A TRIAD OF LUDICROUS DEBACLES - UKRAINE, GAZA, AND THE IMPERIAL TARIFF WAR

The US empire's collapse is being accelerated by a lethal combination of moral, military, and economic blunders. When you're driving on ice, stay off the brakes!

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The metaphor of maintaining control of a vehicle on an icy road perfectly describes the US government’s inability to stabilize and arrest the tempo of deterioration in the US. A driver’s intuitive move during slippery road conditions is to forcefully apply the brakes in an effort to bring the automobile to an abrupt stop. Unfortunately, the intuitive move is also the most counterproductive. Rather than get the vehicle to a stop, applying the brakes causes the vehicle to lose traction wherein it becomes a victim of kinetic force. The driver is likely to lose control and the vehicle will continue on its uncontrolled path until it finds a tree, a rock, or some other dangerous obstruction. The driver must acknowledge that he can’t control the kinetic forces at work, sparingly apply the brakes, and negotiate the vehicle to a controlled stop. The simpletons in America’s two-party system refuse to accept the arrival of the multi-polar world and the need to safely navigate the conclusion of US domination. This means that they are destined to push extreme measures in successive futile efforts to halt the invulnerable multi-polar dynamic. Thus the icy road metaphor aptly applies. Every hopeless action they undertake to “put on the brakes” of multi-polarity increases the probability that they will lose control of the inevitable imperial descent.

World War 2 devastated the international industrial powers in Europe and Asia and the geographical remoteness of the United States left its industry virtually untouched. In a moment of extraordinary opportunity, the ruling elite in the US misread the fortuitous shift in industrial power dynamics as a cosmic indication of American superiority. It was the classic example of the baseball metaphor wherein a rich man is said to have been born on third base and “thought he hit a triple.” There was little competition from the war-torn allied nations, upwards of 40 countries owed the US money due to the war-related lend-lease program, and the homeward-bound flood of military-aged men provided an able and motivated labor force. Additionally, the nation was endowed with an abundant supply of natural resources, ample access to two major oceans, and a winding river system that allowed an uncomplicated maritime flow of goods The US economic class then set up an international economic infrastructure that funneled capital and raw materials back to its home front. The die was cast for decades of economic prosperity. Unfortunately, the colonial inclinations of US leaders disposed them to officially form the CIA in 1947 as a tool for brutal geopolitical maintenance of their new-found system of domination.

MILITARY DEBACLE - UKRAINE

To make a long story short, the US set its sights upon total world domination and viewed controlling the vast resources of Eurasia (mostly Russia) as the key to that project. Unfortunately, the Russian people occupied that valuable real estate and had no intention of surrendering it to the ruling powers of the US/UK and Western Europe. Ukraine was identified as a prime option initially for destabilizing the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation, and today we find ourselves mired in the consequences. The US sharpened up Ukraine as a weapon to attack Russia with the ultimate plan of crushing its economy with sanctions and installing a puppet government. News update, it failed spectacularly and the Trump administration is stuck with a full-spectrum war that has deteriorated into a full-spectrum defeat. Even worse, acknowledgment of this defeat is also an acknowledgment of the end US military supremacy. While Trump’s inclination to end the conflict as quickly as possible is strategically wise, there appears no way to accomplish this task and maintain the fading falsehood of US world supremacy. The dominant thinkers in the US/EU ruling elite can’t even come to grips with the current reality on the battlefield. The US empire pumped hundreds of billions of dollars, weapons, and propaganda into Ukraine and is in the process of suffering a catastrophic defeat. The Russians understand that every hundred years or so some jackass in the West will get the bright idea of stealing Russia’s resources and sovereignty and that these boneheads will need to be neutralized. In a historical context, they have grown quite adept at accomplishing this task. The ghosts of Napoleon and Hitler wander the halls of the West Wing looking for a partner. Bad news Donald Trump, those sounds of rattling chains and phantom footsteps that you hear in the upper floors of the White House late at night are calling for you. Sooner or later you are gonna have to answer their call. Feel free to blame Joe Biden if it makes you feel less responsible but you should have listened to Steve Bannon and just “walked the effe away.” Think of it this way, Joe Biden and his neocon ilk set the table for this military debacle, and you had the misfortune of accepting the invitation to be the guest of honor for the meal.

