Dimensionally Barrett

We’ve heard, possibly ad nauseam, that history repeats itself or that it rhymes or that it echos. In any case, we are witnessing a scenario that played out across the twentieth and seems to be playing out again in the twenty-first; the fall of democracy across the planet. We are also experiencing the fall of an empire.  Make no mistake, US foreign policy has been built on the idea of “Manifest Destiny” and this was assumed to be a universal axiom. It began as justification for the Western movement in the nineteenth century with all the acquisition of native lands possible and land grabs from Mexico and Spain, not to mention the crazy bargain basement buy-out of the Louisiana Purchase. Post Civil War, we see the U.S. expansionism begin across the globe, very often via armed takeover, but later in the twentieth century, by way of “soft” and not-so-soft, power.  With increased globalization, it’s obvious there would be those who would challenge US hegemony, but realistically, it’...

"If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no." Snyder opens with a historical look back at the special riot and secret police forces used by authoritarian regimes. Reference is made to their employment in the Great Terror in the Soviet Union and the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazi regime. What he emphasizes is that the Nazi SS and the Soviet NKVD didn't act with out support.  "Without the assistance of regular police forces, and sometimes regular soldiers, they could not have killed on such a large scale." Moreover, the NKVD might have been the most well-organized of any mass killing group. It was centralized and the officers "recorded 682,691 executions of supposed enemies of the state, most of them peasants or members of national minorities." These executions might have been carried out...