The danger is not that communism has returned wearing an old uniform, but that many of us - far too many - have forgotten the moral conditions that once made its promises recognizable as lies. A society begins to decay when envy is renamed justice, coercion compassion, hatred virtue, and violence merely the understandable language of the aggrieved. By then the political program is almost secondary. The real conquest has already occurred within the conscience, where men learn to excuse evil so long as it is committed against those they have first been taught to despise. No free society can survive indefinitely once truth itself becomes subordinate to grievance.
The answer for citizens of a constitutional republic is neither hysteria nor vengeance, but courage: to speak plainly when language is corrupted, to defend the rule of law even when it restrains our own side, to insist upon equal rights rather than favored classes, and to refuse participation in lies however fashionable they become. Liberty is not preserved by institutions alone. It survives only while free people possess the character to defend those institutions, the discipline to govern themselves, and the courage to say no when power demands that they say yes.
Here's what I don't understand, Thomas. Our host said, "Work is scarce and it’s nearly impossible to make a living at it, that is, pay for food and a roof over your head"
I don't necessarily disagree with our host but in my community I see evidence to the contrary. In my town out here in the burning heat soaked waterless American west, it seems like people have plenty of money to live comfortably. Everyone is driving around a new RAM or Ford truck pulling a fifth wheel. I see people constantly driving around my suburban neighborhood in lifted golf carts with cool mag wheels or in side by side UTVs. They are all walking around staring at $1200 I-phones with fancy data plans. At church the pews are empty because everyone is on their summer vacations before the school year starts, usually Disney World or Hawaii. They all drive newer cars than mine, many of them fancy Jeeps, Tahoes, Porsches and Corvettes. Many people sell their modest homes in my neighborhood and move 1/4 of a mile to another subdivision to buy a house that is bigger and fancier and costs a hell of a lot more in property taxes and heating and cooling than the little 2000 square foot shanty they weren't happy with.
Yeah, I know. They are all buried in debt, up to their foreheads. I get it. But here's the part I don't understand. How do they manage to make the monthly payments? They can't all be living on trust funds or parents inheritances. They have to have a job that produces some kind of income so they can pay the interest on all of their debt and loans.
If a new subdivision pops up with $500,000.00 lots (not including the price of the new home to be built) the lots are gobbled up and sold within weeks of opening.
I go to the gym every day for 1 hour on my lunch break. It's right across the street. The gym is packed with young men and women who, apparently, aren't working. When do they work? Where do they work? Do they work at all? When I have a day off on Tuesday, which has historically been a standard work day, the streets and stores are clogged with automobiles and shoppers, respectively, who are apparently NOT AT WORK. Doesn't any body work anymore? How are they surviving? They can't all be trust fund babies.
I would love to read an article written by our gracious host that describes how in the hell people are making enough money to fund the debt ridden lifestyles they are living and get his eloquent take on it. Food for thought Mr. Kunstler.
I understand the question you are asking, and I do not doubt what you are seeing. I would only be cautious about drawing a broader conclusion from it. America is an enormous and extraordinarily uneven country, and prosperity can be concentrated in remarkably small geographic pockets. I live in a very prosperous area myself that sounds an awful lot like yours. Even my community is eclipsed by adjacent areas of extraordinary wealth that make my town look like Hooverville. If my town and its adjacent communities were my only window onto the country, I might reach much the same conclusion you have.
But I also spend considerable time far upstate in New York, well north of Albany, in communities where the picture could hardly be more different. Double-wide trailers, old pickup trucks and modest incomes are the norm. These are hardworking, blue-collar people whose leisure might consist of a Saturday fishing on Lake Champlain (after their shift has ended) or taking the family to a local hamburger and ice cream stand for their weekly "big outing," not flying to Hawaii or spending a week at Disney World. They are no less representative of America than the people buying $500,000 building lots in your community, and there are vast stretches of this country that look much more like the former than the latter.
So I think the difficulty lies in extrapolating from what is immediately visible around us. A prosperous suburb can be an oasis of wealth and consumption surrounded by a much larger economic landscape that bears little resemblance to it. Travel a few hundred miles beyond such enclaves, particularly through rural America, Appalachia, the rustbelt or parts of the Northeast, and Kunstler's observation becomes considerably easier to understand. The interesting question may therefore be not “How can everyone afford this?” but “Which America are we looking at?”
There are different pockets of wealth across the U.S. for sure, but the things I see in my midwestern affluent suburb are:
- boomers have plenty of money, riding Harleys or driving convertibles around on Sundays, live in big houses
- Genx and Millinneals - a mixed bag of wealth, about half and half good/bad
- Genz - hating life - a handful working in white collar or skilled blue collar, most on the dole or rearranging carts at Walmart for $15 an hour
The biggest difference I've noticed now from my youth, especially post Covid, are the streets being empty after 8 PM. When Walmart closes at 11 PM, there is no shopping left, and just a couple of 1 AM bars are open for entertainment. It used to be busy from 5 AM (farmer types) to midnight, and plenty of traffic except when a blizzard hit. Now it's like stepping into an episode of the twilight zone, err, at twilight.
The bottom line to me is that between theft, grift, sick care and other rackets, the vulnerable have been fleeced and their pockets are empty. When you have nothing left to lose, extreme desperation sets in and things go sideways in a hurry. I imagine many of the younger "socialists" in this country are driven by the feeling "they're sticking it to the Man", making up for their own victimization.
Interesting perspectives. One of the things I didn't point out in my rant is that most of the people I see in my descriptions are people who are younger than me. I am solid Gen X. I often tell my wife when I see some young dude driving down the road in a $90,000 Chevy Silverado pulling a $120,000 fifth wheel with a $15,000 toy hauler full of $50,000 worth of UTVs that when God was handing out money smarts, I was off fishing or not paying attention.
You and me both. I did all that I was told to do...get a college degree, get a white-collar desk job with a good company. Stay out of trouble. Live modestly (within ones means) and save money for a rainy day and/or retirement. Don't accumulate debt, etc. Somehow, I never got the memo that I could have been living a life of pampered comfort and consumer excess. I don't get it, and probably never will.
Ditto that. A lot of people how figured out to game the current system and game it well. My only real prized possession is a gorgeous fully restored 1968 Chevrolet Camaro RS that took me 20 years of saving before I had enough to buy it. I will never know how people can game the system and get away with it.
Try living on SS - nowhere close to COL - and maintaining a (23 yr. old) car (ANY repair can wreck my budget), dental (not covered by Medicare or anything else), and, God help us, the cost of food. Whatever $$ the national treasury is acquiring through tariffs are not helping the general public. What the sellers pay for product is being passed on to consumers, and my grocery bill has almost doubled in 5 years. And I'm 1 person. I don't know how a family of 4 is doing it. Most of you folks won't ever see SS! My saving grace: house & car paid for. Decent health at 82. (At least I have all my marbles!)
I have pondered this condition for some time. Yes many that have material possessions acquire these through debt. But debt alone cannot explain broadly the overwhelming extravagance shown many americans. I am retired but was an engineer in the nuclear power industry and earned a salary purportedly in the upper 15% for decades but can not afford the level of extravagance displayed across the country. Here in south florida, there are many gated communities with multi-million dollar homes and they are full. When a new development starts, homes are sold quickly and the private golf clubs reach maximum membership quickly, even when memberships are six figures and more just to join. So I must wonder if this in theory gets funded by grifting where gov contracts in the private sector fund people to this degree. It simply cannot be good investment practices.
Millennial here. One of the major characteristics of my generation is the willingness to take on stupid amounts of debt to keep up with the Joneses. Not to defend them, but they went into to debt to fund college, why shouldn't they keep doing it to maintain the lifestyle that their degree was supposed to give them?
We're the first generation that got pushed with the notion that we didn't need Home Ec (aka house keeping and budgeting skills) and look how this has turned out.
My take is that some of the younger folks who do have "toys" are getting the money from their Boomer parents. I know numerous peers of mine that pay their kids car loans, cell phone plans, rent and spot them the money for expensive vacations. Not sure if those parents are trying to avoid inheritance taxes, increase the use of retirement money before the economy blows apart, or if they maybe feel guilty of raising a kid that can't make a career/living in the manner in which was common 40 years ago. A guilt trip.
The math of the economics cannot avoid the eventual collapse. This one will be a doozy. Timing, of course, is the tricky part. It's closer today than it was in 2000 (.com bubble) and 2008 (GFC), and I think we're all in the blast zone. Except for some of those folks in East Africa maybe, or the Amazon jungle.
If you're wondering how people can live beyond their means look no further than beyond any govt body which can tax and bond. Taxing authority gives it unlimited spending power while bonding pushes the payback into some future time. To the man on the street this translates into credit card debt. I know both local people and elected officials in DC who live by thick notebooks of credit cards which are used to churn their personal debt so they can afford their extravagant lifestyles. Nowadays that is not an uncommon solution.
It is essentially an unlimited line of credit. Also a literal house of cards. Sound familiar?
Fantastic response. Much appreciated. You are most likely correct for a lot of these people. Your thoughts reflect what I was saying above that much of the money and spending power people are enjoying are coming from the wealthy boomers. Once this pool of wealth dries up there won't be any left. I surmise we'll see lot less big RAM trucks "rollin coal" down the freeway because these young men with big egos won't be able to afford them or fuel them anymore.
When oil prices spiked I was complaining to a friend of mine about how much it cost to fill a tank. He laughed and said that he doesn't buy gasoline. His boomer aged mother gave him a credit card and told him to use the card for all of his gasoline. He's 51 years old and still lets his Mommy buy his gas. I guess its the return on investments and she has to use the money. Something to do with taxes, if I recall.
Thomas, all your points are very valid and I acknowledge and appreciate you making them. I live in Utah which has developed a very high standard of living and income threshhold. In other words, one of the more wealthy states in the union. What I see here is certainly not reflective of elsewhere. I do, however, want to know how people afford all of the new and fancy shit they own.
I ask my husband about this here in our small city in E Texas. The 4 seat golf carts ( no golf course close) driven by teenagers. Electric bikes instead of those you pedal. But mostly the jacked up pickups with tires too large racing up and down the north/south corridor at fantastic speeds. We have the cheapest gas anywhere but seem also to have a large quantity of fools.
Just for shits and giggles, I priced one of those lifted golf carts with the fancy mag wheels and they were priced anywhere from $5,000 to $12,000. First of all, I don't know why anyone would need a lifted golf cart with big knobby tires but, hey, to each their own. Kids in my neighborhood don't ride Huffy BMX pedal bikes anymore, they take the golf cart to the gas station when they want a soda.
I looked into buying an E-bike until I saw the sticker price. $7,000! I recall once I was on a hike in the Utah Wasatch mountains near Bridal Veil Falls, a popular destination for not only hikers but bicyclists. Most of the people were zooming around on E-bikes. Perhaps many were renting them but I was geeking out that so many young people were able to afford such expensive and utterly unnecessary gadgets.
My view is that these people know what they are F**cked, so they're maxxing out their credit cards and line of credit because they know that there is no happy ending
I agree with you there's no way they can afford those $1000 a month payments on that truck and a 7% mortgage and 80K in student debt.
I was chatting recently with a lawyer who specializes in foreclosures
And here is another amazing thing: our veterans get crap medical care, and our young people can't afford a real life, but Somali's come here illegally and in a matter of months are driving brand new vans and living in big houses as they zoom from their Learing centers to their fake autism centers, raking in the cash. Without learning English and without leaving their mini-Mogadishu neighborhoods. At the mall their women are buying designer handbags, while ours are clutching a Wal-Mart knockoff filled with cut coupons.
Who is the appointed judge of too much money? Who gets the indictment and what is the ‘too much’ marker? I don’t like that kind of talk: it leads straight to Bernie with his three house and outspoken selective judgements about who gets judged.
Great question. Is $1 billion too much or not enough. $10 billion? $100 million?
I tell you this much, if you give me $10 million dollars you'll never see or hear from me again. I take that $10 million, deposit in a modest yield money market account of 5% annual return and I'm rolling in $500,00 per year of income. Even if conservative at 3% I'm rolling in $300,000 of annual income. I could easily live on $80,000 per year.
When strapped for entertainment I have occasionally tried to watch a Hallmark movie where they all live fantasy lives in million-dollar homes with pretend careers and plenty of time left over to pursue romance as their day job. I have never lasted more than 10 minutes of their fakery before giving up on Hallmark. I had assumed that those movies were making no effort to portray reality but it seems I could be wrong.
Here's the kicker, Lee Vail. In the State of Utah the median household income is somewhere around $74,000 per year. HOUSEHOLD. Not individual. I make far more than that and because I don't suscribe to debt (I have a hatred of paying interest) I can't afford these "toys" that people adorn themselves with.
As far as the gym mystery goes, many, including my daughter and husband, work remotely three days a week. They can juggle their hours around their two year old and it works out.
You might be right about some of them. I also acknowledge that some of them work grave yard shifts. But I seriously doubt that all of these able bodied tattoo ridden twenty somethings are online accountants or YouTube influencers.
I just find it odd that in the middle of a standard non-holiday work week that so many people are just NOT working.
Ha, I was at the Grand Canyon a couple of years ago and I was standing on an incredible vista enjoying the view. A posse of chinese women ventured over to where I was standing and one of the old women started yelling at me and using hand signals to get me to move. I looked at her. Smiled. Folded my arms and turned around to enjoy the view a bit longer. They moved on to another vista. I can't stand foreign tourists.
You are quite correct, although I have to say I have been taken by the eloquence of Thomas's proposal for cleansing the nation of lies, one lie at a time.
Even with $100,000 being the new lower middle class wage, you are right that all the high life (Disney World and massive personal trucks, heaven help us) cannot be subsidized by a mere $100,000 per year.
So where's the money coming from? Inquiring minds do indeed want to know, but nobody seems to be talking. Where are the "journalists"?
In Japan, apparently, there are multi-generational mortgages. Picture it. You are on your death bed and you tell your son his inheritance is the debt you piled up.
I think you must have missed the memo saying your area was selected to participate in a pilot program to see how well a Universal Basic Income program of $200k per adult per year will work out.
I wonder how many of them have boomer parents that have died and left them better off? Us boomers are a dying entity and many did quite well and usually it goes to the (not so young) “kids”.
I read once that the wealth boomers are leaving behind is being spent at an astronomical rate which means it won't be passed on to upcoming generations. Once the boomers have passed on, the wealth dries up and there goes the buying power of the next generations.
Our society started being infantilized decades ago, and it's just gotten worse with time. I believe it started with the WW2 generatikn and the people who grew up in the Depression and War years wanting to make sure their kids had it better than they did, so they were overprotective and coddled them. Later generations weren't as protective because they were self-absorbed, leading to kids who felt they don't matter even as they have more money and stuff, to the point they're suicidal because, as JHK has written, life has no meaning beyond the thrill of Narcan while overdosed and killing mobs in an MMORPG. Since they're used to getting everything for minimal effort, OF COURSE they want a communist takeover because they think it'll mean more stuff for less effort. Telling them different l3ads to blank stares and accusations that you're a fascist. We're fucked by our own kindness and concern.
Ah, yes, but vengeance and retribution for the mayhem and social disruption that these disillusioned cretins have caused would be oh so satisfying. We're in trouble, plain and simple.
Are we? See my response to Thomas. People still have plenty of money to spend on frivolous things and the acquisition of junk.
Just down the street from me is a house I call the parking lot. The home has a couple and 2 teenage boys. The father drives around a big 1 ton RAM. His two sons each drive around a 2024 or new RAM half ton. Nice trucks. He also has a jeep, two side by side UTVs, a few dirt bikes and his woman drives around in a new Audi SUV.
This is the norm here in Utah. People still have money and they are managing to earn enough to pay the interest on their loans.
It means willingness to fight, kill and die for those institutions and beliefs. The unwillingness to do so is what allows the Leftist scum to proliferate.
Sidebar- How do you get the people willing to fight for liberty, freedom of choice when the never know what that means?
Capitalism must expand or die. That's what WW1 and 2 were about. It is what WW3 is about as well. Thus Capitalism is immoral in its ultimate form and only moral in its early and middle forms when guided by true religion.
As a follower of JHK’s TLE, I agree with your statement about capitalism needing expansion. One of JHK’s tenets is that the limitations of resources will make expansion stop. Then what? Watch the water situation on the Colorado, Rio Grande, Columbia, Rhine and Danube rivers to get an idea of what resource limitation is going to do in the future, with water then oil.
BTW,if free markets prevailed, resource limitations would be handled naturally, with alternatives becoming profitable and idiotic resource utilization curtailing under price pressure. Phoenix and So Cal are about to figure out how much scarce water costs. People will leave, balancing the books.
I was reading last night that the hunger stones are again visible on banks of rivers in Europe. For people who haven't heard: those are stones placed there in times of drought, warning of the impending famine. Voices from our past telling us: when the water is this low, crops will fail and starvation is coming.
Yes, Capitalism teaches that the Earth is infinite, just part of its idiocy. The Elite will have gasoline, because they'll be able to afford it. Everyone else? No.
That is an extraordinary amount of historical and moral certainty packed into a few sentences. To say that capitalism caused two world wars, and will cause a third that has not yet occurred, requires rather more than assertion. Both world wars had identifiable political, ideological, nationalist and military causes that cannot simply be collapsed into an economic system.
Nor is it clear why capitalism “must expand or die,” or by what standard its mature form becomes inherently immoral. Those may be arguments worth making, but they have to be made. As written, the conclusions arrive without the reasoning that would justify them.
You can get your answers by reading Anthony Sutton's trio of books on this subject.
1. Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution
2. Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler and the Nazi's
3. Wall Street and FDR
These books are not long, and well researched and documented. They are very interesting.
As for the capitalism Lugh suggests must expand or die I think he is noting how well it works until the greedy want more and then you get predator capitalism of the sort we can attribute to the Epstein predator class wreaking havoc on our lives today and it's changing face today is Trump, last time it was Biden, then Obama, Bush and on and on.
Absolutely correct. Where do those predators congregate to forward their agenda? Washington DC. Government begets corruption, corruption begets corporate formation in defense, corporations destroy the entropy of capitalism, corporations destroy the marketplace with the help of government, and on and on.
Want real capitalism? Control corporations and government.
"Want real capitalism? Control corporations and government."
There's that, John but you have to reduce political donations, eliminate the tax exempt status of NGO's and the vast majority political activism masquerading as non-profits and lobbying groups. They do not work for the greater good, they work for targeted political action committees. The wealthy use the notion of philanthropy for political activism while getting massive tax breaks. True philanthropy is a myth.
Agree until you count Bush, not a predator on his Texas ranch with his paint palette. Trump is an embarrassment: Palantir/ the fascist Peter Theil and his pet, Vance not to mention yet another new scandal concerning his crypto and money laundering.
I wouldn't count Bush as a part of the Epstein class, but make no mistake his family are elite predators. Yes, Trump has become an embarrassment. He's cornered and waging an ill fated war on a nation we should have become friends with instead of the Saudi's. I stopped believing the propaganda that demonizes Iran while defending nations who take our generosity and support for granted while taking any opportunity to stab us in the back. Peter Theil and Palantir are predators. I have no time for Vance.
Keep counting evil folks. Part of my cynicism is based on the fact that politicians are inherently evil, that their progression goes above any form of morality. I keep getting proved correct.
How do you tell a politician is lying? His or her mouth is moving.
The argument it seems to me would have to be predicated upon the assumption of the motivation behind those who engage in capitalism ( or whatever activity you want to use really / looking for universal truths or first principles here after all ). Correct me if I'm wrong but 'motivation' alludes to thought , or the thinking of the person engaged in the particular activity( any activity really ) that is being judged ? Assuming that the only motivation for the amassing of capital has to be greed or perhaps a form of material gluttony , or perhaps control over others is to treat everything with same daignosis and then by extension with the same remedy. I know , I haven't really made a point here very well, but I am not a particularly good writer , I am just trying to socratically/ logically / philosophically ferret out the flaws in the thinking behind the argument that states " some people do X based upon Y motivation , therefore all people do X based upon Y motivation ( or I prefer " spirit " ,the 'spirit 'that prompts someone's engagement in a particular activity ) "What 'spirit 'we're you acting in , according to the Lugh he knows that there can only be a one size fits all answer to that question .
Lugh believes that human sinful nature can be controlled by government by laws. That has NEVER worked. Jesus’ message is that sin is controlled from within each individual, not by a bunch of laws. The world is failing at this premise now.
I agree, believe it or not , but if its moral in two out of three of its states of evolution then it is essentially like almost every thing else under the sun that man occupies himself with . Notice that communism is immediately and always immoral because it is essentially theft wrapped up in an alluring package of rationales . Lets take work , you should work , but if you work too much or too little ,well , you have broken Mr Miyagi's rule about 'balance ' ( "must have balance Anderson "). How about water ? Water is amazing and essential , but too much of it or having it where you don't want it can be deadly whether that's the teaspoon it takes to drown a human or the condition known as water poisoning caused simply be drinking too much of it . How about eating ? Eat too little and you starve to death , eat too much and you die from the various conditions that obesity brings about . Shall we do sex next , or perhaps personal appearance , or physical fitness, money management , auto enthusiasm , education ? We obviously don't have to because we are intelligent human beings and so it is obvious to us that there is a moderate sweet spot for these and pretty much everything else too .
I will say that I think Usury , like communism or rape , probably has no sweet spot .
