"The president is, shall we say, in an altered state right now."
– House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
"Fresh out of hospital last week, POTUS called off negotiations on a bailout bill. This surprised us. We figured the Trump team would no more want to stand between voters and their free money than they would between a hungry Doberman and a greasy steak… But by Wednesday, Trump’s craven ministers had spelled it out for him: “Hey, you’re behind in the polls.” Within hours, the president was tossing out the meat. He said he was “ready to sign” a giveaway to the voters of $1,200 each.
Total Fraud: As a “stimulus” measure, this is a total fraud. All it will really stimulate is the Robinhood traders, neighborhood drug dealers, web-based retailers… and inflation. But the false money, delivered under false pretenses, may give voters a false sense of prosperity. And then, economists will look at the spending that will inevitably follow – which they say makes up 70% of GDP – and say: “Wow… What a recovery!”
But if you really could “stimulate” growth by dropping money from helicopters, the skies would be full of them. Even as a “relief” measure – to the poor, “hardworking” Americans, who have lost jobs and income in the COVID shutdown – “stimulus checks” are a fraud. The official unemployment rate is only 8%.(Officially", you know better, Good Citizen. - CP) If that is true, it means that 92% of the workforce is still working. And yet, Mr. Trump is proposing to send out 160 million checks – with his name on them. In other words, The Great Benefactor would send $1,200 each to about 150 million people who still have jobs. As an emergency relief measure!
Bombs Away: But the president didn’t stop there. He also proposed to immediately give the airline industry some $25 billion. Why? Because the big four U.S. airlines – American, Delta, Southwest, and United – are holding about 50,000 employees by their heels… threatening to drop them. With the collusion of their unions, they say either they get money from the government… or it’s bombs away.
The last time air transportation workers blackmailed the government was back on August 3, 1981, when the air traffic controllers went on strike. They wanted more money, shorter hours… the usual things. Instead, Ronald Reagan gave them 48 hours to report for work. Those who didn’t – 11,000 of them – were fired. Not furloughed. Not slapped on the wrist. They lost their jobs – permanently. No muss. No fuss. Planes continued flying. New air traffic controllers were hired. Problem solved. This time, no problem will be solved. The president didn’t defy the blackmailers… He gave in to them.
Real Threat: Of all the dumb things that have been done with the public’s money, this has to rank as one of the dumbest. But it is a natural and inevitable phase of late, degenerate capitalism. First, the government destroys real capitalism. Then, it supports an ersatz version. Business… government… leaders and followers – all are altered by a new reality.
Together, the big four U.S. airlines earned about $37 billion in free cash flow during the last six high-flying years. You’d think they might have held on to a little of the money… just in case they ran into some headwinds. Nope. Instead, they spent every penny, and – their reality altered by the Federal Reserve’s ultra-low interest rates – borrowed $14 billion more in order to buy their own shares (thus rewarding their shareholders). And now, short on capital of their own, they look to the feds for a bailout… and threaten to throw their employees out of the cargo door if they don’t come through with the money.
Real Loss: But why should the public pay for more employees than the industry needs? If you pay money to someone to do something with no real value – say, run a poverty program… attack Iraq… provide PR services for a senator… attend a climate change symposium… hand out loans under the Paycheck Protection Program… serve on the Federal Reserve board – you might just as well throw the money away.
But wait… the money is counterfeit anyway. What difference does it make? Well, yes… But even counterfeit money can be used to buy things. Money is just the measure of the loss. The real loss is the time, food, fuel, parking places, machinery, and all the other things that are used up. Those are real… and they can never be recovered. Time goes by. It doesn’t come back.
Let’s suppose you work for the federal Economic Development Administration (which the Government Accountability Office recently found to be completely useless)… or for a company such as Uber, that loses money year after year. You drive your car to work… park… sit at a desk… use electricity… eat lunch… go to a meeting… go home. Everything you do, everything you touch, everyone you talk to – all of it makes the world a poorer place. Money just tells us “how much.”
More Giveaways: But as the week bumbled along, the altered state became clearer and clearer. Nobody in government – neither Republican nor Democrat – cares about wasting money… time… or anything else. Instead, all seem intent on squandering the last of the nation’s solvency. On Thursday, Trump’s man at the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, said he was willing to increase the amount of the giveaway. And it was worth letting the Democrats win this round, he seemed to say, if it got the money to the voters before November.
