"All of us live in a silo of our own making to some degree. We read news sites we like and we like them because they tend to cover the stuff we think is important, in a way we hope is accurate. We admire opinions with which we agree. We hang out with people who share our interests. That’s normal. It’s also normal to know it and know others have different opinions and interests. Most normie conservatives get that Fox News is biased toward the Republicans, but they know all of the other stations are heavily biased to the Democrats.
This self-awareness has never applied to the Left. Every normal person has had a conversation with a Progressive friend where they claim the news is biased against them or is too easy on some conservative they currently hate. They will argue that Fox News is poisoning the minds of the public. When you point out that 90% of the mass media is run by hard left true believers, they scoff and say you’re nuts. The hive mind of Progressives has always allowed them to pretend they are surrounded by a sea of their enemies.
One point made by some on the Dissident Right is that this blinkered view of the world has infected the so-called conservatives. They are blind to the intellectual revolution going on over here, because they stare at Lefty all day. Like people looking directly into the sun, they are blind to everything else. As a result, the legacy conservatives carry on like it is 1984 and Dutch Reagan is riding high. Much of what so-called conservatism is these days is just a weird nostalgia trip, celebrating a fictional past with no connection to the present.
There are many reasons why so-called conservatives are becoming irrelevant, but the main reason is that their good friends on the Left are racing off into a fantasy land of their own creation. Listen to a modern Progressive talk and it is a weird combination of echolalic babbling and paranoia about dark forces that are imaginary. Replace “Russian hacking” with “work of the devil” and their howling makes more sense. Things like “foreign meddling” and “institutional racism” are just stand-ins for Old Scratch.
This increasingly weird disconnect between the Left and this place we call earth shows up in their main propaganda organs. Those old enough to remember reading English versions of communist newspapers can recognize the unintended humor on the front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post. This front page item is a good example. Everything in that “news” story describes a world that only exists in the fevered imaginations of the Left. It was a fictional account of present reality written for believers.
This Andrew Sullivan piece bumps up against this reality a little bit, but from a different angle. His argument is that the fantasy land of academia is casting a long shadow over American society, so it is imperative that the college campus be reformed to look something like reality. His framing of things is mostly wrong because he is just a slightly less berserk member of the hive he is trying analyze. His description of the dynamic on campus, though, is correct. It is a world untethered from reality.
The fact is, the college campus is the apotheosis of Progressive spiritualism. It has been dominated by the Left for as long as anyone has been alive. The constant flow of credit money into American higher education has removed all restraints on the people in charge. They are free to indulge whatever fantasies they have at the moment, as no one ever gets fired and the money spigot stays open. As a result, the American college campus is the full flowering of the Progressive imagination. It’s Wakanda for cat ladies.
This lurch into madness is the result of plenty. Up until recent, the threat of nuclear annihilation and the lack of universal prosperity has reined in the excesses of the Left. In order to win elections, Progressive politicians had to focus on better economics and expanding opportunity. Of course, the Cold War kept everyone focused on practical reality, as a mistake could have set off a nuclear exchange. That’s no longer the case, in human terms, and there are looming threats.
Progressivism has always been a spiritual movement. It is the quest for cosmic justice based on the notion that we are only as good as the weakest among us. That is a fine and noble sentiment, as long as it remains a sentiment. The reality of scarcity has always kept this spiritualism in check. As we enter into a post-abundance world, Progressives are free to explore the far reaches of their mysticism. The result is a ruling class that is looking more like eastern mystics, than pragmatic rulers.
It is why civic nationalism is a dead end street. You see it in the Andrew Sullivan piece about the campus culture. What he is arguing in favor of is the same things we hear from civic nationalists. They all agree with Progressives that we need a unifying religion. They just want a debate about the contours and end points of the religion. The fact that no one has ever pulled this off without ushering in a bloodbath never gets mentioned, Instead, all of these folks prefer to frolic in imagination land, where all their dreams come true.”
“Father, O father! what do we here In this land of unbelief and fear? The Land of Dreams is better far, Above the light of the morning star.” - William Blake, “The Land of Dreams”
Stunning Meditation on Walking into the Questions of Our Becoming”
by Maria Popova
“The role of the artist, James Baldwin believed, is “to make you realize the doom and glory of knowing who you are and what you are.” This, too, is the role of the forest, it occurs to me as I walk the ferned, mossed woods daily to lose my self and find myself between the trees; to “live the questions,” in Rilke’s lovely phrase – to let the rustling of the leaves beckon forth the stirrings and murmurings on the edge of the psyche, which we so often brush away in order to go on being the smaller version of ourselves we have grown accustomed to being out of the unfaced fear that the grandeur of life, the grandeur of our own untrammeled nature, might require of us more than we are ready to give.
