John Mearsheimer details how the American Empire stumbled into one of its largest strategic blunders, and what the effects of it all might entail for the rest of the world.
I don't even want to think about this, or bring it up, but, elephants in the room and all...What's to keep Israel, or the U S, for that matter, from using nuclear weapons to bring about a failed state in Iran?
Feral your right and the only way to end all these wars is not regime change in Iran, but Washington and Israel!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hedges was laid back this evening, and Mearsheimer always talks in a manner that is low key, no matter the horror story he is conveying. I guess it's better to tone things down because what is going on is really frightening. It's riddled with so many unknowns, and the potential that each side has to inflict so much destruction and death is very disturbing, and worse it feels like a very significant part of the world can get dragged into this. It started off, or seemed to, with all those young students slaughtered, girls, children in a school, innocents, an accident they say, but how careless, and maybe it's a symbol of all that is to come. and how it will end.
Middle East Eye
Iran war live: Trump threatens to make Iran 'almost impossible' to rebuild
Iran vows to strike US and Israeli economic centers in the region
This discussion is a rebuke to U.S. voters who thought that they could just compartmentalize the genocide in Gaza and the corresponding threat to our civil liberties, vote blue no matter who, and focus on Trump exclusively. I don’t know how many Democrats I’ve heard say that caring about Gaza was a “distraction,” one that we could not afford to care about. Those of us who cared have been blamed for Trump, when in fact the opposite is true. You can’t support a genocide, whether actively or through indifference, and survive as a democracy.
Democrats and liberals don't like Trump, but they like having him do their dirty work for them. This is why they complain endless about strategy, process, etc., but never about the war itself.
For that matter, exit polls indicate that, had Harris bothered to pretend to care about Gaza, she might well have won.
"Vote blue no matter who" may have worked in the days before superPACs when labor unions and ordinary Americans funded the Democratic Party. These days billionaires control corporations, boards of directors, and armies of lawyers and lobbyists that together have essentially formed a fourth branch of government. I call it "the Acquisitive". Thanks to the unlimited political "donations" it can make, the Acquisitive exercises control over the Legislative, Judicial, and Executive branches.
I believe that America has a vast reservoir of good-hearted people who are being held back by the billionaires' Acquisitive regime. I became more convinced that this was true when I saw solidarity everywhere in support of the people in Minneapolis. And I'm looking forward to further confirmation on March 28th, when millions of Americans will march against the tyranny of the Acquisitive.
The regime that we're living under nurtured the genocide in Gaza. I'm certain that genocide is not what the vast reservoir of good-hearted Americans want. Every step taken by every American who marches on No Kings Day will be a step in a new and better direction for America.
Each step, together in solidarity, will make a difference. And making a difference, one step at a time, is how America will survive as a democracy.
The logic of this situation only leads in terrible and increasingly dangerous directions for the world. Perhaps the least horrible possibility is that Iran will soon make its own nuclear bomb, not to use but to have insurance against aggression as North Korea does now. Not an ideal solution but perhaps the only way to neutralize Israel's expansionist bullying and bring peace, however tense, to the region.
A world of numerous nuclear states engaged in mutual multi-polar mutually assured destruction. Perhaps inevitable. Like a bunch of hopped-up gangbangers pointing guns at each other. A very tenuous future, but not at all unlikely. And you would have to wonder how long it would last in stand-off given the probably inevitable global climate crisis, in the face of millions of climate refugees.
We in the states have been taken over by a criminal cabal. Felon Musk helped steal the 2024 election with his Star Link system that tapped the algorithms to the vote tabulating machines.
As the ChristoNazi threat to our species and our Mother Earth intensifies, three terminal horrors become ever more probable:
(1) -- That the former United States is not only a failed nation; it is also a doomed nation -- a nation that became terminal ill on 22 November 1963, and (boiling over with hate), literally voted itself to death on 5 November 2024;
(2) -- That the ChristoNazi regime is already scheming how it will justify its use of nukes against Iran as the final solution of the global economic crisis it inflicted on the world by its illegal war;
(3) -- That we stand literally on the brink of Ragnarøkkr, of Götterdämmerung -- that Trump is not just the incarnation of Hitler but the embodiment of Loki.
Quoth Völuspá: "Black become the sun's beams in the summers that follow, weathers all treacherous. Do you still seek to know? And what? Brothers will fight and kill each other, sisters' children will defile kinship. It is harsh in the world, whoredom rife —an axe age, a sword age —shields are riven— a wind age, a wolf age— before the world goes headlong. No man will have mercy on another." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnar%C3%B6)
As death approached my oldest half-brother, a founding director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, he said Trump will be the end of the world.
You're diverting the attention away from the real threat, and as Mearsheimer says AIPAC has got to go. Just too much control over our politics and our political agenda. Your sole focus on Trump simply distorts reality by implementing a very narrow focus.