And then, on Friday came more thick steaks from POTUS himself. Here’s Bloomberg: "Trump Says He Now Wants Bigger Stimulus Than Democrats Offering." “I would like to see a bigger stimulus package, frankly, than either the Democrats or the Republicans are offering,” Trump said on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program, saying he’s going in the “exact opposite” direction from his earlier stances. “I’m telling you something I don’t tell anybody else because maybe it helps or maybe it hurts negotiations,” Trump told Limbaugh. “I would like to see a bigger package.”
Wow… What a guy! What a week! What a hopeless mess! Regards,"
"Each week, I send you three potentially life-changing ideas to help you be a slightly less awful human being. This week, we’re talking about 1) shame and its repercussions, 2) the desire many have to “go back” to the early days of their relationship, and 3) the MFM newsletter is officially a year old! Some thoughts and comments for you all. Let’s get into it.
1. Have you no shame? – One of the big bugaboos in the self-help world these days is shame. The idea is pretty simple. There are things that you and I resent and loathe about ourselves. These things tend to be irrational - like we think our ankles are too veiny or that we’re as dumb as a sack of bricks, even though we aced our SATs and our ankles are sexy as f**k.
As a result, we hide these parts of ourselves. And in this hiding, we develop all sorts of unhelpful emotional and behavioral ticks- like we become extra anxious when our ankles are exposed or malicious and callous when defending our ideas.
Basically, the idea goes that most of the ugly, awful stuff that drives people to pick up a self-help book (or newsletter) in the first place is driven by shame. And if we can just uproot that shame in ourselves, to unhide it and express it to the world, then things will be just grand.
But the problem is that there’s a word for someone who has uprooted and rid themselves of all shame. That word is “shameless.” And it’s pejorative for a reason. The last time I checked, shameless people were not at the zenith of emotional health, they were the frauds and charlatans and raging dickheads of the world. So, what the hell is going on here? Shameful or shameless - which is the lesser evil?
Lucky for you, I wrote like a 4,000-word article getting to the bottom of this. Check it out: Read: "The Best Way to Resolve Your Shame" (or read in the iOS App) Go on… don’t be ashamed to read it!
2. Are you sure you want to go back? – One of the most common relationship-related questions I get is whether that passionate “fire” present in the early days together can ever be revived. It’s a common question, often found on the cover of women’s magazines and implied in the gaudiest of travel brochures - as if the delirium of romance were as simple as buying the right perfume or booking the ocean view on your next beach vacation.
I generally find this idealism about romantic love to be misguided. Indeed, long-time readers will be more than familiar with my arguments that, on its own, love is not enough, and the fantasy that it can be is a relatively recent cultural invention.
Those who have been with a partner for a long time can easily become nostalgic for the wild, topsy-turvy emotional tempest of the early-stage romance and convince themselves that for some reason, they need it back to be happy. The truth is that love evolves and changes shape. What often creates that early passion is that you’re two insecure, bumbling humans trying to figure out if it’s worth opening up to someone in the first place.
Anyway, this topic came up recently in a round of Ask Mark Anything questions last week. In case you don’t know, each quarter I sit down and answer about a dozen reader questions (as determined by voting here). I then post the video for site members.
The whole Q&A session runs about 45 minutes and aside from rekindling the lost fires of love, in this session I also talk about: keys to creating friendships, the ethics of intervening in a family member’s life, self-help addiction, selecting good books to read, and the intricacies of lying to oneself. Check it out: Watch: "Ask Mark Anything #13" . Aside from getting access to the AMA videos, site members also have access to my online courses, a few dozen member-only articles and the full archive of previous MFM newsletters. You can learn more about becoming a site member here.
3. A year in the books – Last October, while on a much-needed vacation (remember those?), I decided, somewhat on a whim, to try out sending a weekly newsletter to my readers. There wasn’t a whole lot of strategizing behind it initially. For much of 2017-2019, writing articles for the website felt like abstract promotion as people’s attention moved more and more to social media platforms and a weekly email seemed like a way to get back in touch with readers directly.
To my surprise, this newsletter invigorated my writing in a way I did not expect. For one, it forces me to show up every week, whether I feel like it or not. And while I occasionally have weeks where I gripe and moan, for the most part it’s been a wonderful consistency in what is an otherwise chaotic and unpredictable profession.
But the real joy is the intimacy and interaction it’s brought back with you, my readers. Now, each Monday, three of my ideas go out to around half a million people. And each week, anywhere from a couple hundred to a couple thousand of you reply with your thoughts, disagreements, and suggestions. There’s an accountability and immediacy to the relationship that I have not felt since my early days as a blogger.
