Getting credible news and commentary from Ukraine can be problematic. I’ve been receiving a newsletter from Ukraine called Kyiv Independent. I also view a Polish Public Television program found on YouTube, Telewizja Polska S.A.(PVT), that has up-to-date military news coverage and action video from the anti-Russian perspective, of course. Poland has a much better understanding of Russia than most of us in the West. During WWII, Poland was savagely occupied first by the Nazis only to be liberated and savaged by Stalin’s brutal Red Army.
Another seemingly straight news and opinion source is called “Inside Russia“. This is found on YouTube and is updated at least weekly. The host evacuated Russia around the time of the invasion of Ukraine and broadcasts his channel from abroad. He speaks excellent English and went to college studying economics in the USA. He combs through news and events in Russia and gives context and interpretation. He seems quite credible.
Usually, TVP military content is dripping with the irony around Russia’s once-feared conventional military collapsing in on itself. Poland has everything to fear from Putin’s imperialism so they are following the Putin-Ukraine war closely. So are the Baltic states and perhaps a few former Soviet states to the south as well.
“Since the establishment of the Tsardom of Russia in 1547 and to the present day, Russia has fought wars every two-three decades, on average, meaning that there was never a Russian generation that lived in peace.” From essay by Oleksiy Sorokin, “WTF is Wrong with Russia?” The Kyiv Independent, January 23, 2025.
“In 1774, Russia decisively won the Russo-Turkish War, obtaining what is roughly today Ukraine’s regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, Odessa, Mykolaiv and parts of Donetsk Oblast. The Russian Empire also forced the Ottoman Empire to relinquish control of Crimean Khanate.” Oleksiy Sorokin, ibid.
Much of Putin’s propaganda is anchored in allegations of Western buggery and provocations, spying or otherwise contamination of Russian sovereignty by Western culture which they see as morally corrupt. The former USSR and present-day North Korea built their nations on the fear of America and NATO preparing to invade. The illegal annexing of territory, theft of money and denial of basic human rights is more easily justified if the threat of 10 ft tall foreign soldiers is predicted.
I am unaware of any previous or future attempts by the West to invade Russian territory for any reason. What in the hell would you do with it if you won? Ok, they have minerals and lots of timber which are valuable. Still, the country is crawling with Russian citizens who are, by the way, just as smart as we are and would be highly motivated for self-defense just like the Ukrainians have been. There is no future in a Russia-vs-West major war. The threat of it, however, has value to people like Putin as it did in the bygone days of the USSR.
Putin has done a bit of nuclear saber rattling since his invasion of Ukraine but Western states know that cooler heads in the Kremlin are aware of the consequences of releasing a nuclear war shot even as a demonstration. Everyone knows about Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) but a few on either side have always doubted MAD. Obviously, the ominous warnings of “nuclear weapons” were meant to frighten the citizens of the EU and USA with the hope of weakening anti-Russian sentiment abroad.
In the West we can ask the questions “Why is Russia so paranoid all of the time?” “Why is authoritarian rule so prevalent in Russian history?” Putin has publicly stated that the West wants what they have and he is determined to keep western invaders out. Well, yes this is true as far as market access. Many businesses around the world would love oil & gas or other concessions like Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) or titanium. Russia’s internal markets are underserved and represent opportunities for both Russian citizens and international trade.
I sense there is a fear in Russia that if another country uses Russian raw materials to make a profit elsewhere, that it constitutes a theft directly from them. You know, the zero-sum of “their gain is our loss”. It may be a residue of their long-term dalliance with Marxist-Leninism and Communism.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if only Russia could relax just a bit and join the international community of nations and trading partners. Too idealistic by half? Yes, for now.
Trump’s ill-tempered brinksmanship and his coarse criticism of both long-term allies and old adversaries has begun to cost the US access to strategic materials. In particular, China has announced that it has banned the export of a group of metals and non-metals to the US. Specifically, China had previously imposed export controls on Rare Earth Elements (REE), gallium (Ga), germanium (Ge), antimony (Sb) and graphite (C). More recently it has included tungsten (W), tellurium (Te), bismuth (Bi), indium (In) and molybdenum (Mo) products.
In case the reader is unfamiliar with the uses of the above elements, a list of them with a short description is given below.
Many of the elements listed above are by-products from the refining of other metals like aluminum, copper, lead and zinc. Reduced production of aluminum, copper, lead and zinc will also reduce output of their accessory metals as well.
Gallium– Primarily used in semiconductors; is used to produce the denser, stabilized δ allotrope of plutonium for use in nuclear weapons.
Germanium– Primarily used in semiconductors; a by-product found in copper-lead-zinc ores.
Indium– Primarily used in semiconductors or other electronic applications; it is a by-product found in sulfidic zinc (Sphalerite) and copper ores (Chalcopyrite). Indium tin oxide (ITO) forms a thin, transparent and electrically conductive layer on glass for touch-screen applications such as smart phones.
Tellurium– A scarce element at an average occurrence 1 ppb in the crust and never the primary ore in mining. It is mostly found combined with gold as Calaverite (AuTe2 ), Sylvanite (AgAuTe4 ) or Krennerite (AuTe2 Orthorhombic gold telluride.) Tellurium has use in a large variety of applications. Unfortunately for gold miners, calaverite ore is not susceptible to cyanide extraction for gold recovery. Calaverite can be roasted and tellurium volatiles removed from the gold residues. However, commercial scale roasting of minerals is problematic in the US.