ChristoNazi threat? The majority of people in the US, Christians and Jews do not support this war, and once again the president they elected into office betrayed their trust. No mention of Netanyahu, or Israel? Why? Who identified Iran as a terrorist state and wanted Iran taken out some 30 or more years ago? Granted Trump is also responsible for his despicable complicity, but he doesn't stand alone, and he like other president's is once again doing Israel's bidding. Iran has been on Netanyahu's hit list for more then 30 years. All our Middle Eastern wars were fought for the benefit of Israel. In Netanyahu's 1995 book, Fighting Terrorism, he identifies those countries, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc and Iran was on his hit list as well, and didn't we do his bidding. Remember how he pushed the lie that Hussein was going nuclear? He pushed that lie, over and over, and Biden pushed it in the Senate. No mention of Israel's role in this? Just a Christo/Nazi movement? You are quite mistaken. Do you remember Obama's Iran deal, and do you remember Netanyahu paying him a visit? Netanyahu in this article confirms what I said, in regard to Iran. https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/12/11/in-court-netanyahu-shares-dramatic-interaction-with-obama-on-iran/
To deny the ChristoNazi threat is to enable it. https://andrawatkins.substack.com/ See also: Chris Hedges, “American Fascists: the Christian Right and the War On America” (Free Press: 2007 ) and Jeff Sharlet, “The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power” (Harper: 2008).
To me you simply went off topic to spew the same anti-Trump agenda that was present during Trump's first term in office with a total disregard for the subject under discussion, that is the war in Iran. You used it to go on one of those Trump rants so common during his first administration, and I'm sick of them! Did you take these detours, during the Obama administration, or how about Biden's? You got a war in Iran with many potential dangers ahead and I don't want to make this all about Trump which is what I am afraid of because it's a lot bigger then him, more scary then him. I was involved in the anti-war movement in the beginning, a wash out, and many in the movement turned their backs on it with their misguided hopes that Obama, whom they claimed presented a big opportunity for change, and then came the war in Syria, and then the war in Libya, and the coup in Ukraine which was followed by another administration who wanted to take Putin down. In between we got things like Citizens United that turned companies into people and their issues came first on Washington's agenda. That AIPAC controls our politicians is really scary.
Three points before other obligations compel me to abandon this fruitless debate:
(1)--I'm the blogger who -- after Obama back-stabbed us on union card-check and socialized medicine -- dubbed him "Barack the Betrayer." I also characterized "change we can believe in" as -- in truth -- not "the audacity of hope," but rather "the imbecility of hope";
(2)--I'm the mostly retired journalist who, in comments published by The New York Times, characterized the 2024 behavior of Biden/Harris as exemplary of the post-JFK "Democratic" (sic) Party's function as the Fifth Column of the "Republican": (sic) ChristoNazi/NeoConfederate Party, specifically its (plausibly deniable) throwing of the 2024 election to Trump;
(3)--Though I don't believe we have the chance of the proverbial snowball in hell of ever recapturing our nation from its ChristoNazi conquerors, I focus on the Regime and its plutocratic puppet-masters simply because most USians are so hopelessly ignorant (and so ignorant because they are so fanatically self-obsessed), they could not find Israel on a map; thus I continue my resistance -- as I will for as long as I am able -- in the localized form a near-lifelong experience in communication media tells me has the greatest potential impact. (See https://today.uconn.edu/2014/10/going-too-far-the-american-publics-attitudes-toward-protest-movements/ )
He is "clever" enough to have mobilized -- as never before -- the simmering hatefulness that has always been the true heart of this criminal nation (which, if he goes nuclear, is "clever" enough to destroy the world). As Sun Tzu says, the worst, most fatal mistake in warfare -- and anyone who doubts this is {not} a war is delusional -- is to underestimate one's enemy: and Trump is not just the enemy of the dwindling number of us here trapped in the ruins of the failed United States who remain capable of empathy; he is the enemy of all empathetic humans everywhere on this planet. Moreover, he is also the enemy of our Mother Earth -- and therefore of life itself.
Humans as a whole are the enemy of the Earth and the nonhuman life here. Only a small fraction of 1% of humans aren't overpopulated and live in a rightful manner. This is a choice and humans can always decide to fix it, but a true solution would take thousands of years. See this book outline for details: https://rewilding.org/fixing-humans-by-expanding-our-consciousness/
I love Max, and am well aware of his work and contributions, and his dedication to the causes he believes in. Loren Bliss, is just involved in trying to delegitimize him.
I sent a link to an article posted on UNZ, and written by Max Blumenthal, a highly recognized journalist, who happens to be Jewish. If true, I wasn't aware of your accusation in regard to that site since it's not a site I reference often. However I have never seen articles that deny the Holocaust, but I've come across a lot of people, maybe trolls, who challenge that a genocide was, and continues to be implemented in Gaza on sub-stack. If one disagrees with these people they not only challenge you, but too often can go on a vicious attack. Your response is nothing more then a cheap shot to undermine me, and the article written by Blumenthal. Who do you think you're kidding?