A side effect of that immediacy is that this newsletter has become a living, breathing, evolving thing. In the early months, I still treated it similar to how I treated my website: I wrote up declarative, advice-driven content with a kind of finality to it and posted it, thinking that was that. But as the weeks went on, I started to realize a few things. One, I’m wrong about a lot of things. Two, readers catch those mistakes and let me know, sometimes en masse. And three, by incorporating feedback, disagreements, and follow-up topics, the newsletter morphs into a kind of slow-moving conversation, where I can revisit topics and update prior beliefs with new information.
That baked-in feedback mechanism and willingness to evolve and improve upon itself is something that’s sorely lacking from public discourse at the moment. It’s not present in the media in any significant way. Blogging used to be like that, but blogging hardly exists anymore. And it was never possible on social media, because… since when was there any f***ing nuance on social media?
As a result, this newsletter has felt like a kind of lifeline of normality in these crazy times. And while there have been a few stressful weeks where I’ve struggled to put my thoughts together or where I’ve lodged at least one of my feet firmly into my mouth, overall it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long, long time. So, thank you for being a part of it, for continuing to read, and for participating in this continual weekly project of being slightly less awful human beings together.
“People ask me to predict the future, when all I want to do is prevent it. Better yet, build it. Predicting the future is much too easy, anyway. You look at the people around you, the street you stand on, the visible air you breathe, and predict more of the same. To hell with more. I want better.”
"America is at a crossroads with revolution on our doorstep. On one side are the Patriots; those who seek to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. On the other side are Marxist insurrectionists; those who believe that America is evil and the cause of so many problems in world.
At the risk of sounding like I’m saying, “I told you so,” I told you so. If you’ve been reading tea leaves from the news lately, you may have already figured out what’s coming at us in the next few months. If so, the following may simply affirm your observations. But I wanted to put this out there so everyone knows what to expect and therefore won’t be surprised.
My seven predictions for how 2020 comes to an end:
Prediction 1: Trump will win the election in a landslide. I know, the media is telling you the polls are tight, but just look around. Trump rallies are packed to the gills while Biden can’t fill the bleachers at a high school football field. Trump supporters hold huge boat parades while we see NONE for Biden. Trump supporters hold freeway caravans around that country that take up all lanes of a freeway, while an attempted caravan for Biden in Las Vegas drew only 30 people. Just like in 2016, pollsters today are making it look like it’s a close race. This is gaslighting – they’re telling you something that runs directly opposite of what your own eyes are telling you, but they’re expecting you to believe what they say.
Prediction 2: On the evening of November 3, Joe Biden will not concede the election, even though the vote will clearly be for Trump. Hillary Clinton has publicly stated that Joe should not concede, so the seed has been planted in our minds to expect this. And, because we’re expecting it, we won’t be shocked by it.
Prediction 3: Massive mail voter fraud will create confusion and Marxists (e.g. Democrats) will insist that “every vote counts.” They know Americans want to be fair so Marxists will play on that. They will cry and wail and plead that every vote needs to get counted, so they’ll ask for sympathy for voters who didn’t follow confusing new election rules about how to cast their mail-in ballots. That will be their story, but many votes will be fraudulent. As they’ve demonstrated on America’s streets, Marxists don’t care about following laws; they care about power.
Prediction 4: Because of massive mail fraud ballots showing up late, election results WILL be delayed. The deceptive Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook and the clearly biased Jack Dorsey at Twitter have already announced they will flag any posts or tweets that claim a victory for Trump. They KNOW Trump will have more than enough votes to win, but as Zuckerberg already told us, we should expect results to take “DAYS OR EVEN WEEKS.” In other words, Facebook and Twitter are well-aware of the planned mail-in voter fraud, and they’re already providing cover for it. The planned vote count confusion will be dragged out as long as possible. The Marxists’ intention is to keep confusion swirling at least until December 14 in hopes that the electoral college won’t be able to identify a winner. Expect ballots to keep showing up out of nowhere.
Prediction 5: If Marxists cannot keep up the façade until December 14, some states will obfuscate the electoral process by choosing not to follow the rules laid out in the 12th Amendment. In fact, both may happen. Either way, by attempting to throw the electoral college into confusion, Marxists (again, the Democrats) will make a push for the electoral college to be eliminated. Believe me when I say you don’t want this. Students of the Constitution know that if the electoral college is eliminated, the Republic will be gone.
Prediction 6: Expect Nancy Pelosi to be acting all patriotic and concerned about the Constitution during the chaos, but rest assured, it’s a passive-aggressive act. She is among the Marxist vanguard in both houses of Congress orchestrating the whole mess. You will also see some Marxist-friendly governors making a lot of noise.
