history

How different will the late 21st Century be?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Do you think the late 21st century will be different from the early 21st Century just like the early and late 20th Century are nothing alike?”

The rate of change has been steadily increasing. We (the public at large) have been made aware of this increasing rate of change since Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock was published in 1970.

Re-reading Future Shock, 50 years on

“Western societies for the past 300 years have been caught up in a firestorm of change. This storm, far from abating, now appears to be gathering force.” (p.18)

Future Shock Complete Film on YouTube (1:53:13)

“Future shock is the dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future… [It] is a time phenomenon, a product of the greatly accelerated change in society.” (pp.19-20)

The degree of change between the two centuries will be far more pronounced at the end of this century than the changes that occurred throughout the previous century and all preceding centuries.

Most answers focus on technological change, but this is the most apparent change because many can still remember an analogue age in which telephone communication involved an electronic umbilical cord and displays were limited to televisions and equipped with oddities called “rabbit ears.”

OMG! You had to get up from your seat and move a few feet before turning a dial to watch something different. We have demanded a remote controller for almost every electronic device since enduring that torturous existence. Now, we’re drowning in remotes we can’t find when we need them, while they demand an additional expenditure of precious dollars to feed them energy from disposable batteries.

Technological change alone represents multiple dramatic transformations of human society
and in how we will live from day to day. Today’s world of work will appear both alien and punitive to a world of work that will more closely resemble pre-industrial human society, according to Toffler’s third future-prediction book, “Third Wave.”

Technological change expands the possibilities of what can be considered human and redefines humanity itself. We can already see a massively transformative future for human biology through expanded medical and healthcare solutions to physiological needs and the emergence of a transhumanist movement that emphasizes the benefits of technological augmentation. While we remain cautious about biological alterations and focus on non-invasive technologies, medical solutions to limb loss, for example, are increasingly human-like in function while superior to their biological counterparts.

Like tattoos, artificial enhancements have been considered social taboos (for a short period, under the influence of Victorian sensibilities governing socially acceptable norms); however, they can conceivably become a popular means of “touching pseudo-immortality” and achieve small degrees of “super-humanity.” Genetic modifications will expand beyond preventing the transmission of genetic diseases to include prenatal selection of traits for one’s children. This will occur despite moral outrage because those with means will seek the greatest advantages they can for their lineages.

Technological change, however, is not the most radical change we are currently undergoing. Technology, however, has inspired, enabled, fueled, and empowered the most radical changes to date: ourselves.

We, as humans, are dramatically transforming, through growing pains demanded by our need to build a cooperative world in which cultures that once existed in isolation must now become interdependent to survive. Human psychology is being fundamentally restructured globally, in a way consistent with nature’s demand that we adapt or die.

Old forms of thinking and social organization cannot survive this transition without severely curtailing our social evolution, and they are trying to do precisely that. The MAGA sensibility and its adherence to a fictional nostalgia where familiar power structures continue to wreak havoc on outsiders is unsustainable in a global community that thrives on diversity.

We must learn to communicate and cooperate through mutual respect, and that’s why so much is so messy today. We haven’t grown up. We’re still in grade school, where our leaders mock 12-year-old girls and their base ignores that as irrelevant.

We are currently confronted with the sum of our human flaws and weaknesses, as well as with the social, economic, and psychological dysfunctions we have inherited from our forebears, through a focal point created by technology. Everything we once ignored and silently turned away from has become magnified and loud.

Each day that passes, the volume of discord increases as we negotiate new terms for the social contracts binding us all to a construct called “civilized society.”

“Millions of ordinary psychologically normal people will face an abrupt collision with the future.” (p.18)

We have become aware of the toxic effects of the remnants of decay left behind by our primitive ancestors. The drive for conquest, domination, and exploitation of the vulnerable in society has reached a fever pitch as dinosaur gatekeepers rail against the loss of their power while being confronted by the reality of their limits in their waning years.

We are undergoing massive power shifts and now hand-me-downs as new dynasties emerge, in which the powerful take what they want despite protestations, pleas, and persistent reminders of the values of a world of equally free people, not kingdoms with serfs ruled by rulers who deny the people their needs to favour their luxuries.

The powerful take what they want because they can
And now the people are beginning to say, “No.”

We are increasingly aware that what we become is what we allow.

We have all seen this movie; while some of us seem to have slept through the Reality Onboarding Orientation Program (Introductory ROOP) to miss out on what’s going on in GongShow Reality Tunnel #42, which means we all get to enjoy the cataclysmic scenery together.

We are buffeted about in herds to feed on words, and mostly instructions, telling us how we must live.
At their behest.

Humanity is changing, and the cycles can repeat only so often until enough stop and say enough.
This ends here. This culture of casual cruelty ends now. Right here. Today.

We are human beings: we know we become chaos whenever bound or chained.
We embrace that because human society survives only when humans are equal.

[There is] a racing rate of change that makes reality seem, sometimes, like a kaleidoscope run wild.” (p.19)

Amplifying such voices by the many through the megaphones, the powerful seek to dominate
because they know how to run the show.

This dynamic ebb and flow of power in an endless game of take, take, take
will last only until it breaks.

Meanwhile, numerous pressures are amplified by their instantaneity within a complex formula that quantifies interpersonal dynamics and produces opaque functions, algorithms, and equations.
To result in chaos.

As it turns out, humans are not quantifiable
We never were
Humans have always been chaos

Automation through AI and robotics that can provide for every socially practical human need
dispenses with work altogether, while consolidated powers ignore how their consumptions
are destructive to our weather, but we are told that we must be bold
As they raid our home of all its gold.