Those disquieting, transformative stirrings are what the poet and philosopher David Whyte explores with surefooted subtlety in his poem “Sometimes,” found in his altogether life-enlarging collection “Everything Is Waiting for You” and read here by the poet himself as part of a wonderful short course of poem-driven practices for neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris’s “Waking Up” meditation toolkit (which I can’t recommend enough and which operates under an inspired, honorable model of granting free subscriptions to those who need this invaluable mental health aid but don’t have the means).
“In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile - and the rest of us are f****d until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep.”
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are organizational frameworks which seek to promote the fair treatment and full participation of all people, particularly groups who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination on the basis of identity or disability.
Hot Springs, Arkansas - "The plot thickens...For months now, The Party apparatchiks assured us that President Joe Biden was compos mentis... that the Republic was in firm, unwavering hands... and that questions regarding his mental acuity constituted slanderous mis/disinformation, perpetrated by members of the “far-right,” by “conspiracy theorists,” hopped-up loons and deranged cranks...
The mainstream media, too, lined up in incurious defense of their Commander in Chief, dismissing videos of Mr. Biden’s blundering as “cheap fakes” and assuring us that what we were seeing – with our lyin’ eyes, apparently – was the “very best version of Biden.” After we dared wonder in these very Notes whether the president was, indeed, all there, a dear reader wrote in to suggest that perhaps we had joined a cult, which was news to us.
It’s Not Me, It’s You: Even after his dismal debate debacle, when millions of Americans realized they were being gaslit by a fibbing media, the president’s closest allies, including his Vice President, assured us he was indeed the best man to “finish the job.”
In his absence, the media has tellingly begun referring to “the Biden administration,” a soft admission that it is not the “Big Guy” himself who is calling the shots, but a faceless, unelected cabal of “administrators.”
"Biden administration announces $4.3 billion in climate grants." ~ Reuters
"Biden administration urges tech companies to step up child safety efforts." ~ The Washington Post
"Unions tell the Biden administration to stop sending military aid to Israel." ~ The New York Times
The question “If he is not fit to run, how is he fit to govern?” now hangs over the remainder of Biden’s presidency like the Sword of Damocles. Likewise does it call into serious question the judgment of those who stood by him, knowing he was unfit to lead.
Meanwhile, in the President Unelect’s place stands the multi-talentless Kamala Harris, the poster woman for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Here she is, as Vice President of the United States of America, a heartbeat away from the highest office in the land, reminding herself who, what and where she is...
“I am Kamala Harris, my pronouns are she and her,
and I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit.”
Sensible, intelligent Americans, on the left and the right, in both red and blue suits, must be scratching their aching craniums: How did it come to this? Weren’t we once the envy of the world, the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave, the Shining City on the Hill?
Dude, Where’s My Country?! Yes, dear reader, it is a sorry sight to witness. The decline of basic standards, the lurch into absurdity, the babbling, tragi-comic utterances of so-called leaders. And yet, should we really be so surprised that it has come to this? After all, for at least the past decade, we’ve been lectured from on high about how it is not merit that ought to be the deciding factor in who gets the job, but considerations of “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI).
Here’s how the real life Veep herself explains it: "So there’s a big difference between equality and equity. Equality suggests, “oh everyone should get the same amount.” The problem with that, not everybody’s starting out from the same place. So if we’re all getting the same amount, but you started out back there and I started out over here, we could get the same amount, but you’re still going to be that far back behind me. It’s about giving people the resources and the support they need, so that everyone can be on equal footing, and then compete on equal footing. Equitable treatment means we all end up in the same place."
~ Kamala Harris
And of course, it’s Harris and her misguided troop of know-it-alls who will determine where that magical “same place” is and how we best get there. Naturally.
If this all sounds frighteningly similar to Marx’s “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” doctrine, perhaps that’s because you’re a racist misogynist who hates America and sneers at puppies. That, or you have a clue about just how disastrous centrally planned “equality of outcome” has proven over the past...forever. Still, one needn’t have thumbed the pages of history to see where “needs based” (as opposed to rights based) philosophy this leads us. Look around at the state of the world today.
DEI and DIE: About the same time Vice President Harris was checking the Democratic Party’s quota boxes, another DEI-hard enthusiast, Kimberly A Cheatle, was resigning in disgrace from her post as the director of the Secret Service after what she herself called the “most significant operational failure” in decades.
Under Cheaetle’s stewardship, the United States Secret Service was one of 14 federal law enforcement agencies to join the 30X30 Initiative, which aims to achieve, per its own website, “30% Women Recruits by 2030.” Not “the best recruits, regardless of sex, race or orientation”... not “the best candidates for the job”... not “most deserved for the position based on merit and ability”... not even “person who can perform given task.” Rather, Cheatle actively selected candidates based on their sex... which up until five seconds ago used to be called “sexism.”