Prediction 7: While Marxists in Congress are messing with the electoral process, Marxists on the streets (Antifa and BLM) will intensify their violence by burning, looting, and murdering even more than what we’ve seen to this point. There’s already a movement that seeks to lay siege to the White House. Not only do the puppet masters want all the street chaos to distract our attention from what’s going on in the electoral process, the street Marxists see this election as their only chance to either grab power or put up with Trump for four more years. The protestors have been trained to instigate violence, and copy-cat wannabes will want to join in. Street Marxists will view these riots as the fight of their lives: it will get intense.
To perpetuate the riots, puppet masters like George Soros will continue pouring money into organizations that fund them. Also remember that Antifa and BLM have threatened to go into the suburbs. Their purpose for doing so is to trigger the Soccer Moms who wants peace at all costs. Marxists will hope that these suburban moms will apply pressure on their elected representatives to give in to the Marxists so the violence will end. Life on American streets will be unpredictable and dangerous.
The Marxists are desperate, so the fighting will be like nothing the country has ever seen before. I predict we’ll see horrific things happening in our cities and on our streets, and traditional media (read: Marxist-friendly media) will be spewing twisted truths and lies about everything listed above. And we can’t forget that social media giants favor the Marxists in this revolution, so they will be squelching debate in whatever ways they can.
The final months of 2020 will be an emotional roller coaster, but in the end, I predict Trump prevails. It’s not going to be pretty, and many who are now thinking life will return to normal after November 3 will be sadly mistaken. They will be wondering what happened to the country they once knew.
Whether the Democrats implode or not after all this happens remains to be seen, but it is my prayer that when the dust settles, all the Marxists plotters and schemers will be exposed and truth will be recognized as truth. And then… maybe then… Trump can get on with his promise to drain the entire swamp."
"'Adjustment Day' Looms As America's Headed For Violent Civil War"
by Jeff Costello
"On October 1st, with little fanfare, Politico published an extraordinary opinion piece that may be the most important thing I’ve read all year. Titled “Americans Increasingly Believe Violence is Justified if the Other Side Wins,” the essay was penned by three “senior fellows” at the Hoover Institution, New America, and the Hudson Institute, as well as a professor of “political communication” at Louisiana State University and a professor of government at the University of Maryland (that’s five authors, in case you lost count). The major takeaway is presented in the graph that appears below:
Click image for larger size.
Way back in November of 2017 (my, how long ago that seems...) a mere 8% of both Democrats and Republicans held that it is legitimate to use violence to advance their political goals. Actually, there’s nothing “mere” about it. It ought to surprise us that such a sizeable percentage of both parties could hold such a radical view. Also surprising is Republicans running neck and neck with Democrats. Contrary to how they are perceived by Leftists, conservatives are slow to embrace the idea of violence, or any sort of punitive measures against their opponents. Their Achilles heel, in fact, is commitment to “fair play.”
We must remember that when these numbers were compiled it had been a year since the 2016 election. A year of unhinged rhetoric by the Left, and repeated calls for Trump to be assassinated. Madonna spoke about her fantasies of blowing up the White House, and “comedian” Kathy Griffin held up an effigy of Trump’s severed head. Of course, those were the unserious, tongue-in-cheek threats. Countless other people made similar threats, quite openly, and seemed to be pretty serious about it. To my knowledge, none of them was charged with a crime.
As Trump Derangement Syndrome continued to spread, it was actually a healthy sign that more Republicans began to entertain the idea of using violence as a political tool. Leftists presented themselves as having no boundaries. There was no low to which they would not stoop, no trick too dirty. They were threatening to attack and kill not only the President, but his supporters, and, in fact, the entire white race. They made it quite clear that they could not be reasoned with. Faced with an enemy like this, violence was bound to become more attractive, or at least more justifiable, in the eyes of even the most mild-mannered Republican voter.
Almost a year later, in October 2018, the percentage of Democrats condoning violence had jumped to 13. It had become obvious to them, at this point, that the results of the 2016 election were not going to be reversed, though many still held out the hope that Robert Mueller would uncover some dirt that would prove Trump’s undoing. True to form, conservatives lagged behind (see what nice people we are?), with a mere 11% condoning violence. Still, the number had risen. At least part of this has to be attributed to the Kavanaugh hearings (of September-October), which were a wakeup call for many Republicans, including Lindsay Graham, who seems to have sort of lost his innocence as a result. The hearings proved once and for all, if any more proof had been needed, that liberals have no principles whatever, and that attempts to play fair with them will only backfire. One can’t really blame Republicans for that 11%. Please pass the ammo.
