It’s The End of the American Era. Period.

Has anyone read this account I saw floating around of a Chinese woman who compared rates of baby supplies ordered by hospitals since the 1990s and concluded that the CCP has been inflating its population numbers? She thought the actual population of China would be closer to 1B instead of 1.4B.

Economic crisis is inevitable at some point, given that USA is an asset bubble economy (as is Canada), with bubbles in all of real estate and stock market and exchange value of USA dollar. USA President might be tempted to start a war to distract people from this inevitable economic crisis, same as with President of any banana republic. This is the real danger of USA decline. Worst aspect is that too many people in USA still think USA military dwarfs militaries of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, etc, so that quick victory would be guaranteed.

I’ve posted my predictions on how things will go here many a time before.

As usual, my timeline is wrong, right up until the moment everything catches up.

So, no food riots… yet. Everyone was holding their breath to see how bad it would be.

The deep breath before the plunge.

Now that everyone sees that Trump and Musk essentially are trying to destroy the government and reduce it such that they and their allies can break it apart and create fiefdoms out of the parts they so desire, things will speed up.

The Courts cannot contain them; Congress will not contain them.

And so, collapse an anarchy, with a heaping helping of Hell on the way down.

I originally expected Trump to try to hood things together to try to build an “empire,” but Musk got to him first (a thing I did not foresee) and is either selling him a song and dance about how this will work to Trump’s advantage, or Trump is just too damn stupid to see what Musk is really doing.

So, rather than Fourth Reich, we get Greater Somalia. But, whereas in Somalia a vast number of people were still tribal, still able to access some sort of resources, most Americans — or Usans, as I will call them henceforth — have no such resources. Even the rich are utterly dependent upon the socioeconomic system to deliver everything from eggs (fewer and more expensive every day) to automobiles (very shortly about to be, well… not to not be, thanks to the absolute steel and aluminum tariffs).

So, the issue is what breaks first. Hard to tell, because Musk is moving fast, and the Buttweasel of Doom isn’t stopping to wait to see each house of cards fall before he moves onto the next thing. He doesn’t need to; even if a few lower-ranked judges can stop or slow one of his creative destructive motions here or there, the chaos he is sowing will finish the job.

So whatever falls first starts the whole kit and kaboodle falling.

My bet is that it will be his artistic destructive creative force applied to the banking sector. The regulatory regimen and the Federal bureaucratic structures that maintain it is the only thing that allows banks, domestic and foreign, to trust each other. Take that away, and… everything stops.

And rest assured, that is one of the Buttweasel of Doom’s main targets. Destroy the government banking system to force everyone onto his and his ally’s cryptocurrency.

As though anyone in their right mind would use cryptocurrency to buy groceries, pay for gas, or settle utilities bills.

But it can really be any one thing or combination of minor things that can tip the balance and send cards flying.

At that point the dollar will crash, imports collapse, and domestic production and delivery screeches to a halt.

Cities won’t be able to get food, the countryside won’t be able to ship out the products it has to sell (no banking structure), and no one will be able to get gas.

Anarchy.

How the Buttweasel of Doom thinks he can possibly conquer in the following utter collapse of civilization I do not know. I think at this point he is grossly deluded about his abilities. The Internet will be one of the first things to go — no money, no Internet of anything.

Usans are like dogs — three meals away from being wolves.

Within days of the shelves falling bare in the markets, communications die, and there is no gas at the pump, folks will realize that there won’t be anyone coming to help or fix things, that’s when the food wars — not food riots, food wars — begin.

Gangs of armed men sweeping through “enemy” neighborhoods and taking food, killing anyone who gets in their way.

Power systems will collapse, as no one is left to tend to them. If it is in the midst of summer, California and most of the western states will also be burning, as water systems shut down.

Eventually the cities will be emptied of food, and that’s when the city folk take to the road system out into the suburbs and the farms. Like locusts. Like that scene near the end of War Day.

That’s when the country folk, with their vaunted five or 10 guns per person, discover that it was far more important to have more people than guns.

Survivors strip farms and ranches bare (those that remain, if various diseases don’t kill of most food animals in the next few months, with all the diseases running rampant and unchecked).

Then comes winter, and starvation, and cannibalism en masse…

A song most apropos…

https://youtu.be/XDzd_9bmh8w?si=ttOrTPlY_3uFN8ff

This appears to be relevant
https://x.com/SenAdamSchiff/status/1889114419897983102

“This morning, I sent a letter to the Office of Government Ethics (OGE) regarding
@elonmusk
‘s potential conflicts of interest.

Within minutes, the White House confirmed receipt.

By noon, President Trump fired the Director of OGE.

I want to know: Was this to prevent his answer?”

Well I agree almost 100%, except that I think that the constitution has long been a dead letter, and the only two functional (in the sense that they can cause a result) are the Supremes and the Executive.

If violence is the supreme power of the state, tell me how many of the last Umpteen Wars have been declared by the Legislature? Zero? Well, that tells who matters and who does not.