Bismuth– Bismuth is never the primary ore in mining. It is found with lead, copper and tungsten. Broad applications across many domains. No longer produced in US. Bismuth is the highest atomic number element that is not naturally radioactive. Well, it’s half-life has been determined to be 1.9 × 1019 years which is still “pretty stable”.
Antimony– The largest antimony mine in the world is the Xikuangshan mine in Lengshuijiang Hunan, China. This mine produces 50 % of the world’s antimony. The mine produces antimony from 2 different minerals, stibiconite (Sb3O6(OH)) and stibnite (Sb2S3).
Molybdenum– Mined as the primary metal ore. About 86 % of molybdenum is used in metallurgy with the rest used in chemical applications. An important molybdenum mineral is molybdenite, MoS2. Important US mines are the now-defunct Henderson Mine and the now operating Climax Mine, both in Colorado and both operated by Freeport-McMoRan. The Climax Mine resides at the summit of Freemont Pass at 11,360 ft altitude and to the north of Leadville, Colorado. Molybdenite deposits can be found as far away as Questa, New Mexico, with the Chevron Questa Molybdenum mine which is now closed and undergoing reclamation as a superfund site.
Graphite– Natural graphite arises from metamorphization of carbonaceous sediment. It can mined or produced synthetically. Graphite is the most chemically stable allotrope of carbon at standard pressure and temperature.
Tungsten– Also known as wolfram (W), tungsten has the highest melting point and lowest vapor pressure of the elements. As a refractory metal, tungsten us often used in high temperature applications such as welding and for its relative chemical inertness affording high resistance to corrosion. In military applications tungsten is exploited for its combination of high density, hardness and refractory properties in projectiles and other applications. In chemical form, it is often found as a polyoxometallate anion such as WO4−2, “orthotungstate”. These polyoxometallate anions can form higher order cage structures.
All of the above elements are well established in diverse products and are a part of numerous leading-edge technologies in use today. All ores are subject to the market price of their mined and milled products. All of the elements listed above are produced in various simple but purified forms that customers will plug into their own production lines. The economics of their mine operation has a high reliance on the margins offered by their raw material costs. If the raw material supplier goes a step further and captures value-added profit margins by offering an advanced intermediate or even the final product, then the customer faces having to use the more costly value-added materials. The effect can be that they must raise prices on their product or step away from the market. This is just the old familiar path of competition.
As luck would have it, early in geologic history China won the mineral lottery when many ore-forming processes valuable ores in its present territory. We have all heard of China’s supremacy in rare earth element (REE) reserves. China eventually made the choice of halting exports of rare earth minerals as the oxides in favor of offering value added finished products instead. Business-wise, this was a smart and inevitable choice for China, but users who manufactured REE products from their imported REE raw materials were suddenly facing stiff competition from abroad.
Since this policy of China metering closely the export of REE minerals, western countries have made considerable progress locating REE deposits elsewhere. Incidentally, the same holds true for lithium deposits.
From Google Maps. An aerial view (supposedly) of part of the large Xikuangshan mine in Hunan, China.
Restrictions on exports of the above elements will have a large impact on many industries in the US. My question is this: Could a better diplomatic approach to imports from China have been made?
It isn’t all bad news. Difficulties with raw material prices and availability frequently motivate users to invent a way around problematic raw materials. There is nothing like the motivation to fire up the inventive juices than to seek a work-around for a raw material supplier problem.
Manhattan real estate magnate DJ Trump, US President and amateur epidemiologist, has announced that the US will exit the World Health Organization (WHO), according to Reuters.
‘Trump said the WHO had failed to act independently from the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” and required “unfairly onerous payments” from the U.S. that were disproportionate to the sums provided by other, larger countries, such as China.’ Reuters, January 21, 2025.
MAGA’s spiritual hero and standard bearer also said that his administration would cease negotiations on the WHO pandemic treaty during the withdrawal process. He still seethes over WHO from his previous administration and claims that they mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic. Trumps words read as pouty and not powerful.
This kerfuffle does not appear to be a bluff. Trump has a long history of refusing to pay contractors who have completed projects for him, claiming that they were attempting to rip him off. This move casts a similar shadow. Even if he personally benefits by the work of others, he has had no trouble stiffing them on their bills. This history of nonpayment blended with his spectacular ignorance of everything technical adds up to this stupid move. His transactional mind is only one dimensional, apparently, and is blind to the importance of WHO. Infectious disease can move beyond national borders and into the US at 500 miles per hour via jet aircraft as was the case of HIV/AIDS. An international entity is needed to intervene, especially in the spread of infectious disease.
One would suppose that the US, as the largest donor to WHO, would have had more leverage in renegotiation on payments or other objectionable issues.
#45-47 is a guy who commuted sentences and pardoned 1500 people who participated in the January 6th, 2021 riot and destructive and illegal entry into the US capitol building. This despite complete video evidence and guilty verdicts. Below is a quote by the QAnon, the horned shaman-
“I JUST GOT THE NEWS FROM MY LAWYER… I GOT A PARDON BABY! THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP!!!” Jacob Chansley, dubbed the QAnon shaman as a reflection of his horned-animal headdress and body paint at the January 6, 2021, riot inside the U.S. Capitol, posted on X shortly after President Donald Trump commuted the sentences of or pardoned all those convicted of crimes related to the events of that day. “NOW I AM GONNA BY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!” he continued. “J6ers are getting released & JUSTICE HAS COME… EVERYTHING done in the dark WILL come to light!”
