Chris, thank you for a brilliant - and deeply disturbing - analysis of what is and isn't happening in our country politically, economically and culturally - and why. How the F do we unwind this crazy shit and try to return to something resembling the old normal?
Example re: my response to this. A pediatrician berated us for failing to get our daughter plenty of the brilliant, health-giving mRNA injections that a young body needs, so we carried our medical records out of the office and found an osteopathic pediatrician who practices independently and doesn't take insurance. Withdraw.
I had to have emergency eye surgery in '20. Berating is exactly what the eye surgeon did to me - when I asked a question based upon what I saw whistleblowers post on Rumble, about the Covid 'vaccine.' He literally yelled. I was stuck; I had to go ahead with the surgery. Mostly successful, but my outcome would have been better had the outpatient surgery center not closed for a week, "because Covid." It has left me with permanent partial sight in one eye. "Thanks Garcetti and Newsom!"
Due to an injury, I lost a lot of blood and docs wanted to give me a transfusion. I said I would have donors lined up and would only take blood if it was not tainted with the covid vaccine. They really gave me a hard time, it was hard to resist and insist. One doctor told me privately after no one else was in the room that he agreed with me 100%. It took the blood bank a long time to get to the people donating blood and it took a long time for it to get to me. Meantime, my numbers were dropping, but I held on. I finally got the blood I requested, and now I am healed up and fine. Stay the course!
Good for you! I'm glad you are well. I used to donate blood for years and years. Once I got cancer years ago, that had to stop, as they don't allow you to donate, nor donate blood to a relative - big no-no. However, one can donate blood in advance to themselves, IF you have enough warning. A lot of people don't know that.
Thank heavens you did that. Coming out now how truly deadly the mRNA vax is for children. On Substack, John Leake/Dr. Peter McCullough - Courageous Discourse is one to follow. I'm sure you do. Bailiwick is another.
I asked my doctor during the pandemic if he would prescribe me Ivermectin or HCQ if I needed it. He just looked at me without responding, just a bit of a smile.
I went to see him last week and asked what infection rate they were seeing, since the news had long since pulled their breathless coverage. He said maybe one a day. They go home for a couple days and feel better. No one goes to a hospital for Covid anymore. He quietly added that he did not recommend any of the new boosters.
I laughed outloud--then nearly bawled--so closely tied together. I do think we need parallel systems--but here in WA it is basically dangerous to admit you're not on board with all the madness.
I moved from Edmonds to North Idaho a couple of years ago because I can't/won't wear a slave muzzle (face rag). We had to be very careful not to put any stickers on the car, nothing worn that might indicate a free thinker. You'd get your car keyed if they saw anything like an El Naranja hat.
That's insane-what has happened to people to make them so confident and self righteous that they would vandalize your vehicle rather than just walking by..... simply because they don't like what your sticker represents! Nuts!
You should see some of these clowns here--and sadly is it mostly liberal white women behind all of it--or are the lead Soldiers in this woke madness.
I cannot tell you how many times I've heard whispered, "White male patriarchy" by white women. I'm sure the beta-male white husband or boyfriend just loves to hear that.
Plenty of liberal white woman here too. Life hasn't smacked them upside the head yet, eventually it will, for most of them anyway but the damage is already done.
In this era of self-proclaimed extreme tolerance, the instances and breadth of intolerance have never been greater.
I’m thinking there has to be a connection between 1) the creeping realization by professional white women that they CAN’T “have it all,” 2) that the origin of that bullshit was no more substantive than Ibram X. Kendi’s bookkeeping, 3) that they’re desperately unhappy with their current situations and 4) they’re too old to change their self-chosen lot in life. I can’t decide if this fanatical embrace of woke and $2500 “Race2Dinner” struggle sessions is a last gasp to be relevant, or on the really dark side, something of a psychopathic narcissist going out with a societal murder-suicide.
re: Kotkin's New Clerisy (the PMC, professional-managerial class)
They are cultists. A number of heterodox social scientists across the ideological rectum... err ... spectrum, have pointed out that the "left" has always been a Christian heresy, a faux religion with its own bizarre definition of satan, evil, sin, moral depravity, etc.
With postmodern social conditions and suburban consumer culture, the distance between working people and the elites, the "symbolics" or "virtual" classes, has turned into a huge chasm.
The real problem is that the "woke" cult is a magnet for mentally dysfunctional people. They are mostly irrational, incapable of rational coherence, much less meta-cognitive awareness.
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Les Leopold and Matt Taibbi on how Democrats get in bed with corporate finance, throw the working classes under the bus, and hide their crimes behind a mask of “wokeness”. (30 million jobs destroyed by “stock buybacks, private equity scams, “restructuring”, etc.)
open. substack. com /pub/taibbi/p/the-real-book-about-the-white-working
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Kotkin has been amassing economic and demographic data showing the role of global elites and the PMC in the destruction of free speech and democracy in general and the creation of an economy that reduced the working classes to Neo-Feudalism.
For at least 50 years that I've seen it, there has been a conflict between counterculture anti-state libertarianism (The Whole Earth Catalog being one example of an attempt at returning to self-sufficient frontier culture) and the pro-state "left". Various spinoffs of the anti-state types have discussed most of the issues in the current discussion for a long time, such as:
Jordan Hall (futurist) and John Vervaeke (evolutionary psychologist) discuss "the religion of no religion"
There is quite a bit of that kind of stuff, including an overlap with Ken Wilber's integral theory, William Irwin Thompson's work with the Lindesfarne Association and Eric Weinstein's IDW and other "liminal" movements.
I am often pulled to look for another place to live...but unlikely. Idaho is also beautiful. Our primary fundraiser for our animal rescue is at a local high school here--infamous from "10 Things I Hate About You", and I just love it so much.
When Mr Bray writes one of his scathing reports about CA, numerous posts question his decision to stay in southern CA.
Our lives are here. Friends. Family. Business. I live in 28th Leg District and 20 years ago is was 2 republican legislatures and 1 republican senator. Mirror image today.
One note of optimism is a wealthy conservative funded numerous initiatives pushing back at Peak Woke Inc. The tide is receding. They've seen the best they can do, and we are slowing waking up.
...then again, I could very easily be whistling by the graveyard...
We have a true dilemma this year--in many ways the mirror image of Trump/DeSantis. Dave Reichert, former King County Sherrif & Representative is running for Gov against a truly tyrannical maniac Bob Ferguson, the former AG. Reicher is accurately labeled RINO by many on the right. Semi Bird is also running. Retired Soldier (we were in same unit, I know him personally--good dude) but has the MAGA folks.
