some highlights
This week, as Kissinger celebrates his 100th birthday on May 27, it is reasonable to look back and examine his heritage and how he has impacted – for better or on occasion, for worse – the world that has served as his canvas.
Five years later Kissinger became a naturalized American and at the end of World War II, entered Harvard where he would eventually graduate, win his PhD and become a distinguished professor of government **and, in the interest of full disclosure, one of my teachers. **
In fact, the way this victory was finally structured led to the creation of a nation that is today a bulwark of capitalism – and as the US seeks to diversify away from China, at least in economic terms, a most valued partner if not outright ally.
Along the way there were other issues into which Kissinger felt it necessary to insert himself – a civil war in East Pakistan that led to its breakoff as the nation of Bangladesh; supporting Indonesian actions to prevent independence of the island of East Timor; a host of interventions in Latin America including CIA-backed military coups to remove the Socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, and Argentina’s Isabel Perón; and across Africa where he cemented relations with Zaire dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and pressed for black majority rule in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).
Many of these stances seem in retrospect to have been deeply misguided, especially his moves in Latin America and Africa.
But at the time, at the height of the Cold War’s confrontation and competition between the US and the Soviet Union, they were hardly misguided. It is only in recent years that much of the rest of Kissinger’s world has threatened to go careening off the rails he so carefully established.
The word Weltanschauung does not contain an umlaut. It's also a word that can be translated directly without loss of meaning as "worldview". It's not a mystical term of an old political genius, it's just Americans being baffled by the concept of a foreign language.
Just like Hegel and Heidegger, Kissinger's precise use of language and technical philosophical terms cannot truly be translated. To say things like worldview removes the Geist behind the writing and does not capture the totalizing understanding of die Erde depicted in Weltanshauung.
Thank you for saying what I was gonna say but way more clearly and concisely.
There's no firm evidence that he actually ever said it, but President George W. Bush [is reputed to have said] to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that "the trouble with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur."
I assume that the "no firm evidence" stuff is Brit cleanup after Dubya actually said it.
Transmitting death vibes towards Kissinger. Please 🙏 die you old ghoul.
I hope these journalists who write these disgusting puff pieces about him go down alongside him. Actual ghouls :angery:
Many of these stances seem in retrospect to have been deeply misguided
Least credulous lib
It's 'misguided' when my guy does it, and 'malicious' when yours does; sorry but I don't make the rules sweaty
In fact, the way this victory was finally structured led to the creation of a nation that is today a bulwark of capitalism – and as the US seeks to diversify away from China, at least in economic terms, a most valued partner if not outright ally.
CNN going for the "we must pretend China is capitalist even though we don't believe that anymore" approach to misinforming their audiences I see.
Seriously. God wouldn’t even let Betty White make it, and she’s probably killed far fewer foreigners.
Probably.
Let him live forever but become more and more of a pain riddled husk, unable to die
Two of my long time comrades who were unfaltering leftists for 67-ish years died within the last year just after reaching the pension age. They were more than heroes, they were union people.
:gulag: for every journalist who doesn't spend their every waking hour dragging Kissinger's name through the mud
I hope when he dies as he falls into hell he catches a glimpse of Anthony Bourdain pointing and laughing from heaven.
https://theintercept.com/2023/05/23/henry-kissinger-cambodia-bombing-survivors/
An investigation by The Intercept provides evidence of previously unreported attacks that killed or wounded hundreds of Cambodian civilians during Kissinger’s tenure in the White House. When questioned about his culpability for these deaths, Kissinger responded with sarcasm and refused to provide answers.
Haha yeah dude totally, maybe if we phrase it as
supporting Indonesian actions to prevent independence of the island of East Timor
Nobody will realize we're talking about the genocide that killed over 100k people!
I hope Kissinger lives forever and just continues to senesce. Let the decrepit corpse watch as the world he made crumbles and the people he mutilated rise triumphant.