Other agencies on board with the 30X30 Initiative include the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the US Marshals Service (USMS), US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the US Capitol Police (USCP).
Gee... what could go wrong?
The Austrian School economist Friedrich Hayek warned against the precursor to DEI (known in the olden days as “socialism”). From Individualism and the Economic Order: “There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal. While the first is the condition of a free society, the second means, as De Tocqueville described it, ‘a new form of servitude.’”
Lest we be accused of quoting “dead white males” to make our point, we’ll leave the final word to Mrs. Harris in the expectation that she will do it for us. Here is the aspiring President of the United States of America, explaining the intricacies of geopolitics: “So Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically, that’s wrong.” Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World..."
"We're diving into the chaos that's paralyzing LA courthouses due to a massive ransom attack. The largest courthouse system in the country has ground to a halt, affecting everything from criminal trials to civil business. This unprecedented event has left 36 courthouses and 5,000 employees in limbo, unable to conduct any business. It's absolutely mind-blowing!"
"Hospitals and Medical Devices Hacked! Two More Warnings"
"The medical industry is facing a serious threat as medical devices are getting hacked, putting our health at risk. From MRI machines showing blue screens to pacemakers potentially being tampered with, the implications are terrifying. This is devastating."
"I gave this talk in Blackburn, England during a campaign event for my friend Craig Murray who is running for parliament. Like George Galloway, who was recently elected to parliament, Craig’s central campaign issue is the genocide in Gaza. He calls for a permanent ceasefire, the establishment of a full and independent Palestinian state and backs the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against the apartheid state of Israel.
Transcript
Craig Murray: Good evening. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming along. I'm Craig Murray. I'm here in Blackburn, as you may know, as a candidate in the general election and one thing I've made absolutely plain is that I'm standing here because of the genocide in Gaza. That's what has brought me here to raise the issue and fight the election here and we're having a meeting here today which is not like your normal election meeting in that it's very much focused on that subject and which I hope will give you a lot of information and food for thought and I am extremely proud to have two of the best speakers on the subject in the world, two world leading authorities on the subject who've come here to Blackburn.
I had difficulty persuading people today that they are actually here and that it's not a Zoom meeting or something along those lines. And they've both come large distances to be here. And without further ado, because I'm going to be here, as comedians used to say, I'm here all week. I'm here for the next month so you'll have lots and lots of chances to hear me talk but this is a man who you probably very seldom get to hear talk.
He is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, a man of enormous experience, who's just flown in from Egypt, where he won the Arab World's Top Prize for Journalism — and we look very much forward to hearing Chris Hedges.
Chris Hedges: Thank you.
Israel has been poisoned by the psychosis of permanent war. It has been morally bankrupted by the sanctification of victimhood, which it uses to justify an occupation that is even more savage than that of apartheid South Africa. Its ‘democracy’ - which was always exclusively for Jews - has been hijacked by extremists who are pushing the country towards fascism. Human rights campaigners, intellectuals and journalists - Israeli and Palestinian - are subject to constant state surveillance, arbitrary arrests and government-run smear campaigns. Its educational system, starting in primary school, is an indoctrination machine for the military. And the greed and corruption of its venal political and economic elite have created vast income disparities, a mirror of the decay within America’s democracy, along with a culture of anti-Arab and anti-Black racism.
By the time Israel achieves its decimation of Gaza - Israel istalking about months of warfare that will continue at least until the end of this year - it will have signed its own death sentence. Its facade of civility, its supposed vaunted respect for the rule of law and democracy, its mythical story of the courageous Israeli military and miraculous birth of the Jewish nation – which it successfully sold to its western audiences – will lie in ash heaps. Israel’s social capital will be spent. It will be revealed as the ugly, repressive, hate-filled apartheid regime it always has been, alienating younger generations of American Jews. Its patron, the United States, as new generations come into power, will distance itself from Israel. Its popular support will come from reactionary Zionists and America’s Christianized fascists who see Israel’s domination of ancient Biblical land as a harbinger of the Second Coming and in its subjugation of Arabs a kindred racism and celebration of white supremacy.
Israel will become synonymous with its victims the way Turks are synonymous with the Armenians, Germans are with the Namibians and later the Jews, and Serbs are with the Bosniaks. Israel’s cultural, artistic, journalistic and intellectual life will be exterminated. Israel will be a stagnant nation where the religious fanatics, bigots and Jewish extremists who have seized power will dominate public discourse. It will join the club of the globe’s most despotic regimes.
Despotisms can exist long after their past due date. But they are terminal. You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar to see that Israel’s lust for rivers of blood is antithetical to the core values of Judaism. The cynical weaponization of the Holocaust, including branding Palestinians as Nazis, has little efficacy when you carry out a live streamed genocide against 2.3 million people trapped in a concentration camp.