I would prefer to have Semi as Gov--but does he stand a chance in hell against the Leftists in WA. Polling has Reichert beating Ferguson.
So do we vote for 60% good to keep us from hell--Bob Ferguson--or swing for the fences and support Semi?
The GOP in WA is weaker than in CA..and Chris wrote about the pathetic GOP in Cali a few months ago.
I think we should drop voting all together and do a draft.
I hear you BSN. Mullet (Issaquah-D) is running against Ferguson. I’ve never voted D but Mullet is much more moderate & doesn’t seem like the crazy authoritarian communist that is Ferguson. Would love to see Bird as Gov. but no way a maga R gets the votes in WA. It may come down to Mullet & Ferguson in our crazy primary. In that case I’d vote for Mullet. In the meantime you may like this from Dutch Sheets. From our blessed history: https://us5.campaign-archive.com/?e=50735d1b68&u=21ae4b9aa9f11e4a8320b5ed6&id=faca5a8e17
Thanks Dena. Hadn't heard of Mullet...mostly because our local politics are even more depressing than the national picture. I have been so naive all of my life to think that these politicians--or the people behind the scenes making stuff happen--were decent people, we just disagreed on policy.
No one with two neurons connected in their head can honestly say Chris Gregouire won the election in 2000. 3 recounts and she only wins one...keep counting until I win, then let's stop.
Now I feel like the rube.
I'm a has-been jock. I'm happiest playing team sports--these days that is mostly pickleball--I play to win every time. BUT I would prefer to lose a well-fought match in anything, than to win easily. I may push the rules--kinda like kicking the ball directly into the opponent to have it go out of bounds--but I don't cheat. Why play if you cheat? I just don't understand that.
These people only cheat. I don't understand them. Again, I'm the rube.
Thanks for the link. I'll finish it later--but you're right--I do like it immediately.
My late sister was a poli-sci major in school and avidly followed politics her entire life. She was a devoted Republican, but several times commented that the hard right would rather have failure than accept less than perfection. Subsequently, I heard this best expressed as “Perfect is the enemy of good.”
That being said, the opening negotiating position of many Republicans (including Reagan) has been to increase spending by half of the Democrats’ opening demand.
If the far right is “hard,” then the middle of the party would appear to be “flaccid.”
Funny thing - the government doing what it wants irrespective of its value to its citizens is not new - it’s just all now out in the open and in your face. When it comes to our government gaslighting us I’m not sure the old normal is something we want.
The old normal subterfuge brought us into WW II, the JFK assassination, 9-11, J-6 and on and on.
Hello Chris. Thanks for the article. I spent many of my younger years studying, practicing and implementing many forms of dipshittery.
In fact I wrote a thesis on “Dipshittery in Modern America” for one of my many doctorate’s degrees in the many disciplines of dipshittery. I can unequivocally confirm that today’s political arena falls well within the scope of not just dipshittery, but highly gifted dipshittery. A form of dipshittery that can only be expressed by the most proficient dipshit masters. Dipshittery students will be studying this era of dipshittery with amazement for many years.
Now that is some intuitive thinking. And if it’s not someplace nice, we can just tell the Dipshits attending the “Stupid Ass Dipshits” convention that the location was chosen to fulfill a green initiative. Then no one will complain, and if they do they will be cancelled.
I would like to be the editor of one of the journals….we can all be overly compensated and speak with feigned britishish accents when interviewed. We will sound smarter,
"We need academic departments and interdisciplinary research groups"
And don't forget the absolutely essential oversight - every department, every sub-department and every 'research group' MUST be overseen, and supervised, by accredited DEI officials. To ensure they don't fall into the trap of thinking for themselves, and coming up with unapproved conclusions.
Absolutely! In Theoretical Dipshittery they are believed to be the genesis of fundamental dipshittery, so this will be necessary to get back to dipshittery’s roots.
What a title! One could build a program around it. A whole department. I can see it now. The Rob Mac Chair of Advanced Dipshittery. A billion dollar endowment. PHD's for all!
Bad news Andy. I looked it up and it appears that the Ivy League schools have already patented, copyrighted, trademarked and implemented all our ideas. Damn it! Back to the drawing board…
Just to see what the normies are reading I looked at Yahoo news the other day. There was a gushing article about a 50 year old former art major who kept his loans in deferment for decades because, surprise, he never made any money as an artist. Biden just wrote off $250k of his student loan debt. The artist was so thrilled he said he was going to use all the money he saved on a trip to India for a few months to learn meditation. You can imagine the comment section on that story.
And here I thought trying on swimwear as a 60-year-old woman was the most depressing part of my day…
But in all seriousness, Chris, thank you for the analysis. I always appreciate your work even if it reminds me what a 💩🤡 show world we are living in right now.
Same thing here. Out of control immigration levels, stagnating/collapsing GDP, non-existent R&D and economic development outside of flipping houses, a military shriveling into a force smaller than some US State Troopers, houses beyond reach of many, growing tent cities but Trudeau's budget? More taxes and *more* because something something LGTBQBLAHBLAH...
My daughter is in college rotc and nearly all of her cadre is immigrants and most of them are women. Not that I'm categorically against either of those things but anyone who thinks we're not developing a military just trying to get a sinecure/citizenship and/or a cushy job filling out TPS reports is delusional.
You’ve just touched on something which hasn’t garnered much discussion. I think because it’s sort of an elephant in the room topic. Your observation about who is being attracted to enlisted and officer ranks and for what motivations, isn’t unique. It is worth a serious discussion. As the U.S. is stretched for military commitments around the world and after 23 years of combat operations in the Middle East, the pool of Americans volunteering for the military is shrinking rapidly. It seems, anecdotally, the post 9/11, for God and Country fervor, has run its course. After 23 years, the ‘with us or with the terrorists’ and ‘making the world safe for democracy’ sentiment has become cliche. We have an entire generation who has grown up with war in the background, and without the benefit of any Peace and Democracy dividend to show for. It’s been all cost, no benefit.
Is military service now viewed as just a government job with great benefits? Housing, education, work experience, great retirement if you stay in long enough and for some, a path to citizenship. Then there’s the tangible benefits we’ve ingrained in the private sector: veterans preference, tax free shopping, low or no interest housing loans, passing on education benefits to spouses and kids, healthcare, etc… All because of ‘sacrifices’ people make by serving (voluntarily).
