<p><pre><code> > And he hinted at a novel approach to monetary policy, suggesting that “the ultimate intervention is our military”.
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Yes, that was both funny and tragic. But it also demonstrates why smart people made him president: he is beyond perfect for redirecting attention. By burning the institutions down and by severing international relations, a certain class of people can finally disable the corrective and limiting mechanisms that keep them in check. Even if that means the whole country needs to be burned down. Zero sum in business, zero sum in church, zero sum in state governance.
I wouldnt call those people smart. They might be playing a game optimally in the short term, but they are ruining a long term system. And i dont mean centuries, but decades. They need the general population 20 years from now to have grown up in a safe and prosperous environment with good education accross the board and the country to have the global influence necessary to maintain all that. They're throwing all that away for more cornering more of a market for the next 5-10 years. Its kinda dumb
Those people aren't really "Americans" in any meaningful sense, even if they happen to hold US passports.<p>Once they're done with the US they'll just move onto the next country, same as they moved onto the US once the British empire was done.<p>They're just locusts
The prevailing mentality seems to be that if we don’t win in the next three quarters it will be such a catastrophe that there won’t be a future at all.
At any given time, there are large numbers of influential people with no long term horizons, only a short one that is rapidly approaching. For these people, a good 5-10 more years may be all they really need. That’s why we need to invent life extension tech that gives elites more incentive to think long term, even if most regular people only live normal lifespans.
I don't think we can say this one is a distraction - historically the US dollar has involved the "secret" deal [0] where the US was trading military protection in the Middle East for having a major energy supplier only accept dollars. Probably some other similar shenanigans going on that aren't public too.<p>I imagine the US's poor showing against Iran and the implied inability to coerce medium powers is a factor in the decision making of the serious buyers of US treasuries. It has never been entirely clear how much value the US military's ability to control global trade really backed the dollar; but Trump's style is to hit people with every possible threat and reason to do what he wants in case it helps.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency#1970_to_2000" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency#1970_to_2000</a>
I’m reminded of the recent study claiming that British imperial activities had a negligible impact on the quality of life for non-elites, but was enormously enriching for the elites. Tough to take entirely seriously due to no perfect control sample, but it’s at least provocative to me to consider this: all this pain and suffering for what? The worst person you can imagine being able to piss in a gold toilet and grope women (and men) of a questionable age with coerced consent?<p>From 1945 to Reagan may have been one of the most extraordinary times for the “middle class” of any nation in the history of the world. The distribution of wealth kept pace with the advances of efficiency. What a privilege it must be to have been an adult in a non-discriminated class during that period, and the honeymoon phase that kept steam until the Great Recession.
I think it is past time to admit that a lot of the roots of our current issues, both culturally and economically, can be traced back to the Regan era. Culture wars have always been a thing, but 'the moral majority' throwing out reason for emotion and economic policy glorifying the short term gain of the rich because it will 'eventually' benefit the poor got a real boost under Regan and then Bush. The results of that, unlike the promised economics, have been trickling down ever sense.
Which institutions has Trump burned down?
Smart people helped him be the candidate.<p>People who didn't mind that he is a racist, xenophobic, anti-semitic, bigoted philandering malignant narcissist grifter made him president.<p>Intelligent lawyers degraded themselves to make it happen again.<p>I do think trying to backdate the idea that intelligent people are behind Trump's rise because supposedly intelligent people are now on the Trump train for their own expedient reasons ignores that the beginning of the Trump movement was grounded in his explicitly bigoted and racist proclamations.<p>It's not like he came down the escalator with any pitch to intelligent people. Appeals to hatred, bigotry, conspiracy theories and racism were a key plank of how he drove his candidacy from the very beginning. Enough Americans chose this revolting human being as their avatar to make it happen. Twice.<p>Nobody was conned by intelligent people: they went along with the racist carnival huckster.
