Meatloaf Asked What Happened to Saturday Night

No, I did not go to the protest. I did not leave the apartment until around 8 PM. The back stiffened up, so I napped and then spent time with the heating pad. I finish with a headache, such a one that I want to do no more writing than you will find below.

Steve Schmidt:  Photo gallery: “Hands Off” protests 

Closer to home, from The Muncie Star Press: 'Hands off' protesters gather at Wheeling Avenue and McGalliard Road

From Can Europe save Ukraine? (The Article), I learned:

How strong are the Three? Let’s look at their economic strength. The GDPs of the Three are about 3 trillion dollars for France and the UK and 4 trillion for Germany. Russian GDP stands at around 2 trillion, one fifth of the joint GDP of the Three. This means they can stand fast, they can outlast Russia.

Let me just say a few words about Putin’s most chilling pronouncement. He said that he will put all the men who fought in the Ukrainian Army against Russia on trial for treason in special courts. And that is not without parallel. It has been done before. The most notorious example in the Soviet Union is the Volga-Moskva canal under Yagoda and Franco’s Mausoleum built in Spain by prisoners of the ex-republican army. Putin would be delighted to put that threat into practice. As for Zelensky and the Three: it is time to act.

Yeah, Putin is the victim and Ukraine started the war. No, he sees Ukraine as an affront to Russian imperialism. 

“The book wasn’t put together to make anyone comfortable”: An Interview with Louis Bourgeois by Mike Puican (Another Chicago Magazine) makes me glad of where I did my prison time, but it is time for you who think prison is the solution to crime to think otherwise.

Unit 29: Writing from Parchman Prison is a collection of writing and artwork not for the faint of heart. Anthologist Louis Bourgeois entered one of the country’s most notorious prisons, Mississippi State Penitentiary, also known as Parchman, and led writing classes for those who would be considered the worst offenders, those in solitary confinement. For three years, Bourgeois worked with over fifty inmate students individually, going from cell to cell. Many of these men had never read a piece of literature, let alone written one. As Bourgeois told me, “We’re talking about poverty gone insane and distilled in this place.” The result is a collection remarkable for the humanity expressed by those living in one of the most bleak and cruel environments imaginable. 

***

Finally, what would you like the reader to take away from reading this book?  

I want the reader to be disturbed. I don’t want them to feel okay about reading it. We’re talking about the actual reality of Parchman, regardless of the crime. We’re talking about poverty gone insane and distilled in this place. The book wasn’t put together to make anyone comfortable, even enlightened people. The reader should come away being physically affected by the writing. 

Gaming Japan's bloody past (Engelsberg ideas) did not go where I thought it would - but I had no idea of any controversy over Assassin's Creed - other than a history of Japan I already knew. Then came the final paragraph.

 It is tempting to suggest that Ubisoft’s inclusion of violence against a Shintō shrine has been read in Japan as yet another instance of foreigners either misunderstanding or deliberately disrespecting Japanese culture. One can see their point, and perhaps on balance they were right to remove the shrine-smashing scene from their game, as they are reported to have done. At the same time, given the extraordinary power of video games to immerse people in the past and whet their appetite for history, it would be a great shame if we find ourselves being presented with sanitised versions of the past. Confusion about who we have been risks feeding confusion about who we are now.

Americans have little stomach for the bad and dark and ugly aspects of our history. Most of the attacks on "woke" culture have been about sanitizing our history - brushing out the slaves and the dead Native Americans and laboring men killed by the government seems their ultimate goal. Trump's anti-DEI pogrom has already moved against the achievements of American women, people of color, and the Enola Gay; for Trump only white men have earned their regards and distinctions. American is living proof of what happens when we confuse what we are with what we were.

As with Canada, so with Australia? The new reality dawning in Australia: it can no longer rely on the US (The Guardian)

An Australia Institute poll released this month found three in 10 Australians (31%) think Donald Trump is the greatest threat to world peace (more than chose Vladimir Putin (27%) or Xi Jinping (27%)).

It found nearly half of all Australians (48%) were not confident the Trump administration would defend Australia’s interests if Australia were threatened, compared with only 16% who were very confident that it would do so.

And China is closer than the US; presumably China, not the Solomon Islands, would be attacking Australia. We are learning just how scared the world is of us. Scared people tend to militantly react to what scares them.