So, let the idiot gets his guns. This was his reflex after getting out of prison. Make yer momma proud, bucko.
Thus, a truly ugly chapter continues in the history of our country.
Here is the definition of ethnic cleansing provided by Wikipedia.
Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.[1][2][3][4][5] Both the definition and charge of ethnic cleansing is often disputed, with some researchers including and others excluding coercive assimilation or mass killings as a means of depopulating an area of a particular group.[6][7][8]
Maybe the US is truly concerned about the legality of the millions of illegal aliens within its borders and nothing else. Shipping them out of the country would be an act of law enforcement then. While the GOP members who are spearheading the upcoming mass deportation may be following the letter of the law, the broken laws pertaining to their supreme leader, a felon actually, are easily overlooked. He is more good than bad I suppose.
Given the well-known animus towards those not of European decent, is it just a coincidence that Americans are deporting a very, very large number of them? Certainly, the majority of those to be deported could be identified as coming from a different culture than ours- you know, obese, ignorant and cynical Americans. And, those from Central and South America are likely to be a bit tanner colored than common specimens of the pasty white American couch potato. This alone makes them easier to apprehend.
My guess is that once the Trump manhunt is underway, a place to concentrate them will be necessary. It will have to be a lock-up sort of place because we can’t have them just walking away. A remote location because the NIMBY reflex will not allow them near population centers. I’m thinking the concentrating camps will be along the US-Mexico border.
If we decide to bus them, will Mexico cooperate by allowing the buses into their country? If we fly them, will the Mexican authorities allow the planes to land? And if they do, will they be allowed to deplane and enter passport control? Or will they be denied entry at this point, passport or not? Final question: can they keep the air miles?
If they don’t ship them out right away, how long before the camps become an apartheid situation?
Look at all of the awful words I’ve used- ethnic cleansing, concentrating camp and apartheid. And, all in the context of America, land of the free and home of the brave, and … all men are created equal …
This is not the America I remember going to school in. Half of the electorate has put in place a despicable wannabe dictator and felon plus a republican guard of rabid elected followers. This is a moral disfigurement of the United States of America. Somebody put a drop cloth over the Statue of Liberty until this is over. It’s embarrassing.
This solution of deportation of millions of illegal immigrants certainly has the stink of ethnic cleansing to me. Maybe I’m wrong. I hope so.
California is on fire again. So, what else is new?
The 4000-acre Franklin fire in Malibu, CA, is forcing thousands out of their homes. Cher and Dick Van Dyke had to flee from their homes. Physical reality has come a-callin’ to the world of celebrity.
The other news today is the letter signed by 77 Nobel prize laureates urging the senate not to approve the appointment of RFK, Jr, to head the HHS. The presidential transition team reportedly groused that they weren’t about to take any advice from a bunch of elites who were trying to tell Americans “What to do and how to do it” regarding health care.
We have elite service men and women and elite police officers. Sports has its elite athletes. This is all positive and in common usage. But MAGA GOPers use the word ‘elite’ like a switchblade against liberals and the highly credentialed. To presume that you know a thing or two and have some credentials to back it up is considered a form of public indecency to the GOP Know-Nothings.
The accusation of elitism is ironic coming from Trump’s band of sh*tbirds on the transition team. You don’t think they’re a gaggle of elites?
There has always been a genuine reverence out there for people who are ‘down to earth’. It is part of the inherent goodness-of-the-poor trope where simple folk are praised for their perceived moral purity which is unfettered by the temptations of the world at large. Simple, good and decent folk of modest means who go to church and take care of themselves and their neighbors. You know, the rabble. The privileged sometimes feign noblesse oblige, especially if others are watching. There has always been the poor and the hapless people of the world. But given actual opportunity to improve and enrich themselves, many if not most will take it. Being poor all by itself is an exhausting, soul-sucking life.
I’ve known city people and farm people. The Harvard educated and the 8th grade country school graduates and the many in between. I’ve lived in a very large city and a small Iowa farm. In medium cities and small towns. Everywhere you look you’ll find a statistical distribution of saints and sinners. But among them you’ll also find many of those who are bitterly resentful of another’s success or just disappointed in their lot in life. They slave away at go-nowhere jobs all day and then return home to see television programs packed with beautiful and successful people. Or while shopping they will see products that are wildly out of their price range but nonetheless in common usage. The period of life that they could have gotten an education or training and the resulting opportunities are long gone. They’re stuck. If they had a chance at a better life, it has likely passed.
Then along comes a charismatic character who speaks to you. He is a successful billionaire, businessman and reality TV star who speaks of a mismanaged world where the economically oppressed can stick it to the ‘elites’ in Washington who are keeping them down. The reasoning goes like this: If he is a billionaire, real estate mogul and TV star, he must also be able to apply his business skills to govern the US. Success in business is an all-around qualification for government, right? His language is salty and his accusations are often libelous. Conservative evangelical protestant churches all over the country have come out in favor of the guy. Some are convinced he is heaven sent to trigger the second coming of Christ. If pastors are saying it, it must be true, right?