What if everyone believed there was this Santa Claus type fella living up in the clouds keeping score on everyone's relative adherance to the golden rule , and that at the end of their lives they would be called to account for the way they had conducted themselves vis a vis their fellow human beings ? Oh wait , we already have had that .
Is this a description of the role of faith in the control of good and evil in humanity?
What are any alternatives?
Remember that faith creates the idea that a green piece of linen paper represents wealth. It allows that a 39 trillion dollar debt is of no consequence. When fiscal faith evaporates? 1929 2008.
"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want."
"Liberty is not preserved by institutions alone. It survives only while free people possess the character to defend those institutions, the discipline to govern themselves, and the courage to say not when power demands they say yes." This magnificent statement should be chiseled into the doorposts of Congress. I am not kidding. Now let me tell you why it is, at this point in American Society merely wishful thinking.
The Long March of America's ultimate destruction can, according to some historians, be traced clear back to the Constitutional Convention. Food for thought about this premise has been documented by academics such as Thomas DiLorenzo, Charles Beard, G. Edward Griffin, and Kenneth Royce. The icing on this political cake has been supplied by Edward Bernays and both political parties. Modern America, with the exception of a small, educated, and perceptive remnant does not have the capability of discernment to act on what you have so eloquently written in your last statement.
As a retired Peace Officer and VN War vet, I have had to deal with the American Sheeple, Normies, Cucks, Mall Zombies and Remoras for a very long time. Celebrity worship, Franken Food, Sports, and other distractions have been their focus. The political forces of darkness have realized this for many, many years. When I look at the bread-and-circuses clown shows such as The Golden Golem and his minions have engineered; and then the yammering Idiocracy from that buttoned-down Muzzie criminal psychopath on the DSA side of the aisle, I remember the words of one of America's last true journalists, H.L. Mencken: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." Like all republics which became empires, debasing their currency and warring for profit abroad, America will self-destruct in the very near future. Plan accordingly. Bleib ubrig.
A wonderful comment and extremely on point. I would take issue with your initial framing, however. The new generations have not “forgotten” anything: they have been made to forget, willfully and consciously, by multitudes of mendacious and traitorous academics over the course of many decades. At some point, patriots ceded the critical task of educating the young to the Left and they, as they always do, took full advantage of that retreat. It’s going to be hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
"The real conquest has already occurred within the conscience, where men learn to excuse evil so long as it is committed against those they have first been taught to despise. No free society can survive indefinitely once truth itself becomes subordinate to grievance."
Despise Women, and you'll get what you are calling "vindictive feminism". every time.
White women have betrayed the white race by mating with brown and black men. A new super race of mulattos is being bread and will ultimately be the dominant human species on the planet. White people, however, are too stupid to understand that they are a vast minority on the global scale and in two or three generations will be an endangered species. I'll be long gone by that time but my children and grand children may live to see a time when they could be rounded up and sold off to be slaves, right here in the good ole USA.
Of course white women haven't done themselves any favors. My son is marrying a cute little Mexicana because, as he put it, American girls are "batshit crazy."
My friend, it is not about race...race has nothing to do with it. It is about ideology. You can convene a bunch of meetings anywhere on earth, with participants in each group from every country on earth. One meeting room with all Christians, one with all Muslims, one with all Hindus, one with all Buddhists, one with all socialists and one with all Communists..
At the end of the day, the Christians, Hindus and Buddists will be serving one another tea, showing pictures of their kids and deciding where to go for dinner...except they can't because the socialists will have snuck in and stolen all their wallets while they were holding hands and singing 'We are the World' and are drunk in the hotel bar plotting how to blow the money on useless and frivlous virtue-signaling endeavors, plus tequila shots for comrades.
In the Muslim room, the survivors of the Sunni-Shia mid-day purge will be sitting there covered in blood and planning how to kill the infidels in the other rooms. The communists will trot on down the hall to befriend the oppressed Muslim masses only to be so shocked by all the blood they immediately call their trust fund creators (i.e. parents) and demand tickets home (first class seating, thank you) but sadly, don't make it out the door before being felled by reality.
How come it is all on the shoulders of 'white women'? Your son has married a Latina girl: doesn't that make his babies 'mullatoes' and him a betrayer of the white race? I think you've already made my argument that it is ideology, not race. Race just doesn't matter. Ideology is the core.
"Your son has married a Latina girl: doesn't that make his babies 'mullatoes' and him a betrayer of the white race?"
Yes it does! No argument from me. I wish he'd find himself a cute little white American girl to settle down with but he just can't find one that has the same family values that this one does. However, she is a very fair skinned Mexicana. She has the typical Mexican facial features but her skin is as fair as my son's. So, you may be right. Race doesn't matter as I can't identify the race or ethnicity of many people I meet these days. Mr. Kunstler often refers to them as mutts. Not as an insult but as a general description. I mean, seriously, how often do you see a true blonde haired blue eyed person anymore? Most blondes are fake bleached blondes whose roots are dark.
If evolution has the white race slated for extinction and if the white race is too daft to do anything to stop it then so be it. All things die.
And the same cultures are created by people of different races, right? There is only one breed of dog, the dog breed of dog!
Late at night, when no one is watching, Golden Retriever moms teach their pups to retrieve. It seems innate, but it is in fact, "culture". Where is my revolver?
I would opine that people of different races can embrace an alien culture, as well as create another admixture. The golden accepts western culture, avoids culture of the Koreans and that of the Philippines, Save the revolver for the dog munchers.
Of course Gwinnie thinks that race is just skin color. Meanwhile, the tallest buildings in Black Africa were the termite mounds before the White man came. In the Sahel you can see Blacks crowded around a village tree at midday to escape the sun. It never occurred to them to plant more trees you see.....
Btw, Gwin, the babies will be mestizos or half Indians. Of course in this case, they will be more than half White.
They will be Cankerpuss' beautiful and much-loved grandbabies and it makes me happy to think how they will enrich his life.
You hate Jews, you hate black people, you likely hate Latin people. Be careful of drawing your chalkline so narrowly that only you live in your bubble, your world tiny as a prison cell.
I'm tired of hearing what you hate. What do you love? What are the ideas and people so important you'd gladly give your life for them?
Yes, America was created by Whites, for Whites. Instead of feeling gratitude, people nowadays spit on our godly and god like Founders - but they are eager enough to accept what was bequeathed to them by the Founders. Bad faith.
My brother is married to a Mexican girl. He told her "it might be 2026 out there, but in this house its still 1950." She abides by it and seems like a good wife.
There are a separate set of financial/banking rules once you hit a certain income bracket. Remember the days when Mr. Roboto (Zuckerburg) was claiming he was living on a piddly amount of money while buying properties all over the world? The wealthy get the perks that should be given to middle and lower class people to help them afford to live in a decent home and feed their families.
I don't know. I'm not an economist or even into finance. I don't begrudge wealthy people who have made something of themselves and live a high life style. My problem is that the rules are different....and they are. Marc Cuban (even Warren Buffet) let the mask slip and dish the dirt on it. The rules have been re-written for the rise of Wall Street and Hedge Funds which get to gamble with "our" money (pension funds, IRAs, mortgages etc) while making safe bets with their own all while extracting from the government.
Yes ,that ,and also when small local proprieterships are run out of business by large publicly traded mega corps because of the decided advantage the mega corps have at economies of scale , the profits that would have remained within the local community with the small private local outfits go instead to those hedge fund managers and Wall Street as you pointed out . its my' theory 'anyway . I certainly don't begrudge success via merit either , there is nothing that says "The Murikan Way " more than that . But alas if government has a few rolls to play surely antitrust for this reason is one of them .
At the turn of the century the predator class of the day we knew as "The Gilded Age." A long came the trust busters to break up monopolies. The predator class hates competition and once again we have arrived at the Monopoly stage once again, but no trust busters in sight.
Back in the old caveman days, they too feared the blue eyes because at the end of the day they were more capable of despicable, brazen and wiley savagery.
That sounds reasonable but it seems to me that some of us somehow ended up living with "vindictive feminism" without ever having despised women at all . I'm beginning to despise a good bunch of them as a result .
The best way to fight Communism is to fight the people who fund it - the Banks and the Corporations. After all, Communism is one of the main tentacles or fighting arms of Capitalism. Seen in as such in Truth, Iran is doing wonderful work.
The problem, "Thomas" is that men are expected to speak out and die if required but 51% of the population (women) are "strong and equal" and yet have don't have to only 1 of those things. They are allowed to vote and hold office and thus positions of power yet have no stake in the game. What say you?
One admires the economy of the argument: two exclamation points doing the work that evidence apparently declined to undertake. You are, of course, perfectly entitled to believe that Donald Trump exemplifies hatred masquerading as virtue. But merely inserting his name into the discussion does not establish the proposition.
Indeed, you rather miss the point of what I wrote. The argument was not that one political faction possesses a monopoly on moral corruption. I explicitly said that citizens must defend the rule of law even when it restrains “our own side.” If you believe Trump violates that standard, make the case. Apply the principle to him. I have no objection whatsoever.
What you cannot reasonably do is answer a warning against subordinating truth to partisan grievance by offering, as your entire rebuttal, a partisan grievance unsupported by argument. That is less a refutation of my point than an inadvertent illustration of it.
One is tempted to admire the efficiency of the procedure you employ: introduce an entirely different subject, attribute to me a position I neither stated nor implied, announce that Donald Trump holds some related view, and then pronounce me “defeated.”
But argument, alas, requires rather more ceremony.
Nothing I wrote concerned the integration of the American and Israeli militaries, much less granting Israel a “veto power over us forever.” If you wish to argue that such a relationship exists, that Trump supports it, and that it is objectionable, by all means make that argument and provide the evidence for it. I may agree with you, disagree with you, or find the question more complicated than you suppose.
What you may not reasonably do is invent a proposition on my behalf and then congratulate yourself for refuting it. That is not defeating an argument. It is merely changing the subject and awarding oneself the trophy.
Right ? I reject the premise of the question outright to begin with ) he is not actually doing what Lugh hyperbolically claims he is doing , though some further integration between our military's has probably been created by the executive branch .
“What you may not reasonably do is invent a proposition on my behalf and then congratulate yourself for refuting it. That is not defeating an argument. It is merely changing the subject and awarding oneself the trophy.”
And eliminate many artful dodgers while saving large quantities of bandwidth.
“Reasonable” is in little demand these days though it’s an admirable request.
Wait'll the old bastard has to stand in front of a God he despises and give an account of his life. Not fun for anyone, but for ungrateful, selfish monsters like him, it should be a sobering experience.
"Kill them. Murder them. Let the streets soak in their red capitalist blood.” Statements like this always remind me of the saying of Maya Angelou: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time".
it can happen, If Tucker Carlson tries to run a third party on the right, we end up with someone much worse than Obama as President and the tyrannical take over as the DSA just outlaws any political opposition and imposes its communistic dreams on America.
TC is the new Alex Jones. He will resonate deeply with a small fraction of the "not left". He and Candace are now on the fringes, impacting nothing and going nowhere.
If you look at TC and his cronies you will notice they share much with the communists, thinking the government can resolve problems. They are TDSers, RINOs, and most evil of all, Deep Staters, those that put preservation of the status quo or growth of the federal government as issue number one. The political spectrum is a circle, not a straight line.
Sidebar- Two parties, the far left communists which will absorb the RINO Deep Staters, and the Tea party-MAGA types, which will absorb the moderate Dems. Communists vs. anti-communists. All the decisions will be settled by 2029.
Over and over, you bitch but have no idea what to do about it. Your ideas about fascism are idiotic as you give more power to the institution that causes the problem in the first place.
Sorta like giving nukes to the Ayatollah, catastrophe.
Regardless there is a lot to be angry about with the Republican Party. When they have majorities they refuse to take advantage of it and push their supporters desires such as for safe elections. In Illinois we have some rump group of controlled opposition that ignores the idea that Illinois is a Red state and literally sabotages any conservative that tries to run statewide guaranteeing that the Cook County machine can get away with whatever they want. In Texas the party is a Bush Globalist shit show doing everything it can to sabotage real conservatives. They spent $150 million AGAINST Ken Paxton in the primary. How many of you know that the Speaker of the Texas House insists on making Democrats committee chairmen over Republican members, delivering power to Democrats the voters never intended? Democrat James Talarico, the fruity little dork running to be the US Senator from Texas is chairman of several Texas House committees. Highly unusual but speaks volumes to the idea that too many places, even when majorities, the leaders of the GOP fight tooth and nail to be a controlled opposition in too many states. Grand Old Party my ass!
Fellow Illinois resident can’t agree more with how inept and most likely corrupt the GOP is here. The whole state government is run for the benefit of the public unions.
Good grief talk about spouting lies Illinois is completely controlled by the Democrat machine and has been for decades. The GOP is barely even a functioning party in Illinois.
EXACTLY the point. Outside of Chicago it's as Red as can be yet the establishment GOP is obviously full of nothing but RINOs desperate to prevent the base from becoming energized
Bro, I had to laugh out loud at this one. The gaslighting is off the charts, but at least it is also peak level humor. Qatar?! Hahahaha...c'mon man, please try harder. Everyone knows who the elephant in the room is, who our corrupt politicians are controlled by. But OK Qatar, you need to start doing stand-up somewhere lol
Joe, I was in Beirut in 1983. I led the NavSpecWarDet from MARG 1-83. A SEAL Platoon, a 35' Seafox boat and crew, and an SDV (mini sub) and crew. To call the bombing of the Marine "barracks" an act of terrorism is incorrect.
Scroll halfway down this page to see some pictures etc.
First, it was not "a barracks," not ever. This is the accepted cover story for a total and fatal breakdown in USMC military discipline. I was there in the spring of 83, not the fall, but I was in that BLT HQ building 100 times. It was NEVER a "barracks." The troops should have been dispersed out in their 20-man GP tents. The fact that Marine officers looked the other way as cold rainy Autumn weather came in, and let their troops slip into the BLT HQ building, is on the Marines. There should have been no more than 20 or 30 on "duty sections" manning comms etc. over night in that building.
We went into Beirut as part of the Multi-National Peacekeeping Force. We went as "neutral referees." This was after Israel drove tanks up to the Beirut suburbs, and their proxy Christian phalangist militias went into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, and slaughtered 100s of women and children, with Israeli air and artillery cover.
"From 16 to 18 September 1982, between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias—were killed in Beirut's Sabra neighborhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp by the Lebanese Forces, one of the main Christian militias in Lebanon, with the support of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)"
The world was horrified. This was when CNN was brand new with 24 hour news coverage. It took years for the My Lai massacre in Vietnam to be exposed. It took hours for the Sabra and Shatila massacres to be seen around the world, while the bodies were still bleeding and warm.
Reagan said ENOUGH, and told Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon (defense minister) to back off, or not another dollar from America. And he sent in the U.S. Marines, joined by Brits, French and Italians. But we went in as neutrals, to keep the sides apart. Umpires. Referees. Neutrals. The PLO were put on USN ships and carried to Tunisia. That was the mission.
But, inevitably, "friction happens" when combatants are using the same roads and living space. We call it "clearing lanes of fire for our defense," they call it "chopping down our trees and tearing down some homes and businesses." One thing led to another, and by the Autumn of 83, we had USMC snipers trading shots with the proto-Hezbollah (they did not formally exist yet) shooters. Then came mortars. Both ways. Then artillery. Both ways. Then the battleship New Jersey was firing 16" shells deep into Lebanon.
Our status as "neutral umpires" was over and done. We were combatants. The Seabees used backhoes to dig big holes for the Marines' 20-man GP tents, to put them below ground level, due to the threat of mortars and arty. And then it began to rain, cold rain, and the holes filled with water. Wood pallets were the floors, you know the deal. The troops, on cots, were below ground level, but it sucked. So they began to slip into the BLT HQ building, with their fart sacks and ground pads. Cozy, compared to tents in the rain and mud.
Until 100s of Marines were bunched up in that building, nice and dry. But making a big fat juicy target. This is while the New Jersey was firing 16" shells inland, and our snipers and mortar teams were trading shots with theirs.
And the big target incorrectly known to history as "the Marine Barracks" was hit with a truck bomb, that drove straight into the open foyer of the building.
The Marine sentries were not allowed to have magazines in their rifles without getting permission from an officer. No vehicle barricades had been built. It was about a block and a half from the busy wide-open main Beirut airport road to the front of the building. The rest is history.
But this was 100% a military action against a military target, a military that was engaged in warfare. It was not terrorism. They were, by October of 83, combatants. And they were killed as much by that fatal lapse in USMC military discipline, by letting them bunch up in the BLT HQ building over night, as they were by the truck bomb.
And they were certainly not 168 grade school girls, killed by Tomahawk missiles during a sneak-attack assassination missile strike. During negotiations.
Thank God. Virtually the Republicans voted to merge our military with that of Israel. There has to be an alternative to the Uniparty other than the wacko anti-White Communists.
There is, but it will never happen. Increase the size of Congress. Increase it to 5,000 seats. 10,000 seats. Congressional sessions would be held in a domed Stadium. Move the capitol to Indianapolis and have Congress meet in the Lucas Oil stadium. 10,000 seats would give closer representation to geographical areas and more accurately reflect the mood of the country. Instead of having one representative representing 750,000 people you'd have one representing 35,000 people. Still a large number but a much more accurate representation of the Country. Just a thought. Nothing in the US Conny limits the Congress to 435 people. As far as I know, that is.
If only our forefathers had listened to George Washington when he admonished them to avoid foreign entanglements and PARTISAN politics. Nobody listened. What a mess they created for us.
Before Trump launched his deeply unpopular war with Iran, gas was $2.50 a gallon, inflation was a memory, and the Democratic Party was in dire straits. Now, though, they are poised to win the mid terms and can go as far left as they like. Some communists, and some Islamists, will win this fall. That's what happens when you decide to throw you political fortunes into the trash can by launching an unnecessary, and disastrous war. W. Bush did the same thing with his war in Iraq, searching for WMD's that did not exist (outside of his imagination). Obama was elected as a direct result of Bush's folly. History really does repeat itself. It's a shame. Republicans will stay home and refuse to vote this fall, with very good reason. Frankly, gas is so expensive right now that it isn't worth spending the money to drive to and from a voting site.
Gas was more expensive under "Biden". Surely you are not in favor of Shias getting a nuke. One President has the courage to take on terrorists and globalism and your excuse for an opinion is to criticize? What good did your party ever do?
Gas went as high as $4.50 a gallon a few months ago. Saying, well, yeah, but it was slightly worse under Biden, so. . .is not a serious argument. As for "my party" I am not, and never have been, a Democrat. I don't like high gas and high inflation, no matter who is in office--and most Americans feel the same way.
As a schoolkid, they showed us the original black & white version of the movie, "Failsafe".....I see now that it was trauma-induced conditioning, as it seriously screwed my head up for weeks. As a society, we ALL have cultural PTSD. That's serious as shit, the more you think about it....
The movie, Repo Man tried to undo the damage. As you know, there's nothing dangerous about radiation. It may even help our evolution. Nuclear war is no biggie.
Boy, it would be terrible if those dastardly Iranians got nuclear weapons. Why, North Korea might follow suit! And then Pakistan, and China, and even Russia might develop nukes! That would be awful!
Are any of those other countries messianic death cults?
Even Pakistan, a Muslim country, is not a complete lunatic death cult believing some crazy nuclear war will have the last prophet crawl forth from a well in the company of Jesus.
It is my understanding that Pakistan has expressed interest, or, at least a willingness in providing Iran with nukes. I might be wrong, I don't have anything to substantiate this. Just regurgitating something I hear or read somewhere.
Yes, but how often has this happened? The USA is the only nation to launch nukes against a sovereign power.
I don't lose sleep at night over the potential for nuclear war.
They've been talking about Iran getting a nuke and blowing us all to timbucktoo for decades now. They are an ancient people who have inhabited that land for millennia. The USA barely reached 250. I do not believe the Iranians are interested in lobbing nukes at everyone thanks to mutually assured destruction.
I understand you fear, BenR, but I don't share it.
I have actually spoken at length with Iranian immigrants. They were fantastic people who learned perfect English and had embraced American culture and were contributing tax paying naturalized citizens. I don't argue that the situation sucks in Iran. I just argue that the fear of Iran getting a nuke has become tired to me. Been hearing this for decades and I just don't subscribe to the fear anymore.
Which says that most Americans are as undereducated as you are about the issues that matter. There are communists taking over the Dems and threatening the Constitution. The economy is collapsing due to Obama led de-industrialization. The communists have taken over the Deep Staters, the judiciary, major cities, crime has taken over cities, the press supports it all. If you were a fan of the USSR, you should be happy by what is happening.
Inflation was introduced into our economy by Richard Nixon. Most of our manufacturing was outsourced by Bill Clinton, which spawned the great health insurance crisis, which Obama rode in on with his ACA.
Nope. 1913. ....U.S. (so-called) "Federal Reserve". Central bank. Private bank. Secret owners. Never been audited. Fiat currency.....usury interest....
Nixon only ended the gold standard....This stuff has been going on since the 1800's....
If we'd never gotten into WW1 & WW2, much of our "manufacturing" would never have existed in the first place....
Global geopolitics has been called "The Great Game" since long before Britain invaded Afghanistan in the late 1800's....
But, yeah, Obama's ACA was a Trojan Horse of trouble....