Conditions are ripe for a massive reset for how we live and how we think about living.
What can we do?

Future Shock was an attempt to quantify chaos 50 years ago. Today, its envisioning of the future appears as quaint as the original Star Trek.

We don’t know what surprises are in store that could set us on a trajectory in any direction.
We do know that we stand at a crossroads today to determine a fundamental,
not cosmetic alteration of human life and society as we know it.

That’s a guarantee.
The transformation ahead is far more significant for tomorrow
than the Industrial Age was for today.

Tomorrow is as unimaginable as today will be tomorrow.

“Once emptied, the future can be filled with anything, with unlimited interests, desires, projections, values, beliefs, ethical concerns, business ventures, political ambitions…”

How Can Trump Become the Best President?

Actual Quotes from Trump’s Endorsement of Hydroxychloroquine during COVID-19 Pandemic

This post is a response to a question posed on Quora in its complete format: “Donald Trump desperately wants to be the best president. What would he have had to do differently in his two terms to be considered one of the best presidents the USA has ever had? Is it too late for him to change his ways and be the best president ever?”

That was never possible for him.
He would have had to have been a fundamentally different human being for that to be possible.

Donald Trump Interviewed by Charlie Rose in 1992

Donald J. Trump has always been a fundamentally broken human being who has left a wake of collateral damage in his journey through life.

The only way he could have achieved a status as a somewhat mediocre president, rather than a toxic stain on a nation built on freedom from tyrants, would have been by overcoming his horrifically destructive family legacy of corruption.

Friedrich Trump, Fred Trump, Donald Trump

Donald J. Trump’s grandfather, a 16-year-old German barber named Friedrich Drumpf, boarded a ship with a one-way ticket to America to escape compulsory military service. He was among the wave of desirable German immigrants settling in America between 1880 and 1885. He began his new life as a barber, then became a restaurateur, saloonkeeper, hotelier, and gold-rush prospector, eventually becoming a New York real-estate investor.

Friedrich’s fortunes, however, came from his brothel operations.
“Friedrich Trump amassed a ‘substantial nest-egg’ from the Yukon hotel before heading to New York.”

How a Canadian adventure helped create the Donald Trump family story | CBC News

Friedrich became wealthy from the exploitation of women through sex for profit.

Friedrich had three children with his Bavarian wife, and their middle child, Fred, was Donald’s father. Fred became a successful businessman who amassed a fortune while many around him slumped into financial ruin.

Friedrich died on the morning of May 30 from pneumonia, and secondarily, nephritis during the period of the Spanish flu pandemic in 1918, just before his 50th birthday, while his son, Fred and his mother continued Friedrich’s real estate work.

Fred met two Scottish sisters at a party and eventually married the younger, Mary Ann MacLeod, who had lived in poverty her entire life as the daughter of a fisherman.

Fred died in a flu pandemic just before his 50th birthday, while Donald and his mother continued Fred’s real estate work.

(This summary was extracted from a somewhat sanitized article posted on History.com,

The Trump Family’s Immigrant Story | HISTORY )

The article fails to do more than hint at potentially embarrassing admissions of corrupt behaviour; however, Donald’s father, Fred, made several enemies among New York’s citizens, as Donald has. Woody Guthrie was considered a legendary folk singer who wrote several songs about Fred’s racist housing practices and his endorsements of segregation. Fred was clearly not a “nice man,” and it appears Donald inherited his racist hatreds from his father (just like all racist hatred has survived the generations).

Woody Guthrie, ‘Old Man Trump’ and a real estate empire’s racist foundations

Old Man Trump: Tom Morello gives new life to Woody Guthrie’s protest song

“In December 1950, Woody Guthrie moved to an apartment building in Brooklyn , Beach Haven Apartments. His landlord: Fred Trump, father of Donald Trump, gained millions in federal funds to construct postwar public housing, moving people of colour out of their neighbourhoods, and creating racial codes to keep decent housing out of the hands of persons of colour.”

I suppose
Old Man Trump knows
Just how much
Racial Hate
he stirred up
In the bloodpot of human hearts
When he drawed
That color line
Here at his
Eighteen hundred family project ….

Fred Trump’s racism was an obvious influence on Donald, which explains his actions when posting a full-page editorial in the New York Times endorsing the death penalty for five innocent black men who were eventually exonerated of the rape charges levelled against them.

Given what we know now of Donald Trump’s sexual predation history, this example of over-compensating behaviour makes even more sense today. Donald Trump has since still refused to apologize for this action. Donald Trump does not have a forgiving heart, nor is he capable of assuming ownership of his actions or demonstrating remorse for their consequences.

No one can expect to become an exceptional leader of anything if they cannot rise above the pettiness they have infamously wallowed in throughout their entire life.

For Donald to have achieved a character as a decent human being meant overcoming generational odds against him. To succeed at that would have required high intelligence and immense personal suffering and sacrifice.

Donald J. Trump was, at best, an unremarkable individual, and he allowed the toxicity of his lineage to define his character. Not only was Donald born into a fundamentally corrupt family, but he also leaned into the corruption. He embraced his lineage of hatred, which is the defining characteristic of the most corrupt among us: low intelligence and high cowardice, used to justify corrupt ethics.

Donald J. Trump has lived his entire life as a wailing child angry at a world that cheated him of greatness and has wasted every moment of his life getting revenge on the universe for not being handed the respect that “inferior in his mind” people like Obama seemed to have had given to them on a silver platter.

