The Poet: Margaret Atwood, “The Moment”

“The Moment”

“The moment when, after many years

of hard work and a long voyage

you stand in the center of your room,

house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,

knowing at last how you got there,

and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose

their soft arms from around you,

the birds take back their language,

the cliffs fissure and collapse,

the air moves back from you like a wave

and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.

You were a visitor, time after time

climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.

We never belonged to you.

You never found us.

It was always the other way round.”

- Margaret Atwood,

“Morning in the Burned House”

The Daily "Near You?"

Gisborne, New Zealand. Thanks for stopping by!

"How Did It Get So Crazy, So Fast?"

"How Did It Get So Crazy, So Fast?"

by John Wilder

"One of the comments on a post a few weeks back asked a pretty good question: “How did we get so crazy, so fast?” The answer actually involves several intertwining threads, mice, Soviets, and gasoline engines, so let’s see of we can weave a web that covers at least a chunk of what has made us so crazy, so quickly. This is a distillation of the last seven years’ worth of study and writing, so some of it might be pretty familiar. Also, it’s not necessarily complete yet, but here are the major threads that I see that have led to what Heinlein called The Crazy Years.

First: Societal Malaise Due to Abundance: I’ve written several times about John Bumpass (that’s his real middle name according to the Internet) Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia experiment, see immediately below this paragraph for links to two previous posts. The short summary is Dr. Calhoun asked a crazy question: what would happen if you gave a population of mice everything they could want: food, water, freedom from predation, space to live, bedding material, and places to make nests.

The result? The mice died out. At a certain point they stopped mating, mother mice stopped taking care of infant mice, gangs formed, and some mice (the “beautiful ones”) just spent their time grooming themselves and not really interacting. If this sounds like Reddit® or TikTok™ or the Democratic National Convention, well, you’re right. For a certain subset of the population, abundance has ruined them.

I think it started in the 1960s. I’m just guessing. I like to blame the hippies, so they’re likely the early-version. It then continued into the wildest era of abundance the world has ever seen: the 1990s. If you look at any time lapse, that’s when the United States started leading the world (it has spread now, literally) in having obesity, not hunger, be the bigger (pun intended) health problem.

I think this started to manifest itself, big time, in the music of the 1990s. We went from Warrant singing about Cherry Pie to Kurt Cobain mumbling about how living in the suburbs with all the Pop Tarts™ his fat face could eat was killing him. Turns out that shotguns are even more deadly than Pop Tarts©. Who knew? We had a generation that was lost because they had everything. I think a candidate for the hallmark phrase of this Crazy Cause is: “Why are we even here, dude?”

Second: Societal Anxiety Due to No Challenges: I recently made the comment on X® that a lot of people would e better off if they had been bullied as kids. Was I serious? Yeah, I was. One response was, “Why do you want to make things worse?”

The truth is, for me, that bullies actually helped me build my character and my resolve. And, believe it or not, sometimes the bullies were right and the things that they bullied me about (second graders can be assholes) were things I needed to fix to be a better person. Did I lift harder to get stronger because of it? Yes. Did I develop the internal resilience so that the people who (rightfully) bullied the smarmy second grader that I was eventually earned the respect of the bullies?

Yes. Males, even young males, need to develop a hierarchy and understand their place in it and why they are inferior to Chuck Norris.

No child is born perfect, and it is the challenges in life that help define and develop character. Without challenge, development is stunted.

I think that today’s twentysomethings have the problem that they look into a future that certainly looks grim to them, yet they’ve never had a chance to develop their character and are told again and again how perfect they are and how their choices are important.

Newsflash: the choices of a second grader generally deserve about as much attention as the choices my dog wants to make. Both will eat all of the cake in the house if you let them and make messes everywhere. It’s our job as parents to not care what they think when it’s important to develop character and virtue.

As a society we face many of the same problems: what is it we stand for and what are we trying to accomplish? We don’t have Soviets to fight, we’re actively encouraging invaders into our country to replace us, and we don’t have any cool national purpose like the Apollo program. I think a candidate for the catchphrase of this crazy cause is: “Why am I so worthless?”

Third: Societal Atomization Due To Tech: As humans, we have minds that are built around smaller social systems, mainly. The big move from rural to urban happened in the west only recently. Our legacy social structure is (mainly) to live in a town for a very long time, put down roots, make friends, make a reputation.

Most people aren’t leaders, they’re followers, and want to be led. Why else would sane people want zoning regulations? But now, put us in a constantly churning urban landscape where we don’t know the next-door-neighbor in the apartment building? Who do we turn to? Well, whatever latenightjokeman says or whatever TikTik™ says or whatever InstaFace© allows to be printed. People are defining themselves on how YouTube™ says Europeans feel about Donald Trump.

They are also allowed to pick whatever gender they are. How do I know tech is driving this? Back when COVID made everyone homeschooled, transgenderism dropped. Why? No one to identify to – which is why “transwomen” with no girl parts get offended when gynecologists won’t give them appointments. Yes. That’s a thing.

The iPhone™ is a big driver. It puts connections in the hands of kids. I talked with one Millennial, and he said that at the start of his high school career, kids “cruised main” looking for other kids. By the end of high school, it was all phones. Friendships dropped, and dating dropped. Mix that with the first two causes above, and it leads to fewer kids.

Dating sites magnify this, and make every girl “4” think that she deserves a Chad ranked 9 or higher because one time a drunk Chad had sex with her. This leads to Chads being happy, but girls being sad and hollow inside. I think a catchphrase for this Crazy Cause is “Who or what the heck am I?”

Result of these interacting strands of Crazy are a large number of people who:

• Stand for nothing.

• Have no examples of virtue other than seeking money in their lives.

• See no point in anything other than the present moment.

• Are distracted.

• Think they’re too good for PEZ™.

• Are filled with the combination of anxiety and narcissism.

• Do and feel whatever the media tells them to do.

• Haven’t built social circles of any particular strength – clubs and churches are on constant decline.

There’s good news. All of this is self-limiting. We’re not mice, and plenty of good humans haven’t fallen into Calhoun’s Behavioral Sink. Many of those same people have overcome challenges sufficient to shape their character for the better. Finally, there are enough of us that don’t follow. We lead. Or we choose our own path. And? We’re gonna win."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

"Once Upon a Time, The End"

"Once Upon a Time, The End"

by Martin Zamyatin

"Those that can make you believe absurdities

can make you commit atrocities."

