I am close to the generation of Jim Miles and thus share his concerns about a nuclear winter and the future of the "western world" (the US-led Empire). This piece is divided into two parts: 1) the impact the book by Ellsberg had on Miles, and 2) "Final Thoughts" which he writes more generally on the implications of the geopolitical scene we are witnessing today.
The dominant factor in all this is the U.S. geopolitical view of global domination – hegemony – under the guise of a neoliberal economic outlook and a neoconservative political perspective. It is a society based on consumer consumption promoted through a lifetime of advertising propaganda in the material sense, the pretentious and unrealistic “rugged individualism” of Reagan and Rand, and in the emotive ideas of being the world’s indispensable nation. To support the material side, the corporate world – ranging from the military industries, the financial corporations, through the large media outlets – supports the ongoing wars and subversions around the world in order to harvest the resources and use the cheap labour required to keep the domestic economy going.
This is aided and abetted by their many sycophantic allies [the trans-national capitalists of the US-led Empire].