By December 2019, things had gotten genuinely scary. The trend had continued. And how. This was the month that the House approved articles of impeachment against Trump. Earlier in the year, in April, the Mueller report was made public, revealing that we had been subjected to two solid years of hysteria about “Russia collusion” for absolutely no reason whatever. The libs were frustrated, to put it mildly. 16% of them now condoned violence. Republicans were behind the curve again, but not by much, with 15% of them thinking the same way.
But we hadn’t seen anything yet. That was before COVID and BLM. By June of the current year, these percentages had doubled, and Dems and Republicans were now equally in favor of breaking heads: 30% of both groups now condoned violence to advance political goals. Let us pause to consider this number once more: 30%. Let us also pause to consider that this poll was conducted at the beginning of June, when the George Floyd riots had just gotten going.
By September 1st, the percentage of liberals condoning violence had risen by just three points. Still, at 33% this constitutes one third of all Dems. The more interesting result came from the Republicans, however. The percentage in question had risen to 36%, and for the first time, Republicans rated as more violence-approving than Dems. If you will read the fine print, you will find that the September poll’s margin of error is 2.0 percentage points. Thus, the three percentage points separating Republicans from Democrats are statistically significant; conservatives are now demonstrably more in favor of violence than liberals.
Has the sleeping giant awakened? We were slow to consider violence an option. Unlike liberals, after all, we really do have principles, and we did not want to be like them. But they have pushed us to this point, and it’s difficult to see how there can be any debate about that. Months of watching our cities burn. Months of our history being torn down. Months of draconian lockdowns and arbitrary rules imposed by Democrat governors and mayors. Months of being told that we had to shelter in place, while BLM was given free rein to loot and burn. Months of being told we have no right to defend ourselves; that if you are white, you are automatically guilty. Countless lives and businesses destroyed. Given all of this, and more, it’s surprising that the number isn’t 56% - or 76% or 86%. But since many conservatives are probably afraid to say they might condone violence, I think we can round that 36% up a bit. Quite a bit.
The other day I spoke with a friend who lives in New York. He told me that he recently drove to his local rifle range, which he has visited many times in the past. He had not been there for several months, however, and when he arrived he was shocked to find a line stretching out the door (made up entirely of white people) and what wound up being a 45-minute wait. When he finally got inside, he asked the proprietor about the large turnout and was told that it had been like this every weekend since the BLM riots began, and that the numbers were increasing. I hope all those folks brought their own ammo, because my friend also told me the store was completely sold out. And this was New York, not South Carolina.
Two weeks prior to the Politico essay, The Hill published an opinion piece by a former federal prosecutor titled “Why Democrats Must Confront Extreme Left-wing Incitement to Violence.” It’s a weak and cowardly piece of writing but is nevertheless interesting on multiple levels. The author begins by asserting that Right-wing groups “by far pose the greatest threat of violence.” He bases this on a study by something called the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). This group looked at 900 cases of politically motivated plots or attacks since 1994, and concluded that Right-wing extremists had claimed the lives of 329 people, whereas “Antifa members haven’t killed any.”
This is like somebody saying, in January of 2020, “Over the last 25 years, seasonal flu has claimed the lives of 890,000 Americans, but COVID-19 hasn’t killed any Americans. Therefore, the flu is the real threat.” This would have been a ridiculous position, because COVID was something new and entirely unknown. We had no way of knowing, in January, how dangerous COVID was going to be. And, since then, it has, in fact, claimed far more American lives than the flu ever takes in a given year.
Similarly, since May we have seen Left-wing violence the likes of which this country has not seen since the 1960s. And this phenomenon is fundamentally new because it has been condoned and encouraged by state and local officials, prominent Democrats in Congress, and establishment journalists and pundits. The authors of the CSIS study warn of the dangers posed by groups like the “boogaloos,” a group of “Right-wing, anti-government extremists” bent on “creating a civil war in the United States.” Oddly enough, I’d never heard of the boogaloos until reading this article, and I think I’m pretty “plugged in.”
I know nothing about this group, but I do know one thing for certain: if the boogaloos, or any other “Right-wing extremists” took to the streets and behaved as BLM and Antifa have behaved - looting, burning, assaulting, threatening, or even just blocking traffic - they would have been crushed within twenty-four hours. All the might of state and local police forces and federal law enforcement would have been unleashed against them, and the cops would not have played nice. Many “Right-wingers” would have wound up dead or injured, and the survivors would have faced extensive criminal charges.