- Voltaire

"The small group of devoted followers gathered around Chicago housewife Dorothy Martin sat in stunned silence as the clock on her suburban living room wall struck midnight on the twentieth of December, 1954…and nothing happened. Many had left jobs and spouses and given away all their money and possessions in order to await the arrival of alien beings from the planet Clarion, who Martin had assured them would descend at that appointed hour, carrying the faithful few off in their flying saucers just before huge floods engulfed the planet Earth. Finally, four hours after their scheduled departure time, Martin broke her silence.

As the group readjusted their bras, belts, and zippers - having been instructed to discard any metal objects which might interfere with the aliens’ telepathic radio transmissions - their tearful host revealed the reason why their intergalactic rescuers had failed to appear: Apparently it had all been only an elaborate test of faith, and the group’s advanced state of enlightenment had saved the entire planet from a watery destruction!

Surprisingly, only one or two of Martin’s followers were unconvinced by this perfectly rational explanation. Among them, however, was social psychologist Leon Festinger, who had secretly infiltrated the group. Festinger would later write about Martin - using the pseudonym of Marian Keech - in his groundbreaking 1958 book, "When Prophecy Fails." (Not surprisingly, Festinger is credited with coining the psychological term ‘cognitive dissonance.’)

Following publication of Festinger’s book, the group predictably collapsed under the weight of public ridicule. Martin fled to Peru to warn the clueless natives about the imminent re-emergence of Atlantis, before later resurfacing in Arizona, where she joined crackpot L. Ron Hubbard’s nascent pseudoscientific movement, Scientology.

It seems that for as long as people have inhabited the world, they have anticipated its imminent demise. (In fact, the oldest known apocalyptic prediction is depicted on Assyrian tablets from 2800 BC.) In what may be the earliest example in European folklore, a Frankish villager wandered off into the forest in 591, only to be accosted by a swarm of ravenous flies. Overwhelmed, the poor fellow completely lost his mind and returned to his village clothed in animal pelts, claiming he was Jesus Christ, sent to gather his flock before the coming Rapture. (Perhaps resenting the competition, a local bishop hired a gang of thugs to capture the Lord of the Flies, who they rapturously hacked into little bits.)

The failure of one apocalyptic prophecy not only failed to deter its devoted followers but in fact spawned several entirely new religions. When the world failed to end as predicted in the ‘Great Disappointment’ of 1843-44, Massachusetts preacher William Miller’s tens of thousands of followers splintered off to found the Seventh Day Adventists, as well as the doorknockers known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. When the next fateful year of 1874 passed without the desired fireworks, the latter’s charismatic founder, Charles Taze Russell, explained that Jesus had indeed returned, but was invisible to all except the truly devout. (Predictably, few dared admit to being lacking in the requisite level of faith.)

The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, had declared way back in 1832 that 1890 would be the year of Jesus’s long awaited return engagement. (Later jailed for fraud, Smith somehow failed to predict his own deliverance by an angry mob at age 39.) Russell revised the fateful year to 1881…then 1914…and finally, 1918. (The latter dates spanned World War I and the Spanish Flu epidemic, events that while apocalyptic for many, fell short of being world ending.)

Our own time has seen the horrors of the Peoples Temple - in which 914 adults and children committed suicide in the jungles of Guyana in 1978; the Branch Davidians, an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists - 75 of whom died in the FBI standoff at Waco in 1993; Aum Shinri Kyo - whose poison gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1994-95 left 19 innocent people dead; and - neither least nor unfortunately, last - Heaven’s Gate, 39 of whose members committed suicide in 1996, fully expecting (like Dorothy Martin) their spirits to be carried away by aliens hiding in the wake of an approaching comet.

It was probably no coincidence that all of these cults were acting in anticipation of an impending Bible-inspired Day ofJudgement. One is tempted to blame these kinds of incidents on the delusions of a small minority of misguided religious fanatics, except that millions of people alive today are expecting an imminent Biblical apocalypse. In a 2012 global poll, fully one out of 7 people said they thought the world would end during their lifetime - and rather ominously, Americans topped the list of doomsayers at 22%. Since their government has the means to fulfill their death wish many times over, one can only hope their gloomy prediction won’t one day become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just call it a bedtime story for humanity."

- http://www.321gold.com/editorials/

"A 'Get Away From It All' Musical Interlude: Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"

Leonard Cohen, "Everybody Knows"

The Most Contagious Of Diseases...""

"The Definition of Insanity"

"The U.S. Economy Is Collapsing From the Inside Out"

Full screen recommended.

The Unfolded States, 3/19/26

"The U.S. Economy Is Collapsing From the Inside Out"

"The U.S. economy doesn’t look broken on paper. Inflation is cooling, and unemployment remains relatively low. But for many households, everyday life is getting harder to maintain. This video breaks down why the data and reality no longer match. We look at how housing costs, healthcare, everyday expenses, and rising debt are stacking together. Not as isolated problems, but as a system where financial flexibility is gradually disappearing. The result is not a sudden crash, but a slow buildup of pressure that most people only feel over time. If you’re trying to understand what’s actually happening beneath the surface of the U.S. economy, this is a closer look at where that pressure is coming from and why it matters."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"A Whorehouse of Damned Fools: Thought, If Any, in the Federal Bubble"

"A Whorehouse of Damned Fools: 

Thought, If Any, in the Federal Bubble"

by Fred Reed

"I expect my columns to be gems of lucidity and concision, such as to arouse despair in other writers. I have been expecting this for decades now. It may still happen. Meanwhile I fear today’s effort will be helterskelter, having the literary aspect of a tossed salad. I beg patience.

The Earth holds some eight billion people. It is interdependent with most relying, sometimes for life itself, on things from somewhere else: food, oil, gasoline, fertilizers, parts crucial to machines also crucial, electronics controlling the crucial machines and networks. A world war, even with conventional weapons, would kill incalculable numbers, if only by breaking supply chains. We don’t know how many since we haven’t tried it yet. Nuclear? Far worse.

Of the eight billion, how many would it take to start a world war? Who are they? Why do they hold the power of fdeath by burning or starvation over the rest of us? Why would they do it?

