“A sane society cannot debate its way out of psychosis. It must diagnose the patient with lethal precision and restore the ancient boundary between the mad and the free.” —LHGrey on "X"
Help me understand how republicans are any different? Dems are as Kunstler described, but the GOP is a mess of useless liars and grifters who are quite satisfied to take their bribes from the Lobby and work towards a second place finish where expectations of doing nothing are always rewarded.
I like to joke, as a small-government type, that the Democrats promise bigger government, and they deliver every time. The Republicans promise smaller government, and they never deliver---but they're slightly less bad than the Dems.
That's what I always say too ,at the end of the day the republi-cant's feed from the right side of the pig trough and the demon cat's feed from the left side . But newly minted lefty reps start off wanting to go to DC and do the wrong thing where as newly minted rightwing reps start off thinking they are going to go drain the swamp only to end up being drained by the swamp instead .
Indeed, in the US, I think the only thing that would provoke widespread civil unrest would be if the EBT cards suddenly stopped working, not that I want to give Iranian sleeper cells any suggestions.
Maybe it is just me, but I didn’t get the sense that Kunstler left out the RINOs:
“In John Thune you have something like an anti-leader, doing everything possible to evade his duties, squashing election reform under arcane procedural bullshit, obstructing the confirmation of important agency nominees and federal judges, and “gaveling-in” ghost sessions of his chamber to prevent the president from making recess appointments. And why? Probably for no better reason than he just wants to dissociate himself and many of his fellows from the president because he’s seen as too gauche for their club.
I think he's referring to the grubermint industrial complex as "America " rather than the average law abiding tax paying citizenry who just want to be left alone . Angelo Codevilla referred to the former as' The Ruling Class 'and the latter as 'The Country Class '.
Yes Cosmo, in the words of our beloved host…with a few extra words of wisdom…. “This is what radical leftism is. It may wear various different slogans and ideologies across place and time – anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, communist, anarchist, Marxist – but the fundamental character is always the same. It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality, justice, liberation; an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built, to wreck what is beautiful and right, on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness, and have nothing else to offer the world.
Through violence and terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness on all of us. It has always been driven by a hatred, above all else, a hatred for civilization itself. It is a revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good. It is perpetrated by those who cannot build, who cannot create, who cannot achieve great things, or those who dwell in their own mental illness and ignorance.
A sane society cannot debate its way out of psychosis. It must diagnose the patient with lethal precision and restore the logical boundary between the mad and the free, between the left and the right.”
Im disappointed in the weak links in the Republican Party, but……
The RINOS were always demoniKKKRats. The only way demonikkkRATs can get in office is not on the issues, it’s by running as a Republican but voting as a RAT……that isn’t winning, it is THEFT.
The DemoniKKKRat KKKommunist Islamic Party serves hell.
Jesus said “Satan comes only to steal (they do), kill (they do) and to destroy (they do). The RatComIslam Party encapsulates ALL that is evil.
You can eat at their table, and you will end up a slave.
Seriously ... we're told that nature rushes in to fill a vacuum. Those who've had it up to here with the farcical, self-serving corruption of both traditional parties find the air mighty thin. Almost nobody represents them on a national level. But that possibly spells opportunity.
For once, the door could be open for a serious alternative party. Third parties rarely achieve much traction in the US, or keep it for long. But with so many disgusted with politics as usual, this might be the exception.
A new party, regardless of how many votes it gets, isn't an guaranteed win. Two caveats come immediately to mind.
First, it's extremely unlikely to attain an electoral majority, at best a plurality, and right out of the gate that means angling for a coalition with one or more opposing parties. The experience of European countries with multiple parties isn't encouraging. Alliances are constantly formed and broken up. Italy is a discouraging example -- it's said to change governments as often as the prime minister changes underwear.
Second, to reach escape velocity, a turnaround party will need a charismatic leader. Someone with the kind of magnetism that produces not only agreement among voters but enthusiastic commitment. Such politicos are rare; Ronald Reagan was the last in the US and he was short on action to fulfill his promise. (I exclude Trump, who generated support by his claimed intentions, but few are attracted to his personality.)
All that said, I hope a successful new party of genuine patriots arises in the next two-and-a-half years. It could be the last chance to avoid outright Götterdämmerung.
I know this will sound crazy but what if we actually do as our forefathers were admonished by father of our nation, Mr. George Washington, who said in his fare well address to avoid all partisan politics, altogether.
If it is not clear up to this point that partisan political systems don't work, well, then we are never going to correct this failed political system. Both political parties are dismal failure and a third party won't be any different.
I would like to see a political system where instead of voters considering the political affiliation of the candidate, there are none whatsoever. Just the candidate, who they are and what they stand for.
I would also like to see a much larger congress that gives great representation to American citizens with much smaller districts but that is a different discussion for a different thread.
It's not crazy to favor a system of individual candidates and officeholders without party affiliation. It might have advantages. But candidates would still have to finance their campaigns. The influence of lobbyists and donors with big money would continue, just at the personal rather than the party level, which is often the case already.
It's also hard to imagine politicians with years of party loyalty passing a law to eliminate it, or setting in motion a constitutional amendment if that's what it would take.
It has been tried. And all the ‘Tucker Carlson/Candace Owens party will do is hand the government over to DemoniKKKRat KKKomunist Islamic Party of the Americas.
Americans have every right to be resentful. If the Establishment denies and mocks their concerns, they'll turn to Socialism. Tragically the Marxist have a corner on that. It isn't so intrinsically btw.
Yes I agree. I'm very worried that this Iran war, necessary though it may be, has kept the cost of living for many MAGA voters too high. I really hope that they can solve this problem in an obvious way prior to the midterms, or it may open the door to these Marxist lunatics and hustlers. I'm So glad that USAID was eliminated, but the dems seem to get millions in kickbacks from all these hustlers Somalis, Bhutanese, NGOs and many others in all the blue states. That's a lot of money to fund them including from destructive persons such as George Soros and Neville Roy Singham from China, who probably does the CCP's bidding.
Necessary to justify the immense federal defense spending budget. Otherwise, there is no "necessity" behind this war.
Name one time Iran has invaded or otherwise done anything on the lower 48 including the two outliers, Alaska and Hawaii. And don't quote some military act on an American military installation just outside of Iranian land territory.
Necessary this war is NOT. The Strait of Trump was open for business before Trump starting lobbing missiles over there.
I heard today that since the end of USAID, there has not been a chart topping (c)rap 'song' - in something like 10 or 11 months. I didn't 'fact check', I was not surprised, either
I doubt very much that paying a few dollars more a month for energy will turn any MAGA American. Especially after the cost of the Obama regime on our nation. The positive impact will change the world for generations. We truly have the opportunity now to make America great again, as long as we don’t lose sight of the greater good 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸.
Correct, Steve, The Dems represent what is ugly in people, the grifters, the user's, the mentally ill, and they enable chaos. That does not mean those who claim to be on the right are not without bad actors among the followers. Who could say the late Linsey Graham or Ted Cruz are standing up for us, they are not they are committed to another force, the force that oppresses the rest of us and make wars we cannot afford. They are paid quite well to do so.
In capitalism, there are winners and losers, usually more losers than winners. The Dems figured this out when their Union support flew away to Asia. They support the losers, all of them. They support the gimmes, and have figured out there are more losers and gimmes than every one else. They have spent thirty years creating and importing more gimmes so here we are.
I love that turn of phrase: "poisonous resentment..." ; this really does get to the heart of leftist thinking. As Harry Truman famously observed, "Any jackass can kick down a barn; it takes a carpenter to build one!" Lotta jackasses out there nowadays...
I looked it up, and it was actually Sam Rayburn, longest running Speaker of the House, from Texas. I guess Harry was just doing a cover version! Well, at least you know I didn't use AI to write that!
We've been the floating carcasses for a very long time, Gwennie.
Excellent write up today, Mr. Kunstler. I appreciate your optimism at the end. I don't share your optimism as I believe the country is too far gone to be saved, but I definitely do appreciate your optimism.
"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is that she’s a mere opportunist with nothing inside except some skill at middle-school girl games"
Not a better description of the horse toothed political latina have I ever read. It's also a great representation of America's election system. Very reminiscent of high school student body elections. The candidates make promises they cannot keep the student body votes for the one with the greatest promises and the prettiest faces.
Agree this was an excellent post (particularly since I was not aware of the horse dumping), but I do share Kunstler’s optimism, Granted a lot can & will go wrong, but Trump isn’t just playing the game, he is replacing it as in he is not just trying to defeat Iran in a military sense, he is working to make it irrelevant. In July there was a conference at the Chatham House (Great Britain’s center of evil) where several middle eastern dignitaries commented on new direction being taken with regard to the Middle East aka individual countries acting in their own best interests, not in the interests of global elites & how a new direction was being implemented with regards to Gaza thru building/construction (a plan that even Hillary gave a shout out to) not tons of grift money siphon off into the pockets of the elites. On top of that, Trump has not only opened the floodgates of energy supply in the US, but more importantly building infrastructure in the ME to bypass the Straits of Hormuz chokehold taking Iran & its British masters completely out of the picture. I know it seems like too little too late, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.
I'm not going to say I disagree with you because I've heard these theories about Mr. Trump playing 20 dimensional chess. I don't know one way or another because, frankly, I don't have clairvoyance that gives me special insights into the inner workings of his brain. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're a crazy Qanon person.
What I do know is that before the attack of the USA against Iran the Straight of Hormuz was open for business and gasoline in the USA was hovering around $2.80 per gallon. Since then? Chaos.
I also know that it has taken a lot longer than the 4 or 5 weeks that were promised to us by Mr. Trump when this fiasco began.
Perhaps he is playing 20 dimensional chess with these people. I only know what I can see, hear and feel around me.
Again, I have no crystal ball & you maybe right- I am just a crazy person. But I don’t support Trump because I hate the Dems (though I do hate the Dems). I support Trump bc he has a vision that I believe in, & a plan/people to implement that vision (as opposed to the same old, same old). Being in our bday year (250), I have often reflected on what I would have done; would I have been in those boats crossing the Delaware on what was by all accounts a suicide mission. Best bet, I will not be called on to make that choice, but if the only thing I can do is to not be a Chicken Little, to be supportive of Trump & of those who are also supportive, then, at the very least, when the guy comes to fill out the tally sheet, I can say I stood for something other than cheap gas.
No doubt. These multi-dimensional chess theories that are postulated by MAGA sycophants long left behind by their hero are tired and unproven. Trumpenstein has failed all of them but they won't admit it. Too prideful.
Only if he starts to wrap up all the spending, bring down inflation and curb the national debt which, from what I can tell, he has no interest in doing. Inflation alone is sucking yours and my savings account of any value and inflation exists ONLY because he has to run the printing presses to fund his war. Inflation is ONLY a money supply issue and there is only one entity that controls the money supply and therefore inflation can be blamed on only one and that is federal spending. Good times may come if they stop the spending but they won't. Therefore, I disagree with you. Hard lessons are yet to be learned.
This is funny, given the rumours that it's sailors on board the USS Abraham Lincoln who are literally throwing themselves overboard.
Those rumours might be completely false, I dunno. But it's 100% true that Iran won the war, the USA lost it, and the sailors on board the Abe Lincoln are suffering through an extended deployment with broiling heat and bad hygiene because of it. So it's amusing to me how MAGA seal themselves off from what's actually going on. Kunstler's delusion that Iran has been "neutralized", when in fact it has gained control over a tremendously important waterway and the USA has no military option to change that fact, is another case in point.
The great convenience of rumor is that it requires neither evidence nor the embarrassment of being true. One may begin with sailors “literally throwing themselves overboard,” concede in the next breath that the story may be entirely false, and then proceed, with admirable confidence, to conclusions presented as “100% true.”
That is not argument. It is clairvoyance with punctuation.
Perhaps Iran won the war. Perhaps the United States lost it. Perhaps Iran now controls a “tremendously important waterway” beyond the reach of American military power. These are rather large claims, and large claims, like large hats, generally benefit from something underneath them.
What is particularly charming is the accusation that others have “sealed themselves off from what’s actually going on,” delivered immediately after citing an unverified rumour as evidence of what is actually going on. There is a certain elegance in condemning delusion while furnishing one’s own.
I am perfectly willing to be persuaded that Kunstler is wrong. But persuasion traditionally involves evidence. Simply announcing that one possesses reality while one’s opponents possess only MAGA is not analysis. It is theology, and rather fundamentalist theology at that.
Still, I admire the certainty. Facts are so tiresome. Conviction travels much lighter.
The blind rodent undoubtedly believed the Russia Hoax, that Fauci was sent from heaven to save us, that Trump committed impeachable offenses, that the three letter fraudsters were protecting us, that the news media and academia were not and are not on the CCP payroll, Comey and Wray are honorable men, a wealth tax will fund heaven on earth, you can change your gender...........
I'm quite capable of navigating truth versus rumour, thank you, and I specifically set up my remarks as a contrast between rumour on the one hand (sailors leaping off the aircraft carrier like horses) and clear fact on the other (Iran having handily won the war Trump started in late February, and now controlling the strait of Hormuz for the foreseeable future).
Interesting fact: America's ships should be able to dock and resupply at the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, which is right in the middle of the warzone. But they can't, because Iran destroyed it, or at least rendered it unusable. Were you even aware of that fact? They're having to resupply the fleet from the British airbase on Diego Garcia, 2000 miles to the south. That's a long way to go for toilet paper.
Trump is helpless to change the outcome of the war he started. He made this perfectly obvious on Easter Sunday when he posted "Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell". The poor fellow, to rant such an empty threat! He must have been beside himself with frustration. And nothing of significance has changed in the months since.
Like the military-industrial complex that puppets him, Trump can never, ever be made to admit defeat. It was true in Vietnam, it was true when the USA spent twenty years pounding lives and money down a rathole in Afghanistan, and it's true now. At least there's fun to be had watching people share in his mulish delusion. Reality will descend eventually, though. It always does.
Ah, I see. We have progressed from rumor to certainty, and apparently all that was required for the transformation was your assurance that you are quite capable of telling the difference.
That certainly simplifies things.
The difficulty is that you continue to confuse events with the conclusions you wish them to prove. Iran damaged the American facilities in Bahrain, quite seriously in places. That is a fact. “Destroyed it,” “rendered it unusable,” and therefore “won the war” are rather more ambitious propositions. The reporting I can find says the base was extensively damaged, including the Fifth Fleet headquarters, but that American military officials said operations were not significantly affected. A damaged headquarters is a military success. It is not, by some mysterious law of metaphysics, a peace treaty signed aboard the USS Missouri.
The Diego Garcia point is equally charming. A military adapting its logistics after an enemy damages a supply hub proves that the enemy inflicted damage. It does not prove that the adapting military has been defeated. Armies have been moving supply depots since someone first discovered the rather inconvenient habit enemies have of shooting at them.
But the most delightful feature of your victorious Iran is that, as of today, it is threatening further offensive action specifically to break an American naval blockade. This is an unusual definition of “handily won.” Normally, when one has handily won a war, one does not announce plans to break the blockade being maintained by the helpless nation one has just defeated. Perhaps warfare has changed. Or perhaps adjectives have.
As for Trump’s Easter profanity, I am quite prepared to accept it as evidence that Donald Trump is capable of vulgarity. I had thought the matter settled some years ago. What it does not establish is that the United States possesses “no military option.” A politician shouting obscenities is evidence of a politician shouting obscenities, not an order of battle.
Then come Vietnam, Afghanistan, the military-industrial complex, puppetry, delusion and, finally, reality itself descending from the heavens to vindicate you. It is an impressive procession, although an argument appears to have missed the parade.
You began by informing us that a rumor might be completely false, followed immediately by something you called “100% true.” You have now expanded “100% true” into a collection of contested strategic judgments and presented the whole confection as “clear fact.”
There is a name for the habit of treating one’s interpretation as reality and everyone else’s interpretation as delusion. It is not analysis. Still, I do admire the confidence. Evidence can be terribly cumbersome, whereas certainty fits very comfortably into a comment box.
And yes, Reality does eventually descend. One only hopes it remembers your address.
You need to be a spokesman for this Administration. This is absolutely brilliant. I’m 75 years old and bad-tempered in my old age. I wish I could clean these creeps clocks as elegantly as you. Absolutely amazing and I LOVE IT!
English veterans of WW2 are ashamed of their service and wished they had never gone, given what their Government has done to their nation. Morrissey concurs, loathing the new residents who will never be English.
Put down your game controller, Mole. It's time you take a break and clear your foggy mind. Your conclusions are a fantasy, your propagandized brain is smoking, overloaded with things you know nothing about. How much is the IRCG paying you?
People have made remarks like this to me in the past. Later, after the pretense they were defending could no longer be sustained, I would remind them of those remarks and even helpfully provide hyperlinks so the fact that I was right and they were wrong could not be denied. They never responded to my helpful reminders, funnily enough. I hypothesize they felt there was simply nothing they could say that wouldn't amount to acknowledging I was right and they were wrong, and so they preferred silence.
My dear fellows, disagreement is inevitable; insults needn’t be. You are both much better company when your wits are sharper than your tempers. Please, let's put this all behind us. I promise to weigh in when Kunstler posts on Friday, so perhaps we can lick our respective wounds and go to war all over again then. Cease fire!
"Simply announcing that one possesses reality while one’s opponents possess only MAGA is not analysis. It is theology, and rather fundamentalist theology at that."
Again, thank you. I do my best to shine a little light of reason upon the murky waters of modern discourse. One cannot always make the waters clear, of course, but it is occasionally satisfying to discover what has been lurking beneath the surface.
“This is what radical leftism is. It may wear various different slogans and ideologies across place and time – anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, communist, anarchist, Marxist – but the fundamental character is always the same. It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality, justice, liberation; an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built, to wreck what is beautiful and right, on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness, and have nothing else to offer the world.
Through violence and terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness on all of us. It has always been driven by a hatred, above all else, a hatred for civilization itself. It is a revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good. It is perpetrated by those who cannot build, who cannot create, who cannot achieve great things, or those who dwell in their own mental illness and ignorance.
A sane society cannot debate its way out of psychosis. It must diagnose the patient with lethal precision and restore the logical boundary between the mad and the free, between the left and the right.”
The Persians have inhabited that land since before Alexander the Great went about the Mediterranean wreaking havoc on his neighbors. They aren't going to be bullied into doing what a young, bankrupt nation like the USA wants. They know their land. They know their people. They know how to survive not a few bombs.
Indeed, the Persians have occupied their land since time immemorial, rather as the Germanic peoples and the Japanese had occupied theirs for a very long time before 1941. Antiquity is impressive, but it has never been much of a defense system.
