Shitty America Is Getting Shittier

[seektravelinfo]

Aren't you all getting a bit ahead of yourselves? Jesus you're whining like a bunch of Brits.

Right? Anyway, should America go full-out fascist, so goes the rest of the world.

[ROB]

Aren't you all getting a bit ahead of yourselves? Jesus you're whining like a bunch of Brits.

Right? Anyway, should America go full-out fascist, so goes the rest of the world.

Pretend for a moment that the sun doesn't shine out of your ass.

[snaark]

Aren't you all getting a bit ahead of yourselves? Jesus you're whining like a bunch of Brits.

Right? Anyway, should America go full-out fascist, so goes the rest of the world.

Then there's not a lot of point in emigrating, is there! America has a loooong way to go yet so I wouldn't worry yourself too much.

[rickshaw92]

I can’t wrap my head around what it would be like for democratic countries to be put into a position of accommodating American refugees.

We had that happen back home when The Donald took the helm. They should have been sent back.

[ROB]

Aren't you all getting a bit ahead of yourselves? Jesus you're whining like a bunch of Brits.

Right? Anyway, should America go full-out fascist, so goes the rest of the world.

Then there's not a lot of point in emigrating, is there! America has a loooong way to go yet so I wouldn't worry yourself too much.

Their utter and profound belief in their own superiority unites the rest of the world in thinking they are dipshits.

The actual genius of the system is in making statements like those from Seeks self-perpetuating. They don't even need an official propaganda department when there are so many useful idiots.

[Kurt]

Aren't you all getting a bit ahead of yourselves? Jesus you're whining like a bunch of Brits.

Right? Anyway, should America go full-out fascist, so goes the rest of the world.

Then there's not a lot of point in emigrating, is there! America has a loooong way to go yet so I wouldn't worry yourself too much.

Their utter and profound belief in their own superiority unites the rest of the world in thinking they are dipshits.

The actual genius of the system is in making statements like those from Seeks self-perpetuating. They don't even need an official propaganda department when there are so many useful idiots.

The thing that makes us dipshits is the same thing that made Britain dipshits. Our exceptionalism is "Lite" compared to what the British Empire had. I was listening to a lecture by Bertrand Russel that he recorded back in 1952 when he was 80 and his advice for people was that the thing you least expect to change is the thing that you will lose in your lifetime.

His example was British Naval superiority.

Before WWI the intellectuals claimed that Germany and the UK could never go to war, they could never move beyond Diplomatic tits for tat because the UK had such a powerful Navy that Germany would never try and it would be easy for the UK to avoid a land war in Europe because all they had to do was not fight in Europe.

Then we know the rest.

Then they said "At least will still have our Empire, that will never go away" ...and we know what happened then.

American exceptionalism is like fish in a barrel. The Dollar will always be dominant. Our democratic institutions will save us from Anti-Democratic forces from within. Our military can project anywhere in the world in case those two fail us.

It is actually kind of worrying for so many other countries saying "wow, if America goes, then the rest of us are fucked." Back in the cold war whenever Italy or Spain started to go a bit bolshie we, and the rest of NATO were there infiltrating and subverting....for worse mostly but we were doing it. Western Europe sniveled and bitched at us with one side of their mouth and thanked us via official channels. Most likely the only NATO allies we have that is working to subvert the Right Wing is probably France and Germany.

I say "probably" because I do not know for sure, of course. But German intelligence has been feeding us information on "international right wing organizations" and they all seem to be connected here. Like Patriot Front's* tour of Europe a few years ago and each and every meeting was reported back to the US. And the fact that France knew all about the Capitol Police orders and response plans before Jan 6th.

*The rumor among the right is that Patriot Front is a "Fed" group, but the intel came from people who knew the native languages of the folks they visited in Italy and Sweden.

[Tarkan]

I’ve been reading Peter Zeihan, and if he’s correct about what’s coming, boy are you folks outside of North America absolutely fucked.

[ROB]

Why?

[Kurt]

I’ve been reading Peter Zeihan, and if he’s correct about what’s coming, boy are you folks outside of North America absolutely fucked.

Ive read bits and his stuff predicting the actions of others based on demographics seems to have worked out better than anyone but his "the world is fucked" claus rests on the idea that without the USA the world falls into chaos.

But since that chaos would be caused by competition for resources, maybe he explains why that cannot happen with the USA as well as without it.
.Shale and fracking are given as one reason for USA saying fuck you to the world but under the "drill baby drill" crowd (which was also pro Fracking) blessed by Trump the cost of fracking made natural gas managed to shoot higher than anyone anticipated (I used to believe in a saudi free life of frack gas and oklahoma quakes too)
And he believes the Leftist critique of Blood for Oil and i think he would find we dont need oil to wage war on someone...it helps but the war industry would go on as before.

[Tarkan]

I’ve been reading Peter Zeihan, and if he’s correct about what’s coming, boy are you folks outside of North America absolutely fucked.

Ive read bits and his stuff predicting the actions of others based on demographics seems to have worked out better than anyone but his "the world is fucked" claus rests on the idea that without the USA the world falls into chaos.