Trump, not very smart, pathologically aggressive, exploring early senility, might be able to do it alone. One man. In theory he could order a nuclear strike or Russia, though it is unlikely that he would do so and not clear that the military would obey. Simply ordering US fighters to attack Russian aircraft over Ukraine, Iran or Syria, might do the trick. He is commander-in-chief, after all..

And Washington has poked hard at Russia, escalating and escalating, raising the ante. Situations of this sort are not predictable. Say Hezbolla attacks Israel with Iranian support, America bombs Iran, Russia downs American planes, the US is now at war with Iran, which destroys American bases in the region and the large Russian reserve forces in Ukraine roll toward the Polish border. It’s nuke’m or lose’m.

Here let us consider the crucial role of blank ignorance in American foreign policy. We may use China as a convenient example. I have read that seventy-seven percent of Americans, or some such number, think that China is a dangerous enemy. This of course is a majority manufactured by the media. But how many Americans know anything about China? Can they name three Chinese cities other than Beijing, Hongkong, and Shanghai? Even those three? Can they name one date in Chinese history? Know what happened in 1976? But they are quite sure that China, wherever it is, constitutes a grave danger.

The foregoing applies almost as well to the Congress. A friend, a former US Senator, has estimated to me that ninety percent of the Senate doesn’t know where Myanmar is. Congressmen, usually negligible lawyers from somewhere, have neither the background, time, or interest to master multifaceted foreign countries. They vote as the wind blows, as the rest of their party votes, as lobbyists n donors wish, and as they think that their constituents. also comprehensively ignorant, will approve.

The media, often little better informed, throw softball questions to avoid embarrassing either the pols or the viewership. The typical question is vague and lets the politician ramble into his love of democracy, opposition to dictatorship, and passionate concern for human rights. No reporter would ask Secretary of State Rubio whether he can tell semiconductors from possum droppings. Thus is policy made.

In two decades in Washington, I covered the military and its political hangers-on for Army Times, the Washington Times, the Washington Post, Universal Press Syndicate, Harper’s, and other stations of the journalistic cross. I had a Pentagon Pass and spent long hours walking the E-ring, talking to officers. I mention these not to puff my imaginary importance but to make the point that I know the smell, the attitude that moves the city, especially as regards the military.

There is a sense of omnipotence, of a right to rule. We have heard the phrases, the world’s policeman, the Indispensable Nation, a Shining City on a Hill, the Exceptional Nation. People believed this, and still do. This is hard to describe, but real. America had a God-given right, not infrequently expressed in religious terms, to intervene anywhere. Importantly, the US was believed to have the power to do so. In 1955, it did. Many of our gerontocratic leftover political fossils in power are old enough to have grown up in this.

There was, in those days, the American Imperium, US hegemony, the Empire, now consisting of something like 750 military bases around the world, control of the IMF, the World Bank, the United Nations, SWIFT, and so on. Washington came to think of this dominance as natural, eternal, a deserved fruit of European superiority. This is now collapsing, and Washington is ready to do anything, anything at all, to preserve it.

The desperate desire to stay in the saddle shapes America’s foreign policy. The approach is heavily military, in part because realists know that America cannot compete commercially or, for long, technologically with Asia. Washington has a short window of opportunity, perhaps of ten years, in which to crush first Russia and then China. Thus the war against Russia, a war in the Near East, threats to invade Mexico, and the frequent talk, and planning for, a war against China. 

The horrifying thing is how very few are the men and women who can bring about a war in which hundreds of millions could die. In a world of eight billion, fewer (I will guess) than a hundred can start a holocaust. Much is made by conservatives of the Jewish Neocons, Victoria Nulan, Blinken, Zelenski, Kristol, and the gang, but there was also Biden, Bolton, Pompeo, Graham, Rubio, various Pentagon generals, and the arms industry.

In Washington there was talk of putting US boots on the ground in Ukraine, this being thought of as something the Russians would find fearsome. It isn’t’. America is no longer a nation of tough country boys. The Army can’t meet recruiting quotas because the American young are obese. Physical and mental standards have been lowered. Recruits with felony records are accepted. For years the services have been laboratories for political indoctrination, feminized, larded with sexual curiosities, rotted with affirmative action hires. The Army has no troops or officers who have experience with combat against a serious enemy with massive artillery, tanks, helicopter gunships. In recent decades the American military has bombed goat herders armed with rifles from secure bases with PXs. The Russians they would try to fight in the Ukraine are battle-hardened, with over four years of experience of combat against a modern Ukrainian army. It would be a slaughter.

Here we come to a major element in Washington’s purported strategic thinking: Wars are containable and fought somewhere else, never in America. This curious delusion is palpable in all the threats of direct intervention. A mistake. If American soldiers fight Russian soldiers, America will be at war with Russia, whose submarines could easily torpedo American troop or supply ships. Today’s cruise missiles, such as those used by Russia in the Ukraine, are accurate and have in some cases ranges of 1,200 miles. Several of these launched from submarines and killing most of the people at the Pentagon would be a shock. The Pentagon, note, is a short bicycle ride from the Capitol and the White House.

What then would Washington do? Russia is a huge nuclear power, able to incinerate the US and Europe at the same time. Nuclear saber rattling by Washington won’t intimidate it. Russia is independent in both food and energy. Its air force is large and powerful. God help an aircraft carrier that tried to fight continental Russia. What do America’s toy soldiers do now?

A very, very important point: Wars usually do not turn out as expected. Here i repeat myself but I ask regular readers, if I have one, to be patient. Let’s look at some actual wars and how well they matched expectations. The American Civil War was supposed to be over in an afternoon at First Manassas. Wrong by four bloody years and 650,000 dead, equivalent to about six and a half million today. Nobody had the slightest idea of what that war would be. When Napoleon invaded Russia, he had no idea that Russian troops would soon be marching in Paris. Which is what happened. When the Germans launched WWI, they expected a short, victorious war of maneuver. They got four years of bloody, losing trench warfare. When Hitler invaded Russia, having Russian and American GIs divide up Berlin was not a major war plan. It happened. When the Japanese army urged war with America, it did not plan on American sailors doing the boom-boom, as the Vietnamese used to say, with its daughters in the bars of Tokyo. 

When the French recolonized Vietnam after WWII, they did not expect to be outfought and outsmarted at Dienbienphu. When the Americans repeated the French mistake, they also did not foresee being handed their ass, as is said in the military. It happened. When the Russians invaded Afghanistan, they did not expect to lose. But did. When the Americans, seeing the Russian defeat, also did not expect to lose. But did. The current war with Iran goeth not as expected.