A curious thing happened some eighty years ago. A nation an ocean away, still emerging from profound economic distress, harnessed its industrial capacity, manpower, technology, and resources, built fleets on an almost unimaginable scale, transported armies across the globe, and defeated two powers that had themselves spent years demonstrating an emphatic unwillingness to be “bullied” by anyone.
The Germans certainly knew their land. The Japanese knew theirs. Both regimes possessed formidable militaries, considerable industrial capacity, and populations conditioned to endure extraordinary hardship. If the bombing campaigns over Europe and Asia proved anything, it was that neither government intended to surrender merely because matters had become unpleasant.
And yet history did not consult their intentions.
They endured until endurance ceased to matter.
So I quite accept that the Persians are ancient, resilient, familiar with their country, and capable of surviving hardship. What I cannot quite see is how any of this proves the proposition you have attached to it.
Civilizations may be ancient; military circumstances are distressingly contemporary.
Your argument, if we may indulge it with the title, is rich in confidence but rather poor in evidence. History has an unfortunate habit of being least impressed by those who invoke it most confidently.
I don't present evidence, Thomas. I only present an opinion. If evidence is what you seek in everyone's opinion oriented comments then why are you frequenting a comment thread on someone's opinion editorial blog?
Here are a couple of nations who, due to antiquity of their people in their home land were quite adept at resisting empire building advances from larger, more powerful nations. I see the same thing happening with Iran.
Afghanistan. This poverty stricken nation resisted the empire building desires of the British, the Soviet Union and then, of course, the USA.
Vietnam. This nation resisted the USA and its war mongering efforts until the USA with drew like a beaten dog from its shores.
I didn't have you pegged as being a war humper, Thomas.
“Evidence? Evidence! What evidence? I don’t need no stinkin’ evidence!”
Forgive the cinematic paraphrase, but you have rather invited it.
You say, “I don’t present evidence. I only present an opinion,” as though the word opinion were some charming diplomatic passport permitting every assertion to cross the border of reason without inspection.
It is not.
“I dislike American foreign policy” is an opinion. “I believe the United States should not have invaded Afghanistan” is an opinion. “Iran will prove more resilient than Washington expects” is a prediction, and a perfectly legitimate one.
But when you tell us that ancient peoples are inherently more successful at resisting great powers, that Afghanistan demonstrates this principle, or that America “withdrew like a beaten dog” from Vietnam, you are no longer merely expressing a taste or preference. You are making assertions about what happened, why it happened, and what caused what.
Those are historical claims.
Historical claims are rather inconvenient things because they tend to attract evidence. Calling them “opinion” does not absolve you from supporting them any more than calling an unpaid bill “literature” satisfies the creditor.
And this brings us to Vietnam.
“America withdrew like a beaten dog” is vivid. It is also a splendid illustration of why evidence matters.
The United States was not militarily driven from Vietnam by an enemy advancing upon and destroying its forces. Beginning under Nixon, American troop strength was deliberately reduced through Vietnamization, with responsibility for combat increasingly transferred to South Vietnamese forces. The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973, and American combat forces departed. Saigon did not fall to North Vietnam until more than two years later, in April 1975.
One may certainly argue that the United States suffered a strategic and political defeat in Vietnam. Indeed, there is a very strong case for saying so. But that is quite different from claiming that the American military was routed from the country. The distinction between the two is not pedantry. It is history.
Tet provides an especially inconvenient example. It was an enormous political success for North Vietnam because it shattered American confidence in the war. Militarily, however, communist forces suffered devastating losses and failed to hold the positions they attacked. America could prevail tactically while simultaneously losing the political contest at home.
History has a vexing habit of permitting two things to be true at once.
Afghanistan offers much the same lesson. The United States did not depart because the Taliban had militarily destroyed the American armed forces and chased them to the airport. Washington negotiated a withdrawal and eventually carried it out. The Afghan government and security forces subsequently collapsed with extraordinary speed.
Was the entire twenty-year undertaking a strategic failure? Quite possibly. Was the withdrawal badly conceived or executed? There is ample room for that judgment. But once again, strategic failure is not synonymous with battlefield rout.
And here your choice of “beaten dog” becomes revealing.
It is not merely descriptive language. It positively luxuriates in humiliation. One senses that America being defeated is not simply the conclusion of your argument but something you rather enjoy imagining.
That is entirely your privilege, of course. But animus is a notoriously unreliable historian. It has a tendency to convert setbacks into routs, withdrawals into stampedes and complex strategic failures into morality plays in which the object of one’s dislike is conveniently humiliated in the final act.
As for Afghanistan and Vietnam proving your original theory about the antiquity of peoples, they do nothing of the sort. They demonstrate that great powers can fail against weaker adversaries. No sensible person disputes that.
What they do not establish is that they failed because Afghans and Vietnamese had inhabited their respective lands for a very long time.
Geography mattered. Outside military assistance mattered. Strategy mattered. Political endurance mattered. Domestic American opinion mattered. Objectives mattered. Cost mattered. In Afghanistan, Pakistan mattered enormously. In Vietnam, Chinese and Soviet support mattered enormously.
To select “antiquity” from that rather crowded room of causes and announce it as the decisive explanation is not analysis. It is historical astrology.
So by all means offer opinions. Comment sections would be grim places without them.
But when an opinion contains assertions of fact, causation and history, one cannot simply draw a little circle around it marked OPINION and declare evidence forbidden entry.
You are entitled to your own conclusions.
History, regrettably, retains custody of the facts.
Your understanding of cultural history is quite shallow. Go back and research all the different cultures that overran the region of 'Iran' (so designated in 1935). The German military wasn't formidable until the British facilitated their taking over the Czech military...a powerhouse in Europe.
You assume the country is a single entity, and not a Zoroastrian nation conquered by a now widely-hated Islamic sect. Some large segment of the country cheers the American bombs.
Imagine a world where people talk about the USA the same way they talk about the USA's official enemies. "You assume the United States is a single entity, and not a land of hunter-gatherers conquered by widely-hated Caucasian colonizers. Some large segment of the country cheers for America to be bombed."
Interestingly, the American counter-example happened much more recently and in that sense is likely to be that much more accurate.
Lots of people here at CFN cheer the American bombs. See JohnAZ and many many others. Afterall, war is very profitable for the likes of Lockheed and Raytheon.
Iran has been three weeks away from a nuke for 30 years now.
All America's wars are to justify our governments immense defense department spending budget and to satisfy the financial needs and desires of the military-industrial complex over lords.
The government will continue to spend the nation's strength and means making war in a foreign land that poses no significant threat to the 50 states until, like Afghanistan and Vietnam, the military is withdrawn in an utter fiasco. See Afghanistan.
We were at war with the Shia back then, before the rise of Hezbollah. The attack on the barracks was not terrorism, just a successful military strike. What were we doing in Lebanon? Is Lebanon an American state - or just some place Israel wants to acquire?
One apparently needs to be reminded that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are not Persians and are actually viewed, by a majority of Iranians, as occupiers of Iran, since 1979.
90% to 95% of Iran's population identifies as Shia Muslims, making it the world's largest Shia-majority country. This demographic represents approximately 66 to 70 million people.
While government censuses and international estimates like the CIA World Factbook consistently cite the 90-95% figure, independent surveys such as those by GAMAAN suggest a potentially lower and shifting identification rate, with some 2022-2023 data showing 37% to 56% of respondents identifying specifically as Shia, alongside significant numbers identifying as non-religious or spiritually inclined without formal affiliation.
AI
Lugh: Let's say that the latter estimate is correct. To then postulate that these people want a Zionist invasion and conquest is a bridge very much too far. Hannibal made similar assumptions. He imagined that the Italian tribes would rise against their Roman masters, but in fact they joined the Romans against the Semitic Conqueror and his Celtic mercenaries (no doubt promised much of Italy - many used to live there).
So…..you now admit you know NOTHING about the Persians.
Hee-hee……all your ignorant rot you spew on here, your and your buddy slugh’s s hatred of the US proves to me that you are dyed-in-the-wool DemoniKKKRat KKKommunist IslamiKKK Party members, acting as though you understand anything about the world.
Note that Inisfad employs the passive voice the IRGC "are viewed as" whatever. The passive construction lets Inisfad slip past without saying who, exactly, views them that way. If Inisfad had to attribute this view to an identifiable person, group or world view, that would leave them open to fact-checking. This contributes to the impression that what Inisfad says is actually BS, unless Inisfad can shore up the assertion somehow.
Inisfad's kind of BS is illustrative of the imperial mindset that takes for granted the USA cannot be wrong, is not fallible, is free to employ violence or any other means to impose its will, and can make up whatever nonsense it likes to justify its imperial whims.
Note that Inisfad characterizes the IRGC using 'Shia', which denotes a religious sect, and 'Islamists', which is a religiously-inflect political ideology. Neither one establishes nationality either positively (the IRGC are Iranians) or negatively (they aren't Iranians). Inisfad apparently thinks one describes the IRGC without mentioning nationality, then we'll forget that nationality is the actual point in contention. Perhaps Inisfad thinks this is clever. If so, Inisfad is mistaken.
The other illusion is that Iran is the "bad guy" here. The real problems is the oppressors of the world who seek to enslave humanity so they can create the largest Golden Calf in history once they destroy the USA.
Humans have little capacity for reality. I'd be satisfied with the United States claiming victory and then just leaving, quietly working out the economic details with Iran behind the scenes. But Americans can't let go of their triumphalism, which will be our undoing.
Pride goeth before the fall and Americans have been extremely prideful for many decades now. This country is ripe for destruction, either internally or externally. Our $40 trillion dollar debt should be sufficient to dole out a slice of humble pie but the warmongers on this threat seem content to ignore this fat elephant skulking and sulking in the corner.
Our author no doubt goes along with the Trumpian cry that the purpose of the war is to open the Strait of Hormuz; that, in other words, we are fighting the was and spending billions to restore the conditions that were in place before we started fighting it.
The strait has been used by the IRGC as a chokepoint to extract compliance from all the nations who had ships passing the strait. Comply with the jihad regime or we will block your oil. Trump has destroyed their chokehold and no one is going back to letting the IRGC weaponize that geography.
The Gulf States -along with a 22 Muslim nation coaltion called the Board of Peace- are rendering Iran's blockade obsolete by building alternate pipelines and canals.
We are watching the deliberate reset: a new infrastructure that will be blackmail-free, and for the 1st time in decades militarily unthreatened access to global oil markets to flow to the world.
This is very bad analysis. First of all, Trump has in no way, shape or form destroyed Iran's chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz. At minimum, Iran has sufficient destructive capacity to make any ship or cargo passing through the strait uninsurable, and therefore economically non-viable, in the short term -- and the short term matters. The Trump administration has no doubt expended heroic efforts to suppress the price of oil, but that kind of shuck & jive can't last forever, and the mid-terms are looming.
And it's not just a matter of shipping through the strait. Iran has demonstrated it has a precision-strike capability by which it can, and has, disabled numerous US and allied military bases being used to launch attacks against it. It has destroyed radars that were essential for the US to get any use out of its most advanced capabilities, rendering its most expensive toys useless. Most of all, it has shown itself unmistakably ready, willing and able to decimate critical oil infrastructure in the world's premiere oil-producing region.
Neither new pipelines, nor indeed the re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz, will be any use to anyone if the refineries and chemical plants that turn crude oil into diesel, naphtha, jet fuel, gasoline, fertilizer and myriad other products are blown to bits. Nothing whatsoever. Lose that capacity, and it doesn't matter how much crude you pump out of the ground: you'll have a worldwide depression that will make the 1930s look like a bad mood.
Lastly, your remark about "for the 1st time in decades militarily unthreatened access to global oil markets" is really funny, since that remark pretty well describes the situation that existed *until* Trump's stupid blunder on February 27. The one country that didn't enjoy "militarily unthreatened access to global markets" was Iran itself, owing to US and Israeli threats and sanctions against it, while everyone else did. Trump's stupid blunder ended that situation, and getting it back somehow is the one thing everyone wants -- everyone *except* Iran, which is now making the military threats and will be enjoying the proceeds in the months and years to come.
Mind you, I'm not taking Iran's side here. I'm simply telling the truth about the situation. The level of delusion everyone here is suffering about this is off the charts. Iran won the war, the USA lost, and to the victor will go the spoils. Those are the facts, we'll see how long until MAGA gives up pretending.
"Iran has decided to shift its policy from defensive to a 'fully offensive' posture and has set a deadline of a few weeks for the United States to fully implement the memorandum of understanding, Reuters reported, citing a senior Iranian official.
"'Within the short period of a few weeks set by Iran, all the agreement's provisions must be implemented by the US. This is a precondition for further negotiations with the US,' the official said.
"The timeframe set by Tehran would be conveyed to the United States and regional countries through mediators, according to the official.
"All Iranian entities would be prepared to escalate tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and across the region if diplomacy failed, Reuters quoted the official as saying."
"They are discussing using nuclear weapons on Iran in strategy meetings.
"Yes you read that correctly. It’s real. I’m not speculating, I know.
"And it’s pure evil.
"The last time a nuclear weapon was used was August 6th and 9th of 1945 on two cities in Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, immediately killing 110,000 people, vaporizing people at ground zero, and total deaths reached 214,000 by the end of the year from severe burns and trauma.
"But the extreme suffering continued for the Japanese people from radiation sickness, skyrocketing cancer rates, and generational birth defects.
"Not to mention wiping out all means of their economy.
"And the suffering was so great that all of humanity vowed, 'never again.'
"Trump and his admin were told by our own intelligence that Iran was no where near creating a nuclear weapon, then Israel said the same line it’s repeated for decades, 'Iran is only weeks away.'
"So we bombed anyways, killed their leaders and innocent little children in a school, and Iran has controlled the Strait of Hormuz ever since and punished the region for their part in it.
"And now our government is the one actually discussing lowering the nuclear threshold in order to use nuclear weapons against Iran even though Trump claims he’s won the war like 40 times and says the U.S. controls the SoH.
"Trump promised no more foreign wars, but may actually be the one who delivers a nuclear holocaust that would likely drag the entire world into major conflict, economic depression, and mass human suffering we’ve never seen in our lifetimes and maybe throughout history.
"People need to speak out and boldly stop this insanity.
"America is not untouchable.
"If and when that happens, everyone, and I do mean everyone, will hold ALL of those in leadership right now fully responsible for the rest of human history.
"Do not use nuclear weapons and stop this war NOW."
--
I'm not an ally of MTG and there are many, many things on which we disagree. But I completely agree with and endorse the above words as written.
If Trump uses nuclear weapons, he will secure his place as one of history's great criminals. Netanyahu, with his genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, is there already.
I would suggest all of the offshored factories and call centers, closed power plants and refineries that offend the woke hoity toity class are the horses. They of course have their own horses (Embraers, Bombardiers, Lears) which are exempt as they are used to attend conferences on how to deal with those of us deplorable riff raff wishing to have "horses."
For the moment not only the brain-damaged R-'n'-D parties but the pushback forces are becalmed in the horse latitudes. That must end. The winds of change will carry us through and out this autumn. Changes in latitude, changes in attitude. Be ready, willing, and able.
As we maneuver through the dog days of August, let us nonetheless continue to resist efforts to remove our freedoms as they will relentlessly continue unabated. Each time you refuse to give in to data mining (be it another 'smart' appliance or discounts for being a 'member' of a grocery or hardware store) you help others.
I'm a snow bird and a few weeks back a rental organization wanted me to allow a third party to have a photo (front and back) of my DL, then use facial recognition via my phone to 'identify' me, simply for the 'privilege' of applying... - I let them know that I do not risk my personal information in such a way and instead signed on with another organization. - These types of actions may not help you personally, but each time you do not comply, you help to starve the beast.
To what freedoms are you referring? The freedom to watch the teevee, go to the grocery store and buy salty chips or go to Disneyland to stand in long lines for a lame-ass Princess Tiana DEI ride? Or are you referring to the freedom to own property in America? The pseudo freedom that actually, for all intents and purposes, DOES NOT EXIST. You know what I am talking about. Property taxes. You know that pesky little tax that prohibits each and every one of us Americans from actually owning property we paid for with money that was already taxed. We also paid sales taxes on it when we bought the property as well but, I digress.
If we Americans cannot own property, free and clear from government intrusion, we are no more free than those poor saps living in Great Britain where the monarchy and lords own all the land and the citizens pay rent.
Property taxes. Are we truly free? Not a chance babe. So you keep resisting those efforts to remove our freedoms.
I'm not sure people really understand the implications of property taxes.
Real estate taxes (property taxes) are a scheme to keep government in power. Admittedly roads need repair and if one lives where it snows those same roads need to be plowed when the snow reaches a certain depth.
However, using individuals' means of shelter (their home) as the sledge hammer to extract the funds for the public works projects I mentioned is servitude by another name.
When I bought my 1/4 acre lot I paid sales taxes on the sale of that lot with money that was already taxed with income taxes.
When I paid for my home construction I paid sale taxes on the home with money that was already taxed with income taxes.
I pay an annual rent payment to my government for the right to live on my land that has already been taxed twice with money that is taxed annually with income taxes. In short, I am being taxed over and over and over again for the same property that I supposedly "own."
The fact that Americans are not pissing razor blades in anger over this shows a serious detachment from what Americans consider to be "freedom" vs what is truly being done to us as a people. Most people wouldn't understand freedom if it was growing on their asses and no quote from the old drunk Winston Churchill isn't going to do any good for anyone.
I would gladly pay double in sales taxes if I knew I my home and land could never be taken from me by the government. I'd even pay triple. At least I would always have a home, even if I couldn't afford to buy food.
You would have control over what you purchase and how much you pay. It could also be a negotiating tool.
How the collected funds from a sales tax, a consumption tax, would eventually, if not initially, become the target of abuse is a different topic. But... one's home would still be removed from the real estate tax lien ploy
Quit ya complaining, Cankerpuss. The gov can create a 100% tax and take everything:
AI Overview
Yes, legally and constitutionally, the U.S. government can create a 100% tax bracket. The 16th Amendment gives Congress the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived, without limitation. Historically, top marginal rates reached 94% during World War II.
I do not mean this disparagingly, but I will not go quietly into the night and simply allow the Transhumanist Agenda to unfold. This is a spiritual battle of Good vs Evil. - Churchill's quote to British citizens when they'd learned that the Germans had broken through the French line is fitting: "It would be foolish to disguise the gravity of the hour. - It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage."
Good for you! So when will you begin your campaign to rid us of the freedom denying evil known as property taxes? Or, does it not bother you that in a self proclaimed "free" society you cannot ever fully and truly own your property?
Slapping feel good quotes from old dudes long turned to dust is all fine and dandy but what good does it do when you and I are not permitted to own property?