Anyone who doubts the accuracy of my description need only peruse the site. (Apropos Blumenthal's Jewishness, he's notoriously pro-Islamist; apropos Unz's Jewishness, he is a self-proclaimed Libertarian, therefore a disciple of Ayn Rand, therefore an existential fascist, therefore someone I would [never under any circumstances] trust; in which context don't forget Trump's outspokenly Nazi advisor Stephen Miller is also Jewish.)
At first he's on a site that you claim has published articles that deny the holocaust, and now you go on to say Blumenthal is a proclaimed Libertarian, and therefore a disciple of Ayn Rand, ergo, a fascist. He's a fascist, well, in plain English what has he done to be defined as a fascist in your book? They call people fascists who believe in authoritarian rule, militarism and believe in the supremacy of the nation over the individual.. I looked that up. Well, doesn't sound like Max to me. Oy vey es mir, the people you meet on this site.
Thank you for pointing out the copying error in the "Anyone who doubts..." response. (I write replies off-site to prevent them from being glitched into oblivion before they're posted; this one was at the bottom of a full page and jumped to another, and when I copied it, I somehow missed seven words, which are now included.) My apology for the error.
Since nobody else mentions it, wtf, I will. I wonder if Mr. Mearsheimer is willing to reassess his remarks on the record that the bombing & incineration of more than 170 Iranian schoolgirls on the 1st morning of this unlawful, unprovoked war of aggression against Iran amounts to a “tragic mistake”. You could describe it that way. You could also describe it as a war crime.
Scott Ritter explains ( w/Nima on Dialogue Works, for example) how the brand spanking new Secretary of War did away with an analysis team set up under the Biden administration to confirm that potential strike targets are not targeting civilians. All in the name of maximum lethality, no holds barred, no rules mind you.
Using a weak bromide such as “tragic mistake” to sweep aside massive incompetence coupled with unbridled hubris fueled by murderous intent seems too simple, maybe bordering on cavalier.
listening to this interview, grateful as always, for the insight to be gained when true experts exchange ideas, i realized that nazi germany’s monstrosities btw 1933 and 1945 led to another monstrosity in 1948 [bearing in mind that english - not british, i.e. neither scottish nor welsh - colonialism is at the root of almost all conflicts around the globe today].
as to israel’s PM of years, i wondered: how could one man harbor, for decades, the dream of destroying one country, and flatten others in the process just to keep his behind from behind bars? while i find it just as shocking, if not worse, that this one man - with hi$ cohort$ of co-con$pirator$, of cour$e - manages to find so many european [and US] henchmen and -women willing to help him along his EVIL way!
my country claims to have come to grips w its nazi past and has, for the past few years, provided ample proof that it absolutely hasn’t.
file under: [christian] zionism, white supremacy, habits of hegemony. samson option?
Is bleak like toast, the prognosis for the illegal pariah occupation? This war can’t end without a global depression or Iran will be right back in six months facing the tail wagged rabid dog with much of its infrastructure in ruins.
A fantastic discussion. You might have mentioned how the United States through its endless wars is cannibalizing itself as well as, as you said, eviscerating its liberal values. It’s not unthinkable that Trump will turn future generations of U.S. citizens into slaves, responsible for paying back the enormous debts he is incurring week by week now.
Reading and watching sources of information about three hours a day since this began, this is the most informative single contribution toward reaching a prictical understanding of the current situation.
Something that came to mind at the closing: the observation Professor Mearsheimer made regarding the corruption of a state that engages in war paralleled somewhat Sheldon Wolin's similar view of the process of loss of the liberal state over the course of the cold war.
And again, as in other recent posts and interviews, the ending triggered an emotional response, a grieving for the principles aspired to at the founding of this country, in light of what we have become, particularly over the past decades. (Please note I use the words "aspired to" here, and acknowledge that it was selective, but I do think relative to it's point in time, there was a genuine attempt to reflect Enlightenment principles.)
Thank you again to Chris Hedges and John Mearsheimer.
March 16, 2026: 1.4 million views on YouTube since posting 'Why America is Losing the War With Iran' on March 12, 2026. Congratulations, Chris Hedges and John Mearsheimer. Let's hope Substack will follow soon. Great interview.
Please excuse my efforts to cobble together an outline (for the purposes of my own understanding) of where this country is, in mid-March, 2026. An understanding that is predicated on my own bias.* (Following below).
Questions remain. Any comments welcomed. Things change rapidly. Stakes are high.
1) The United States is now engaged in a war with Iran, essentially as a result of being manipulated by the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, and the AIPAC, which has extraordinary influence on our political system.
2) Benjamin Netanyahu has found in our current President someone willing to pursue this course, after the failure to goad previous chief executives. Particular character issues are involved. Further aspects of political cult of personality elements are also involved.
Opinions differ as the relative balance of motivations and interests of the U.S. and Israel, the questions of regional hegemony, shifting global polarities, the “game” of great power dominance globally.
The United States since the mid-1800s has become increasingly, functionally, an empire. The U.S. has for decades been a nation that has engaged in wars in the interests of these imperial concerns.