Militaries are often as bad at predicting the kind of war as its outcome. The game changer, as we like to say, in this war has been the drone. For one thing it allows armies to make precise attacks on targets, such as tanks, without risking the lives of soldiers. Further, when a drone spots, say, an enemy battalion, it can instantaneously relay its coordinates back to the artillery which in three minutes can bring down fire on said battalion. This wasn’t foreseen.

Now, as Washington is in a war with Iran, it probably lacks a gerbil’s idea of how that war will go. There are the usual complacency, self-assurance, belief in America’s superiority in weapons and their use, the expectation of a short, sharp, victorious war, with the continental US remaining an untouchable sanctum. I find officials in the Federal Bubble talking of using F-35s to fly deep into Iran to bomb command centers. They say this in the same casual tone they would use when speaking of bombing Guatemala.

Iran isn’t Guatemala. It is a country of huge population, vast resources, large numbers of excellent engineers and scientists who feature prominently in the world’s elite technical journals. It is not a dragon casually to be poked by overgrown little boys in the Five-Sided Wind Tunnel. And it is a country that over decades has crafted its armed forces specifically to fight America in its nearby waters. I have a hard time imagining a situation better designed to produce surprises."

- https://fredoneverything.org

"How It Really Is"

 

"Iran 'Destroys' the World’s Largest Gas Facility: Trump Blames Israel"

Full screen recommended.

Jon Guy, 3/19/26

"Iran 'Destroys' the World’s Largest Gas Facility: 

Trump Blames Israel"

"Massive new tensions are rising in the Middle East after reports that Iran struck one of the most strategically important energy targets in the region, creating global concern over energy supply, military escalation, and diplomatic fallout. In this video, we examine the latest developments surrounding the attack on the world’s largest gas facility, the international reaction, and why Donald Trump is now blaming Israel for the dangerous escalation. The strike has already triggered major discussion about oil prices, regional security, and possible military consequences across the Gulf. Watch till the end for full analysis of what this means for Iran, Israel, the United States, and the global energy market."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The National Debt Isn’t $39 Trillion… It’s $100 Trillion"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 3/19/26

"The National Debt Isn’t $39 Trillion… It’s $100 Trillion"

"The national debt has been reported at $39 trillion, but that number doesn’t tell the full story. When you include unfunded liabilities like Social Security, Medicare, and other government obligations, the real number could exceed $100 trillion. In this video, Dan from i Allegedly breaks down what this means for the economy, interest rates, and your financial future. With inflation still a concern and the Federal Reserve holding rates steady, Americans are feeling the pressure more than ever. We also cover major business news including Shell selling Jiffy Lube, Amazon cutting back on USPS deliveries, rising fraud cases, and how AI is disrupting industries like real estate. From economic warning signs to real-world impact, this is a must-watch breakdown of what’s really happening behind the headlines. Stay informed and protect yourself as financial conditions continue to shift."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How Israel Convinced Trump to Wage War Against Iran (w/Max Blumenthal)"

"How Israel Convinced Trump to Wage War

 Against Iran (w/Max Blumenthal)"

by The Chris Hedges Report

"As the chaos and destruction of the war in Iran escalates by the day, a lesser known element of the conflict remains ensconced in the shadows of statespeak and bureaucracy. Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, joins Chris Hedges to explain how an Israeli psychological warfare campaign worked to exploit Donald Trump’s imbecilic intelligence and increasing paranoia with the ultimate goal of luring the President into a war with Iran.

Blumenthal says the Israelis and their allies convinced President Trump that Iran was trying to assassinate him – a fear first stoked when Trump began a vicious cycle of violence with the regime after he assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani during his first term.

The FBI played an active role in this covert lobbying effort, utilizing War- on- Terror-esque sting operations to manufacture threats in order to justify foreign policy measures. “Trump is an enigmatic figure,” Blumenthal points out, “less stable and predictable than a Bill Clinton or even a Barack Obama. However, he offers a massive opportunity because he’s totally transactional and entered politics essentially to make a profit.”

As the war drags on and thousands of lives are claimed in the process, the grim reality that cynical actors likely played a role in manipulating American leadership into the interests of the Zionist lobby casts an embarrassing light on any propagandistic narrative about combatting “terror” in the region. “Do you think [fear of assassination] was the primary motivation behind Trump’s support of the war?” Hedges asks Blumenthal. “I think Trump has to answer for that.”

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Last Gloaming"

"The Last Gloaming"

by David Haggith

"I thought I was more intense in yesterday’s editorial about Trump’s deconstruction than other conservative writers would likely be in their assessments, but it turns out I was not. I even thought I might lose one of the conservative publications that carries a lot of my writings; but, instead, they actually carried the article, rather than tossing me out on my head. It turns out that yesterday became a turning point or, at least, a climax for a number of conservative or alternative-press writers who have clearly had enough.

For all of the writers I came across who covered the collapse of Donald Trump and MAGA, it was not just Trump’s flip-flopping in his relationship with NATO or his tirade against NATO members that jarred them. It was not even just the Iran war, though that was certainly the catalyst. It was the raft of imperial, Quixotic, militaristic, and bombastic betrayals of anything and everything the MAGA folk thought they were getting in Trump.

This week, Trump entered what appears suddenly to be the twilight of his popularity, as the lights suddenly came on everywhere for nearly everyone. Even Nick Fuentes, one of his former supporters, whom Trump wined and dined at Mar-a-Lago, called for his impeachment yesterday:

He’s the problem. The buck stops with him. He’s the president. He’s the movement. And if there ever were principles or promises, he’s betrayed all of them….

He needs to go. Like, I really believe that he needs to be impeached under the Democrats. And I don’t even want him to be removed from office because I don’t want Vance to become president either. I want Vance to burn down with all of it. But it just needs to be shut down. This guy is totally insane.

Many people who had been big supporters of Trump started seeing who he is with clarity yesterday and writing about it. Others, who have been critical but balanced, took off their restraints. Still, Trump is far from finished. He has three years left unless Fuentes gets his kind-of wish, and he seems to become more deranged by the month; but I guess that is how those kinds of things go.