I withheld my vote in 2016 from either candidate because I viewed it as a competition between Ds. The last two cycles have moved him an inch to the right while the opposition has moved a yard to the left.
The Donald is still a liberal at heart, holding more conservative positions than the RINOs. Weird, yes. Uni-Party, no.
Sounds a lot like my insurance agent, who, when I spoke with him about my ever increasing insurance rates, said they are a business based upon "what-ifs." I asked him if I need to go broke paying for insurance to cover the cost of something that may or may not ever happen. He shrugged his shoulders and didn't have a response.
The USA is going bankrupt funding a war over a "what-if" when recent history shows that Iran will never have a nuke and will not ever use a nuke (nobody has except for the USA.) Well, the USA is already bankrupt, so, I suppose another war doesn't really matter, other than inflation.
I suppose older people don't worry to much about the value of the dollars in their savings accounts as they are almost done using them, but younger people certainly should. More debt to fund more wars mean more worthless dollars.
"W. Bush did the same thing with his war in Iraq, searching for WMD's that did not exist (outside of his imagination)."
Revisionist claptrap. The Intel community, home and abroad, was in a closed loop analytical death spin that premised all reports with the assumption that Sadam had and would use WMDs (supported by his having them and using them against Iran). The information presented to the POTUS was universal in declaring WMDs in Iraq. Stop the BS about Bush imagining and lying. Start looking at your own, cloistered consciousness.
Although a lot of women sure can remember who raped them 30 years ago at a frat party in college where everyone was drunk or stoned off their asses and nobody casts any doubt on their memory.
True. What they remember is what someone said to someone who heard from someone that said something. That human failing is not a new thing.... But it deserves ridicule.
The president could be seen bending over to peer at the floor of the Oval Office
US President George W Bush has sparked a political row by making a joke about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
At a black-tie dinner for journalists, Mr Bush narrated a slide show poking fun at himself and other members of his administration.
One pictured Mr Bush looking under a piece of furniture in the Oval Office, at which the president remarked: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere."
After another one, showing him scouring the corner of a room, Mr Bush said: "No, no weapons over there," he said.
And as a third picture, this time showing him leaning over, appeared on the screen the president was heard to say: "Maybe under here?"
If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought
John Kerry
Democratic Party challenger for the presidency
The audience at Wednesday's 60th annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association obviously thought the quips hilarious - there were laughs all round - but the next morning, in the cold light of day, things looked far less amusing.
The joke about the fruitless search for Iraqi WMDs so far, Washington's prime justification for the US-led invasion, has been branded as tasteless and ill-judged.
'Undermining' sacrifices
Mr Bush's election challenger Senator John Kerry described the president's attitude as "stunningly cavalier".
"If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought," he said in a written statement.
"Unfortunately for the president, this is not a joke."
The vast majority at least. The ones who tried to do something were run out of office or their political party refused to endorse them during the primary.
You can't fool all the people all of the time. But you can fool a lot of them and those are the ones you focus on - George Bush Jr
Lugh: Absolutely correct. You don't have to fool everyone, sometimes not even the majority. Just enough to "win"! It's just like scrabble. The game is won on the power squares and by using the bullshit Scrabble dictionary to find non-words.
You DO KNOW, that the "Bush Dynasty" has hundred$ of million$ of mutual investments, through the Carlyle Group, with the Bin Laden Family of Saudi Arabia, don't you? And that Prescott Bush, H.W.'s father, ran a bank that helped fund the 3rd Reich in the 1930's? Or that when the FedGov confiscated Tesla's life work when he died, the job went to Trump's uncle?.... Bush, Sr., was CIA Chief, remember?....etc.,....
It also Ames you wonder what the intelligence community has told Trump, as he seems to be a sucker for what he is informed about. Is the CIA-FBI-DNI-MIC consortium of the Deep Staters corrupting everything? That has been going on since 1775 in one form or the other.
Is American ideology worth fighting for? We are being asked that right now.
After the Civil War, the Southerns had to take an oath of allegiance to the Union, then the United States of America. If the same requirement was put onto the politicos of today, I shudder to think of what the results would be.
In places like Michigan, I wonder if it makes any difference.
You are conflating the current vendetta against Iran's efforts to get a nuclear weapon and Iraq's possession and use of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction include chem/bio).
From AI:
During the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq used chemical weapons extensively, including mustard gas and nerve agents, against both Iranian forces and Kurdish civilians, resulting in significant casualties.
There was never any focus on Iraq and nukes singularly. Yes, it was a concern, and yes, they had a bunch of yellowcake, but no, that war was not about nukes.
No I wasn't conflating those two situations. I actually misread your statement about WMDs, for which I apologise.
Perhaps you could then answer the question I posed to Ben R, which he has declined to answer, i.e. why did Donald Trump claim that Bush lied and that there were no WMD in Iraq? Was Trump lying or misinformed? (The term used for misinformed these days seems to be 'duped', so that the state of being misinformed can be more strongly blamed on someone else!).
(I have no idea if you are a Trump supporter or critic - I'm just curious. Although I know that Ben is a Trump apologist, so I understand why he would not wish to reply.)
He doesn't say Bush had out-of-date information, i.e. that Saddam had WMDs and destroyed them - he specifically says Bush lied.
I'm not a Trump supporter, but I do sympathize with him when it comes to the challenges of leadership.
It's easy to say Bush lied... but what he actually did was tell people what he was told. Unlike the PHOs during COVID that should have known better [pubmed is a thing, ya know], his only source of information was who briefed him and there was/is no way for the POTUS to gain insight to refute the Intel gang. It is what it is.
Thanks. So, leaving aside whether Bush was duped or otherwise (I seem to recall he managed to link the invasion of Iraq to 9/11 in the public imagination, which was quite a feat), was Trump also misinformed when he clearly said that there had been no WMD?
Yes, it's the Democrat's race to lose. No cheating needed this time. Trump's given it to them on a silver platter. He utterly squandered the mandate given to him via the greatest comeback in American history.
He's transformed from a shrewd business man to a typical politician. Make big promises to get elected and once elected tell the people to sit on it and rotate. Very disappointing.
Reagan wasn't as morally reprehensible as Trump, but his presidency largely amounted to the same disappointment. He accomplished almost nothing he promised and most things got worse. He also opened the door for the neocons and that has led us to today.
Reagan scared the crap out of the GOP establishment. When they couldn’t prevent his nomination they used “Plan B”. First trying to sic Ford as watchdog and when that failed, Bush I got the job.
Even so, for the first year at least, Reagan’s friends did decent battle against the Bush crowd. It was the shooting that derailed any hope that Reagan ideas on the gold standard, eliminating cabinet positions, etc, were going to be fought for. Within 18 months Reagan loyalists with the exception of Ed Meese were gone.
From that point on Nancy was in charge and Reagan was not going to do any more battles with the GOP establishment. She, Mike Deaver and Jim Baker made sure of it.
Ole Ronnie singlehandedly destroyed California with his amnesty of millions of Mexican immigrants who loved to vote Democrat. Before Reagan California was reliably RED. After Reagan it turned BLUE and never looked back.
He ran on eliminating the then-recently-established department of education. When elected, not only did he not eliminate it, he made Bill Bennett, one of the least educated men in public life, the secretary of education.
The amnesty was the real killer, though. It ensured the end of the nation.
Yep. Mr. Trump is going to spend the last two years of his presidency going blind fighting back sham impeachment charges because of his waging a completely unnecessary war against Iran resulting in massive record breaking profits for the petroleum companies ($28 billion last I read, and counting). I paid $4.77 for a gallon of 88 octane yesterday. Why? Because the USA wants to stop Iran from getting a nuke? Pakistan has nukes, why isn't anyone concerned about that? North Korea does too. I guess there is no reason fear them, just the Iranians.
I don't fear nuclear war. The only nation to ever use a nuke against another nation is the good ole USA. People seem to forget that little fact of history. Even the Russians at their height of expansion didn't use nukes. Only the USA.
Yet again, the Republicans were given absolute power in the Congress and the Executive and yet again they have pissed away any opportunity to make monumental change. The fuckers couldn't even pass the SAVE Act. But the unnecessary wars continue and the bankrupting of the USA continues. Unabated. Unapologetically.
It is such a shame. I bet he regrets starting this war every day, as W. Bush came to regret launching his disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. We still have boots on the ground there, 23 years later.
These wars aren't started to win or to spread democracy or build a new nation. They are started to fund the military/industrial complex. Can't justify a trillion dollar military defense budget without a war or three to fight. Hence the reason they become perpetual engagements and never won.
The US has started four wars in the Middle East since 1991. None of them have worked out for us, and our latest war, with Iran, is doing great damage to our own economy, and fueling a resurgence of the Democratic Party--just like W. Bush's failed war in Iraq did. This is very basic stuff.
We will never know with certainty, but here is what I think happened. Military advisors often promise civilian heads of government amazing short, glorious wars that end very quickly, in total victory, and transform the head of state into a War Hero. For example, people literally brought picnic baskets and opera glasses to the Battle of Bull Run. Why, those brave Union men would whip those dirty, backwoods "rebels" with ease and the war would be over in afternoon! It was something to gaily watch, with family and friends, a pleasant summer afternoon. It didn't turn out that way for the Union, if memory serves. . .we are six months into the war with Iran as a write this.
His question whether he knows it or not is rhetorical. We know who convinced Trump to war with Iran. Mossad and Bibi. With no evidence, just projections.
What is missing, over and over, is a definition of victory. When do you stop?
It is starting to look as if we are running out of stuff to throw at them, that will make Trump look like a global laughingstock. I remember that this is not a war against Iranonly, but BRICS.
And you do? Where do you get your sources? I'd like to read the information you have access to so I can have a stronger grasp on the situation in the ME.
And don't tell me your sources are Google controlled YouTube videos. Please.
I was helping park cars on a friend's lawn for the state fair and you'd be surprised how many big trucks and SUVs were there. I saw Lexus cars and Audi cars.
Teslas. I see them everywhere. These suckers are expensive cars and you also have to rig your house with equipment to properly charge them. They are all over the place.
There is still a way out of this mire. More than 50 million voting age Christians either do not vote or are not even registered. They have been “misindoctrinated” by many of our church leaders into believing that misunderstood, separation of Church and State, meant that spirituality must not get involved with civic matters, especially government. This has led to the surrendering of our government, our children’s education, our morals, to the Godless. We allowed the Godless to take over, not by their legitimate election wins, but by our refusing to identify the real enemy and by standing down and not exercising our moral obligation to vote out Godless politicians. We have the numbers to keep our government out of the hands of these Godless terrorists, we just don’t know it. We have been erroneously taught that we should “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” means that we should stay out of politics altogether. God not only appointed prophets and spiritual leaders, He also appointed kings and rulers. We have forgotten our obligations to insure that our government is not handed over to the Godless, simply by shirking our duties to lead our congregations, guiding and encouraging them to examine closely our political candidates, and vote accordingly. Instead, we now have the likes of Mamdani at he helm of our largest and very influential city. The Islamic terrorist invasion is taking over because too many Christians have been convinced that standing down, is somehow “being spiritual”! Wake up Christians, this is ours to loose. Do not surrender to the Godless followers of Satan.
There is no such thing as "separation of Church and State" in the US. The phrase comes from a private letter Jefferson wrote and is not enshrined in the Declaration or Constitution. Anti-Christians used the phrase to make Americans believe that it was somehow codified law and that states and local governments couldn't be explicitly Christian. This is patently untrue, as most states had established religions at the time of the founding.
Indeed, I think the founding fathers would be horrified to see how far we've strayed from Christian/Western Civ. traditions in our running of this great clusterfuck of a country. There is little doubt that various foreign influences have promoted this, but we must call these out for the treason they are.
States had established religions where the clergy was funded through tax/tariff money. The only prohibition is against the federal government having an established religion for the entire country.
Freedom of religion means that the government cannot make laws restricting any form of religion from being practiced. Of course, it has been interpreted as to enforce that, the government must not show acceptance and approval of any one religion. Or religion at all. A hard nut to crack, government with no source of authority for its morality. So anything goes. America of the 21st century.
Actually, most religions created states. Massachusetts, Puritans, Rhode Island, Roger William’s brand of Puritan, Connecticut, another form of Puritans, Maryland, Catholics, Pennsylvania, Quakers, North Carolina, Scottish Catholics.
Correct. The language in the bill of rights states that "congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion or the free practice thereof" or something similar to that. I'm too lazy to pull out my Conny right now. It says nothing about the church being separated from the state or vice versa. In fact, many of the founders were spiritual men. Not necessary religious but certainly spiritual. Deists.
Islam and the fundamental principles of American commercial and moral agency of conscience have nothing in common with each other. Islam is a foreign ideology no different than communism or fascism. It just has dressed itself up in the garb of religion to fool the stupid.
I didn’t mention that, I should have. My wife and I know many Christians that vote democrat. Something that amazes us. Many still get all their news from CNN and other MSM sources. You can add that list to the more than 50 million that do not vote at all. We can win this battle against evil, but we need to stand united.
America was founded by Whites for Whites. It's as simple as that. Letting the Blacks stay showed the power of the hidden masters of industry. They knew that they would be "useful". And bringing in the Latinos, an alien and hostile people, showed that we learned nothing from the whole Black slavery thing. We've been sold into slavery by the money power.
History will disagree. America practiced slavery long after it was common in the world, and abolished it while it still goes on in many parts of the world today.
they just took the playbook from Adam Weishaupt of hiding intentions by gaining power within governments and within the masonic lodges and through those connections to launch the french revolution. The Perfectabilists would have eventually destroyed all of the monarchies of Europe. Nothing is new under the sun as bible says.
As you are so quick to point out all the communists in the Democrat party, flock cameras and the like are going up at a feverish pace and your new 2027 car will be tied into the same data center. Communists are chump change to what is really coming
1985 VW Golf diesel, and 1990 Ford Ranger with roll up windows...the 1996 Cummins Dually as a backup. There are Luddites, and then there are manly Luddites....
I think that Rich Mohlman, above, and Casey Jones are BOTH correct. It's not an either/or, it's a both/and... But as True Commie as Bernie is, he's OLD, and Jewish, and a peace-nick, hippie from barefoot backwoods pothead Vermont. Bernie is not a "clear-and-present-danger", or a violent, direct threat. Mandami, on the other hand, is YOUNG, Muslim, and a violence-talking, imminent threat. IMHO. So if he's still alive in 5 years, then that will be PROOF that "9/11 was an inside job". ....I'm recalling an old right-wing joke from the 1991 "1st Gulf War": "God bless our military, especially our snipers"....
A favorite verbal assault coming from the TDS crowd compares Trump to Hitler, but I see Mandami as the 1916 - 1928 version of Hitler.....
"Despite what your mama told you, sometimes, violence does solve problems"....
We need to get serious, homicidal serious, before the suicidal empathy of the Left prevails....know what I'm suggesting?....IMHO....
I prefer the phrase "2nd Amendment solution"....it's more gentlemanly & refined. A little more classy....and civilized....Piker sounds like the rantings & ravings of a jihadi terrorist....
We, the press and MAGAites are making a big error, allowing this shit to go on. Remember McCarthy? These people want one thing, central control of our lives.
An example, trying to get free food markets. So they can control the flow of food to the people. You think CBDC is a take over, food is the ultimate.
One good thing (just trying to find a bright spot here!) about Mamdani's idiotic Marxist experiments in NYC is that they will fail spectacularly and serve as a wonderful example of why communism (or socialism) doesn't work. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of various commie congress-critters; their stupidity will foul the waters of our Federal government without any self-correcting mechanism available.
Here is the real deal.Socialism has been chewing up the US economy ever since the Depression. Dumping the excesses of welfare into a phantom called the national debt had been a hallmark of the socialistic governments we have endured. The Dems have been very successful in making the people more and more dependent on government, creating the gimme state ensuring more votes.
We are at a crossroads now, caused by income inequality caused by Democrats and creeping socialism for seventy years. So what are the people saying? The answer is to become more socialistic into state ownership, ie communism.
Hope NYC enjoys its free food. Where are they going to get it when the water situation in the SW destroys 25% of the nation’s winter produce and cattle feed?
There in lies the rub: socialism only works until you run out of other peoples money, but the federal government can never run out of money, because they can always print more! Of course, the more they print the more they devalue our life savings, but since most people don't understand this, they can get away with it. So, New York City will run out of money soon enough, California will run out of money eventually, but the US government can continue playing these silly socialist games until we are all impoverished. Just like Argentina only 10 times the size!
Over the weekend news media reported on Mamdani's opposition to voter ID. At the same time, Mamdani now requires official NYC-issued ID to shop at his discount grocery stores.
Like Fascism, the term Communism is a convenient Swiss Army Knife term that has largely lost its meaning in these confused times. For that matter, so has Capitalism.
Obama’s bailing out the too big to fail banks with everyone else’s money was not Capitalism. Permitting Private Equity to cannibalize one sector after another of our society is Capitalism gone mad.
Bringing millions of illegal aliens into this country to drive down the cost of labor even further is not Communism. It’s a standard feature of Free Market Capitalism. So now they are here, and they are alien to us not only in culture but in their expectations and their notion of a good society.
Fighting Communism – whatever that even means any more – does not address the problem. The problem is Predatory Capitalism, that continues to transfer wealth from working people to ever fewer alpha capitalists at the top of the food chain. Unless and until that dynamic is reversed, more and more of its victims, both imported and domestic, will find radical alternatives attractive.
Restore a system in which energetic, creative working people can have a decent life again and alternatives to Capitalism will lose their appeal. That’s really the only solution.
Howard Skillington -- Fatuous, as usual. Communism, Capitalism, Fascism all have meaning, but their meanings are obfuscated on purpose by parties with an agenda.
“Like Fascism, the term Communism is a convenient Swiss Army Knife term that has largely lost its meaning in these confused times. For that matter, so has Capitalism.”
You are too modest. Your first sentence clearly demonstrates the point.
I don't know if Jim is slipping or if it's just his animus toward me. Surely no-one can gainsay the fact that these labels have become nearly meaningless today - including on this forum.
Kunstler's post today does no more than suggest that all of today's ills in the US are caused by Communism, without clarifying what he means by the term or suggesting any remedy. The point that he failed to make is that Predatory Capitalism is the incubator of Communism, and the cause of our dysfunction. Communism is just a symptom.
While I adhere to the Hayek quote, “if Socialists understood economics they wouldn’t be socialists”, only the foolhardy among us cannot recognize some benefits from SS and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Purity is a virtue much admired, rarely achieved.
This in mind it can be adduced with a bit of humor, the angst, horror and end times predictions here at the thought of a half dozen or so “socialist/Commies” living mostly in solid blue districts winning a handful or two of primaries.
The idea the DNC will somehow refuse “donations” from their same private/corporate donors in favor of Marx “Labor Value Theory” can be summarily dismissed.
I make a point of agreeing with Jim when I can, but it's only occasionally possible, with his fatuous expectation of a five-day Iran War and poignant belief that our system's many failings are about to right themselves.
I agree with that first observation , that we actually did get some benefits out of State intervention , but I chalk that up to the fact that it was a relatively novel approach for the US gov at that time and so the rot had not yet set in , the concept hadn’t been codified into grubbermint agency status . Like the Newly minted NASA launched us to the dang moon in fairly short order , because it had to be newly staffed from the privates sector . in the preceding decades it devolved into something that resembles all the other established government agencies , more and more funding that delivers less and less of its stated outcomes . Why is that ? Its obvious why that is , its an economic text book example of “ moral hazard “ , where negative incentives for lack of performance all but disappear because the government spends value that was created by others ( Us ) and we have ultimately allowed them to do it .
Predatory or crony capitalism emerges as the result of too much State intervention across the spectrum of human endeavor (because by meddling they essentially pick the winners and losers whether intentionally or not )and a failure to do the few things that we fund The State to do in the first place , one of which is its antitrust roll in keeping competition open and vigorous ? Ya cant have that if “ all restauraunts are Taco Bell “cuz of economies of scale .Is Amazon bigger than Standard Oil was at the height of the whole Robber Baron era at the end of the whole gilded age thing when Teddy said “bust up them Trusts “?
Fascism and National Socialism mandate partnership between the public and private spheres, with the former guiding the latter. This is how it should be. We have the opposite understanding, thus we are a Plutocracy.
and unfortunately it was baby Bush who decided he “needed to suspend the free market principles in order to save the free market” (for some reason I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard him say those words thru the radio in my work van ), and then proceeded to bail out the big Banks and so on instead of just allowing bad decisions to lead to bad consequences , a thing known as “clearing out the dead wood “or sometimes “creative destruction “ . the decaying corpse’s become the fertilizer for the fresh new green shoots to push their way up thru the soil in the spring . or at least that’s what I imagine Chauncey Gardener woulda said .if we could somehow ask him.
Exactly what are those alternatives to capitalism you are referring to? What is your solution? How do you destroy the evils of government from infecting the free market, the requirement of capitalism to operate well?
The failures, the outflow of capitalism’s competition, have to have a second, third chance to succeed. Our government has halted that with its welfare mentality. Also, government wants to deal with just a few contractors, suppressing the wide looking entropy that capitalism needs to stop cronyism stemming from the government. Capital needs competition, not the suppression of competition.
"Restore a system in which energetic, creative working people can have a decent life again and alternatives to Capitalism will lose their appeal. That’s really the only solution."