Nations need more than force to survive. They need a mystique. This mystique provides purpose, civility and even nobility to inspire citizens to sacrifice for the nation. The mystique offers hope for the future. It provides meaning. It provides national identity.
When mystiques implode, when they are exposed as lies, a central foundation of state power collapses. I reported on the death of the communist mystiques in 1989 during the revolutions in East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Romania. The police and the military decided there was nothing left to defend. Israel’s decay will engender the same lassitude and apathy. It will not be able to recruit Indigenous collaborators, such as Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority - reviled by most Palestinians - to do the bidding of the colonizers.
All Israel has left is escalating savagery, including torture and lethal violence against unarmed civilians, which accelerates the decline. This wholesale violence works in the short term, as it did in the war waged by the French in Algeria, the Dirty War waged by Argentina’s military dictatorship, the British occupation of India, Egypt, Kenya and Northern Ireland and the American occupations of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. But in the long term, it is suicidal.
The genocide in Gaza has turned Hamas’ resistance fighters into heroes in the Global South. Israel may wipe out the Hamas leadership. But the past - and current - assassinations of scores of Palestinian leaders has done little to blunt resistance. The genocide in Gaza has produced a new generation of deeply traumatized and enraged young men and women whose families have been killed and whose communities have been obliterated. They are prepared to take the place of martyred leaders.
Israel was at war with itself before Oct. 7. Israelis were protesting to prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s abolition of judicial independence. Its religious bigots and fanatics, currently in power, had mounted a determined attack on Israeli secularism. Israel’s unity is a negative unity. It is held together by hatred. And even this hatred is not enough to keep protestors from decrying the government’s abandonment of Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Hatred is a dangerous political commodity. The Palestinian “human animals,” when eradicated or subdued, will be replaced by Jewish apostates and traitors. A politics of hatred creates a permanent instability, exploited by those seeking the destruction of civil society.
Israel was far down this road on Oct. 7 when it promulgated a series of discriminatory laws against non-Jews that resemble the racist Nuremberg Laws that disenfranchised Jews in Nazi Germany. The Communities Acceptance Law permits exclusively Jewish settlements to bar applicants for residency on the basis of “suitability to the community’s fundamental outlook.”
Yeshayahu Leibowitz, whom Isaiah Berlin called “the conscience of Israel,” warned that if Israel did not separate church and state and end the occupation, it would give rise to a corrupt rabbinate that would warp Judaism into a fascistic cult.
“Religious nationalism is to religion what National Socialism was to socialism,” wrote Leibowitz, who died in 1994. He understood that the blind veneration of the military, especially after the 1967 war that captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem, was dangerous. “Our situation will deteriorate to that of a second Vietnam, to a war in constant escalation without prospect of ultimate resolution,” he warned.
He foresaw that, “the Arabs would be the working people and the Jews the administrators, inspectors, officials, and police - mainly secret police. A state ruling a hostile population of 1.5 million to 2 million foreigners would necessarily become a secret-police state, with all that this implies for education, free speech and democratic institutions. The corruption characteristic of every colonial regime would also prevail in the State of Israel. The administration would have to suppress Arab insurgency on the one hand and acquire Arab Quislings on the other. There is also good reason to fear that the Israel Defense Force, which has been until now a people’s army, would, as a result of being transformed into an army of occupation, degenerate, and its commanders, who will have become military governors, resemble their colleagues in other nations.” “Israel,” he wrote, “would not deserve to exist, and it will not be worthwhile to preserve it.”
Settler colonial states that endure, including the United States, exterminate the native population through genocide and the spread of new infectious diseases such as smallpox. By 1600 less than a tenth of the indigenous population remained in South, Central and North America. Israel cannot kill on this scale, with nearly 5.5 million Palestinians living under occupation and another nine million in the diaspora. They cannot, as many Israelis wish, wipe them all out.
Israel’s scorched earth campaign in Gaza means there will be no two-state solution. Apartheid and genocide will define existence for the Palestinians. This presages a long conflict, but one that the Jewish State cannot ultimately win.
Run, the Israelis demand of the Palestinians, run for your lives. Run from Rafah the way you ran from Gaza City, the way you ran from Jabalia, the way you ran from Deir al-Balah, the way you ran from Beit Hanoun, the way you ran from Bani Suheila, the way you ran from Khan Yunis. Run or we will kill you. We will drop GBU-39 bombs on your tent encampments and set them ablaze. We will spray you with bullets from our machine-gun-equipped drones. We will pound you with artillery and tank shells. We will shoot you down with snipers. We will decimate your tents, your refugee camps, your cities and towns, your homes, your schools, your hospitals and your water purification plants. We will rain death from the sky.
