Noblesse Oblige 2.0.

Here is an excellent take on OPEC++ from Indian diplomat Bhadrakumar. As I state non-stop, the game with oil is way larger than some oil-industry. It is about Big Three (OK, let's call it this way, because it is) and almost big several others (Major Houses of Landsraad), to arrange the new world in some not-suicidal way:

There is a broad consensus among the American elite that Putin holds the key to unlocking the oil crisis that can severely damage the US economy when it is already heading into deep recession. In fact, since April 10, Trump and Putin spoke to each other three times. Trump knows he is on the right side of history and his interlocutor can be trusted to keep his word. Trump’s tweet on Sunday (quoted above) drips with confidence. He is striding toward a detente with Russia.

There are number of interesting points which Bhadrakumar makes, not least this one:

All in all, therefore, we should not miss the wood for the trees. The OPEC+ deal is much more than about oil. It kickstarted a sequence of great-power cooperation involving the US, Russia and China, which would be far-reaching in the post-pandemic world politics. Such convergence is a clear indicator of how the global pandemic and the global oil crisis remain deeply entangled, and the recovery of the US economy being linked to it. As the US Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette put it, the global oil crisis is the shattering impact of COVID-19 and “transcends the interest of any one nation and requires a swift and decisive response from us all.”

Which aligns itself really well with what I wrote in Noblesse Oblige few days ago. In practical terms there is no real alternative to superpowers setting new set of rules. Well, there is--a complete chaos and slide towards global military confrontation in which the United States doesn't have resources to win and, being inherently nuclear-biased, especially after losing conventional arms race, the nuclear option stops being for the US something unthinkable. It all is reminiscent of living next to rowdy, drunk neighbor, who is full o shit but you still cannot make him move or kill him without sustaining life-threatening injuries yourself. What's left? Talk, with gun drawn, obviously, and talk firmly, but still talk. Well, killing one of his dogs is also not forbidden, but not the neighbor and his property. Meanwhile, TAC suddenly publishes this (just now):

In historian Christopher Lasch’s book, The Culture of Narcissism, he describes how “the new ruling class of administrators, bureaucrats, technicians, and experts” that dominates public life possesses neither the old aristocratic virtues of priests and monarchs nor the virtues of natural aristocrats described by Jefferson and Röpke. A “new therapeutic culture of narcissism” instead is at the center of their worldview. 

Oh boy, TAC is now thinking about how to build new elite. It could be really fun for me tomorrow to explore that, but even now I can tell that until US "conservatism" is defined only within "free-market" delusion (there are no free-markets, never existed) it is not a conservatism but some contrived ideological BS which is totally bankrupt in intellectual and economic senses. No, really, William Buckley "an intellectual"? Spare me this BS, majority of US "conservatives" do not know the real history of their own country, forget about global one. But still, understanding of utter corruption and incompetence of current US "elites" grows and this is a healthy process. Hopefully it will not be too little, too late. One can only hope.