Tag Archives: Medieval v. Modern

East-West Rivalry: Trump-Putin Divide the World

04 Sunday Jan 2026

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, South America, Venezuela

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The tweeted text follows (with a few hash marks replaced by standard typed English and adjustments for sense) so as to give expression its more persistent showcase in online publishing (a tweet may be noticed and read but briefly as X compiles rapidly and destroys focus as efficiently as it confronts its audience with virtually limitless attention-seeking stimulus).

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The mirroring couple Trump and Putin appear to be between states in their relationship. Trump, at this point, might wish to be free of the boss of the Russian Mafia State (being blackmailed by kompromat might account for that), and he’s been presented with an opportunity involving the post-Cold War clean-up of the former Soviet/post-Soviet spheres of alliance, control, and influence and the severing of the link that has been for a long time Moscow-Havana-Caracas.

While Donald may expect accolades for his conquest of a former Soviet communist satellite, I think he’s proceeding from a different compact with Putin involving the feudal-medieval mafia mentality each has come to represent and he would just as soon make a “gangster’s paradise” out of his invasion of Venezuela. That would help make sense of his low-to-high pattern in pardons of criminals who have injured the United States (e.g., the January 6, 2021 insurrectionists; the recent pardon of drug kingpin Juan Orlando Hernandez) and his penchant for locating and targeting mineral wealth from Greenland to Ukraine and working “deals” in which he involves business associates and family in a process that may be referred to as the development of his own personal empire.

Is he betraying his “handler” Putin?

While it looks that way at a glance, Trump in fact may be turning East-West Rivalry on its head and setting up to rule and plunder the wealth of the western hemisphere while leaving Europe and its interests to his rival.

How Americans view the Trump-Putin relationship (mirroring) may be tempered by both political bias (partisan drift) and the American constituency’s general detachment from foreign affairs and international relations. Up to this point, America’s professional business and political managers have understood their having a uniquely American mission from the 20th Century perspective at least. As an American People, the same have negated the power of kings, fought fascism and imperialism worldwide, and tempered totalitarianism as understood from witness of leaders pledged each to the support of his ruling Communist Party.

In fact, the winning of the Cold War had been framed as having beaten Communism, not a practical and ruthless KGB driven and managed police state that could be turned toward serving a dictatorship– a private patronage system–devoted solely to its own aggrandizement, ambition, greed, and security.

So this round is different.

Trump and Putin represent an archaic criminal mentality associated with the malign narcissism and related emotional needs of each, i.e., the equivalent in outlook of what would be today criminal medieval powers engaged in continuous competition for territory and tribute, and then–with the concept of modern feudal-medieval mafia established–related unbridled and unhinged methods in power and enterprise.

***

About the Art

The bookends tell in part the Trump-Putin story as one dates to 2016 and has since become an iconic as well as ironic statement about the two statesmen. The other has been captured in relation to Trump’s second-term meeting of the two in Alaska. In the way of a fast-paced meme-spilling web, the composites between reflect, of course, my conclusions about the two and their archaic views of dominion and sovereignty–and both lawless men have reserved for themselves as principle a deeply archaic, deranged, and mentally and morally sick “right” to destroy with their power persons and property alike with impunity. One has ordered the piloting of missiles into apartment buildings and malls; the other threatens to take over the western hemisphere while fueling his own corrupt system of private patronage. Neither should represent anyone’s future governance–not for Russians and never (again) for Americans.

Related to Archaic Leadership and Malignant Narcissism

I’ve whittled related political science and political psychology (#PoliSciPoliPsy) down to this module for X-ting (X-ing . . . whatever)–>

–33–

A Note on Archaic Moscow, Modern Integrity, the Palestinians, and Feudal-Medieval Mafia.

02 Saturday Aug 2025

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Middle East, Qualities of Living (QOL)

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I don’t do “Hasbara”, i.e., Jewish or Israeli public relations.