Run for your lives. Again and again and again. Pack up the few belongings you have left. Blankets. A couple of pots. Some clothes. We don’t care how exhausted you are, how hungry you are, how terrified you are, how sick you are, how old, or how young you are. Run. Run. Run. And when you run in terror to one part of Gaza, we will make you turn around and run to another. Trapped in a labyrinth of death. Back and forth. Up and down. Side to side. Six. Seven. Eight times. We toy with you like mice in a trap. Then we deport you so you can never return. Or we kill you.
Let the world denounce our genocide. What do we care? The billions in military aid flows unchecked from our American ally. The fighter jets. The artillery shells. The tanks. The bombs. An endless supply. We kill children by the thousands. We kill women and the elderly by the thousands. The sick and injured, without medicine and hospitals die. We poison the water. We cut off the food. We make you starve. We created this hell. We are the masters. Law. Duty. A code of conduct. They do not exist for us.
But first we toy with you. We humiliate you. We terrorize you. We revel in your fear. We are amused by your pathetic attempts to survive. You are not human. You are creatures. Untermensch. We feed our lust for domination. Look at our posts on social media. They have gone viral. One shows soldiers grinning in a Palestinian home with the owners tied up and blindfolded in the background. We loot. Rugs. Cosmetics. Motorbikes. Jewelry. Watches. Cash. Gold. Antiquities. We mock your misery. We cheer your death. We celebrate our religion, our nation, our identity, our superiority, by negating and erasing yours.
Depravity is moral. Atrocity is heroism. Genocide is redemption.
This is the game of terror played by Israel in Gaza. It was the game played during the Dirty War in Argentina when the military junta “disappeared” 30,000 of its own citizens. The “disappeared” were subjected to torture - who cannot call what is happening to Palestinians in Gaza torture? - and humiliated before they were murdered. It was the game played in the clandestine torture centers and prisons in El Salvador and Iraq. It is what characterized the war in Bosnia in the Serbian concentration camps.
Israeli journalist Yinon Magal on the show “Hapatriotim” on Israel’s Channel 14, joked that Joe Biden’s red line was the killing of 30,000 Palestinians. The singer Kobi Peretz asked if that was the number of dead for a day. The audience erupted in applause and laughter.
We know Israel’s intent. Annihilate the Palestinians the same way the United States annihilated Native Americans, the Australians annihilated the First Nations peoples, the Germans annihilated the Herero in Namibia, the Turks annihilated Armenians and the Nazis annihilated the Jews. The specifics are different. The goal is the same. Erasure.
We cannot plead ignorance.
But it is easier to pretend. Pretend Israel will allow humanitarian aid. Pretend there will be a permanent ceasefire. Pretend Palestinians will return to their destroyed homes in Gaza. Pretend Gaza will be rebuilt - the hospitals, the universities, the mosques, the housing. Pretend the Palestinian Authority will administer Gaza. Pretend there will be a two-state solution. Pretend there is no genocide.
The vaunted democratic values, morality and respect for human rights, claimed by Israel and the United States, has always been a lie. The real credo is this – we have everything and if you try and take it away from us we will kill you. People of color, especially when they are poor and vulnerable, do not count. The hopes, dreams, dignity and aspirations for freedom of those outside the empire are worthless. Global domination will be sustained through racialized violence.
This lie - that the American empire is predicated on democracy and liberty - is one the Palestinians, and those in the Global South, as well as Native Americans and Black and Brown Americans, not to mention those who live in the Middle East, have known for decades. But it is a lie that still has currency in the United States and Israel, a lie used to justify the unjustifiable.
We do not halt Israel’s genocide because we, as Americans, are Israel, infected with the same white supremacy, and intoxicated by our domination of the globe’s wealth and the power to obliterate others with our advanced weaponry.
The world outside of the industrialized fortresses in the Global North is acutely aware that the fate of the Palestinians is their fate. As climate change imperils survival, as natural resources, including access to water, diminish, as mass migration becomes an imperative for millions, as agricultural yields decline, as coastal areas are flooded, as droughts and wildfires proliferate, as states fail, as militias and armed resistance movements rise to battle their oppressors along with their proxies, genocide will not be an anomaly. It will be the norm. The earth’s vulnerable and poor, those Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth,” will be the next Palestinians.
“Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths,” the Roman historian Tacitus wrote of those the emperor Nero singled out for torture and death. “Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.”
Sadism by the powerful is the curse of the human condition. It was as prevalent in ancient Rome as it is, 200 miles to the north from us, in Gaza.
We know the modern face of Nero, who illuminated his opulent garden parties by burning to death captives tied to stakes. That is not in dispute. But who were Nero’s guests¹? Who wandered through the emperor’s grounds as human beings, as in Rafah, were burned alive? How could these guests see, and no doubt hear, such horrendous suffering and witness such appalling torture and be indifferent, even content?
There is nothing hidden about this genocide. Over 147 courageous Palestinian journalists have been murdered by the Israelis because they have conveyed the images and stories of this slaughter to the world, martyred for their people, for us.
We are Nero’s guests.