Howard,
Unfortunately THAT is a wet-dream, not a viable solution. The viable solution requires, as foretold by history, rivers of blood, decades of hell, and untold misery. Think Ukraine in the 1920's...Think of the Fatherland's tender handling by the "Mighty Eighth", think the Jacobin Terror. It is the human condition.
The Oligarchs were reigned in with a minimum of bloodshed. Putin's great achievement. of course they resent it and have sworn vengeance via Sunni and Capitalist terrorism.
Considering the scope of the issue, I cannot think of anything (other than that which alluded to) that has worked in the past. I do not see a change of human nature, nor a developed sense of empathy, that would, from our betters, benefit the great unwashed. Kindness does not scale.
Shoot ourselves? No. That is one service all governments seem to excel at.
I recommend that you check out "Two Systems / British Free Trade vs the American System" which explains the way British "Free Trade" had supplanted a better way which worked very well for this country in the past. It's another invaluable podcast from Alex Krainer.
The distinction you're making between Capitalism and Predatory Capitalism doesn't have much substance. Capitalism at its foundation is a system that harnesses greed to produce productivity, meaning greed is fundamental to its operation. A system founded on greed is liable to be predatory in pretty much the same way a forest fire is liable to burn forests.
It's the dream of every capitalist to become a monopolist. In our own time, the oligarch Peter Thiel has bluntly said "competition is for losers". Capitalists need government in order to safeguard their property and enforce their contracts, but a government that represents everyone is a government that might limit greed and predation. And so, the natural tendency is for capitalists to collude to control government, keep the parts of it that serve them, turn as much of it as possible into an engine for enabling greed, and paint anything that might resist greed for the sake of ordinary people's ordinary lives as communism and therefore elementally EEE-vil. Thus we have today's situation, where basically the entire economy consists of five or six gargantuan monopolies that are busy trying to turn themselves into two or three titanic monopolies, where everyday people own nothing and have to pay a monthly subscription fee for their oxygen.
For capitalism to serve everyone and not just a few oligarchs with obscene wealth requires a politics capable of disciplining the system. For the past 40 or 50 years the only actors capable of discipling Congress, the presidency or the courts have been capitalists themselves. There's really not much more that's required to understand why everyday life has become so shitty for everyone. Nothing matters because nobody's efforts amount to anything, so people squabble over petty nonsense and culture-war bugaboos while oligarchs bathe in champagne. If you want a really impressive idea of what can be accomplished when capitalists are disciplined by a government determined to control their greed, look no further than China. Capitalism there fires on all cylinders and the benefits roll out to the entire population, for two reasons: one, because the government sets and enforces policies that reward productive activity rather than speculation, and two, because no amount of money, not even billions of dollars, will buy you a Chinese politician. The USA could learn a lot from the example set by the Chinese Communist Party.
Forest fires are part of nature. That you would utilize such an inept analogy is telling. Which is why, "The USA could learn a lot from the example set by the Chinese Communist Party," is unsurprising.
This may come a shock to you, but the CCP is a monopoly.
It produces more billionaires than any other nation, you dunce. It's not Communist anymore, OBVIOUSLY. It's actually National Socialist, though they don't say that out loud. Russia is Fascist. North Korea is a Monarchy. Communism doesn't work, right? So it becomes something else. Pretty simple if your mind isn't shackled by Capitalist or Zionist ideology.
Forest fires are part of nature. So are trap-door spiders, dung, and quantum chromodynamics. What of it? The point, dear sir, is not whether fire is a part of nature, but the use to which fire is put. Fire itself is indifferent to circumstances: whether a fireplace warms an orphanage in the dead of winter, or a crematorium incinerates a mountain of orphan corpses, the fire burns the same. Only human judgment can, or ever will, choose burning logs over burning bodies.
It seems to me that warming the orphans in winter is desirable, and that burning their corpses is something to be avoided. Do you agree? Or would you find it unacceptable to govern the fire so that it warms, but doesn't cremate? If I join you in thinking, as seems to be the case, that the fire must be allowed to burn as it will, trees and orphans alike, then I abandon my sense of right and wrong. I do not choose to do so.
When a participatory government transitions from providing public goods to ensuring The Public Good it is unnatural and doomed to failure.
If you wish to save the forest or warm the orphans on your dime and time, have at it. You can identify the need that fits your moral code and satisfy that need individually or through a private enterprise. That is not the proper role of government.
When anyone forcefully takes from those that earn and gives it to someone else unencumbered, that is slavery. When a government does it, it is sugar coated as "taxes" and "entitlements" and it is still slavery.
Your absolutely killing it David !!! They also called it “ The Great Society “ if I recall , but boy she sure went all pear shaped after that didn’t she ?
Your view of what is or is not the proper role of government fits you very well to be exploited by people with more property and wealth than you. It leaves a power vacuum that they are only too happy to fill, and use it to hoover money away from your pocket and into theirs. And because the value of your work lands in their pocket, you think they must deserve it... somehow. It's a con.
As if your expanded idea of the proper roll of government doesnt represent at least equal the potential for exploitation as the private concern that at least for the time being ( until the government decides otherwise !!!!) you are free to decline services and or product exchange with ? The best thing is some “laissez faire “because it sharpens people’s “caveat emptor “( that chick has got to fly at some point if it is ever to be a bird in the proper sense of the word ) . But of course that presupposes that your aim would be to foster the creation of an independent citizenry able to govern themselves and think for themselves , which cancels out the need for an ever expanding interventionist State Leviathan apparatus where the few control the many “ for their own good “ of course , poor things , the “ lessers “ of the self annointed “social innovators” . Stalin , in all of his obvious compassion stated that the top down centrally collective system would release the proletariate form the burden that is “ the chimera of moral conscience “ by making all their decisions for them essentially . What a guy huh ? So where do we find ourselves currently on the spectrum between total state control and total self governance ? Are we closer to the former now and further from the latter ? And where lies the proverbial sweet spot ?Those that argue for solutions that involve further STATE intervention apparently want more of what it could very logically and compellingly be argued caused the problems to begin with ? Anyhoot , that’s my Jam bro .
This is a great allegorical or perhaps metaphorical argument Mr Mole! unencumbered by State intervention , economic cycles bear great similarities to natural cycle . For instance ,was it not a change in government policy that allowed too much dead wood to accumulate on the forest floors that lead to the increase in wildfires ? Similarly , when The State intentionally or unintentionally gets into the business of picking the winners and losers out in what before had been a free market , does that not too allow to much “ dead wood “( dead would sometimes refers to business entities that should have and would have failed absent State intervention ) to accumulate ? Examples abound but just for starters the Community Reinvestment Act guaranteed govt tuition for college and the Affordable Care Act spring to mind for me ?
As a bit of a compliment to those who identify with a decidedly more leftist view of economics , ya’ll often do pretty well at identifying genuine problems , OWS and WTO protesters were on to something ,pointing at the genuine source of problems ( “Marco ? Polo ?”), but its your solutions that inevitably only exacerbate the problems see ? Because after a certain sweet spot of State intervention to solve some of the inequities that arise (when monopolies emerge in markets , and of course an impartial justice system for impartial contract dispute remediation ( the rule of law ) and so on , )those few original responsibilities that gov was formed to fulfill , its fairly obvious to me and probably most others here that it all starts to go pair shaped from there if you keep going back to “The State Well “to solve all ill’s, Heck even John Maynerd Keynes knew that , you can get that car going with that can of starter fluid but you don’t run your car around on it full time for christ sake!!!! ( think of it , what would a government actually look like that was built up to solve ALL ills ( hinting at its ultimate limitations here ) ?There wouldn't be any room for anything else but The State ) .In short ,left of center solutions to economic problems ( and lets’s face it ,everything is ultimately at least partly an economic problem) always consist of doubling down on more of the same interventionist policies that if one takes a long enough view on ,were actually the cause of the problems in the first place . Ya’ll just double down cuz you are true blue believers in the promise of the Almighty State to make all those owwy boo boo’s go away with out any suffering .I do have to sort of admire that level of faith though ( another compliment )!!!!So but yeah , that’s all I got for now .
Government is too stupid to run an economy, too political, and too evil in its quest for power.
Economies need to be free-wheeling, uncontrolled and competitive to control the market place. Government should be collections of wise outputs of capitalism to make decisions on strategies and not tactics. The America of today is running real estate developers, bar tenders, MDs, and old farts with no economic experience for office.
What stands out to me here is that you think only government is political. It's somehow not political if, to choose just one example, housing policy encourages developers to build for maximum profit and disregard affordability, while also allowing speculators to freely run up the cost of housing. The end result is entire generations being priced out of any hope of home ownership. There's nothing political about that? Really?
The whole idea that the market is its own thing that needs to be kept pristine and "free of politics" is itself an intensely political, and delusional, idea. It's one that I and other socialists reject completely.
And I reject the idea that the economy should be controlled by a bunch of governmental idiots is lunacy. Do you really feel that your economic well-being should be in the hands of Bernie Sanders, or AOC or Mamdani? Sad, if so.
What I think is that government policy should concern itself with the freedom, wealth and industry of everyone. What exists now is a government that concerns itself with the freedom and wealth of wealth. Its one, unswerving objective is to clear the decks for fewer and fewer people to own more and more of everything, leaving everyone else as serfs.
Surely you've seen this graph? https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ It shows productivity (the value of an hour of work) compared with real wages (what working people get paid for that hour). From 1979 to 2026, productivity growth has exceeded real wage growth by 2.8 times. And people wonder why no one wants to work anymore? What's the point? The way to get rich, or even not be destitute in your old age, isn't to work hard anymore; it's to cheat other people who are working hard, while you get the gains.
Bernie Sanders, AOC and Mamdani all at least pay lip service to the idea that the working stiff should get paid what their work is worth. Likewise, Trump paid lip service to the idea that America shouldn't do stupid wars. When he said that, do you believe him? Or did you think "Well, at least this guy *says* the right things"? If so, then you'll forgive me for supporting politicians who are at least saying the right things.
So, people work hard, come up with new ideas, and make a fortune. Your heroes will just tax those people more and more and redistribute the wealth to “the less fortunate”. So we penalize the productive part to allow the non-productive sector to feed on them. Sounds like a really good deal, Robin Hood would be proud. Then we go further into debt. Then the productive sector rightfully gets the hell out of Dodge. Like California, NYC, etc.
A system needs creativity and risk takers, not gimmes. The USA is going down because of the people becoming more dependent, increasing the government debt from payouts, and not because of any one person in DC?
I agree withnone of your assertions, Trump is in over his head. Nothing will save the gimme culture we are now.
I agree almost entirely with your characterization of our current mode of predatory, winner-take-all Capitalism, but do not believe that we all need to start learning Mandarin to fix things.
I recommend that you check out "Two Systems /British Free Trade vs the American System" which explains the way British "Free Trade" had supplanted a better way which worked very well for this country in the past. It's another invaluable podcast from Alex Krainer. (Jim hates him)
So is the key the elimination of predatory capitalism, the destruction of economic enemies with competition? How do we allow “ losers” to have another chance? How do we allow workers to adapt to changing conditions when technology clobbers their industry? How do we guarantee to continuity of people’s ability to work and support families? Or for GenZ even get a job?
Hint: It is not welfare. We do not need to be giving the aholes in DC any more power.
Robots and AI have the potential to make human economies a moot point.
That is not a triumph. It is not a victory for capitalism as it eliminates capitalism. If anything promotes central control, it is AI.
A question, for a Godless society, will AI now be the God answer, the substitute for the ultimate authority? I am seeing signs of that already on You Tube discussions.
Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. Jesus acknowledged greed, but gave vividly descriptions of why wealth destroys people’s relations with God. Getting a camel through the eye of a needle is pretty tough.
Two commandments. God before everything and love and compassion for our fellow humans.
Too bad Me (greed) still outweighs We. That, however, is reality.
"the government sets and enforces policies that reward productive activity rather than speculation"
You mean like building empty cities? With dangerous sub-standard buildings?
I will say they can very quickly build large projects, there are some very impressive bridges to nowhere as well as huge solar farms in the Gobi Desert.
The Chinese property bubble is an interesting example. For one thing, something like 85% of the inflated gains from the bubble have since been deflated:
Some would call that wealth destruction, taking paper gains away from millions of Chinese households. Others (me, for example) would be just fine with that, considering those households still actually own their home while millions of other Chinese households are still actually able to afford home ownership. Compare that with the West, where it's simply assumed that people who own real property should be able to make money in their sleep as housing stays scarce and prices get bid into the stratosphere. I can understand both points of view. Understand, but not sympathize with. My sympathies lie more with the people who get priced out, because they still have to work for a living, but the value of their work gets sucked up by landlords.
It's precisely because the CCP prevents pricing speculation that investment has to go into productive activity, like industry, or as you say, solar farms in the Gobi desert (an extremely valuable investment). In 50 years, China has gone from a poor country to a peer competitor to the USA. That's a phenomenal achievement, and it happened very much because speculators lost and productive enterprises won.
Meanwhile, would you have me believe the US economy produces no waste? No unproductive spending? Would it surprise you to learn the USA wastes $2.5 trillion per year on health care spending alone? America's unspeakably bloated health-care sector dwarfs anything China has to offer in terms of waste. It makes nobody any healthier, but it buys plenty of sailboats and second homes for useless upper managers, and megayachts and estates for private equity schemers.
Bingo. Some small timers may just want independence. That was Astera's rebuttal to me. Ok, fine. But most want to grow and grow and grow. They dream of becoming movers and shakers. Would Astera have turned riches down if one of her ideas took off? Of course not.
What to do? Change human nature? No. Use their passion for the good of everyone. But that does mean not letting them do everything they want. They find this intolerable. Who cares? Play ball with the nation or get the fuck out.
Is it just me, or does Hasan Piker appear to be the left's Charlie Kirk? If so, the difference in persona and temperament of their respective followers speaks volumes.
Publicity starved AOC was on Youtube or something similar over the weekend injecting herself with some kind of hormones that are part of harvesting one's eggs for freezing. The implication being that she intends to run for La Presidente and will postpone having children or have surrogates in order to not interfere with her sure to be brilliant governance.
Saw a few click baits regarding that performative theater actress... Didn't bite, but wasn't surprised she's going for the drama queen title once again.
AOC ancestry is all Spanish. Spanish people are considered racially white. The Puerto Rico censuses of 2000-2010 were racially listed 80-76% white but in 2020 it was 17% white, probably because people figured out that multiracial and non-white get better benefits. All this leads to the Hasan Piker threat against white people that will have AOC in its sights.
Under the longstanding U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standards (1997, used for Census data through the 2020s), “White” is defined as a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. This explicitly includes responses such as Lebanese, Egyptian, Iranian, Arab, Moroccan, and similar groups. MENA ancestries were tabulated under White.
And who is responsible for the de-industrialization of the country? All the environmental nut jobs under Obama wanting manufacturing to be done in Mexico, and East Asia.
Look at what is destroying the country’s economy, and you will find Democrats in any direction.
The danger is not that communism has returned wearing an old uniform, but that many of us - far too many - have forgotten the moral conditions that once made its promises recognizable as lies. A society begins to decay when envy is renamed justice, coercion compassion, hatred virtue, and violence merely the understandable language of the aggrieved. By then the political program is almost secondary. The real conquest has already occurred within the conscience, where men learn to excuse evil so long as it is committed against those they have first been taught to despise. No free society can survive indefinitely once truth itself becomes subordinate to grievance.
The answer for citizens of a constitutional republic is neither hysteria nor vengeance, but courage: to speak plainly when language is corrupted, to defend the rule of law even when it restrains our own side, to insist upon equal rights rather than favored classes, and to refuse participation in lies however fashionable they become. Liberty is not preserved by institutions alone. It survives only while free people possess the character to defend those institutions, the discipline to govern themselves, and the courage to say no when power demands that they say yes.
Here's what I don't understand, Thomas. Our host said, "Work is scarce and it’s nearly impossible to make a living at it, that is, pay for food and a roof over your head"
I don't necessarily disagree with our host but in my community I see evidence to the contrary. In my town out here in the burning heat soaked waterless American west, it seems like people have plenty of money to live comfortably. Everyone is driving around a new RAM or Ford truck pulling a fifth wheel. I see people constantly driving around my suburban neighborhood in lifted golf carts with cool mag wheels or in side by side UTVs. They are all walking around staring at $1200 I-phones with fancy data plans. At church the pews are empty because everyone is on their summer vacations before the school year starts, usually Disney World or Hawaii. They all drive newer cars than mine, many of them fancy Jeeps, Tahoes, Porsches and Corvettes. Many people sell their modest homes in my neighborhood and move 1/4 of a mile to another subdivision to buy a house that is bigger and fancier and costs a hell of a lot more in property taxes and heating and cooling than the little 2000 square foot shanty they weren't happy with.
Yeah, I know. They are all buried in debt, up to their foreheads. I get it. But here's the part I don't understand. How do they manage to make the monthly payments? They can't all be living on trust funds or parents inheritances. They have to have a job that produces some kind of income so they can pay the interest on all of their debt and loans.
If a new subdivision pops up with $500,000.00 lots (not including the price of the new home to be built) the lots are gobbled up and sold within weeks of opening.
I go to the gym every day for 1 hour on my lunch break. It's right across the street. The gym is packed with young men and women who, apparently, aren't working. When do they work? Where do they work? Do they work at all? When I have a day off on Tuesday, which has historically been a standard work day, the streets and stores are clogged with automobiles and shoppers, respectively, who are apparently NOT AT WORK. Doesn't any body work anymore? How are they surviving? They can't all be trust fund babies.
I would love to read an article written by our gracious host that describes how in the hell people are making enough money to fund the debt ridden lifestyles they are living and get his eloquent take on it. Food for thought Mr. Kunstler.
I understand the question you are asking, and I do not doubt what you are seeing. I would only be cautious about drawing a broader conclusion from it. America is an enormous and extraordinarily uneven country, and prosperity can be concentrated in remarkably small geographic pockets. I live in a very prosperous area myself that sounds an awful lot like yours. Even my community is eclipsed by adjacent areas of extraordinary wealth that make my town look like Hooverville. If my town and its adjacent communities were my only window onto the country, I might reach much the same conclusion you have.
But I also spend considerable time far upstate in New York, well north of Albany, in communities where the picture could hardly be more different. Double-wide trailers, old pickup trucks and modest incomes are the norm. These are hardworking, blue-collar people whose leisure might consist of a Saturday fishing on Lake Champlain (after their shift has ended) or taking the family to a local hamburger and ice cream stand for their weekly "big outing," not flying to Hawaii or spending a week at Disney World. They are no less representative of America than the people buying $500,000 building lots in your community, and there are vast stretches of this country that look much more like the former than the latter.
So I think the difficulty lies in extrapolating from what is immediately visible around us. A prosperous suburb can be an oasis of wealth and consumption surrounded by a much larger economic landscape that bears little resemblance to it. Travel a few hundred miles beyond such enclaves, particularly through rural America, Appalachia, the rustbelt or parts of the Northeast, and Kunstler's observation becomes considerably easier to understand. The interesting question may therefore be not “How can everyone afford this?” but “Which America are we looking at?”
There are different pockets of wealth across the U.S. for sure, but the things I see in my midwestern affluent suburb are:
- boomers have plenty of money, riding Harleys or driving convertibles around on Sundays, live in big houses
- Genx and Millinneals - a mixed bag of wealth, about half and half good/bad
- Genz - hating life - a handful working in white collar or skilled blue collar, most on the dole or rearranging carts at Walmart for $15 an hour
The biggest difference I've noticed now from my youth, especially post Covid, are the streets being empty after 8 PM. When Walmart closes at 11 PM, there is no shopping left, and just a couple of 1 AM bars are open for entertainment. It used to be busy from 5 AM (farmer types) to midnight, and plenty of traffic except when a blizzard hit. Now it's like stepping into an episode of the twilight zone, err, at twilight.
The bottom line to me is that between theft, grift, sick care and other rackets, the vulnerable have been fleeced and their pockets are empty. When you have nothing left to lose, extreme desperation sets in and things go sideways in a hurry. I imagine many of the younger "socialists" in this country are driven by the feeling "they're sticking it to the Man", making up for their own victimization.
Interesting perspectives. One of the things I didn't point out in my rant is that most of the people I see in my descriptions are people who are younger than me. I am solid Gen X. I often tell my wife when I see some young dude driving down the road in a $90,000 Chevy Silverado pulling a $120,000 fifth wheel with a $15,000 toy hauler full of $50,000 worth of UTVs that when God was handing out money smarts, I was off fishing or not paying attention.
You and me both. I did all that I was told to do...get a college degree, get a white-collar desk job with a good company. Stay out of trouble. Live modestly (within ones means) and save money for a rainy day and/or retirement. Don't accumulate debt, etc. Somehow, I never got the memo that I could have been living a life of pampered comfort and consumer excess. I don't get it, and probably never will.
Ditto that. A lot of people how figured out to game the current system and game it well. My only real prized possession is a gorgeous fully restored 1968 Chevrolet Camaro RS that took me 20 years of saving before I had enough to buy it. I will never know how people can game the system and get away with it.
Try living on SS - nowhere close to COL - and maintaining a (23 yr. old) car (ANY repair can wreck my budget), dental (not covered by Medicare or anything else), and, God help us, the cost of food. Whatever $$ the national treasury is acquiring through tariffs are not helping the general public. What the sellers pay for product is being passed on to consumers, and my grocery bill has almost doubled in 5 years. And I'm 1 person. I don't know how a family of 4 is doing it. Most of you folks won't ever see SS! My saving grace: house & car paid for. Decent health at 82. (At least I have all my marbles!)