So, the guy gets elected as chief executive of the US government. Then he is selected as Time Magazine’s ‘Person of the Year’. If you recall, the designation isn’t always a valentine to the person and their impressive deeds. Rather, it is a marker representing the large-scale influence the awardee has had. Just like numbers on the number line, influence can have a positive or a negative sign depending on which direction they’ve taken. Despicable characters like Joseph Stalin (1939 & 1942), Adolph Hitler (1938), Ruhollah Khomeini (1979) and Vladimir Putin (2007) have been selected for this award along with many decent people. That Trump and his flock of sheep will take it as a powerful endorsement should not be a surprise.
The accusation of the ‘elite’ status of an educated person is an attempt to slander a person. It is an ad hominem attack. Rhetorically, it is meant to deflect attention from a person’s argument and instead attempt to disqualify the person themselves. At least since Reagan, GOP has long been fond of attacking academics or other recognized experts in a field because they are able to use established facts and logic to back their arguments. To a populist, this is a type of power that academics ‘elites’ can uniquely wave around that must be overcome. So, when up against facts that argue against the populist, they get dirty. This is Courtroom Drama 101, straight out of law school. You try to destroy the credibility of the contradicting expert, or in this case the elite person or their entire field.
Colleges and universities award diplomas to graduates as only a token of achievement. It is an official endorsement of a person’s education and intellectual growth by their institution. It certifies that the graduate has met a list of standards in their field of education. It is not a certification in all around knowledge. A degree is a union card that helps, but does not guarantee, a person gain entry-level admission into their chosen field.
When I do something stupid, my spouse likes to wave the irony flag with great amusement to contrast my chemistry PhD education with my stupid move. I have to point out that the degree is only for a tiny sliver of a very large and esoteric field, mostly meaningless in daily village life. Actually, the degree is less than meaningless overall, given the amount of time (June 1980 to June 1992) spent on a chemical education versus investing in real estate, contributing to a retirement fund, finance, auto mechanics, carpentry, landscaping and many other useful skills. It’s a big trade-off that I took willingly.
There is a very positive side to elitism. In addition to the negatives like cliquishness and snobbery, people who might be called elite have gone beyond the extra mile to acquire expertise in a particular area which has been endorsed by accredited educational institutions. These people get hired by organizations because their expertise is valuable. People who become immunologists and virologists, for instance, are hired and put to work in public health. These people are highly educated and their opinions should be taken seriously. They are not extruded out of a political party apparatus and placed in health agencies with a political agenda. Ideologs think this way because it validates their half-assed arguments. Of course people will evolve political leanings over time, but doesn’t everybody? Why replace people based on educational merit regardless of their politics with people based primarily on their loyalty? This is how fascism soaks into a society.
The next president of the US, # 47, was heard to proclaim very recently the slogan ‘Drill Baby Drill‘. This slogan was first used by Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele of Maryland at the 2008 Republican National Convention. It was quickly picked up and made famous by Sarah Palin at the 2008 vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden. The slogan was used frequently by former president DJ Trump in his 2024 presidential campaign.
As slogans go, Drill Baby Drill successfully hit a nerve with Trump’s constituency if for no other reason than as a shout-in-your-face taunt. There was and is conservative consternation with liberal push-back on the practice of hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’). It is not just fracking either. Opening public land to oil exploration was met with howls of dismay by Democrats over the plan to open up ANWR and other public lands to oil exploration, drilling and pipelines.
Many seem to believe, MAGAs in particular, that increased drilling and fracking will automatically decrease gas and diesel prices at the pump. From 50,000 feet up, that might seem to be true. More supply, lower prices or so the thinking goes. But economics learned in the back yard drinking beer while playing corn hole or from TikTok only takes you so far. There are many details that have their origins national and global politics as well as the many particulars of how the oil & gas supply chain actually works.
An excellent source of data on the global oil & gas situation is the International Energy Agency, IEA. They offer an excellent pdf report of the global oil picture extending to 2030. Here are the highlights from the IEA November 2024 Oil Market Report:
Consider
World oil demand is forecast to expand by 920 kb/d this year and just shy of 1 mb/d in 2025, to 102.8 mb/d 2024 and 103.8 mb/d 2025, respectively. The slowdown in growth from recent years reflect the end of the post-pandemic release of pent-up demand and below-par underlying global economic conditions, as well as clean energy technology deployment. (kb/d = kilobarrels per day; mb/d = million barrels per day)
Global oil supply rose by 290 kb/d in October to 102.9 mb/d, as the return of Libyan oil to the market more than offset lower Kazakh and Iranian supplies. OPEC+ delayed the unwinding of extra voluntary production cuts to January, at the earliest. Non-OPEC+ producers will boost supply by roughly 1.5 mb/d in both 2024 and 2025.
Refinery margins improved in October as seasonal maintenance and economic run cuts supported product cracks. Global refinery runs hit a seasonal low in October before starting to recover in November and will average 82.8 mb/d this year and 83.4 mb/d in 2025. Annual growth of roughly 600 kb/d is driven largely by OECD Americas (+360 kb/d) this year and by non-OECD regions in 2025.