Patience advocates building new alliances in the region, forging stronger ties with other liberal democracies, in particular South Korea and Japan, and developing a “sophisticated diplomacy” with China.

“I think Australia is in very serious trouble because of this naive belief in America. We’ve been such fools living in this imagined American paradise for so long.”

Thanks to Trump, we cannot be sure these kinds of alliances would benefit America.

But JD Vance put on an impressive performance in Greenland: Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous (Timothy Snyder, The Guardian).

The American imperialism directed towards Denmark and Canada is not just morally wrong. It is strategically disastrous. The US has nothing to gain from it, and much to lose. There is nothing that Americans cannot get from Denmark or Canada through alliance. The very existence of the base at Pituffik shows that. Within the atmosphere of friendship that has prevailed the last 80 years, all of the mineral resources of Canada and Greenland can be traded for on good terms, or for that matter explored by American companies. The only way to put all of this easy access in doubt was to follow the course that Musk-Trump have chosen: trade wars with Canada and Europe, and the threat of actual wars and annexations. Musk and Trump are creating the bloodily moronic situation in which the US will have to fight wars to get the things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking. And, of course, wars rarely turn out the way one expects.

***

... We are the only ones ever to have invoked article 5, the mutual defence obligation of the Nato treaty, after 9/11; and our European allies did respond. Per capita, almost as many Danish soldiers were killed in the Afghan war as were American soldiers. Do we remember them? Thank them?

As this blog is about my continuing education, let me say what I learned from that article:

1. That with Trump, the art of the deal is to start a war rather than to say please.
2.  That we demand a thank you from Zelenskyy for American weapons, but cannot thank Denmark for it people killed on our behalf,

But I learned even more from Trump’s chaos-inducing global tariffs, explained in charts (The Guardian) and Trump’s ‘idiotic’ and flawed tariff calculations stun economists (The Guardian).

1. That Trump has not only defecated on his own doorstep, us, but on the world.
2. That I know as much world economics as the people who came up with Trump's tariffs.

There are multiple problems with this – not least that it vastly oversimplifies the drivers of trade deficits. Trade deficits occur when a country buys more than it sells abroad. The US has run a deficit persistently since the 1970s. Typically trade deficits balance over time, as they create downward pressure on a country’s currency (as the result of demand for foreign currency, to buy imported goods, outstrips demand for domestic currency).

However, sitting atop the global reserve currency – used throughout the global financial system for payments and international trade – the US has managed to run larger trade deficits than other nations would be able to.

But I already knew the gist of this paragraph:

“This is not serious trade policy or grand strategy,” said Tooze. “The boss hates trade deficits and his team of willing sycophants came up with a formula, however idiotic, that ticked the box.”

My left eye throbs. No idea how long before the ibuprofen kicks in. This is what happened to this Saturday night. 

sch 

 

A Wet, Grumpy Saturday Morning

 I overslept by two hours. Probably the better for it, if I did not have things to do. The laundry, some cleaning, some research might have been started in the past 90 minutes, if I had not started on thinning out the email. That just made me grumpy after reading Sheila Kennedy's Will Obvious Insanity Be A Turning Point?, who dissects a Paul Krugman piece. Krugman always makes sense of economic issues, and Kennedy and Krugman point out the illogic of Trump's own rhetoric of tariffs. I felt reassured that my own sensibility was on the right course.

But what got me grumpy was the first comment to Kennedy's post, which asks a few questions about Trump's supporters that I will restate here, with more emphasis.

So why did half the country apparently not see Trump's insanity? 

Could it really be that such a large segment of the population saw a reflection of themselves in Trump and liked what they saw? 

Did they see Trump making them “winners”…. potential “winners”?

Did they see Trump as someone with their own principles, standards, morals? 

Did they see Trump as someone whose behavior they could excuse because they had never taken responsibility for their own? 

Did they see Trump as a rich, successful version of themselves?

No one directly asks MAGA these questions. American journalists fail us.

Not everything that glitters is gold, Trumpists: 

All the talk about owning the libs speaks volumes about the lack of seriousness in American voters. The same with the professional wrestling thinking. People will die, they will be ruined economically; the country will be shamed and alone and disgraced. All that thanks to your decadent, weak-minded, superficial thinking. We need a better people.