I’ve decide to briefly review two particularly excellent articles from the headlines below. I’m not saying these writers just now came to their realizations because I’m sure from what they’ve written, they’ve seen the light for some time. However, this past week became a climax for them in the same way it did for me, and they really laid it on the line.

A couple of other writers (who come right after these two in the headlines section that follows) also merit a look. I’m going to share all the headlines with everyone today in order to showcase and help advance these astute observations about how Trump has revealed his vacant inner core, hoping I can send some traffic their way; so, I hope you will read them:

John Whitehead (The Rutherford Institute): Whitehead begins with a couple of quotes by Trump, past and present, that should have clued everyone in about his character, which Whitehead points out was easy to discern all along:

“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything... Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.”— Donald J. Trump on seizing women, Access Hollywood (2005)

“I think I can do anything I want with it. Whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it.”—Donald Trump on seizing Cuba (2026)

From there, Whitehead goes on to say, "Despite the Access Hollywood recording - and everything it revealed about his character - Trump was elected to the White House twice. And ever since, he has governed exactly as he promised: as a man who believes he is unaccountable, entitled, and free to act without limits….

He can be accused of sexually assaulting young girls, and he won’t lose any voters. He can, as commander-in-chief, sanction the bombing of a girls’ school in Iran - killing young girls, their mothers and teachers - and he won’t lose any voters. He can torpedo a thriving economy, sending inflation and gas prices soaring, and he won’t lose any voters. He can dismantle a government structure that has been in place for over 200 years, and he won’t lose any voters. He can be a walking - talking - living contradiction of everything Christians claim to stand for, and he won’t lose any voters. He can send Americans servicemen and women to die in wars that the U.S. had no business starting, and he won’t lose any voters."

77,000,000 Americans made Trump president of America, and millions of MAGA supporters empowered Trump to emerge over the course of 2025 as the worst version of himself; yet, somehow he manages to keep hitting new lows in behavior that reveal more and more truth about how base his character, is as Whitehead describes: "Trump’s acts of aggression against other nations—Venezuela. Iran. Greenland. Canada. Now Cuba - are expansions of the same worldview, only this time backed by the full force of the U.S. military and funded by American taxpayers."

It is the logic of the schoolyard bully: Take what you want. Dare others to stop you. Punish anyone who resists. As a strong writer about constitutional issues and the writings and beliefs of our nation’s founding fathers, Whitehead says, "Trump wanted Venezuela’s oil, so he used the military to get it - and then bullied the country’s leaders into letting him keep it and its profits. The tactics - swaggering, arrogant, and always prepared to browbeat and mow over anyone and anything in his way - have become all too familiar."

All exactly the opposite of any characteristics of Christ, whom Trump and his prophets claim appointed Trump to Make America Great Again. Trump wants a new ballroom? Tear down the old one and build another. Trump wants to be in charge of global peace? Seize the U.S. Institute of Peace and rename it. Trump wants to prove his economic prowess? Levy tariffs against any nations who refuse to fall in line. Trump wants to be seen as the one who solved Iran? Launch a preemptive war that kills civilians, destabilizes regions, and threatens the global economy - then turn to the same allies he once disparaged to bail him out.

The pattern is unmistakable: Power without restraint. Action without accountability. Force without principle. And when the law stands in the way, it is bent - or ignored. Justice is weaponized. Congress is sidelined. The courts are defied, their rulings delayed or disregarded when inconvenient. Due process becomes conditional - a privilege for the favored few, optional for the disfavored.

This is not constitutional governance. Whitehead has a lot to say quite lucidly about Trump’s character. I encourage you to think deeply about his article. That is why I led off with it.

Phil Butler (Writing on the pro-Trump Zero Hedge site): Phil Butler, the former publisher at Russia Insider, analyst for Russia Today, and a contributor to the Huffington Post, The Epoch Times and Japan Today, writes another erudite article about the deep flaws that have broken out into the open as Donald Trump cracks:

I’ve written through enough upheaval to know when the ground has actually shifted beneath us. Today’s chaos isn’t the usual turbulence we’ve learned to absorb - the predictable cycles of crisis and recovery, or the familiar rhythms of things getting worse before they get better. Something structural has given way. We all feel it, even if we can’t quite name it, even if we’re still performing the motions of normalcy while the framework quietly collapses around us. I didn’t think I’d be writing this kind of story either….

On September 5, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14347, authorizing the Department of Defense to use “Department of War” as a secondary title. Plaques at the Pentagon were quietly replaced. Secretary Pete Hegseth began appearing at press conferences as the Secretary of War. The White House framed it as “restoring the institution to its founding-era roots” and a signal of “peace through strength.” Critics sugar-coated it, calling it simply performative saber-rattling. However, the symbolic shift was deliberate: from defense to war as the default posture. Hegseth, a man with zero qualifications to hold the job, struts like a barnyard rooster crowing about the “No Quarter” Directive….

As a point of fact, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Law of War Manual explicitly prohibit “no quarter” declarations. They are considered war crimes because they remove the incentive for surrender and command the killing of those who can no longer fight…

President Trump is an even bigger barnyard caricature strutting and donkey honking about how “he’s” already won the war with Iraq [sic.], and how American fliers and sailors are blowing up shit just for fun. Meanwhile, Iran is anything but defeated."

Butler lays out the path from the precursors to chaos during Trump 1.0, through the swamp of Biden, and into the war-torn wasteland of Trump 2.0. He spells out how we got to a government over the United States that is unrecognizable, just as one of Trump’s longtime female fans, whom I quoted yesterday, said about the nation’s leader she once adored, claiming she no longer recognizes the man she sees. Then Butler uses apocalyptic language very similar to what I used in my editorial about the deconstruction of Trump:

"For many, the world is not sliding toward Armageddon because one man is uniquely evil. Donald Trump has gone from being a last chance for millions to being a dictatorial madman of a pariah state. Our nation is being redefined by the world at the moment, the presidency is remade. It’s important to note that almost no one is talking about the Epstein Files anymore. How could we focus on that societal carnage with the world coming to an end in front of our eyes?"

Butler’s comments on the inevitable success of Iran’s embargo on oil going out of the Persian Gulf match my own at the start of the war when Trump was foolishly talking about US military escorts for tankers and US-government-provided insurance and later about tankers finding the guts to go through the strait on their own, encouraging them off to their own peril in order test Iran’s resolve.