He admitted in his memoirs that the real reason for the War was Germany's unwillingness to surrender sovereignty to the coming global financial order. Sorry, we were the bad guys in that one too.
I read a book about George Patton. After Germany surrendered Mr. Patton wanted to march to Moscow and take down Stalin and the communists. General Eisenhower fired him, or, at least removed him from command of the 3rd army. Later, at a US Army military installation General Patton had a strange but minor vehicular accident from which he ultimately "died" from.
George Patton was on to something. There was much more to WWII than just stopping the big bad Germans from taking over the world (something that could never have happened).
"[...] those poor saps living in Great Britain where the monarchy and lords own all the land and the citizens pay rent."
You are running away with yourself there, CK. The monarch and lords do not own 'all the land'.
I own my property (a flat) freehold and pay rent to no-one. I pay council tax for services, but no property tax. By your metric, I am therefore more free than you. For now. The latest Fabian to become PM by means of a coup rather than an election is threatening a property tax. There has never been such a thing in modern history (I vaguely remember window taxes from history lessons! They led to lots of windows being bricked up.)
Previously I owned a terraced house, which was also freehold, so no ground rent.
Some/many new flats (not houses) are bought leasehold (this is more of an English* thing, as far as I know) and the 'owners' have to pay ground rent - generally to property companies. My property, like almost half of those in the city where I live, is Victorian (the rest of that half is Georgian), so there is no property company involved.
However ... those old properties like mine are not retrofittable to meet the energy requirements of the genocidal Agenda 2030. At some point they will be declared uninhabitable (see seminal work by the late Rosa Koire on this phenomenon in the US) and will be declared what Mark Carn(age) calls 'stranded assets' that we can neither sell nor leave to our children. They will get everyone, one way or another. "You will own nothing and be happy."
*The Guardian tells me half of England is owned by aristos and corporations. That's the land, though, not the properties. Most land doesn't have properties on it. Or not many. The aristos do own a lot of farmland. A friend of mine had in-laws who were farmers living on land owned by the Duke of Buccleuch (bu-kloo).
You were right that the aristos and royals own a lot, just not all of it! And the Overlords are coming for all of it in the long run. We and everything we own are going to be 'tokenised'.
Thanks Lisa, so true. Last week I clicked on a "Job listing service for Seniors". It's taken many hours to remove the malware and phishing. Thankfully I have Bitdefender that caught it early. It could have been much worse.
Ai has only made it easy for the hackers to invade.
Even the smart meters which - beyond the health concerns - are similar to a burglar casing your home 24/7. They record all of your daily habits: when you're normally at home, how long you generally stay up during the evenings, how many hours you usually watch tv or are on the internet, etc. - Once the smart meters are in, the next thing on the agenda is often a data center (though thankfully there is growing resistance to them). - Definitely Orwellian...
Data Centers. People oppose them yet the people are creating the need for them.
It's people opposing a cell phone monopole when their ownership and constant usage of their cell phones are creating the need. Or, opposing road construction when their own cars are creating the need for roads.
I live in Utah and there is some big stink going on about data centers. Ironically, the people who are opposed to these data centers most likely all own and operate cell phones, all use their credit cards when they buy something and all stream their favorite television shows at home.
My point is data centers are no the problem. The problem is us and our increasing dependence upon and use of these little gadgets we carry everywhere we go and cannot put down.
Lisa, Please explain how smart meters can know"when you're normally at home, how long you generally stay up during the evenings, how many hours you usually watch tv or are on the internet, etc. -. Also how are they harmful to your health. The "smart" meters are nothing more than traditional electric meters with a connection to the cell phone system. The only disadvantage I see is to the meter readers who all got replaced.
The basic difference is a meter reader who comes once a month to read a number and one who watches continually and reports you energy consumption every few seconds. That's a big difference to the amount of privacy I snjoy.
Hi, R: The smart meters pulse non-ionizing radiation throughout the day to collect patterns of each customer’s energy usage presumably to promote energy conservation and encourage consumers to use more energy during low-use times. While most people seem to worry about eventual rationing of energy to consumers, I’m more concerned about the following:
From www.energy.gov (DOE’s ‘Data Access and Privacy Issues related to Smart Grid Technologies – this from back in Oct. 5, 2020): “Advances in Smart Grid technology could significantly increase the amount of potentially available information about personal energy consumption. Such information could reveal personal details about the lives of consumers, such as their daily schedules (including times when they are at or away from home or asleep), whether their homes are equipped with alarm systems, whether they own expensive electronic equipment such as plasma TVs, and whether they use certain types of medical equipment.”
From Arthur Firstenberg – The Invisible Rainbow (pg. 318) - The wireless version of smart meters in a ‘mesh network’ communicate not only with the utility company but with each other, rapidly becoming the single most intrusive source of electronic noise in modern life … each meter chattering to its neighbors as frequently as two hundred and forty thousand times per day.”
Children’s Health Defense (March 20, 2026): 1 in 8 U.S. adults say wireless radiation is causing health issues (e.g., cardiovascular issues, headaches, insomnia, tinnitus).
Thanks Lisa, I still don't get how the meters can moniter your personal activities. I mean the big energy hogs at my house are HVAC, refrigerator/freezer, pool pump, etc. The HVAC and 'fridge are on and off 24/7 randomly for the most part. Switching on a few LEDs,my laptop,or a tv are a very small percentage of my electricity bill. I don't have a smart meter. My Kwhs cost the same day or night
Hi, R: I don't pretend to know all the details, either, and the only reason I've looked into this to this extent is because my local REA has a loophole to get around our State law of allowing opt-outs for smart meters and last winter they sent letters out stating that if 'members' don't agree to use their smart meters they'd close our accounts (no other utilities in the service area, so zero competition for them). So, 7 random morons on a local REA board can essentially shut your power off in order to make more $. Now, no one I've talked with is OK with this, so why wouldn't they just work with their customers (and follow the law)? - I can only presume it's because they can make a lot of $ selling the data their smart meters collect... And now, in their most recent minutes they talk about encouraging a data center to locate in our service area so that's their game. - Anyway, I closed my account and have gone off-grid - had been thinking about doing so for a long time anyway. I've had a manual hand-pump installed so I can access my well water and use a small array of Anker Solix solar panels. I didn't get the full array of solar panels so what I have is not strong enough to run the house fully and it's been a lot of extra work but I can manage (esp as the stove runs on propane so I don't need power for that). - Anyway, long story short, no one really thinks about their power utility much unless you are 'EMF sensitive' or have local yokels who think they have the right to tell you what to do at your own home...
Thank you, Gwennie! - I'm in the situation where I have to work during the winters so I've seen similar overreach with job applications, and I feel sorry for all of the young folk who feel desperate enough to comply with things like (and this is just for an interview, not a job offer) taking a 'personality assessment,' or 'virtual interviews' where you're being recorded during an 'interview' with an AI bot... I'd never heard of the virtual interview and when I checked online I saw many comments where people felt violated by the interview because it's out there forever 'somewhere' with a third party and can never be retrieved...
I'm right there with you. At best it is impertinently invasive and at worst it is pre-compliance training for the beast system. I don't give my zip code at checkout to store clerks who ask for it. Don't go to restaurants where I have to scan a barcode to see the menu. Don't go to places that don't take cash. Don't do self-checkout. Don't let the doctor's offices or gyms take pictures. Don't use biometric phone unlock. One place I worked wanted all employees to sign something that said they had the right to search our cars in the employee parking lot...nope. It is the modern day variant of unlawful search and seizure and it bothers me that people give up their rights and privacy so carelessly...
There is no such 'thing' as a free lunch, a concept constantly being suppressed. Making life easier with the 'conveniences' such as you mention do have a price. The price is 'loss of freedom' and its partner 'loss of privacy' . Is it laziness? Possibly. Is it poorly developed critical thinking skills? I'd place this high on the list.
In simpler times having a washing machine to take care of clothes freed the owner to do other tasks. The expense, beyond up-front cost, was the energy used to run the machine (electricity). The electricity has associated costs. One could choose to use the machine sparingly. Likely the owner still had a washboard.
Choice is being eliminated. It is a control issue. Unfortunately, the items on your list are all control items. They might seem convenient. The convenience has those hidden costs summarized as infringement upon, to outright theft of, personal liberty.
I recently rented a 2025 GMC Sierra for a camping trip. After I picked up the truck and took it home I loaded all of our camping gear and attempted to start the truck. The big computer screen that used to be a dash board, flashed the words "updating, unable to start until update is complete." It took 20 minutes for the update to complete at which time I was able to start the vehicle and go on my way. Funny. I didn't ask for the update to the vehicle. The update and information came from somewhere at the direction of someone and it completely disabled my ability to use that vehicle.
This is the kind of trouble that awaits us due to our dependence upon technology. If General Motors wanted to, they could disable that truck completely and totally remove my ability to go anywhere. This is absolutely terrifying to me and I wish these manufacturers would just stop with the technology.
The ironic part is we don't really need this kind of technology. Does it really improve our lives?
I have a cherry 1968 Camaro that is completely mechanical. No computer electronics anywhere on the car. When all these computerized monstrosities like that 2025 GMC Sierra are disabled for whatever reasons, my Camaro will still be chugging down the road (assuming I can afford the fuel at that time).
This stuff is not good. Not good at all. We don't need it. Not in the slightest.
And what if you were out of phone range and urgently needed to take your pregnant wife in labor to the hospital, or an elderly relative with chest pain? Keep the Camaro! Plus it is way cooler to have a muscle car that can't be neutered by technology.
Last night the circuit board on my chest freezer went out so after unsuccessfully trying to reboot it, I spent a couple sweaty hours in the garage relocating items to my other freezer and today making the world's largest meatloaf and some terriyaki chicken because those didn't fit. Why does a cheap freezer need a circuit board? Why can't it just have a cooler thing and knobs to adjust the temp?
A very good point. An adverse interview with a “bozo” AI would be entrenched in the NSA, forever, damning you for all further interviews. I do not believe the effect of AI on privacy has been ascertained.
BTW, how about the NSA, how are they going to store all the data from AI? Are the data centers being built tools for federal surveillance? AI reminds me of a child growing up. As the child programs its mind, more and more storage is required. What is a mature AI going to look like?
"Are the data centers being built tools for federal surveillance?" ~ JohnAZ
JAZ - Of course. That's exactly what they are for. Of all the investment hype about Data Centers, how many people have asked that question? They deserve the prison they are funding for themselves. Insanity and stupidity reign.
Could be the Data Centers are needed to store all the information from the FLOCK cameras, facial recognition cameras, Ring Door Bells and ATM's. Yikes...
And the ongoing data tracking that has been going on for decades. I have a friend who installs car wash equipment, very specialized equipment, hydraulics, plumbing, electrical, conveyors, etc.
A very lucrative, niche business because it requires vast mechanical experience and knowledge and specialized tools. He has and does most installations, coast to coast for many years and drives to projects trailering his specialty tools.
Leaving South Florida for a job in California, he stayed at a hotel in the Florida Panhandle the first night, ate breakfast in Alabama, and stayed the following night in Texas. He used his company credit card for all transactions, to track his business expenses. On day three, he went to fuel up in Arizona, and his credit card was declined - cut off for possible fraudulent use.
This was 30 years ago. How could these specific transactions out of hundreds of millions a day, be sorted and analyzed as to time, use and geographic movement? The technology has been around for a long time.
The Data Centers will track the day, time, items purchased, in billions of transactions a day - 330 million people @ 3 transactions per day and you're already there.
Pair that with CBDC, and all will be known. Cash businesses will be gone. Time to short car washes and strip joints ;-)
BTW, the first AI reaction by the politicos looks like the Left is coming out against the data centers. I am confounded here, I do not agree with the Trumpian high techers at all. AI is a disaster ready to unfold.
Private and unincorporated is so European. The big box concept is slowly dying in the USA as the up-coming smaller companies are clobbering big business. Good example is a young man who started with a better way of doing things about thirty years ago and left a trail behind.
Glenn Greenwald - who staunchly defended Snowden from the get-go - has succinctly stated that the surveillance state is a multi-pronged collaboration between silicon valley, the MIC, and the neocons.
On the other hand, I have always found it curious that as the US was attempting to find and detain Snowden as he fled the country, that Greenwald was not only able to locate him, but sit down for an interview with him in Hong Kong. Ever since then, I have not trusted Greenwald.
There are moments when a civilization reveals its exhaustion not through defeat, but through its inability to distinguish strength from sickness, truth from fashion, creation from resentment.
What you describe is less a political realignment than a struggle over values themselves. The old institutions stagger on, repeating formulas in which more than a few of their own believers no longer believe, while new forces gather beneath them.
Meanwhile, the decent men and women who work, produce, raise families, build businesses, obey the law, and ask little more than to be left in peace are discovering that even patience has its limits. For years they have watched their prosperity, customs, security, and ordinary standards of life treated not as achievements worth defending, but as things to be taxed, dismantled, mocked, or morally condemned. Exhaustion eventually hardens into resistance.
A culture that has lost confidence in its own standards eventually calls decadence compassion, weakness virtue, and resentment justice. As the preamble to your essay states, it cannot be argued back to health. It must recover the courage to judge, to choose, and above all to create.
The decisive question, then, is not which party survives. It is whether those who still build, work, produce, and preserve have enough vitality left to rise, reject the forces that would diminish them, and drive those forces from political and cultural power.
A civilization survives when its creators finally refuse to apologize to its destroyers.
“when a civilization reveals its exhaustion not through defeat”
This civilization have been invaded by dissidents that are destroying it from within. It is more than inability, it is being destroyed by outsiders. As we have a federal government that thinks it is above the interests of the states and their people, the globalists do the same with nations around the world.
One wonders if certain states within our Union may ultimately decide to act unilaterally on a host of issues should things reach a breaking point. Am not advocating for this, but sometimes events take on their own momentum. The insane and satanic left believes that our system of government is tantamount to a buffet, where one can select or reject what is on the menu (see their stance on immigration law as well as ICE, among many other things). If I had known that this was a legitimate course of action for a state or city (or the Federal government, for that matter), then I would have declared by income to be subject to "sanctuary" from taxation long ago. Funny how that works, isn't it?
First , compliments on your writings style . That out of the way , I think you are referring to nullification as a response to taxation without representation . The deal was that we funded the government and in turn the government was supposed to represent our interests . That aint happenin .
for most of my life I've been hearing this country would be destroyed from within
those 'outsiders' you note are being allowed entry to the Republic and made to be 'insiders'. They gather many of the real citizens (insiders) into their group, and soon, after a few decades, the cracks become gaping holes as the structure (the Republic) crumbles from internal weakness.
I do think it can be stopped, it just will be a terrible mess along the way.
And when the creators are no longer subject to the tyranny of the created. Our government, the created, can do things that we the people, the creators, cannot do. This cannot continue. Until the people figure this out, nothing is going to change.
I was hiking through a forest over the weekend when I made a rather disturbing discovery: some trees are taller than others.
At first I assumed this was merely an oversight on the part of Nature. But the longer I walked, the more appalling the inequalities became. Some trees possessed considerable girth, while others were positively slender. Certain poplars stood straight as arrows, whereas nearby elms leaned at angles that suggested either moral uncertainty or inadequate supervision.
The injustice was everywhere.
Beside a stream stood an enormous old oak, broad of trunk and magnificently crowned, enjoying every advantage of sunlight, water, and position. Not fifty yards away, beneath the oppressive shade of its neighbors, a pine of approximately the same age had been reduced to a miserable, stunted thing.
One could hardly imagine a more glaring example of unequal outcomes.
Why should the oak be permitted such extravagant growth merely because its roots happened to find water? Why should the poplar enjoy vertical privilege while the elm is condemned to crookedness? And what possible justification can there be for one tree possessing thirty branches while another struggles along with twelve?
Clearly, something must be done.
We cannot continue allowing the forest to perpetuate such arbitrary disparities under the sentimental pretext of “nature.” Nature, after all, has never demonstrated the slightest commitment to fairness. It distributes sunlight unevenly, rains without regard to need, and permits the strong to spread their branches wherever they please.
Fortunately, mankind possesses what Nature conspicuously lacks: policy.
The solution is obvious. The saw must be applied.
Every tree shall henceforth be reduced to the same height, regulated to the same trunk circumference, and permitted precisely the same number of branches. Roots will be monitored for excessive acquisition of nutrients. Trees receiving disproportionate sunlight will surrender a portion of their canopy. Particularly vigorous specimens may require periodic pruning in the interests of forest cohesion.
There will, naturally, be some complaints from the oaks.
But privilege so often mistakes itself for achievement.
When the work is finished, no tree shall tower above another, no trunk shall boast an indecent superiority of girth, and no branch shall reach farther toward the sun than its neighbor’s allotted share.
Good, you're noticing things. The Market is the Law of the Jungle. The apex predators cooperate in taking down everybody else. They seek to convince everyone else of the justice of the Market and the need for individualism, while they eschew both privately.
"What you describe is less a political realignment than a struggle over values themselves."
Values? Values are nothing more than fleeting talking points to demonstrate you have some foundation, but as I say, they are fleeting and change easily. Let's talk principals. Principals are the foundation of a civilized society and values without principals are built on a bed of shifting sand. What's missing is the principals that once guided us and have been shredded under the weight of un-enlightened self-interest.
The common culture of any population are set in mores and folkways. The USA has lost its common culture. It seems people think that the US can be infinitely diverse, whatever comes, goes. It is on its last legs. What holds it together?
I see the dog days are also being used to describe these August days. Just like the “horse latitudes” in the oceans, which I remember studying in seventh or eighth grade. The “bloated horses” is the symbol for the recessed senators and the inactive Congress, except for the ‘pro forma’ sessions intended to prevent presidential appointments. About JHK’s positivity towards the ME, it’s going to happen because Trump does what he says.
Yes, the Grand Jury in Miami will shock every institution when justice and truth are revealed. That, I believe. And the other part of the decapitation of which Trump spoke is the destruction of the City of London, the banking system with its hold on Iran as in Professor David Clements’ recent stack, Ascension, when he writes about this proscribed event and quotes President Trump.
Think about the converse statement, the Deep State hates Trump because they believe they are not supposed to do anything. They flip flop like a fish, all aimed at never taking a stance on anything.
Think about the ballroom, mostly paid by patrons. Trump saw a weakness, the security difficulty of official events in DC. He will not benefit from the “new fortress” but future presidents and state visitors will. So the Deep State gets in his way as much as they can. He was smart, tearing down the East, I believe, wing, anticipating the ballroom build. So what are the idiots going to do? One idiot stated that if a Dem got into the presidency, they would tear down what Trump built and replace it. Such Deep State thinking. Insanity.
Indeed, it is private funding for most of it so by the Constitution he does not need Congress’ approval for funding. They want a little tweak to increase the security capability and that does require Congressional approval. It will be built.