I have a nephew who I spoke to only once since my return from prison; he told me he was very much for Trump. He has never explained why. He married a Mexican woman - he loudly, proudly declared she had come in the right way. They have two children.

I wonder what he would like about ICE descending on a school and taking Hispanic-looking children out of classrooms: Welcome To The Gulag (Sheila Kennedy, again).

No, probably not that, to my great sorrow.

My oldest sister says she is a conservative as if she were declaring a religious faith. Never has she explained why; nor have I asked her. Some things are needed for familial peace. I do not think she sees anything needing torn born out of Trump:

The Statue of Liberty was a welcome sign. Now the U.S. vibe is 'stay out' - Los Angeles Times

The best I can see is that a plurality of Americans are weak-kneed, weak-minded sheep willing to see strength in the bellowing of an idiot, and protection for their resentment at failing to achieve what they think of as entitlements, which are actually the rewards for talent and energy and ambition, so they follow him into a new pasture where Trump will fatten them for his dinner table.

Strange how the Republicans used to trumpet the need for responsibility to the poor back in the days of Bill Clinton. That they always excused their irresponsibilities and hypocrisies even then (yes, I am thinking of Newt Gingrich) seems forgotten. Rush Limbaugh accusing his opponents of being sheeple made sheeple of his own listeners. The slaughterhouse calls for all of us now.

Trump’s tariff strategy is a surefire loser - Los Angeles Times

We let grown men with the mentality of toddlers drive the car. 

What is Trump trying to achieve with tariffs and does Smoot-Hawley have any lessons? (Fortune)

Columbia professor Brett House argues there’s another motive to Trump’s action, exemplified by the fact that the White House has implemented both individual and blanket tariffs. He told Fortune: “The president loves creating a situation where other countries or individuals have to come and bargain with him. By setting out different tariff rates on a country-by-country basis, it creates a situation where every country then has to supplicate and beg and negotiate with the White House on an individual basis. 

“This is the essence of the kind of power that a bully and an autocrat tries to create by dividing people and ensuring that it is very difficult for them to unite and negotiate with a single voice.”

Did none of the Trumpists manage to stay awake during their history classes? That reality is not owned by one man, even bullies cannot fight reality?

Trump's agenda grapples with political and economic reality (BBC)

The president, it seems, is willing to wait out the tempest created by his tariff plan. He appears confident that his economic vision of a rebuilt, job-rich American manufacturing sector protected from foreign competition - a vision he has closely held for decades - will ultimately be proven right.

And if it all goes wrong - as the non-delusional, non-MAGA cultist experts think will happen - what will Trump do? Blame everyone else. The delusional do that. His cult will follow him into the slaughterhouse. 

Did they not notice that what made us safe was our allies, and how we treated them?

Tariff troubles overshadow US olive branch at NATO – DW – 04/03/2025

DM wrote me just now:

Interest rates for 10 yr treasury fell from >4.3% to <4.0% just this week;  His real estate might be in trouble.  I heard one market analyst/investor predict the rates could get to 3.5%

The Daily Reid: Burning down the house

When are the Spanish bombs going to start falling on us?

Are you Trump voters getting what you wanted?

How Trump's tariffs rollout turned into stock market mayhem (CNBC)

A brain drain away from America? Europe to burned American scientists: We’ll take you in (POLITICO)

The Affordable Car Is About to Go Extinct in the US (WIRED)

Making us small and mean-spirited is not the way to lead the world:

Rubio dismisses criticism over US response to Myanmar earthquake

Lesotho, a Small African Nation, Expects a Big Hit From Trump’s Tariffs - The New York Times

 And if we are not leading the world, how have you made America great again?

And if we are going to war against the world, why should America see greatness in America?

And if you want to be a serf to plutocrats, how is that making America great?

I can think of nothing less American than serfdom.

Everything about MAGA will destroy America's greatness.

Time the Democrats got serious; time for serious American  stand up.

Twenty years ago, a former friend who was a dedicated follower of the Republican Party said that China would never attack us because it held so much of our bonds. I did not buy that logic then, and I think his argument is even less viable now. The same is true now of the rest of the world. Where our blunders and stupidities could once be written off against the profitability coming from being allied to us, we have now become red ink. Have we forgotten that we are not the whole of the world?