Trump Stares at Obama

Trump could never achieve the kind of genuine respect that better people freely grant to public figures who deeply inspire us to become better people. He was never going to be anything better than mediocre. Instead, Trump chose the opposite, to become this century’s most destructive force for evil, we could have imagined being saddled with to teach us all some humility.

No matter how far we have gotten as a species, and no matter what it is that we have accomplished while rising above the primitive savagery we tell ourselves that we evolved past, Trump reminds us all that barbarism can easily become our future if we don’t stand against it.

Trump will die as a stain on a nation once considered great and as a cautionary tale for a future that is rapidly transforming into a world that will become either a nightmare for whomever from the billions among us who will survive an impending catastrophe, or will successfully catalyze such a resistance that our progeny can lack back on and feel proud that we, as a people, rose to the occassion and gave our all to fix what is broken and make this a better world for our future as a species on this planet.

Donald J. Trump Memurinal

Since this piece is being published on the last day of an incredibly dysphoric 2025, I want to wish you a festive New Year’s celebration filled with hope for a far better 2026 than many have had to endure.

Thank you for reading this post, and a special thank you to my Quora readers who quickly blew up a shorter version filled with errors to support my efforts with their acknowledgments (and corrections).

What do you expect America to be like after Trump’s full 4 years?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “After seeing what Trump has done in less than a year, what do you expect America to be like after his full 4 years?”

The problem we are overlooking with this question isn’t what America will be like, but what the world will be like.

America is the epicentre of a sociopolitical earthquake that will fundamentally change the global geopolitical landscape forever.

Whether that results in the further democratization of a multipolar world or in the establishment of continental empires is entirely contingent on the degree of public engagement today.

Whether we like it or not, the recent release of the American National Security Strategy , alternatively referred to as a revisionist version of the “Monroe Doctrine,” which they arrogantly and narcissistically refer to as the “Donroe Doctrine,” is a declaration of war. (citations below)

We have been witnessing their strategy play out throughout the last year with antics ranging from a cleansing of bureaucratic staffing throughout the entire government apparatus, to tariff wars, annexation threats, ICE expansion and citizen round-ups to be shipped off to concentration camps, to testing the waters of a Venezuelan aggression through the commission of war crimes to see how far they can push to trigger resistance.

All of it has appeared to be a random series of events intended to sow chaos without a guiding strategy to culminate in the long-term achievement of objectives. It’s been easy to find ourselves misdirected by an imbecile who stares at an eclipse as if immune to blindness or rambles incoherently into fractured thoughts strung together only by the mouth in which a babbling stream of consciousness flows.

It’s not randomly generated chaos, however. It is a carefully orchestrated stream of chaos that Steve Bannon conceived of as a “flood the zone” strategy. The goal is and always has been misdirection because that’s how grifters play their marks, and the marks in this case are not solely the American people, but the entire global network of interconnected enterprises and competing foreign powers.

For an in-depth review of the Trump administration’s plan, Ben Norton from The Geopolitical Economy Report presents a one-hour, chapter-by-chapter interpretation and analysis of the scope and severity of the global upheaval planned in the video linked below. The intention is for the entire globe to be reconfigured into continental trading blocks, with the U.S. at the centre of a global power dynamic following the consolidation of the Americas (North and South) under U.S. control.

(Citations are below for those who may be unfamiliar with Ben Norton’s credentials as an Investigative Journalist. – Transparency on this source is provided for those whose personal political views might be triggered by Ben’s. Whether you align yourself with them or not isn’t relevant to the issue of an objective analysis of his analysis of the gravity of the issues he examines in a globally transformative initiative spearheaded by the Trump administration.)

Like all things Trump, he’s not intelligent enough to have contributed significantly to the goals and strategies outlined in this document, even as he provided little more than his name as a brand for the Project 2025 initiative. Trump’s M.O. has always been to have other people do the groundwork while he brands and sells the product to a gullible public.

Trump is a spokesperson for a movement that has essentially operated outside the spotlight and occasionally lets slip the quiet part of its plans.

You may remember the election campaign when the president of the Heritage Foundation threatened violence if people did not willingly submit to their restructuring of a New World Order conceived of by a White Supremacist ethos.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/04/leader-of-the-pro-trump-project-2025-suggests-there-will-be-a-new-american-revolution-00166583

This is not “political business as usual,” where issues are bandied about like a table tennis match, and points are awarded for each winning strike the opposition fails to return as fans cheer their favourites from the bleachers. Changes or initiatives implemented by opposing parties in the past may have affected people’s lives, but they have never fundamentally transformed civilian life as this current administration seeks to do.

We have been hearing cries that the U.S. is at the precipice of full-blown fascism (and, in the interests of complete transparency, I have also been contributing to that noise), but this is the next stage in a dramatic battle for global control involving machinations in which we, the little people, are pawns in a massive game of power between the few who have no loyalty to any nation and who treat the world like a chessboard, as they position their dynasties for shaping tomorrow’s brave new world order.

We are passively watching the pieces of last century’s attempt at global dominion reassemble like a reborn T-1 Terminator. They have reinvented the Hakenkreuz symbol as a red beanie, and their little people’s army sings “Sieg Heil” in a country twang. Their base of disgruntled citizens, marginalized by society, sincerely view themselves as “patriots” who commit treason against their nation and wage war against their neighbours with righteous indignation.

Since 22 states are already in a recession and recent job reports have been terrible, the odds are excellent that the economy as a whole will be underwater by the midterm election. As much hardship as that will cause, the sad fact is that not enough truly understand what’s at stake. Many are still deluded by the shortsighted, self-serving thinking they’ve been led to believe is a patriotic fight against the evil forces that have been making their lives more difficult by the year.