The Palestinians have long been betrayed, not only by us in the global north, but by most of the governments in the Muslim world. We stand passive in the face of the crime of crimes. History will judge Israel for this genocide. But it will also judge us. It will ask why we did not do more, why we did not sever all agreements, all trade deals, all accords, all cooperation with the apartheid state, why we did not halt weapons shipments to Israel, why we did not recall our ambassadors, why when the maritime trade in the Red Sea was disrupted by Yemen an alternative overland route into Israel was set up by Saudi Arabia and Jordan, why we did not do everything in our power to end the slaughter. It will condemn us for not heeding the fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which is not that Jews are eternal victims, but that when you have the capacity to stop genocide and you do not, you are culpable.
“The opposite of good is not evil,” Samuel Johnson wrote. “The opposite of good is indifference.”
The Palestinian resistance is our resistance. The Palestinian struggle for dignity, freedom and independence is our struggle. The Palestinian cause is our cause. For, as history has also shown, those who were once Nero’s guests soon became Nero’s victims."
"How much of your income taxes are being spent on interest on the national debt? According to the latest Monthly Statement of the US Treasury, Net Interest expense was $81 billion June of 2024. That’s 43% of the $185 billion the government generated through income tax receipts. But wait!
If you look at the bottom of the table below, you’ll see that ‘gross interest’ paid in June was $140 billion. That’s 76% of total income tax receipts. Three quarters of every dollar you paid in income tax went to pay interest on the debt in June. How sustainable is that?
Click image for larger size.
‘Net interest’ is the interest paid to US Treasury debt held by the public. ‘Gross interest - a much bigger number - includes interest paid to various US government trust funds (Social Security) and other intra-government holders of US debt. In other words, its money the government ‘pays itself.’
Total US government debt is less than $50 billion away from $35 trillion. As the debt climbs closer to the 130% of GDP ‘trigger point’ we’ve identified in our research, the question arises: Who will the US government choose to default to first? Or will it default to all debt holders, through higher inflation (and interest rate cuts, beginning next week from the Federal Reserve)?"
How will America’s confrontational, scaremongering attitudes
affect our financial future? The age-old combination of war
and debt are likely to be fatal to the empire and to US asset values.
by Bill Bonner
"China is a party state. The function of China is not to better
the interests of the Chinese people - it is to promote, strengthen, and
expand the power and influence, and reach of the Chinese Communist Party."
- Mary Kissel
Poitou, France - "You might wonder: is that any different from the Democratic Party or the Republican Party? And where did Kamala Harris come from? Does anyone know how or why this ‘DEI hire’ is now in the running for the top job in the USA?
Was the selection process for her much different from how the Soviets chose Brezhnev, or how the Chinese chose Xi? Wasn’t she selected by party honchos, behind closed doors? And isn’t her mission not to ‘better the interests’ of the American people... but to ‘promote, strengthen and expand the power and influence’ of the Democratic party’s elites?
We are exploring US foreign policy. Not for its own sake... foreign policy is not our beat. But how will America’s confrontational, scaremongering attitudes affect our financial future? In preview, the age-old combination of war and debt are likely to be fatal to the empire... and to US asset values.
The problems in themselves are easy to understand and solve. Javier Milei in Argentina turned a deep deficit into a surplus in a matter of months. In America, it should be easier. The ‘empire budget’ could be cut in half... or more... just by eliminating the ‘empire’ part. On the other hand, without substantial cuts to the military, there is little chance of preventing a financial catastrophe. Too bad, the firepower industry controls Congress!
Deeper in the Hole: The US has the most powerful empire the world has ever seen... with some seven hundred military bases all over the world... and a Pentagon budget eight times bigger than Russia and three times more than the Chinese. The total empire budget - including foreign aid and other entanglements - comes to about $1.3 trillion per year. And as long as it continues, the deeper into the hole the US goes.
Thanks to its lucky geography, America faces no danger from the land or the sea. The only plausible attack would come from the air. And the cost of maintaining a defense against it - with an Eisenhower Era level of reasonable military muscle - is probably around a quarter of the entire empire budget... or about $300 billion per year. The rest of the budget plays no real role in the defense of the fifty states.
But neither Republicans nor Democrats propose to make the obvious and essential cuts. Instead, they paint their faces and pound the drums... whooping for war. The foreigners are all out to get us, they insist.
We’ve lived among foreigners for the last thirty years, with business outposts in China, India, Australia and several other nations. Never once did we get the impression that they were ready to slit our throats.
But listening to recent congressional hearings, we felt lucky to get home alive. A supposed US foreign policy expert, Mary Kissel, said the Chinese aim to “upend our way of life and to dominate and change our way of life.” And they are “committed to destroy(ing) us.” And members of Congress - all supposedly intelligent, educated people - took it seriously.