I have pondered this condition for some time. Yes many that have material possessions acquire these through debt. But debt alone cannot explain broadly the overwhelming extravagance shown many americans. I am retired but was an engineer in the nuclear power industry and earned a salary purportedly in the upper 15% for decades but can not afford the level of extravagance displayed across the country. Here in south florida, there are many gated communities with multi-million dollar homes and they are full. When a new development starts, homes are sold quickly and the private golf clubs reach maximum membership quickly, even when memberships are six figures and more just to join. So I must wonder if this in theory gets funded by grifting where gov contracts in the private sector fund people to this degree. It simply cannot be good investment practices.
Millennial here. One of the major characteristics of my generation is the willingness to take on stupid amounts of debt to keep up with the Joneses. Not to defend them, but they went into to debt to fund college, why shouldn't they keep doing it to maintain the lifestyle that their degree was supposed to give them?
We're the first generation that got pushed with the notion that we didn't need Home Ec (aka house keeping and budgeting skills) and look how this has turned out.
But they still have to finance all that debt and that is the part that baffles me.
My take is that some of the younger folks who do have "toys" are getting the money from their Boomer parents. I know numerous peers of mine that pay their kids car loans, cell phone plans, rent and spot them the money for expensive vacations. Not sure if those parents are trying to avoid inheritance taxes, increase the use of retirement money before the economy blows apart, or if they maybe feel guilty of raising a kid that can't make a career/living in the manner in which was common 40 years ago. A guilt trip.
The math of the economics cannot avoid the eventual collapse. This one will be a doozy. Timing, of course, is the tricky part. It's closer today than it was in 2000 (.com bubble) and 2008 (GFC), and I think we're all in the blast zone. Except for some of those folks in East Africa maybe, or the Amazon jungle.
If you're wondering how people can live beyond their means look no further than beyond any govt body which can tax and bond. Taxing authority gives it unlimited spending power while bonding pushes the payback into some future time. To the man on the street this translates into credit card debt. I know both local people and elected officials in DC who live by thick notebooks of credit cards which are used to churn their personal debt so they can afford their extravagant lifestyles. Nowadays that is not an uncommon solution.
It is essentially an unlimited line of credit. Also a literal house of cards. Sound familiar?
Fantastic response. Much appreciated. You are most likely correct for a lot of these people. Your thoughts reflect what I was saying above that much of the money and spending power people are enjoying are coming from the wealthy boomers. Once this pool of wealth dries up there won't be any left. I surmise we'll see lot less big RAM trucks "rollin coal" down the freeway because these young men with big egos won't be able to afford them or fuel them anymore.
When oil prices spiked I was complaining to a friend of mine about how much it cost to fill a tank. He laughed and said that he doesn't buy gasoline. His boomer aged mother gave him a credit card and told him to use the card for all of his gasoline. He's 51 years old and still lets his Mommy buy his gas. I guess its the return on investments and she has to use the money. Something to do with taxes, if I recall.
Good points!
Thomas, all your points are very valid and I acknowledge and appreciate you making them. I live in Utah which has developed a very high standard of living and income threshhold. In other words, one of the more wealthy states in the union. What I see here is certainly not reflective of elsewhere. I do, however, want to know how people afford all of the new and fancy shit they own.
I ask my husband about this here in our small city in E Texas. The 4 seat golf carts ( no golf course close) driven by teenagers. Electric bikes instead of those you pedal. But mostly the jacked up pickups with tires too large racing up and down the north/south corridor at fantastic speeds. We have the cheapest gas anywhere but seem also to have a large quantity of fools.
Just for shits and giggles, I priced one of those lifted golf carts with the fancy mag wheels and they were priced anywhere from $5,000 to $12,000. First of all, I don't know why anyone would need a lifted golf cart with big knobby tires but, hey, to each their own. Kids in my neighborhood don't ride Huffy BMX pedal bikes anymore, they take the golf cart to the gas station when they want a soda.
I looked into buying an E-bike until I saw the sticker price. $7,000! I recall once I was on a hike in the Utah Wasatch mountains near Bridal Veil Falls, a popular destination for not only hikers but bicyclists. Most of the people were zooming around on E-bikes. Perhaps many were renting them but I was geeking out that so many young people were able to afford such expensive and utterly unnecessary gadgets.
My view is that these people know what they are F**cked, so they're maxxing out their credit cards and line of credit because they know that there is no happy ending
I agree with you there's no way they can afford those $1000 a month payments on that truck and a 7% mortgage and 80K in student debt.
I was chatting recently with a lawyer who specializes in foreclosures
he is overwhelmed with work
You're probably right. They figure, what the hell, why not enjoy it for a little while at least.
And here is another amazing thing: our veterans get crap medical care, and our young people can't afford a real life, but Somali's come here illegally and in a matter of months are driving brand new vans and living in big houses as they zoom from their Learing centers to their fake autism centers, raking in the cash. Without learning English and without leaving their mini-Mogadishu neighborhoods. At the mall their women are buying designer handbags, while ours are clutching a Wal-Mart knockoff filled with cut coupons.
Yep, and we got no leadership who gives a damn. Not even the Trumpenstein himself.
Ten percent of three hundred fifty million people is still a lot of people who have too much time and money.
Who is the appointed judge of too much money? Who gets the indictment and what is the ‘too much’ marker? I don’t like that kind of talk: it leads straight to Bernie with his three house and outspoken selective judgements about who gets judged.
Great question. Is $1 billion too much or not enough. $10 billion? $100 million?
I tell you this much, if you give me $10 million dollars you'll never see or hear from me again. I take that $10 million, deposit in a modest yield money market account of 5% annual return and I'm rolling in $500,00 per year of income. Even if conservative at 3% I'm rolling in $300,000 of annual income. I could easily live on $80,000 per year.
Why they want to up their investment in an area with dwindling water and energy for cooling is pu
Good point. Acknowledged. I certainly don't see all or know all. Just my water starved little corner of the globe.
When strapped for entertainment I have occasionally tried to watch a Hallmark movie where they all live fantasy lives in million-dollar homes with pretend careers and plenty of time left over to pursue romance as their day job. I have never lasted more than 10 minutes of their fakery before giving up on Hallmark. I had assumed that those movies were making no effort to portray reality but it seems I could be wrong.
hallmark is fairy tales for cat ladies
they have no relation to reality because they're not selling reality
now drink your hot chocolate while the snow magically falls on the winter festival
One of the sane voices still in the USA today, thank you Cankerpuss.
Here's the kicker, Lee Vail. In the State of Utah the median household income is somewhere around $74,000 per year. HOUSEHOLD. Not individual. I make far more than that and because I don't suscribe to debt (I have a hatred of paying interest) I can't afford these "toys" that people adorn themselves with.
As far as the gym mystery goes, many, including my daughter and husband, work remotely three days a week. They can juggle their hours around their two year old and it works out.
You might be right about some of them. I also acknowledge that some of them work grave yard shifts. But I seriously doubt that all of these able bodied tattoo ridden twenty somethings are online accountants or YouTube influencers.
I just find it odd that in the middle of a standard non-holiday work week that so many people are just NOT working.
I have been complaining about that for a couple of years now.
Costco is wall-to-wall idiots no matter what day or time you go, and now foreigners who don't speak English and have zero manners.
Ha, I was at the Grand Canyon a couple of years ago and I was standing on an incredible vista enjoying the view. A posse of chinese women ventured over to where I was standing and one of the old women started yelling at me and using hand signals to get me to move. I looked at her. Smiled. Folded my arms and turned around to enjoy the view a bit longer. They moved on to another vista. I can't stand foreign tourists.
Only one universal hand signal would be needed in this event.
You are quite correct, although I have to say I have been taken by the eloquence of Thomas's proposal for cleansing the nation of lies, one lie at a time.
Even with $100,000 being the new lower middle class wage, you are right that all the high life (Disney World and massive personal trucks, heaven help us) cannot be subsidized by a mere $100,000 per year.
So where's the money coming from? Inquiring minds do indeed want to know, but nobody seems to be talking. Where are the "journalists"?
Part of that is 50-year mortgages that have relatively lower psyments, and that usually are never paid off.
In Japan, apparently, there are multi-generational mortgages. Picture it. You are on your death bed and you tell your son his inheritance is the debt you piled up.
"Gee, Dad! Thanks! Just what I always wanted!"
I actually wrote that in my original comment but deleted it. You and I are on the same wave length.
I think you must have missed the memo saying your area was selected to participate in a pilot program to see how well a Universal Basic Income program of $200k per adult per year will work out.
"Everyone is driving around a new RAM or Ford truck pulling a fifth wheel. " Everyone, huh?
Funny guy!
I've been wondering about this for years.
I wonder how many of them have boomer parents that have died and left them better off? Us boomers are a dying entity and many did quite well and usually it goes to the (not so young) “kids”.
I read once that the wealth boomers are leaving behind is being spent at an astronomical rate which means it won't be passed on to upcoming generations. Once the boomers have passed on, the wealth dries up and there goes the buying power of the next generations.
You seriously expected arguably the most self-indulgent generation in history to save money and pass it along to Milennials? 😲😂
Yeah, kind of like how i expect my children to start taking care of themselves and stop mooching on the old man???? Crazy, right?
Our society started being infantilized decades ago, and it's just gotten worse with time. I believe it started with the WW2 generatikn and the people who grew up in the Depression and War years wanting to make sure their kids had it better than they did, so they were overprotective and coddled them. Later generations weren't as protective because they were self-absorbed, leading to kids who felt they don't matter even as they have more money and stuff, to the point they're suicidal because, as JHK has written, life has no meaning beyond the thrill of Narcan while overdosed and killing mobs in an MMORPG. Since they're used to getting everything for minimal effort, OF COURSE they want a communist takeover because they think it'll mean more stuff for less effort. Telling them different l3ads to blank stares and accusations that you're a fascist. We're fucked by our own kindness and concern.
Language corruption. Migrants the winner IMHO of a tightly crowded field. Birds and bugs migrate; people make choices. And even Our People play along.
"Live not by lies."
Solzhenitsyn. See what he says about the people behind the Russian revolution.
Ah, yes, but vengeance and retribution for the mayhem and social disruption that these disillusioned cretins have caused would be oh so satisfying. We're in trouble, plain and simple.
Are we? See my response to Thomas. People still have plenty of money to spend on frivolous things and the acquisition of junk.
Just down the street from me is a house I call the parking lot. The home has a couple and 2 teenage boys. The father drives around a big 1 ton RAM. His two sons each drive around a 2024 or new RAM half ton. Nice trucks. He also has a jeep, two side by side UTVs, a few dirt bikes and his woman drives around in a new Audi SUV.
This is the norm here in Utah. People still have money and they are managing to earn enough to pay the interest on their loans.
It means willingness to fight, kill and die for those institutions and beliefs. The unwillingness to do so is what allows the Leftist scum to proliferate.
Sidebar- How do you get the people willing to fight for liberty, freedom of choice when the never know what that means?
Capitalism must expand or die. That's what WW1 and 2 were about. It is what WW3 is about as well. Thus Capitalism is immoral in its ultimate form and only moral in its early and middle forms when guided by true religion.
As a follower of JHK’s TLE, I agree with your statement about capitalism needing expansion. One of JHK’s tenets is that the limitations of resources will make expansion stop. Then what? Watch the water situation on the Colorado, Rio Grande, Columbia, Rhine and Danube rivers to get an idea of what resource limitation is going to do in the future, with water then oil.
BTW,if free markets prevailed, resource limitations would be handled naturally, with alternatives becoming profitable and idiotic resource utilization curtailing under price pressure. Phoenix and So Cal are about to figure out how much scarce water costs. People will leave, balancing the books.
I was reading last night that the hunger stones are again visible on banks of rivers in Europe. For people who haven't heard: those are stones placed there in times of drought, warning of the impending famine. Voices from our past telling us: when the water is this low, crops will fail and starvation is coming.
Yes, Capitalism teaches that the Earth is infinite, just part of its idiocy. The Elite will have gasoline, because they'll be able to afford it. Everyone else? No.
That is correct. And when that happens, something will take the place of gasoline. That is free markets.
As if they still need the peasants? They can walk or ride bikes. Or die.
Watch the movie, Elysium, about the break away Civilization.
That is an extraordinary amount of historical and moral certainty packed into a few sentences. To say that capitalism caused two world wars, and will cause a third that has not yet occurred, requires rather more than assertion. Both world wars had identifiable political, ideological, nationalist and military causes that cannot simply be collapsed into an economic system.
Nor is it clear why capitalism “must expand or die,” or by what standard its mature form becomes inherently immoral. Those may be arguments worth making, but they have to be made. As written, the conclusions arrive without the reasoning that would justify them.
You can get your answers by reading Anthony Sutton's trio of books on this subject.
1. Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution
2. Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler and the Nazi's
3. Wall Street and FDR
These books are not long, and well researched and documented. They are very interesting.
As for the capitalism Lugh suggests must expand or die I think he is noting how well it works until the greedy want more and then you get predator capitalism of the sort we can attribute to the Epstein predator class wreaking havoc on our lives today and it's changing face today is Trump, last time it was Biden, then Obama, Bush and on and on.
Absolutely correct. Where do those predators congregate to forward their agenda? Washington DC. Government begets corruption, corruption begets corporate formation in defense, corporations destroy the entropy of capitalism, corporations destroy the marketplace with the help of government, and on and on.
Want real capitalism? Control corporations and government.
Mission Impossible? Trump is finding that out.
"Want real capitalism? Control corporations and government."
There's that, John but you have to reduce political donations, eliminate the tax exempt status of NGO's and the vast majority political activism masquerading as non-profits and lobbying groups. They do not work for the greater good, they work for targeted political action committees. The wealthy use the notion of philanthropy for political activism while getting massive tax breaks. True philanthropy is a myth.
Agree until you count Bush, not a predator on his Texas ranch with his paint palette. Trump is an embarrassment: Palantir/ the fascist Peter Theil and his pet, Vance not to mention yet another new scandal concerning his crypto and money laundering.
I wouldn't count Bush as a part of the Epstein class, but make no mistake his family are elite predators. Yes, Trump has become an embarrassment. He's cornered and waging an ill fated war on a nation we should have become friends with instead of the Saudi's. I stopped believing the propaganda that demonizes Iran while defending nations who take our generosity and support for granted while taking any opportunity to stab us in the back. Peter Theil and Palantir are predators. I have no time for Vance.
Keep counting evil folks. Part of my cynicism is based on the fact that politicians are inherently evil, that their progression goes above any form of morality. I keep getting proved correct.
How do you tell a politician is lying? His or her mouth is moving.
In additiion to Professor Sutton's books, recommended by Kat, I would highly recommend two books by co-authors Gerry Docherty and Jim MacGregor:
(1) Hidden History: the Secret Origins of the First World War, and
(2) Prolonging the Agony: how the Anglo-American Establishment deliberately extended WWI by Three and a Half Years.
Also, Jim MacGregor and John O'Dowd:
(3) Two World Wars and Hitler: Who was Responsible?: Anglo-American Money, Foreign Agents and Geopolitics.
A couple of those titles are long enough to provide a synopsis. 😁
The argument it seems to me would have to be predicated upon the assumption of the motivation behind those who engage in capitalism ( or whatever activity you want to use really / looking for universal truths or first principles here after all ). Correct me if I'm wrong but 'motivation' alludes to thought , or the thinking of the person engaged in the particular activity( any activity really ) that is being judged ? Assuming that the only motivation for the amassing of capital has to be greed or perhaps a form of material gluttony , or perhaps control over others is to treat everything with same daignosis and then by extension with the same remedy. I know , I haven't really made a point here very well, but I am not a particularly good writer , I am just trying to socratically/ logically / philosophically ferret out the flaws in the thinking behind the argument that states " some people do X based upon Y motivation , therefore all people do X based upon Y motivation ( or I prefer " spirit " ,the 'spirit 'that prompts someone's engagement in a particular activity ) "What 'spirit 'we're you acting in , according to the Lugh he knows that there can only be a one size fits all answer to that question .
Lugh believes that human sinful nature can be controlled by government by laws. That has NEVER worked. Jesus’ message is that sin is controlled from within each individual, not by a bunch of laws. The world is failing at this premise now.
There you go…spoiling all the fun. 🤩
I agree, believe it or not , but if its moral in two out of three of its states of evolution then it is essentially like almost every thing else under the sun that man occupies himself with . Notice that communism is immediately and always immoral because it is essentially theft wrapped up in an alluring package of rationales . Lets take work , you should work , but if you work too much or too little ,well , you have broken Mr Miyagi's rule about 'balance ' ( "must have balance Anderson "). How about water ? Water is amazing and essential , but too much of it or having it where you don't want it can be deadly whether that's the teaspoon it takes to drown a human or the condition known as water poisoning caused simply be drinking too much of it . How about eating ? Eat too little and you starve to death , eat too much and you die from the various conditions that obesity brings about . Shall we do sex next , or perhaps personal appearance , or physical fitness, money management , auto enthusiasm , education ? We obviously don't have to because we are intelligent human beings and so it is obvious to us that there is a moderate sweet spot for these and pretty much everything else too .
I will say that I think Usury , like communism or rape , probably has no sweet spot .
Do sex, how much is too much?
Cmon really ? Do I have to ? It should be obvious the pitfalls of an over obsession with it are . " Lets talk about sex " : how bout nooooo !!!
A simple answer. Find an alternative to greed to motivate people to advance.
I am waiting.
Oh I forgot , " well done my good and faithful servant " .
What if everyone believed there was this Santa Claus type fella living up in the clouds keeping score on everyone's relative adherance to the golden rule , and that at the end of their lives they would be called to account for the way they had conducted themselves vis a vis their fellow human beings ? Oh wait , we already have had that .
Is this a description of the role of faith in the control of good and evil in humanity?
What are any alternatives?
Remember that faith creates the idea that a green piece of linen paper represents wealth. It allows that a 39 trillion dollar debt is of no consequence. When fiscal faith evaporates? 1929 2008.
5-star comment!
Related:
"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want."
~ Hannah Arendt
A very astute observation.
"Liberty is not preserved by institutions alone. It survives only while free people possess the character to defend those institutions, the discipline to govern themselves, and the courage to say not when power demands they say yes." This magnificent statement should be chiseled into the doorposts of Congress. I am not kidding. Now let me tell you why it is, at this point in American Society merely wishful thinking.
The Long March of America's ultimate destruction can, according to some historians, be traced clear back to the Constitutional Convention. Food for thought about this premise has been documented by academics such as Thomas DiLorenzo, Charles Beard, G. Edward Griffin, and Kenneth Royce. The icing on this political cake has been supplied by Edward Bernays and both political parties. Modern America, with the exception of a small, educated, and perceptive remnant does not have the capability of discernment to act on what you have so eloquently written in your last statement.
As a retired Peace Officer and VN War vet, I have had to deal with the American Sheeple, Normies, Cucks, Mall Zombies and Remoras for a very long time. Celebrity worship, Franken Food, Sports, and other distractions have been their focus. The political forces of darkness have realized this for many, many years. When I look at the bread-and-circuses clown shows such as The Golden Golem and his minions have engineered; and then the yammering Idiocracy from that buttoned-down Muzzie criminal psychopath on the DSA side of the aisle, I remember the words of one of America's last true journalists, H.L. Mencken: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." Like all republics which became empires, debasing their currency and warring for profit abroad, America will self-destruct in the very near future. Plan accordingly. Bleib ubrig.
A .45 helps, too.
A wonderful comment and extremely on point. I would take issue with your initial framing, however. The new generations have not “forgotten” anything: they have been made to forget, willfully and consciously, by multitudes of mendacious and traitorous academics over the course of many decades. At some point, patriots ceded the critical task of educating the young to the Left and they, as they always do, took full advantage of that retreat. It’s going to be hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
Especially when all the King's men are gone - plenty of horses, but not many men that I can see.
Envy: one of the 7 deadly sins, and our society runs on it.
"The real conquest has already occurred within the conscience, where men learn to excuse evil so long as it is committed against those they have first been taught to despise. No free society can survive indefinitely once truth itself becomes subordinate to grievance."
Despise Women, and you'll get what you are calling "vindictive feminism". every time.
"we’re here to destroy the White race, bitch."
White women have betrayed the white race by mating with brown and black men. A new super race of mulattos is being bread and will ultimately be the dominant human species on the planet. White people, however, are too stupid to understand that they are a vast minority on the global scale and in two or three generations will be an endangered species. I'll be long gone by that time but my children and grand children may live to see a time when they could be rounded up and sold off to be slaves, right here in the good ole USA.
Of course white women haven't done themselves any favors. My son is marrying a cute little Mexicana because, as he put it, American girls are "batshit crazy."
My friend, it is not about race...race has nothing to do with it. It is about ideology. You can convene a bunch of meetings anywhere on earth, with participants in each group from every country on earth. One meeting room with all Christians, one with all Muslims, one with all Hindus, one with all Buddhists, one with all socialists and one with all Communists..