Global oil inventories plunged by 47.5 mb in September, to their lowest level since January, led by a sharp draw in OECD oil products and non-OECD crude oil stocks. OECD industry stocks fell by 36.4 mb to 27.99 mb, 95.3 mb below the five-year average. Provisional data suggest total global stocks decreased for a fifth consecutive month in October.
‘Global oil markets face a surplus of more than 1 million barrels a day next year as Chinese demand continues to falter, cushioning prices against turmoil in the Middle East and beyond, the International Energy Agency said.’
As you may know, lately China has been having a rough go of it economically with their construction and real estate crises. Bloomberg reports that-
‘Oil consumption in China — the powerhouse of world markets for the past two decades — has contracted for six straight months through September and will grow this year at just 10% of the rate seen in 2023, the IEA said in a monthly report on Thursday. The global glut would be even bigger if OPEC+ decides to press on with plans to revive halted production when it gathers next month, according to the agency.’
The linked Bloomberg article paints a picture of static global demand for oil and weak prices extending into 2025 and possibly longer. So, this leads us to the question- How anxious does this picture make oil executives who are always looking for a reason to increase oil & gas exploration and drilling? Obviously, their planning goes well past 2025. Lower wholesale prices of gasoline and diesel out of the refinery do not automatically translate into proportionally lower retail prices at the pump. What would be the reason that a gas station owner would lower the retail price just because his wholesale fuel costs have dropped? Why would they forfeit profit margin to offer lower pump prices when they could keep prices as high as the market allows?
Do you think that a MAGA gas station owner with a red hat would offer reduced margins and prices to MAGA customers in red hats just … because he/she is generous? I don’t think so.
The reality has always been that fuel prices are based on what the customer is willing to pay. A president or candidate promising lower fuel prices in the USA should be viewed with serious skepticism. The entire supply chain from drillers to gas station owners struggle to maximize their profit margins and sales volumes 24/7. Do we really believe that the supply chain would bend to the price promises of some politico? Perhaps in Venezuela but look at what price fuel price meddling has done to that country.
Drill-Baby-Drill is a shallow chant used to polarize voters into opposing Democrats by lumping them into a contrived basket of anti-American fools. The trouble is that it works.
An effect of the internet and social media is that it brings the entire bell curve of voters to the table where many believe that all opinions are of equal merit. On the macroscopic scale, all citizens in the broader bell curve have a right to express their opinions. But just like at the microscopic scale of business, home and institutions, arguments and opinions without merit can be cast aside. Facts and solid logic should prevail over hand waving opinions.
I posted this essay December 19, 2016, and am reposting it with some editing today, November 22, 2024.
Much as I would like to indulge in witty and ironic commentary about the results of the 2016 general election, it would be yet another steaming load of pathetic word paste gumming up the internet. There are no words or sentences you could construct that would make a meaningful difference in the direction our wobbling American culture seems headed for.
I’m left with the conclusion that only civil disobedience can disrupt the unholy congress of corporate media, banking, energy and the foetid red-light district of governmental-industrial conjugation. After all, aren’t the B-school gurus always going on about disruption? It’s good, right?
Could it be that donors and lobbyists amount to a 3rd house of Congress?
Enormous corporations, it seems, no longer have need of our democratic republic. Fortunes are stashed abroad, sheltered in tax havens lest a slice finds its way into public kitty. Corporations benefit from the use of American infrastructure- you know, public education, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Border Patrol, FBI, FDA, NIH, NASA, NSF, public highways, airways, NOAA, etc., etc. Deregulation is creeping forward. We live in a period of reconstruction. Neoliberal doctrines are taking hold in state and federal government.
America has become a big barrel of fish, stunned by the high voltage of short life-cycle consumer goods and ever spiraling planned obsolescence. Neoliberalism seeks to help businesses harvest these fish. We relent and become increasingly compliant with the tightening harness of ever advancing complexity and the cloying whispers of big data and AI.
Neoliberalism has hoped for this moment for decades when a character like Trump and both houses of congress filled with MAGA Republicans take control the government. Project 2025 is a grocery list of desired policy reforms the bastards have been wanting forever. Like the quivering desire of a lusty 18-year-old, capitalism knows only one thing- that it wants more. Always more and in bigger gulps. The acceleration of dollars over time squared must be greater than zero in perpetuity. Our brains soon grow tired of static luxury and comfort. Satisfaction is only transient.
The invisible hand of the market, we’re told, will surely trickle down a baptism of unexpected benefits to the masses, if only the rotten buggers would let the acquisitive 1 % have their way. After all, if your taxes are lower, the first thing a business owner will do is to add hirelings. Right? Wrong. The extra profits will be socked away. Why hire people if demand is level but taxes drop? This libertarian dream was fomented in the early Reagan years as supply-side economics postulated by economist Arthur Laffer and his famous curve.
In the inflationary period we are just coming out of, why not raise your prices 25 % even though your costs have only risen 10 %? If other companies are raising their prices, raise yours by a like percentage to match. Your price increase may be taken by customers as part of the wide-spread inflation. After all, price is what the customer is willing to pay, right? If they are accustomed to inflation elsewhere, maybe they will just pay your new price, bogus as it may be.
The gospel of laissez-faire is practically physics if you listen to the economists and B-school graduates. A force of nature both inevitable and irreducible. Capitalism is fine if you have capital to use. If your capital is your own stoop labor or assembly work, then maybe it isn’t such a great thing.