Grinding Poverty: The Chinese want to change our way of life? How? Do they want to make our wages go up at 7% per year... as theirs have for the last thirty years (while ours have been flat)? Are they hoping to build a high-speed train between Boston and Washington... or even between LA and San Francisco... one that will travel at 373 miles per hour like China’s new maglev?
Since 1979, the Chinese have multiplied their GDP by thirty times - three times faster than the US; they’ve lifted eight hundred million people out of grinding poverty in a single generation. Is that the way they’d change our way of life? Heck, maybe we’d all learn to speak Chinese if hat were the payoff. Or maybe they’ll insist on getting the US retirement age down to just 54 years old... as it is in China?
Rep. Lisa McClain is apparently concerned that the Chinese company, Gotion, is up to something in her district. In Michigan, we have the Gotion plant... We have a Chinese-owned company and the only spot they can figure out that is feasible for them to build is next to a university and next to a military base. Anybody think that’s a coincidence? I’m not much for coincidences.
Ms. McClain may know nothing about China. But she might have realized that there are so many colleges and universities in her home state - 198, including community colleges and trade schools - being close to one of them was more than a coincidence; it was inevitable. And since the company intends to hire thousands of Americans... and pay them about 50% more than the US average... it might make sense to locate near a university where the company could find the talent it needed.
As for the military base, it is more than one hundred miles away! But on the Hill there is no need for careful, comparative analysis. Representative Tim Burchett set the tone, with this note of idiocy: ‘What if they were to develop some kind of biological entity that can, say, wipe out females of child-bearing ages or something?’
That would be just like the Chinese, right?! And what geniuses... the ‘entity’ would attack young American women - but not Chinese women. But wait. With the American women wiped out...maybe that wouldn’t be such a smart strategy for the Chinese, after all. There would still be some 160 million American men alive.
Who would fix their breakfasts? Who would darn their socks and bake their cookies? Watch out, you diabolical Chinese. They might be very angry..."
"International Man: On July 13, there was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump. What’s your take on what really happened?
Doug Casey: The official narrative is still crystallizing, as all the government employees and bureaucrats who were supposedly responsible for Trump’s safety scurry about to ensure their careers aren’t adversely affected. Now that Kim Cheatle, the security hen in charge of the Secret Service, has resigned to collect her fat pension as a public mea culpa, the Secret Service and FBI will conduct internal investigations. A few people may be reprimanded and placed on administrative paid leave for a couple of weeks. A question will be asked as to whether it was a lone nut or part of a broader conspiracy. The odds are 99 out of 100 they’ll conclude the former, whether or not it’s true. They definitely won’t dare find there was any conspiracy within the Secret Service to take Trump out…
The only thing that I’m really sure of is that the Secret Service was ultra-incompetent in scores of separate and egregious ways. The Biden administration’s DEI policies fatally compromised SS effectiveness, starting with a diversity hire as director and using two short fat chicks as frontline security for Trump. If you have bodyguards, especially for a big, tall man like Trump, you want big, tall, muscular guys.
Many more things will come out showing how poorly managed the Secret Service has become. For instance, I understand physical qualifications used to include the ability to run a mile and a half in under 12 minutes. That’s been dropped to 20 minutes. To me, it seems certain that top Secret Service guys are going to leave. Serious professionals will find it too demoralizing to stick around as standards degrade and the ranks are filled with Wokesters.
I suspect this has already happened with the FBI. The corruption set in long ago with the CIA. And in different ways, with all of the 15 armed Praetorian agencies. I don’t take any news or analysis they put forth at face value. This is a time for critical thinking, which, as we recently discussed, is the process of questioning the validity of everything and pursuing the answers that are given until you’ve arrived at a reasonable conclusion. Regrettably, most Americans accept whatever the government tells them as fact.
The other thing that’s certain is that the blue and the red people really don’t like each other and can’t communicate. The Progressive blue people actively hate the red MAGA people. The red people have a much longer, slower fuse. But an event like this can solidify their feelings and they could wind up hating the blue people as much as the blue people already hate them.
My bottom line on the assassination attempt? There was definitely government and Deep State involvement. We’re just lucky that they’re incompetent.
International Man: If Trump had been killed, what do you think would have happened next?
Doug Casey: I’d say that the 30 to 40% of the country who are MAGAs would’ve gone wild. It’s a semi-religious movement at this point, and they won’t take losing their savior lying down.
If he’d been killed, it would’ve immanentized the Eschaton. Generally speaking, the public killing of a semi-religious figure is big trouble. You saw that with the riots that followed the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, even more so with the death of George Floyd in 2020. In an unstable country, even a worthless common criminal can be apotheosized and set off riots.
When things like this happen in stable times, the public can overlook them and go back to their lives. But when the tinder is dry like it is now, almost anything can set off a conflagration. And that’s what I expect we’re going to see.