At the end of the day, the Christians, Hindus and Buddists will be serving one another tea, showing pictures of their kids and deciding where to go for dinner...except they can't because the socialists will have snuck in and stolen all their wallets while they were holding hands and singing 'We are the World' and are drunk in the hotel bar plotting how to blow the money on useless and frivlous virtue-signaling endeavors, plus tequila shots for comrades.
In the Muslim room, the survivors of the Sunni-Shia mid-day purge will be sitting there covered in blood and planning how to kill the infidels in the other rooms. The communists will trot on down the hall to befriend the oppressed Muslim masses only to be so shocked by all the blood they immediately call their trust fund creators (i.e. parents) and demand tickets home (first class seating, thank you) but sadly, don't make it out the door before being felled by reality.
How come it is all on the shoulders of 'white women'? Your son has married a Latina girl: doesn't that make his babies 'mullatoes' and him a betrayer of the white race? I think you've already made my argument that it is ideology, not race. Race just doesn't matter. Ideology is the core.
"Your son has married a Latina girl: doesn't that make his babies 'mullatoes' and him a betrayer of the white race?"
Yes it does! No argument from me. I wish he'd find himself a cute little white American girl to settle down with but he just can't find one that has the same family values that this one does. However, she is a very fair skinned Mexicana. She has the typical Mexican facial features but her skin is as fair as my son's. So, you may be right. Race doesn't matter as I can't identify the race or ethnicity of many people I meet these days. Mr. Kunstler often refers to them as mutts. Not as an insult but as a general description. I mean, seriously, how often do you see a true blonde haired blue eyed person anymore? Most blondes are fake bleached blondes whose roots are dark.
If evolution has the white race slated for extinction and if the white race is too daft to do anything to stop it then so be it. All things die.
Interesting post. Thanks for sharing.
Gwennie,
Culture.
And the same cultures are created by people of different races, right? There is only one breed of dog, the dog breed of dog!
Late at night, when no one is watching, Golden Retriever moms teach their pups to retrieve. It seems innate, but it is in fact, "culture". Where is my revolver?
Lugh,
I would opine that people of different races can embrace an alien culture, as well as create another admixture. The golden accepts western culture, avoids culture of the Koreans and that of the Philippines, Save the revolver for the dog munchers.
Of course Gwinnie thinks that race is just skin color. Meanwhile, the tallest buildings in Black Africa were the termite mounds before the White man came. In the Sahel you can see Blacks crowded around a village tree at midday to escape the sun. It never occurred to them to plant more trees you see.....
Btw, Gwin, the babies will be mestizos or half Indians. Of course in this case, they will be more than half White.
They will be Cankerpuss' beautiful and much-loved grandbabies and it makes me happy to think how they will enrich his life.
You hate Jews, you hate black people, you likely hate Latin people. Be careful of drawing your chalkline so narrowly that only you live in your bubble, your world tiny as a prison cell.
I'm tired of hearing what you hate. What do you love? What are the ideas and people so important you'd gladly give your life for them?
Yes, America was created by Whites, for Whites. Instead of feeling gratitude, people nowadays spit on our godly and god like Founders - but they are eager enough to accept what was bequeathed to them by the Founders. Bad faith.
My brother is married to a Mexican girl. He told her "it might be 2026 out there, but in this house its still 1950." She abides by it and seems like a good wife.
This little Mexicana wants to have 4 or 5 children and wants to be a stay at home mom and raise them herself.
I know, THE HORROR!
Let the feminists come out of the shadows and hurl their insults.
There are a separate set of financial/banking rules once you hit a certain income bracket. Remember the days when Mr. Roboto (Zuckerburg) was claiming he was living on a piddly amount of money while buying properties all over the world? The wealthy get the perks that should be given to middle and lower class people to help them afford to live in a decent home and feed their families.
Would you say that condition at least in part was the byproduct of Monopoly corporatism ?
I don't know. I'm not an economist or even into finance. I don't begrudge wealthy people who have made something of themselves and live a high life style. My problem is that the rules are different....and they are. Marc Cuban (even Warren Buffet) let the mask slip and dish the dirt on it. The rules have been re-written for the rise of Wall Street and Hedge Funds which get to gamble with "our" money (pension funds, IRAs, mortgages etc) while making safe bets with their own all while extracting from the government.
Yes ,that ,and also when small local proprieterships are run out of business by large publicly traded mega corps because of the decided advantage the mega corps have at economies of scale , the profits that would have remained within the local community with the small private local outfits go instead to those hedge fund managers and Wall Street as you pointed out . its my' theory 'anyway . I certainly don't begrudge success via merit either , there is nothing that says "The Murikan Way " more than that . But alas if government has a few rolls to play surely antitrust for this reason is one of them .
At the turn of the century the predator class of the day we knew as "The Gilded Age." A long came the trust busters to break up monopolies. The predator class hates competition and once again we have arrived at the Monopoly stage once again, but no trust busters in sight.
Xshmactly Cosmo !!!!! Maybe that's why it used to be so authentically American to root for the underdog .
Back in the old caveman days, they too feared the blue eyes because at the end of the day they were more capable of despicable, brazen and wiley savagery.
You don't despise the women behind the Communist surge or those behind the divorce industry that has destroyed so many men and children?
Or chosen to abort their own offspring growing inside their own uteri?
That sounds reasonable but it seems to me that some of us somehow ended up living with "vindictive feminism" without ever having despised women at all . I'm beginning to despise a good bunch of them as a result .
The best way to fight Communism is to fight the people who fund it - the Banks and the Corporations. After all, Communism is one of the main tentacles or fighting arms of Capitalism. Seen in as such in Truth, Iran is doing wonderful work.
beautifully said!
The problem, "Thomas" is that men are expected to speak out and die if required but 51% of the population (women) are "strong and equal" and yet have don't have to only 1 of those things. They are allowed to vote and hold office and thus positions of power yet have no stake in the game. What say you?
This is so well said, I couldn't articulate it, but this is it.
Thomas, “hatred virtue”, you have just described Trump!!
One admires the economy of the argument: two exclamation points doing the work that evidence apparently declined to undertake. You are, of course, perfectly entitled to believe that Donald Trump exemplifies hatred masquerading as virtue. But merely inserting his name into the discussion does not establish the proposition.
Indeed, you rather miss the point of what I wrote. The argument was not that one political faction possesses a monopoly on moral corruption. I explicitly said that citizens must defend the rule of law even when it restrains “our own side.” If you believe Trump violates that standard, make the case. Apply the principle to him. I have no objection whatsoever.
What you cannot reasonably do is answer a warning against subordinating truth to partisan grievance by offering, as your entire rebuttal, a partisan grievance unsupported by argument. That is less a refutation of my point than an inadvertent illustration of it.
So you support mixing America's military with that of Israel? Giving them veto power over us forever?
Trump does. Thus you are defeated.
One is tempted to admire the efficiency of the procedure you employ: introduce an entirely different subject, attribute to me a position I neither stated nor implied, announce that Donald Trump holds some related view, and then pronounce me “defeated.”
But argument, alas, requires rather more ceremony.
Nothing I wrote concerned the integration of the American and Israeli militaries, much less granting Israel a “veto power over us forever.” If you wish to argue that such a relationship exists, that Trump supports it, and that it is objectionable, by all means make that argument and provide the evidence for it. I may agree with you, disagree with you, or find the question more complicated than you suppose.
What you may not reasonably do is invent a proposition on my behalf and then congratulate yourself for refuting it. That is not defeating an argument. It is merely changing the subject and awarding oneself the trophy.
So you're against the merger? If you don't know about it, you know very little - or you're just being dishonest.
Go from the presence of a foolish man, when thou perceivest not in him the lips of knowledge.
Proverbs 13:7
Right ? I reject the premise of the question outright to begin with ) he is not actually doing what Lugh hyperbolically claims he is doing , though some further integration between our military's has probably been created by the executive branch .
Of which nation?
“What you may not reasonably do is invent a proposition on my behalf and then congratulate yourself for refuting it. That is not defeating an argument. It is merely changing the subject and awarding oneself the trophy.”
And eliminate many artful dodgers while saving large quantities of bandwidth.
“Reasonable” is in little demand these days though it’s an admirable request.
Somewhere between "what aboutism "and the old tried and untrue " simple straw man argument" ?
Thomas, beautifully written. 100 upvotes if I could.
Fantastic! Great post.
"Communism is just the icing on that fruitcake."
;-)
The monster will eat Bernie, too, but it will elevate him as a martyr in memoriam.
Bernie is a cuck.
An "alte kocker" cuck.
Wait'll the old bastard has to stand in front of a God he despises and give an account of his life. Not fun for anyone, but for ungrateful, selfish monsters like him, it should be a sobering experience.
"Kill them. Murder them. Let the streets soak in their red capitalist blood.” Statements like this always remind me of the saying of Maya Angelou: "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time".
Goes right along with "Death to America."
Think about the attitude of the Ayatollahs of Iran about their dissenters.
If it acts, smells and looks like a Muslim, it is probably a Muslim.
it can happen, If Tucker Carlson tries to run a third party on the right, we end up with someone much worse than Obama as President and the tyrannical take over as the DSA just outlaws any political opposition and imposes its communistic dreams on America.
TC is the new Alex Jones. He will resonate deeply with a small fraction of the "not left". He and Candace are now on the fringes, impacting nothing and going nowhere.
He's an idiot.
Tucker the dumb fucker.
If you look at TC and his cronies you will notice they share much with the communists, thinking the government can resolve problems. They are TDSers, RINOs, and most evil of all, Deep Staters, those that put preservation of the status quo or growth of the federal government as issue number one. The political spectrum is a circle, not a straight line.
Sidebar- Two parties, the far left communists which will absorb the RINO Deep Staters, and the Tea party-MAGA types, which will absorb the moderate Dems. Communists vs. anti-communists. All the decisions will be settled by 2029.
You guarantee the continuation of Communism with your left/right mindset. Ever see a stick with only a right end? Neither have I. Neither has anyone.
Over and over, you bitch but have no idea what to do about it. Your ideas about fascism are idiotic as you give more power to the institution that causes the problem in the first place.
Sorta like giving nukes to the Ayatollah, catastrophe.
Yes, the Globalist Corporations will save us as per Atlas Shrugged.
Think TC has marginalized himself to a great degree.
Regardless there is a lot to be angry about with the Republican Party. When they have majorities they refuse to take advantage of it and push their supporters desires such as for safe elections. In Illinois we have some rump group of controlled opposition that ignores the idea that Illinois is a Red state and literally sabotages any conservative that tries to run statewide guaranteeing that the Cook County machine can get away with whatever they want. In Texas the party is a Bush Globalist shit show doing everything it can to sabotage real conservatives. They spent $150 million AGAINST Ken Paxton in the primary. How many of you know that the Speaker of the Texas House insists on making Democrats committee chairmen over Republican members, delivering power to Democrats the voters never intended? Democrat James Talarico, the fruity little dork running to be the US Senator from Texas is chairman of several Texas House committees. Highly unusual but speaks volumes to the idea that too many places, even when majorities, the leaders of the GOP fight tooth and nail to be a controlled opposition in too many states. Grand Old Party my ass!
Fellow Illinois resident can’t agree more with how inept and most likely corrupt the GOP is here. The whole state government is run for the benefit of the public unions.
Good grief talk about spouting lies Illinois is completely controlled by the Democrat machine and has been for decades. The GOP is barely even a functioning party in Illinois.
EXACTLY the point. Outside of Chicago it's as Red as can be yet the establishment GOP is obviously full of nothing but RINOs desperate to prevent the base from becoming energized
Why put money into an area completely controlled by the Chicago machine and now proven to also be playing with voting machine outputs?
Just like California is all red except for LA and the Bay Area.
What do we get?
Gavin Newsom and his ilk, soon-to-be disgusting Javier Basseras.
They lie, cheat, and steal elections.
That is what happens when someone is so obviously on the payroll of a foreign country like Qatar.
Qatar the one playing all sides against the middle.
Bro, I had to laugh out loud at this one. The gaslighting is off the charts, but at least it is also peak level humor. Qatar?! Hahahaha...c'mon man, please try harder. Everyone knows who the elephant in the room is, who our corrupt politicians are controlled by. But OK Qatar, you need to start doing stand-up somewhere lol
It shows the level of ignorance on your part.
Where does Tucker have a house?
Qatar!
Repeating a bunch of Lies do not make it a truth. Do better.
Do provide a reference for your lies.
Matt Bracken
Joe, I was in Beirut in 1983. I led the NavSpecWarDet from MARG 1-83. A SEAL Platoon, a 35' Seafox boat and crew, and an SDV (mini sub) and crew. To call the bombing of the Marine "barracks" an act of terrorism is incorrect.
Scroll halfway down this page to see some pictures etc.
https://enemiesforeignanddomestic.com/mac-10.html
First, it was not "a barracks," not ever. This is the accepted cover story for a total and fatal breakdown in USMC military discipline. I was there in the spring of 83, not the fall, but I was in that BLT HQ building 100 times. It was NEVER a "barracks." The troops should have been dispersed out in their 20-man GP tents. The fact that Marine officers looked the other way as cold rainy Autumn weather came in, and let their troops slip into the BLT HQ building, is on the Marines. There should have been no more than 20 or 30 on "duty sections" manning comms etc. over night in that building.
We went into Beirut as part of the Multi-National Peacekeeping Force. We went as "neutral referees." This was after Israel drove tanks up to the Beirut suburbs, and their proxy Christian phalangist militias went into the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, and slaughtered 100s of women and children, with Israeli air and artillery cover.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre
Wiki, top up front:
"From 16 to 18 September 1982, between 1,300 and 3,500 civilians—mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shias—were killed in Beirut's Sabra neighborhood and the adjacent Shatila refugee camp by the Lebanese Forces, one of the main Christian militias in Lebanon, with the support of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)"
The world was horrified. This was when CNN was brand new with 24 hour news coverage. It took years for the My Lai massacre in Vietnam to be exposed. It took hours for the Sabra and Shatila massacres to be seen around the world, while the bodies were still bleeding and warm.
Reagan said ENOUGH, and told Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon (defense minister) to back off, or not another dollar from America. And he sent in the U.S. Marines, joined by Brits, French and Italians. But we went in as neutrals, to keep the sides apart. Umpires. Referees. Neutrals. The PLO were put on USN ships and carried to Tunisia. That was the mission.
But, inevitably, "friction happens" when combatants are using the same roads and living space. We call it "clearing lanes of fire for our defense," they call it "chopping down our trees and tearing down some homes and businesses." One thing led to another, and by the Autumn of 83, we had USMC snipers trading shots with the proto-Hezbollah (they did not formally exist yet) shooters. Then came mortars. Both ways. Then artillery. Both ways. Then the battleship New Jersey was firing 16" shells deep into Lebanon.
Our status as "neutral umpires" was over and done. We were combatants. The Seabees used backhoes to dig big holes for the Marines' 20-man GP tents, to put them below ground level, due to the threat of mortars and arty. And then it began to rain, cold rain, and the holes filled with water. Wood pallets were the floors, you know the deal. The troops, on cots, were below ground level, but it sucked. So they began to slip into the BLT HQ building, with their fart sacks and ground pads. Cozy, compared to tents in the rain and mud.
Until 100s of Marines were bunched up in that building, nice and dry. But making a big fat juicy target. This is while the New Jersey was firing 16" shells inland, and our snipers and mortar teams were trading shots with theirs.
And the big target incorrectly known to history as "the Marine Barracks" was hit with a truck bomb, that drove straight into the open foyer of the building.
The Marine sentries were not allowed to have magazines in their rifles without getting permission from an officer. No vehicle barricades had been built. It was about a block and a half from the busy wide-open main Beirut airport road to the front of the building. The rest is history.
But this was 100% a military action against a military target, a military that was engaged in warfare. It was not terrorism. They were, by October of 83, combatants. And they were killed as much by that fatal lapse in USMC military discipline, by letting them bunch up in the BLT HQ building over night, as they were by the truck bomb.
And they were certainly not 168 grade school girls, killed by Tomahawk missiles during a sneak-attack assassination missile strike. During negotiations.
Lugh: Another Zionist lie refuted.
You refuted nada but nice try nazi wanna be.
Or Trump being owned by Israel along with God knows how many others. Basically all but Massie in the Republican Party.
Do prove that dunce.
So looks like you were wrong about what happened in Lebanon. It wasn't terrorism unlike what we did to those Iranian girls.
All his legal troubles went away after he accepted Madam Adelson as his sugar mama.
Another day another wrong factoid from Lugh.
Thank God. Virtually the Republicans voted to merge our military with that of Israel. There has to be an alternative to the Uniparty other than the wacko anti-White Communists.
There is, but it will never happen. Increase the size of Congress. Increase it to 5,000 seats. 10,000 seats. Congressional sessions would be held in a domed Stadium. Move the capitol to Indianapolis and have Congress meet in the Lucas Oil stadium. 10,000 seats would give closer representation to geographical areas and more accurately reflect the mood of the country. Instead of having one representative representing 750,000 people you'd have one representing 35,000 people. Still a large number but a much more accurate representation of the Country. Just a thought. Nothing in the US Conny limits the Congress to 435 people. As far as I know, that is.
If only our forefathers had listened to George Washington when he admonished them to avoid foreign entanglements and PARTISAN politics. Nobody listened. What a mess they created for us.
We already have the libertarians. There must one or two really small parties on the right as well.
Hopefully everyone ignores them.
Apparently the MTG, Massie, Carlson group are in active talks to merge with the Libertarian Party.
Before Trump launched his deeply unpopular war with Iran, gas was $2.50 a gallon, inflation was a memory, and the Democratic Party was in dire straits. Now, though, they are poised to win the mid terms and can go as far left as they like. Some communists, and some Islamists, will win this fall. That's what happens when you decide to throw you political fortunes into the trash can by launching an unnecessary, and disastrous war. W. Bush did the same thing with his war in Iraq, searching for WMD's that did not exist (outside of his imagination). Obama was elected as a direct result of Bush's folly. History really does repeat itself. It's a shame. Republicans will stay home and refuse to vote this fall, with very good reason. Frankly, gas is so expensive right now that it isn't worth spending the money to drive to and from a voting site.
Gas was more expensive under "Biden". Surely you are not in favor of Shias getting a nuke. One President has the courage to take on terrorists and globalism and your excuse for an opinion is to criticize? What good did your party ever do?
Gas went as high as $4.50 a gallon a few months ago. Saying, well, yeah, but it was slightly worse under Biden, so. . .is not a serious argument. As for "my party" I am not, and never have been, a Democrat. I don't like high gas and high inflation, no matter who is in office--and most Americans feel the same way.
But you like death to America and crazy messianic cults getting nukes and developing Icbm's capable of delivering the payload?
One nuke in the right spot will definitely ruin one's day.
As a schoolkid, they showed us the original black & white version of the movie, "Failsafe".....I see now that it was trauma-induced conditioning, as it seriously screwed my head up for weeks. As a society, we ALL have cultural PTSD. That's serious as shit, the more you think about it....
1964 was also the same year "Dr. Strangelove" was released.
Lotta stuff going on then.
Launched by the "lift-off" of JFK's head....ironic metaphor pun intended....
The movie, Repo Man tried to undo the damage. As you know, there's nothing dangerous about radiation. It may even help our evolution. Nuclear war is no biggie.
Every car has one. You'll see.
Every time I think you can't get any more stupid........
Boy, it would be terrible if those dastardly Iranians got nuclear weapons. Why, North Korea might follow suit! And then Pakistan, and China, and even Russia might develop nukes! That would be awful!
Are any of those other countries messianic death cults?
Even Pakistan, a Muslim country, is not a complete lunatic death cult believing some crazy nuclear war will have the last prophet crawl forth from a well in the company of Jesus.
It is my understanding that Pakistan has expressed interest, or, at least a willingness in providing Iran with nukes. I might be wrong, I don't have anything to substantiate this. Just regurgitating something I hear or read somewhere.
Hit Iran with a nuke and see what Pakistan does. They have promised Iran that they will retaliate in kind. You can't win this, Zio.
Yes, but how often has this happened? The USA is the only nation to launch nukes against a sovereign power.
I don't lose sleep at night over the potential for nuclear war.
They've been talking about Iran getting a nuke and blowing us all to timbucktoo for decades now. They are an ancient people who have inhabited that land for millennia. The USA barely reached 250. I do not believe the Iranians are interested in lobbing nukes at everyone thanks to mutually assured destruction.
I understand you fear, BenR, but I don't share it.
Go talk to people who escaped Iran and you will get an earful of just how evil the ruling nuts are in Iran.
I have actually spoken at length with Iranian immigrants. They were fantastic people who learned perfect English and had embraced American culture and were contributing tax paying naturalized citizens. I don't argue that the situation sucks in Iran. I just argue that the fear of Iran getting a nuke has become tired to me. Been hearing this for decades and I just don't subscribe to the fear anymore.
Which says that most Americans are as undereducated as you are about the issues that matter. There are communists taking over the Dems and threatening the Constitution. The economy is collapsing due to Obama led de-industrialization. The communists have taken over the Deep Staters, the judiciary, major cities, crime has taken over cities, the press supports it all. If you were a fan of the USSR, you should be happy by what is happening.
Inflation was introduced into our economy by Richard Nixon. Most of our manufacturing was outsourced by Bill Clinton, which spawned the great health insurance crisis, which Obama rode in on with his ACA.
Nope. 1913. ....U.S. (so-called) "Federal Reserve". Central bank. Private bank. Secret owners. Never been audited. Fiat currency.....usury interest....