MORAL DEBACLE - GAZA

Evaluating the Hamas attack of October 7th without starting in the 1940’s would be like evaluating the Nat Turner slave rebellion without starting in the 1600’s. Israel may have been a number of things historically but it is now effectively a US imperial military and intelligence outpost. It’s barely a shell of a country with little to no economy and a military that is nonexistent without US ammunition and support. The bizarre collection of fascist ideologues ostensibly running the country only makes sense when you recognize that they have been operating in the shadows of DC lunatics like Tony Blinken and Marco Rubio. I’m just sayin’ that Tom Cotton and Lindsay Graham could change their last names to Ben Gvir and Smotrich, move to Tel Aviv, and no one would notice. The civilized world (which clearly doesn’t include Europe and the US) is horrified at the constant flow of information that reveals Israel’s contempt for Palestinian lives. The Democrats were crushed in the November general election and a significant part of their electoral coalition will never return to the party due to its unconditional support for Israel’s extremist government. While the Trump administration started on a minimally positive note by freezing the Gaza conflict, they allowed the Israelis to continue their West Bank rampage and have since abandoned all pretense of restraint. The official position of the unified US government is unconditional support for the wanton slaughter of innocents and an ever-expanding regional conflict. The Democrats are morally discredited in the eyes of many of their former supporters and the anti-war libertarian wing of the Trump coalition is starting to peel off. There is no political or moral excuse for genocide and the cries of “I did not vote for this” are getting louder in MAGA land. This moral debacle is finalizing the Global South’s turn away from the US led coalition and it will last for the foreseeable future. The attempt to maintain the Israeli “unsinkable aircraft carrier” has blasted a hole below the moral waterline of US hegemony.

ECONOMIC DEBACLE - NEOLIBERAL CAPITALISM AND THE DEADLY TARIFFS

We return to the administration of Donald J Trump sitting at a meal that has been carefully prepared for him. Today’s fare consists of a well-done financialized economy, a side of uncontainable inflation, and an angry hopeless electorate. One could argue that his 2017 tax cut package added both scent and flavor to the feast. A lethal combination of deindustrialization, massive tax cuts for the wealthy, endless wars, and predatory rent-seeking policies have wiped out the middle class and left a grossly unequal society. To make matters far worse, necessary infrastructure and education have been privatized and/or defunded creating a poorly educated workforce and a power grid that could not support a sudden upswing in manufacturing should it occur. Most major municipalities experience power shortages during high use periods in hot weather and could in no way support energy-intensive factories in large numbers. Enter Donald Trump’s recent tariff plan. Based on a concept of American victimhood rather than economic theory, President Trump ignores the flawed and counter-productive policies of the greedy ruling elite and their political puppets and blames imperial economic decline on the rest of the world. The tariff policy is based on an argument that the rest of the world has taken advantage of our “beautiful” economy by burdening our increasingly non-existent industries with tariffs while we allow them to sell their good in our market without hindrance. Notably, the ruling elite’s number one adversary, China, just happens to be at the top of the list of economic evil-doers. This exposes the punitive element to the so-called economic tariff policy. In the short term, markets are crashing, speculators are recoiling in horror, and 401K’s are retreating faster than a brigade of Nazi soldiers on the Russian front. It’s difficult to know if President Trump’s policies will cause an economic rebound and produce millions of good-paying industrial jobs but even in a best-case scenario, we won’t know for decades. The current state of affairs can accurately be described as an economic debacle of biblical proportions.

So there we have it, dear friends. Sometimes we effe around for decades and sometimes we find out in the first 12 weeks of Donald Trump’s second administration. The peace candidate is threatening his way through an unavoidable catastrophic loss to Russia, threatening to attack Iran, locked in a naval stalemate with Yemen, defending an indefensible Israeli massacre, and reminding us that these are mere skirmishes when compared to his plan to sacrifice the bulk of the US military in a cataclysmic Indo-Pacific military defeat to China. So far, the Trump foreign policy has not exactly been a rousing success. On the economic front, it’s ideologues all the way down. Fire tens of thousands of federal employees, use the money to increase the Pentagon budget, and slam hardworking Americans with higher prices.

The Democrats are thoroughly discredited and the Trump administrative is confused and unfocused. The empire is circling the drain.