I’m not interested in promoting American “Yankee Doodle” flapjack about the genius of the American Enterprise in Democracy, especially when that “democracy has served up a foreign infection for its head of state (related: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/29/czechoslovakia-spied-on-trump-to-exploit-ties-to-highest-echelons-of-us-power; https://conflict-backchannels.com/2024/11/08/well-have-it-fixed-so-good-said-donald-trump/; https://conflict-backchannels.com/2025/02/18/trump-piracy-board-disarm-and-plunder-the-united-states-of-america/; https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property–find the same on X through the hash tag #RussiaRussiaRussia).

My interest: American modern culture and related art and humanism–and expressive of it, my own American neighborhood.

With Donald Trump in power, American may share the feeling of being marched forward into a past characterized by the power of feudal-medieval mafia to (in retrospect, inevitably) destroy themselves.

How many Americans — how many American neighbors — sunk in hunger or pain will quietly dissolve before power into a living death–or death–without a fight for their right to the dignity of their existence beneath the security umbrella of a nation that has their back?

*

On my desktop earlier today: https://www.kyleorton.com/p/nyt-media-coverage-israel-hamas-gaza.

Moscow and its manipulation Palestinian “leaders” have lied to Palestinians for decades as regards their Jewish neighbors. Kyle Orton’s astute observation of plain factual “pro-Palestinian” errors may provide the fuel for a right revolutionary fire against . . . lies, for both Israelis and Palestinians might benefit from the kind of truth that may be questioned, explored with integrity, and affirmed, corrected, or trashed.

The study finds that the Times admitted seventy-two errors in its coverage of the war, forty-eight of them (fully two-thirds) directly against Israel. It is a point that authors do not stress, but should have: there is not a single case of false Times reporting that negatively affected the image of HAMAS. If incompetence was all that was going on here, the “mistakes” would not all be in the same direction. As telling on this point, the “errors were identified by external sources” and when corrections were issued they were often “late, vague, and sometimes evasive”.

Orton goes on to cover bias, deceptions, and misrepresentations in The New York Times‘ reporting on the Israeli-Hamas war.

For denizens of the American Far Left (or Far Right) one would think carelessness with information would be resented–the same informs the equivalent of lies with intent to manipulate popular perception while massaging along the way egos with malign narcissistic, partisan, and ultimately only selfish ends. They are those who worry about how they may look rather than how things are and what might bring improvements in security and in the enjoyment of life.

So why play along with falsehoods?

Palestinians have been basically bullshitted into slavery (as well as certain suicide-by-war and death) by their own (related on this blog: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2021/07/26/ftac-palestinian-kgb-the-palestinians-abused-and-plundered-by-their-own/).

*

Criminals, including political ones, advance their interests through coercion (blackmail, bribery, intimidation, and patronage), fraud (misrepresentations), and force (violence). Any in and of the modern west may only wonder how some in and near Gaza may feel about being bullied, essentially, into a compliant posture toward retrograde and vicious power.

Above: Palestinians kill one another during the 2007 “Battle for Gaza“.

The interests of modern societies are not in power but in area-wide qualities of living of concern to the health of environments and of species supported, much including our own. For assorted cavemen, cowards, and criminals, coercive power, corruption, and wealth appear all that matter.

–33–

Malignarcs: Ali the Thief; VladolphPutler; Mafia Don.

18 Wednesday Jun 2025

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Extreme Brown vs Red-Green, International Development, Political Psychology, United States of America

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The malignant narcissists share the same hidden misery in their fear of public humiliation and shame. Never give in, never give up, never back down? In modern life, cooperation, dignity, and freedom win for independent, modern, responsible, and responsive mentalities–cognizance, consciousness, emotion, and empathy comprising human virtues and nothing like the “mind viruses” of feudal-medieval mafia, all of them damaged goods made callous and deadened by their earliest experiences and adult excesses. Call them what they have been always: criminals and political criminals.

Ali the Thief

The 82-year-old Iranian woman keeps the documents that upended her life in an old suitcase near her bed. She removes them carefully and peers at the tiny Persian script.

There’s the court order authorizing the takeover of her children’s three Tehran apartments in a multi-story building the family had owned for years. There’s the letter announcing the sale of one of the units. And there’s the notice demanding she pay rent on her own apartment on the top floor.

Pari Vahdat-e-Hagh ultimately lost her property. It was taken by an organization that is controlled by the most powerful man in Iran: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. She now lives alone in a cramped, three-room apartment in Europe, thousands of miles from Tehran.