Taking to the streets is a form of persuasion that has rewarded many movements here and abroad. In thermodynamics, power is the rate at which work is done through the transfer of energy. Anthropological power lies in the ability to allocate and focus resources on a need or desire. Money is power because for a price, you can persuade someone to get most anything done. There is no shortage of those who would step up to the challenge or sell their souls or accept any spiritual disfigurement for the hefty jingle of lucre in their pockets.
If the tin ears of corporate media are deaf to the reasoned voices of those who don’t buy advertising, then what is left for us to do? In this general election cycle a species of disrupter was reelected president. This charismatic fellow can work a crowd like Castro or Hugo Chavez or Mussolini or (add your own dictator)? A large crowd in the spell of a colorful and grandiose orator seeking high office meets the show business (i.e., news) definition of “compelling.” If the event results in fisticuffs or tempers flaring like Roman candles, so much the better. Media is hyper-focused on “compelling”. Either as a savior or a freak show, Trump attracts the eyeballs and pumps up the ratings. He has been on television every day somewhere for over 8 years.
Electronic news broadcasting is to a large extent a freak show. The whole news industry exists because of our irresistible primate compulsion to stand and stare. A key element of a good story is conflict. Look at any movie. The writers take a sympathetic character and do terrible things to them. There is a chase, violence, intrigue and reconciliation with a twisty ending in three acts. Sound familiar? TV is constructed to do this and they are good at it. And it sells. Watch Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent.
Civil disobedience, as opposed to mere picketing, makes meaty footage because there is the possibility of imminent violent conflict. It is compelling. As an exercise in power, though, immediate resolution rarely happens. The power aspect comes to play when and if establishment politicians are forced to face reelection. Often establishment authority is refractory to public scrutiny. But when voter support disappears, it can fold like a lawn chair.
To overcome Trump we must put together compelling footage for broadcast.
The present situation is one whereby a large swath of the population, including K-12 students, are being exposed to an increased risk of bloody, violent death sustained by those who fetishize firearms. Whatever you may think of the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution, the fact is that we are prioritizing an originalist interpretation over the lives of school children. We are allowing children to be sacrificed on the alter of the 2nd Amendment in order to satisfy people who idolize the idea of boundless access to metal tubes that discharge high energy bits of metal. We are not officially at war defending our borders in the US nor are we on the verge of a civil war. By far, most guns are not used to hunt. Most Americans lead peaceful lives in their neighborhoods without the need to shoot at people.
The very notion that the US government is going to wrench guns away from citizens in one of the most heavily armed democratic countries in the world is the fever dream of a fool. Any full-scale attempt to do this would lead to armed rebellion and the collapse of the USA as a democratic republic. Widespread gun confiscation is not politically feasible today or in the foreseeable future.
We must tone down and be less tolerant of the image of inflated machismo that guns confer to their users. Both in real life and in entertainment, gunplay is used to resolve conflict. By far, most gun owners do not commit violent acts with their guns. While they should not be penalized for the crimes committed by others, accepted mechanisms like driver’s and pilot’s licenses are a form of limitation and standardization that could be applied to access to firearms. But this reliably produces hysteria among the armed public. Like everything else in society, a few people have to ruin it for the rest of us.
The basic utility of a gun is to deliver crippling or fatal kinetic energy, or the threat of it, from a safe distance. The need for guns for peacekeeping use will last as long as there is dangerous criminality. What the US is presently suffering from is the use of rapid-fire, high-energy projectiles from guns designed to hit as many targets as possible in the shortest time. Man killers.
Sidebar
I took the hunter’s safety course sponsored by the NRA at the age of 9. The truth is that firing a gun is both fun and stimulating. I recall stealthily walking along a muddy creek in the Iowa countryside with a bolt action 0.22 caliber rifle desperately looking for some reason the fire the gun. I spotted fish, turtles and birds but something held me back from shooting at them except for once a few years later. With a BB gun I shot a sparrow perched on a small twig of an elm tree. The bird rotated backwards, still gripping the twig, and hung upside down for a minute or two. Then it released and dropped into an irrigation ditch with a small splash.
I was immediately gripped with regret and sorrow for what I had just done. I had just killed a random sparrow for utterly no reason than to see what happens. Even as a teenager I could see that this was a senseless action. I am sorry for killing the sparrow to this very day and, except for a few mice and bugs, I have never killed wildlife since.
Back to the essay
The point of the story above is that, for me, being in possession of a firearm could sometimes produce a strong urge to fire it. I’m confident that there are others who have felt the same way. The healthy release is to do target practice. Some people enjoy hunting. I do not indulge in this because I prefer the flavor of beef, pork and fish which, conveniently, are already butchered.
Male characteristics can have both good and bad attributes. A measure of focused male aggressiveness, ambition and territoriality can be beneficial for the wellbeing of loved ones and the community. Brute strength can be quite useful in providing for a family. Male rage, however, can be very destructive wherever it is directed, as we all know. A firearm or other weapon is a force multiplier for a raging male. Recent mass killings prove the point. Firearms provide the ability to kill or wound from a safe distance and the value of this is lost on no one.