This, gentle reader, is why “Right-wing violence” is not the greater threat. Left-wing violence is taking place with the approval and support, financial and otherwise, of the establishment. It is a threat to all ordinary Americans, especially white Americans. Right-wing violence only poses a threat (so far, a very mild one) to the establishment.
The author of The Hill piece, while claiming that Right-wingers pose the greatest threat, wishes nonetheless to warn liberals that their own people are becoming far more violent and that they need to address this problem. This is after referring to the riots we’ve seen since May as “overwhelmingly peaceful social justice protests.” But he fears Democrats aren’t listening:
Perhaps Democrats are afraid of leaving the impression of a false equivalency between extreme right- and left-wing violence. Perhaps they are fearful that acknowledging the threat posed by extreme left-wing incitement gives credibility to Trump’s false narrative that Democrat-run cities are burning because of left-wing violence (they are not burning) and his promotion of outlandish conspiracy theories, such as that people in “the dark shadows” allegedly control Joe Biden.
In other words, the author, a Leftist in deep denial about the threat posed by the Left, wonders why the Left is in such deep denial about the threat posed by itself. You can’t make this stuff up.
In August, Joe Biden asked “Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?” This was widely interpreted by conservatives as a threat. The truth is that the violence will continue regardless of who wins the election. Trump’s reelection will guarantee further violence by the Left. But since Democrats have encouraged the violence and done nothing to contain it, there is every reason to believe that it will continue if Biden wins. Indeed, the “hands off” attitude the establishment has taken to Left-wing violence makes it almost inevitable that the violence will escalate, meaning that it will become more deadly. The Far Left has been emboldened.
If Biden does win, and if the Democrats manage to gain complete control of Congress, we can look forward to an assault on the first and second amendment rights of Americans, in the form of hate speech legislation and gun control. Further, Biden and Harris have signaled that they will pack the Supreme Court - simply by repeatedly refusing to answer the question of whether they will. Democrats are also likely to grant statehood to the District of Columbia (thus increasing their numbers in Congress), amnesty millions of illegals and put them on a fast track to citizenship, and abolish the Electoral College.
This is, quite simply, a recipe for civil war - of some kind or other. It is certainly a recipe for the further fragmentation of the country. 62% of white men voted for Trump in 2016, and none of them wants what I have just indicated the Democrats have to offer. The elimination of the Electoral College, if it happens, could be the country’s tipping point toward dissolution. It would mean that millions of Americans in the heartland of the country (most of them white) would be politically disenfranchised. The situation in the US is already volatile; the disenfranchisement of large numbers of citizens would make it much worse. This is particularly true given that those citizens are the backbone of the country: their decency, hard work, and tax money keep it afloat. It is unlikely that those people would readily accept living at the mercy of a combination of urban elites and non-white freeloaders.
Of course, the same situation would be created if demographic projections are borne out, and whites become a minority by 2044, regardless of what happens to the Electoral College. And the re-election of the hapless Trump would not even slow this process. Given demographics, our long-term prospect is a Democratic takeover. So that even if Democrats lose in 2020 - even if they lose big - everything I projected above about what the Democrats will do when they take power is still going to happen, it just may take a little longer.
My own prediction for what will happen to the US is that it will eventually split up along racial and political lines. Already, there is hardly any “union” to assess the state of. Further, all signs now indicate that this is not going to be a peaceful process. The Left began the violence, and they have now succeeded in pushing a whopping 36% of conservatives to approve of answering violence with violence.
Some of my readers will greet these claims with skepticism. Average Americans find it impossible to imagine their country disintegrating in violent conflict. This is the result of years of propaganda about the “stability” of our Republic, the “miracle” of our peaceful transfer of power every four years, yada yada. Average Americans are bizarrely oblivious to just how violent this country really is and always has been (something that has not escaped the notice of the rest of the world): sky-high rates of murder, rape, and assault; urban riots every few years; the assassination of political figures; regular “spree killings”; and a civil war that claimed the lives of around 700 thousand people. Average folks may not want to think about it, but a second civil war is quite plausible.
My readers on the Right, who are far more discerning than average folks, may be skeptical for different reasons. According to some of them, the chances of violent civil war or revolution are zero, since the establishment has far greater firepower. As I said above, if the Right took to the streets like BLM, they would be mercilessly crushed. But suppose they did it again. And again. And suppose the anger that sent them out into the streets did not diminish, but increased. It is naïve to think that determined individuals, through persistent guerilla warfare and other forms of resistance, cannot destabilize a government - especially when the government is run by decadent, out-of-touch elites who inhabit an ideological and social bubble. It has happened before, and can happen again.