Stecklow, Steve, Babak Dehghanpisheh, and Yeganeh Torbati. “Khamenei controls massive financial empire built on property seizures.” Series: Assets of the Ayatollah: The economic empire behind Iran’s supreme leader. Reuters, November 11, 2013.

*

For Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the image and power of his most pious religious position covers, in fact, an immensely ruthless callousness, greed, and self-aggrandizing and entirely self-serving madness. Man of God? Man of Peace? Thief, evidently, and murderer in his own feudal-medieval political and religious mode: see NCRI, “Iran: Khamenei’s New Record in Execution and Crimes, January 2, 2025.

Vladolph Putler

Putin’s pretext for his 2014 invasion of Crimea along with Donetsk and Luhansk–the Donbas–had been his duty to save a surrounded Russian culture in Ukraine–and never mind the comfortability of complacent Russian enclaves in Ukraine–from the bogey of Ukrainian tyranny, a thought as faked up and self-serving as his hallucinated Ukrainian Nazis. As a delusional and surreal malignant narcissist, the not-so-great Russian leader and mediocre mafia, secret police, and political thug had intended to make himself look like a hero. Instead, he provoked Russians in Ukraine to fight with Ukraine, and not a few of them as Russian partisans for Ukraine in Russia.

Today by way of Putin’s petulant lunacy, Russia has suffered more than a million military casualties of war. Financial losses appear immeasurable for their being multiple dimensions involved but staggering in the region of $100 billion and up (query AI on “Russia’s financial losses related to invasions of Ukraine”), and the direct losses to its defense appear in the Odessa Journal (June 18, 2025) approximately as follows — note: I’ve made the list alpha, adjusted typography for this blog, and edited with, I hope, experienced judgment:

Estimated total Russian combat losses from 24.02.22 to 18.06.25

Russian Military Casualties of War: about 1007160 (+1040) persons. Note: more than one thousand Russian soldiers have been dying per day in Ukraine. The numbers in parentheses indicate expected additional losses at the time of initial publication.

  • aircraft: 416 (+0)tanks: 10947 (+7)
  • anti-aircraft systems: 1187 (+0)
  • artillery systems: 29265 (+37)
  • boats: 28 (+0)
  • cruise missiles: 3369 (+23)
  • helicopters: 337 (+0)
  • MLRS: 1420 (+1)
  • special equipment: 3916 (+0)
  • submarines: 1 (+0)
  • troop-carrying AFVs:22845 (+31)
  • UAV operational-tactical level: 41165 (+184)
  • vehicles and fuel tanks: 52312 (+137)
  • warships: 28 (+0)

What kind of crazy drives a dictator? And what might turn him off?

From January 20, 2023 on this blog: “FTAC: Why Putin Won’t Stop Until Stopped.”

Vladolph has yet to do anything that would refute the psychology involved. In his own head, his posture appears courageous, heroic, and unassailable, and that’s what he believes he must project. There is no reasoning with his mentality.

Donald Trump has turned out the same way.

Mafia Don

I’ve published this bloc a time or two on X:

https://money.cnn.com/2016/03/28/news/trump-apartment-tenants/; https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/trump-tenants-lawsuit/2020/12/04/db4a82e6-367a-11eb-8d38-6aea1adb3839_story.html; https://thehill.com/homenews/news/528714-tenants-sue-trump-over-scheme-that-increased-their-rent-report/; https://www.newsweek.com/2016/10/28/donald-trump-business-busts-victims-511034.html.

A glance a the CNN URL cited tells just how greedy, ruthless, self-serving, and sideways ol’ Mafia Don has been in his unbridled ambitions and related methods of getting his way:

It began in 1981. Trump bought a 14-story building on prime real estate facing New York City’s Central Park.

His plan was to tear down the building and replace it with luxury condos. But first he needed a small band of rent-stabilized tenants out of there.

To succeed, Trump played rough, according to lawsuits filed by the tenants. Renters said he cut heat and hot water, and he imposed tough building rules. Trump even proposed sheltering homeless people in the building.