Heard that the board of governors told the folks to put Trump’s name back on the Kennedy Center for the priority he has put on upgrading it.
It’s good to see both parties recognized today as The Problem. They have been enabled for far too long in their Good Cop/Bad Cop routine by millions of credulous Americans of both persuasions who can’t let go of the delusion that their team is the Good Guys. Granted, Democratic psychosis seems more disturbing at this juncture than good old Republican avarice, but neither team has what it will take to save our nation.
The most effective propaganda apparatus in history continues to prevent most Americans from understanding that we have lost the Iran War, but that stark fact will be undeniable in a few more weeks when our Strategic Petroleum Reserve runs out, airlines can’t fly for want of jet fuel, trucking grinds to a halt without diesel, and lemming Wall Street speculators finally face the fact that they’ve bid the Dow up to several times the value of the hollowed-out economy that it supposedly represents.
The epic realignment suggested in today’s post is indeed taking place, but there will be no place in it for the US of A. Being driven out of West Asia will be a harsh lesson for our failing empire. Plenty of nut jobs in Washington will want to push the Big Red Button out of spite, but we will all have no choice but to learn how to build a future for ourselves, while minding our own damned business.
Reality does not require your recognition. Your view of this five day war has been delusional from the start. Soon the facts on the ground will be undeniable.
As we remember with our host the good old days in June 2025. It was all so predictable then:
“There’s also the usual talk about Iran shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20-percent of the world’s oil supply passes — and much of that (up to 45-percent) goes directly to China, which does not have enough of its own oil to function. So, blocking Hormuz would mainly harm Iran’s fellow BRICs nations in Asia while it would deprive Iran of the oil revenue that represents most of its national income. In other words, a really stupid play.
Otherwise, the Trump government looks to exit its role in the Iran-Israeli war. The chief aim has been accomplished. No nukes. Iran’s usual henchmen, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, are standing down for the moment, probably perceiving that Iran can no longer support, supply, or protect them. Israel is managing to do what it did in two earlier wars (despite doomish predications): prevail against its enemy. And rather quickly, too. Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Middle East happened to become a little peaceful for a while?”
Got one thing right. The Trump government is looking for a way out.
Yep. And that post was clairvoyant, compared with his predictions made since February 28.
Every time Trump tells us the war will only take about five days, or that it's now over, or that a settlement is very near, or that Iran is out of missiles while we have plenty left, or that we control the Strait of Hormuz, he seems to buy it, and expects us to.
And, of course, all of his dittoheads nod their empty heads in agreement.
Well guys, good job of talking up the global press’ bullshit. I will wait for the end result before making my opinion. Don’t you realize that all the Iranians are doing is delaying things in anticipation of the media statement that the midterms are going to emasculate Trump? I disagree with how Trump is running this war, up down up down. I was happy when the blew away the Ayatollah and his staff but the hesitancy since just encourages them to hang on. Back and forth since February trying to reason with insane people. Will we ever learn to win wars?
Frankly, great prose aside, I’m unaware of any global media particularly interested in Kunstler’s opinions.
And your own response here is a mishmash. You disagree with how Trump is running this war ”up and down” but what? You think we are winning it and Trump is right?
Trump has contradicted himself over and over since starting this war. His latest, telling us our sailors haven’t been deployed long enough and we will own the Strait is manic raving. And you think the Iranians are insane.
FWIW "...Strategic Petroleum Reserve runs out, airlines can’t fly for want of jet fuel, trucking grinds to a halt without diesel..." The SPR is a book-keeping practice that sets the floor for inventories. Yes, there are storage tanks associated with it, but oil comes in many shades and not all of the SPR (if any) is refinable into specialty gardes such as diesel, jet fuel, etc.. "Releasing" it merely allows more supply into the aggregate market.
I do not recall your narrative claiming the same when it was drawn down a few years ago as a stopgap to the inflation spike....
May I suggest that you take a moment to look at Promethean Action on Youtube? What is currently happening globally is far different than what you are seeing.
"Iran War"??? Try WEFI (World Economic Forum Instigations). Why do you think Lloyds of London stepped onto the stage?...because they want to mess with fuel and people as they sit in their "bankers' suits & polished shoes."
Trump has had some success in that direction, which is laudable. He will no longer be president in a couple of years,. There will still be a City of London.
The Iran war has minimal influence on American petroleum supplies as, from what I have read, only 7% of America's crude oil supplies come from the middle east. If this is true, I don't see why the USA's strategic petroleum reserve would be tapped. The truth is, the petroleum companies are making record profits in the tens of billions of dollars for a product that is costing Americans nearly double to buy but costs big oil the same to refine.
The US exports and imports crude oil. The heavier oil from the Middle East is used to make diesel and jet fuel which are essential to a healthy economy and a functioning military. Refineries can be built to manufacture diesel and jet fuel from lighter US crude but they aren't as efficient and, like US missile defenses, they can't be built overnight. The US strategic petroleum reserve is not only depleted but has been drawn down to such an extent that the salt caverns either have partially collapsed or are in danger of collapsing, permanently damaging them.
We probably have similar information sources. I finally realized during COVID that people believe what we believe based on the information we consume. Propaganda works. Imagine that. The value of places like Substack is that we can discuss and share ideas. Free societies rely upon the free exchange of information and ideas. Like many other founding principles of the United States, free speech is currently being suppressed. We the People have been filtered into camps and each is fed their own flavor of polarizing propaganda to keep us at each other's throats so we don't notice what is being done to us.
And, of course, the ultimate accomplishment of America's propaganda apparatus is that the brainwashed are convinced that there is no propaganda.
I agree that places like Substack offer the possibility of meaningful communication, but most are bad or false information.
Take here, for instance. Jim used to be an invaluable source of information regarding collapse. Now he alternates between fatuous false hope about our system correcting itself and utter bullshit regarding the Iran War.
The Fall of the American Empire is new to us but the themes should be familiar because they're common to human power structures. Mark Twain observed that it's easier to fool someone than it is to convince him that he's been fooled, and that's no less true today. Propaganda tends to be self reinforcing. I tend to think of people being herded into our disparate camps but it's probably more true to say that we chose our own tribal associations with relatively little encouragement by those who seek to be our masters and benefit from our squabbling.
Twain also said that people who don't read the newspapers are uninformed but people who do read the newspapers are misinformed. The mainstream sources of information are all spewing regime propaganda, and they're trying their best to control the internet as well but pockets of the internet are resisting their control. Just as good money displaces bad money, free speech is preferable to propaganda.
Humans are tribal and that entails defending the tribe. At this point, our tribal nature is mostly working against us. We need to be aware of our darker natures. We need to reject propaganda and insist on observable facts. We need to reject the innate human Obedience To Authority (see Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo for details). We need to focus on facts and trying to educate each other and ourselves when it's our nature to dig in our heels and lob spears at the other tribes. I try to focus on seeking the truth rather than defending a position. That's likely a benefit of my scientific nature and training.
Amen to that Liberty. I grow so frustrated when people come on these threads and hurl insults at you because you have an opinion that differs or you ask questions instead of blindly accepting what is being told.
You taught me something today about jet fuel. Didn't know that before. This is why I frequent these blogs.
Let us no longer be polite about "mental illness" problems and separation. These are decades long marxist power plays coming to fruition. Check out Christopher Rufo.
All fine & dandy, but if Trump doesn’t begin accountability, I don’t see how the game continues past the mids.
We have an immigration law; we have a scotus holding (v. AZ) that immigration is purely federal. Transporting, hiding, etc., of an illegal is a felony. So why aren’t ALL “sanctuary” governors, mayors, city councils, and Mayorkas being charged with felonies? As with Hillary, Brennan, Clapper, Biden, Obama, Wray, McCabe … a two-tier justice system .. isn’t. If they are free, we are not.
All maddening indeed. We would likely need the police and the military to enforce real justice on the treasonous actors, leading to an all out civil war in the streets. Trump won't do this for obvious reasons. Former DNI director Tulsi Gabbard recently identified clearly illegal government activities over the past decade by the dems, but few citizens notice or even care. They're too busy with their everyday lives to pay much attention. And many in the GOP leadership obstruct the effort to bring legal charges.
That said, we do need to move on a few of the criminals to rebuild faith in our system of rules. I do believe we'll see something soon. Hopefully more than what they did with James "Seashell" Comey.
That talking turd Thune, the "Marlboro Man," apparently would rather have a proto-socialist government elected than help Trump get anything done, despite almost all of Trump's goals being the stated goals of the Republican Party for decades. The same sort if thing happened to Reagan, just not as blantantly. Kinda makes you realize the Establishment never really meant a damn thing they ever said.
Exactly right about what Trump is doing economically. He was doing exactly the same things 2018_2020 when you had the highest purchasing power of your lives. Then he was kicked out when they used bioweapons(really just a flu) against us.
One of your best. Time of revelation. People and things are being exposed for who and what they really are. GOD is fulfilling HIS promises of exposing things done in the dark to the light which is truth. Let HIM do HIS works. Trust GOD. Believe HIM.
Lol I had a commenter here on these threads who's spent the last 4 or 5 days doing just that . I finally told him to GF himself , I was immune to his Jedi mind tricks .
I was replying to the Orwell quote , Jeff the Un -Original wanted me to disregard what I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears in favor of his narrative / hence the Jedi mind trick reference " These are not the droids you are looking for "?
If, for example, you use the Edwardian/early Victorian definition, as "our betters", "the gentry", "Society" means one thing. It meant something similar in the glory years of the 1920's pre-depression era.
Today, of course, the term is often used more inclusively.
But, power has always, and probably will always, co-exist in an unholy alliance with the "transnational gangsters" of the day.
People love to talk about ideology in terms of politics, but--first and foremost--any political ideology is actually an economic ideology. Why? Because all political ideology revolves around how what is produced in an economy and how it is owned, controlled, and distributed.
Free market capitalists believe that the means of production should be held privately by individuals and corporations not owned by the government, with the minimum amount of government control exercised over all private property owners.
Then there are the Socialists. Socialists can be divided into two basic camps with only one defining difference between them. The Fascist/Socialists believe that the means of production should be fully controlled by a powerful central government, with private property owners only allowed to exist so long as they fully comply with the edicts of the Socialist regime. Communist/Socialists differ from Fascist/Socialists only to the extent that Communist Socialists believe that private property rights should not exist at all, and all property should be owned "communally" by the Socialist regime. Both regimes, particularly in their ascent to power, are persecutory to groups (opposing political parties, religions, ethnicity, holders of wealth) that they feel are a threat to the Socialist regime. Such groups facing such persecution (including extermination) were Jews in Nazi Germany, non-Russian ethnicities in the Soviet Union, non-Chinese ethnicities in Communist China, and--lately--whites, political conservatives, Christians and Jews in the United States.
So, understanding all of that, it becomes easy to fathom the internal fight ongoing in the Democrat Party of 2026--the "old-guard" Democrat faction are now the Fascist/Socialists and the younger "far left" faction are the Communist/Socialists. The question for 2026 is whether or not the Fascist/Socialists and the Communist/Socialists will unite just long enough to take control of the Congress and the Senate away from the conservative and moderate Republicans and independents. There is a historical precedent for that, and author Ayn Rand wrote about it:
"It is a matter of record that in the German Election of 1933, the Communist Party was ordered by its leaders to vote for the Nazis - with the explanation that they could later fight the Nazis for power, but first they had to help destroy their common enemy: capitalism and its parliamentary form of government." -Ayn Rand
The most important and ignored fact is that any form of Socialism requires a central government strong enough to fully override individual rights at its pleasure. As such, a necessary outcome of the adoption of Socialism in the United States would be the de facto abolition of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, a policy now being openly espoused among many American Socialists.
Very well said , what needs put to a referendum then would be The Constitution itself because in my opinion using the government for the purpose of instituting any form of socialism is anathema to it . A Convention Of The Sates has long been part of the discussion as a possibility to resolve this issue I suppose . I don't like but at least we can make the argument that what these collectivists are asking for and actually have already gone a long way in implementing is actually a wholesale nullification of the US Constitution IMO . Of course there are eminent domain issues paired with the greater good ( the general welfare ) arguments to be made ,where 'if 'we had sane interlocutors we might be able to find some sweet spot middle ground to compromise on . But " if " is not "is " and seeing as how these commies are loony we cant find that middle ground , and giving an inch is just business as usual for the last 100 years .Miles are made up of inches , give an inch here ,give and inch there ,pretty soon yer talkin bout feet , then yds then ........
I brought up eminent domain because although it may seem unrelated its not really . There can be cases where property rights should not be sacrosanct . Think of the interstate highway system as supply roots for the military to potentially be logistically supported by in the case of a theoretical hostile foreign military invasion of the continental US as an example of a legitimate invocation of eminent domain in promoting the general welfare . One mans home or a hundred mens homes for that matter ,cannot stand in the way of the creation of that essential supply line in such a case so that even in a sane nation property rights are not absolute . But of course all of this type of thinking requires a level of wisdom that our age is in serious short supply of . Besides ,they already manufacture fake crisis for the purpose of justifying the abrogation of our constitutional rights so who;s gonna trust the boy who has already disengeniously cried wolf a million times only in order to cynically steal more power away from the citizen . We really are so screwed , never mind .
We civilians are the horses.
Insane leadership, propaganda, and people being pressured to deny what they can plainly see…the New Democratic Party🤔
Help me understand how republicans are any different? Dems are as Kunstler described, but the GOP is a mess of useless liars and grifters who are quite satisfied to take their bribes from the Lobby and work towards a second place finish where expectations of doing nothing are always rewarded.
I like to joke, as a small-government type, that the Democrats promise bigger government, and they deliver every time. The Republicans promise smaller government, and they never deliver---but they're slightly less bad than the Dems.
How about... "Give the Democrats an inch, and they'll take a yard. Give the Republicans an inch, and they'll take an inch."
Good one, and pretty accurate, I'd say. Sometimes it seems the Republicans only grudgingly take the inch!
If they are paid to do so.......just sayin'
Bad donkeys hardly prove good elephants. They're all pigs at the trough.
That's what I always say too ,at the end of the day the republi-cant's feed from the right side of the pig trough and the demon cat's feed from the left side . But newly minted lefty reps start off wanting to go to DC and do the wrong thing where as newly minted rightwing reps start off thinking they are going to go drain the swamp only to end up being drained by the swamp instead .
Thanks for the chuckle, George, and I agree!
Only slightly, because the people want their handouts and our government, regardless of who is in charge, cannot turn off the tap.
Indeed, in the US, I think the only thing that would provoke widespread civil unrest would be if the EBT cards suddenly stopped working, not that I want to give Iranian sleeper cells any suggestions.
Ha, I read today that the cruise lines are having difficulty with passengers wanting to use EBT cards on board.
Maybe it is just me, but I didn’t get the sense that Kunstler left out the RINOs:
“In John Thune you have something like an anti-leader, doing everything possible to evade his duties, squashing election reform under arcane procedural bullshit, obstructing the confirmation of important agency nominees and federal judges, and “gaveling-in” ghost sessions of his chamber to prevent the president from making recess appointments. And why? Probably for no better reason than he just wants to dissociate himself and many of his fellows from the president because he’s seen as too gauche for their club.
They're virtually all loyal to a foreign nation, not America.
Go back to your hole, Jarek.
Life is too big for you, tom. You're so small that you can't even capitalize your name.
that"d be me, jarek...e e cummings returned from the grave.
What upstanding man can be loyal to today's America? Clearly a revolution is in order.
Which one, America or Amerika?
I think he's referring to the grubermint industrial complex as "America " rather than the average law abiding tax paying citizenry who just want to be left alone . Angelo Codevilla referred to the former as' The Ruling Class 'and the latter as 'The Country Class '.
Yes Cosmo, in the words of our beloved host…with a few extra words of wisdom…. “This is what radical leftism is. It may wear various different slogans and ideologies across place and time – anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, communist, anarchist, Marxist – but the fundamental character is always the same. It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality, justice, liberation; an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built, to wreck what is beautiful and right, on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness, and have nothing else to offer the world.
Through violence and terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness on all of us. It has always been driven by a hatred, above all else, a hatred for civilization itself. It is a revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good. It is perpetrated by those who cannot build, who cannot create, who cannot achieve great things, or those who dwell in their own mental illness and ignorance.
A sane society cannot debate its way out of psychosis. It must diagnose the patient with lethal precision and restore the logical boundary between the mad and the free, between the left and the right.”
Exactly. The DemoniKKKRat Communist Islamic Party of the Americas is exActly what it has always been,
They just took off their hoods.
Exactly brother!
And the Republicans are not?
Im disappointed in the weak links in the Republican Party, but……
The RINOS were always demoniKKKRats. The only way demonikkkRATs can get in office is not on the issues, it’s by running as a Republican but voting as a RAT……that isn’t winning, it is THEFT.
The DemoniKKKRat KKKommunist Islamic Party serves hell.
Jesus said “Satan comes only to steal (they do), kill (they do) and to destroy (they do). The RatComIslam Party encapsulates ALL that is evil.
You can eat at their table, and you will end up a slave.
Insanity isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Seriously ... we're told that nature rushes in to fill a vacuum. Those who've had it up to here with the farcical, self-serving corruption of both traditional parties find the air mighty thin. Almost nobody represents them on a national level. But that possibly spells opportunity.
For once, the door could be open for a serious alternative party. Third parties rarely achieve much traction in the US, or keep it for long. But with so many disgusted with politics as usual, this might be the exception.
A new party, regardless of how many votes it gets, isn't an guaranteed win. Two caveats come immediately to mind.
First, it's extremely unlikely to attain an electoral majority, at best a plurality, and right out of the gate that means angling for a coalition with one or more opposing parties. The experience of European countries with multiple parties isn't encouraging. Alliances are constantly formed and broken up. Italy is a discouraging example -- it's said to change governments as often as the prime minister changes underwear.
Second, to reach escape velocity, a turnaround party will need a charismatic leader. Someone with the kind of magnetism that produces not only agreement among voters but enthusiastic commitment. Such politicos are rare; Ronald Reagan was the last in the US and he was short on action to fulfill his promise. (I exclude Trump, who generated support by his claimed intentions, but few are attracted to his personality.)
All that said, I hope a successful new party of genuine patriots arises in the next two-and-a-half years. It could be the last chance to avoid outright Götterdämmerung.
I know this will sound crazy but what if we actually do as our forefathers were admonished by father of our nation, Mr. George Washington, who said in his fare well address to avoid all partisan politics, altogether.
If it is not clear up to this point that partisan political systems don't work, well, then we are never going to correct this failed political system. Both political parties are dismal failure and a third party won't be any different.