I think I will walk in the protest march today. Screw the dishes and laundry.

It is now the afternoon, I have spent the morning working on this post. I remain grumpy. Have I spent too much time on this to make the march?

sch

Philosophy: Causation; Hume, James, Goddu!

I started reading Mariel Goddu's Causal understanding is not a point of view, it’s a point of do (Aeon Essays) looking for criticism of David Hume's theory of causality.

Hume shows that experience does not tell us much. Of two events, A and B, we say that A causes B when the two always occur together, that is, are constantly conjoined. Whenever we find A, we also find B, and we have a certainty that this conjunction will continue to happen. Once we realize that “A must bring about B” is tantamount merely to “Due to their constant conjunction, we are psychologically certain that B will follow A”, then we are left with a very weak notion of necessity. This tenuous grasp on causal efficacy helps give rise to the Problem of Induction–that we are not reasonably justified in making any inductive inference about the world. Among Hume scholars it is a matter of debate how seriously Hume means us to take this conclusion and whether causation consists wholly in constant conjunction.

***

The second of Hume’s influential causal arguments is known as the problem of induction, a skeptical argument that utilizes Hume’s insights about experience limiting our causal knowledge to constant conjunction. Though Hume gives a quick version of the Problem in the middle of his discussion of causation in the Treatise (T 1.3.6), it is laid out most clearly in Section IV of the Enquiry. An influential argument, the Problem’s skeptical conclusions have had a drastic impact on the field of epistemology. It should be noted, however, that not everyone agrees about what exactly the Problem consists in. Briefly, the typified version of the Problem as arguing for inductive skepticism can be described as follows:

Recall that proper reasoning involves only relations of ideas and matters of fact. Again, the key differentia distinguishing the two categories of knowledge is that asserting the negation of a true relation of ideas is to assert a contradiction, but this is not the case with genuine matters of fact. But in Section IV, Hume only pursues the justification for matters of fact, of which there are two categories:

(A)           Reports of direct experience, both past and present

(B)           Claims about states of affairs not directly observed

Matters of fact of category (A) would include sensory experience and memory, against which Hume never raises doubts, contra René Descartes. For Hume, (B) would include both predictions and the laws of nature upon which predictions rest. We cannot claim direct experience of predictions or of general laws, but knowledge of them must still be classified as matters of fact, since both they and their negations remain conceivable. In considering the foundations for predictions, however, we must remember that, for Hume, only the relation of cause and effect gives us predictive power, as it alone allows us to go beyond memory and the senses. All such predictions must therefore involve causality and must therefore be of category (B). But what justifies them?

It seems to be the laws governing cause and effect that provide support for predictions, as human reason tries to reduce particular natural phenomena “…to a greater simplicity, and to resolve the many particular effects into a few general causes….” (EHU 4.12; SBN 30)  But this simply sets back the question, for we must now wonder what justifies these “general causes.”  One possible answer is that they are justified a priori as relations of ideas. Hume rejects this solution for two reasons:  First, as shown above, we cannot meditate purely on the idea of a cause and deduce the corresponding effect and, more importantly, to assert the negation of any causal law is not to assert a contradiction. 

Or that of William James: 

The metaphysical question regarding activity, in any case, depends on two beliefs regarding causality: “a belief that causality must be exerted in activity, and a wonder as to how causality is made.” In the end, real activities bring us to the problem of creation. At this point, James can only present his radically empiricist perspective on the matter. He states that according to the methodical postulates mentioned above, somewhere the that and what of “real creative activities” – if they exist – must be experienced as a unity. James specifies that the immediate unitary experience should not be misinterpreted. Sensations are fallible but rather as to the way we interpret them and fix their meaning. The only possible and correct starting point for us remains our concrete experience of causality. There is no possibility of getting out of it, insofar as it would mean getting out of our specific sensibility, and therefore of human life. He strongly suggests that “real effectual causation as an ultimate nature, as a ‘category’ […] of reality, is just what we feel it to be, just that kind of conjunction which our own activity-series reveal” (ERE: 93-4). Here we encounter James’s effort to clarify the scope of metaphysics as a form of knowledge, as mentioned in a 1904 letter to François Pillon (CWJ 10: 409-10). James always looks for ends; his philosophy is teleological but not in an essentialist way. Understanding the nature of causation would be essential in order to use that knowledge to recognize actual causes or to foresee future developments in a more intelligent way. Quoting some passages of Royce’s review of Stout’s Analytic Psychology, James agrees with his colleague about the fact that metaphysical problems – such as the problem of effectual activity – are superficial unless they have a “possible use in helping us to solve the far deeper problem of the course and meaning of the world of life” (ERE: 94). Life is full of significance, full of meaning, he repeats, and without explicating this as a goal (the “pragmatic note”) – which is also an evident moral amelioration of our life and an integral engagement in all that is part of life – philosophy and psychology lose their ultimate reason for existing.