All useless ideas, though some mainstream financial writers took up Trump’s lightheaded notions as if they might have some merit for consideration, which they certainly did not because the real truth about the simplicity of Iran’s blockade without a blockade is picked up by Butler in much the same way I described it on day one because the truth, looking past all of Trump’s bluster, was glaringly simple:

"The world’s most vital energy artery has become a “Dead Zone.” No amount of “Peace through Strength” rhetoric can move a single tanker through a sea of asymmetric mines and autonomous drones that the 1% refused to acknowledge until the lights began to flicker in the West."

As one of the videos below lays out, Iran has deployed simple measures that are comparatively cheap to build, and with those cheap tricks has stalled the US navy from doing anything to prevent closure of the gulf. David’s little stone has struck Goliath between the eyes (not that I think of Iran as being in any way, the good guy here like the legendary David, but neither is tyrannical Trump. I’m just speaking of scale), and now Trump is collapsing into the withering void of his own soul: "Donald Trump at first requested help, then demanded it, threatened allies for it, and subsequently told the world that America does not need its former allies. It is the final, lonely posture of a Hegemony that has lost its connection to the Substrate and is now shouting into the void." Strongly said.

Trump’s latest demand that the news media shift to reporting only the administration’s view of Trump’s War is a step back into much darker ages than many people alive today have known in their lifetimes: "This isn’t just a presidential tantrum; it is the institutionalization of silence. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, following a meeting at Mar-a-Lago, has openly threatened to revoke the broadcast licenses of networks that air “news distortions,” effectively auditioning a state-mandated script for the American public. Secretary Hegseth has even provided the headlines he expects a “Patriotic Press” to run: “Iran Increasingly Desperate” instead of “Mideast War Intensifies.”

We are being prodded into a state where seeing the world as it actually exists - observing the smoke from the Saudi bases or the retreat of the Lincoln - is legally redefined as an act of betrayal. This pincer movement between the White House and the regulatory bodies is designed to pave over the “Substrate” of truth with a layer of digital concrete so thick that the actual human and hardware costs of the war become invisible. This kind of robust censorship reeks of Nazism and Soviet Russia and Red China.

With these kinds of acts Trump has become the president of a pariah state, cast off by allies and increasingly hated by most of the world. Relationships with other nations will never be the same. Again, I encourage you to read the article so that it can fully make its own points.

John Rubino: You might also want to read John Rubino’s brief encapsulation of the mega MAGA meltdown. Relations between the major [MAGA] players have taken a darker turn. The MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement has descended into a civil war over its central issues, with old allies becoming, in some cases, mortal enemies…This isn’t a frivolous debate. The differences between original MAGA and ascendant neoCons are stark, and what happens next - starting with the upcoming mid-term elections  - will shape global politics and finance for years to come.

Man o’ wars: With all of Trump’s chaotic, warring moves, it is not surprising that the equally ludicrous stock market plummeted over 700 points on the Dow today to plumb out a new low for the year. It was easily foreseeable that crude oil raced back up to $111/bbl as Israel destroyed a major Iranian gas site. Both markets have become as manic as the president.

Oil soared because Israel launched a devastating attack on the biggest gas enterprise in Iran, and Iran immediately promised to mete out much broader retaliation in the oil fields in retaliation for that attack, stating, ““The enemy committed suicide, we have moved to a full economic war.” Then it started down the long road of carrying that threat out. It is not surprising that gasoline also soared to over $5/gal. in Washington State and California.

As I stated a few days ago, this oil crisis will last much longer than the one in the 70s because, oil is not simply under an embargo, but the ability to produce it and load it for shipment is being destroyed. By the time the ships can move again, there will be a lot less oil to ship out of that region for quite some time.

This war will bring a rise in inflation that keeps inflating for a long time. We won’t just be paying for the war by restocking all of our weapons. We’ll be paying for the inflation that comes from devastation in one of the world’s most oil-rich regions. Not that it is all gone by any means so far, but it has been hit badly, and we have no idea how much further that will go, while restoring production will take, at least, a couple of years after the bombing stops … whenever that day comes.

And that is only looking at the costs that come from oil and gas. We have no idea what new kinds of losses will come in the days ahead from things like cyberwar; but, so far, the hits have been enormous. That is why Trump wants to censor all reporting about them.

Apocalypse looming:  Every day this war is widening as it spirals out of the Don’s control and as he spirals down, himself. This is what a nation gets when a major party covers for a supremely arrogant leader with no moral core values whose dementia is clearly as bad as Biden’s while the madman’s select courts give him immunity over every official act he makes, even as his party in congress and all the sycophants who drown him with praise in his cabinet meetings do nothing to rein in him (as if they could).

I would barely prefer the demented old fool the Dem’s covered for, who shook hands with curtains and talked to the dead and did faceplants on stages and fell off his bicycle because he should have been on a tricycle. I would prefer all of that clownishness to this loose cannon banging all over the world, creating what may, yet, turn into the most epic war of our time.

Don’t mistake me. It is not that I liked anything about Biden. I did not. His Covid policies did me a world of financial harm, and he took our nation into the pages of 1984 with his draconian enforcement of those policies, which was an absolutely horrible shift in our society. He also was divisive like Trump. Going from Donald McRonald 1.0 to Biden, we went from bad to worse; but now, in 2.0, we’ve gone to worst.

We are roaring into scenes that look like they are straight from The Apocalypse, otherwise known as the Book of Revelation, and the damage done to the world may be much worse than the damage recked by Trump’s vaccines, which he endlessly praised himself for (and which were forced on everyone by Biden because neither half of the uniparty serves the common man or woman).

We are definitely entering some kind of twilight epoch for Earth from which the world will never be anything like what any of us grew up in. Old alliances are shattered now. Trade partners have divorced from each other. The economy is rapidly sinking now. War is spreading like fire, and chaos is engulfing us like the smoke and debris of war. Disillusioned people are fleeing their floundering, ill-guided champion and tearing at each other’s flesh with their words. And I think that, because of the increase of wickedness, the love of many is growing cold. The world is a fiercer place."