I would like to see a political system where instead of voters considering the political affiliation of the candidate, there are none whatsoever. Just the candidate, who they are and what they stand for.
I would also like to see a much larger congress that gives great representation to American citizens with much smaller districts but that is a different discussion for a different thread.
My vote? No more political parties. Ever.
It's not crazy to favor a system of individual candidates and officeholders without party affiliation. It might have advantages. But candidates would still have to finance their campaigns. The influence of lobbyists and donors with big money would continue, just at the personal rather than the party level, which is often the case already.
It's also hard to imagine politicians with years of party loyalty passing a law to eliminate it, or setting in motion a constitutional amendment if that's what it would take.
It has been tried. And all the ‘Tucker Carlson/Candace Owens party will do is hand the government over to DemoniKKKRat KKKomunist Islamic Party of the Americas.
Good "thinking", Stone. We have to choose the Jews or the Muslims to rule over us. It's one or the other.
Americans have every right to be resentful. If the Establishment denies and mocks their concerns, they'll turn to Socialism. Tragically the Marxist have a corner on that. It isn't so intrinsically btw.
Yes I agree. I'm very worried that this Iran war, necessary though it may be, has kept the cost of living for many MAGA voters too high. I really hope that they can solve this problem in an obvious way prior to the midterms, or it may open the door to these Marxist lunatics and hustlers. I'm So glad that USAID was eliminated, but the dems seem to get millions in kickbacks from all these hustlers Somalis, Bhutanese, NGOs and many others in all the blue states. That's a lot of money to fund them including from destructive persons such as George Soros and Neville Roy Singham from China, who probably does the CCP's bidding.
"necessary though it may be"
Necessary to justify the immense federal defense spending budget. Otherwise, there is no "necessity" behind this war.
Name one time Iran has invaded or otherwise done anything on the lower 48 including the two outliers, Alaska and Hawaii. And don't quote some military act on an American military installation just outside of Iranian land territory.
Necessary this war is NOT. The Strait of Trump was open for business before Trump starting lobbing missiles over there.
I heard today that since the end of USAID, there has not been a chart topping (c)rap 'song' - in something like 10 or 11 months. I didn't 'fact check', I was not surprised, either
Necessary because Bibi sez so. 🙄
I doubt very much that paying a few dollars more a month for energy will turn any MAGA American. Especially after the cost of the Obama regime on our nation. The positive impact will change the world for generations. We truly have the opportunity now to make America great again, as long as we don’t lose sight of the greater good 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸.
Depends on whether you’re talking about the concerns of the left or right. Both very different concerns 🤔
Donkeys versus Elephants is a construct in TPTB's (transparent) divide-&-conquer strategy/m.o./paradigm to cow the masses.
Correct, Steve, The Dems represent what is ugly in people, the grifters, the user's, the mentally ill, and they enable chaos. That does not mean those who claim to be on the right are not without bad actors among the followers. Who could say the late Linsey Graham or Ted Cruz are standing up for us, they are not they are committed to another force, the force that oppresses the rest of us and make wars we cannot afford. They are paid quite well to do so.
In capitalism, there are winners and losers, usually more losers than winners. The Dems figured this out when their Union support flew away to Asia. They support the losers, all of them. They support the gimmes, and have figured out there are more losers and gimmes than every one else. They have spent thirty years creating and importing more gimmes so here we are.
Agree Cosmo, too many RINOs or wolves in red white and blue clothing as we like to call them.
So true, but there is a deep malaise among Americans unaware of the danger that lurks ahead.
I love that turn of phrase: "poisonous resentment..." ; this really does get to the heart of leftist thinking. As Harry Truman famously observed, "Any jackass can kick down a barn; it takes a carpenter to build one!" Lotta jackasses out there nowadays...
I could be wrong, but I thought LBJ is credited with that observation.
I looked it up, and it was actually Sam Rayburn, longest running Speaker of the House, from Texas. I guess Harry was just doing a cover version! Well, at least you know I didn't use AI to write that!
You ain't wrong , but still some how voting R turns out to be marginally better than voting D IMO .
It isn’t t new.
It’s the same party it has always been. They just took off their hoods.
"... Republican phantoms of Congress busy getting nothing done for the past year and a half despite holding the majority in both houses."
You're only half right, Steve.
-----
Donkeys versus Elephants is a construct in TPTB's (transparent) divide-&-conquer strategy/m.o./paradigm to cow the masses.
We've been the floating carcasses for a very long time, Gwennie.
Excellent write up today, Mr. Kunstler. I appreciate your optimism at the end. I don't share your optimism as I believe the country is too far gone to be saved, but I definitely do appreciate your optimism.
"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is that she’s a mere opportunist with nothing inside except some skill at middle-school girl games"
Not a better description of the horse toothed political latina have I ever read. It's also a great representation of America's election system. Very reminiscent of high school student body elections. The candidates make promises they cannot keep the student body votes for the one with the greatest promises and the prettiest faces.
Such is America's political system.
Keep up the good work Mr. Kunstler!
Agree this was an excellent post (particularly since I was not aware of the horse dumping), but I do share Kunstler’s optimism, Granted a lot can & will go wrong, but Trump isn’t just playing the game, he is replacing it as in he is not just trying to defeat Iran in a military sense, he is working to make it irrelevant. In July there was a conference at the Chatham House (Great Britain’s center of evil) where several middle eastern dignitaries commented on new direction being taken with regard to the Middle East aka individual countries acting in their own best interests, not in the interests of global elites & how a new direction was being implemented with regards to Gaza thru building/construction (a plan that even Hillary gave a shout out to) not tons of grift money siphon off into the pockets of the elites. On top of that, Trump has not only opened the floodgates of energy supply in the US, but more importantly building infrastructure in the ME to bypass the Straits of Hormuz chokehold taking Iran & its British masters completely out of the picture. I know it seems like too little too late, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.
I'm not going to say I disagree with you because I've heard these theories about Mr. Trump playing 20 dimensional chess. I don't know one way or another because, frankly, I don't have clairvoyance that gives me special insights into the inner workings of his brain. Maybe you're right. Maybe you're a crazy Qanon person.
What I do know is that before the attack of the USA against Iran the Straight of Hormuz was open for business and gasoline in the USA was hovering around $2.80 per gallon. Since then? Chaos.
I also know that it has taken a lot longer than the 4 or 5 weeks that were promised to us by Mr. Trump when this fiasco began.
Perhaps he is playing 20 dimensional chess with these people. I only know what I can see, hear and feel around me.
Again, I have no crystal ball & you maybe right- I am just a crazy person. But I don’t support Trump because I hate the Dems (though I do hate the Dems). I support Trump bc he has a vision that I believe in, & a plan/people to implement that vision (as opposed to the same old, same old). Being in our bday year (250), I have often reflected on what I would have done; would I have been in those boats crossing the Delaware on what was by all accounts a suicide mission. Best bet, I will not be called on to make that choice, but if the only thing I can do is to not be a Chicken Little, to be supportive of Trump & of those who are also supportive, then, at the very least, when the guy comes to fill out the tally sheet, I can say I stood for something other than cheap gas.
Sounds like a plan. I hope, for all our sakes, that you are right.
Still waiting for Trump to start working on repealing those income taxes, like he said he would....
3 d chess my ass: trumps more like chewing on checkers to see what they taste like
No doubt. These multi-dimensional chess theories that are postulated by MAGA sycophants long left behind by their hero are tired and unproven. Trumpenstein has failed all of them but they won't admit it. Too prideful.
" ... I don't have clairvoyance that gives me special insights into the inner workings of his brain."
You mean telepathy, not clairvoyance.
Ummmmm...yeah, what VS said.
You are correct. Let Trump cook. Even with all the evil obstruction from our domestic enemies, good times are on their way.
Only if he starts to wrap up all the spending, bring down inflation and curb the national debt which, from what I can tell, he has no interest in doing. Inflation alone is sucking yours and my savings account of any value and inflation exists ONLY because he has to run the printing presses to fund his war. Inflation is ONLY a money supply issue and there is only one entity that controls the money supply and therefore inflation can be blamed on only one and that is federal spending. Good times may come if they stop the spending but they won't. Therefore, I disagree with you. Hard lessons are yet to be learned.
This is funny, given the rumours that it's sailors on board the USS Abraham Lincoln who are literally throwing themselves overboard.
Those rumours might be completely false, I dunno. But it's 100% true that Iran won the war, the USA lost it, and the sailors on board the Abe Lincoln are suffering through an extended deployment with broiling heat and bad hygiene because of it. So it's amusing to me how MAGA seal themselves off from what's actually going on. Kunstler's delusion that Iran has been "neutralized", when in fact it has gained control over a tremendously important waterway and the USA has no military option to change that fact, is another case in point.
MAGA, man. You guys are endlessly hilarious.
The great convenience of rumor is that it requires neither evidence nor the embarrassment of being true. One may begin with sailors “literally throwing themselves overboard,” concede in the next breath that the story may be entirely false, and then proceed, with admirable confidence, to conclusions presented as “100% true.”
That is not argument. It is clairvoyance with punctuation.
Perhaps Iran won the war. Perhaps the United States lost it. Perhaps Iran now controls a “tremendously important waterway” beyond the reach of American military power. These are rather large claims, and large claims, like large hats, generally benefit from something underneath them.
What is particularly charming is the accusation that others have “sealed themselves off from what’s actually going on,” delivered immediately after citing an unverified rumour as evidence of what is actually going on. There is a certain elegance in condemning delusion while furnishing one’s own.
I am perfectly willing to be persuaded that Kunstler is wrong. But persuasion traditionally involves evidence. Simply announcing that one possesses reality while one’s opponents possess only MAGA is not analysis. It is theology, and rather fundamentalist theology at that.
Still, I admire the certainty. Facts are so tiresome. Conviction travels much lighter.
The blind rodent undoubtedly believed the Russia Hoax, that Fauci was sent from heaven to save us, that Trump committed impeachable offenses, that the three letter fraudsters were protecting us, that the news media and academia were not and are not on the CCP payroll, Comey and Wray are honorable men, a wealth tax will fund heaven on earth, you can change your gender...........
Indeed. Such fantasies were once evidence of insanity. Now they're talking points.
“Being hated by idiots and freaks is the price we pay for not being one of them. “.
I'm quite capable of navigating truth versus rumour, thank you, and I specifically set up my remarks as a contrast between rumour on the one hand (sailors leaping off the aircraft carrier like horses) and clear fact on the other (Iran having handily won the war Trump started in late February, and now controlling the strait of Hormuz for the foreseeable future).
Interesting fact: America's ships should be able to dock and resupply at the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, which is right in the middle of the warzone. But they can't, because Iran destroyed it, or at least rendered it unusable. Were you even aware of that fact? They're having to resupply the fleet from the British airbase on Diego Garcia, 2000 miles to the south. That's a long way to go for toilet paper.
Trump is helpless to change the outcome of the war he started. He made this perfectly obvious on Easter Sunday when he posted "Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell". The poor fellow, to rant such an empty threat! He must have been beside himself with frustration. And nothing of significance has changed in the months since.
Like the military-industrial complex that puppets him, Trump can never, ever be made to admit defeat. It was true in Vietnam, it was true when the USA spent twenty years pounding lives and money down a rathole in Afghanistan, and it's true now. At least there's fun to be had watching people share in his mulish delusion. Reality will descend eventually, though. It always does.
Ah, I see. We have progressed from rumor to certainty, and apparently all that was required for the transformation was your assurance that you are quite capable of telling the difference.
That certainly simplifies things.
The difficulty is that you continue to confuse events with the conclusions you wish them to prove. Iran damaged the American facilities in Bahrain, quite seriously in places. That is a fact. “Destroyed it,” “rendered it unusable,” and therefore “won the war” are rather more ambitious propositions. The reporting I can find says the base was extensively damaged, including the Fifth Fleet headquarters, but that American military officials said operations were not significantly affected. A damaged headquarters is a military success. It is not, by some mysterious law of metaphysics, a peace treaty signed aboard the USS Missouri.
The Diego Garcia point is equally charming. A military adapting its logistics after an enemy damages a supply hub proves that the enemy inflicted damage. It does not prove that the adapting military has been defeated. Armies have been moving supply depots since someone first discovered the rather inconvenient habit enemies have of shooting at them.
But the most delightful feature of your victorious Iran is that, as of today, it is threatening further offensive action specifically to break an American naval blockade. This is an unusual definition of “handily won.” Normally, when one has handily won a war, one does not announce plans to break the blockade being maintained by the helpless nation one has just defeated. Perhaps warfare has changed. Or perhaps adjectives have.
As for Trump’s Easter profanity, I am quite prepared to accept it as evidence that Donald Trump is capable of vulgarity. I had thought the matter settled some years ago. What it does not establish is that the United States possesses “no military option.” A politician shouting obscenities is evidence of a politician shouting obscenities, not an order of battle.
Then come Vietnam, Afghanistan, the military-industrial complex, puppetry, delusion and, finally, reality itself descending from the heavens to vindicate you. It is an impressive procession, although an argument appears to have missed the parade.
You began by informing us that a rumor might be completely false, followed immediately by something you called “100% true.” You have now expanded “100% true” into a collection of contested strategic judgments and presented the whole confection as “clear fact.”
There is a name for the habit of treating one’s interpretation as reality and everyone else’s interpretation as delusion. It is not analysis. Still, I do admire the confidence. Evidence can be terribly cumbersome, whereas certainty fits very comfortably into a comment box.
And yes, Reality does eventually descend. One only hopes it remembers your address.
Thomas. Wow.
You need to be a spokesman for this Administration. This is absolutely brilliant. I’m 75 years old and bad-tempered in my old age. I wish I could clean these creeps clocks as elegantly as you. Absolutely amazing and I LOVE IT!
Thank you, CStone. I appreciate your supportive feedback.
You're 75? Good God, you comments make you look like your 11.
Nice to see you actually have the ability to issue a complement to someone. Thomas does post great comments. You should learn a thing or two from him.
HA HA
Have a nice day, CStone. Thanks for the banter. I really do enjoy it.
English veterans of WW2 are ashamed of their service and wished they had never gone, given what their Government has done to their nation. Morrissey concurs, loathing the new residents who will never be English.
Put down your game controller, Mole. It's time you take a break and clear your foggy mind. Your conclusions are a fantasy, your propagandized brain is smoking, overloaded with things you know nothing about. How much is the IRCG paying you?
People have made remarks like this to me in the past. Later, after the pretense they were defending could no longer be sustained, I would remind them of those remarks and even helpfully provide hyperlinks so the fact that I was right and they were wrong could not be denied. They never responded to my helpful reminders, funnily enough. I hypothesize they felt there was simply nothing they could say that wouldn't amount to acknowledging I was right and they were wrong, and so they preferred silence.
This is another one of those cases.
What a wonderfully convenient hypothesis: silence proves you right, disagreement proves others deluded, and memory supplies the verdict.
With rules like those, one need never suffer the vulgar inconvenience of being mistaken.
PURE IDIOT
I agree with your opinion of the rodent.
Easy. The Straits are still closed and Iran still a free nation with a non-Rothschild central banking system.
Ahhh….. lugh, the Muslim pig has spoken!!!!!
Yet another stupid response. Your batting average for posting inane, worthless comments is high. Keep up the good work.
My dear fellows, disagreement is inevitable; insults needn’t be. You are both much better company when your wits are sharper than your tempers. Please, let's put this all behind us. I promise to weigh in when Kunstler posts on Friday, so perhaps we can lick our respective wounds and go to war all over again then. Cease fire!
I must be over the target.
“It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”
~ Mark Twain.
"Simply announcing that one possesses reality while one’s opponents possess only MAGA is not analysis. It is theology, and rather fundamentalist theology at that."
Excellent!
LOL
One battleship would control the straits, too bad they de-commissioned them.
Seek your own evidence and then you can sure of what is taking place that you still can't believe.
Thomas obviously outclasses you and your cohorts on here!
Again, thank you. I do my best to shine a little light of reason upon the murky waters of modern discourse. One cannot always make the waters clear, of course, but it is occasionally satisfying to discover what has been lurking beneath the surface.
“This is what radical leftism is. It may wear various different slogans and ideologies across place and time – anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, communist, anarchist, Marxist – but the fundamental character is always the same. It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality, justice, liberation; an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built, to wreck what is beautiful and right, on behalf of people who are only filled with ugliness, and have nothing else to offer the world.
Through violence and terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness on all of us. It has always been driven by a hatred, above all else, a hatred for civilization itself. It is a revolt of the worst against the best, a revolt of the weak and the cowardly against the strong and the good. It is perpetrated by those who cannot build, who cannot create, who cannot achieve great things, or those who dwell in their own mental illness and ignorance.
A sane society cannot debate its way out of psychosis. It must diagnose the patient with lethal precision and restore the logical boundary between the mad and the free, between the left and the right.”
The Persians have inhabited that land since before Alexander the Great went about the Mediterranean wreaking havoc on his neighbors. They aren't going to be bullied into doing what a young, bankrupt nation like the USA wants. They know their land. They know their people. They know how to survive not a few bombs.
Indeed, the Persians have occupied their land since time immemorial, rather as the Germanic peoples and the Japanese had occupied theirs for a very long time before 1941. Antiquity is impressive, but it has never been much of a defense system.
A curious thing happened some eighty years ago. A nation an ocean away, still emerging from profound economic distress, harnessed its industrial capacity, manpower, technology, and resources, built fleets on an almost unimaginable scale, transported armies across the globe, and defeated two powers that had themselves spent years demonstrating an emphatic unwillingness to be “bullied” by anyone.
The Germans certainly knew their land. The Japanese knew theirs. Both regimes possessed formidable militaries, considerable industrial capacity, and populations conditioned to endure extraordinary hardship. If the bombing campaigns over Europe and Asia proved anything, it was that neither government intended to surrender merely because matters had become unpleasant.
And yet history did not consult their intentions.
They endured until endurance ceased to matter.
So I quite accept that the Persians are ancient, resilient, familiar with their country, and capable of surviving hardship. What I cannot quite see is how any of this proves the proposition you have attached to it.
Civilizations may be ancient; military circumstances are distressingly contemporary.
Your argument, if we may indulge it with the title, is rich in confidence but rather poor in evidence. History has an unfortunate habit of being least impressed by those who invoke it most confidently.
Some kind of Zionist warmonger, apparently.
The Persians are not in charge of Iran.
The slave masters (Arabic) of the Persians is a fairly recent event.
So your comment has no substance.
I don't present evidence, Thomas. I only present an opinion. If evidence is what you seek in everyone's opinion oriented comments then why are you frequenting a comment thread on someone's opinion editorial blog?
Here are a couple of nations who, due to antiquity of their people in their home land were quite adept at resisting empire building advances from larger, more powerful nations. I see the same thing happening with Iran.