A recession means they won’t be able to continue lying to themselves about who is genuinely responsible for their hardships. The polls and the recent elections show a distinct swing away from supporting the party of the plutocrats. However, the DNC is still struggling to accept that the opposition has long since lost sight of its responsibility to provide good-faith representation.

People like Chuck Schumer refer to the current situation as a fever he hopes will break, and that’s the thinking that a parent demonstrates when they’re holding out hope that their addicted child will eventually see reason in time to return to sanity. Decades of working with the same people have glossed over his perceptions with unwarranted sentiment. It is an incredibly tone deaf mistake because he’s prioritizing his relationships with his political peers rather than accepting the deadly threat they pose to a nation struggling to survive a dystopic shithole.

Whatever happens between now and the midterms, the public will need to see hope on the horizon as the economy careens headlong toward what could conceivably become a full-on depression. Without that alarm bell ringing loudly in their ears and motivating them to the polls, they may not cleanse the halls of government enough to slow down the strategic assault against the nation, its people, and the rest of the world. At the same time, the increasing consolidation of power among the plutocratic class continues their machinations and maneuvers the country into armed conflict with Venezuela.

An open war seems like a likely strategy to mobilize their base to vote for them, and, depending on how they massage the optics, they may convince a few Democrats to support them enough to hold onto enough seats to continue their agenda.

The DNC must stop resisting public sentiment, and the old guard must step aside to make way for new leadership and convince people that the two parties are not the same. The DNC has done a terrible job on their messaging, and that turns off potential support while convincing people that the entire edifice of government must be torn down. However else Trump may be perceived, he still represents the chaos they innately trust more than a government that has turned its back on them for the last 50 years.

If the DNC loses the support they’re getting now, “for free,” they’ll be stuck with tepid government shutdown strategies that will turn the public further away from a do-nothing administration.

They still don’t understand the hardships people are enduring.
People like Schumer and the “old guard” are living in a disconnected reality, like it’s 1983.

The people are angry, and they have to feel that anger themselves if they want to leverage it for change.

If the DNC succeeds in winning back enough control to turn Trump into a lame duck for the remainder of his term, and even possibly initiate another impeachment process (although after two prior impeachments that accomplished nothing tangible enough to be visible to the public, that could backfire on them). The nation might have some hope of at least mitigating the economic downturn, while the entire country will be in turmoil.

Economic hardship otherwise seems unavoidable, and particularly so when destabilization becomes an international strategy for containing the expansionist MAGAt hunger for dominion.

Making matters worse, the people behind Project 2025 and the “Donroe Doctrine” will continue to push their agenda by ramping up their disinformation campaigns. They’re not going to rest while their crown falls closer within their reach. They will likely do what they can to kneecap the DNC or enough members to hamper efforts to stop them, or at least minimize their investment losses.

Results from the mid-term elections will dramatically affect the trajectory of the remaining half of Trump’s term in office. Even if Trump’s power and influence wane, the architects of Project 2025 and the U.S. National Security Strategy will have contingency plans to sow discord, escalate disinformation, and likely inflame conflicts between nations, thereby furthering their agenda.

For example, I’d been thinking the $80 billion transfer to Argentina was to cover Trump’s escape plan, should things go south and he finds himself facing insurmountable legal battles. That money, however, could also serve as a means by which they can destabilize Venezuela’s politics enough to justify American aggression.

Keep in mind that their endgame is a North and South America economic bloc that they can control.

It seems quite possible that Trump could deliberately sabotage a renegotiation of CUSMA to pressure Canada and Mexico into falling in line. He seems to be taking steps in that direction by imposing punitive tariffs on Canadian potash and proactively minimizing the impact on farmers by handing out money to quell their growing anger and disappointment with the results of his actions so far.

Moving too fast or too hard in that direction, however, risks global retaliation, such as a massive sell-off of U.S. Treasury securities, which could further destabilize the nation and the world. This would be a “nuclear option” to avoid a perceived worse outcome that would further impact global trade and exacerbate a U.S. recession into a worldwide depression, but that’s a nightmare scenario which seems least likely.

At any rate, at the end of Trump’s four-year term, the least dramatic outcome would be for Trump to voluntarily step down (as he should – but won’t without at least hurling a choice collection of his favourite words of petty spite), and the nation is left hobbling through a deep recession that would require both austerity on behalf of the little people will be so enraged by this point that the plutcrats they will demand restitution from will either begrudgingly commit to long resisted initiatives like a universal healthcare option, and quite possibly a minimum guaranteed income.

Whatever else may be the case, if the architects of this madness fail in their quest to reshape the globe into a manifestation of their “Dark Enlightenment agenda,” then the days of the U.S. as a dominant superpower are rapidly ending.

America will be in chaos at the end of Trump’s second and final term, but it will at least represent a state of turmoil with some hope shining through the end of a long and dark tunnel.

CITATIONS:

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/trump-strategy-document-revives-monroe-doctrine-slams-europe-2025-12-05/

What is the Monroe Doctrine, and why does Trump want to ‘reassert’ it? – National | Globalnews.ca

Click to access 2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf

Ben Norton – AI Summary:

Ben Norton is an American investigative journalist, political analyst, and founder of the Geopolitical Economy Report, known for his anti-imperialist reporting on U.S. foreign policy, Latin America (where he lived for years), and China, now based in Beijing, studying at Tsinghua University to blend journalism with academic research on global development and finance. He previously worked for Salon, AlterNet, and The Real News Network, focusing on economic justice and critical media analysis.

