Seeking the Principles of Power and Danger

"The orgy in question is the moment when modernity exploded on us, the moment of liberation in every sphere. Political liberation, sexual liberation, liberation of the forces of production, liberation of the forces of destruction, women’s liberation, children’s liberation, liberation of unconscious drives, liberation of art. . . . This was a total orgy—an orgy of the real, the rational, the sexual, of criticism as of anti-criticism, of development as a crisis of development. . . . Now everything has been liberated, the chips are down, and we find ourselves faced collectively with the big question: WHAT DO WE DO NOW THAT THE ORGY IS OVER? Now all we can do is simulate the orgy, simulate liberation." - Jean Baudrillard, in "The Transparency of evil: Essays on Extreme Phenomena". It has to be said, Baudrillard is terribly flippant.

The first University essay I ever wrote, for open foundation at the University of Newcastle midway through 2006. Enjoy:

This is a very timely book and Bacevich manages to pack it with a substantial amount of well organized information. His main themes, as evidenced by the title, are the limitations of power projection through military force and the ideology of American Imperium. He traces the history of the National Security State, its organizational apparatus and the friction between various departments and the ideology of National Security which provide the rationale for the projects of political elites. His analysis situates the Bush administration within a tradition of ideology that spans back to the early days of the Cold war. Whilst also demonstrating its discontinuities; above all, the Bush doctrine’s concept of “preemptive war”. For Bacevich, this policy is both morally indefensible and pragmatically inept. He attempts to give both a description of the current crises (the crisis of profligacy, the political crisis and the military crisis) and prescriptive advice on how to readdress past mist...