Ms. Goddu writes something different from either Hume or James:

Most people don’t realise that any of this is a cognitive achievement. But, in fact, it is highly unusual. No other animal thinks about causation in the hyper-objective, hyper-general way that we do. Only we – adult humans – see the world suffused with causality. As a result, we have unparalleled power to change and control it. Our causal understanding is a superpower.

The scientific story of how our causal minds develop features another superpower: human sociality. It’s our unique sensitivity to other people that lets us acquire our special causal understanding. The story also raises questions about ‘other minds’. If our causal understanding is the exception, rather than the rule, then how does the world show up for other animals? If we try to suspend the causal necessity that structures so much of our experience, what’s left over?

I’m going to suggest that what remains is our experience of doing – a value-laden, first-personal and inherently interactive perspective. It is in this involved, participatory ‘point of do’ – as opposed to a detached, objective point of view – that the seeds of higher cognition take root. Appreciating that our original perspective is action-oriented and goal-directed can also help us understand our own shortcomings – and how to change them.

***

This interventionist way of defining causation is often referred to as ‘difference-making’. That’s because a ‘cause’ is something that makes a difference to something else: wiggle the cause, and the effect wiggles, too. This doesn’t fully satisfy our sceptic – (What do you mean, difference-MAKING?) – but it does give us a more precise way of talking about causal relations. As the sun-and-rooster example shows, the interventions don’t have to be actually possible. The key idea is simply: if we were to change the cause, then it would make a difference to the effect.

***

The scene we’ve just imagined comes from a vignette in Intention (1957) by the philosopher G E M Anscombe. In her analysis, ‘actions’ are the kind of thing to which a special sense of the question ‘Why?’ applies – specifically, the ‘Why?’ we address to people when enquiring about their aim, goal or purpose (Why are you ringing that bell?) When you rang the bell without knowing it, Anscombe says, that wasn’t an action. But when you moved the door to make it ring – when you knew what you were doing – then it was.

The development of causal understanding depends precisely on this ‘insider perspective’ on your own actions – your knowledge of your goal, the thing you’re aiming at by acting. 

***

It’s unclear exactly what drives the development of impersonal, ‘it-causal’ understanding – the shift from a causal understanding grounded in actions to an objective one where causality is seen as part of the world itself. (This is the causal understanding that makes you look up at the tree above your car to check if an acorn could have caused the dent.) However, around age four, children also develop ‘theory of mind’ (appreciating that people’s beliefs can fail to match reality), visual perspective-taking (understanding that something that’s blue for me will look green to you wearing yellow glasses), and tolerate ‘dual naming’ (you say tree, I say bush; we can both be right). Notably, these all involve holding two ideas about the same thing in mind at once. Perhaps the idea of ‘causal potential’ that persists even when no one is changing things requires ‘dual representation,’ too.

It seems David Hume does make a cameo appearance:

But these ‘intervenable’ props for action would be sparse. And they would mainly appear in situations very similar to others where you had acted before. Everything else would be mere variation – like shifting forms on a laptop screensaver. Some changes would be benign (rippling grass in a windy field). Others might have valenced associations – like a sudden rustling in the bushes (‘uh-oh!’), the calls of distant conspecifics (‘friends!’), or the musk of a potential partner (‘ooOOh!’). But these percepts, patterns and rhythms would be a kind of Humean music: familiar, predictable and reliable, but not caused, controllable or explainable. 

 Then the writer strays from the descriptive to the prescriptive, and the essay is the better for it. Where I started reading for variations on Hume, I ended with a call to action in a pragmatic sense that eschewed distinctions in philosophical theories.