Nixon only ended the gold standard....This stuff has been going on since the 1800's....
If we'd never gotten into WW1 & WW2, much of our "manufacturing" would never have existed in the first place....
Global geopolitics has been called "The Great Game" since long before Britain invaded Afghanistan in the late 1800's....
But, yeah, Obama's ACA was a Trojan Horse of trouble....
You mean the UNI-party, Mark?....Trump voted Dem longer than he's been a Repub....remember?
I withheld my vote in 2016 from either candidate because I viewed it as a competition between Ds. The last two cycles have moved him an inch to the right while the opposition has moved a yard to the left.
The Donald is still a liberal at heart, holding more conservative positions than the RINOs. Weird, yes. Uni-Party, no.
Click on it to open it up all the way
Of course. He started out as dem, then wised up. Also, contributing to both parties is smart if you want to build in NY. He knows the game.
The Shias in Iran have been 3 weeks away from getting a nuke for 30 years now. It's a tired argument and has never and will never come to fruition.
Until it does.
Sounds a lot like my insurance agent, who, when I spoke with him about my ever increasing insurance rates, said they are a business based upon "what-ifs." I asked him if I need to go broke paying for insurance to cover the cost of something that may or may not ever happen. He shrugged his shoulders and didn't have a response.
The USA is going bankrupt funding a war over a "what-if" when recent history shows that Iran will never have a nuke and will not ever use a nuke (nobody has except for the USA.) Well, the USA is already bankrupt, so, I suppose another war doesn't really matter, other than inflation.
I suppose older people don't worry to much about the value of the dollars in their savings accounts as they are almost done using them, but younger people certainly should. More debt to fund more wars mean more worthless dollars.
One nuke will ruin your day.
Iran gets one, Israel gets one. So that's two. Washington getting one would make three.
But it sure does frighten the soccer Moms and geriatric set.
"W. Bush did the same thing with his war in Iraq, searching for WMD's that did not exist (outside of his imagination)."
Revisionist claptrap. The Intel community, home and abroad, was in a closed loop analytical death spin that premised all reports with the assumption that Sadam had and would use WMDs (supported by his having them and using them against Iran). The information presented to the POTUS was universal in declaring WMDs in Iraq. Stop the BS about Bush imagining and lying. Start looking at your own, cloistered consciousness.
Mister Penny, that was decades ago; the average American can't remember last week.
Although a lot of women sure can remember who raped them 30 years ago at a frat party in college where everyone was drunk or stoned off their asses and nobody casts any doubt on their memory.
Those are the BEST kind of memories to fabricate!
...And remember, no means yes, and yes means anal....
Ouch. Sometimes, truth hurts.
True. What they remember is what someone said to someone who heard from someone that said something. That human failing is not a new thing.... But it deserves ridicule.
Indeed, it doesn't help that they lied to us about what they found.
The burn pits in Iraq went on for years and caused all sorts of terrible Gulf War syndrome problems.
“They” thought there were WMDs in Iraq. What if there were? Before the war, no one knew for sure. Hindsight is 20/20, the slogan of the know-it-alls.
What I was trying to say is they found them and all the precursor ingredients used to make them, which they spent years burning.
Given what they allegedly found, do you have any idea why Donald Trump lied about there being no WMD in Iraq? And about Bush lying?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9E-l6W3ijQ
Was he 'duped' again, as he was with Operation Warp Speed?
He seems to be very 'dupable', no?
(I realise this clip is from a while ago and 'the average American can't remember last week'. Or so someone just said.)
Because who knows what is still buried in the sand.
D'uh.
Ha ha ha. So absolutely fucking true. Sorry about the language. Had to swear on this one.
Bush's Iraq WMDs joke backfires
President Bush in Oval Office
The president could be seen bending over to peer at the floor of the Oval Office
US President George W Bush has sparked a political row by making a joke about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
At a black-tie dinner for journalists, Mr Bush narrated a slide show poking fun at himself and other members of his administration.
One pictured Mr Bush looking under a piece of furniture in the Oval Office, at which the president remarked: "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere."
After another one, showing him scouring the corner of a room, Mr Bush said: "No, no weapons over there," he said.
And as a third picture, this time showing him leaning over, appeared on the screen the president was heard to say: "Maybe under here?"
If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought
John Kerry
Democratic Party challenger for the presidency
The audience at Wednesday's 60th annual dinner of the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association obviously thought the quips hilarious - there were laughs all round - but the next morning, in the cold light of day, things looked far less amusing.
The joke about the fruitless search for Iraqi WMDs so far, Washington's prime justification for the US-led invasion, has been branded as tasteless and ill-judged.
'Undermining' sacrifices
Mr Bush's election challenger Senator John Kerry described the president's attitude as "stunningly cavalier".
"If George Bush thinks his deceptive rationale for going to war is a laughing matter, then he's even more out of touch than we thought," he said in a written statement.
"Unfortunately for the president, this is not a joke."
Every person that served in Congress the Senate and White House for the last 60 years bears responsibility for the current situation.
The vast majority at least. The ones who tried to do something were run out of office or their political party refused to endorse them during the primary.
Because Democrats have never lied about past and present Republicans, even to the point of having special Dossiers rolled out.
They are so above the fray they would never use something to attack an "enemy" even at the cost of damaging the US, its interests, and reputation.
You can't fool all the people all of the time. But you can fool a lot of them and those are the ones you focus on - George Bush Jr
Lugh: Absolutely correct. You don't have to fool everyone, sometimes not even the majority. Just enough to "win"! It's just like scrabble. The game is won on the power squares and by using the bullshit Scrabble dictionary to find non-words.
You DO KNOW, that the "Bush Dynasty" has hundred$ of million$ of mutual investments, through the Carlyle Group, with the Bin Laden Family of Saudi Arabia, don't you? And that Prescott Bush, H.W.'s father, ran a bank that helped fund the 3rd Reich in the 1930's? Or that when the FedGov confiscated Tesla's life work when he died, the job went to Trump's uncle?.... Bush, Sr., was CIA Chief, remember?....etc.,....
It also Ames you wonder what the intelligence community has told Trump, as he seems to be a sucker for what he is informed about. Is the CIA-FBI-DNI-MIC consortium of the Deep Staters corrupting everything? That has been going on since 1775 in one form or the other.
Is American ideology worth fighting for? We are being asked that right now.
After the Civil War, the Southerns had to take an oath of allegiance to the Union, then the United States of America. If the same requirement was put onto the politicos of today, I shudder to think of what the results would be.
In places like Michigan, I wonder if it makes any difference.
Not Ames, makes
"[...] supported by his having them and using them against Iran [...]"
Could you clarify where (i.e. on which targets) Iraq used nuclear weapons against Iran?
Given that the White House, under George Bush, declared that Saddam had a nuclear weapons program but no nukes ...
https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/iraq/decade/sect3.html
You are conflating the current vendetta against Iran's efforts to get a nuclear weapon and Iraq's possession and use of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction include chem/bio).
From AI:
During the Iran-Iraq War, Iraq used chemical weapons extensively, including mustard gas and nerve agents, against both Iranian forces and Kurdish civilians, resulting in significant casualties.
There was never any focus on Iraq and nukes singularly. Yes, it was a concern, and yes, they had a bunch of yellowcake, but no, that war was not about nukes.
No I wasn't conflating those two situations. I actually misread your statement about WMDs, for which I apologise.
Perhaps you could then answer the question I posed to Ben R, which he has declined to answer, i.e. why did Donald Trump claim that Bush lied and that there were no WMD in Iraq? Was Trump lying or misinformed? (The term used for misinformed these days seems to be 'duped', so that the state of being misinformed can be more strongly blamed on someone else!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9E-l6W3ijQ
(I have no idea if you are a Trump supporter or critic - I'm just curious. Although I know that Ben is a Trump apologist, so I understand why he would not wish to reply.)
He doesn't say Bush had out-of-date information, i.e. that Saddam had WMDs and destroyed them - he specifically says Bush lied.
I'm not a Trump supporter, but I do sympathize with him when it comes to the challenges of leadership.
It's easy to say Bush lied... but what he actually did was tell people what he was told. Unlike the PHOs during COVID that should have known better [pubmed is a thing, ya know], his only source of information was who briefed him and there was/is no way for the POTUS to gain insight to refute the Intel gang. It is what it is.
Thanks. So, leaving aside whether Bush was duped or otherwise (I seem to recall he managed to link the invasion of Iraq to 9/11 in the public imagination, which was quite a feat), was Trump also misinformed when he clearly said that there had been no WMD?
Yes, it's the Democrat's race to lose. No cheating needed this time. Trump's given it to them on a silver platter. He utterly squandered the mandate given to him via the greatest comeback in American history.
He's transformed from a shrewd business man to a typical politician. Make big promises to get elected and once elected tell the people to sit on it and rotate. Very disappointing.
Reagan wasn't as morally reprehensible as Trump, but his presidency largely amounted to the same disappointment. He accomplished almost nothing he promised and most things got worse. He also opened the door for the neocons and that has led us to today.
Reagan scared the crap out of the GOP establishment. When they couldn’t prevent his nomination they used “Plan B”. First trying to sic Ford as watchdog and when that failed, Bush I got the job.
Even so, for the first year at least, Reagan’s friends did decent battle against the Bush crowd. It was the shooting that derailed any hope that Reagan ideas on the gold standard, eliminating cabinet positions, etc, were going to be fought for. Within 18 months Reagan loyalists with the exception of Ed Meese were gone.
From that point on Nancy was in charge and Reagan was not going to do any more battles with the GOP establishment. She, Mike Deaver and Jim Baker made sure of it.
Ole Ronnie singlehandedly destroyed California with his amnesty of millions of Mexican immigrants who loved to vote Democrat. Before Reagan California was reliably RED. After Reagan it turned BLUE and never looked back.
He ran on eliminating the then-recently-established department of education. When elected, not only did he not eliminate it, he made Bill Bennett, one of the least educated men in public life, the secretary of education.
The amnesty was the real killer, though. It ensured the end of the nation.
As you point out, there is no “very good reason”. Republics are lost through apathy.
Yep. Mr. Trump is going to spend the last two years of his presidency going blind fighting back sham impeachment charges because of his waging a completely unnecessary war against Iran resulting in massive record breaking profits for the petroleum companies ($28 billion last I read, and counting). I paid $4.77 for a gallon of 88 octane yesterday. Why? Because the USA wants to stop Iran from getting a nuke? Pakistan has nukes, why isn't anyone concerned about that? North Korea does too. I guess there is no reason fear them, just the Iranians.
I don't fear nuclear war. The only nation to ever use a nuke against another nation is the good ole USA. People seem to forget that little fact of history. Even the Russians at their height of expansion didn't use nukes. Only the USA.
Yet again, the Republicans were given absolute power in the Congress and the Executive and yet again they have pissed away any opportunity to make monumental change. The fuckers couldn't even pass the SAVE Act. But the unnecessary wars continue and the bankrupting of the USA continues. Unabated. Unapologetically.
...."the Republicans were given absolute power"....by WHO?....lol,lol,lol,...ok, boomer
The voters. They control the Legislature and the Executive. Duh.
It is such a shame. I bet he regrets starting this war every day, as W. Bush came to regret launching his disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. We still have boots on the ground there, 23 years later.
These wars aren't started to win or to spread democracy or build a new nation. They are started to fund the military/industrial complex. Can't justify a trillion dollar military defense budget without a war or three to fight. Hence the reason they become perpetual engagements and never won.
Like many, You are not grasping what is going on in the Middle East.
The US has started four wars in the Middle East since 1991. None of them have worked out for us, and our latest war, with Iran, is doing great damage to our own economy, and fueling a resurgence of the Democratic Party--just like W. Bush's failed war in Iraq did. This is very basic stuff.
I wonder who convinced Trump to start the war, and what evidence was used?
We will never know with certainty, but here is what I think happened. Military advisors often promise civilian heads of government amazing short, glorious wars that end very quickly, in total victory, and transform the head of state into a War Hero. For example, people literally brought picnic baskets and opera glasses to the Battle of Bull Run. Why, those brave Union men would whip those dirty, backwoods "rebels" with ease and the war would be over in afternoon! It was something to gaily watch, with family and friends, a pleasant summer afternoon. It didn't turn out that way for the Union, if memory serves. . .we are six months into the war with Iran as a write this.
His question whether he knows it or not is rhetorical. We know who convinced Trump to war with Iran. Mossad and Bibi. With no evidence, just projections.
What is missing, over and over, is a definition of victory. When do you stop?
It is starting to look as if we are running out of stuff to throw at them, that will make Trump look like a global laughingstock. I remember that this is not a war against Iranonly, but BRICS.
And you do? Where do you get your sources? I'd like to read the information you have access to so I can have a stronger grasp on the situation in the ME.
And don't tell me your sources are Google controlled YouTube videos. Please.
Try Barbara Boyd of Promethian Action for another view. I personally prefer her analysis over Susan KiKinda's.
They're twin sisters so the difference is mainly in presentation
Not really...
Keep voting for those elected representatives!
You misspelled selected.
I was helping park cars on a friend's lawn for the state fair and you'd be surprised how many big trucks and SUVs were there. I saw Lexus cars and Audi cars.
Teslas. I see them everywhere. These suckers are expensive cars and you also have to rig your house with equipment to properly charge them. They are all over the place.
Now you're talking in circles. I thought your husband talked about Trump incessantly. Which is it?
There is still a way out of this mire. More than 50 million voting age Christians either do not vote or are not even registered. They have been “misindoctrinated” by many of our church leaders into believing that misunderstood, separation of Church and State, meant that spirituality must not get involved with civic matters, especially government. This has led to the surrendering of our government, our children’s education, our morals, to the Godless. We allowed the Godless to take over, not by their legitimate election wins, but by our refusing to identify the real enemy and by standing down and not exercising our moral obligation to vote out Godless politicians. We have the numbers to keep our government out of the hands of these Godless terrorists, we just don’t know it. We have been erroneously taught that we should “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s” means that we should stay out of politics altogether. God not only appointed prophets and spiritual leaders, He also appointed kings and rulers. We have forgotten our obligations to insure that our government is not handed over to the Godless, simply by shirking our duties to lead our congregations, guiding and encouraging them to examine closely our political candidates, and vote accordingly. Instead, we now have the likes of Mamdani at he helm of our largest and very influential city. The Islamic terrorist invasion is taking over because too many Christians have been convinced that standing down, is somehow “being spiritual”! Wake up Christians, this is ours to loose. Do not surrender to the Godless followers of Satan.
There is no such thing as "separation of Church and State" in the US. The phrase comes from a private letter Jefferson wrote and is not enshrined in the Declaration or Constitution. Anti-Christians used the phrase to make Americans believe that it was somehow codified law and that states and local governments couldn't be explicitly Christian. This is patently untrue, as most states had established religions at the time of the founding.
Indeed, I think the founding fathers would be horrified to see how far we've strayed from Christian/Western Civ. traditions in our running of this great clusterfuck of a country. There is little doubt that various foreign influences have promoted this, but we must call these out for the treason they are.
Well said.
The meaning of all that is that the Government can't force us to believe a certain religion?
Is that a question?
Yes. I'm giving the Constitutional Law.
States had established religions where the clergy was funded through tax/tariff money. The only prohibition is against the federal government having an established religion for the entire country.
Freedom of religion means that the government cannot make laws restricting any form of religion from being practiced. Of course, it has been interpreted as to enforce that, the government must not show acceptance and approval of any one religion. Or religion at all. A hard nut to crack, government with no source of authority for its morality. So anything goes. America of the 21st century.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;"
From the Conny herself. That's all there is. Nothing about "separation" or "churches and states."
The Constitution was written for White Christians as John Adams said. Thus you are defeated.
Actually, most religions created states. Massachusetts, Puritans, Rhode Island, Roger William’s brand of Puritan, Connecticut, another form of Puritans, Maryland, Catholics, Pennsylvania, Quakers, North Carolina, Scottish Catholics.
Correct. The language in the bill of rights states that "congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion or the free practice thereof" or something similar to that. I'm too lazy to pull out my Conny right now. It says nothing about the church being separated from the state or vice versa. In fact, many of the founders were spiritual men. Not necessary religious but certainly spiritual. Deists.
But they have no problem with them being explicitly Muslim.
Islam and the fundamental principles of American commercial and moral agency of conscience have nothing in common with each other. Islam is a foreign ideology no different than communism or fascism. It just has dressed itself up in the garb of religion to fool the stupid.
You'd be surprised how many Christians vote democrat. I'd say at least half of the people at a church I attended voted democrat.
I didn’t mention that, I should have. My wife and I know many Christians that vote democrat. Something that amazes us. Many still get all their news from CNN and other MSM sources. You can add that list to the more than 50 million that do not vote at all. We can win this battle against evil, but we need to stand united.
America was founded by Whites for Whites. It's as simple as that. Letting the Blacks stay showed the power of the hidden masters of industry. They knew that they would be "useful". And bringing in the Latinos, an alien and hostile people, showed that we learned nothing from the whole Black slavery thing. We've been sold into slavery by the money power.
History will disagree. America practiced slavery long after it was common in the world, and abolished it while it still goes on in many parts of the world today.
What a fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into!
Have you noticed how the WEF/Transnational gangsters captured MSM are the biggest cheerleaders for this assault on the constitution?
AKA, globalists. Does anyone notice the dumkopfs in the EU and their continuing failure to help the European folks? Is the EU the future?
they just took the playbook from Adam Weishaupt of hiding intentions by gaining power within governments and within the masonic lodges and through those connections to launch the french revolution. The Perfectabilists would have eventually destroyed all of the monarchies of Europe. Nothing is new under the sun as bible says.
As you are so quick to point out all the communists in the Democrat party, flock cameras and the like are going up at a feverish pace and your new 2027 car will be tied into the same data center. Communists are chump change to what is really coming
"your new 2027 car will be tied into the same data center" 2027 car? No thanks.
My daily drivers are '96 and '02. I'm looking at a 2006 to replace the '96. I've been called a Luddite but hey if the shoe fits.
Saint,
1985 VW Golf diesel, and 1990 Ford Ranger with roll up windows...the 1996 Cummins Dually as a backup. There are Luddites, and then there are manly Luddites....
2006 Toyota Tacoma. Didn't bother to replace my 2009 Nissan SUV. So we have one vehicle, work truck/family car
No, they're not. They're the Engine.
I think that Rich Mohlman, above, and Casey Jones are BOTH correct. It's not an either/or, it's a both/and... But as True Commie as Bernie is, he's OLD, and Jewish, and a peace-nick, hippie from barefoot backwoods pothead Vermont. Bernie is not a "clear-and-present-danger", or a violent, direct threat. Mandami, on the other hand, is YOUNG, Muslim, and a violence-talking, imminent threat. IMHO. So if he's still alive in 5 years, then that will be PROOF that "9/11 was an inside job". ....I'm recalling an old right-wing joke from the 1991 "1st Gulf War": "God bless our military, especially our snipers"....
A favorite verbal assault coming from the TDS crowd compares Trump to Hitler, but I see Mandami as the 1916 - 1928 version of Hitler.....
"Despite what your mama told you, sometimes, violence does solve problems"....
We need to get serious, homicidal serious, before the suicidal empathy of the Left prevails....know what I'm suggesting?....IMHO....
I will add that Piker dude needs high-speed lead poisoning right now.
I prefer the phrase "2nd Amendment solution"....it's more gentlemanly & refined. A little more classy....and civilized....Piker sounds like the rantings & ravings of a jihadi terrorist....
Yeah, those Jewish peaceniks are a big problem. Not the Jewish warmongers in High Tech, the State Department, and in Israel.
We, the press and MAGAites are making a big error, allowing this shit to go on. Remember McCarthy? These people want one thing, central control of our lives.
An example, trying to get free food markets. So they can control the flow of food to the people. You think CBDC is a take over, food is the ultimate.
U
S
S
R, here we come.
One good thing (just trying to find a bright spot here!) about Mamdani's idiotic Marxist experiments in NYC is that they will fail spectacularly and serve as a wonderful example of why communism (or socialism) doesn't work. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of various commie congress-critters; their stupidity will foul the waters of our Federal government without any self-correcting mechanism available.
Here is the real deal.Socialism has been chewing up the US economy ever since the Depression. Dumping the excesses of welfare into a phantom called the national debt had been a hallmark of the socialistic governments we have endured. The Dems have been very successful in making the people more and more dependent on government, creating the gimme state ensuring more votes.
We are at a crossroads now, caused by income inequality caused by Democrats and creeping socialism for seventy years. So what are the people saying? The answer is to become more socialistic into state ownership, ie communism.
Hope NYC enjoys its free food. Where are they going to get it when the water situation in the SW destroys 25% of the nation’s winter produce and cattle feed?
There in lies the rub: socialism only works until you run out of other peoples money, but the federal government can never run out of money, because they can always print more! Of course, the more they print the more they devalue our life savings, but since most people don't understand this, they can get away with it. So, New York City will run out of money soon enough, California will run out of money eventually, but the US government can continue playing these silly socialist games until we are all impoverished. Just like Argentina only 10 times the size!
Good assessment.
Over the weekend news media reported on Mamdani's opposition to voter ID. At the same time, Mamdani now requires official NYC-issued ID to shop at his discount grocery stores.
One of your best, Mr. Kunstler. Bravo!