Of course, the goal should not be “revolution.” There is no reason to want to “take over” the United States, because it is not desirable that the United States should continue to exist. We don’t want to live with these people anymore, even if we are the ones “in charge.” Instead, what we should aim for is independence - in other words, the partitioning of the country; carving our own country out of this country and saying goodbye to those other people. Folks, it’s either that or persuade the Europeans that we have the right of return. But that’s not going to happen.
So here are my predictions for the near future:
Left-wing violence will continue, indeed it will escalate. However, white conservatives will be increasingly willing to challenge Leftists in the streets. The Politico numbers persuasively suggest that this is likely, and we already see signs of it (notably, the Kyle Rittenhouse episode).
A Trump loss will further radicalize many white conservatives. A Trump win will also radicalize white conservatives, because the response will be even more violence from Leftists. The continued anti-white rhetoric, which shows no signs of abating, will also do the work of radicalization. I predict that we will see more acts of domestic terrorism perpetrated by Right-wing groups, and that many new such groups will spring up in the next several years. These acts will be heavily condemned by all the usual suspects, but this will have little effect, since the double standard is now too obvious. Even Mom and Dad, drinking Snapple and watching Hannity, will now approve of Right-wing violence.
Unlikely? Look at that chart above and think again. How likely is it that the trend has peaked at 36%?
I also predict that we will see cases of mini-secessions, in which towns, cities, and counties that are largely white and Republican will begin resisting the power of state and federal governments (e.g., not enforcing certain laws). This will make parts of the country hard to govern. These areas will become a mecca for white conservatives. They will grow in population and geographic reach, as new arrivals take residence just over county or city lines. Tired of the dirty looks they get, many non-whites and liberals will go elsewhere. In short, there will be de facto secession before secession is ever made official.
By the way, had I made prognostications about “civil war” as little as a year ago, I would have done so with the caveat “probably not in our lifetime.” Now I am definitely not so sure. It’s hard to believe, but the scenario envisioned by Chuck Palahniuk in Adjustment Day is becoming more plausible with each passing week."
"Making sense of Sweden: The White House event to celebrate Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination - a gathering that appears to have spread the coronavirus - would have violated the law in Sweden. It was too large. More than 200 people attended the Barrett celebration. In Sweden, public events cannot include more than 50 people. Anyone who organizes a larger gathering is subject to a fine or up to six months in prison.
If you’ve been following the virus news out of Sweden, this fact may surprise you. Sweden has become notorious for its laissez-faire response. Its leaders refused to impose a lockdown in the spring, insisting that doing so was akin to “using a hammer to kill a fly.” They also actively discouraged mask wearing. Ever since, people in other countries who favor a more lax approach have held up Sweden as a model. Recently, as new cases have surged in other European countries, some of Sweden’s defenders have claimed vindication.
How are you supposed to make sense of all this? Several readers have asked me that question, and the answers point to some lessons for fighting the virus. I think there are three key ones from Sweden:
1. It is not a success story. Over all, Sweden’s decision to let many activities continue unabated and its hope that growing immunity to the virus would protect people does not look good. The country has suffered more than five times as many deaths per capita as neighboring Denmark and about 10 times as many as Finland or Norway. “It was a terrible idea to do what they did,” Janet Baseman, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington, told me.
Compared with other viruses, this one seems especially likely to spread in clusters. Many infected people don’t infect a single other person, while “as few as 10 to 20 percent of infected people may be responsible for as much as 80 to 90 percent of transmission,” The Atlantic’s Zeynep Tufekci has explained. Given this, it’s less surprising that Sweden’s recent virus performance looks mediocre rather than horrible.
3. Swedish officials have been right to worry about “sustainability.” Strict lockdowns bring their own steep costs for society. With a vaccine at least months away, societies probably need to grapple with how to restart activities while minimizing risk.
Sweden’s leaders do not seem to have found the ideal strategy, but they are asking a reasonable question. “We see a disease that we’re going to have to handle for a long time,” Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s top epidemiologist, told The Financial Times, “and we need to build up systems for doing that.”
The fact that Sweden is no longer an extreme outlier in new virus cases - even as life there looks more normal than in most places - offers a new opportunity to assess risk."
In other developments:
• The number of confirmed new coronavirus cases around the world has accelerated in the past week and is consistently exceeding 300,000 per day for the first time. Here’s a map showing global outbreaks.
• President Trump announced on Twitter that he was now immune from the virus and could not spread it. Twitter labeled his post “misleading and potentially harmful.”
• Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top infectious disease expert, took issue with the Trump campaign, which he said featured him in an advertisement without his consent and misrepresented his comments.
• Memory loss. Confusion. Grasping for everyday words. Some virus survivors are coping with troubling cognitive long-term symptoms that have impaired their ability to work and function normally. “It feels as though I am under anesthesia,” one said.
"Experts are warning that a stock market crash is brewing and it will devastate the prospects of an economic rebound and boost a massive banking crisis with bankruptcies/ In this video, we examine the signals pointing to an unprecedented collapse on the markets and use experts' insight to explain to you how this may be the biggest monetary disaster in American history.
Market watchers are alerting that with so many different deteriorating elements piling up, at this point, a crash is unavoidable. Even the Fed's extraordinary monetary policies and the Congressional stimulus plans that inject trillions of dollars to keep the bubble inflated won't be enough to hold off the financial crash for much longer.
Despite the remarkable rebound in stocks we have recently witnessed, this upswing hasn't been supported by the reality of the beaten U.S. economy, and stocks are being priced for a fully materialized economy recovery, and if there's something we surely know, is that the economy isn't improving at all.
Although we have seen unemployment rates fall, the numbers are still worrying and approximately 20% of the jobs that were lost are gone for good. Furthermore, forecasts project the U.S. economy will likely spiral down again during the last three months of 2020 and by 2021 the GDP could decline by 1.7%.
Right now, the biggest concern is that a second wave of viral infections will emerge as we approach the cold season, triggering more business closings and significantly reducing business activity. And, in case of a substantial surge in cases, that itself could lead the stock market into a crash. But unfortunately, the outbreak-related disruptions are just one of the numerous signs that a stock market crash is looming.
Amongst the most worrying signals that the market is about to break is the growing corporate debt bubble. The U.S. corporate debt has jumped to $11 trillion in 2020, as many companies struggled to replace earnings lost to the outbreak-induced lockdown. In this sense, a second wave of infection cases could spark a larger surge in defaults, and of course, markets won't like that.
Also, the national debt bubble will certainly add more pressure to a financial meltdown. The fiscal stimulus spending alone has added $4 trillion to the national debt up until now, which has driven the debt-to-GDP ratio past 100%. From now on, GOP resistance will cut back on stimulus spending, meaning that stock market triumph has its days numbered.
Additionally, according to stock market rules created by Wall Street veteran Bob Farrell, a bear market starts with a large downfall, which is then followed by a "reflexive rebound." We have witnessed both of those stages this year. If the market continues to follow the rule, the third stage will cause a dramatic decline.
The possibility of a contested election, for its part, will spread fear amongst investors, who think a Trump-Biden legal fight will linger for a long time and act as a driving force to create a more acute, longer-term stock market collapse. Strategist at Contrarian Macro Advisors, David Hunter disclosed that he believes we are on the brink of “the biggest monetary disaster in historical past".
The strategist separates his apocalyptic prediction into two distinct phases, In a nutshell, Hunter expects a large “soften up” rally to take place within the subsequent few months, and ultimately it will "set the stage for an 80% inventory crash". In his perspective, the only repercussion that stemmed from the economic crisis resulted from the viral outbreak was a “fake-out sell-off”.
And the results of it were only a blip on the radar of a lot bigger, debt-and-leverage-fueled development that has been constructing for years. That’s why he defends that the huge amount of debt and leverage on which the monetary system is based upon will start stumbling. By adding some extra trillions of presidency and Federal Reserve stimulus into the equation, then we'll dive even deeper in debt.
At this stage, liquidity injections will only be one more aggravating factor, because our monetary system will be so overly-stressed by the excessive amount of debt, businesses bankruptcies, and unbacked leveraged that the next stock market crash will likely break historical standards, leaving us in a deep economic rock bottom one more time."
"What strange world is this? Earth. In the foreground of the featured image are the Pinnacles, unusual rock spires in Nambung National Park in Western Australia. Made of ancient sea shells (limestone), how these human-sized picturesque spires formed remains unknown. In the background, just past the end of the central Pinnacle, is a bright crescent Moon. The eerie glow around the Moon is mostly zodiacal light, sunlight reflected by dust grains orbiting between the planets in the Solar System.
Click image for larger size.
Arching across the top is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. Many famous stars and nebulas are also visible in the background night sky. The featured 29-panel panorama was taken and composed in 2015 September after detailed planning that involved the Moon, the rock spires, and their corresponding shadows. Even so, the strong zodiacal light was a pleasant surprise."