Here’s why I’m hopeful. I think we can use our causal understanding to intervene in our own behaviour. For one, we know that it’s highly flexible. Even primary school children can learn about the complex causal relations involved in ecosystems, food chains and structural inequality – this can provide guidance for education, storybooks and children’s media. We also know about the power of sociality – the power of highlighting variables for one another. Friends and family are an influential source for developing habits around causal factors that affect our own health (like exercise, diet and microplastics) and the planet’s (like eating meat, composting and sustainable consumer practices). The more we talk to each other about these difference-makers, the more these actions can echo and amplify, species-wide.

Finally, causal understanding is rooted, originally, in our values – things we want. The most primal causal learning happens by aiming at things we want to make happen. This means that optimistic, action-oriented suggestions are probably more effective than doom and gloom. My favourite recent instance of human causal imagination is the book What If We Get It Right? (2024) by the marine biologist and climate activist Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. In it, Johnson invites us to imagine the future we want to live in, and shoot for it – each in our own way, in our own communities. We already have a lot of solutions, she says; we just need to scale, spread and use them.

Think about it because thinking is the solution!

sch 3/29 

 

End of Friday

 The good effects of yesterday's physical therapy were gone by the time I ended today's group therapy (notes will appear tomorrow). I napped when I came home, since then I have been going the email and working on blog posts. It is a form of procrastination.

I went  down to the convenience store around 10, the thunder and lightning got me out of the door, finally. A strange thing happened when I came back. I encounter a fellow, probably in his twenties, about as tall as me and much thinner coming towards me. He asked me if I knew anyone living in the houses. I told him I did not. He started muttering to him; saying something about not strong-arming an old man. Yeah, I did not think that was going to happen, but I did not need my glasses broken. When I got back here, I called 911. That he followed me back here was a bother.

 Poetry Out Loud has a Hoosier going forward.

Charlie G did not like Darryl Hannah, but I have since the early days: From android to assassin: Daryl Hannah’s 10 best films – ranked! (The Guardian). I would have put in her performance in Two Much, a silly film.

I have seen Wet Leg pop up on my YouTube feed without taking them seriously, but ‘This weird dream just keeps going!’ Wet Leg on overnight success, sexual epiphanies and facing fears (The Guardian) leave me thinking they are legit.

The Guardian's Val Kilmer: an ethereally handsome actor who evolved into droll self- awareness is probably a more than fair assessment of Kilmer's career - at least, it mentions Willow - but does not mention his early comedies like Real Genius. 

Today's thunderstorm is not nearly as dramatic as last night's with its harsh winds and destruction.

I have a few more posts to attend to, so good night.

sch

Thursday is the worst day of the week, but this day America finds ruin

My morning bus driver told me weeks ago that Thursday is the worst day of the week because it means one more day to work.

Yesterday was another day where we worked almost a full day. Another day when I left rather tired. Only I had places to go. First, to the bank to get the balance of my rent, then to the property management company, then to physical therapy. Two buses and the better part of two hours in traveling and taking care of business.

I did feel better from the physical therapy, but I did not feel like cooking dinner when I got back at 5:30. I ordered Chinese, They have vegetarian food, so I could keep with the Lenten Fast.

Waiting on dinner, I did some research, found out I lacked some software.

Dinner arrived, I watched a movie on Netflix, The Third Border.

Then I started on my email, which brought me to Jonathan V. Last's The American Age Is Over (The Bulwark). A certain reassurance comes to one's vanity, reading something that confirms one is not alone in one's opinions. Mr. Last's essay confirms an opinion I have held for many years now, without giving my vanity any good sensations. It was mostly chilled.

If, tomorrow, Donald Trump revoked his entire regime of tariffs, it would not matter. It might temporarily delay some economic pain, but the rest of the world now understands that it must move forward without America.

If, tomorrow, Donald Trump abandoned his quest to annex Greenland and committed himself to the defense of Ukraine and the perpetuation of NATO, it would not matter. The free world now understands that its long-term security plans must be made with the understanding that America is a potential adversary, not an ally.

This realization may be painful for Americans. But we should know that the rest of the world understands us more clearly than we understand ourselves.

