people have been dealing with psychopaths since the inception of this country. It's nothing new. It's new for White folks but not people of color. Because of their actions their will witness the fall of the American empire.
What many people still refuse to admit is that Trump’s return to power was never some unimaginable accident, just as a confrontation between the United States and Iran has, for years, felt less like a possibility and more like an eventuality.
The mistake is believing that politics is primarily driven by the personalities at the top. It isn’t. Leaders matter, of course, but only within boundaries set by far larger systems of power. The public is given a choice, but it is rarely a choice unconstrained by those who shape the political field long before a ballot is ever cast. By the time voters arrive, the menu has already been written.
This is why incompetence, volatility, or even visible cognitive decline in leaders can become politically useful. Whether it is Trump’s impulsiveness or Biden’s frailty, these traits create a ready-made alibi for catastrophic decisions. When the irrational happens, those behind the machinery of power can simply point upward and say: he was unstable, he acted erratically, nobody could have predicted it. Accountability evaporates into theatre.
In that sense, chaos is not always an accident. Sometimes it is architecture.
Power often works by creating the very conditions that later excuse its own behaviour. Manufacture instability, allow tensions to escalate, place combustible personalities at the centre of the stage, and when the inevitable explosion comes, present it as an unforeseeable tragedy rather than the product of deliberate incentives and sustained pressure.
The same logic increasingly applies to artificial intelligence. As more consequential decisions are delegated to opaque systems, AI offers the perfect future scapegoat. When an algorithm produces a disastrous outcome, the response writes itself: the system made the call, the risk wasn’t anticipated, no human intended this. It becomes a more technologically sophisticated version of the same old absolution.
“It wasn’t us. The machine decided.”
But machines do not emerge from the ether. They are built, trained, deployed, and authorised by human institutions with human interests. The distance between decision and responsibility is precisely what makes them so politically useful.
There’s an old saying in politics: it’s only when you reach the top that you realise you’re actually somewhere in the middle. Presidents and prime ministers often discover that the highest office is still constrained by networks of influence far more durable than any individual administration — intelligence agencies, defence interests, financial institutions, party machinery, donor classes, and the permanent state that outlives elections.
That is the world we actually inhabit.
In that world, figures like Trump are often less the authors of events than the instruments through which events are made possible. He may well believe a decision is entirely his own, but that does not mean it emerged in a vacuum. People around him understand exactly how to steer him: through ego, grievance, flattery, fear, and the careful construction of circumstances that make one course of action feel inevitable.
The performance of spontaneity is often just choreography in disguise.
Trump’s greatest political vulnerability has always been that he is remarkably easy to manipulate — and those who orbit power know precisely how to turn that weakness into leverage.
This has to be one of the most concisely intelligent comments on inter/national power dynamics that I have ever seen written down, or maybe that merely means that it chimes perfectly with my own analysis so I flag it as 'intelligent'. 😉
Regardless, I'll look up your substack on the strength of it.
Yep, this is exactly it. And this is where I find so much of the big, famous analysts fall short. They come from a place that thinks this screwed up system of economics, organisation etc can and will function if we weed out the bad apples and follow things as scripted.
Did you organise this for students? Brilliant work - Jeffrey speaks from a lot of experience, and these are certainly opinions people need to be hearing. Not that I actually agree with his analysis in many ways - Modhi, for example, is part of a virulent Hindu nationalism in India that demonises and endangers many of the muslim population of that country, so looking to him as a white knight seems ludicrous.
That said, the questions and perspectives he espouses are certainly going to trigger thoughts and ideas, and he punches holes very easily in the shroud of nonsense!
I remember- i think you posted the question on notes, maybe? That’s brilliant - how folks respond to the challenge reveals a lot. What remains without a doubt is he cares deeply about humanity. And from there, things are always possible. I would have loved to hear the students’ questions - but i guess these days that’s a whole can of worms of permission etc etc. i hope it brings you a raft of subs :) agin, great work!
I’m always super curious about the questions from that age group, as they often give me hope! Particularly when I compare them with questions I would have asked at a similar age, being the internet free, naive youth I was. Also, it’s reflective of a culture nowhere near as individualistic as this western version I’ve been pickling in most of my life. As always, ta for the interaction. I’ve got your paper lined up for reading this week. As i’m sure you’ve come to expect, i’ll comment ;) have a good weekend sir.