Like Fascism, the term Communism is a convenient Swiss Army Knife term that has largely lost its meaning in these confused times. For that matter, so has Capitalism.
Obama’s bailing out the too big to fail banks with everyone else’s money was not Capitalism. Permitting Private Equity to cannibalize one sector after another of our society is Capitalism gone mad.
Bringing millions of illegal aliens into this country to drive down the cost of labor even further is not Communism. It’s a standard feature of Free Market Capitalism. So now they are here, and they are alien to us not only in culture but in their expectations and their notion of a good society.
Fighting Communism – whatever that even means any more – does not address the problem. The problem is Predatory Capitalism, that continues to transfer wealth from working people to ever fewer alpha capitalists at the top of the food chain. Unless and until that dynamic is reversed, more and more of its victims, both imported and domestic, will find radical alternatives attractive.
Restore a system in which energetic, creative working people can have a decent life again and alternatives to Capitalism will lose their appeal. That’s really the only solution.
Howard Skillington -- Fatuous, as usual. Communism, Capitalism, Fascism all have meaning, but their meanings are obfuscated on purpose by parties with an agenda.
Supercilious, as usual.
Nothing I wrote indicated that I fail to understand that obvious fact.
“Like Fascism, the term Communism is a convenient Swiss Army Knife term that has largely lost its meaning in these confused times. For that matter, so has Capitalism.”
You are too modest. Your first sentence clearly demonstrates the point.
I don't know if Jim is slipping or if it's just his animus toward me. Surely no-one can gainsay the fact that these labels have become nearly meaningless today - including on this forum.
Kunstler's post today does no more than suggest that all of today's ills in the US are caused by Communism, without clarifying what he means by the term or suggesting any remedy. The point that he failed to make is that Predatory Capitalism is the incubator of Communism, and the cause of our dysfunction. Communism is just a symptom.
Commies! Booga booga.
You do seem to have found his testy button.
While I adhere to the Hayek quote, “if Socialists understood economics they wouldn’t be socialists”, only the foolhardy among us cannot recognize some benefits from SS and the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Purity is a virtue much admired, rarely achieved.
This in mind it can be adduced with a bit of humor, the angst, horror and end times predictions here at the thought of a half dozen or so “socialist/Commies” living mostly in solid blue districts winning a handful or two of primaries.
The idea the DNC will somehow refuse “donations” from their same private/corporate donors in favor of Marx “Labor Value Theory” can be summarily dismissed.
I make a point of agreeing with Jim when I can, but it's only occasionally possible, with his fatuous expectation of a five-day Iran War and poignant belief that our system's many failings are about to right themselves.
I agree with that first observation , that we actually did get some benefits out of State intervention , but I chalk that up to the fact that it was a relatively novel approach for the US gov at that time and so the rot had not yet set in , the concept hadn’t been codified into grubbermint agency status . Like the Newly minted NASA launched us to the dang moon in fairly short order , because it had to be newly staffed from the privates sector . in the preceding decades it devolved into something that resembles all the other established government agencies , more and more funding that delivers less and less of its stated outcomes . Why is that ? Its obvious why that is , its an economic text book example of “ moral hazard “ , where negative incentives for lack of performance all but disappear because the government spends value that was created by others ( Us ) and we have ultimately allowed them to do it .
Predatory or crony capitalism emerges as the result of too much State intervention across the spectrum of human endeavor (because by meddling they essentially pick the winners and losers whether intentionally or not )and a failure to do the few things that we fund The State to do in the first place , one of which is its antitrust roll in keeping competition open and vigorous ? Ya cant have that if “ all restauraunts are Taco Bell “cuz of economies of scale .Is Amazon bigger than Standard Oil was at the height of the whole Robber Baron era at the end of the whole gilded age thing when Teddy said “bust up them Trusts “?
Fascism and National Socialism mandate partnership between the public and private spheres, with the former guiding the latter. This is how it should be. We have the opposite understanding, thus we are a Plutocracy.
and unfortunately it was baby Bush who decided he “needed to suspend the free market principles in order to save the free market” (for some reason I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard him say those words thru the radio in my work van ), and then proceeded to bail out the big Banks and so on instead of just allowing bad decisions to lead to bad consequences , a thing known as “clearing out the dead wood “or sometimes “creative destruction “ . the decaying corpse’s become the fertilizer for the fresh new green shoots to push their way up thru the soil in the spring . or at least that’s what I imagine Chauncey Gardener woulda said .if we could somehow ask him.
Exactly what are those alternatives to capitalism you are referring to? What is your solution? How do you destroy the evils of government from infecting the free market, the requirement of capitalism to operate well?
The failures, the outflow of capitalism’s competition, have to have a second, third chance to succeed. Our government has halted that with its welfare mentality. Also, government wants to deal with just a few contractors, suppressing the wide looking entropy that capitalism needs to stop cronyism stemming from the government. Capital needs competition, not the suppression of competition.
See my recommendation in response to The Mole, below.
The only way to do that is to get government out of everything. It's not predatory capitalism; it's a predatory government cabal.
"Restore a system in which energetic, creative working people can have a decent life again and alternatives to Capitalism will lose their appeal. That’s really the only solution."
Howard,
Unfortunately THAT is a wet-dream, not a viable solution. The viable solution requires, as foretold by history, rivers of blood, decades of hell, and untold misery. Think Ukraine in the 1920's...Think of the Fatherland's tender handling by the "Mighty Eighth", think the Jacobin Terror. It is the human condition.
The Oligarchs were reigned in with a minimum of bloodshed. Putin's great achievement. of course they resent it and have sworn vengeance via Sunni and Capitalist terrorism.
You may well be right, in which case, we may as well shoot ourselves.
Short of that reliable, draconian solution, I think it's worth trying to return to what has worked well in the past.
Howard,
Considering the scope of the issue, I cannot think of anything (other than that which alluded to) that has worked in the past. I do not see a change of human nature, nor a developed sense of empathy, that would, from our betters, benefit the great unwashed. Kindness does not scale.
Shoot ourselves? No. That is one service all governments seem to excel at.
I recommend that you check out "Two Systems / British Free Trade vs the American System" which explains the way British "Free Trade" had supplanted a better way which worked very well for this country in the past. It's another invaluable podcast from Alex Krainer.
Conversion to socialism is the beginning of the end for a society.
don't know who you are addressing with that comment. It has nothing to do with my post today.
Your comment is looking back, mine is the consequences of the future.
I agree with you, the past holds more promise than what the future portends.
The distinction you're making between Capitalism and Predatory Capitalism doesn't have much substance. Capitalism at its foundation is a system that harnesses greed to produce productivity, meaning greed is fundamental to its operation. A system founded on greed is liable to be predatory in pretty much the same way a forest fire is liable to burn forests.
It's the dream of every capitalist to become a monopolist. In our own time, the oligarch Peter Thiel has bluntly said "competition is for losers". Capitalists need government in order to safeguard their property and enforce their contracts, but a government that represents everyone is a government that might limit greed and predation. And so, the natural tendency is for capitalists to collude to control government, keep the parts of it that serve them, turn as much of it as possible into an engine for enabling greed, and paint anything that might resist greed for the sake of ordinary people's ordinary lives as communism and therefore elementally EEE-vil. Thus we have today's situation, where basically the entire economy consists of five or six gargantuan monopolies that are busy trying to turn themselves into two or three titanic monopolies, where everyday people own nothing and have to pay a monthly subscription fee for their oxygen.
For capitalism to serve everyone and not just a few oligarchs with obscene wealth requires a politics capable of disciplining the system. For the past 40 or 50 years the only actors capable of discipling Congress, the presidency or the courts have been capitalists themselves. There's really not much more that's required to understand why everyday life has become so shitty for everyone. Nothing matters because nobody's efforts amount to anything, so people squabble over petty nonsense and culture-war bugaboos while oligarchs bathe in champagne. If you want a really impressive idea of what can be accomplished when capitalists are disciplined by a government determined to control their greed, look no further than China. Capitalism there fires on all cylinders and the benefits roll out to the entire population, for two reasons: one, because the government sets and enforces policies that reward productive activity rather than speculation, and two, because no amount of money, not even billions of dollars, will buy you a Chinese politician. The USA could learn a lot from the example set by the Chinese Communist Party.
"...a forest fire is liable to burn forests."
Forest fires are part of nature. That you would utilize such an inept analogy is telling. Which is why, "The USA could learn a lot from the example set by the Chinese Communist Party," is unsurprising.
This may come a shock to you, but the CCP is a monopoly.
It produces more billionaires than any other nation, you dunce. It's not Communist anymore, OBVIOUSLY. It's actually National Socialist, though they don't say that out loud. Russia is Fascist. North Korea is a Monarchy. Communism doesn't work, right? So it becomes something else. Pretty simple if your mind isn't shackled by Capitalist or Zionist ideology.
Forest fires are part of nature. So are trap-door spiders, dung, and quantum chromodynamics. What of it? The point, dear sir, is not whether fire is a part of nature, but the use to which fire is put. Fire itself is indifferent to circumstances: whether a fireplace warms an orphanage in the dead of winter, or a crematorium incinerates a mountain of orphan corpses, the fire burns the same. Only human judgment can, or ever will, choose burning logs over burning bodies.
It seems to me that warming the orphans in winter is desirable, and that burning their corpses is something to be avoided. Do you agree? Or would you find it unacceptable to govern the fire so that it warms, but doesn't cremate? If I join you in thinking, as seems to be the case, that the fire must be allowed to burn as it will, trees and orphans alike, then I abandon my sense of right and wrong. I do not choose to do so.
When a participatory government transitions from providing public goods to ensuring The Public Good it is unnatural and doomed to failure.
If you wish to save the forest or warm the orphans on your dime and time, have at it. You can identify the need that fits your moral code and satisfy that need individually or through a private enterprise. That is not the proper role of government.
When anyone forcefully takes from those that earn and gives it to someone else unencumbered, that is slavery. When a government does it, it is sugar coated as "taxes" and "entitlements" and it is still slavery.
Get back in your box, Lugh.
Your absolutely killing it David !!! They also called it “ The Great Society “ if I recall , but boy she sure went all pear shaped after that didn’t she ?
You have mistaken me for someone else.
Your view of what is or is not the proper role of government fits you very well to be exploited by people with more property and wealth than you. It leaves a power vacuum that they are only too happy to fill, and use it to hoover money away from your pocket and into theirs. And because the value of your work lands in their pocket, you think they must deserve it... somehow. It's a con.
As if your expanded idea of the proper roll of government doesnt represent at least equal the potential for exploitation as the private concern that at least for the time being ( until the government decides otherwise !!!!) you are free to decline services and or product exchange with ? The best thing is some “laissez faire “because it sharpens people’s “caveat emptor “( that chick has got to fly at some point if it is ever to be a bird in the proper sense of the word ) . But of course that presupposes that your aim would be to foster the creation of an independent citizenry able to govern themselves and think for themselves , which cancels out the need for an ever expanding interventionist State Leviathan apparatus where the few control the many “ for their own good “ of course , poor things , the “ lessers “ of the self annointed “social innovators” . Stalin , in all of his obvious compassion stated that the top down centrally collective system would release the proletariate form the burden that is “ the chimera of moral conscience “ by making all their decisions for them essentially . What a guy huh ? So where do we find ourselves currently on the spectrum between total state control and total self governance ? Are we closer to the former now and further from the latter ? And where lies the proverbial sweet spot ?Those that argue for solutions that involve further STATE intervention apparently want more of what it could very logically and compellingly be argued caused the problems to begin with ? Anyhoot , that’s my Jam bro .
Thanx, Claude.
This is a great allegorical or perhaps metaphorical argument Mr Mole! unencumbered by State intervention , economic cycles bear great similarities to natural cycle . For instance ,was it not a change in government policy that allowed too much dead wood to accumulate on the forest floors that lead to the increase in wildfires ? Similarly , when The State intentionally or unintentionally gets into the business of picking the winners and losers out in what before had been a free market , does that not too allow to much “ dead wood “( dead would sometimes refers to business entities that should have and would have failed absent State intervention ) to accumulate ? Examples abound but just for starters the Community Reinvestment Act guaranteed govt tuition for college and the Affordable Care Act spring to mind for me ?
As a bit of a compliment to those who identify with a decidedly more leftist view of economics , ya’ll often do pretty well at identifying genuine problems , OWS and WTO protesters were on to something ,pointing at the genuine source of problems ( “Marco ? Polo ?”), but its your solutions that inevitably only exacerbate the problems see ? Because after a certain sweet spot of State intervention to solve some of the inequities that arise (when monopolies emerge in markets , and of course an impartial justice system for impartial contract dispute remediation ( the rule of law ) and so on , )those few original responsibilities that gov was formed to fulfill , its fairly obvious to me and probably most others here that it all starts to go pair shaped from there if you keep going back to “The State Well “to solve all ill’s, Heck even John Maynerd Keynes knew that , you can get that car going with that can of starter fluid but you don’t run your car around on it full time for christ sake!!!! ( think of it , what would a government actually look like that was built up to solve ALL ills ( hinting at its ultimate limitations here ) ?There wouldn't be any room for anything else but The State ) .In short ,left of center solutions to economic problems ( and lets’s face it ,everything is ultimately at least partly an economic problem) always consist of doubling down on more of the same interventionist policies that if one takes a long enough view on ,were actually the cause of the problems in the first place . Ya’ll just double down cuz you are true blue believers in the promise of the Almighty State to make all those owwy boo boo’s go away with out any suffering .I do have to sort of admire that level of faith though ( another compliment )!!!!So but yeah , that’s all I got for now .
Poor JC has been utterly defeated.
Government is too stupid to run an economy, too political, and too evil in its quest for power.
Economies need to be free-wheeling, uncontrolled and competitive to control the market place. Government should be collections of wise outputs of capitalism to make decisions on strategies and not tactics. The America of today is running real estate developers, bar tenders, MDs, and old farts with no economic experience for office.
What stands out to me here is that you think only government is political. It's somehow not political if, to choose just one example, housing policy encourages developers to build for maximum profit and disregard affordability, while also allowing speculators to freely run up the cost of housing. The end result is entire generations being priced out of any hope of home ownership. There's nothing political about that? Really?
The whole idea that the market is its own thing that needs to be kept pristine and "free of politics" is itself an intensely political, and delusional, idea. It's one that I and other socialists reject completely.
And I reject the idea that the economy should be controlled by a bunch of governmental idiots is lunacy. Do you really feel that your economic well-being should be in the hands of Bernie Sanders, or AOC or Mamdani? Sad, if so.
What I think is that government policy should concern itself with the freedom, wealth and industry of everyone. What exists now is a government that concerns itself with the freedom and wealth of wealth. Its one, unswerving objective is to clear the decks for fewer and fewer people to own more and more of everything, leaving everyone else as serfs.
Surely you've seen this graph? https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ It shows productivity (the value of an hour of work) compared with real wages (what working people get paid for that hour). From 1979 to 2026, productivity growth has exceeded real wage growth by 2.8 times. And people wonder why no one wants to work anymore? What's the point? The way to get rich, or even not be destitute in your old age, isn't to work hard anymore; it's to cheat other people who are working hard, while you get the gains.
Bernie Sanders, AOC and Mamdani all at least pay lip service to the idea that the working stiff should get paid what their work is worth. Likewise, Trump paid lip service to the idea that America shouldn't do stupid wars. When he said that, do you believe him? Or did you think "Well, at least this guy *says* the right things"? If so, then you'll forgive me for supporting politicians who are at least saying the right things.
So, people work hard, come up with new ideas, and make a fortune. Your heroes will just tax those people more and more and redistribute the wealth to “the less fortunate”. So we penalize the productive part to allow the non-productive sector to feed on them. Sounds like a really good deal, Robin Hood would be proud. Then we go further into debt. Then the productive sector rightfully gets the hell out of Dodge. Like California, NYC, etc.
A system needs creativity and risk takers, not gimmes. The USA is going down because of the people becoming more dependent, increasing the government debt from payouts, and not because of any one person in DC?
I agree withnone of your assertions, Trump is in over his head. Nothing will save the gimme culture we are now.
I agree almost entirely with your characterization of our current mode of predatory, winner-take-all Capitalism, but do not believe that we all need to start learning Mandarin to fix things.
I recommend that you check out "Two Systems /British Free Trade vs the American System" which explains the way British "Free Trade" had supplanted a better way which worked very well for this country in the past. It's another invaluable podcast from Alex Krainer. (Jim hates him)
So is the key the elimination of predatory capitalism, the destruction of economic enemies with competition? How do we allow “ losers” to have another chance? How do we allow workers to adapt to changing conditions when technology clobbers their industry? How do we guarantee to continuity of people’s ability to work and support families? Or for GenZ even get a job?
Hint: It is not welfare. We do not need to be giving the aholes in DC any more power.
Robots will soon make these questions moot. You have triumphed!
Robots and AI have the potential to make human economies a moot point.
That is not a triumph. It is not a victory for capitalism as it eliminates capitalism. If anything promotes central control, it is AI.
A question, for a Godless society, will AI now be the God answer, the substitute for the ultimate authority? I am seeing signs of that already on You Tube discussions.
I think the point is people were supposed to harness their own GREED with religion.
Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s. Jesus acknowledged greed, but gave vividly descriptions of why wealth destroys people’s relations with God. Getting a camel through the eye of a needle is pretty tough.
Two commandments. God before everything and love and compassion for our fellow humans.
Too bad Me (greed) still outweighs We. That, however, is reality.
"the government sets and enforces policies that reward productive activity rather than speculation"
You mean like building empty cities? With dangerous sub-standard buildings?
I will say they can very quickly build large projects, there are some very impressive bridges to nowhere as well as huge solar farms in the Gobi Desert.
The Chinese property bubble is an interesting example. For one thing, something like 85% of the inflated gains from the bubble have since been deflated:
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/econographics/chinas-property-slump-deepens-and-threatens-more-than-the-housing-sector/
Some would call that wealth destruction, taking paper gains away from millions of Chinese households. Others (me, for example) would be just fine with that, considering those households still actually own their home while millions of other Chinese households are still actually able to afford home ownership. Compare that with the West, where it's simply assumed that people who own real property should be able to make money in their sleep as housing stays scarce and prices get bid into the stratosphere. I can understand both points of view. Understand, but not sympathize with. My sympathies lie more with the people who get priced out, because they still have to work for a living, but the value of their work gets sucked up by landlords.
It's precisely because the CCP prevents pricing speculation that investment has to go into productive activity, like industry, or as you say, solar farms in the Gobi desert (an extremely valuable investment). In 50 years, China has gone from a poor country to a peer competitor to the USA. That's a phenomenal achievement, and it happened very much because speculators lost and productive enterprises won.
Meanwhile, would you have me believe the US economy produces no waste? No unproductive spending? Would it surprise you to learn the USA wastes $2.5 trillion per year on health care spending alone? America's unspeakably bloated health-care sector dwarfs anything China has to offer in terms of waste. It makes nobody any healthier, but it buys plenty of sailboats and second homes for useless upper managers, and megayachts and estates for private equity schemers.
Bingo. Some small timers may just want independence. That was Astera's rebuttal to me. Ok, fine. But most want to grow and grow and grow. They dream of becoming movers and shakers. Would Astera have turned riches down if one of her ideas took off? Of course not.
What to do? Change human nature? No. Use their passion for the good of everyone. But that does mean not letting them do everything they want. They find this intolerable. Who cares? Play ball with the nation or get the fuck out.
Is it just me, or does Hasan Piker appear to be the left's Charlie Kirk? If so, the difference in persona and temperament of their respective followers speaks volumes.
Piker is the anti-Kirk.
Publicity starved AOC was on Youtube or something similar over the weekend injecting herself with some kind of hormones that are part of harvesting one's eggs for freezing. The implication being that she intends to run for La Presidente and will postpone having children or have surrogates in order to not interfere with her sure to be brilliant governance.
Saw a few click baits regarding that performative theater actress... Didn't bite, but wasn't surprised she's going for the drama queen title once again.
AOC ancestry is all Spanish. Spanish people are considered racially white. The Puerto Rico censuses of 2000-2010 were racially listed 80-76% white but in 2020 it was 17% white, probably because people figured out that multiracial and non-white get better benefits. All this leads to the Hasan Piker threat against white people that will have AOC in its sights.
Under the longstanding U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) standards (1997, used for Census data through the 2020s), “White” is defined as a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. This explicitly includes responses such as Lebanese, Egyptian, Iranian, Arab, Moroccan, and similar groups. MENA ancestries were tabulated under White.
Piker has a target rich environment.
Poor Riley, her pet White partner person.
Yep, Bernie is part of the Mensheviks who were eaten by the Bolsheviks.
Here is a historical trace of where we are now and it is frightening:
https://escapekey.substack.com/p/kennedy
Our plutocracy, and the resultant economic conditions for average Americans, make socialism and communism inevitable.
And who is responsible for the de-industrialization of the country? All the environmental nut jobs under Obama wanting manufacturing to be done in Mexico, and East Asia.
Look at what is destroying the country’s economy, and you will find Democrats in any direction.
And now those Democrats are turning into communists.
Wow. How dumb are you? It started decades before that. It's a Uniparty thing, not merely the Democrats.
Garet Garrett wrote "The People's Pottage" in 1953.
Anyone who remembers Garet Garrett should be put in charge of something.
I have a copy sitting on my desk.