Politics

Miss Pax

Chill Evil, Politics

The age of America is ending. We’ve somehow managed to strangle ourselves with no outside assistance.

The world that’s coming will be much more dangerous and worse. The evil degrowthers will cheer, though China, India and now Europe will be ramping up emissions more than the US ever would have, so it’ll be a net loss even there. The wake of our decline will stir into motion much war, much death, and probably a nuclear exchange or two before it’s done.

I never thought it’d all wrap up like this, in a pathetic suicide. But perhaps that’s the only way it could’ve concluded.

DOGE Gone

Chill Evil, Political Economy, Politics

I’ve been planning for Social Security not to exist when I retire and looks like DOGE might make that happen. Glad I started planning for that more than 20 years ago.

Poverty rate is gonna jump and elderly are gonna be dying in the streets. But we all knew it was coming. Well, the smart ones did. The rich absolutely despise Social Security and covet that money. It was only a matter of time before they stole it all.

Superior

Chill Clowns, Political Economy, Politics

That’s right. She doesn’t understand it because it makes no sense. But people always want to feel that they’re better than someone else, even if the average contractor or construction worker should have more solidarity with the waitress in the café than the billionaire being a clown on TV.

But everyone in America sees themselves as a temporarily-embarrassed millionaire so class solidarity isn’t much of a thing.

He Found the Self-Destruct Button

Chill Evil, Political Economy, Politics

I thought the idea absurd in 2015-2016 that Trump might be a Russian agent, or least on their payroll. Now I think it’s probably substantially true.

Has a country so large ever destroyed itself so quickly? Maybe Germany in the lead-up to WWII, but even that was slower if I’ve read my history correctly.

Ludic

Chill Clowns, Political Economy, Politics

He is right. Even all the liberals chanting “Death to America” who firmly side with Hamas terrorists will miss Pax Americana and the liberal global order that rode on its back when that stability and peace is gone.

It’s going to be a wild few decades. That said, all orders collapse eventually. All systems have built-in frailties and weaknesses. The post-WWII arrangement is no different. It lasted longer than it likely should have after the end of the Cold War.

Rarely, though, has a system imploded in such a preventable and ludicrously tragicomic manner.

Rigged Up

Chill Clowns, Politics

Elon Musk buying Twitter and bending it to favor Trump isn’t rigging the election, you fuckin’ numpties.

That’s called “strategy” and the Democrats should try it sometime. Creating a favorable information environment for themselves is something Dems are uniquely terrible at, so I can understand why when another person or entity does it they see it as cheating.

But it’s how you win. So of course they won’t do that.

Overground

Chill Politics, Prediction

Might be right, might be wrong — but we have heard this before. Read documents and commentary from the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was chaos. There were riots, the Weather Underground bombed the US Capitol building and people believed society was about to dissolve into anarchy and mass death.

But it didn’t. And that’s mostly forgotten now, even in some cases by people who lived through it.

My personal guess is that we experience a pretty bad WWIII against China, Russia and North Korea, the US pulls together and we and Europe emerge stronger with China diminished and reclusive once again.

But Trump is doing the US much damage that will not be easy to repair. I agree that it is not looking good.

Understim

Chill Clowns, Political Economy, Politics

And this is why I thought then and continue to think that Matt Yglesias is a fucking idiot.

Obama made the choice that millions of Americans would lose their homes. And yes, that was a choice — it all could’ve been prevented. That was done to save the banks and specifically the banksters who wrote all that fraudulent paper. This decision ruined many Americans economically for the rest of their lives as well as making the Great Recession worse and last much longer than it otherwise would have.

Obama also oversaw the largest loss of black wealth in history. He was and is just an evil, venal person.

As president, he had one of the greatest opportunities for real reform since the 1930s. And instead he forked over the country and its wealth the rich all so he could be a billionaire later himself. No Obama, no Trump it’s also important to remember.

Outland

Chill Clowns, Politics

The US is going to be a much more hardscrabble, much worse place after this four years. Biden did a little (far too little) to forestall the looting, while his Democratic predecessor Obama allowed the plunderers free rein.

Trump is worse — he doesn’t even really know what he’s doing; he’s just a chaos agent swinging from outlandish position to absurd action, making the pillaging unpredictable and even more dangerous.

And we’re all going to pay for our not holding Obama to account back when we could’ve forestalled most of what’s to come.