted Great Britain, and the Germans are tourists instead of paratroopers. But carrion like Geoffrey Pyatt do not get booted out and disgraced like the statesmen of old when they’re caught in disgraceful behavior. America props up her dastardly yes men nowadays. Poor Greece. The cradle of civilization will soon fall, but not before they turn it into a New Florida! That’s another story. Today, Greece gets to sell olives and oil to America without tariffs or sanctions! But, I wonder what America gets from the deal Pyatt made?
Then there was the news that President Trump reinstated embattled Navy SEAL Chief Eddie Gallagher to his E-7 rank after the Navy slapped him on the wrist for posing in a chest-pounding pride moment with a dead ISIS fighter. Gallagher, who was investigated in the shooting of a young girl in Afghanistan in 2010, was recently acquitted of premeditated murder, attempted murder, obstruction of justice, and other offenses, in a recent military trial. The tribunal cleared the now notorious Navy Seal, leaving only an “unbecoming” issue over the dead enemy photo moment. I don’t know Gallagher, and I’d defend any shipmate to the death, but the stories about him texting he’d slayed a wounded and defenseless boy ISIS combatant with his hunting knife? Well, that set the Navy Seal apart for me. If World War II’s General George Patton were his commanding officer, a court-martial would never have been necessary. While Julian Assange rots in a British prison for telling us the truth of America’s war killers, our president protects the psychopaths pushed over the top in the killing fields of hegemony.
Now Trump aims to pardon more murderous men. And all I can think of are the words Navy prosecutor Chris Czaplak had to say about a sailor in the most elite fighting force on Earth:
“Chief Gallagher decided to act like the monster the terrorists accuse us of being. He handed ISIS propaganda manna from heaven. His actions are everything ISIS says we are.”
None of the accounts of the death of the wounded 17-year-old ISIS fighter in Seal captivity speak of anything but ghastly behavior by men of the United States armed forces, but somehow not even CNN can SNAP into a sane and honorable world! According to the trial report, Gallagher was basically exonerated because another Seal medic changed his story that Gallagher had stabbed the defenseless captive, and admitted to murdering their captive himself. Anybody who has served honorably should be sick to their stomach with the grief of our collective dishonor in all this. Read the CNN recount and see if you can find the light of valor and honor anywhere in it.
Horrible things happen in all wars. And like I said, I do not know Eddie Gallagher. I do know Seal Special Operator First Class Corey Scott could face a court-martial for lying to investigators and prosecutors. But the guy who said he suffocated a man to death as an act of mercy seemed to be part of a team that took human “trophies” when they had a successful mission. Excuse me. WTF kind of dog and pony show is my Navy running? Now we ARE the terrorists?
Then there’s the Trump impeachment, or coup, or circus, or whatever the Congressional inquiry in “The Swamp” turns out to be. Suddenly, Washington is concerned that there may be a “snake pit” in Kyiv. And suddenly, former Vice President Joe Biden’s son may be a sellout-money-grubbing little criminal sent to take advantage of a country ripped apart. Or, maybe he had always wanted to go to a country he’d probably never heard of in prep school to work for a company nobody ever heard of (Burisma), to get some oil leases and stuff? And to make the whole matter truly laughable, in a sad clown sort of way, In 2017 Burisma signed a partnership agreement with the Atlantic Council to promote anti-corruption measures. I won’t get into Ukraine oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky who owns Burisma, that deep well of sickening dealings is just too nasty. The family name Biden should make every American sick in my opinion. Now we hear claims that Joe Biden was paid $900,000 to pressure the Ukrainian government not to investigate the business of Burisma. Now Ukraine seems to be throwing everybody under the bus. I wonder when Washington will follow suit?
This just in, one of the attorneys for the whistleblower in the Trump impeachment inquiry predicted this “coup” back in 2017 when he Tweeted: The “coup has started” and that “impeachment will follow ultimately.”
Finally, the news that even our pitiful climate goals are unreachable simply ices the apocalyptic cake for me. I don’t trust too many media outlets these days, but somehow those 500 National Geographic Magazines I saved since I was a kid must have brainwashed me. The venerated magazine now says we’re pretty much screwed on the environmental front.
Greta Thunberg didn’t impress Putin enough. Trump followers could not give up their Chevy Suburbans with the 1-ton tow package for towing their bass boats. And too many billionaires donated to tree-hugging causes to convince alternative news our shit is about to go underwater. Yep, the rationale has gripped us now, for sure. God almighty could peer at us all over the edge of the earth like a Jack in the Beanstalk giant and half the world would deny his existence.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