Although there has been - in my view - some diminishing degree of “honest mistake” in the wake of fear engendered by the perceived specter of Commie threat as a result of witnessing the excesses of Stalinism and Maoism. A case of some degree of miscognition. (Though Eric Hobsbawm might differ with respect to the period following WWll, the Cold War.)
But the cause of self-defense/national security, is not a reasonable explanation for essentially any of the militaristic actions following the Korean War. It however, has been effectively used (overall) for purposes of opinion management. (See bias explanation re the social nature of the species.)
The world changes rapidly now, with increasing population and an exponential acceleration of technologies, particularly electronic/cyber.
Throughout history, the advances of technology are ultimately applied to warfare.
In addition to nuclear weapons (Yikes!), we now have a growing cornucopia of low-cost, high yield weaponry.
Cyber weapons - national and terrorist! (Yikes!)
Biological weapons - especially terrorist! Developed with the probable increasing use of AI! (Yikes!)
We seem to face an imminent planetary environmental challenge, of a very possibly existential global degree.
This scenario loads the stakes of all conflicts and feeds into them.
The world is increasingly cleaving into nationalist states in contention in the face of this situation.
American society itself has undergone many changes in the past decades.
We are increasingly an authoritarian society, most likely already a firmly entrenched oligarchy with dimming prospects for anything approaching aspects of democratic processes representing the interests of the overwhelming majority.
Americans rely overwhelmingly on certain sources for information, and the reliability of these sources is already much compromised by the ownership of these sources.
The nature of media and opinion management is increasingly sophisticated.
The effect of countless hours of screen watching by the vast majority of this (and perhaps most globally?) on cognition is incalculable. There is no society, no comparable control group, against which to evaluate.
There is in addition a concerted assault on voices that disagree with the regime currently in power in the U.S.
As with nearly all things, this is only a difference in degree, it has been a steady progression on both parties, who both operate in the interests of a certain wealth/power minority within an increasingly dysfunctional system.
The “American Project” is one that has since the beginning, been an admixture of commercial interests and economic opportunities, combined with a slightly lesser degree (at least in practical application) of political liberty (based on classical liberalism, the values of Enlightenment principles). In the letter of the law, liberty was always predicated in the U.S. more on the economic rather than the civil. English property rights was the foundational basis more that the Universal Rights of Man. Again a matter of degree.
What the U.S. has evolved into is overwhelmingly a culture concerned with the material, with a small degree of social justice remaining.
A culture of entertainment, a culture of distraction, a culture of alienated/anomic individuals, acting though as self-identified members of polarized groups riven with mutual animosity, with a group in political power and increasing ascendancy animated by an incomprehensible spite.
We might be seeing the ultimate result of this situation now.
I wouldn’t begin to place a bet on the overall outcome.
I wouldn’t begin to guess on a time frame of potentially catastrophic events which might follow.
…………
*The bias: that the political follows the social, and the collective nature of society operates something like an amoeba, without conscious unified purpose, but moves as as myriad internal and external forces act on it. Yet with the difference that it at times acts on a collective impulse - we are a social species - following group drives of mania, often possessed by an us-versus-them collective murderous rage, a functional mob. An ape with extraordinarily advanced technology, particularly destructive technology. (War is the purpose to which every technology has always ultimately been applied. War seems to be what we ineluctably do in every generation. Us-versus-them underpinned by the much-vaunted phenomenon of "identity", celebrated in an almost sacral way, when in reality we are all simply born where we are born.)
……..
At the time of this writing, germane background and contextual writings/opinions:
Regarding the aspect of cult phenomenon, what we now seeing is somewhat different than the U.S. has experienced to this degree. It intersects with the fact that the mass society essentially functions more via the internet than in the physical world, also to a degree that is ever-increasing.
-In addition: the prospects of totalitarianism, in all modern states, with the reality of the majority of communication and transactions occurring via the net, is dystopian in the extreme.
(e.g. the financial sanctions applied to Francesca Albanese could be applied to all Americans, deemed by the institutions of state as threats to security.)
I don't even want to think about this, or bring it up, but, elephants in the room and all...What's to keep Israel, or the U S, for that matter, from using nuclear weapons to bring about a failed state in Iran?
1. Since Trump himself pays no price, why should he care? Especially if this keeps Epstein out of the news.
2. The United States and Israel have the goal of turning Iran into a failed state, much as was done to Iraq, Libya and Syria.
3. The Chinese leaders simply want to sell things. The Russian leadership desperately wants to be allowed to join The Club.
By contrast, the sociopaths who rule over the West care for nothing other than power, domination and control.
Feral your right and the only way to end all these wars is not regime change in Iran, but Washington and Israel!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hedges was laid back this evening, and Mearsheimer always talks in a manner that is low key, no matter the horror story he is conveying. I guess it's better to tone things down because what is going on is really frightening. It's riddled with so many unknowns, and the potential that each side has to inflict so much destruction and death is very disturbing, and worse it feels like a very significant part of the world can get dragged into this. It started off, or seemed to, with all those young students slaughtered, girls, children in a school, innocents, an accident they say, but how careless, and maybe it's a symbol of all that is to come. and how it will end.
