History Repeats Itself...

 ... as you all know, first as tragedy and then as farce. This is how institutional collapse looks like. 

Internal rancour has gripped the US NGO National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA cutout responsible for fermenting political discontent in countries regarded as adversaries by Washington. It’s perhaps best known for helping to foment the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine, a country that its founder Carl Gershman labelled “the biggest prize.” The debacle has resulted in two senior officials being fired and a “civil war” erupting between older neoconservatives and younger management – which the former accuses of being too “woke” – according to documents obtained by The Grayzone. The scandal was sparked after then newly-appointed NED vice-president for communications broke ranks by engaging with journalists the organisation had previously shunned. Leslie Aun took exception to the Grayzone’s portrayal of the organization as CIA proxy, and initiated a call with the outlet’s Max Blumenthal and Alex Rubinstein, which it published in May 2023.

Max Blumenthal talks about it in a very direct manner:

You can read a comprehensive selection of the #NEDFiles obtained exclusively by The Grayzone here: https://thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/NED-Master-Files.pdf I think many will be shocked that Congress allocates $200 million a year to an unstable, politically partisan organization with obviously inept leadership

My request is--show me ANY US organization which is not inept and not partisan. None exists. Be that NGOs or government. It is one massive clusterfuck. It is intellectual collapse as a consequence of a severe systemic crisis which cannot be treated therapeutically anymore. What is left is coping, such as yesterday's piece by CIA guy who teaches now at Georgetown. I want to repeat again a critical and astute definition by one of the best American minds about this whole clusterfuck: 

Americanism provides a Unified Field Theory of self-identity, collective enterprise, and the Republic’s enduring meaning. When one element is felt to be in jeopardy, the integrity of the whole edifice becomes vulnerable. In the past, American mythology energized the country in ways that helped it to thrive. Today, it is a dangerous hallucinogen that traps Americans in a time warp more and more distant from reality. There is a muted reflection of this strained condition in the evident truth that Americans have become an insecure people. They grow increasingly anxious about who they are, what they are worth and what life will be like down the road. This is an individual and collective phenomenon. They are related insofar as self-identity and self-esteem are bound up with the civic religion of Americanism. To a considerable degree, it’s been like this since the very beginning. 

Once insecurities are exposed, no more so than ineptness in warfare, intelligence and foreign relation, the whole thing collapses.