Has all of this created an institution which will attract those seeking benefit rather than a sense of public service? What is the effect when motivation is purely personal benefit? When there is no sense of shared history and no cultural bond with your community, then what is the motivation? At what point does military service become transactional? What is the value of the transaction when duty and honor and service to your country are not part of the transaction currency, but instead, the currency is a lifetime guarantee of social benefits for you and your family?
This may be hyperbolic but I think it’s worth asking, at what point are we attracting people to the military whose ethics and virtue boils down to, “twenty bucks is twenty bucks, man?” At what point is lining up the dissenters in the town square just a value proposition?
Great article, Chris.. I like the line: competing concerns. No matter how little you think about economics, it is called "the dismal science" because there are never infinite resources, so some choices have to be made. Even the government money printing will end sometime, as Herbert Simon (a great economist) said: What cannot go on forever must stop.
Yes, when I heard RFK, Jr's VP choice, I had a moment's disgust as I realized that campaign was over.
He's right, of course, about our health crisis. I'm still stunned that a majority of the population rates as "obese." Type II. diabetes, among many other things, is killing America. And how did it happen? Thirty years ago, many Boomers and GenXers were obsessed with health. I wonder if obesity came in train, as they used to say, with tattoos, piercings, pink hair, and shopping for donuts while wearing your pajamas?
I'm laughing. Holy sh*t, how did it happen? How did we go from the "fashion America" of the 1950s, when women strove to look as attractive as possible, and many men paid careful attention to the annual Top Ten Best Dressed Men lists, to what we have now?
There's a wonderful, hourlong documentary of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, "Jazz on a Summer Afternoon." It's gorgeous to listen to and to watch. Anita O'Day's immensely attractive climb up the stairs to the stage, shot from behind, could have wiped out male homosexuality in the United States if enough young men had seen that movie.
Okay, you expect that the performers would have looked good. The stunning thing is the way the audience is dressed. An outdoor jazz festival, and most of the women are wearing suits and many, if not most, of the men are wearing neckties and sports jackets.
started in brooklyn in the mid-teens. first noticed it on the subway. apparently it's a badge of honor if you never have to change into your work clothes
1990s, tech jobs, the t-shirt with jeans, and probably keds or flip flops signaled that you were a genius techie/coder that didn't need to conform, and were ready to work 18 hour shifts ad sleep under your desk, or in the back of the server room with the spare parts, etc.
What actually happened was that the "founders" (merchant elites, many of whom had fallen out of the "lower nobility" or something like that) used military force to put down anti-tax peasant rebellions.
"The overarching theme common to all of these individual themes is closed discursive systems: 'It’s a club, and you ain’t in it.'"
What I noticed, Chris, is that those systems reinforce each others' power. The politics of distraction works because, even though the world is smaller than it's ever been in modern times, there is no shared reality that is large enough to pierce through the bullshit. And the bullshit makers, because they rule government, media, and academia, always have the floor.
So by default, they serve one audience -- everyone whose life's meaning hinges on seeing Trump as an existential threat. Buy into that, and you buy into everything else the elites are selling you. Disinformation as you define it is a threat? More please. We should allow men to compete in women's sports? More please. Russia is a monster? Yes, yes, yes.
Would the support for Ukraine be anywhere near where it is now if it weren't seen as a way to get back at Trump? Wasn't the entirety of the Covid response shaped by being anti-Trump? "What, he's not going into hysterics over Covid? He's evil and we must mask, social distance, and inject ourselves until our bodies are 80% mRNA.
If Trump were smart, he would have been all for the most draconian responses. Guess which side of the debate MSNBC's wealthy "thanks for paying off my student loans, Joe" audience would be on?
They repeat the same narratives: marginalization, systemic oppression, social injustice. There is no feedback mechanism to call them out, because they control those levers, too. If you disagree, you're alt. Of the Dark Web.
It's a grift, and a powerful one. And it won't go away when Trump leaves the stage. They have spent the last eight years honing their skills and cementing more of their power. Which is why their lack of power in the Supreme Court drives them batshit crazy. "We run the WEF, the CDC, the WHO, the Deep State, NATO, et al, but we don't control all three branches of government? It's an injustice. We were meant to rule."
Remember when NPR sulked at being called state media on Twitter? What defense do they have when the entirety of their news reportage is defined by access journalism and acquiescing to the power they approve of? Ask yourself when they give a fair hearing to any issue?
Across the pond, it's the same. I listen to BBC World Service Overnight, and I don't know how many brains must be melting at the sheer preening, the freeze-dried neoliberalism they dispense for hours every night as if they're reading a lullaby. There is no two sides to Russia-Ukraine. It's just Ukraine.
There's no two sides to the abortion debate. It's just cheerleading for the pro-choice side. There's no border-security issue. It's just racist Republicans encouraging populism. And we know what use liberal elites have for populists.
Their programming is of a realm that exists only within the closed, academic-inspired system you write about -- one with little relation to the way our lives are lived and experienced. It's a stew of noxious navel-gazing whose main purpose is to announce: "Look how evolved we are. Can you even stand it?"
One one BBC World Service Overnight podcast -- "Dear Daughter" -- narrated with the sickly-sweet self-regard that defines progressive public radio, the host prefaced that night's theme with:"There is so much history and cultural weight" of...wait for it...black hair. Who the fuck is this for if not Brooklynites sipping pinot noir late at night on the fire escape?
NPR and the BBC's ouroboros programming is of a piece with The Atlantic Council. The Global Engagement Center. The Election Integrity Project. They are forever and always finding the marginalized narrative, the stray dogs of opinion so that they have something against which to act and assert their power.
They're all united by their love of systems. Finding the systems that have manipulated them. Manipulating the systems. The world is multicultural, we're told; those telling us this fetishize multiculturalism.
But they crave monoculture. They rule as elites who think they're the first group in history to "get it right." What they are is the first group in history to extend its tentacles this far around the world.
If you're a technocrat who went to or are going to an Ivy League school, you are living in the Renaissance. This is your time to shine.
Generations of students who were indoctrinated into seeing the world as little else but power structures are so enamored of the system, so used to seeing the world through that prism, they made it their mission to ascend to corporate and government and NGO and global media and non-profit power centers. Katherine Maher is their platonic ideal of what it means to be a fully-realized human being in 2024 and into eternity.