Middle East Eye
Iran war live: Trump threatens to make Iran 'almost impossible' to rebuild
Iran vows to strike US and Israeli economic centers in the region
This discussion is a rebuke to U.S. voters who thought that they could just compartmentalize the genocide in Gaza and the corresponding threat to our civil liberties, vote blue no matter who, and focus on Trump exclusively. I don’t know how many Democrats I’ve heard say that caring about Gaza was a “distraction,” one that we could not afford to care about. Those of us who cared have been blamed for Trump, when in fact the opposite is true. You can’t support a genocide, whether actively or through indifference, and survive as a democracy.
Democrats and liberals don't like Trump, but they like having him do their dirty work for them. This is why they complain endless about strategy, process, etc., but never about the war itself.
For that matter, exit polls indicate that, had Harris bothered to pretend to care about Gaza, she might well have won.
Democrats blaming democrats is disheartening.
"Vote blue no matter who" may have worked in the days before superPACs when labor unions and ordinary Americans funded the Democratic Party. These days billionaires control corporations, boards of directors, and armies of lawyers and lobbyists that together have essentially formed a fourth branch of government. I call it "the Acquisitive". Thanks to the unlimited political "donations" it can make, the Acquisitive exercises control over the Legislative, Judicial, and Executive branches.
I believe that America has a vast reservoir of good-hearted people who are being held back by the billionaires' Acquisitive regime. I became more convinced that this was true when I saw solidarity everywhere in support of the people in Minneapolis. And I'm looking forward to further confirmation on March 28th, when millions of Americans will march against the tyranny of the Acquisitive.
The regime that we're living under nurtured the genocide in Gaza. I'm certain that genocide is not what the vast reservoir of good-hearted Americans want. Every step taken by every American who marches on No Kings Day will be a step in a new and better direction for America.
Each step, together in solidarity, will make a difference. And making a difference, one step at a time, is how America will survive as a democracy.
Great interview!
The logic of this situation only leads in terrible and increasingly dangerous directions for the world. Perhaps the least horrible possibility is that Iran will soon make its own nuclear bomb, not to use but to have insurance against aggression as North Korea does now. Not an ideal solution but perhaps the only way to neutralize Israel's expansionist bullying and bring peace, however tense, to the region.
we'll have to deal w evangelical christian zionism, too.
A world of numerous nuclear states engaged in mutual multi-polar mutually assured destruction. Perhaps inevitable. Like a bunch of hopped-up gangbangers pointing guns at each other. A very tenuous future, but not at all unlikely. And you would have to wonder how long it would last in stand-off given the probably inevitable global climate crisis, in the face of millions of climate refugees.
Thank you both for your elucidating comments!
We in the states have been taken over by a criminal cabal. Felon Musk helped steal the 2024 election with his Star Link system that tapped the algorithms to the vote tabulating machines.
www.electiontruthalliance.org
It continues.
Bankruptcy was Osama Bin Ladens plan
As the ChristoNazi threat to our species and our Mother Earth intensifies, three terminal horrors become ever more probable:
(1) -- That the former United States is not only a failed nation; it is also a doomed nation -- a nation that became terminal ill on 22 November 1963, and (boiling over with hate), literally voted itself to death on 5 November 2024;
(2) -- That the ChristoNazi regime is already scheming how it will justify its use of nukes against Iran as the final solution of the global economic crisis it inflicted on the world by its illegal war;
(3) -- That we stand literally on the brink of Ragnarøkkr, of Götterdämmerung -- that Trump is not just the incarnation of Hitler but the embodiment of Loki.
Quoth Völuspá: "Black become the sun's beams in the summers that follow, weathers all treacherous. Do you still seek to know? And what? Brothers will fight and kill each other, sisters' children will defile kinship. It is harsh in the world, whoredom rife —an axe age, a sword age —shields are riven— a wind age, a wolf age— before the world goes headlong. No man will have mercy on another." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnar%C3%B6)
As death approached my oldest half-brother, a founding director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, he said Trump will be the end of the world.
You're diverting the attention away from the real threat, and as Mearsheimer says AIPAC has got to go. Just too much control over our politics and our political agenda. Your sole focus on Trump simply distorts reality by implementing a very narrow focus.