… and yet America voted for him a second time. I just don’t get why
> I just don’t get why<p>That behavior is the cause. The question must be answered, and if you haven't answered it after 8 (since 2016) or 26 (since 2000) or more years, you aren't trying.<p>How does the Republican party do these things without losing votes? The likely causes seem obvious to me, but the real problem is that people who oppose them need to believe again that they can do anything, that they are responsible, that they won't be stopped, and stop accepting helplessness.
Even now when things have gone so far off the rails, the average American knows basically nothing about what's going on. There's a ton of information but no reliable way to split it from misinformation, so people just glom on to whatever aligns with their worldview. Our future feels pretty hopeless to me.
Project 2025 ain't gonna implement itself.
Next he'll be bombing US states guilty of 'election fraud'.
Exactly. He and his accomplices don't give a flying fuck whether the whole country goes down in flames, because they already have fuck-you money, and they're only getting richer. That's why arguing about how incompetent, demented, or whatever he is misses the point completely. And the "incompetence" of his underlings doing the work of destruction is a feature, not a bug in this scheme. The chaos they sow is the perfect cover to do what they want unhindered while everyone else is distracted. It would be beautiful if it weren't so unfathomably evil.
The military threats include burning down other countries.<p>Now, people accept the "no angel" defense for Iran and Venezuela. Just like a cop is allowed to execute someone in the street if they have a criminal record. But now we have to work out how serious the threats against Western countries are, or whether they're just routine Trump bullshit for social media. Is there a real prospect of the use of force against Canada, or Canadian nationals in the US? Is there a limit to the trade sanctions? If the US can sanction individual ICC members, can't they exert pressure on Carney by debanking him too?
We know from crime that the only way to solve a crisis is to escalate, because that is what zero-sum dynamics basically forces one too. In that process, everything becomes a tool and there is barely anything that is off-limits.<p>Putting aside the possible change of guards with the other party getting into power, the USA are long-term heading to a serious crisis. The dems were able to reduce deficits in the past (a bit surprisingly because that contradicts the narrative), but I think their space for maneuvering is getting increasingly small. There is a serious possibility that notwithstanding efforts to save the ship the long term trend cannot be reversed because so many critical processes had been set in motion, about which control has been lost.<p>What happens after a decade? You can do the math. A disgruntled electorate want final solutions to an increasingly heavier crisis. It takes real states(wo)men to re-architect the USA in favor of the public. Also, if you ever open 'social' media or regular media even, you could experience first-hand how hard it has become to reach the public. The vested interests are not willing to give up their power.
When a debt crisis occurs, there is only one good option and many bad ones. The good option is the debt holders realize they need to compromise and are willing to forgive part of the debt for proper governance. ie. forgive part of the debt as long as the US adheres to a strict budget which involves raising taxes and cutting services. And no more giving out tax breaks and tax holidays as if they were free.<p>All the other options are infinitely worse. The problem is that such a deal is political suicide. MAGA will run on repealing the deal like they ran on dismantling Obama care. They are the party of financial self immolation.
The window is still pretty large. Raising taxes at low to moderate levels would be sufficient to close the gap and restore confidence in debt without slowing the economy.<p>The problem is that every time democrats make progress republicans pass massive tax cuts. Four successive republican administrations have passed massive tax cuts. Trump alone is responsible for 30% of all debt.<p>The problem is that voters punish anyone who raise taxes. The first bush lost reelection because he broke his “read my lips no new taxes promise” when he was actually trying to behave responsibly.
<p><pre><code> > The window is still pretty large. Raising taxes at low to moderate levels would be sufficient
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Agreed, short term there is. But tax=theft narratives and other cultural beliefs are real obstacles.<p><pre><code> > The problem is that every time democrats make progress republicans pass massive tax cuts. Four successive republican administrations have passed massive tax cuts. Trump alone is responsible for 30% of all debt.
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True, but people won't believe you if you would tell them, or they will ignore it. Furthermore, the dems don't own the media, including the 'liberal media'. I expect blame games and victim-playing turned to the max on news stations after any change of guards. What doesn't help too is that every politician has to literally buy their seat, so sponsors have ultimately more power than the electorate.
"Give us money to pay for our military or else our military will intervene"