I'm just starting to read this book, "The Mighty Wurlitzer: how the CIA played America" by Hugh Wilford. It mentions most of the well-known CIA-funded misdeeds. Some I wasn't aware of, like former Playboy bunny Gloria Steinem, ("women's rights activist") worked for a company that was a front for the CIA. A LOT of things tie together, this isn't accidental cultural change, folks. I'm 1/3 of the way into the book and am totally disgusted.
I previously read the book, "December, 1941" by Craig Shirley. Lesson? Communists never quit. In 1941, college kids were trained to act up, be disruptive. Sound familiar? The CIA has their tentacles in Unions, besides Academia, and Media.
I'm not a fan of the Queens-Trump personality, but he's the ONLY candidate talking about saving our country as we were all born into it, or came here legally to it. I think he's the only one willing to tell the UN, WEF, and WHO to go F themselves.
Eisenhower was truly spot-on, when he warned of the military industrial complex. My gut feeling is that government on ALL levels (including Los Angeles in this, as I am L.A. born) is run by people who have invested in the destruction of said City, County, State, US. Not only is this wealth redistribution, but the selfies, the dancing, the flaunting it in our faces - all of it, I feel, is to rub our noses in it while we're being destroyed. Including by Big Pharma. I'm a senior, and in my lifetime, TV "drug" ads have initially gone from diet aids, headache, cold, and allergy relief to all manner of "if your body part is broken, we've got the cure" for it. All showing happy people frolicking in the park or whatever, looking like they never have a sick day now, thanks to Big Pharma! Besides taxes, it's another way to bleed us dry - sometimes quite literally.
Great piece. Sovereign debt crisis coming. Soon. We are reminiscent of those cartoon characters that have run off the Cliff and haven’t realized their predicament….yet
"So the second most obvious reality of American politics is that power doesn’t care about public sentiment. You can oppose whatever you want, peasant, but don’t think that it means something. Institutions have no levers that people outside of the institutions can get their hands on."
The 'issues' are cherry-picked for us. We get to decide which side of THEIR issue we're on, and then fight each other over it. And while we are thus distracted, they get away with murder.
It's strange, we don't have exactly the same problems in UK but like you, we find ourselves "withdrawing" certainly from mainstream politics. It doesn't leave many options tbh. Healthcare is "free" here (paid for via taxation, if you need meds, you pay for them) and since convid I've turned down every opportunity to engage with the medical profession except for my annual asthma review. Which is done over the phone because I'm otherwise fit and healthy. We are drawn to people like us, but are noticing more of our other friends (from pre convid times) "joining the dots". The latest is a mate who's multi jabbed hubs has survived bowel cancer and heart/lung problems since the jabs. He's now had a massive stroke and in a specialist unit. All the other patients are young men between 20-30. All need 24 hrs care, some will never recover. She finally realised the jabs had done it. No more for her.
Chris, I have seen three or four interviews with you and unlike me, you present the craziness and never seem to get really maniacally pissed off. I try to mirror that approach but the information in this post elevated my pissed off level to the maniacal range. How about you?
I get how NPCs supporting The Current Thing get’s one’s goat at and it is well known that Ukraine has a corruption problem — though I note the Ukrainian government is the one making the accusations and prosecuting offenders. Also, “you have a corruption problem so we should not support you against a Russian invasion that is explicitly genocidal” (as Putin told us it is) is not a morally impressive argument.
But the aid to Ukraine is a tiny part of both US GDP and even of the US defence budget. Even tinier when one realises that much of it is about giving old weapons and munitions to Ukraine and the Pentagon then buys shiny new versions for US Armed Forces. The US also gets to see how technology is changing warfare without any US forces doing the dying.
Moreover, a whole lot of other countries are coming to the same calculation. Here in Australia, as a Pacific US ally and the only US ally to fight in every one of the US’s major postwar conflicts, while prepared to do its own fighting (Malaysia, Borneo) and its own interventions (East Timor), our policy is very pro-Ukraine in part because we are very keen to have the CCP regime in China be convinced that attacking neighbours is a bad move.
Chris, thank you for a brilliant - and deeply disturbing - analysis of what is and isn't happening in our country politically, economically and culturally - and why. How the F do we unwind this crazy shit and try to return to something resembling the old normal?
Example re: my response to this. A pediatrician berated us for failing to get our daughter plenty of the brilliant, health-giving mRNA injections that a young body needs, so we carried our medical records out of the office and found an osteopathic pediatrician who practices independently and doesn't take insurance. Withdraw.
Yes, "berating" is an attractive trait, and certainly one to be sought when selecting a family physician.
I had to have emergency eye surgery in '20. Berating is exactly what the eye surgeon did to me - when I asked a question based upon what I saw whistleblowers post on Rumble, about the Covid 'vaccine.' He literally yelled. I was stuck; I had to go ahead with the surgery. Mostly successful, but my outcome would have been better had the outpatient surgery center not closed for a week, "because Covid." It has left me with permanent partial sight in one eye. "Thanks Garcetti and Newsom!"
Due to an injury, I lost a lot of blood and docs wanted to give me a transfusion. I said I would have donors lined up and would only take blood if it was not tainted with the covid vaccine. They really gave me a hard time, it was hard to resist and insist. One doctor told me privately after no one else was in the room that he agreed with me 100%. It took the blood bank a long time to get to the people donating blood and it took a long time for it to get to me. Meantime, my numbers were dropping, but I held on. I finally got the blood I requested, and now I am healed up and fine. Stay the course!
Good for you! I'm glad you are well. I used to donate blood for years and years. Once I got cancer years ago, that had to stop, as they don't allow you to donate, nor donate blood to a relative - big no-no. However, one can donate blood in advance to themselves, IF you have enough warning. A lot of people don't know that.
I dare you to find one that doesn't, but takes insurance, because no one can afford the bills.
It easier to have a professional do it than to have to resort to self-flagellation. Less blood to clean up too.
My endocrinologist told me I was endangering my mother by not getting the shot. He knows nothing about my mother except that I have one! Wtf??
Thank heavens you did that. Coming out now how truly deadly the mRNA vax is for children. On Substack, John Leake/Dr. Peter McCullough - Courageous Discourse is one to follow. I'm sure you do. Bailiwick is another.
I wonder how much of the decline in the WW birth rate is due COVID vaccines…
It was in a massive decline already. Supposedly, the vax has a temporary effect on fertility. Time will tell. Read more at The Vigilant Fox. Birth rates are now at their lowest level since 1979. You should be able to find it by this description alone, but if not, here is the link to it. https://vigilantnews.com/post/us-births-alarmingly-slide-to-lowest-level-since-1979-failing-to-exceed-replacement-rate/?omnisendContactID=64f0f8a694a54bbd3d3b19bc
Yesssssss😘
I asked my doctor during the pandemic if he would prescribe me Ivermectin or HCQ if I needed it. He just looked at me without responding, just a bit of a smile.