In fact, if I put on my conspiracy theorist hat, I might say that there could be other assassination attempts on Trump and/or JD Vance. Or even Kamala. Getting rid of a highly undesirable candidate would solve all kinds of problems for the Democrats, and give them a much-needed hero while fabricating a perfect excuse to lock the country down as well as “solve” the gun problem. A narrative would be built about how everybody’s life is at risk.
I’ve said before that the Democrat Party is controlled and largely populated by people with the philosophy and psychology of French Jacobins. They really want to overturn the basis of society, and some of them will see a series of assassinations just before an election as a good way to do it.
International Man: You wrote a fiction book, "Assassin," which explores political assassinations. What did you learn writing that book, and how does it relate to what is happening today?
Doug Casey: John Hunt and I looked at, among many other things, a unique way to organize a resistance movement in modern-day America. Is it even possible to overturn the country’s entrenched rulers since “democracy” and elections are a sham? What is the morality of shooting candidates? Apart from that, is it even practical?
Guns are basically a 15th-Century technology. You might think any technology that ancient wouldn’t be something to fear in today’s high-tech world. It’s reminiscent of Biden’s comment a few years ago about how you need F-15s if you want to overthrow the US government, which, like much of what he says, makes no sense.
You might think that if people want to replace a repressive regime, they could form militias, the way the colonists did in 1776. But a repressive State will just center its force on any pockets of resistance. No matter how well-armed the individual citizens might be, they can’t stand up to an organized army. The odds are always against the rebels.
But on the other hand, guns are quite useful for excising selected bad individuals. Anyway, that’s one of the themes of "Assassin" Political assassination has a long history in the US, and that’s likely to remain true in future US elections.
International Man: The US election is approaching, but there’s still plenty of time for surprises that could sway the election. Do you have any predictions?
Doug Casey: It now looks like the Republicans will win, for lots of reasons. But the Republicans are known as the stupid party for good reason. Notwithstanding election rhetoric, they’re completely without fixed principles. Their operating principles are “do what the Democrats would do, but slower and not as thoroughly”. They love to moralize but don’t have a moral center, which actually makes them quite despicable. Everybody hates a hypocrite. The Democrats, on the other hand, do have principles - but they’re all rotten.
Trump has my sympathy among the candidates because, although he has no moral or philosophical center, at least he’s a cultural conservative. Unlike the Democrats, he doesn’t want to overturn the nature of society. But since the Republicans are so dimwitted, even though Trump is riding a huge wave of sympathy for what happened and the admirable way he recovered from the incident, it’s entirely possible they’ll find some way to blow the election.
Meanwhile, the Democrats, the Jacobins, are desperate to retain control of the apparatus of the State and could find any number of ways to subvert the election. They’ll use the millions of migrants. They’ll make massive use of mail-in ballots. They’ll take full advantage of the electronic voting machines. They undoubtedly have lots of dirty tricks and surprises planned we can’t imagine. They’ll use the full force of the leftist media, academic, and entertainment complexes to propagandize. And don’t forget, the average American is now a leftist. They elected and re-elected Obama, among other things. They could, God forbid, win. As Yogi Berra said, it ain’t over till it’s over.
International Man: How do you recommend people prepare for the coming chaos?
Doug Casey: The coming chaos will be something very much like a civil war, which is defined as a conflict where two opposing sides attempt to gain control of the same government. Using that definition, the conflict of 1861 to 1865 was not a civil war. It was simply a secession movement.
I think that Ray Dalio, the multi-billionaire, may have put his finger on the way this is going to evolve. Dalio has recently published lots of articles and a book discussing how things are likely to evolve. He’s a rather dry writer, but let me summarize.
He sees countries generally going through six stages, the last one characterized by war, civil war, revolution, or the like. He feels we’re at the very end of stage five and right at the cusp of stage six. I generally concur with his outlook - but lots of people today have a gloomy view on the shape of things to come; that’s nothing new. What’s important here is that Dalio speaks as someone who’s worth $15 billion and is totally immersed in the current system at the Master of the Universe level.
What’s likely to be the catalyst that sets things off? He (correctly, IMO) puts his finger on the bankruptcy of the government, presumably accompanied by the collapse of the debt-based banking system and hyperinflation of the dollar. What does he suggest we do, now that we’re looking at something like a civil war, with all the trimmings?
Dalio says you have three options. One: pick your side and fight. Two: keep your head down and hide. Three: flee. Everybody has to determine which alternative is best for them. Trying to hide, especially in today’s world, is not very effective. Your neighbors will ask, to paraphrase that infamous quote from Baby Bush some years ago, “Are you with us or against us?” Don’t be sure that if you choose sides, you’ll necessarily be with the “good guys.” You might consider following in the footsteps of Rhett Butler in “Gone with the Wind”. Enough said.
Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the course of these trends in motion. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible."