Afghanistan. This poverty stricken nation resisted the empire building desires of the British, the Soviet Union and then, of course, the USA.
Vietnam. This nation resisted the USA and its war mongering efforts until the USA with drew like a beaten dog from its shores.
I didn't have you pegged as being a war humper, Thomas.
“Evidence? Evidence! What evidence? I don’t need no stinkin’ evidence!”
Forgive the cinematic paraphrase, but you have rather invited it.
You say, “I don’t present evidence. I only present an opinion,” as though the word opinion were some charming diplomatic passport permitting every assertion to cross the border of reason without inspection.
It is not.
“I dislike American foreign policy” is an opinion. “I believe the United States should not have invaded Afghanistan” is an opinion. “Iran will prove more resilient than Washington expects” is a prediction, and a perfectly legitimate one.
But when you tell us that ancient peoples are inherently more successful at resisting great powers, that Afghanistan demonstrates this principle, or that America “withdrew like a beaten dog” from Vietnam, you are no longer merely expressing a taste or preference. You are making assertions about what happened, why it happened, and what caused what.
Those are historical claims.
Historical claims are rather inconvenient things because they tend to attract evidence. Calling them “opinion” does not absolve you from supporting them any more than calling an unpaid bill “literature” satisfies the creditor.
And this brings us to Vietnam.
“America withdrew like a beaten dog” is vivid. It is also a splendid illustration of why evidence matters.
The United States was not militarily driven from Vietnam by an enemy advancing upon and destroying its forces. Beginning under Nixon, American troop strength was deliberately reduced through Vietnamization, with responsibility for combat increasingly transferred to South Vietnamese forces. The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973, and American combat forces departed. Saigon did not fall to North Vietnam until more than two years later, in April 1975.
One may certainly argue that the United States suffered a strategic and political defeat in Vietnam. Indeed, there is a very strong case for saying so. But that is quite different from claiming that the American military was routed from the country. The distinction between the two is not pedantry. It is history.
Tet provides an especially inconvenient example. It was an enormous political success for North Vietnam because it shattered American confidence in the war. Militarily, however, communist forces suffered devastating losses and failed to hold the positions they attacked. America could prevail tactically while simultaneously losing the political contest at home.
History has a vexing habit of permitting two things to be true at once.
Afghanistan offers much the same lesson. The United States did not depart because the Taliban had militarily destroyed the American armed forces and chased them to the airport. Washington negotiated a withdrawal and eventually carried it out. The Afghan government and security forces subsequently collapsed with extraordinary speed.
Was the entire twenty-year undertaking a strategic failure? Quite possibly. Was the withdrawal badly conceived or executed? There is ample room for that judgment. But once again, strategic failure is not synonymous with battlefield rout.
And here your choice of “beaten dog” becomes revealing.
It is not merely descriptive language. It positively luxuriates in humiliation. One senses that America being defeated is not simply the conclusion of your argument but something you rather enjoy imagining.
That is entirely your privilege, of course. But animus is a notoriously unreliable historian. It has a tendency to convert setbacks into routs, withdrawals into stampedes and complex strategic failures into morality plays in which the object of one’s dislike is conveniently humiliated in the final act.
As for Afghanistan and Vietnam proving your original theory about the antiquity of peoples, they do nothing of the sort. They demonstrate that great powers can fail against weaker adversaries. No sensible person disputes that.
What they do not establish is that they failed because Afghans and Vietnamese had inhabited their respective lands for a very long time.
Geography mattered. Outside military assistance mattered. Strategy mattered. Political endurance mattered. Domestic American opinion mattered. Objectives mattered. Cost mattered. In Afghanistan, Pakistan mattered enormously. In Vietnam, Chinese and Soviet support mattered enormously.
To select “antiquity” from that rather crowded room of causes and announce it as the decisive explanation is not analysis. It is historical astrology.
So by all means offer opinions. Comment sections would be grim places without them.
But when an opinion contains assertions of fact, causation and history, one cannot simply draw a little circle around it marked OPINION and declare evidence forbidden entry.
You are entitled to your own conclusions.
History, regrettably, retains custody of the facts.
And I thought I was prone to logorrhea.
No one has ever, ever, in the history of this or any online forum, changed anyone's mind this way.
Thanks for all of that. I'll be sure to log that away in my book of useless information.
Your understanding of cultural history is quite shallow. Go back and research all the different cultures that overran the region of 'Iran' (so designated in 1935). The German military wasn't formidable until the British facilitated their taking over the Czech military...a powerhouse in Europe.
You assume the country is a single entity, and not a Zoroastrian nation conquered by a now widely-hated Islamic sect. Some large segment of the country cheers the American bombs.
Imagine a world where people talk about the USA the same way they talk about the USA's official enemies. "You assume the United States is a single entity, and not a land of hunter-gatherers conquered by widely-hated Caucasian colonizers. Some large segment of the country cheers for America to be bombed."
Interestingly, the American counter-example happened much more recently and in that sense is likely to be that much more accurate.
Lots of people here at CFN cheer the American bombs. See JohnAZ and many many others. Afterall, war is very profitable for the likes of Lockheed and Raytheon.
Iran has had it coming since 1979.
Iran thinks we’ve had it coming since 1953.
Iran has been three weeks away from a nuke for 30 years now.
All America's wars are to justify our governments immense defense department spending budget and to satisfy the financial needs and desires of the military-industrial complex over lords.
The government will continue to spend the nation's strength and means making war in a foreign land that poses no significant threat to the 50 states until, like Afghanistan and Vietnam, the military is withdrawn in an utter fiasco. See Afghanistan.
We were at war with the Shia back then, before the rise of Hezbollah. The attack on the barracks was not terrorism, just a successful military strike. What were we doing in Lebanon? Is Lebanon an American state - or just some place Israel wants to acquire?
One apparently needs to be reminded that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are not Persians and are actually viewed, by a majority of Iranians, as occupiers of Iran, since 1979.
More Zionist talking points. The IRGC have massive public support. Far more than our military has here.
You seem unaware of the number of civilian uprisings against the IRGC. Maybe look it up. The majority of Iranians are not Shia.
90% to 95% of Iran's population identifies as Shia Muslims, making it the world's largest Shia-majority country. This demographic represents approximately 66 to 70 million people.
While government censuses and international estimates like the CIA World Factbook consistently cite the 90-95% figure, independent surveys such as those by GAMAAN suggest a potentially lower and shifting identification rate, with some 2022-2023 data showing 37% to 56% of respondents identifying specifically as Shia, alongside significant numbers identifying as non-religious or spiritually inclined without formal affiliation.
AI
Lugh: Let's say that the latter estimate is correct. To then postulate that these people want a Zionist invasion and conquest is a bridge very much too far. Hannibal made similar assumptions. He imagined that the Italian tribes would rise against their Roman masters, but in fact they joined the Romans against the Semitic Conqueror and his Celtic mercenaries (no doubt promised much of Italy - many used to live there).
Liar. You Muslims do that well.
They do NOT have the support of the Persian population. Not. At. All.
If they are not Persians, then who are they? They had to come from somewhere? Are they Pakistanis? Afghanis? Turks?
So…..you now admit you know NOTHING about the Persians.
Hee-hee……all your ignorant rot you spew on here, your and your buddy slugh’s s hatred of the US proves to me that you are dyed-in-the-wool DemoniKKKRat KKKommunist IslamiKKK Party members, acting as though you understand anything about the world.
You and your slugh friend are outted.
Note that Inisfad employs the passive voice the IRGC "are viewed as" whatever. The passive construction lets Inisfad slip past without saying who, exactly, views them that way. If Inisfad had to attribute this view to an identifiable person, group or world view, that would leave them open to fact-checking. This contributes to the impression that what Inisfad says is actually BS, unless Inisfad can shore up the assertion somehow.
Inisfad's kind of BS is illustrative of the imperial mindset that takes for granted the USA cannot be wrong, is not fallible, is free to employ violence or any other means to impose its will, and can make up whatever nonsense it likes to justify its imperial whims.
Iran is comprised of about 95 million people. Approximately 90 million of them view the IRGC as occupiers.
The are Shia Islamists.
Note that Inisfad characterizes the IRGC using 'Shia', which denotes a religious sect, and 'Islamists', which is a religiously-inflect political ideology. Neither one establishes nationality either positively (the IRGC are Iranians) or negatively (they aren't Iranians). Inisfad apparently thinks one describes the IRGC without mentioning nationality, then we'll forget that nationality is the actual point in contention. Perhaps Inisfad thinks this is clever. If so, Inisfad is mistaken.
From where? Persian isn't a religion.
The other illusion is that Iran is the "bad guy" here. The real problems is the oppressors of the world who seek to enslave humanity so they can create the largest Golden Calf in history once they destroy the USA.
Americans are the ultimate dupes. Too stupid to see that they are being taken over by another nation.
We agree here. Wonder what Trump is thinking, having Un as his new bro’?
Although there is evidence of an awakening, but that is largely true.
Covid didn't wake them up. Nothing will.
Yes, covid separated the "follow the experts only" crowd from the "Hey, wait a minute here" thinkers.
Humans have little capacity for reality. I'd be satisfied with the United States claiming victory and then just leaving, quietly working out the economic details with Iran behind the scenes. But Americans can't let go of their triumphalism, which will be our undoing.
Pride goeth before the fall and Americans have been extremely prideful for many decades now. This country is ripe for destruction, either internally or externally. Our $40 trillion dollar debt should be sufficient to dole out a slice of humble pie but the warmongers on this threat seem content to ignore this fat elephant skulking and sulking in the corner.
Proverbs 16:18 "Pride goes before destruction...a haughty spirit before a fall".., to be correct.
Our author no doubt goes along with the Trumpian cry that the purpose of the war is to open the Strait of Hormuz; that, in other words, we are fighting the was and spending billions to restore the conditions that were in place before we started fighting it.
The strait has been used by the IRGC as a chokepoint to extract compliance from all the nations who had ships passing the strait. Comply with the jihad regime or we will block your oil. Trump has destroyed their chokehold and no one is going back to letting the IRGC weaponize that geography.
The Gulf States -along with a 22 Muslim nation coaltion called the Board of Peace- are rendering Iran's blockade obsolete by building alternate pipelines and canals.
We are watching the deliberate reset: a new infrastructure that will be blackmail-free, and for the 1st time in decades militarily unthreatened access to global oil markets to flow to the world.
City of London is very upset.
This is very bad analysis. First of all, Trump has in no way, shape or form destroyed Iran's chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz. At minimum, Iran has sufficient destructive capacity to make any ship or cargo passing through the strait uninsurable, and therefore economically non-viable, in the short term -- and the short term matters. The Trump administration has no doubt expended heroic efforts to suppress the price of oil, but that kind of shuck & jive can't last forever, and the mid-terms are looming.
And it's not just a matter of shipping through the strait. Iran has demonstrated it has a precision-strike capability by which it can, and has, disabled numerous US and allied military bases being used to launch attacks against it. It has destroyed radars that were essential for the US to get any use out of its most advanced capabilities, rendering its most expensive toys useless. Most of all, it has shown itself unmistakably ready, willing and able to decimate critical oil infrastructure in the world's premiere oil-producing region.
Neither new pipelines, nor indeed the re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz, will be any use to anyone if the refineries and chemical plants that turn crude oil into diesel, naphtha, jet fuel, gasoline, fertilizer and myriad other products are blown to bits. Nothing whatsoever. Lose that capacity, and it doesn't matter how much crude you pump out of the ground: you'll have a worldwide depression that will make the 1930s look like a bad mood.
Lastly, your remark about "for the 1st time in decades militarily unthreatened access to global oil markets" is really funny, since that remark pretty well describes the situation that existed *until* Trump's stupid blunder on February 27. The one country that didn't enjoy "militarily unthreatened access to global markets" was Iran itself, owing to US and Israeli threats and sanctions against it, while everyone else did. Trump's stupid blunder ended that situation, and getting it back somehow is the one thing everyone wants -- everyone *except* Iran, which is now making the military threats and will be enjoying the proceeds in the months and years to come.
Mind you, I'm not taking Iran's side here. I'm simply telling the truth about the situation. The level of delusion everyone here is suffering about this is off the charts. Iran won the war, the USA lost, and to the victor will go the spoils. Those are the facts, we'll see how long until MAGA gives up pretending.
You are telling the lies that the globalist media are putting out. You should run for president of the Iran fan club.
Iran to Trump: "No takesie-backsies".
WE ARE STOMPING IRAN INTO A MUD HOLE AND TAR IS LEAKING FROM THEIR RECTUMS. THEY SOON WILL BE BEGGING FOR FOOD.
That was probably the stupidest comment I have read on the thread today. What's with the all caps. Who are you shouting at?
It must suck to be you - still riding the short bus.
News from outside the MAGA bubble: Iran has shifted to ‘fully offensive’ policy - Reuters
https://www.iranintl.com/en/202608169173
"Iran has decided to shift its policy from defensive to a 'fully offensive' posture and has set a deadline of a few weeks for the United States to fully implement the memorandum of understanding, Reuters reported, citing a senior Iranian official.
"'Within the short period of a few weeks set by Iran, all the agreement's provisions must be implemented by the US. This is a precondition for further negotiations with the US,' the official said.
"The timeframe set by Tehran would be conveyed to the United States and regional countries through mediators, according to the official.
"All Iranian entities would be prepared to escalate tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and across the region if diplomacy failed, Reuters quoted the official as saying."
--
FWIW, they're not *talking* like a country that's being stomped into a mud hole. The full Reuters article is here, but I'm not a subscriber: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-threatens-go-offensive-strait-hormuz-if-diplomacy-with-us-fails-2026-08-17/
News from outside the MAGA bubble: Marjorie Taylor Greene warns Trump administration discussing use of nuclear weapons
https://x.com/FmrRepMTG/status/2089069623706603837?s=20
"They are discussing using nuclear weapons on Iran in strategy meetings.
"Yes you read that correctly. It’s real. I’m not speculating, I know.
"And it’s pure evil.
"The last time a nuclear weapon was used was August 6th and 9th of 1945 on two cities in Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, immediately killing 110,000 people, vaporizing people at ground zero, and total deaths reached 214,000 by the end of the year from severe burns and trauma.
"But the extreme suffering continued for the Japanese people from radiation sickness, skyrocketing cancer rates, and generational birth defects.
"Not to mention wiping out all means of their economy.
"And the suffering was so great that all of humanity vowed, 'never again.'
"Trump and his admin were told by our own intelligence that Iran was no where near creating a nuclear weapon, then Israel said the same line it’s repeated for decades, 'Iran is only weeks away.'
"So we bombed anyways, killed their leaders and innocent little children in a school, and Iran has controlled the Strait of Hormuz ever since and punished the region for their part in it.
"And now our government is the one actually discussing lowering the nuclear threshold in order to use nuclear weapons against Iran even though Trump claims he’s won the war like 40 times and says the U.S. controls the SoH.
"Trump promised no more foreign wars, but may actually be the one who delivers a nuclear holocaust that would likely drag the entire world into major conflict, economic depression, and mass human suffering we’ve never seen in our lifetimes and maybe throughout history.
"People need to speak out and boldly stop this insanity.
"America is not untouchable.
"If and when that happens, everyone, and I do mean everyone, will hold ALL of those in leadership right now fully responsible for the rest of human history.
"Do not use nuclear weapons and stop this war NOW."
--
I'm not an ally of MTG and there are many, many things on which we disagree. But I completely agree with and endorse the above words as written.
If Trump uses nuclear weapons, he will secure his place as one of history's great criminals. Netanyahu, with his genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, is there already.
I would suggest all of the offshored factories and call centers, closed power plants and refineries that offend the woke hoity toity class are the horses. They of course have their own horses (Embraers, Bombardiers, Lears) which are exempt as they are used to attend conferences on how to deal with those of us deplorable riff raff wishing to have "horses."
Good insight.
You should see the play, Equus
For the moment not only the brain-damaged R-'n'-D parties but the pushback forces are becalmed in the horse latitudes. That must end. The winds of change will carry us through and out this autumn. Changes in latitude, changes in attitude. Be ready, willing, and able.
As we maneuver through the dog days of August, let us nonetheless continue to resist efforts to remove our freedoms as they will relentlessly continue unabated. Each time you refuse to give in to data mining (be it another 'smart' appliance or discounts for being a 'member' of a grocery or hardware store) you help others.
I'm a snow bird and a few weeks back a rental organization wanted me to allow a third party to have a photo (front and back) of my DL, then use facial recognition via my phone to 'identify' me, simply for the 'privilege' of applying... - I let them know that I do not risk my personal information in such a way and instead signed on with another organization. - These types of actions may not help you personally, but each time you do not comply, you help to starve the beast.
" resist efforts to remove our freedoms"
To what freedoms are you referring? The freedom to watch the teevee, go to the grocery store and buy salty chips or go to Disneyland to stand in long lines for a lame-ass Princess Tiana DEI ride? Or are you referring to the freedom to own property in America? The pseudo freedom that actually, for all intents and purposes, DOES NOT EXIST. You know what I am talking about. Property taxes. You know that pesky little tax that prohibits each and every one of us Americans from actually owning property we paid for with money that was already taxed. We also paid sales taxes on it when we bought the property as well but, I digress.
If we Americans cannot own property, free and clear from government intrusion, we are no more free than those poor saps living in Great Britain where the monarchy and lords own all the land and the citizens pay rent.
Property taxes. Are we truly free? Not a chance babe. So you keep resisting those efforts to remove our freedoms.
I'm not sure people really understand the implications of property taxes.
Real estate taxes (property taxes) are a scheme to keep government in power. Admittedly roads need repair and if one lives where it snows those same roads need to be plowed when the snow reaches a certain depth.
However, using individuals' means of shelter (their home) as the sledge hammer to extract the funds for the public works projects I mentioned is servitude by another name.
When I bought my 1/4 acre lot I paid sales taxes on the sale of that lot with money that was already taxed with income taxes.
When I paid for my home construction I paid sale taxes on the home with money that was already taxed with income taxes.
I pay an annual rent payment to my government for the right to live on my land that has already been taxed twice with money that is taxed annually with income taxes. In short, I am being taxed over and over and over again for the same property that I supposedly "own."
The fact that Americans are not pissing razor blades in anger over this shows a serious detachment from what Americans consider to be "freedom" vs what is truly being done to us as a people. Most people wouldn't understand freedom if it was growing on their asses and no quote from the old drunk Winston Churchill isn't going to do any good for anyone.
I would gladly pay double in sales taxes if I knew I my home and land could never be taken from me by the government. I'd even pay triple. At least I would always have a home, even if I couldn't afford to buy food.
You would have control over what you purchase and how much you pay. It could also be a negotiating tool.
