Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia

 Given that the Trump regime has been a joint venture with Russia since the first time around, and it's been even more obvious this time, any political figure or analysts asking whether he's concerned that the kidnapping of Venezuela's president, and stated plans to take over that country's oil fields will embolden Russia and China in their territory grabs is just framing a statement as a question.

Trump has an understanding with Putin. They've divvied up the world. Russia recently deployed intermediate range, nuclear capable missiles to Belarus, putting a gun to Europe's head. China's conducting military exercises off the coast of Taiwan. The deals have been made. Mind you, both China and Russia are assuming that the forces of ignorance and greed that have lifted Donald Trump to the status of most destructive president in American history will blunder so badly in their new playground that China and Russia will be able to close in from either side. The odds are in their favor.

At this point, China looks like the least worst as a global overlord. They're  repressive, sure. But Putin and Trump, and the powers aligned with them, are outright sadists. Trump and Putin and their devoted followers actively enjoy causing and watching pain and suffering. It's a major part of the strongman image. I don't welcome our Chinese overlords, I merely observe all the players and make a prediction. Domination by any or all of them will be much worse than bumbling toward some sort of global human understanding would have been. I just wanted to get a time and date stamp on my conjecture.

Trump has already threatened Cuba. Russia used to consider Cuba a tripwire, but I bet now they'd be willing to cut it loose to focus on getting more and more of the contiguous territory of the old USSR back together, and adding Western Europe as at least coerced allies.

Africa presents a problematic prize. South America gets mighty skinny as you go south. Neither Russia nor China would cross an ocean to fight you for it. But Africa is thick and broad and loaded with resources. It's difficult country to hold. A superpower could wield influence, but no outside force would be able to subdue any major percentage of it. China, Russia, and the country formerly known as the United States will continue to compete there, with the US off to the slowest start because of the stupidity, greed, and bigotry of the current regime, whether it's the part led by the senile 1980s real estate failure or the part led by Bible-thumping misogynists.

So: The Big Three have divided the world into general spheres of influence where each will let the other do pretty much anything. Global war will be threatened on a regular basis to keep ordinary citizens on edge expecting Armageddon. Small wars will bleed off young people who have no other job options. Or maybe conscription will return. If you survive your enlistment with all your body parts, and your mind intact, you might go on to finish out your career in the building trades, or trucking. If you're maimed in body and or spirit, die a beggar. No one asked you to be born. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country's wealthy leaders.

Revolutions are forced. Evolution happens.

We were taught in school that the American Revolution was a glorious stride in the direction of a better world. What it really did was put a rotating cast of rich white men in place of the British monarchy and its agents as the decision makers for this chunk of North America, without even firmly determined boundaries yet. The men in charge were all beneficiaries of the system of chattel slavery, whether they owned any or not. They continued the policy of displacing and eradicating the existing native population. Women could suggest, as Abigail Adams did, that they be included in this new government of the free, but that had to wait for a later century, and see some women actually killed in the pursuit of it.

"Do what I want or I will kill you," has been a compelling argument throughout our existence. It may be preceded by, "Do what I want or I will beat you up," but it always lies in the background, ready to be used, like a black rifle carried down a city street, or a militarized police force's surplus tank that they just got as a hand-me-down from the real armed forces.

People who deride hippies and other peaceniks in this country assure us that human nature is incorrigibly mean and nasty. One must always be ready to fight for peace. Any peace that you enjoy here is protected by a fortified perimeter keeping the evil forces of worse nations at bay. And within this great land of ours, you need to be able to defend yourself against individual attackers who will inevitably spring up.

This can be a real problem if they are wearing law enforcement uniforms, or you're a woman and he's your boss, or you're black and they're not, or the attackers are using their car as a weapon against you as you ride a bike. And that's just a few of the situations in which the myth of the armed citizen comes up against the realities of the legal system. And if you relax the standards for self defense you also create more cover stories for homicide.

Every so often, someone suggests that humans learn to put aside their animal promptings to force dominance, and instead develop more awareness of the fragility of life and the underlying sadness that we all share, whether we have ever noticed it in ourselves or not. But that sounds really boring, and it also makes you vulnerable to anyone who has not put down the weapons yet. In addition, because it requires that you take less in material wealth, and accept gratefully many amenities that we currently take for granted, it leaves more resources lying around for grabby people to grab. Which they definitely do.

Can humans guide their evolution by learning to do what is better for them, enacted in quiet revolutions of nonviolent change? Or will we be the victims of biological promptings expressed through advanced technology, becoming better and better destroyers until we succeed in destroying ourselves? Consumerism is far more destructive than war, because it uses pleasure instead of pain. There are those who lust for war. Not all of them are sideline profiteers. Some people enjoy the actual killing. There are people crazy enough to hope for a full-on exchange of nuclear missiles. But even if those people never get their way, we can live our peaceful little lives, "not hurting anybody," and burn it all down just as effectively. We've practically accomplished it already.

As the Democratic candidates compete for their party's nomination, polls show the policy positions of  Bernie Sanders seem extremely popular. His detractors on the left are marshaling their considerable resources to prevent him from being nominated. In this information -- and disinformation -- age, it's hard for a political lightweight to know for sure how much of the opposition research is true, but we've also learned that smears don't have to be true at all to do irreparable damage to Democratic candidates. Oddly, the same seems far less true of Republican candidates. But that's another topic entirely. The dirt on Bernie is probably quite verifiable. And, as someone pointed out somewhere on social media today, campaigns that spend all their time on damage control end up losing.

The proposals of the progressive wing of the Democrats trigger the conditioned reflexes of generations of Americans well trained to recoil from "socialism." Even though we've never really lived in a land of unlimited individual liberty, even for white men, the majority of us are conditioned to believe in an economic Utopia just over the horizon, or just behind us in a misty past, in which pure merit will be, or was, rewarded. Merit means hard work and good character. It rejects the controlling and coddling of Big Government in favor of rugged individualism. It is the land of the alpha male, and the underlings who know their place, because the meritocracy has weeded them, and they accept its judgment. It's one of the many things that sound good until you really think about them. But who has time for all that thinking? We have merit to accrue.

In the rest of the Democratic field, the same full-on socially connective and environmentally active positions put forward by Sanders appear in varying levels of dilution, all the way down to practically nothing. So then you have to wonder how much of anyone's formulation will survive actually being elected, and that's only if they manage to win. A couple of days ago, I found a chart that laid them all out nicely, but I didn't bookmark it, and now I can't find it again. Sorry about that. I'm sure you're closing in on a favorite on your own. Go make your mark! There's still a long process to sort it out further.