2020 election

[pineapplemike]

[Smitty-48]

Vietnam is everything. It's all still about Vietnam.

Vietnam is what Identity Politics is all about.

Prior to the Ia Drang, America had one identity.

After the Ia Drang, it split into two.

One is the Nixonian Hardhats, the other is the Humphrey McGovern Asshippies.

[Smitty-48]

America had never fought a bad war.

America had never lost a war.

America hadn't even been slowed, never mind stopped in its tracks, until Hill 937 in the A Shau.

That was a Treaty of Versailles moment for America. The catastrophe which cracked the ramparts.

Vietnam is the point of divergence, where America split into two Identity camps.

It's the same camps now as it was in 1968, fighting over the exact same things.

Trump is Nixon. The Democrats are Humphrey and McGovern.

It's all come full circle, as it always does, American history is a series of loops.

[Smitty-48]

You can't possibly be so naive to think the Islamicnam is going to be the last Vietnam.

America is caught in a Vietnam loop,

It's going to keep coming around again and again.

Vietnam is America's Demon.

[pineapplemike]

[Smitty-48]

Colonel Bacevich has rightly coined the Establishment as the Washington National Security Consensus.

It's still Allen Dulles.

It's still Robert McNamara.

It's still JFK

It's still LBJ.

Nothing has changed, quite the opposite, the GWOT is simply the gateway drug for a Global Vietnam.

The only thing I would differ with Colonel Bacevich about, is his assertion that America is losing.

America is the winning the Vietnam War, slowly but surely.

Which is why it continues to completely dominate both foreign and domestic policy.

Kennedy was right. It's simply a question of doing it over and over, until the Demon is vanquished, in the Jungle.

[Smitty-48]

The problem with the Humphrey McGovern Asshippies, particularly the McGovern wing, is that they are resisting the inexorable tide of Manifest Destiny.

That's not going to work.

It just wastes energy.

Manifest Destiny is destiny.

America has to vanquish the Vietnam Demon.

McGovernism is a canard which serves no good purpose.

Manifest Destiny cannot be stopped.

It's just a question of how much time and energy America will waste on McGovernism to nowhere.

[Smitty-48]

The North Vietnamese themselves no longer resist Manifest Destiny.

In Vietnam now, the general consensus is that fighting the Americans was a huge mistake.

The regime in Ho Chi Minh city tries to stamp out such speech, but it's flowing around them regardless.

[Smitty-48]

Thing is, Ho Chi Minh himself thought that fighting the Americans was a huge mistake.

It wasn't Ho Chi Minh America was fighting, it was Le Duan.

Ho Chi Minh sided with the Soviets, who wanted Detente with America.

Le Duan deposed Ho Chi Minh in favor of the Chinese plan for violent insurrection.

Nothing has changed. The Russians still prefer Detente, the Chinese are still bent on confrontation.

America is still warring between Nixonian and McGovernism.

Vietnam was an epoch.

Epochs take decades, sometimes centuries to play out.

Vietnam is a hundred years war.

America will win, it's just a matter of how long that will take.

[Smitty-48]

2075?

That sounds about right.

By 2075 China will probably be the last holdout against Manifest Destiny.

Big as they are, they will be the ones who are surrounded by then.

I think Russia will have long since fully integrated with Europe by 2075.