I agree significantly with Dr. Sachs except for his apparent positivity about the Democrats. They are as bad as the Republicans, or maybe it's better to say that neither party runs foreign policy, so it doesn't matter which is in power.
grace lee boggs liked to ask, "what time is it on the clock of the world?" her take was that we are living through the end of an epoque of history. that's why the usual lenses don't go deep enough to explain the times. could donald trump be here to help bring an end to things, not intentionally, of course?
Good stuff. Karim, on your last question wrt the grand strategy: May I kindly suggest to invite Brian Berletics to your podcast.
He talks about it for more than a decade, and has been proven right over and over again. Today he published another excellent grand strategy monologue: https://youtu.be/LXuxfX0y1H4?si=UTKyh0xcMAL5K7x0
I'm genuinely curious as to why not. I'm not after causing an ad hominem, internet spat, of course, but in what ways do you find him an undesirable as a guest?
He ignored Palestine for a very long time, until it became untenable. He also thinks everything is a mastermind plot of the West and does not provide any agency to the people of West Asia to change the course of history. He, at times, even berates the resistance from the comfort of his Western background. These forms of latent supremacist attitude is not very elegant.
We never made any of our conceptions about him public, however.
In fact, we wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and respectfully invited him at least 3 times to make his case. He never responded.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I've not followed him for that long so was unaware of his initial (non-)coverage of the Palestinian genocide. I do find his current analysis of Western strategy (attacking Venezuela and Iran as an energy chokehold on China and even Eurasia) as compelling and worth listening to.
It is true that he engages in very little solutionism, but then that's not what I look to him for; likewise, I don't look to the excellent Sachs for military analysis.
Thanks again for the reply; I continue to love your work.
people have been dealing with psychopaths since the inception of this country. It's nothing new. It's new for White folks but not people of color. Because of their actions their will witness the fall of the American empire.
What many people still refuse to admit is that Trump’s return to power was never some unimaginable accident, just as a confrontation between the United States and Iran has, for years, felt less like a possibility and more like an eventuality.
The mistake is believing that politics is primarily driven by the personalities at the top. It isn’t. Leaders matter, of course, but only within boundaries set by far larger systems of power. The public is given a choice, but it is rarely a choice unconstrained by those who shape the political field long before a ballot is ever cast. By the time voters arrive, the menu has already been written.
This is why incompetence, volatility, or even visible cognitive decline in leaders can become politically useful. Whether it is Trump’s impulsiveness or Biden’s frailty, these traits create a ready-made alibi for catastrophic decisions. When the irrational happens, those behind the machinery of power can simply point upward and say: he was unstable, he acted erratically, nobody could have predicted it. Accountability evaporates into theatre.
In that sense, chaos is not always an accident. Sometimes it is architecture.
Power often works by creating the very conditions that later excuse its own behaviour. Manufacture instability, allow tensions to escalate, place combustible personalities at the centre of the stage, and when the inevitable explosion comes, present it as an unforeseeable tragedy rather than the product of deliberate incentives and sustained pressure.
The same logic increasingly applies to artificial intelligence. As more consequential decisions are delegated to opaque systems, AI offers the perfect future scapegoat. When an algorithm produces a disastrous outcome, the response writes itself: the system made the call, the risk wasn’t anticipated, no human intended this. It becomes a more technologically sophisticated version of the same old absolution.
“It wasn’t us. The machine decided.”
But machines do not emerge from the ether. They are built, trained, deployed, and authorised by human institutions with human interests. The distance between decision and responsibility is precisely what makes them so politically useful.
There’s an old saying in politics: it’s only when you reach the top that you realise you’re actually somewhere in the middle. Presidents and prime ministers often discover that the highest office is still constrained by networks of influence far more durable than any individual administration — intelligence agencies, defence interests, financial institutions, party machinery, donor classes, and the permanent state that outlives elections.
That is the world we actually inhabit.
In that world, figures like Trump are often less the authors of events than the instruments through which events are made possible. He may well believe a decision is entirely his own, but that does not mean it emerged in a vacuum. People around him understand exactly how to steer him: through ego, grievance, flattery, fear, and the careful construction of circumstances that make one course of action feel inevitable.
The performance of spontaneity is often just choreography in disguise.
Trump’s greatest political vulnerability has always been that he is remarkably easy to manipulate — and those who orbit power know precisely how to turn that weakness into leverage.