It went on for five years as Trump fought tenants, real estate lawyers, New York state regulators and city officials.

Pagliery, Jose. “Donald Trump was a nightmare landlord in the 1980s.” CNN Money, March 28, 2016.

When Winston Churchill delivered his resounding speech advocating a stubborn resistance to Hitler’s aggression and purpose–“Never give in, never give in, never give in . . . .“–he spoke for all of Great Britain against barbarous aggression of a mass-murdering tyrant; when Donald Trump repeats his admonishment to never give up, never give in, and never quit, he repeats basically his own cheerleading formed in the process of his own embattlement. He has lived through and with a process today well known to psychologists–here’s my distillation of it: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/10/malignant-narcissistic-process-distilled/ –and as with his fellows of similar class, he must appear always courageous-heroic and unassailable before the public and those who would otherwise humiliate and shame him. His own image creates his politics, not a nation’s more authentic challenges and predicaments.

The grim phantoms of history–whatever was thought to have been left behind in the many ways of the dreaded horsemen–Pestilence, War, Famine, and Death–have ways of appearing before us just when we think we have beaten them. So here are the three insults to modern humanity, each one callous and crude, greedy as sin, without boundaries or limits, an sickeningly delusional with criminal and messianic intents, and the authentic among those good and noble must wonder how they are to be met. That they will be “met” we may be certain for time evolves communities more than it resigns any to again living in caves and by tooth and claw, arrow or spear, or sword and shield, but for the living cohort subject to the will of evil leaders, all pay a price in the producing of better and more secure and permanent good circumstance.

For Americans, I believe it appears the “American Experiment” has taken its one giant step backward with Donald Trump as well as the “tech-bro threat” of a degrading and dehumanizing AI future, so perhaps we must all look forward to envisioning the character of our best possible “two steps forward” and then find ways of joining together and in irresistible force to get that next and better world.

–33–

OnX: Reprise on MaligNarcs

03 Tuesday Sep 2024

Posted by in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology

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Transposing from inline tweets on X to this blog leaves much to be desired, but of the two platforms, this WordPress product has greater persistence and utility as regards turning wrap-ups into modules for reference. Much of my time on X has been spent aggregating, combining, and rearranging short blocks of argumentative points and related proof in supporting material, so it makes sense to have here this more permanent “final say” on several matters. After months to years of participation on X‘s anti-social “social media”, I’ve tired of feeling compelled to make the same points, cite the same reference, and mix-and-match the four X-allotted images for hours on end. Probably, this will mark the beginning of the end of my X-addiction.

MaligNarcs Putin & Trump

Malignant Narcissism: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/10/malignant-narcissistic-process-distilled/

Putin: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2023/05/03/reference-journalist-alexander-zhilin-operation-storm-in-moscow-aka-moscow-apartment-bombings/; https://conflict-backchannels.com/2023/01/20/ftac-why-putin-wont-stop-until-stopped/.

Trump: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2024/04/22/trump-delusional-and-innocent/; https://conflict-backchannels.com/2024/05/20/a-last-note-about-the-malignarc/.

Signal: delusional, grandiose, messianic ideation absent of normal boundaries and limits, i.e., the parameters of normal conscience.

– may be the basics in ’s behavioral and social repertoire. The “clocks” run backward to habits and practices in power (before the ). The related reference for the committing of crimes is quite close: . Neither nor are strangers to developed mafia-style systems of enticement, patronage, punishment, and threat.

Finally (and I will be quiet for a long time) 😉 –

  1. https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/.
  2. x – -#DJT —https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/19/trump-first-moscow-trip-215842/; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/29/czechoslovakia-spied-on-trump-to-exploit-ties-to-highest-echelons-of-us-power; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/29/trump-russia-asset-claims-former-kgb-spy-new-book; https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ex-kgb-agent-trump-russian-asset-mueller-putin-kompromat-unger-book.html; https://newrepublic.com/article/150646/young-trump-went-russia.