But since that chaos would be caused by competition for resources, maybe he explains why that cannot happen with the USA as well as without it.
.Shale and fracking are given as one reason for USA saying fuck you to the world but under the "drill baby drill" crowd (which was also pro Fracking) blessed by Trump the cost of fracking made natural gas managed to shoot higher than anyone anticipated (I used to believe in a saudi free life of frack gas and oklahoma quakes too)
And he believes the Leftist critique of Blood for Oil and i think he would find we dont need oil to wage war on someone...it helps but the war industry would go on as before.

It's a little more complex than simply competition for resources. Demographic collapse also plays a big factor.

Basically, among the developed countries, the USA is the only country where our baby boom generation had kids anywhere close to replacement rates. The population of the developed world and China has peaked, and is due for a steep decline over the next 20 years. Since the baby boom generation is transitioning from their peak earning years to retirement, they are going to collectively pull their money out of the markets and exit the labor market at the same time. Bye-bye investment capital, and say hello to rampant wage inflation (also accelerated by Covid). So, stagflation is baked in for the next 20 years, more or less.

Both China and Russia made it illegal to export fertilizer last year. Most of Europe gets their fertilizer from Russia either directly, or indirectly through downstream natural gas. Natural gas has been cut off for the most part due to the war in Ukraine. Europe used about 50% of it's normal fertilizer for spring planting. Developing world used even less. Russia and Ukraine are huge exporters of wheat to the developing world. Ukraine invasion has fucked all that up. Food insecurity is going to be a real, pressing issue for a number of national governments in Asia and Africa, some of which who are actually important geopolitically speaking (particularly, Egypt given it's location).

Most countries in Europe are export driven. Collapse of world order means it will be hard for their goods to get to market (except maybe to the US).

US generates 10% of it's GDP from trade. It'll be fine. It's food and energy self-sufficient. Mexico has the most diverse economy of any developing nation, and has a greater value added manufacturing economy than all of central Europe (not including Germany, of course).

China imports a large amount of food and most of it's energy. Most of those imports transit waters where they can be easily cut off by hostile powers, and pretty much all of China's neighbors can be classified as hostile.

Anyway, that's his basic thesis among other things.

[Kurt]

But generally nations with diverse political institutions have survived shortages in the past.

Fertilizer exports stopping is a shortage of fertilizer, that's it. Changes are made, prices rise and India sells everyone everything as a middle-man, which is pretty much the mainstay of their economy.

The thing I always go back to whenever I hear the "Everyplace else is fucked but the USA" is that in 1988 The Warsaw Pact got together and discussed how to divide up the West to prevent mass riots and starvation since their own intellectuals predicted Western Collapse by 1995.

I remember because I would have been under Polish Administration with an Soviet HQ in Chicago.

Everything was falling around them and they we still planning on how to manage the world.

The actual collapse of parts of the world would have happened had Trump's Coup been successful. The EU and NATO would have been obliged to sanction us but had no idea how to sanction the main financial system and the main military force. Now everyone they are relying on to hold shit together is over the age of 70 and many of them are hated at home. It's kind of like how Abortion Rights people had a plan to keep everything and that plan was to have an 89 year old with Cancer stay alive.

[el3so]

The actual collapse of parts of the world would have happened had Trump's Coup been successful. The EU and NATO would have been obliged to sanction us but had no idea how to sanction the main financial system and the main military force.

Cooler heads prevailed. Funny how the actual people working in/for your Federal government (different departments, different levels) seem less inclined to actually believe what politicians promise, compared to the voters. If your politicians could have sold it to the homeland, why would we do anything but make jokes and write op-eds about it?

Think our internal market is big enough to would have muddled through. France has that force de frappe, militarily we could just manage to scrape together barely enough to force project for some humanitarian project or more domestic disturbances.

I do wonder what Trump 'd have done over the Ukraine thing.

[Tarkan]

But generally nations with diverse political institutions have survived shortages in the past.

Fertilizer exports stopping is a shortage of fertilizer, that's it. Changes are made, prices rise and India sells everyone everything as a middle-man, which is pretty much the mainstay of their economy.

Yeah, no.

Much of the world's farmed land is marginal and only gives decent yields with the continued application of fertilizers (nitrogen, potassium, phosphate), pesticides, and mechanization. Take them out of the equation and yields drop precipitously. These outputs allowed Africa to increase food production by 5X in the 20th Century. Similar story happened in much of Asia as well. There isn't enough surplus food out there to feed 5 billion people with 20-40% of their normal available calories for the next 5 months. It'll be a little more significant than some price increases and the world keeps chugging along. Remember, wheat doubling in price in 2010 was a primary driver in the Arab spring revolutions. And food insecurity is just the start.

[Tarkan]

The actual collapse of parts of the world would have happened had Trump's Coup been successful. The EU and NATO would have been obliged to sanction us but had no idea how to sanction the main financial system and the main military force.

Cooler heads prevailed. Funny how the actual people working in/for your Federal government (different departments, different levels) seem less inclined to actually believe what politicians promise, compared to the voters. If your politicians could have sold it to the homeland, why would we do anything but make jokes and write op-eds about it?

Think our internal market is big enough to would have muddled through. France has that force de frappe, militarily we could just manage to scrape together barely enough to force project for some humanitarian project or more domestic disturbances.

I do wonder what Trump 'd have done over the Ukraine thing.

LOL. Muddled through. Maybe. As long as we let you.

[el3so]

As long as we let you.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistic ... a-EU_trade

The EU trade surplus with the United States grew from €67 billion in 2011 to a record high of €167 billion in 2021. Keep smoking that copium.