Ben Norton

Are America’s promises still trustworthy?

This post is a response to a question initially posed on Quora, and can also be accessed via “https://www.quora.com/Are-America-s-promises-still-trustworthy/answer/Antonio-Amaral-1“

America has a humongous chasm dividing the nation. Consequently, their politics and decision-making process are subject to a see-sawing effect.

Whatever decisions a party in power might make, the next election will likely empower the opposition. When that happens within conditions of extreme differences, the next party completely reverses whatever gains one party makes.

America has no consistent long-term development or growth plan.

It is ruled by chaos, making it impossible for any other country to count on stability.

Stability is crucial to any form of success, whether for an individual, a family, a community, an organization, or a nation.

Without stability, there is no predictability, and no way to proceed without constantly reverting to a fight-or-flight disaster planning mode.

It’s impossible to develop, much less maintain confidence in one’s decisions, because circumstances could flip the next day.

It would be like trying to decide which bank would be safest to deal with to protect your savings, and being unsure whether or not they’re going out of business tomorrow.

It would be like going to multiple stores to decide which products you can buy at the best prices while building your list, and then going back to make your purchases, and all the prices doubled between visits.

No one can make any progress in that kind of environment. America has no capacity for long-term planning, while planning for a nation like the U.S. should be at least for 100 years. Meanwhile, Americans can’t even plan every quarter like a business would.

This type of ongoing chaos is the kind of dynamic that is often found in a family that is controlled by a narcissist who constantly keeps people on edge and walking on eggshells to ensure they can be overwhelmed into submission when the head chooses to flex their muscles.

This is precisely the dynamic found within criminal gangs, which are often at odds with each other while engaging in ongoing internal conflicts.

This is precisely the dynamic that Donald Trump has lived with his entire life.

The only way he can find comfort is in the knowledge that he can destroy anyone within his sphere on a whim.

It’s only a matter of time before he begins publicly trash-talking Elon Musk while he secures a relationship with Peter Thiel to pit the two against each other.

His strategy has always been that of a bully. No one wants to deal with a bully unless they can benefit from being subservient to them and are comfortable navigating such chaos while accepting subservience to their abusive mindset.

Such people are all products of a broken home, while we live in a world where one in five people are suffering from a mental health condition, and a whopping majority (70%-80%) of families are dysfunctional.

Anyone with experience in a dysfunctional family understands how the pain that drives all the members apart makes them estranged.

America is the child in the global family who has become an addict, has lost control and threatens international stability.

The world can stay as far away from America’s business as possible while shutting its doors on trade deals until America can come to its senses.

Attempting to work with America today represents a significant risk to the stability of any nation that tries to do business with it.

Donald Trump has a long history of bragging about how he doesn’t keep his promises, so only a gullible fool would trust him with anything of value.

This is why Ukraine shared nothing in advance of their counter-attack on Russian military planes with the U.S., because the nation cannot be trusted.

If that’s happening, you can bet that the rest of the world’s nations have changed their information-sharing policies to regard the U.S. as an enemy, not an ally.

The impact of Trump on America that the MAGA cult cannot see will be felt for at least the rest of this century.

If nothing else, America will emerge from this nightmare, if it survives intact, with a newfound appreciation for the importance of voting in the world’s most extended election cycles.

Right now, it’s only a matter of time before America becomes Greece and the U.S. becomes the world’s beggar looking for a handout to keep its economy from collapsing.

Why do Liberals trash Conservatives?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Why do liberals feel it’s okay to publicly trash conservatives?”

It’s funny, but the only time I think of myself as a liberal is when an ideologue draws a line in the sand.

Whenever I encounter a nutbar, I think to myself that the idiot I have encountered is a nutbar. I don’t care much about triangulating their ideological affinity. I prefer interacting with people as people and not as idiotologues who are myopically affixed to a flag embedded in quicksand.

Sadly, though, it’s become almost impossible not to assume the nutbars I encounter are ideologically conservative. It has been so consistently this way for so long that I was surprised recently to discover a nutbar group that was ideologically left-wing.

I had to do a double-take because I hadn’t encountered anyone I could remember who had extreme views (from my biased perspective).

If you feel conservatives are unfairly trashed, then you are obliged to speak out against the people who have co-opted the conservative brand. It’s not like the MAGAts among you are the silently incognito types in your group.

You don’t get to complain about liberals mocking conservative stupidity because that’s the only brand of conservative appearing on the horizon.

“All that is required for evil to exist is for good people to do nothing.” — Edmund Burke

If you wish to identify yourself as conservative and be treated with respect, then you have a house to clean up.

Standing on the sidelines and complaining about being trashed isn’t defensible. It makes you a coward and a hypocrite.

If you have a problem with liberals trashing conservatives, then you should be going after the people who are giving liberals something to trash.

You should be screaming at the top of your lungs at the treasonous monsters who are making you look bad.

Complaining to liberals about being trashed only makes you look worse.

Grow some Liz Cheney-sized cojones and fight to take your party back. Clean out the trash clogging up your house and take the garbage people out with it. You need to stop behaving like a snowflake because you bear responsibility for this happening.

You’re supposed to work with your honourable opposition to create solutions to our common problems, not treat them like enemy combatants while mindlessly cheering for your team and trash-talking the other like politics were a sporting event.

Real lives are at stake, and your nation deserves better. The entire world deserves better. Democracy demands better.

Bonus Question:Why do many democrats oppose ICE deporting illegal immigrants?