ChristoNazi threat? The majority of people in the US, Christians and Jews do not support this war, and once again the president they elected into office betrayed their trust. No mention of Netanyahu, or Israel? Why? Who identified Iran as a terrorist state and wanted Iran taken out some 30 or more years ago? Granted Trump is also responsible for his despicable complicity, but he doesn't stand alone, and he like other president's is once again doing Israel's bidding. Iran has been on Netanyahu's hit list for more then 30 years. All our Middle Eastern wars were fought for the benefit of Israel. In Netanyahu's 1995 book, Fighting Terrorism, he identifies those countries, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc and Iran was on his hit list as well, and didn't we do his bidding. Remember how he pushed the lie that Hussein was going nuclear? He pushed that lie, over and over, and Biden pushed it in the Senate. No mention of Israel's role in this? Just a Christo/Nazi movement? You are quite mistaken. Do you remember Obama's Iran deal, and do you remember Netanyahu paying him a visit? Netanyahu in this article confirms what I said, in regard to Iran. https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/12/11/in-court-netanyahu-shares-dramatic-interaction-with-obama-on-iran/
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2026/03/06/lawmakers-want-dod-hegseth-investigated-biblical-armageddon-claims.html
To deny the ChristoNazi threat is to enable it. https://andrawatkins.substack.com/ See also: Chris Hedges, “American Fascists: the Christian Right and the War On America” (Free Press: 2007 ) and Jeff Sharlet, “The Family: the Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power” (Harper: 2008).
To me you simply went off topic to spew the same anti-Trump agenda that was present during Trump's first term in office with a total disregard for the subject under discussion, that is the war in Iran. You used it to go on one of those Trump rants so common during his first administration, and I'm sick of them! Did you take these detours, during the Obama administration, or how about Biden's? You got a war in Iran with many potential dangers ahead and I don't want to make this all about Trump which is what I am afraid of because it's a lot bigger then him, more scary then him. I was involved in the anti-war movement in the beginning, a wash out, and many in the movement turned their backs on it with their misguided hopes that Obama, whom they claimed presented a big opportunity for change, and then came the war in Syria, and then the war in Libya, and the coup in Ukraine which was followed by another administration who wanted to take Putin down. In between we got things like Citizens United that turned companies into people and their issues came first on Washington's agenda. That AIPAC controls our politicians is really scary.
Three points before other obligations compel me to abandon this fruitless debate:
(1)--I'm the blogger who -- after Obama back-stabbed us on union card-check and socialized medicine -- dubbed him "Barack the Betrayer." I also characterized "change we can believe in" as -- in truth -- not "the audacity of hope," but rather "the imbecility of hope";
(2)--I'm the mostly retired journalist who, in comments published by The New York Times, characterized the 2024 behavior of Biden/Harris as exemplary of the post-JFK "Democratic" (sic) Party's function as the Fifth Column of the "Republican": (sic) ChristoNazi/NeoConfederate Party, specifically its (plausibly deniable) throwing of the 2024 election to Trump;
(3)--Though I don't believe we have the chance of the proverbial snowball in hell of ever recapturing our nation from its ChristoNazi conquerors, I focus on the Regime and its plutocratic puppet-masters simply because most USians are so hopelessly ignorant (and so ignorant because they are so fanatically self-obsessed), they could not find Israel on a map; thus I continue my resistance -- as I will for as long as I am able -- in the localized form a near-lifelong experience in communication media tells me has the greatest potential impact. (See https://today.uconn.edu/2014/10/going-too-far-the-american-publics-attitudes-toward-protest-movements/ )
That said -- unless we are rescued by some genuine miracle -- our plight is that of the forgotten heroes of Wake Island (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Wake_Island ) and the immortalized heroes of Fortress Brest (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw3mDJ0qdp0 )
In addition to being very mean-spirited and aggressive, Loki was very clever and creative. Trump is neither of the latter, quite the opposite.
He is "clever" enough to have mobilized -- as never before -- the simmering hatefulness that has always been the true heart of this criminal nation (which, if he goes nuclear, is "clever" enough to destroy the world). As Sun Tzu says, the worst, most fatal mistake in warfare -- and anyone who doubts this is {not} a war is delusional -- is to underestimate one's enemy: and Trump is not just the enemy of the dwindling number of us here trapped in the ruins of the failed United States who remain capable of empathy; he is the enemy of all empathetic humans everywhere on this planet. Moreover, he is also the enemy of our Mother Earth -- and therefore of life itself.
Humans as a whole are the enemy of the Earth and the nonhuman life here. Only a small fraction of 1% of humans aren't overpopulated and live in a rightful manner. This is a choice and humans can always decide to fix it, but a true solution would take thousands of years. See this book outline for details: https://rewilding.org/fixing-humans-by-expanding-our-consciousness/
https://www.unz.com/article/how-israel-and-the-fbi-manipulated-assassination-plots-to-goad-trump-into-iran-war/
The site you link includes Holocaust-denial. Do you also believe in the utterly discredited notion of an "international Jewish conspiracy'?
Mr Unz is jewish too, so he obviously tolerates EVERYTHING on his website and as Fran said, the piece is by Max Blumenthal who is a GEM!
I love Max, and am well aware of his work and contributions, and his dedication to the causes he believes in. Loren Bliss, is just involved in trying to delegitimize him.
I sent a link to an article posted on UNZ, and written by Max Blumenthal, a highly recognized journalist, who happens to be Jewish. If true, I wasn't aware of your accusation in regard to that site since it's not a site I reference often. However I have never seen articles that deny the Holocaust, but I've come across a lot of people, maybe trolls, who challenge that a genocide was, and continues to be implemented in Gaza on sub-stack. If one disagrees with these people they not only challenge you, but too often can go on a vicious attack. Your response is nothing more then a cheap shot to undermine me, and the article written by Blumenthal. Who do you think you're kidding?