This has to be one of the most concisely intelligent comments on inter/national power dynamics that I have ever seen written down, or maybe that merely means that it chimes perfectly with my own analysis so I flag it as 'intelligent'. 😉
Regardless, I'll look up your substack on the strength of it.
Yep, this is exactly it. And this is where I find so much of the big, famous analysts fall short. They come from a place that thinks this screwed up system of economics, organisation etc can and will function if we weed out the bad apples and follow things as scripted.
Top comment.
great discussion and guests, Big TQ
Very interesting.
Did you organise this for students? Brilliant work - Jeffrey speaks from a lot of experience, and these are certainly opinions people need to be hearing. Not that I actually agree with his analysis in many ways - Modhi, for example, is part of a virulent Hindu nationalism in India that demonises and endangers many of the muslim population of that country, so looking to him as a white knight seems ludicrous.
That said, the questions and perspectives he espouses are certainly going to trigger thoughts and ideas, and he punches holes very easily in the shroud of nonsense!
He offered to visit me. I, Karim, complained through email to him about some of his words. He agreed with me and said let’s talk about it.
So I organized a lecture hall with our students and he showed up. True story!
I remember- i think you posted the question on notes, maybe? That’s brilliant - how folks respond to the challenge reveals a lot. What remains without a doubt is he cares deeply about humanity. And from there, things are always possible. I would have loved to hear the students’ questions - but i guess these days that’s a whole can of worms of permission etc etc. i hope it brings you a raft of subs :) agin, great work!
Yep, university asked us to avoid the student questions being put online.
I’m always super curious about the questions from that age group, as they often give me hope! Particularly when I compare them with questions I would have asked at a similar age, being the internet free, naive youth I was. Also, it’s reflective of a culture nowhere near as individualistic as this western version I’ve been pickling in most of my life. As always, ta for the interaction. I’ve got your paper lined up for reading this week. As i’m sure you’ve come to expect, i’ll comment ;) have a good weekend sir.
Especially with our “Dr. Strangelove-type” generals we’ve always had, as I have learned from Professor Sachs.
It’s called the ZOG. I love how he never mentions Israel controlling our country.
It’s called cowardice! It’s COWARDICE!
the Republicans need to screw their balls back on, grow a backbone and drag trump and his pychophants out of office.
(1) Something Strange with humans bowing to psychopaths: Well, the MF is the embodiment of „To crawl to the bigwigs and bully the underlings“
To some he appears rich and powerful To others even more powerful than him, he is a compromised puppet
I agree significantly with Dr. Sachs except for his apparent positivity about the Democrats. They are as bad as the Republicans, or maybe it's better to say that neither party runs foreign policy, so it doesn't matter which is in power.
grace lee boggs liked to ask, "what time is it on the clock of the world?" her take was that we are living through the end of an epoque of history. that's why the usual lenses don't go deep enough to explain the times. could donald trump be here to help bring an end to things, not intentionally, of course?
Good stuff. Karim, on your last question wrt the grand strategy: May I kindly suggest to invite Brian Berletics to your podcast.
He talks about it for more than a decade, and has been proven right over and over again. Today he published another excellent grand strategy monologue: https://youtu.be/LXuxfX0y1H4?si=UTKyh0xcMAL5K7x0
Sorry, not a fan of Berletic.
Why is that?
I'm genuinely curious as to why not. I'm not after causing an ad hominem, internet spat, of course, but in what ways do you find him an undesirable as a guest?
He ignored Palestine for a very long time, until it became untenable. He also thinks everything is a mastermind plot of the West and does not provide any agency to the people of West Asia to change the course of history. He, at times, even berates the resistance from the comfort of his Western background. These forms of latent supremacist attitude is not very elegant.
We never made any of our conceptions about him public, however.
In fact, we wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt and respectfully invited him at least 3 times to make his case. He never responded.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I've not followed him for that long so was unaware of his initial (non-)coverage of the Palestinian genocide. I do find his current analysis of Western strategy (attacking Venezuela and Iran as an energy chokehold on China and even Eurasia) as compelling and worth listening to.
It is true that he engages in very little solutionism, but then that's not what I look to him for; likewise, I don't look to the excellent Sachs for military analysis.
Thanks again for the reply; I continue to love your work.
No No let's get this straight people want Trump out we do not have mercy for the pedophile we want him convicted and rot in hell.
No one at this “chat”?
You’re talking about Peter and me here.
Don’t like it? Stop watching our stuff.