Confuse and Destroy
The estate agents who took over planet earth
Mandelson needs to ‘disappear for a very long time’ says cabinet minister. Conversely, Mandelson is ace interpreter of Trump says Louis Mosley, head of Palantir - and British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley’s grandson.
Peter pissing on George Osborne’s wall. Peter pissing inside the big tent from outside, then Peter, pissing in it inside, or out of it from the outside, it doesn’t matter where the weewee trickles, so long as it benefits Peter.
Anyway, I look forward to a) him, and now Starmer - who is clearly still listening to him - eating the dead rat sandwich of his claim that Trump won’t invade and annex Greenland or b) eating my own words when Trump doesn’t invade.
At some level this is a win-win for me. A win-win inside a massive global lose-lose.
Because I am, like everyone else, pissing from nowhere into nowhere.
Hello everyone.
At my most conspirabro, Trump’s game is the same as Putin’s: the result of Vladislav Surkov’s ultimate Baudrillardian pomo strategy, perhaps best summarised by Conemelt’s album title of Confuse and Destroy. Make people not know if they’re coming or going while bullying them, they won’t see the real game ‘til it’s too late.
I rattled on about Surkov in Provocation Volume 1, with Brian Baker. Now I note there’s a movie I haven’t seen called The Wizard of the Kremlin, based on a novel. I should see that film, or read the book, basically Surkov engineered a situation in which nobody knew what was going on, under which they got on with what they really had going on... sound familiar?
My father died suddenly at the end of last year. So all kinds of people I never see were suddenly at the funeral. My mum has two cousins, one was the MD of a furniture company and the other in the diplomatic service, both are brothers, the only ‘posh’ in the family. Well, the former diplomat was there and so I asked him about all this madness. He just kept shaking his head and looking at his shoes saying ‘we’ve never seen anything like this’ and ‘we’re tiny.’
In my most credulous moments I imagine the Surkovian spin environment of Putin and Trump being one continuum, and Trump a Manchurian Candidate for Putinism, and you know Alaska used to belong to Russia before they sold it, Trump could sell it to Russia again! They’re all fucking estate agents, one of the guys they sent to Ukraine, Steve Witkoff, an estate agent! the world has been taken over by estate agents!
THE ESTATE AGENTS WHO TOOK OVER PLANET EARTH
[Three exclamation marks]
I could imagine Philip K. Dick writing all that up in the 1970s, Trump opens the back door for Russia, and then sells it to them, but now it’s likely to be a dead manuscript by the time the publisher starts to read it.
I chatted to Brian Baker about my wilder imaginings and he replied, ‘I think Surkov’s theory relies on a much more rational actor than Trump.’ He’s right. So I stopped riffing on it. Because, I’ll say it again, to continue is to piss from nowhere into nowhere.
Things are moving so fast that any cultural material you produce ages like zip! and foosh!
Gorn.
I suppose Substack is at least the right medium for it.
Bye for now.
And hello.


Great handle, great piece