I went to see him last week and asked what infection rate they were seeing, since the news had long since pulled their breathless coverage. He said maybe one a day. They go home for a couple days and feel better. No one goes to a hospital for Covid anymore. He quietly added that he did not recommend any of the new boosters.
He never advised me to take a Covid shot, ever.
Lyons had an article about creating parallel institutions.
I want to like this 100 times, but it won't let me.
The only part of the answer that I can see starts with parallel systems. Opt out, live as a person, and then TBD.
More and more of us are heading that direction.
I found a great local functional medical doctor. It's night and day different from the death buildings of modern healthcare.
See N. S. Lyons’s excellent piece on parallel systems:
https://open.substack.com/pub/theupheaval/p/the-rights-future-must-be-parallel?r=z7hid&utm_medium=ios
It seems we’ll be forced eventually to participate & build these parallel systems. Going to take awhile, though it is happening in health care. In the meantime, this excellent reminder of our history is a great read. https://us5.campaign-archive.com/?e=50735d1b68&u=21ae4b9aa9f11e4a8320b5ed6&id=faca5a8e17
I was going to say “bankruptcy and pestilence”, but I might be a bit more biblical than Chris.
I laughed outloud--then nearly bawled--so closely tied together. I do think we need parallel systems--but here in WA it is basically dangerous to admit you're not on board with all the madness.
bsn
I moved from Edmonds to North Idaho a couple of years ago because I can't/won't wear a slave muzzle (face rag). We had to be very careful not to put any stickers on the car, nothing worn that might indicate a free thinker. You'd get your car keyed if they saw anything like an El Naranja hat.
That's insane-what has happened to people to make them so confident and self righteous that they would vandalize your vehicle rather than just walking by..... simply because they don't like what your sticker represents! Nuts!
You should see some of these clowns here--and sadly is it mostly liberal white women behind all of it--or are the lead Soldiers in this woke madness.
I cannot tell you how many times I've heard whispered, "White male patriarchy" by white women. I'm sure the beta-male white husband or boyfriend just loves to hear that.
bsn
Plenty of liberal white woman here too. Life hasn't smacked them upside the head yet, eventually it will, for most of them anyway but the damage is already done.
In this era of self-proclaimed extreme tolerance, the instances and breadth of intolerance have never been greater.
I’m thinking there has to be a connection between 1) the creeping realization by professional white women that they CAN’T “have it all,” 2) that the origin of that bullshit was no more substantive than Ibram X. Kendi’s bookkeeping, 3) that they’re desperately unhappy with their current situations and 4) they’re too old to change their self-chosen lot in life. I can’t decide if this fanatical embrace of woke and $2500 “Race2Dinner” struggle sessions is a last gasp to be relevant, or on the really dark side, something of a psychopathic narcissist going out with a societal murder-suicide.
re: Kotkin's New Clerisy (the PMC, professional-managerial class)
They are cultists. A number of heterodox social scientists across the ideological rectum... err ... spectrum, have pointed out that the "left" has always been a Christian heresy, a faux religion with its own bizarre definition of satan, evil, sin, moral depravity, etc.
With postmodern social conditions and suburban consumer culture, the distance between working people and the elites, the "symbolics" or "virtual" classes, has turned into a huge chasm.
The real problem is that the "woke" cult is a magnet for mentally dysfunctional people. They are mostly irrational, incapable of rational coherence, much less meta-cognitive awareness.
-----
Les Leopold and Matt Taibbi on how Democrats get in bed with corporate finance, throw the working classes under the bus, and hide their crimes behind a mask of “wokeness”. (30 million jobs destroyed by “stock buybacks, private equity scams, “restructuring”, etc.)
https://open.substack.com/pub/taibbi/p/the-real-book-about-the-white-working
open. substack. com /pub/taibbi/p/the-real-book-about-the-white-working
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Kotkin has been amassing economic and demographic data showing the role of global elites and the PMC in the destruction of free speech and democracy in general and the creation of an economy that reduced the working classes to Neo-Feudalism.
https://joelkotkin.com/the-coming-of-neo-feudalism/
joelkotkin. com /the-coming-of-neo-feudalism/
For at least 50 years that I've seen it, there has been a conflict between counterculture anti-state libertarianism (The Whole Earth Catalog being one example of an attempt at returning to self-sufficient frontier culture) and the pro-state "left". Various spinoffs of the anti-state types have discussed most of the issues in the current discussion for a long time, such as:
Jordan Hall (futurist) and John Vervaeke (evolutionary psychologist) discuss "the religion of no religion"
warning: new agey stuff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl48eFZGRq8
www. youtube. com /watch?v=nl48eFZGRq8
There is quite a bit of that kind of stuff, including an overlap with Ken Wilber's integral theory, William Irwin Thompson's work with the Lindesfarne Association and Eric Weinstein's IDW and other "liminal" movements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_dark_web
I am often pulled to look for another place to live...but unlikely. Idaho is also beautiful. Our primary fundraiser for our animal rescue is at a local high school here--infamous from "10 Things I Hate About You", and I just love it so much.
When Mr Bray writes one of his scathing reports about CA, numerous posts question his decision to stay in southern CA.
Our lives are here. Friends. Family. Business. I live in 28th Leg District and 20 years ago is was 2 republican legislatures and 1 republican senator. Mirror image today.
One note of optimism is a wealthy conservative funded numerous initiatives pushing back at Peak Woke Inc. The tide is receding. They've seen the best they can do, and we are slowing waking up.
...then again, I could very easily be whistling by the graveyard...
bsn
“We had to be very careful…”
I hope you’re referring to WA and not ID.
There's other pretty states. Just don't vote for what you have there. (Not that I think you would.)
We have a true dilemma this year--in many ways the mirror image of Trump/DeSantis. Dave Reichert, former King County Sherrif & Representative is running for Gov against a truly tyrannical maniac Bob Ferguson, the former AG. Reicher is accurately labeled RINO by many on the right. Semi Bird is also running. Retired Soldier (we were in same unit, I know him personally--good dude) but has the MAGA folks.
I would prefer to have Semi as Gov--but does he stand a chance in hell against the Leftists in WA. Polling has Reichert beating Ferguson.