Your question needs to be fixed:

“Why do many Democrats oppose ICE deporting people without first identifying and proving that they legitimately are immigrants who are in the country illegally?”

You’re welcome.

A bonus question you could add is, “Why does the Trump administration commit human rights violations against American citizens by ignoring an 800-year-old legal precedent from the Magna Carta that’s more than three times as old as the U.S.?”

Yet another question you might want to ask is, “Why am I not scared of being hauled away in the dead of night and sent to a foreign concentration camp?”

Being placed on an International Human Rights Watch list should deeply disturb you. If it doesn’t, you’re the problem, not the people who fight to protect rights you take for granted. Before rewording their protests to suit your biases, you should try to understand what they are saying.

Would you tell the truth if it meant losing your job?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Would you tell the truth about something to help the course of justice if it means you’d lose your job by means of corruption?”

I’ve just rewatched “The Big Short” — a film about the cluster of greed and stupidity that made a few people rich and millions poor and poorer. The housing market grew in a stupidity and greed bubble that collapsed in 2008, and a publicly funded bailout ensued while long-term financial institutions were wiped out of existence.

One quote I caught this time around that I’m stunned I missed it the first time I saw it, or at least don’t remember it:

“For every one percent the unemployment rate goes up, forty thousand people die.”

The nation learned nothing and did nothing to prevent this scenario from repeating. The CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligation) — a corrupt means of bundling bad debts into bad investments to profit from- was not made illegal. However, it has been a rebranded gimmick to create profits for those with resources and market exploitation expertise.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is again heading for a major collapse because the American public seems incapable of learning from its mistakes.

This time around, however, the collapse will not be fixed by stealing from a non-existent middle class after all being robbed by trillions per year for decades.

The “Big Beautiful Bill” that Trump named will add a few trillion more to the national debt and deficit, while twelve countries have already announced they no longer accept the U.S. dollar. The U.S. dollar is losing its status as the world’s currency, making it less secure while the cost of borrowing increases (while investing shrinks).

The next stage is a credit downgrade, and store shelves will be emptier than during the pandemic while product prices go on a gouge fest that will definitely trigger a recession. There is no avoiding it now. How bad it gets is still outside my wheelhouse, but I will not be surprised if it’s deep enough to create a full depression.

The unemployment rate will skyrocket, and the forty thousand casualties of unemployment will break one million.

All of this can be possible only because hundreds of millions are so willing to lie to themselves that they can’t risk facing reality and the prospect of losing the stability they count on to survive in a dystopia.

However, they won’t have any more choices because instability and outright chaos are inevitable.

The arc of history may bend toward justice, but that’s because the trajectory of injustice always bends toward chaos.

There is no way to answer this question honestly because context and circumstances are fluid and unique to each situation. What may be true for a person one day within a given set of parameters may not be true the next day with different variables at stake.

One may hope they will make the moral choice and accept sacrifice, but that’s the kind of self-serving thinking that people often indulge in when thinking they would jump on a grenade to save a crowd.

One’s belief about one’s selfless nature rarely matches reality.

At the end of the day, whatever choice one makes will always be a balancing act between benefits and sacrifices that becomes a lifetime burden to carry.

What makes people elect corrupt candidates?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “What makes people elect candidates for influential government positions while knowing them to be corrupt?”

Sadly, corrupt agents in government and media have succeeded in appealing to cynical minds enough for a significant proportion of people to believe everyone is corrupt, that there is no difference between parties or people in each party.

Misanthropic cynicism has always existed, but it began to define politics when Ronald Reagan claimed the government was the enemy.

It was a half-truth which appealed to enough people to begin choosing political leaders based less on who they supported and more on who they disliked.

As our societies have evolved from primitive states, most people have consistently found themselves at odds with those wielding the most powerful in society. Before arriving at our current state of global reach by a handful of centibillionaires and multinational corporations, the most powerful in society were always represented by the governing body of a society.

It has been relatively easy to convince people that the most powerful enemy in their lives is the government they comprise as individuals in a system of democracy. It is nearly impossible for people to grasp how a lone individual with a global reach can pull the levers of many governments worldwide. Even though this has been happening for decades now, we have been fortunate to have been given a glimpse behind the curtain when news of Musk’s meddling in the affairs of multiple nations around the globe reached our attention.

On a “quieter level,” Canadians have been experiencing the corruptive influence of oil billionaires such as the Kochs, which has resulted in the creation of an almost national crisis with a separatist movement in Canada originating within the province of Alberta.

Canada is not the first, but only one among many nations around the globe that have been assaulted by mostly American billionaires seeking to extend their reach and control the resources of other countries.

Example upon example of this corruption endorsed by the most powerful among us who transcend governments and destroy governments can be found almost everywhere, from Venezuela, to Iran, Iraq, Panama, and Vietnam.

Understanding how democracy is a system of the people remains challenging for a significant proportion of the population, who also remain susceptible to propaganda through their ignorance of governance today.

Many people still think of government as a ruling authority rather than a servant of the people.

The complexity of the dynamic and its layers throughout society, such as the distinctions between federal, municipal, and state/provincial governments, create barriers to understanding. Meanwhile, our corporate environments have grown to such degrees of influence that they, more than governments, shape our daily lives.

They have, since being permitted to rule by corporations supporting right-wingers throughout the world, defined life for all of us, and that has meant stealing the necessary time, resources, and education the people need to understand how our world functions.

The harsh reality of electing puppets to enable the corruption of the powerful among us is as simple as participating in an auction to establish ownership of a politician who wins their election primarily based on how much funding they get.