How the collected funds from a sales tax, a consumption tax, would eventually, if not initially, become the target of abuse is a different topic. But... one's home would still be removed from the real estate tax lien ploy
Quit ya complaining, Cankerpuss. The gov can create a 100% tax and take everything:
AI Overview
Yes, legally and constitutionally, the U.S. government can create a 100% tax bracket. The 16th Amendment gives Congress the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes from whatever source derived, without limitation. Historically, top marginal rates reached 94% during World War II.
I do not mean this disparagingly, but I will not go quietly into the night and simply allow the Transhumanist Agenda to unfold. This is a spiritual battle of Good vs Evil. - Churchill's quote to British citizens when they'd learned that the Germans had broken through the French line is fitting: "It would be foolish to disguise the gravity of the hour. - It would be still more foolish to lose heart and courage."
Good for you! So when will you begin your campaign to rid us of the freedom denying evil known as property taxes? Or, does it not bother you that in a self proclaimed "free" society you cannot ever fully and truly own your property?
Slapping feel good quotes from old dudes long turned to dust is all fine and dandy but what good does it do when you and I are not permitted to own property?
He admitted in his memoirs that the real reason for the War was Germany's unwillingness to surrender sovereignty to the coming global financial order. Sorry, we were the bad guys in that one too.
I read a book about George Patton. After Germany surrendered Mr. Patton wanted to march to Moscow and take down Stalin and the communists. General Eisenhower fired him, or, at least removed him from command of the 3rd army. Later, at a US Army military installation General Patton had a strange but minor vehicular accident from which he ultimately "died" from.
George Patton was on to something. There was much more to WWII than just stopping the big bad Germans from taking over the world (something that could never have happened).
A dying Jedburgh (some kind of elite force back then) admitted to the deed.
"[...] those poor saps living in Great Britain where the monarchy and lords own all the land and the citizens pay rent."
You are running away with yourself there, CK. The monarch and lords do not own 'all the land'.
I own my property (a flat) freehold and pay rent to no-one. I pay council tax for services, but no property tax. By your metric, I am therefore more free than you. For now. The latest Fabian to become PM by means of a coup rather than an election is threatening a property tax. There has never been such a thing in modern history (I vaguely remember window taxes from history lessons! They led to lots of windows being bricked up.)
Previously I owned a terraced house, which was also freehold, so no ground rent.
Some/many new flats (not houses) are bought leasehold (this is more of an English* thing, as far as I know) and the 'owners' have to pay ground rent - generally to property companies. My property, like almost half of those in the city where I live, is Victorian (the rest of that half is Georgian), so there is no property company involved.
However ... those old properties like mine are not retrofittable to meet the energy requirements of the genocidal Agenda 2030. At some point they will be declared uninhabitable (see seminal work by the late Rosa Koire on this phenomenon in the US) and will be declared what Mark Carn(age) calls 'stranded assets' that we can neither sell nor leave to our children. They will get everyone, one way or another. "You will own nothing and be happy."
*The Guardian tells me half of England is owned by aristos and corporations. That's the land, though, not the properties. Most land doesn't have properties on it. Or not many. The aristos do own a lot of farmland. A friend of mine had in-laws who were farmers living on land owned by the Duke of Buccleuch (bu-kloo).
Then I stand corrected. I was under the impression that nobody owns land in Great Britain except those of monarchy.
Sounds like you are blessed to own your property. Wish I could say the same thing here in the land of the "free" and the home of the brave.
Thanks for taking the time to educate me that there is still land ownership in the United Kingdom.
You were right that the aristos and royals own a lot, just not all of it! And the Overlords are coming for all of it in the long run. We and everything we own are going to be 'tokenised'.
Lisa, good for you. Just politely tell them to fuck off.
Thanks Lisa, so true. Last week I clicked on a "Job listing service for Seniors". It's taken many hours to remove the malware and phishing. Thankfully I have Bitdefender that caught it early. It could have been much worse.
Ai has only made it easy for the hackers to invade.
Even the smart meters which - beyond the health concerns - are similar to a burglar casing your home 24/7. They record all of your daily habits: when you're normally at home, how long you generally stay up during the evenings, how many hours you usually watch tv or are on the internet, etc. - Once the smart meters are in, the next thing on the agenda is often a data center (though thankfully there is growing resistance to them). - Definitely Orwellian...
Data Centers. People oppose them yet the people are creating the need for them.
It's people opposing a cell phone monopole when their ownership and constant usage of their cell phones are creating the need. Or, opposing road construction when their own cars are creating the need for roads.
I live in Utah and there is some big stink going on about data centers. Ironically, the people who are opposed to these data centers most likely all own and operate cell phones, all use their credit cards when they buy something and all stream their favorite television shows at home.
My point is data centers are no the problem. The problem is us and our increasing dependence upon and use of these little gadgets we carry everywhere we go and cannot put down.
Lisa, Please explain how smart meters can know"when you're normally at home, how long you generally stay up during the evenings, how many hours you usually watch tv or are on the internet, etc. -. Also how are they harmful to your health. The "smart" meters are nothing more than traditional electric meters with a connection to the cell phone system. The only disadvantage I see is to the meter readers who all got replaced.
The basic difference is a meter reader who comes once a month to read a number and one who watches continually and reports you energy consumption every few seconds. That's a big difference to the amount of privacy I snjoy.
Hi, R: The smart meters pulse non-ionizing radiation throughout the day to collect patterns of each customer’s energy usage presumably to promote energy conservation and encourage consumers to use more energy during low-use times. While most people seem to worry about eventual rationing of energy to consumers, I’m more concerned about the following:
From www.energy.gov (DOE’s ‘Data Access and Privacy Issues related to Smart Grid Technologies – this from back in Oct. 5, 2020): “Advances in Smart Grid technology could significantly increase the amount of potentially available information about personal energy consumption. Such information could reveal personal details about the lives of consumers, such as their daily schedules (including times when they are at or away from home or asleep), whether their homes are equipped with alarm systems, whether they own expensive electronic equipment such as plasma TVs, and whether they use certain types of medical equipment.”
From Arthur Firstenberg – The Invisible Rainbow (pg. 318) - The wireless version of smart meters in a ‘mesh network’ communicate not only with the utility company but with each other, rapidly becoming the single most intrusive source of electronic noise in modern life … each meter chattering to its neighbors as frequently as two hundred and forty thousand times per day.”
Children’s Health Defense (March 20, 2026): 1 in 8 U.S. adults say wireless radiation is causing health issues (e.g., cardiovascular issues, headaches, insomnia, tinnitus).
Thanks Lisa, I still don't get how the meters can moniter your personal activities. I mean the big energy hogs at my house are HVAC, refrigerator/freezer, pool pump, etc. The HVAC and 'fridge are on and off 24/7 randomly for the most part. Switching on a few LEDs,my laptop,or a tv are a very small percentage of my electricity bill. I don't have a smart meter. My Kwhs cost the same day or night
Hi, R: I don't pretend to know all the details, either, and the only reason I've looked into this to this extent is because my local REA has a loophole to get around our State law of allowing opt-outs for smart meters and last winter they sent letters out stating that if 'members' don't agree to use their smart meters they'd close our accounts (no other utilities in the service area, so zero competition for them). So, 7 random morons on a local REA board can essentially shut your power off in order to make more $. Now, no one I've talked with is OK with this, so why wouldn't they just work with their customers (and follow the law)? - I can only presume it's because they can make a lot of $ selling the data their smart meters collect... And now, in their most recent minutes they talk about encouraging a data center to locate in our service area so that's their game. - Anyway, I closed my account and have gone off-grid - had been thinking about doing so for a long time anyway. I've had a manual hand-pump installed so I can access my well water and use a small array of Anker Solix solar panels. I didn't get the full array of solar panels so what I have is not strong enough to run the house fully and it's been a lot of extra work but I can manage (esp as the stove runs on propane so I don't need power for that). - Anyway, long story short, no one really thinks about their power utility much unless you are 'EMF sensitive' or have local yokels who think they have the right to tell you what to do at your own home...
Yes! Good work, Lisa.
Thank you, Gwennie! - I'm in the situation where I have to work during the winters so I've seen similar overreach with job applications, and I feel sorry for all of the young folk who feel desperate enough to comply with things like (and this is just for an interview, not a job offer) taking a 'personality assessment,' or 'virtual interviews' where you're being recorded during an 'interview' with an AI bot... I'd never heard of the virtual interview and when I checked online I saw many comments where people felt violated by the interview because it's out there forever 'somewhere' with a third party and can never be retrieved...
I'm right there with you. At best it is impertinently invasive and at worst it is pre-compliance training for the beast system. I don't give my zip code at checkout to store clerks who ask for it. Don't go to restaurants where I have to scan a barcode to see the menu. Don't go to places that don't take cash. Don't do self-checkout. Don't let the doctor's offices or gyms take pictures. Don't use biometric phone unlock. One place I worked wanted all employees to sign something that said they had the right to search our cars in the employee parking lot...nope. It is the modern day variant of unlawful search and seizure and it bothers me that people give up their rights and privacy so carelessly...
There is no such 'thing' as a free lunch, a concept constantly being suppressed. Making life easier with the 'conveniences' such as you mention do have a price. The price is 'loss of freedom' and its partner 'loss of privacy' . Is it laziness? Possibly. Is it poorly developed critical thinking skills? I'd place this high on the list.
In simpler times having a washing machine to take care of clothes freed the owner to do other tasks. The expense, beyond up-front cost, was the energy used to run the machine (electricity). The electricity has associated costs. One could choose to use the machine sparingly. Likely the owner still had a washboard.
Choice is being eliminated. It is a control issue. Unfortunately, the items on your list are all control items. They might seem convenient. The convenience has those hidden costs summarized as infringement upon, to outright theft of, personal liberty.
Eliminating choice is enslavement.
I recently rented a 2025 GMC Sierra for a camping trip. After I picked up the truck and took it home I loaded all of our camping gear and attempted to start the truck. The big computer screen that used to be a dash board, flashed the words "updating, unable to start until update is complete." It took 20 minutes for the update to complete at which time I was able to start the vehicle and go on my way. Funny. I didn't ask for the update to the vehicle. The update and information came from somewhere at the direction of someone and it completely disabled my ability to use that vehicle.
This is the kind of trouble that awaits us due to our dependence upon technology. If General Motors wanted to, they could disable that truck completely and totally remove my ability to go anywhere. This is absolutely terrifying to me and I wish these manufacturers would just stop with the technology.
The ironic part is we don't really need this kind of technology. Does it really improve our lives?
I have a cherry 1968 Camaro that is completely mechanical. No computer electronics anywhere on the car. When all these computerized monstrosities like that 2025 GMC Sierra are disabled for whatever reasons, my Camaro will still be chugging down the road (assuming I can afford the fuel at that time).
This stuff is not good. Not good at all. We don't need it. Not in the slightest.
And what if you were out of phone range and urgently needed to take your pregnant wife in labor to the hospital, or an elderly relative with chest pain? Keep the Camaro! Plus it is way cooler to have a muscle car that can't be neutered by technology.
Last night the circuit board on my chest freezer went out so after unsuccessfully trying to reboot it, I spent a couple sweaty hours in the garage relocating items to my other freezer and today making the world's largest meatloaf and some terriyaki chicken because those didn't fit. Why does a cheap freezer need a circuit board? Why can't it just have a cooler thing and knobs to adjust the temp?
A very good point. An adverse interview with a “bozo” AI would be entrenched in the NSA, forever, damning you for all further interviews. I do not believe the effect of AI on privacy has been ascertained.
BTW, how about the NSA, how are they going to store all the data from AI? Are the data centers being built tools for federal surveillance? AI reminds me of a child growing up. As the child programs its mind, more and more storage is required. What is a mature AI going to look like?
"Are the data centers being built tools for federal surveillance?" ~ JohnAZ
JAZ - Of course. That's exactly what they are for. Of all the investment hype about Data Centers, how many people have asked that question? They deserve the prison they are funding for themselves. Insanity and stupidity reign.
Could be the Data Centers are needed to store all the information from the FLOCK cameras, facial recognition cameras, Ring Door Bells and ATM's. Yikes...
And the ongoing data tracking that has been going on for decades. I have a friend who installs car wash equipment, very specialized equipment, hydraulics, plumbing, electrical, conveyors, etc.
A very lucrative, niche business because it requires vast mechanical experience and knowledge and specialized tools. He has and does most installations, coast to coast for many years and drives to projects trailering his specialty tools.
Leaving South Florida for a job in California, he stayed at a hotel in the Florida Panhandle the first night, ate breakfast in Alabama, and stayed the following night in Texas. He used his company credit card for all transactions, to track his business expenses. On day three, he went to fuel up in Arizona, and his credit card was declined - cut off for possible fraudulent use.
This was 30 years ago. How could these specific transactions out of hundreds of millions a day, be sorted and analyzed as to time, use and geographic movement? The technology has been around for a long time.
The Data Centers will track the day, time, items purchased, in billions of transactions a day - 330 million people @ 3 transactions per day and you're already there.
Pair that with CBDC, and all will be known. Cash businesses will be gone. Time to short car washes and strip joints ;-)
Every move that you make.
BTW, the first AI reaction by the politicos looks like the Left is coming out against the data centers. I am confounded here, I do not agree with the Trumpian high techers at all. AI is a disaster ready to unfold.
He imagines some kind of distinction between the Federal Government and the Banks and Corporations. "Private" is good!
Private and unincorporated is so European. The big box concept is slowly dying in the USA as the up-coming smaller companies are clobbering big business. Good example is a young man who started with a better way of doing things about thirty years ago and left a trail behind.
X.com leading to GPS and Maps.
Pay.pal
Tesla and most of the credit for solar and battery improvements. His work in EVs has set the standard for the industry.
SpaceX putting NASA and Boeing to shame.
Glenn Greenwald - who staunchly defended Snowden from the get-go - has succinctly stated that the surveillance state is a multi-pronged collaboration between silicon valley, the MIC, and the neocons.
On the other hand, I have always found it curious that as the US was attempting to find and detain Snowden as he fled the country, that Greenwald was not only able to locate him, but sit down for an interview with him in Hong Kong. Ever since then, I have not trusted Greenwald.
Yes, people trust him more than they do our infiltrated Federal Government. How weird is that, right?
You asked, "What is a mature AI going to look like?"
I think Orwell summed it up for you:
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”
Or, instead of Orwell, it could be more akin to Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons
Good call.
Read that one about 66, 67 years ago.
Kornbluth was prescient!
Skynet from Terminator or Hal from 2001.
Ahhhh. The JHK with literary panache! "...now marshaling into an insectile host of predatory Marxists."
Bravo, Sir.
That whole paragraph is golden.
I was picking cherries at the gilded fruit bar.
Putting those cherries in an expertly crafted manhattan one hopes!
Wait, what? I wanna go!
There are moments when a civilization reveals its exhaustion not through defeat, but through its inability to distinguish strength from sickness, truth from fashion, creation from resentment.
What you describe is less a political realignment than a struggle over values themselves. The old institutions stagger on, repeating formulas in which more than a few of their own believers no longer believe, while new forces gather beneath them.
Meanwhile, the decent men and women who work, produce, raise families, build businesses, obey the law, and ask little more than to be left in peace are discovering that even patience has its limits. For years they have watched their prosperity, customs, security, and ordinary standards of life treated not as achievements worth defending, but as things to be taxed, dismantled, mocked, or morally condemned. Exhaustion eventually hardens into resistance.
A culture that has lost confidence in its own standards eventually calls decadence compassion, weakness virtue, and resentment justice. As the preamble to your essay states, it cannot be argued back to health. It must recover the courage to judge, to choose, and above all to create.
The decisive question, then, is not which party survives. It is whether those who still build, work, produce, and preserve have enough vitality left to rise, reject the forces that would diminish them, and drive those forces from political and cultural power.
A civilization survives when its creators finally refuse to apologize to its destroyers.
“when a civilization reveals its exhaustion not through defeat”
This civilization have been invaded by dissidents that are destroying it from within. It is more than inability, it is being destroyed by outsiders. As we have a federal government that thinks it is above the interests of the states and their people, the globalists do the same with nations around the world.
One wonders if certain states within our Union may ultimately decide to act unilaterally on a host of issues should things reach a breaking point. Am not advocating for this, but sometimes events take on their own momentum. The insane and satanic left believes that our system of government is tantamount to a buffet, where one can select or reject what is on the menu (see their stance on immigration law as well as ICE, among many other things). If I had known that this was a legitimate course of action for a state or city (or the Federal government, for that matter), then I would have declared by income to be subject to "sanctuary" from taxation long ago. Funny how that works, isn't it?
First , compliments on your writings style . That out of the way , I think you are referring to nullification as a response to taxation without representation . The deal was that we funded the government and in turn the government was supposed to represent our interests . That aint happenin .
Oh those Dems. Their answer to income inequality is to make everyone poor.
Except themselves. In the USSR, everyone was poor, unless you were the 2% inside the Communist Party.
Communists:
1. Fellow travelers
2. Commissars
3. Useful idiots
'destroying it from within'
for most of my life I've been hearing this country would be destroyed from within
those 'outsiders' you note are being allowed entry to the Republic and made to be 'insiders'. They gather many of the real citizens (insiders) into their group, and soon, after a few decades, the cracks become gaping holes as the structure (the Republic) crumbles from internal weakness.
I do think it can be stopped, it just will be a terrible mess along the way.
Part of Rome’s downfall was the inclusion of immigration.
I remember that the Quran makes it a Muslim’s business to convert everyone to Islam. Look around, it is happening here.
+100
And when the creators are no longer subject to the tyranny of the created. Our government, the created, can do things that we the people, the creators, cannot do. This cannot continue. Until the people figure this out, nothing is going to change.
I was hiking through a forest over the weekend when I made a rather disturbing discovery: some trees are taller than others.
At first I assumed this was merely an oversight on the part of Nature. But the longer I walked, the more appalling the inequalities became. Some trees possessed considerable girth, while others were positively slender. Certain poplars stood straight as arrows, whereas nearby elms leaned at angles that suggested either moral uncertainty or inadequate supervision.
The injustice was everywhere.
Beside a stream stood an enormous old oak, broad of trunk and magnificently crowned, enjoying every advantage of sunlight, water, and position. Not fifty yards away, beneath the oppressive shade of its neighbors, a pine of approximately the same age had been reduced to a miserable, stunted thing.
One could hardly imagine a more glaring example of unequal outcomes.
Why should the oak be permitted such extravagant growth merely because its roots happened to find water? Why should the poplar enjoy vertical privilege while the elm is condemned to crookedness? And what possible justification can there be for one tree possessing thirty branches while another struggles along with twelve?
Clearly, something must be done.