- https://www.thedailydoom.com/

Canadian Prepper, "Alert: Its Probably Time to Stock Up on Food"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 3/19/26

"Alert: Its Probably Time to Stock Up on Food"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Stock Up at Kroger before Price Increases!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 3/19/26

"Stock Up at Kroger before Price Increases!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"God Help Us All"

"God Help Us All"

by NO1

"Ali Larijani was killed in his daughter’s home on a Tuesday morning. His son alongside him. A residential area in the outskirts of eastern Tehran levelled in the strike. Iranian state TV confirmed it before sunrise. He was, by most accounts, the last senior Iranian official who could pick up a phone to a European foreign minister and be taken seriously. Parliament Speaker for twelve years. Chief nuclear negotiator. PhD in Western philosophy. Wrote books on Kant. No one's left anymore to negotiate…

Thousands filled Revolution Square for Larijani’s funeral the same night.

This war was completely preventable on several occasions. But Israel, in its infinite wisdom, chose otherwise:

July 31, 2024. Hamas’s chief ceasefire negotiator Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an IRGC guesthouse in Tehran. He was there attending a presidential inauguration. Tracked on Iranian sovereign soil, during a diplomatic event, and killed. Ceasefire talks collapsed immediately.

June 13, 2025. Israel launched what became known as the Twelve-Day War while the sixth round of US-Iran nuclear talks was scheduled for that Sunday in Oman. Ali Shamkhani, the official running those talks, was among the targets. He’d told NBC the month before: “If the Americans act as they say, for sure we can have better relations”. The talks didn’t happen on Sunday. They didn’t happen at all.

September 9, 2025. The Hamas negotiating team was mid-meeting in Doha, discussing Trump’s own ceasefire proposal, when Israeli jets struck the office of their lead negotiator Khalil al-Hayya. Six killed, including al-Hayya’s son. Qatar – a US ally, host of the largest American air base in the region – called it “state terrorism”. Hamas called it “the assassination of the entire negotiation process”. Trump said he was “not thrilled”. The Times of Israel reported he’d given the green light in advance.

February 27, 2026. Oman’s Foreign Minister stood up and announced Iran had agreed to full IAEA verification. Agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium. Agreed to downgrade its current stockpiles to the lowest possible level. “Peace is within reach”, he said. Talks scheduled to resume March 2. The bombs fell February 28. And then Larijani, a few days ago, in his daughter’s home.

The Oman FM published an op-ed this week. He said that the United States has “lost control of its foreign policy” to Israel. He was in the room for the February breakthrough. He confirmed the deal was real. Britain’s national security adviser Jonathan Powell confirmed the Geneva sessions were producing genuine progress. “We regarded Witkoff and Kushner as Israeli assets that dragged a president into a war he wants to get out of”, a UK diplomat told the Guardian.

The people who could have stopped this have all been eliminated, one by one, on a nine-month schedule. Haniyeh. Shamkhani. The Doha negotiation team. The Oman breakthrough. Larijani now. What you’re watching is not a war that diplomacy failed to prevent. It is a war that was repeatedly kept alive by killing the diplomats.

There’s no one left. The IRGC commanders who fill the vacuum don’t take calls from Geneva. They have standing orders and they follow them. Araghchi said it as plainly as it can be said: “The presence or absence of one person doesn’t affect this structure”. He’s right. And that’s the problem. The structure continues. On autopilot. Without moderates. Without off-ramps.

Things Go Haywire as Israeli Escalation Throws Iran Conflict into Dangerous New Phase: Things really hit the fan earlier today after Iran’s largest natural gas field, the South Pars, was struck by Israel. This field reportedly accounts for 75% of Iran’s natural gas production and 80-85% of its electric grid… Simplicius put it concisely enough that I’ll just quote the frame: Israel’s strategy is running on two tracks simultaneously. Kill the moderates to guarantee that only hardliners remain. Strike Iran’s most sensitive sites to guarantee that Iran retaliates against Gulf infrastructure, dragging the whole region into a fire large enough to force the world to “finish Iran off”. The South Pars strike this week – on the facility that powers 75-80% of Iran’s electricity grid – and the immediate Iranian retaliation against Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG hub, were not accidents. They were that strategy, executing.

South Pars. Ras Laffan. These names occupy the headlines, but what do they actually mean? And what’s at stake here?

South Pars and Qatar’s North Field are essentially the same geological reservoir. One reservoir, with a border running right through the middle. Iran calls its half South Pars. Qatar its North Field. They share the same rock. The same methane. When Israel struck South Pars phases, it struck the geological twin of the installation that supplies 20% of global LNG exports and keeps European households from freezing. Qatar called it “dangerous and irresponsible”. Qatar – which, according to Reuters, has privately been pressing Washington to “finish the job” on Iran – is now watching its own gas facility burn as a direct consequence of the escalation it was encouraging.

Simplicius’s description of Ras Laffan: “Worlds most sophisticated gas processing plant, took 14 years to build.” Some engineers are saying the damage may be irreparable. I don’t know if that’s true yet. But even partial damage to Ras Laffan on top of the production suspension since March 2 is not a problem you fix with a maintenance crew and three weeks. You fix it – if you even can – in years…

Iran published its retaliation list: Leviathan, Tamar, Karish, Tanin, Dalit, Heletz, Haifa port. Those are Israel’s gas fields and its main industrial port. They haven’t been struck yet, though by the time you’re reading this, that may have changed.

Trump’s response on Truth Social was to simultaneously claim the US knew nothing about the South Pars strike, blame Israel for striking it, and then threaten to “blow up the entire South Pars” if Iran retaliates against Qatar again.

Axios’s Barak Ravid reported within hours that the US had given Israel the green light. Both things can’t be true, and neither is reassuring. Either the US has zero control over its ally, or it’s lying about having zero control. The distinction doesn’t help anyone.

The immediate structural damage is already historic. Oman crude hit $154 a barrel. Dubai crude $130. Brent $102. WTI $93. That $61 gap between Oman and US prices – 65% – is not a rounding error. It’s two oil markets. One for countries that can get physical delivery from the Gulf under Iranian transit permission. And another one for everyone else buying paper at discounted prices that don’t reflect physical scarcity. (silver enters the chat) The London Metal Exchange halted all contracts on March 16. First time ever. The insurance market for marine war risk has been functionally closed since the first week. That’s the short term. High but legible. A spike.

The medium term is where it gets structural. A third of global seaborne fertilizer trade transits the Strait of Hormuz. China halted NPK fertilizer exports and extended its phosphate suspension through August. India requested emergency urea from China – denied. The nitrogen and phosphate that was supposed to go into the soil across the northern hemisphere’s planting season is not going in. Not this spring. The biological window for spring application in most of Europe and North America runs through May. It’s March 19. The war has no end in sight.

