The Unauthorized World Situation Report, 2nd Edition
Friday, March 4, 2022 1:26 PM
They muddy the water to make it seem deep.—Nietzsche
Dear Friends + Interlocutors,
Inasmuch as the world is cracking-up in slow motion, I’m calling a time-out for some self-promotion.
Last March 15th I sent out a note stating the the 2nd edition of The Unauthorized World Situation Report had been published or rather self-published. I did not realize at the time that the printing was seriously flawed and there were many mistakes.
Amazingly, it has taken a year (!) for this situation to be rectified. I have recently ordered the book via Amazon both in the U.S. and in Europe and these copies have been correct and properly edited. If I had a regular publisher, this problem would not have happened.
Here is the link to Amazon. It can also be special ordered through your bookstore via ISBN # 978-1-64969-419-5. (I have not done that.) The new paperback edition has an addendum of a hundred pages which includes some of my fiction and sketches. The book is over 300 pages.
To repeat what I wrote a year ago:
The premise of Situation Report was expressed by H.G. Wells, as quoted by Frank Harris in England or Germany? (1915):
We in Great Britain are now intensely jealous of Germany. We are intensely jealous of Germany not only because the Germans outnumber us, and have much larger and more diversified country than ours, and lie in the very heart and body of Europe, but because in the last hundred years, while we have fed on platitudes and vanity, they have had the energy and humility to develop a splendid system of national education, to toil at science and art and literature, to develop social organization, to master and better our methods of business and industry, and to clamber above us in the scale of civilization. This has humiliated and irritated rather than chastened us.
This explains what happened to Imperial Germany circa 1900 and subsequently. It was targeted by the British Establishment for being too successful and building a navy. Something along the lines of what Washington is trying to do to China today. English umbrage led to world wars and to the tragedy of Europe.
The gentlemen at Whitehall could not stomach the idea of being eclipsed and perhaps falling into the shade. As Lord Arthur Balfour said privately in 1910, “Maybe it would be simpler for us to have a war…” England was dead wrong, going about it that way. In retrospect, this is easy to see.
The result was British Empire self-destruction and the simultaneous wreckage of continental Europe, with enormous collateral damage to the world at large. The crack-up of England created the primacy of America in world affairs…and the instantaneous Cold War, then the “war on terror”, followed by the rise of China.
Now the Washington drama is winding down fast. It may even be on the verge of imploding—thanks to the same hubris, overreach, myopia and miscalculation that was on vivid display in London decades ago.
Sincerely,
Patrick
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