We cannot continue allowing the forest to perpetuate such arbitrary disparities under the sentimental pretext of “nature.” Nature, after all, has never demonstrated the slightest commitment to fairness. It distributes sunlight unevenly, rains without regard to need, and permits the strong to spread their branches wherever they please.
Fortunately, mankind possesses what Nature conspicuously lacks: policy.
The solution is obvious. The saw must be applied.
Every tree shall henceforth be reduced to the same height, regulated to the same trunk circumference, and permitted precisely the same number of branches. Roots will be monitored for excessive acquisition of nutrients. Trees receiving disproportionate sunlight will surrender a portion of their canopy. Particularly vigorous specimens may require periodic pruning in the interests of forest cohesion.
There will, naturally, be some complaints from the oaks.
But privilege so often mistakes itself for achievement.
When the work is finished, no tree shall tower above another, no trunk shall boast an indecent superiority of girth, and no branch shall reach farther toward the sun than its neighbor’s allotted share.
It may no longer resemble a forest.
But at last it will be fair.
Ah, introducing ‘equity’ to nature….or at least to the forest. Surely this will be more difficult to introduce to the animal kingdom…..:)
"From each according to his ability to each according to his needs." This never will work, as it is against basic human nature.
Good, you're noticing things. The Market is the Law of the Jungle. The apex predators cooperate in taking down everybody else. They seek to convince everyone else of the justice of the Market and the need for individualism, while they eschew both privately.
"What you describe is less a political realignment than a struggle over values themselves."
Values? Values are nothing more than fleeting talking points to demonstrate you have some foundation, but as I say, they are fleeting and change easily. Let's talk principals. Principals are the foundation of a civilized society and values without principals are built on a bed of shifting sand. What's missing is the principals that once guided us and have been shredded under the weight of un-enlightened self-interest.
Mores - principles
Folkways - values
The common culture of any population are set in mores and folkways. The USA has lost its common culture. It seems people think that the US can be infinitely diverse, whatever comes, goes. It is on its last legs. What holds it together?
I see the dog days are also being used to describe these August days. Just like the “horse latitudes” in the oceans, which I remember studying in seventh or eighth grade. The “bloated horses” is the symbol for the recessed senators and the inactive Congress, except for the ‘pro forma’ sessions intended to prevent presidential appointments. About JHK’s positivity towards the ME, it’s going to happen because Trump does what he says.
Yes, the Grand Jury in Miami will shock every institution when justice and truth are revealed. That, I believe. And the other part of the decapitation of which Trump spoke is the destruction of the City of London, the banking system with its hold on Iran as in Professor David Clements’ recent stack, Ascension, when he writes about this proscribed event and quotes President Trump.
“Because Trump does what he says”.
Think about the converse statement, the Deep State hates Trump because they believe they are not supposed to do anything. They flip flop like a fish, all aimed at never taking a stance on anything.
Think about the ballroom, mostly paid by patrons. Trump saw a weakness, the security difficulty of official events in DC. He will not benefit from the “new fortress” but future presidents and state visitors will. So the Deep State gets in his way as much as they can. He was smart, tearing down the East, I believe, wing, anticipating the ballroom build. So what are the idiots going to do? One idiot stated that if a Dem got into the presidency, they would tear down what Trump built and replace it. Such Deep State thinking. Insanity.
Indeed, it is private funding for most of it so by the Constitution he does not need Congress’ approval for funding. They want a little tweak to increase the security capability and that does require Congressional approval. It will be built.
Heard that the board of governors told the folks to put Trump’s name back on the Kennedy Center for the priority he has put on upgrading it.
Yes, I heard that, too.
The crown wants its colonies back. The brits never got over the original 13 telling old George to go pound sand.
It’s good to see both parties recognized today as The Problem. They have been enabled for far too long in their Good Cop/Bad Cop routine by millions of credulous Americans of both persuasions who can’t let go of the delusion that their team is the Good Guys. Granted, Democratic psychosis seems more disturbing at this juncture than good old Republican avarice, but neither team has what it will take to save our nation.
The most effective propaganda apparatus in history continues to prevent most Americans from understanding that we have lost the Iran War, but that stark fact will be undeniable in a few more weeks when our Strategic Petroleum Reserve runs out, airlines can’t fly for want of jet fuel, trucking grinds to a halt without diesel, and lemming Wall Street speculators finally face the fact that they’ve bid the Dow up to several times the value of the hollowed-out economy that it supposedly represents.
The epic realignment suggested in today’s post is indeed taking place, but there will be no place in it for the US of A. Being driven out of West Asia will be a harsh lesson for our failing empire. Plenty of nut jobs in Washington will want to push the Big Red Button out of spite, but we will all have no choice but to learn how to build a future for ourselves, while minding our own damned business.
No place for the USA in it, Skillington?
Bombastically wrong, as usual.
Reality does not require your recognition. Your view of this five day war has been delusional from the start. Soon the facts on the ground will be undeniable.
As we remember with our host the good old days in June 2025. It was all so predictable then:
“There’s also the usual talk about Iran shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20-percent of the world’s oil supply passes — and much of that (up to 45-percent) goes directly to China, which does not have enough of its own oil to function. So, blocking Hormuz would mainly harm Iran’s fellow BRICs nations in Asia while it would deprive Iran of the oil revenue that represents most of its national income. In other words, a really stupid play.
Otherwise, the Trump government looks to exit its role in the Iran-Israeli war. The chief aim has been accomplished. No nukes. Iran’s usual henchmen, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, are standing down for the moment, probably perceiving that Iran can no longer support, supply, or protect them. Israel is managing to do what it did in two earlier wars (despite doomish predications): prevail against its enemy. And rather quickly, too. Wouldn’t it be amazing if the Middle East happened to become a little peaceful for a while?”
Got one thing right. The Trump government is looking for a way out.
Yep. And that post was clairvoyant, compared with his predictions made since February 28.
Every time Trump tells us the war will only take about five days, or that it's now over, or that a settlement is very near, or that Iran is out of missiles while we have plenty left, or that we control the Strait of Hormuz, he seems to buy it, and expects us to.
And, of course, all of his dittoheads nod their empty heads in agreement.
Well guys, good job of talking up the global press’ bullshit. I will wait for the end result before making my opinion. Don’t you realize that all the Iranians are doing is delaying things in anticipation of the media statement that the midterms are going to emasculate Trump? I disagree with how Trump is running this war, up down up down. I was happy when the blew away the Ayatollah and his staff but the hesitancy since just encourages them to hang on. Back and forth since February trying to reason with insane people. Will we ever learn to win wars?
Straw Man argument.
What was talked about was JHK’s post from June.
Frankly, great prose aside, I’m unaware of any global media particularly interested in Kunstler’s opinions.
And your own response here is a mishmash. You disagree with how Trump is running this war ”up and down” but what? You think we are winning it and Trump is right?
Trump has contradicted himself over and over since starting this war. His latest, telling us our sailors haven’t been deployed long enough and we will own the Strait is manic raving. And you think the Iranians are insane.
This is nothing new for the US - just another unjustified violation of a sovereign nation, and another ignominious defeat.
Thanx for that....
FWIW "...Strategic Petroleum Reserve runs out, airlines can’t fly for want of jet fuel, trucking grinds to a halt without diesel..." The SPR is a book-keeping practice that sets the floor for inventories. Yes, there are storage tanks associated with it, but oil comes in many shades and not all of the SPR (if any) is refinable into specialty gardes such as diesel, jet fuel, etc.. "Releasing" it merely allows more supply into the aggregate market.
I do not recall your narrative claiming the same when it was drawn down a few years ago as a stopgap to the inflation spike....
Oh Mohammed, you're so funny!
May I suggest that you take a moment to look at Promethean Action on Youtube? What is currently happening globally is far different than what you are seeing.
You have sources you apparently trust. I have mine. We will see.
Save yourself a lot of bandwidth. His source is a Lyndon LaRouche spawned conspiracy theory group that has more twisted knots than Jesuit casuistry.
The very thought that Trump has a “plan” and it’s all working perfectly is all you need to know.
I have given you the name of one source that I trust. So, let’s have one of yours….????
Their "source" is the Koran. They're Muslim agitators.
What’s laughable is that all those defending Islamic radicals here are also considered infidels. Chickens defending the fox that would kill them.
"Iran War"??? Try WEFI (World Economic Forum Instigations). Why do you think Lloyds of London stepped onto the stage?...because they want to mess with fuel and people as they sit in their "bankers' suits & polished shoes."
Lloyds insures very expensive tanker ships that are easily sunk. Capiche?
Lloyds is part of the tentacles of Britain that have orchestrated chaos globally for centuries.
Absolutely. The City of London is part of the US/Israel//UK Axis of Evil.
Trump is destroying the City of London hold on global activity and economics. FFS, will you take a look at Promethean Action?
Trump has had some success in that direction, which is laudable. He will no longer be president in a couple of years,. There will still be a City of London.
Short selling is only 1/2 the arbitrage.
The Iran war has minimal influence on American petroleum supplies as, from what I have read, only 7% of America's crude oil supplies come from the middle east. If this is true, I don't see why the USA's strategic petroleum reserve would be tapped. The truth is, the petroleum companies are making record profits in the tens of billions of dollars for a product that is costing Americans nearly double to buy but costs big oil the same to refine.
Correct me if I am wrong. I welcome it.
You are not wrong, but world petroleum supply is a zero sum game. Less supply anywhere raise prices everywhere. Not to mention urea, helium, etc.
The US exports and imports crude oil. The heavier oil from the Middle East is used to make diesel and jet fuel which are essential to a healthy economy and a functioning military. Refineries can be built to manufacture diesel and jet fuel from lighter US crude but they aren't as efficient and, like US missile defenses, they can't be built overnight. The US strategic petroleum reserve is not only depleted but has been drawn down to such an extent that the salt caverns either have partially collapsed or are in danger of collapsing, permanently damaging them.
Finally: an informed opinion. Thank-you.
We probably have similar information sources. I finally realized during COVID that people believe what we believe based on the information we consume. Propaganda works. Imagine that. The value of places like Substack is that we can discuss and share ideas. Free societies rely upon the free exchange of information and ideas. Like many other founding principles of the United States, free speech is currently being suppressed. We the People have been filtered into camps and each is fed their own flavor of polarizing propaganda to keep us at each other's throats so we don't notice what is being done to us.
Thoughtfully expressed.
And, of course, the ultimate accomplishment of America's propaganda apparatus is that the brainwashed are convinced that there is no propaganda.
I agree that places like Substack offer the possibility of meaningful communication, but most are bad or false information.
Take here, for instance. Jim used to be an invaluable source of information regarding collapse. Now he alternates between fatuous false hope about our system correcting itself and utter bullshit regarding the Iran War.
The Fall of the American Empire is new to us but the themes should be familiar because they're common to human power structures. Mark Twain observed that it's easier to fool someone than it is to convince him that he's been fooled, and that's no less true today. Propaganda tends to be self reinforcing. I tend to think of people being herded into our disparate camps but it's probably more true to say that we chose our own tribal associations with relatively little encouragement by those who seek to be our masters and benefit from our squabbling.
Twain also said that people who don't read the newspapers are uninformed but people who do read the newspapers are misinformed. The mainstream sources of information are all spewing regime propaganda, and they're trying their best to control the internet as well but pockets of the internet are resisting their control. Just as good money displaces bad money, free speech is preferable to propaganda.
Humans are tribal and that entails defending the tribe. At this point, our tribal nature is mostly working against us. We need to be aware of our darker natures. We need to reject propaganda and insist on observable facts. We need to reject the innate human Obedience To Authority (see Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo for details). We need to focus on facts and trying to educate each other and ourselves when it's our nature to dig in our heels and lob spears at the other tribes. I try to focus on seeking the truth rather than defending a position. That's likely a benefit of my scientific nature and training.
Amen to that Liberty. I grow so frustrated when people come on these threads and hurl insults at you because you have an opinion that differs or you ask questions instead of blindly accepting what is being told.
You taught me something today about jet fuel. Didn't know that before. This is why I frequent these blogs.
All my best,
CP
Let us no longer be polite about "mental illness" problems and separation. These are decades long marxist power plays coming to fruition. Check out Christopher Rufo.
“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Link, please.
Best thing I've read in a year. Thank you.
Look at John Beukemann's art on Facebook, please.
Good stuff.
All fine & dandy, but if Trump doesn’t begin accountability, I don’t see how the game continues past the mids.
We have an immigration law; we have a scotus holding (v. AZ) that immigration is purely federal. Transporting, hiding, etc., of an illegal is a felony. So why aren’t ALL “sanctuary” governors, mayors, city councils, and Mayorkas being charged with felonies? As with Hillary, Brennan, Clapper, Biden, Obama, Wray, McCabe … a two-tier justice system .. isn’t. If they are free, we are not.
All maddening indeed. We would likely need the police and the military to enforce real justice on the treasonous actors, leading to an all out civil war in the streets. Trump won't do this for obvious reasons. Former DNI director Tulsi Gabbard recently identified clearly illegal government activities over the past decade by the dems, but few citizens notice or even care. They're too busy with their everyday lives to pay much attention. And many in the GOP leadership obstruct the effort to bring legal charges.
That said, we do need to move on a few of the criminals to rebuild faith in our system of rules. I do believe we'll see something soon. Hopefully more than what they did with James "Seashell" Comey.
You had me at AOC...has "some skill at middle-school girl games." Good one. Thanks for the laugh.
It is amazing how many adults never matured past their middle school years!
That talking turd Thune, the "Marlboro Man," apparently would rather have a proto-socialist government elected than help Trump get anything done, despite almost all of Trump's goals being the stated goals of the Republican Party for decades. The same sort if thing happened to Reagan, just not as blantantly. Kinda makes you realize the Establishment never really meant a damn thing they ever said.
Exactly right about what Trump is doing economically. He was doing exactly the same things 2018_2020 when you had the highest purchasing power of your lives. Then he was kicked out when they used bioweapons(really just a flu) against us.
One of your best. Time of revelation. People and things are being exposed for who and what they really are. GOD is fulfilling HIS promises of exposing things done in the dark to the light which is truth. Let HIM do HIS works. Trust GOD. Believe HIM.
Why are the Transnational gangsters allowed to operate in this country?'
How do they benefit our society?
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
— George Orwell, 1984
Lol I had a commenter here on these threads who's spent the last 4 or 5 days doing just that . I finally told him to GF himself , I was immune to his Jedi mind tricks .
So why are Transnational gangsters allowed to operate in this country?
I was replying to the Orwell quote , Jeff the Un -Original wanted me to disregard what I saw and heard with my own eyes and ears in favor of his narrative / hence the Jedi mind trick reference " These are not the droids you are looking for "?
No no no, it's how society benefits them!
You asked, "How do they benefit our society?"
Depends how you define "society", doesn't it?
If, for example, you use the Edwardian/early Victorian definition, as "our betters", "the gentry", "Society" means one thing. It meant something similar in the glory years of the 1920's pre-depression era.
Today, of course, the term is often used more inclusively.
But, power has always, and probably will always, co-exist in an unholy alliance with the "transnational gangsters" of the day.
People love to talk about ideology in terms of politics, but--first and foremost--any political ideology is actually an economic ideology. Why? Because all political ideology revolves around how what is produced in an economy and how it is owned, controlled, and distributed.
Free market capitalists believe that the means of production should be held privately by individuals and corporations not owned by the government, with the minimum amount of government control exercised over all private property owners.
Then there are the Socialists. Socialists can be divided into two basic camps with only one defining difference between them. The Fascist/Socialists believe that the means of production should be fully controlled by a powerful central government, with private property owners only allowed to exist so long as they fully comply with the edicts of the Socialist regime. Communist/Socialists differ from Fascist/Socialists only to the extent that Communist Socialists believe that private property rights should not exist at all, and all property should be owned "communally" by the Socialist regime. Both regimes, particularly in their ascent to power, are persecutory to groups (opposing political parties, religions, ethnicity, holders of wealth) that they feel are a threat to the Socialist regime. Such groups facing such persecution (including extermination) were Jews in Nazi Germany, non-Russian ethnicities in the Soviet Union, non-Chinese ethnicities in Communist China, and--lately--whites, political conservatives, Christians and Jews in the United States.
So, understanding all of that, it becomes easy to fathom the internal fight ongoing in the Democrat Party of 2026--the "old-guard" Democrat faction are now the Fascist/Socialists and the younger "far left" faction are the Communist/Socialists. The question for 2026 is whether or not the Fascist/Socialists and the Communist/Socialists will unite just long enough to take control of the Congress and the Senate away from the conservative and moderate Republicans and independents. There is a historical precedent for that, and author Ayn Rand wrote about it:
"It is a matter of record that in the German Election of 1933, the Communist Party was ordered by its leaders to vote for the Nazis - with the explanation that they could later fight the Nazis for power, but first they had to help destroy their common enemy: capitalism and its parliamentary form of government." -Ayn Rand
The most important and ignored fact is that any form of Socialism requires a central government strong enough to fully override individual rights at its pleasure. As such, a necessary outcome of the adoption of Socialism in the United States would be the de facto abolition of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, a policy now being openly espoused among many American Socialists.
Very well said , what needs put to a referendum then would be The Constitution itself because in my opinion using the government for the purpose of instituting any form of socialism is anathema to it . A Convention Of The Sates has long been part of the discussion as a possibility to resolve this issue I suppose . I don't like but at least we can make the argument that what these collectivists are asking for and actually have already gone a long way in implementing is actually a wholesale nullification of the US Constitution IMO . Of course there are eminent domain issues paired with the greater good ( the general welfare ) arguments to be made ,where 'if 'we had sane interlocutors we might be able to find some sweet spot middle ground to compromise on . But " if " is not "is " and seeing as how these commies are loony we cant find that middle ground , and giving an inch is just business as usual for the last 100 years .Miles are made up of inches , give an inch here ,give and inch there ,pretty soon yer talkin bout feet , then yds then ........
I brought up eminent domain because although it may seem unrelated its not really . There can be cases where property rights should not be sacrosanct . Think of the interstate highway system as supply roots for the military to potentially be logistically supported by in the case of a theoretical hostile foreign military invasion of the continental US as an example of a legitimate invocation of eminent domain in promoting the general welfare . One mans home or a hundred mens homes for that matter ,cannot stand in the way of the creation of that essential supply line in such a case so that even in a sane nation property rights are not absolute . But of course all of this type of thinking requires a level of wisdom that our age is in serious short supply of . Besides ,they already manufacture fake crisis for the purpose of justifying the abrogation of our constitutional rights so who;s gonna trust the boy who has already disengeniously cried wolf a million times only in order to cynically steal more power away from the citizen . We really are so screwed , never mind .
Trust the plan, eh?
Where have I heard that before?