When 80 %+ of election winners win because they raise more money than their competitors, we create a feedback loop of corruption in our electoral systems. If winning a cushy job that one can leverage to become a millionaire is as simple as catering to billionaire whims, then we are inviting the most corruptible citizens among us to benefit from screwing us all over.

This dynamic, in turn, reinforces the perception that all candidates are corrupt.

By creating a two-party dynamic, the wealthy and powerful billionaires among us establish a see-sawing dynamic of opposites in our elections that makes it easier to manipulate the people while creating a horse race for their entertainment as they compete among themselves instead of allowing the people to exercise their democratic rights to self-governance.

Their deliberate manipulations of electoral dynamics turn political gamesmanship into a sporting event where those lacking the time, education, and energy to be vigilant dominate the political landscape. This leaves us all to be led by the whims of the most cynical, undereducated, and emotionally unhinged mental health patients among us.

Unless we change this dynamic on a fundamental level by eliminating the influence of the powerful among us, we will continue a trajectory of increasing conflicts, such that we will no longer be able to ignore the widespread destruction of modern society.

We are on a path to chaos, and the people standing in our way are the people we must retrain, but won’t because too many among us envy their wealth and power to such a degree that they fantasize about acquiring such wealth for themselves to empower them in acts of retribution toward their neighbours.

If the top one percent create jobs, does money drip down?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “If the top one percent create jobs aka businesses, then without the everyday worker it would only be pipe dream right? Does money drip down not bottom up?”

That certainly is the myth perpetrated by the one percenters, but that’s just a narrative they have invested millions in convincing the gullible to support their hoard-growing efforts.

Anyone who spends even just minutes thinking about how the working class is the engine of the economy knows that’s just bunk — simply due to numbers and how no business can survive without market demand, because you can’t force people to buy your product, no matter how much Elon Musk wishes it were the case.

The job creators in society are the mass of consumers who create enough demand within any market niche, which justifies hiring staff to meet demand.

Making matters worse has been how the one percent have perverted the capitalist system to reduce their tax burden and eliminate laws that would prevent them from indulging in job-killing initiatives like stock-buybacks that they then distribute to shareholders, board members, and executives.

Fifty years ago, under a system of higher taxes and greater regulations limiting corruption, the one percent were incentivized to hire more people to reduce their tax burden. Further to all of that, and before the one percent went on massive “union-killing sprees” with corrupt “Right to Work” laws, the middle class had disposable incomes that they then reinvested back into the economy at greater proportions of their total wealth than the one percent ever have to create the most significant economic growth this world has ever seen.

When the middle class had disposable income, they would also have resources to create businesses and employ more people than is possible today. In today’s corporatist world, the only real employers of note are corporate employers who, when they have a bad quarter, make minor budget cuts that force hundreds to thousands at a time onto the unemployment line.

Fifty years ago, a business could fail, and fewer than one hundred people would be unemployed, with the economy easily absorbing that without a downturn. There was also enough diversity and opportunity for the recently unemployed to find new employment within one or two weeks.

In today’s world, corrupted by the one percent’s greed, people going years without finding suitable employment is not unheard of.

Money in the hands of the gluttonous never drips down. It collects in hoards to cater to sociopathic egos who regard those less fortunate with the same disdain many today consider the poor and homeless.

An economy is like a garden that relies on a strong root structure before flowering.

Economies grow from the bottom up.

Supply-side economics is a wealth redistribution scam responsible for putting the middle class on life support and making home ownership an unattainable dream, fifty years after Reagan betrayed the working class and changed the direction of the ship of state to become a tool of the oppressive class of one percenters.

Economies grow from demand.

No flower can survive without roots, just like no economy can be sustained without demand.

Update:

How will factory jobs of the future work?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Are factory jobs the jobs of the future in the United States? How would that work?”

Factory jobs will mostly go the way of blacksmith jobs worldwide as “Dark factories” become the norm.

Here’s a video introduction to a massive change that is already transforming the factory landscape on an enormous scale to displace over 10 million factory workers in China alone:

Below this bit of my two cents is a long assessment by AI that will give you an overview of the reasons driving this transformation.

How that affects us as individuals is another issue altogether.

Much of what we can do as individuals is determined by our resources. As individuals or small groups of friends, we can focus our resources on investing in small business ventures that can generate profits by producing custom solutions, services and/or products that will still be in demand.

Almost all mass-produced products in society will be handled by automated systems with minimal human oversight.

Smaller markets will emerge, however, as 3D manufacturing matures enough to create local production facilities for customized products. As 3D matures, we will likely see growth in creative design areas where people will buy product designs or templates rather than products, which they then print with their in-home 3D printers. These will, of course, be limited in their capacity as they become more available to consumers, as laser printers have, which will create cottage industries for a higher production level.

In essence, I can envision three levels of production: large-scale factories producing for a global market, local factories producing for local municipalities (which begs the question of raw materials like PLA, along with a radical evolution of printable materials to expand production choices made on a global level), and home-based production.

Factory jobs and jobs where people go to every day by the hundreds or thousands to perform functions for a large organization’s profits are disappearing. That type of work dynamic is vanishing, particularly on a production floor.

We may see organizations grow out of opportunities for innovation, where, instead of going to a job to perform mechanical functions in a production process, we will see large groups emerge in an innovation-driven enterprise model. Hundreds of scientists, engineers, electricians, programmers, etc., will collaborate on new technologies for space exploration, for example, or medical advancements.

Companies specializing in material sciences will emerge to create new printable materials to advance 3D printing technologies, for example.