So do we vote for 60% good to keep us from hell--Bob Ferguson--or swing for the fences and support Semi?
The GOP in WA is weaker than in CA..and Chris wrote about the pathetic GOP in Cali a few months ago.
I think we should drop voting all together and do a draft.
bsn
The only draft, other than a sports draft, that someone would want to be called for.
I hear you BSN. Mullet (Issaquah-D) is running against Ferguson. I’ve never voted D but Mullet is much more moderate & doesn’t seem like the crazy authoritarian communist that is Ferguson. Would love to see Bird as Gov. but no way a maga R gets the votes in WA. It may come down to Mullet & Ferguson in our crazy primary. In that case I’d vote for Mullet. In the meantime you may like this from Dutch Sheets. From our blessed history: https://us5.campaign-archive.com/?e=50735d1b68&u=21ae4b9aa9f11e4a8320b5ed6&id=faca5a8e17
Thanks Dena. Hadn't heard of Mullet...mostly because our local politics are even more depressing than the national picture. I have been so naive all of my life to think that these politicians--or the people behind the scenes making stuff happen--were decent people, we just disagreed on policy.
No one with two neurons connected in their head can honestly say Chris Gregouire won the election in 2000. 3 recounts and she only wins one...keep counting until I win, then let's stop.
Now I feel like the rube.
I'm a has-been jock. I'm happiest playing team sports--these days that is mostly pickleball--I play to win every time. BUT I would prefer to lose a well-fought match in anything, than to win easily. I may push the rules--kinda like kicking the ball directly into the opponent to have it go out of bounds--but I don't cheat. Why play if you cheat? I just don't understand that.
These people only cheat. I don't understand them. Again, I'm the rube.
Thanks for the link. I'll finish it later--but you're right--I do like it immediately.
bsn
My late sister was a poli-sci major in school and avidly followed politics her entire life. She was a devoted Republican, but several times commented that the hard right would rather have failure than accept less than perfection. Subsequently, I heard this best expressed as “Perfect is the enemy of good.”
That being said, the opening negotiating position of many Republicans (including Reagan) has been to increase spending by half of the Democrats’ opening demand.
If the far right is “hard,” then the middle of the party would appear to be “flaccid.”
I needed that! Funny!
bsn
Which WA?
West coast WA.
bsn
Funny thing - the government doing what it wants irrespective of its value to its citizens is not new - it’s just all now out in the open and in your face. When it comes to our government gaslighting us I’m not sure the old normal is something we want.
The old normal subterfuge brought us into WW II, the JFK assassination, 9-11, J-6 and on and on.
Hello Chris. Thanks for the article. I spent many of my younger years studying, practicing and implementing many forms of dipshittery.
In fact I wrote a thesis on “Dipshittery in Modern America” for one of my many doctorate’s degrees in the many disciplines of dipshittery. I can unequivocally confirm that today’s political arena falls well within the scope of not just dipshittery, but highly gifted dipshittery. A form of dipshittery that can only be expressed by the most proficient dipshit masters. Dipshittery students will be studying this era of dipshittery with amazement for many years.
We need academic departments and interdisciplinary research groups.
And journals. Lots and lots of journals with "expert" peer-review from experts with expertise credentials who are real smart and stuff.
And annual conferences to share regional ideas. And shop, so make it someplace nice.
Now that is some intuitive thinking. And if it’s not someplace nice, we can just tell the Dipshits attending the “Stupid Ass Dipshits” convention that the location was chosen to fulfill a green initiative. Then no one will complain, and if they do they will be cancelled.
Agreed! One of the core tenants of post modern dipshittery is to unquestionably trust the experts. The best of which are in academia and government
I would like to be the editor of one of the journals….we can all be overly compensated and speak with feigned britishish accents when interviewed. We will sound smarter,
Great idea! It would be imperative for an editor to understand that sounding smarter is what separates the average dipshits from the massive dipshits.
"We need academic departments and interdisciplinary research groups"
And don't forget the absolutely essential oversight - every department, every sub-department and every 'research group' MUST be overseen, and supervised, by accredited DEI officials. To ensure they don't fall into the trap of thinking for themselves, and coming up with unapproved conclusions.
Absolutely! In Theoretical Dipshittery they are believed to be the genesis of fundamental dipshittery, so this will be necessary to get back to dipshittery’s roots.
"The Roots of Dipshittery".
What a title! One could build a program around it. A whole department. I can see it now. The Rob Mac Chair of Advanced Dipshittery. A billion dollar endowment. PHD's for all!
Bad news Andy. I looked it up and it appears that the Ivy League schools have already patented, copyrighted, trademarked and implemented all our ideas. Damn it! Back to the drawing board…
Damn! Thought for sure that we had discovered an authentic academic opportunity.
Obviously more research required.
I'll get the team right on it!
First - funding...
Now where did I put that list ?
I like it! Only the biggest dipshits need apply.
"Systematic Dipshittery" 101, the textbook.
Great. More people with degrees in a discipline with no real jobs. More student loans I'll get to pay for. (I already paid for mine.) 🙄
Yes, I know you're being facetious.
Just to see what the normies are reading I looked at Yahoo news the other day. There was a gushing article about a 50 year old former art major who kept his loans in deferment for decades because, surprise, he never made any money as an artist. Biden just wrote off $250k of his student loan debt. The artist was so thrilled he said he was going to use all the money he saved on a trip to India for a few months to learn meditation. You can imagine the comment section on that story.
I wish I had enough money to drive to the next town over, it's about 7 miles away.
Now we need a campaign to STOP STUDENT LOANS.
DEI would ruin it.
And here I thought trying on swimwear as a 60-year-old woman was the most depressing part of my day…
But in all seriousness, Chris, thank you for the analysis. I always appreciate your work even if it reminds me what a 💩🤡 show world we are living in right now.
“I’m unable to analyze dipshittery.” Once again, Chris Bray clearly articulated exactly how I feel every damn time I read any mainstream “news”.
Great article!
Same thing here. Out of control immigration levels, stagnating/collapsing GDP, non-existent R&D and economic development outside of flipping houses, a military shriveling into a force smaller than some US State Troopers, houses beyond reach of many, growing tent cities but Trudeau's budget? More taxes and *more* because something something LGTBQBLAHBLAH...
It's all nothing, *literally* nothing.
My daughter is in college rotc and nearly all of her cadre is immigrants and most of them are women. Not that I'm categorically against either of those things but anyone who thinks we're not developing a military just trying to get a sinecure/citizenship and/or a cushy job filling out TPS reports is delusional.