– x : https://conflict-backchannels.com/2021/10/09/trumps-america-in-retrospect-russian-real-estate-entanglements/ (my blog); for shorter suggestion: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-little-moscow-russians-helped-donald-trumps-brand-survive-the-recession/2016/11/04/f9dbd38e-97cf-11e6-bb29-bf2701dbe0a3_story.html; 2017-https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/; 2018-https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/21/how-russian-money-helped-save-trumps-business/; 2022-https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-little-moscow-sunny-isles-miami-russian-money-real-estate-2022-3#the-citys-luxury-development-boom-that-first-began-in-the-1990s-revitalized-the-citys-economy-which-began-to-see-an-influx-of-wealth-3.

Americans may be paying a price for complacency in and around our establishment or mainstream political communities, and we may be leveraged by our own black markets (see “Trump, Money Laundering, Russia”). Cash is cash, of course. We may decry a $1 billion narcotics market on Kensington Avenue in Philadelphia, but that money circulates into the city and region.

For whatever reasons, so I believe, Putin has been able to use Trump as a wrecking ball unleashed on , , and .

I published the basis for this post on X yesterday: https://x.com/JS_Oppenheim/status/1830739425145257992 (September 2, 2024).

–33–

OnX: Trump-Putin’s Medieval Mafia Estate–Every War Has a War in the Shadows

03 Tuesday Sep 2024

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, OnX, Political Spychology, Politics, Russia, Syndicate Red Brown Green, United States of America

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Every war has a war in the shadows. This one involves and related circles of associates and investors as well as deep corruption and compromise. Good leaders–grounded and strong in their ethics, integrity, knowledge, and outlook plus experiences and skills–would not do as do in relation to their dishonesty, ruthlessness, and violence.

–https://conflict-backchannels.com/2023/05/03/reference-journalist-alexander-zhilin-operation-storm-in-moscow-aka-moscow-apartment-bombings/

–https://conflict-backchannels.com/2024/04/22/trump-delusional-and-innocent/; https://conflict-backchannels.com/2024/05/20/a-last-note-about-the-malignarc/.

The images below: spot on.

Related and cogent: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2022/07/19/detecting-post-soviet-russias-black-narrative-of-revenge-for-89-and-91/.

Moscow’s in . . . and we’re (we ) are getting screwed. Putin has the power of a real “deep state”, specifically criminal / , and itself operates the state as a criminal enterprise–that’s how got booted out of ! In the , we have gotten for a Presidential candidate a dumb narcissistic jerk. I believe he’s a traitor — — who serves . He wants to replace our with his own system of private patronage. Add the look-up, “Trump, Money Laundering, Russia.”

😦

None with power, so far, appear to be able to say “No” to either or , neither of whom have normal boundaries or limits in the governing of their own behavior.

Flying rockets into playgrounds ain’t normal; baldly lying to , especially those who appear to trust you most, ain’t normal either.

Suggestions?

Lately, I’ve been noting, –not an organization, a fact of life, and , all –and I am certain the good and noble possessed of integrity are tired of , would that their “investors” would tired of them as well as all would seem to represent bad business and irremediable political evil.

This post originated on X: https://x.com/general_ben/status/1830331699290660921 (September 2, 2024).

–33–

Dagestan Terrorism, Russian Power, and Potential False Presentations

24 Monday Jun 2024

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Russia

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Here is the plain text version of the above X-pression:

Dagestan #RussianStyle

Reference: Journalist, Alexander Zhilin, Operation Storm In Moscow AKA Moscow Apartment Bombings

Who can anyone trust to tell the truth?

FalseFlagOperations MoscowApartmentBombings RussianPoliticalTheater

The terror attacks in #Dagestan create not only the detective’s questions, “Who done it, motivated how, and supported by whom?” but also the question as to whether #RussianStateAuthority hasn’t rigged the entire scene itself through its #SecretPoliceState machinery. The lying has already been distributed with finger-pointing: . . . Given ’s delusional and deranged narcissistic sickness (#MalignantNarcissism) and long established #Criminal and #PoliticallyCriminal habits, here’s what may be expected:

-Baseless Accusations, Defamations, Slanders
-Claims Without Merit
-Deflections of Attention In Relation to Crimes
-Denials of Culpability
-Disinformation
-Disingenuous and Fallacious Arguments
-Fabrications and False Flag Actions and Operations
-Sins of Omission

Is there among the natural political flora of the modern world a #RadicalIslam? Of course. We have all seen the host over decades. However, there has been also a deeply #ManipulatedRadicalIslam that has involved in its arms-smuggling, behind-the-curtains, and dark under-the-table support.