It is hard to imagine that some restraint in the use of firearms without addressing the cultural and natural phenomenon of male aggression can be successful. We are saturated with violence in entertainment, on the streets and in the news. As long as we seek entertainment violence, show business will anxiously provide it.
I’m neither a Quaker nor a pacifist but I do admire their sincere dedication to non-violence. We need many early adopters of non-violence with considerable social standing and a non-violence vibe across the whole country. Destructive male behavior can be tamed to a great extent, but it has to start early and be immersed in non-violent surroundings. Where is the sign that Americans can summon the discipline to do it. I’m not seeing it.
Woke up to the worst news this morning. Trump has been reelected. To the international community I express my sorrow that for the second time, Trump has been elected President of the USA. There is nothing new to say about the guy that hasn’t already been said thousands of times.
But it gets worse. Trump’s Vice President is his ward, the inexperienced JD Vance, soon to be the former 2022 Senator from Ohio. Vance, contradicting his 2016 opposition to the now 78-year-old Trump, is only a few heart beats away from the Presidency. Setting aside for a moment how he might conduct the presidency, he would also be the leader or at least figurehead of the entire GOP political machine. Do we really think that a greenhorn like Vance would actually set the GOP agenda himself?
It is a given that Russia and previously the USSR has been conducting hybrid warfare in the West long before and during this election. Because of the asymmetric power balance between the West and Russia, Putin will be compelled to continue his deliberate corrosion of Western civilization long afterwards.
It is hard not to feel bad for Ukraine. They were watching our election closely. They understand that the election of Trump puts US spending for their defense in serious doubt. Not only could the money and weapons dry up, but Putin will be emboldened to continue his extermination of everything Ukrainian. Trump’s expressed lack of enthusiasm for NATO will certainly weaken its defensive posture in holding Putin east of present borders. Putin wants to take back what territory the collapse of the Soviet Union lost. That includes all of the now independent countries formerly part of the Soviet bloc. He is empire building and his boldness must be met with equal boldness in opposition.
There are serious repercussions in front of the free world because of this election. Withdrawal of American influence from any given acre or hectare in the world will create a vacuum soon to be occupied by someone, sometimes enemies of the West, namely China and Russia. They are playing the long game.
It is difficult for the USA to play the long game in international affairs due to the frequent transfers of power in the government. Policies puff up and soon collapse. It is difficult for other nations of the world to synchronize with this. Our frequent changes in administration and policy works against us when more patient but hostile nations encroach. It keeps everyone off-balance.
I think many Americans believe that the USA can continue to ride on past achievements and goodwill and that no one will notice. All free nations have to wake up every day and prove themselves anew.
One of the complaints about liberal democracy is that it lacks order and stability. Both China and Russia have stated this openly. President Viktor Orbán of Hungary is fond of referring to his reforms as part of a greater illiberal democracy. One definition of illiberal democracy is “nondemocratic practices behind formally democratic institutions and procedures”. This is just the larval form of authoritarianism.
Of course, liberal democracy is noisy and somewhat disordered. This is the nature of free people. The free exchange of ideas is called brainstorming. At some point time runs out and a consensus is taken and acted upon. Yesterday the national consensus was that Trump/Vance will win the Whitehouse. If the dimmer side of the bell curve votes in larger numbers, then they win. And that is that.
To friends in democratic states around the world. As you watch America’s clumsy slouch into an authoritarian/fascist state in real time, take heed. Level-headed Americans are astonished at the ease with which one insane populist has misled a venerable political party to mutate and turn against the foundational principles of our republic. The US has struggled to conduct a capitalistic democratic republic for 250 years. There have been many rough spots since our founding, some reprehensible. What is happening today is the decapitation of a powerful liberal democracy. The USA has been a prolonged experiment in mostly democratic governance where, in principle at least, today the leadership is elected fairly by all the people, not just property-owning white men.
The USA will be the only nation choosing fascism during a period of economic growth, abundant oil & gas and relative peace. Other nations in the world are battling but the US has no combat troops deployed to fight.
Lest anyone think that the MAGA movement was built from the urging of Trump alone, be aware that there has been a population of angry and disenfranchised white Americans for a very long time. Trump was just the seed crystal around which a concentrated population of teabaggers and other white Americans has crystallized. They have somehow been left behind on the road to a modern, prosperous future. If there was an actual trickle down of wealth that Ronald Reagan promised in the 1980’s, they were left high and dry.
We are witnessing a gradual overthrow by a party led by a man who is well understood to be a serial liar and a shameless, malignant narcissist who, in desperation for power and vengeance, will stop at nothing to take control of the USA. There is a word for what is happening- Lawfare, “the use of law as a means of accomplishing what might otherwise require the application of traditional military force“. This was popularized by Major General Charles Dunlap, USAF.
Trump’s immediate goal is getting even with his enemies. If that weren’t bad enough, he is firmly supported by loyal one third of the electorate. Many other Republicans cannot bring themselves to vote for a democrat for various reasons. The rabid supporters are known as MAGA- Make America Great Again– Republicans. These people see Trump as the key to America’s glorious future, but too intoxicated with revolutionary fervor to see Trump for what he really is- a grasping neofascist.
The 20th century was blighted with fascist dictatorships and even fascist organizations within liberal democracies, particularly in the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s. A partial list can be found here. For some reason, the USSR has been omitted from this list. Today, the latest Russian dictator stands out in his attempt to resurrect the power and reach of the Soviet Union, and he must be stopped.