Anyone who doubts the accuracy of my description need only peruse the site. (Apropos Blumenthal's Jewishness, he's notoriously pro-Islamist; apropos Unz's Jewishness, he is a self-proclaimed Libertarian, therefore a disciple of Ayn Rand, therefore an existential fascist, therefore someone I would [never under any circumstances] trust; in which context don't forget Trump's outspokenly Nazi advisor Stephen Miller is also Jewish.)
At first he's on a site that you claim has published articles that deny the holocaust, and now you go on to say Blumenthal is a proclaimed Libertarian, and therefore a disciple of Ayn Rand, ergo, a fascist. He's a fascist, well, in plain English what has he done to be defined as a fascist in your book? They call people fascists who believe in authoritarian rule, militarism and believe in the supremacy of the nation over the individual.. I looked that up. Well, doesn't sound like Max to me. Oy vey es mir, the people you meet on this site.
Thank you for pointing out the copying error in the "Anyone who doubts..." response. (I write replies off-site to prevent them from being glitched into oblivion before they're posted; this one was at the bottom of a full page and jumped to another, and when I copied it, I somehow missed seven words, which are now included.) My apology for the error.
That said, here are links that substantiate what I said about Blumenthal --https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Blumenthal -- and about Unz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Unz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unz_Review
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/01/ron-unz-the-california-libertarian-multimillionaire-is-pushing-a-minimum-wage-hike.html (paywalled).
Since nobody else mentions it, wtf, I will. I wonder if Mr. Mearsheimer is willing to reassess his remarks on the record that the bombing & incineration of more than 170 Iranian schoolgirls on the 1st morning of this unlawful, unprovoked war of aggression against Iran amounts to a “tragic mistake”. You could describe it that way. You could also describe it as a war crime.
Scott Ritter explains ( w/Nima on Dialogue Works, for example) how the brand spanking new Secretary of War did away with an analysis team set up under the Biden administration to confirm that potential strike targets are not targeting civilians. All in the name of maximum lethality, no holds barred, no rules mind you.
Using a weak bromide such as “tragic mistake” to sweep aside massive incompetence coupled with unbridled hubris fueled by murderous intent seems too simple, maybe bordering on cavalier.
He’s mentioned it in other interviews. He’s as horrified as the rest of us
listening to this interview, grateful as always, for the insight to be gained when true experts exchange ideas, i realized that nazi germany’s monstrosities btw 1933 and 1945 led to another monstrosity in 1948 [bearing in mind that english - not british, i.e. neither scottish nor welsh - colonialism is at the root of almost all conflicts around the globe today].
as to israel’s PM of years, i wondered: how could one man harbor, for decades, the dream of destroying one country, and flatten others in the process just to keep his behind from behind bars? while i find it just as shocking, if not worse, that this one man - with hi$ cohort$ of co-con$pirator$, of cour$e - manages to find so many european [and US] henchmen and -women willing to help him along his EVIL way!
my country claims to have come to grips w its nazi past and has, for the past few years, provided ample proof that it absolutely hasn’t.
file under: [christian] zionism, white supremacy, habits of hegemony. samson option?
Is bleak like toast, the prognosis for the illegal pariah occupation? This war can’t end without a global depression or Iran will be right back in six months facing the tail wagged rabid dog with much of its infrastructure in ruins.
A fantastic discussion. You might have mentioned how the United States through its endless wars is cannibalizing itself as well as, as you said, eviscerating its liberal values. It’s not unthinkable that Trump will turn future generations of U.S. citizens into slaves, responsible for paying back the enormous debts he is incurring week by week now.
Reading and watching sources of information about three hours a day since this began, this is the most informative single contribution toward reaching a prictical understanding of the current situation.
Something that came to mind at the closing: the observation Professor Mearsheimer made regarding the corruption of a state that engages in war paralleled somewhat Sheldon Wolin's similar view of the process of loss of the liberal state over the course of the cold war.
And again, as in other recent posts and interviews, the ending triggered an emotional response, a grieving for the principles aspired to at the founding of this country, in light of what we have become, particularly over the past decades. (Please note I use the words "aspired to" here, and acknowledge that it was selective, but I do think relative to it's point in time, there was a genuine attempt to reflect Enlightenment principles.)
Thank you again to Chris Hedges and John Mearsheimer.
March 16, 2026: 1.4 million views on YouTube since posting 'Why America is Losing the War With Iran' on March 12, 2026. Congratulations, Chris Hedges and John Mearsheimer. Let's hope Substack will follow soon. Great interview.
Tedious, prolix, bloviating comment follows:
Please excuse my efforts to cobble together an outline (for the purposes of my own understanding) of where this country is, in mid-March, 2026. An understanding that is predicated on my own bias.* (Following below).
Questions remain. Any comments welcomed. Things change rapidly. Stakes are high.