Case in point: Sri Lanka… One season of synthetic fertilizer ban in 2021. Rice production dropped 40%. Prices surged. The government fell. That was one country, one policy decision, reversed within months. What’s happening now is that that same constraint is applied simultaneously to the global seaborne supply, with no reversal in sight, across the single most important planting window of the year.

Another underreported supply chain that is running off the same cliff is the pharmaceutical one. Paracetamol. Ibuprofen. Metformin – the world’s most prescribed diabetes drug. All are 80~100% petrochemical-derived. The naphtha feedstock that Asian pharmaceutical plants need is stuck behind the blockade. Nobody has a strategic reserve for pharmaceutical feedstocks. Nobody ever thought to build one.

The long term? Oh boy… People think 1970s… Let me tell you where this will break down in both directions. In October 1973, OPEC cut production and the world entered a period of stagflation that redefined the decade. It was devastating. But the crucial difference is that in 1973, you could turn the tap back on. The infrastructure existed. The question was just political will, not physical capability.

What’s happening now is completely different. No switch was flipped. The switch was bombed! The Shah gas field in the UAE – the world’s largest ultra-sour gas operation – is offline. South Pars phases are burning. Habshan and the Bab field in the UAE shut down. Kuwait is at half oil production. UAE at just over half. Saudi Aramco has suspended all 54 of its jackup drilling rigs. When the politics eventually resolve, you don’t flick that switch. You have to rebuild it. Counted in years.

Debt/GDP in the 1970s was at around 35%. We could absorb it. You could run deficits through the stagflation and come out the other side. But now? The US national debt crossed $39 trillion just a few days ago. Debt-to-GDP? North of 120%. And everything is going so smoothly that the Pentagon just has to ask Congress for a neat supplement of a mere $200 billion. The FPRI calculated that the first 4 days costed $10-16 billion in munitions alone… Yep. Everything’s fine. Repeat after me: everything’s fine. Exhale. Keep repeating it until you believe it.

The Federal Reserve held rates this week – second consecutive hold – and Powell described the energy shock as “generally transitory”. “Transitory”. I think I heard this somewhere before. Very reassuring. But you’ll forgive me if I don’t pull out the party balloons just yet. When Powell said “transitory” about the pandemic inflation in 2021, he was describing a demand shock in a system with intact supply chains. And we all know how that turned out. “Transitory.”

This oil and gas shock is a supply shock, in a system with physically destroyed infrastructure, financed by a country with trillions in debt that cannot even afford the rates required to fight inflation. Let alone a war. The Fed is trapped. Raise rates into a war-driven recession, or hold rates and watch inflation embed. There are no good options left.

As I already mentioned: in the first 96 hours of the war, the coalition expended 5,197 .. 8 .. 9 .. 5,200 .. munitions across ~35 types. Replacement bill: $10-16 billion. For just the first 4 days. We’re 3 weeks in now. And they’re asking for $200B. This is definitely going to end next week.

Warning times in Israel have collapsed from fifteen minutes on day one to three minutes now, with some strikes arriving with none. The interceptor inventory is effectively gone – I wrote about that over two weeks ago and it’s now confirmed not by my napkin but by the lived reality of cluster munitions landing at Savidor Central Station and private jets burning at Ben Gurion.

Iran deployed its Haj Qassem ballistic missile this week for the first time in this conflict. A missile specifically designed to defeat the defenses Israel no longer has. It wasn’t held back for weeks because Iran was saving its best. It was held back because you don’t use a key-defeating missile until the lock is broken. The lock has been bombed, hammered, irrevocably and completely crushed into dust. It IS broken. Iran’s launch rate hasn’t declined. It’s stable, and in the past week, increasing.

The coalition has lost 10% of its entire MQ-9 Reaper drone fleet. The US has zero combat vessels actively present in the Persian Gulf – the Littoral Combat Ships based in Bahrain, whose entire purpose is to engage IRGC speedboats and sweep mines, were spotted in Malaysia three days ago. I have been told the beaches are lovely this time of year.

Iran has thirty-plus speedboats patrolling the strait, boarding vessels, forcing unauthorised transits to turn back. “The Persian Gulf is now an Iranian lake”, as one analyst put it. That’s no exaggeration. It’s the geography, stupid.

Iran’s declared terms are: reparations, closure of all US bases in the GCC, guarantees against future aggression. The US’s declared goal is: regime change, denuclearisation, dismantlement of the “Iranian terror regime”. Neither side has moved an inch. The only people who might have found a middle lane are either dead or sidelined.

Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress that the nuclear program “was obliterated and Iran was NOT rebuilding it”. No12 days. Internal cracks… Initial step building towards impeachment?

Joe Kent, who ran the National Counterterrorism Center until his resignation Monday, said there was no imminent threat and that Israel drove the decision. The casus belli is dissolving in public, on the record, while the war continues anyway.

The Gulf states who privately demanded escalation are now burning. Qatar expelled Iranian diplomats after Ras Laffan was struck. Qatar – which mediated between Iran and the West for years, which Iran supplied during the 2017 GCC isolation, which shares a gas field with Iran – is now in direct military confrontation with the country next door. The belt of states from Kuwait to Oman spent two weeks cheering the war on from behind their firewalls. Iran’s retaliation list was always going to include their infrastructure. They knew that. They did it anyway.

The Belgian Prime Minister – who runs the country hosting NATO headquarters – told the Financial Times this week that Europe must normalize relations with Russia. “In private”, he said, “European leaders agree with me. But nobody dares say it out loud”. The coalition that refused to send ships to Hormuz is now starting to say the quiet parts in public.

There’s only one scenario I see where this ends in weeks. A massive Iranian domestic collapse that produces a negotiated transition. Hasn’t happened. Doubtful it will now. Every other scenario involves months if not years.

The energy infrastructure damage is already partly irreversible. The fertilizer window is basically over. The yuan transit system is being institutionalized wave by wave, port call by port call. The petrodollar is fracturing in the way I described in my Bretton Whoops piece (link).

The US seems to be settling its trade deficit already in gold for three of the last four months. The Fed is trapped. And $200B in new debt will be added on top of the $39T current debt on top of a global energy shock. And the last moderate is dead in his daughter’s living room. God help us all.

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/