The origins of conservative and libertarian outrage against American progressivism traces back more than a century, even before the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal in the mid 1930s. By the end of the 1800’s, political machines and business monopolies were firmly rooted in the landscape of America. The rising middle class eventually overcame much of this through politics.
Some put the American Progressive Era as between 1896 and 1917. Before this period the US was beset with urban poverty, child labor, Victorian era patriarchy, long working hours and unsafe working conditions. Note to MAGAs, was this when America was great??
The New Deal was a series of public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, aimed at rescuing the U.S. from the Great Depression.
“Major federal programs and agencies, including the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the Civil Works Administration (CWA), the Farm Security Administration (FSA), the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA), provided support for farmers, the unemployed, youth, and the elderly. The New Deal included new constraints and safeguards on the banking industry and efforts to re-inflate the economy after prices had fallen sharply. New Deal programs included both laws passed by Congress as well as presidential executive orders during the first term of the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Source: Wikipedia.
The 20th century witnessed the United States grappling with a severe depression starting in 1929 which spread worldwide. Later, the US reluctantly engaged in World War II with other allied powers combating Nazi forces in Europe, Africa, and Japanese imperialism in the Pacific. Upon discovering Hitler’s nuclear ambitions, the US, with vital assistance from British and European scientists, developed nuclear weapons using isolated domestic uranium-235 and the synthetic element plutonium-239. Fortunately, the Allied forces managed to defeat the Nazis in Europe in 1945 before the necessity of releasing a nuclear weapon there. By August 9th of that year, Japan was defeated and the war ended. Sadly, it received two atomic blasts.
The US came away from the World War II period full of itself and bursting with optimism. Technologies that were spawned by the war like radar, jet engines, high performance aircraft, industrial production of every kind and a can-do spirit led to a boom in single family homes, babies, and consumerism. By the late 1940’s, television was well along the way and behind it, computers, and new designs in automobiles. Americans were puffed up and excited about modern life while much of Europe and Japan were still cleaning up after the massive devastation caused by the war. The remoteness of North America and its seemingly inexhaustible natural resources left it almost untouched by the war.
By the Reagan years in the early 1980s, religious conservative and libertarian groups were organizing and linking up to form what would become a powerful political machine. This conservative, evangelical Christian Zionist nationalism group has methodically wound itself up and this very day proposes to make the USA into a theocratic state. They have money and fanatical adherents willing to risk a civil war for their faith. They will support the state of Israel to the extent that it makes way for the second coming of Christ. This is the core of Protestant Evangelical Christian eschatology. Like all religious warriers, they believe they are fulfilling God’s very own plan. I think the 21st century is going to be difficult.
Many of us think this would be laughable bullshit if it weren’t so serious. To grease the skids of their feared ‘apocalypse’ involving a final battle in Israel, they see Trump as one who could aid the beginning of this nightmare. To their credit, many confess they will have to hold their noses while voting for him. An apocalypse of sorts may happen, but it is more likely to be of the usual unholy variety.
In eastern Europe, once Trump withdraws US assistance to Ukraine, Putin will do the predictable and step up his plans for the take-down of the Baltic states and Poland as well. Putin is already well underway with his hybrid warfare. His meddling in the US elections is one element of hybrid warfare. The goal is to shake the world’s confidence in liberal democracy.
Once his move has begun, NATO will be obligated to come to their defense. It is hard to predict whether or not the threat of NATO’s backing will fend off a Putin invasion if the US backs out or takes a neutral position to Putin. Putin’s military, already greatly weakened, would be even closer to claiming that the state is in danger of collapse. The collapse of the state is Putin’s criterion for the release of nuclear weapons. NATO will respond in kind to a nuclear threat, and it will likely get out of control.
The US and Russia each have a nuclear triad that requires presidential approval for a strike. Even if the command centers of both countries are in ashes, the ballistic missile submarines will still be mission ready. Imagine, if in a conflict, that the US and NATO will have to rely on Trump and his White House staff to be Commander and Chief of US forces. Trump is a man who, as President, has a long history of ignoring the advice of military specialists preferring to ‘winging’ on his own.
What in Trump’s past behavior and utterances makes anyone confident that he is qualified to make decisions in any other matter of warfare? Should he have access to the nuclear launch codes or to top secret plans?
Of course, there will be military general staff and advisors around him as would be the case if Harris is elected. But Trump was notorious for not reading his daily intelligence reports nor much of anything else. He spent a lot of time on Airforce 1 traveling to play golf at his resorts.
Harris has a disciplined and educated mind as well as the native intelligence and organizational savvy to listen to the experts and make decisions with the best and latest information. Being a district attorney and prosecutor, California Attorney General, California Senator and Vice President, she is well versed in the law at many levels and can be relied upon to follow it.
International friends, protect your liberal democracies from those who would degrade them into autocratic states under the guise of law and order. A democratic republic is messy, noisy and will test your patience. This is not a bug; it is a feature. Rejoice in it.
See that pale blue dot as a single pixel? It is a picture taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 at a distance of 3.7 billion miles from the sun. A band of idiots living there are about to do something very stupid and self-destructive tomorrow, 5 November 2024. Source: Nasa photograph.
Lamentations on Chemistry 