The Audie Murphy days are long gone, friends
You’ve just touched on something which hasn’t garnered much discussion. I think because it’s sort of an elephant in the room topic. Your observation about who is being attracted to enlisted and officer ranks and for what motivations, isn’t unique. It is worth a serious discussion. As the U.S. is stretched for military commitments around the world and after 23 years of combat operations in the Middle East, the pool of Americans volunteering for the military is shrinking rapidly. It seems, anecdotally, the post 9/11, for God and Country fervor, has run its course. After 23 years, the ‘with us or with the terrorists’ and ‘making the world safe for democracy’ sentiment has become cliche. We have an entire generation who has grown up with war in the background, and without the benefit of any Peace and Democracy dividend to show for. It’s been all cost, no benefit.
Is military service now viewed as just a government job with great benefits? Housing, education, work experience, great retirement if you stay in long enough and for some, a path to citizenship. Then there’s the tangible benefits we’ve ingrained in the private sector: veterans preference, tax free shopping, low or no interest housing loans, passing on education benefits to spouses and kids, healthcare, etc… All because of ‘sacrifices’ people make by serving (voluntarily).
Has all of this created an institution which will attract those seeking benefit rather than a sense of public service? What is the effect when motivation is purely personal benefit? When there is no sense of shared history and no cultural bond with your community, then what is the motivation? At what point does military service become transactional? What is the value of the transaction when duty and honor and service to your country are not part of the transaction currency, but instead, the currency is a lifetime guarantee of social benefits for you and your family?
This may be hyperbolic but I think it’s worth asking, at what point are we attracting people to the military whose ethics and virtue boils down to, “twenty bucks is twenty bucks, man?” At what point is lining up the dissenters in the town square just a value proposition?
But don't you remember? He said he gives us more carbon tax back than what we actually spend!
Great article, Chris.. I like the line: competing concerns. No matter how little you think about economics, it is called "the dismal science" because there are never infinite resources, so some choices have to be made. Even the government money printing will end sometime, as Herbert Simon (a great economist) said: What cannot go on forever must stop.
Yes, when I heard RFK, Jr's VP choice, I had a moment's disgust as I realized that campaign was over.
He's right, of course, about our health crisis. I'm still stunned that a majority of the population rates as "obese." Type II. diabetes, among many other things, is killing America. And how did it happen? Thirty years ago, many Boomers and GenXers were obsessed with health. I wonder if obesity came in train, as they used to say, with tattoos, piercings, pink hair, and shopping for donuts while wearing your pajamas?
ADULTS ARE WEARING FLANNEL PAJAMAS IN PUBLIC. I saw this today. It leaves me a little speechless.
I'm laughing. Holy sh*t, how did it happen? How did we go from the "fashion America" of the 1950s, when women strove to look as attractive as possible, and many men paid careful attention to the annual Top Ten Best Dressed Men lists, to what we have now?
There's a wonderful, hourlong documentary of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, "Jazz on a Summer Afternoon." It's gorgeous to listen to and to watch. Anita O'Day's immensely attractive climb up the stairs to the stage, shot from behind, could have wiped out male homosexuality in the United States if enough young men had seen that movie.
Okay, you expect that the performers would have looked good. The stunning thing is the way the audience is dressed. An outdoor jazz festival, and most of the women are wearing suits and many, if not most, of the men are wearing neckties and sports jackets.
They've been doing that for around 10 years in my state! You mean to tell me WE set a fashion trend, INSTEAD of CA or NY?!
I bet they were wearing slippers too. But we can be sure they were certainly not the My Pillow Guy's slippers.
Come to Canada- it's practically a uniform here.
started in brooklyn in the mid-teens. first noticed it on the subway. apparently it's a badge of honor if you never have to change into your work clothes
1990s, tech jobs, the t-shirt with jeans, and probably keds or flip flops signaled that you were a genius techie/coder that didn't need to conform, and were ready to work 18 hour shifts ad sleep under your desk, or in the back of the server room with the spare parts, etc.
During the original founding of our country we used to burn politicians houses down when they did shit we didn’t like….just sayin’
What actually happened was that the "founders" (merchant elites, many of whom had fallen out of the "lower nobility" or something like that) used military force to put down anti-tax peasant rebellions.
I have long called for the return of tar and feathering.
"The overarching theme common to all of these individual themes is closed discursive systems: 'It’s a club, and you ain’t in it.'"
What I noticed, Chris, is that those systems reinforce each others' power. The politics of distraction works because, even though the world is smaller than it's ever been in modern times, there is no shared reality that is large enough to pierce through the bullshit. And the bullshit makers, because they rule government, media, and academia, always have the floor.
So by default, they serve one audience -- everyone whose life's meaning hinges on seeing Trump as an existential threat. Buy into that, and you buy into everything else the elites are selling you. Disinformation as you define it is a threat? More please. We should allow men to compete in women's sports? More please. Russia is a monster? Yes, yes, yes.
Would the support for Ukraine be anywhere near where it is now if it weren't seen as a way to get back at Trump? Wasn't the entirety of the Covid response shaped by being anti-Trump? "What, he's not going into hysterics over Covid? He's evil and we must mask, social distance, and inject ourselves until our bodies are 80% mRNA.
If Trump were smart, he would have been all for the most draconian responses. Guess which side of the debate MSNBC's wealthy "thanks for paying off my student loans, Joe" audience would be on?
They repeat the same narratives: marginalization, systemic oppression, social injustice. There is no feedback mechanism to call them out, because they control those levers, too. If you disagree, you're alt. Of the Dark Web.
It's a grift, and a powerful one. And it won't go away when Trump leaves the stage. They have spent the last eight years honing their skills and cementing more of their power. Which is why their lack of power in the Supreme Court drives them batshit crazy. "We run the WEF, the CDC, the WHO, the Deep State, NATO, et al, but we don't control all three branches of government? It's an injustice. We were meant to rule."
Remember when NPR sulked at being called state media on Twitter? What defense do they have when the entirety of their news reportage is defined by access journalism and acquiescing to the power they approve of? Ask yourself when they give a fair hearing to any issue?
Across the pond, it's the same. I listen to BBC World Service Overnight, and I don't know how many brains must be melting at the sheer preening, the freeze-dried neoliberalism they dispense for hours every night as if they're reading a lullaby. There is no two sides to Russia-Ukraine. It's just Ukraine.
There's no two sides to the abortion debate. It's just cheerleading for the pro-choice side. There's no border-security issue. It's just racist Republicans encouraging populism. And we know what use liberal elites have for populists.