At any rate, here’s the screen grab of an AI overview of dark factories:

Here’s another bonus video on the Future of Tech:

Isn’t it essential to have presidents with morals?

This post is a response to a question posed in its complete format: “Isn’t it important, and even necessary to have presidents with morals? Regardless of party affiliation, or none, religion, or none, can an ethical America ever be restored if truthful leaders, and humane officials are elected?”

People will elect leaders who echo their standards, and that leader will validate those standards. That dynamic becomes a feedback loop that pushes a society to evolve in a particular direction.

A political duopoly creates a dynamic of competing standards that pulls a society in opposite directions.

In the case of the U.S., and the emergence of a Neo-Liberal sensibility, the nation’s standards toward the accrual of material wealth put the oppositions in alignment, and the consequence has been a nation that has become increasingly sociopathic over the decades.

Since both Republicans and Democrats embraced power through wealth, there was no room for any competing morality to maintain any semblance of a compassionate society.

This dynamic is how they managed to create such moral abominations as instituting privatized prison systems, blocking universal healthcare, and eliminating the right to claim bankruptcy on student loans.

The U.S. morality has evolved completely around the veneration of wealth and the worship of greed. Due to that perversion of humanity, they have evolved into a corporatocracy to become a kleptocracy on the way to becoming a full-blown fascist state whose national character is defined by gluttony and an attitude of entitled expansionism.

“Greed is good” is the morality that the U.S. has embraced and the character that its leaders cultivate within the people.

The morality they have embraced throughout the decades since Ronald Reagan has put them on a path of becoming a nation defined by a narcissistic character, and that makes them an enemy to the world. Even their current “friends” aren’t actual friends but fellow sociopaths who will exploit them for their benefit.

The record-breaking “gift” of a $400 million plane that would require up to $1 billion to inspect and convert into an appropriate means of air travel for the nation’s leader is a manipulation tactic by those the current American leader views through envious eyes.

Although this question presumes “morality” to describe a state of being beneficial to all citizens, that’s not the case with what the word means. People do vote for and elect a president with morals. Those morals, however, are entirely self-serving for the current American president and would make people consider him “amoral” or “immoral,” but that’s because the nation has lost track of which morals they value.

Currently, the opposition to the extraordinarily corrupt Republicans who enable and empower the malignant narcissist in charge is also struggling with the same form of corrupt morality as they deny the truth of being lulled by their failure to represent an opposition to a materialistic morality adequately.

The DNC’s old guard is as responsible for the monstrously corrupt morality ruling the nation as the RNC for installing Trump as their party leader. The DNC continues to show that they have not learned their lessons, and because they’re not as willing to “join the dark side” as the RNC, they suffer internal struggles which turn their supporters away.

At the moment, there exists a younger sensibility of opposition toward established morality within the DNC, and the old guard seeks to excise what they view as a threat rather than a necessary evolution for their party to survive.

Had they not been so corrupted as a party, they would not have prevented Bernie Sanders from having his opportunity to lead the nation back from the brink of a sociopathic morality. They have not yet learned their lessons and seem to presume their Neo-Liberal beliefs are still sustainable in a world that crumbles around them.

One-third of the electorate stayed home and abstained from voting because they saw no difference between the RNC and the DNC. To some extent, that’s very much true because both parties continue to embrace a materialistic morality that has been responsible for the destruction of the middle class throughout the last several decades.

Many people have reasoned that if both parties are the same, the only solution is widespread chaos that causes their society to crumble. By refusing to vote, many voted for the current state of protesting nationwide in every city every day until the problems they see being ignored begin to be addressed.

The DNC is undergoing internal strife, and the more the old guard resists giving way to the new who fight for a morality that represents the people, the more that party will become fractured and ineffectual against the trajectory of a nation becoming a full-fledged fascist state or autocratic rulership.

People like Chuck Schumer need to be pushed out of the party, and the DNC must start paying attention to the goals that David Hogg has been promoting. They desperately need a cleansing of the morality that fully characterizes their opposition’s morality of being sycophants to the wealthy in society if they want to preserve some form of dignity as a party that can install leaders who have enough backbone to lead the nation out of a dark morality and toward an enlightened one.

The notion of a “dark enlightenment” currently characterizing the RNC and Conservatives worldwide is a morality of misanthropic cynicism which embodies an Ouroboros that ultimately consumes itself. Adherents of this worldview of rulers and serfs are so primitive and barbaric in their thinking that they cannot fathom a world not characterized by a zero-sum game of winners and losers.

We are all responsible for allowing this sensibility to become a threat to the world order because we have worshipped the wealthy to such a degree that when the term “centibillionaire” was first coined, we celebrated it instead of becoming horrified by the abomination we allowed to come into being.

In short, having presidents with morals is neither essential nor necessary because they all have some form of morality, even if it’s considered an “anti-morality” or destructive morality. What matters is selecting leaders whose moral fibre is such that they place the good of all people above the whims of the few.

The morality we all desperately need now to lead us out of our darkness is the morality that acknowledges the necessity of placing upper limits on wealth and power. The morality we must embrace to restore sanity to this world is to recognize how, if someone possesses the wealth of a small nation and can afford to buy themselves a private army, they are a clear and present danger to society.

We must establish a rational and community-based view of social engineering rather than allow a chaotic approach toward our social evolution. We cannot afford to continue allowing the wealthy to shape our morals as a people while empowering the most psychopathic among us to define our character as human beings.

If we want an ethical society to re-emerge as our guiding vision for humanity, we must cleanse the misanthropic darkness clouding our sight.