1) The United States is now engaged in a war with Iran, essentially as a result of being manipulated by the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, and the AIPAC, which has extraordinary influence on our political system.
2) Benjamin Netanyahu has found in our current President someone willing to pursue this course, after the failure to goad previous chief executives. Particular character issues are involved. Further aspects of political cult of personality elements are also involved.
Opinions differ as the relative balance of motivations and interests of the U.S. and Israel, the questions of regional hegemony, shifting global polarities, the “game” of great power dominance globally.
The United States since the mid-1800s has become increasingly, functionally, an empire. The U.S. has for decades been a nation that has engaged in wars in the interests of these imperial concerns.
Although there has been - in my view - some diminishing degree of “honest mistake” in the wake of fear engendered by the perceived specter of Commie threat as a result of witnessing the excesses of Stalinism and Maoism. A case of some degree of miscognition. (Though Eric Hobsbawm might differ with respect to the period following WWll, the Cold War.)
But the cause of self-defense/national security, is not a reasonable explanation for essentially any of the militaristic actions following the Korean War. It however, has been effectively used (overall) for purposes of opinion management. (See bias explanation re the social nature of the species.)
The world changes rapidly now, with increasing population and an exponential acceleration of technologies, particularly electronic/cyber.
Throughout history, the advances of technology are ultimately applied to warfare.
In addition to nuclear weapons (Yikes!), we now have a growing cornucopia of low-cost, high yield weaponry.
Cyber weapons - national and terrorist! (Yikes!)
Biological weapons - especially terrorist! Developed with the probable increasing use of AI! (Yikes!)
We seem to face an imminent planetary environmental challenge, of a very possibly existential global degree.
This scenario loads the stakes of all conflicts and feeds into them.
The world is increasingly cleaving into nationalist states in contention in the face of this situation.
American society itself has undergone many changes in the past decades.
We are increasingly an authoritarian society, most likely already a firmly entrenched oligarchy with dimming prospects for anything approaching aspects of democratic processes representing the interests of the overwhelming majority.
Americans rely overwhelmingly on certain sources for information, and the reliability of these sources is already much compromised by the ownership of these sources.
The nature of media and opinion management is increasingly sophisticated.
The effect of countless hours of screen watching by the vast majority of this (and perhaps most globally?) on cognition is incalculable. There is no society, no comparable control group, against which to evaluate.
There is in addition a concerted assault on voices that disagree with the regime currently in power in the U.S.
As with nearly all things, this is only a difference in degree, it has been a steady progression on both parties, who both operate in the interests of a certain wealth/power minority within an increasingly dysfunctional system.
The “American Project” is one that has since the beginning, been an admixture of commercial interests and economic opportunities, combined with a slightly lesser degree (at least in practical application) of political liberty (based on classical liberalism, the values of Enlightenment principles). In the letter of the law, liberty was always predicated in the U.S. more on the economic rather than the civil. English property rights was the foundational basis more that the Universal Rights of Man. Again a matter of degree.
What the U.S. has evolved into is overwhelmingly a culture concerned with the material, with a small degree of social justice remaining.
A culture of entertainment, a culture of distraction, a culture of alienated/anomic individuals, acting though as self-identified members of polarized groups riven with mutual animosity, with a group in political power and increasing ascendancy animated by an incomprehensible spite.
We might be seeing the ultimate result of this situation now.
I wouldn’t begin to place a bet on the overall outcome.
I wouldn’t begin to guess on a time frame of potentially catastrophic events which might follow.
…………
*The bias: that the political follows the social, and the collective nature of society operates something like an amoeba, without conscious unified purpose, but moves as as myriad internal and external forces act on it. Yet with the difference that it at times acts on a collective impulse - we are a social species - following group drives of mania, often possessed by an us-versus-them collective murderous rage, a functional mob. An ape with extraordinarily advanced technology, particularly destructive technology. (War is the purpose to which every technology has always ultimately been applied. War seems to be what we ineluctably do in every generation. Us-versus-them underpinned by the much-vaunted phenomenon of "identity", celebrated in an almost sacral way, when in reality we are all simply born where we are born.)
……..
At the time of this writing, germane background and contextual writings/opinions:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v28/n06/john-mearsheimer/the-israel-lobby
Regarding the aspect of cult phenomenon, what we now seeing is somewhat different than the U.S. has experienced to this degree. It intersects with the fact that the mass society essentially functions more via the internet than in the physical world, also to a degree that is ever-increasing.
https://bandyxlee.substack.com/p/battered-nation-syndrome?publication_id=824777&post_id=190941087&isFreemail=true&r=u7hmx&triedRedirect=true
An interesting recent development.
Parallels possible elsewhere?
-In addition: the prospects of totalitarianism, in all modern states, with the reality of the majority of communication and transactions occurring via the net, is dystopian in the extreme.
(e.g. the financial sanctions applied to Francesca Albanese could be applied to all Americans, deemed by the institutions of state as threats to security.)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/12/russia-internet-blackouts-walkie-talkies-moscow
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/14/russias-self-inflicted-communication-crisis-00827197