Their programming is of a realm that exists only within the closed, academic-inspired system you write about -- one with little relation to the way our lives are lived and experienced. It's a stew of noxious navel-gazing whose main purpose is to announce: "Look how evolved we are. Can you even stand it?"
One one BBC World Service Overnight podcast -- "Dear Daughter" -- narrated with the sickly-sweet self-regard that defines progressive public radio, the host prefaced that night's theme with:"There is so much history and cultural weight" of...wait for it...black hair. Who the fuck is this for if not Brooklynites sipping pinot noir late at night on the fire escape?
NPR and the BBC's ouroboros programming is of a piece with The Atlantic Council. The Global Engagement Center. The Election Integrity Project. They are forever and always finding the marginalized narrative, the stray dogs of opinion so that they have something against which to act and assert their power.
They're all united by their love of systems. Finding the systems that have manipulated them. Manipulating the systems. The world is multicultural, we're told; those telling us this fetishize multiculturalism.
But they crave monoculture. They rule as elites who think they're the first group in history to "get it right." What they are is the first group in history to extend its tentacles this far around the world.
If you're a technocrat who went to or are going to an Ivy League school, you are living in the Renaissance. This is your time to shine.
Generations of students who were indoctrinated into seeing the world as little else but power structures are so enamored of the system, so used to seeing the world through that prism, they made it their mission to ascend to corporate and government and NGO and global media and non-profit power centers. Katherine Maher is their platonic ideal of what it means to be a fully-realized human being in 2024 and into eternity.
Great article, thank you, Mr. Bray.
I'm just starting to read this book, "The Mighty Wurlitzer: how the CIA played America" by Hugh Wilford. It mentions most of the well-known CIA-funded misdeeds. Some I wasn't aware of, like former Playboy bunny Gloria Steinem, ("women's rights activist") worked for a company that was a front for the CIA. A LOT of things tie together, this isn't accidental cultural change, folks. I'm 1/3 of the way into the book and am totally disgusted.
I previously read the book, "December, 1941" by Craig Shirley. Lesson? Communists never quit. In 1941, college kids were trained to act up, be disruptive. Sound familiar? The CIA has their tentacles in Unions, besides Academia, and Media.
I'm not a fan of the Queens-Trump personality, but he's the ONLY candidate talking about saving our country as we were all born into it, or came here legally to it. I think he's the only one willing to tell the UN, WEF, and WHO to go F themselves.
Eisenhower was truly spot-on, when he warned of the military industrial complex. My gut feeling is that government on ALL levels (including Los Angeles in this, as I am L.A. born) is run by people who have invested in the destruction of said City, County, State, US. Not only is this wealth redistribution, but the selfies, the dancing, the flaunting it in our faces - all of it, I feel, is to rub our noses in it while we're being destroyed. Including by Big Pharma. I'm a senior, and in my lifetime, TV "drug" ads have initially gone from diet aids, headache, cold, and allergy relief to all manner of "if your body part is broken, we've got the cure" for it. All showing happy people frolicking in the park or whatever, looking like they never have a sick day now, thanks to Big Pharma! Besides taxes, it's another way to bleed us dry - sometimes quite literally.
Thanks for speaking out.
The selfies in Los Angeles are next-level and never-ending.
https://twitter.com/LindseyPHorvath/status/1781728824033751475
No kidding! After Hahn, she's the worst abuser, I think. Hahn's Denim Day photo was a profile - I'm sure she didn't want her Mom a$$ showing. :D
Great piece. Sovereign debt crisis coming. Soon. We are reminiscent of those cartoon characters that have run off the Cliff and haven’t realized their predicament….yet
"So the second most obvious reality of American politics is that power doesn’t care about public sentiment. You can oppose whatever you want, peasant, but don’t think that it means something. Institutions have no levers that people outside of the institutions can get their hands on."
The 'issues' are cherry-picked for us. We get to decide which side of THEIR issue we're on, and then fight each other over it. And while we are thus distracted, they get away with murder.
It's strange, we don't have exactly the same problems in UK but like you, we find ourselves "withdrawing" certainly from mainstream politics. It doesn't leave many options tbh. Healthcare is "free" here (paid for via taxation, if you need meds, you pay for them) and since convid I've turned down every opportunity to engage with the medical profession except for my annual asthma review. Which is done over the phone because I'm otherwise fit and healthy. We are drawn to people like us, but are noticing more of our other friends (from pre convid times) "joining the dots". The latest is a mate who's multi jabbed hubs has survived bowel cancer and heart/lung problems since the jabs. He's now had a massive stroke and in a specialist unit. All the other patients are young men between 20-30. All need 24 hrs care, some will never recover. She finally realised the jabs had done it. No more for her.
Chris, I have seen three or four interviews with you and unlike me, you present the craziness and never seem to get really maniacally pissed off. I try to mirror that approach but the information in this post elevated my pissed off level to the maniacal range. How about you?
I get maniacally pissed off. It's unavoidable.
I get how NPCs supporting The Current Thing get’s one’s goat at and it is well known that Ukraine has a corruption problem — though I note the Ukrainian government is the one making the accusations and prosecuting offenders. Also, “you have a corruption problem so we should not support you against a Russian invasion that is explicitly genocidal” (as Putin told us it is) is not a morally impressive argument.
But the aid to Ukraine is a tiny part of both US GDP and even of the US defence budget. Even tinier when one realises that much of it is about giving old weapons and munitions to Ukraine and the Pentagon then buys shiny new versions for US Armed Forces. The US also gets to see how technology is changing warfare without any US forces doing the dying.
Moreover, a whole lot of other countries are coming to the same calculation. Here in Australia, as a Pacific US ally and the only US ally to fight in every one of the US’s major postwar conflicts, while prepared to do its own fighting (Malaysia, Borneo) and its own interventions (East Timor), our policy is very pro-Ukraine in part because we are very keen to have the CCP regime in China be convinced that attacking neighbours is a bad move.
An informative and witty video on this is provided by a fellow Australian. https://youtu.be/Qc436PwqeqM?si=aI0lgjHfHXl-Zg6h
I knew that link was going to Perun before I even clicked on it. :)
Amen.
Those bureaucrats running healthcare, (hospital systems, insurance companies) are special kind of cancer.
You are outlining here why they will bring about a dollar based CBDC as soon as they can.
Research site for you in case you’ve not discovered it yet:
theconservativetreehouse.com