Vladimir Putin bet his life that American voters would be weak and decadent enough to return Donald Trump to the presidency. He was right.

Europeans are moving ahead with their own security plans because they realize, as a French minister put it, “We cannot leave the security of Europe in the hands of voters in Wisconsin every four years.” He was right.

The Canadian prime minister declared the age of American leadership over. He was right.

I then sent out the essay to friends and family with the following message:

 America first becomes America on its own, loss of trade, loss of jobs, loss of being protected. Oceans will not protect us. That was the lesson of World War One that got rammed home hard with the birth of ICBMs. The power we held was not from bullying, but from the dollar being ubiquitous in trade. There is no reason for oil to be priced in dollars now. There is no reason for anyone to trust us any longer. And trust is what keep alliances together, keeps people investing in America, and keeps the world at peace. I have been worrying for years now - written about it, too - when the rest of the world looked us at presenting more harm than benefit. We have seen that day come.

Yes, I am tired and worn out, but that does not mean I am depressed, for all that the news is depressing. Some of you reading this will agree with me, some of you will delete it without reading, but I hope none read this and do not realize the damage that is done to our country and to your futures.  

See, I had been looking at what we had been doing in so many places in the world where we harmed native populations. Resentment had to be brewing that did not come to a boil so long as America remained useful to the majority of the world through our good works. We can only await judgment for our hubris.

A friend replied to my email this morning with this:

I agree with him too. I believe that one of the biggest mistakes made has been to alienate the EU and Canada because they will now become an economic and military rival. A Russian asset couldn't have done a better job.

And another wrote:

Future headline: Embargo on US!

All those critical minerals we use for stuff will not be available. Shortages will increase.  People will lose jobs.  Any food that comes from other countries will go up even more! (EMPHASIS ADDED).  The people that voted for or still support the Rump will deserve what is coming.  Dark path ahead.

Apologies,

DM 

Yep, but Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv solving its troop shortages, says top US general in Europe (The Guardian). 

sch

Paying Attention to Paul Kennedy

 I was very late to read Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers; about 14 years. It was very much in the air in the late Eighties. He missed the fall of the Soviet Union only because the data he had to work with was wrong.

Engelsberg ideas published Paul Kennedy in conversation on the rise of a new era of great power competition, and it is short, and should be read by everyone shooting off their mouths (like I do) about politics.

I was intrigued by a future chart projection of the share of world total economic output by the year 2050, which would see three very large economies at the top of the pile, namely, the United States, the People’s Republic of China, and, because of a vastly higher rate of growth between the 2000s and 2050, India.

Now those three countries, the US, China and India, would have GDPs approximately six to eight times bigger than any of the ones directly beneath them – the middle-ranking powers such as Japan, Britain, Russia, and France. That would be the rough and ready order of the world in the year 2050. So the world of the nation states and national economies has not altered, just the nation states. And those three, if they wanted to, in total defence spending, would be way above anyone else.

A note of caution, however. In the meantime, epic things have happened in Washington, DC. We have an authoritarian powerbroker and deal maker in the Oval Office, an impulsive, I would say unscrupulous, president who makes things a little bit more complicated. I think we have a calculating leadership in Beijing, just watching to see how far Washington on the one hand and Moscow on the other, might stumble. I think that those leaders in Beijing do believe that they are in or entering this new tripolar world, along with India. It is a world in which they have to move very carefully and slowly, but from which they might be the beneficiaries.

Which makes me think there is a future for this country - unless Trump screws the pooch. Or Putin goes completely wrong with his nukes.

Read the whole interview, it does have interesting things to say about America's future.

And for something far more amusing:

sch 3/29

Who Got Liberated Yesterday?

I spent yesterday working until almost 2 PM. Not so sure I am cut out for working any longer. 

I piddled the evening away. We had had high winds all day, but it looked like the really bad weather would pass us by. Nope. The thunder and lightning started around 7, if memory serves, and kept going until around 10. The siren went off twice, warning us of a tornado. I tuck my head out of the door to see the wind swirling the rain down the street. I caught up with Star Trek Discovery on YouTube. A complete waste of my time, if I had had any energy.

Some items to consider for Trump's Liberation Day:

The Rubber Is Meeting The Road – Sheila Kennedy

Well, the drafts are now almost all published, and it is time to get ready for work.

sch