Related on BackChannels

Detecting Post-Soviet Russia’s Black Narrative of Revenge for ’89 and ’91

Authentic modern and vibrant societies meet their challenges with an objective responsive and responsible integrity. Shit happens, indeed, and fire or flood, the better governments and services of the world respond with each their best programs. As much is to be–and must be!–expected of the senior executives, managers, and political leaders throughout that catch-all for the greatest, most civilized, cooperative, and wealth creating and distributing machinery known to history: The West.

–33–

Medvedev: Muscovy Clown and Kremlinal

15 Friday Mar 2024

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, Gaza, Germany, Israel, Middle East, North America, Palestinia, Politics, Russia, Ukraine, United States of America

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In a recent Tweet, the high and not so mighty Dmitry Medvedev, chair of the Security Council of Russia, referred to Ukrainian President Zelensky as a “provincial clown”. After so many years of accumulating material about Russia, I had quite a bit to pack into one riposte–>

Provincial clown?

Look in the mirror.

For , this has been ’s work in its support of dictatorship-https://conflict-backchannels.com/2018/02/24/war-east-west-abomination-syria-bombing-hospitals/ -of the lust for the wealth of others and the power to steal it: #StormInMoscow-https://conflict-backchannels.com/2023/05/03/reference-journalist-alexander-zhilin-operation-storm-in-moscow-aka-moscow-apartment-bombings/ (you bombed in the dead of night as part of an obscene political theater) and here you will destroy what doesn’t shoot back: https://youtu.be/a245RkGUXfk; https://youtu.be/c1xFSCDy8Jo; https://youtu.be/q2nfuIP2tU0; https://youtu.be/8_XCe86resg. Your #JewHate traces back to about here: https://conflict-backchannels.com/2021/02/01/ftac-endemic-russian-anti-semitism-a-note/ -and your own #RussianNazism does too. Regarding ’s sideshow: you know of #WhiteRussianLoyalist #MaxErwinVonScheubnerRichter-https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/12/29/ftac-middle-east-conflict-back-to-max-erwin-von-scheubner-richter-and-forward-to-the-plundering-of-palestinian-misery-by-palestinian-leadership-elites/.

In the end, the darkness you believe surrounds you–that paranoia–is your own and fixed by a reliably delusional, grandiose, messianic, and malign narcissism that has no other purpose than the want of adoration (narcissistic supply).

As an X-Pression–>

–33–

Hey, Suzie Qz: Perfect “X”–>New Consideration for the Peace of Westphalia

03 Sunday Mar 2024

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, 21st Century Modern, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Europe, North America, Politics, United States of America

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Suzie Qz posted this on X today as appropriate to Trump’s #RevoltingGOP and House Speaker Mike Johnson’s role in the reactionary subversion of America’s guiding principles and values:

The response that came to me yielded two additional:

If you would be passionate about the survival of American democracy, be at least curious about the Thirty Years War and the Peace of Westphalia that served to end it while also revolutionizing European diplomacy, redefining the assumptive principles of sovereignty, and forever modifying relationships between powers and the management of their affairs beneath an umbrella greater than themselves. This one treaty would then set a part of the stage for America’s own revolutionary departure from the power known to kings.

Before the Westphalia settlement, there was no recognizable diplomatic profession. Spies, irregular envoys, and heralds citing scripture or handing out ringing declamations were the usual route that princes chose to alert one another to the start of war. After Westphalia, the diplomatic craft was practiced by a kind of well-born guild, with members who were adept at melding reason, precedent, and law with quiet allusion to the implication of armed compunction.

Nathan, James A. Soldiers, Statecraft, and history: Coercive Diplomacy and International Order. 1 ed. Westport CT: Praeger Publishers, 2002 — cited: https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1146&context=the_histories–Patton, Steven. “The Peace of Westphalia and its Affects on International Relations, Diplomacy and Foreign Policy.” The Histories 10:1 (91-99), 2019.

–33–