Yes EloTrump is breaking things. But many of the things that are getting broken really need to get broken. Ending the power of the Censorship Industrial Complex is an unalloyed good. Will it end well? Probably not. And Canada does need to build a “Beautiful Wall. And the US will pay for it!”

Soon we will get to the point:
“Justice Taney has issued his decision. Now let him enforce it”
“The Pope? How many divisions does he have?”

In the middle of all of this, my Trump-supporting relations are the only ones oblivious to the magnitude of the nightmare unfolding around us. Talking to any of my other friends, it’s been a bit eye-opening how clearly all of us see what is happening. Even to the extant that Ian outlines here, by which I mean understanding how this nation harms everyone else and how good it will be for the rest of the world when this regime eds. There have even been a couple of them who said they didn’t expect to be alive to see this, so I am also not the only one who understood that something this bad was bound to happen, if not in our lifetimes, certainly soon after them.

“It’s The End of the American Era. Period.”

True, but. It’s not the beginning of any other nation state’s era. Or, even the era of a multi-polar world.

It’s the dawn of the age of the #Jackpot.

How about this paragraph from an NPR article today! …”The economists, as well as others in their wake, also found that the broader communities hit by the China Shock suffered enormously. They saw higher unemployment rates. They saw declines in wages and in upward mobility. They saw an explosion in the use of welfare programs. And they became plagued by social ills, from higher rates of child poverty and single parenthood to an increase of deaths from drugs, alcohol and suicide.”

Add the novels of John Brunner, the SF author with the most correct predictions of anyone in the whole field and it’s not even close.

Thank you, Captain Obvious, as far as US goes.
But wtf are you talking about regarding Europe? “Europe” is a chain and it is only as strong as its weakest link, Hungary, and various other eastern members. The Euro democracies should not have anything to do with Russia under the current regime, but leave them to wither under China. I really am starting to think China manipulated Russia into hitting the tar baby of Ukraine just like Putin is pushing trump and the russpublicans for war with .Canada and Denmark. Blah blah blah about broken promises and security. So what? Europe has not threatened Russia in decades and its sovereign former satellites had every reason to move away from it. If there was any doubt before about the impotence of Europe and NATO, Obama’s response to them stealing Crimea settled that 8 years before the current war. I dont care what Russia has done to turn around its economy since the war, it’s still much worse off. It has killed and maimed numberless men and turned even more into psychos and Im sure it is as corrupt as ever. No good will come from any deals with Russia. Changing dependency from US to Russia is going from the frying pan to the fire. Everyone should be working towards self sufficiency.

As a harbinger of things to come, I was sad to see the good folks at Naked Capitalism find themselves obliged to disable comments.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2025/02/we-are-disabling-comments.html

Yves Smith goes into detail as to why this was necessary, so I guess we can add that to the list of reasons for concern about the near future.

I also post this because naturally it makes me worry about the toll managing comments takes on Ian at this site. I hope it is not too overwhelming and I will do my best never to be part of the problem.

Here’s the noise of some gears grinding on the way down. It is titled : ” Musk crashes Trumps interview and goes on an info dump about how the judicial branch shouldnt exist (reposted because first post was from my phone recording) ”

Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/1inaszr/musk_crashes_trumps_interview_and_goes_on_an_info/

@Feral Finster

“Europeans, canadians, etc. have less self-respect than whipped dogs.”

Without wanting to contradict your view too strongly, I suggest that you are referring to the elected, useless scumbaggery rather than the majority of the populations concerned, as your comment may imply. Subsequent possible retort in the manner of “well, they elected those gobshites” will be weak given that the offered candidates in any current Western “democratic” elections are only those approved by corporate interests. Have no fear, the PMC (professional, managerial “caste” as per Aurelien ” https://aurelien2022.substack.com/“) in every “Western democracy” are reviled by the majority of their citizens. The Western PMCs are fully recognized for serving only their corporate masters and themselves, personally. The ordinary folks just have no real choice. Recent turns towards right-leaning paper-shufflers, office bureaucracy warriors, and lawyers (on the slimier end of the spectrum) are only because those of similar genesis purporting to be “on the left” have for so long ignored the majority of their populations who actually produce things, and engage in the, albeit more limited, kind of societal support that current Western governments promise but only deliver under conditions that provide profit incentives for their corprorate cronies.

Cheers.

– CT

Ian & diff clue – Thanks for the feedback. After that post from Yves it was a pretty natural consequence for me to worry about the emotional toll moderation might be taking on Ian.

I want to thank Ian, and the entire commentariat, for the quality of the comments here.

I regret the closing of the Naked Capitalism comments section, and have appreciated much of that blog’s work over the years. However, I have to say I have been in significant disagreement with that blog for a few years now.

NC, in the commentariat, has taken an increasingly hard right turn since they joined the Trump-curious post-left bandwagon. I am disturbed but unsurprised that members of that commentariat have taken to calling for outright genocide, given its turn of late. I noted, and challenged, the presence of what appeared to be a Holocaust denier there in the Fall; I have also seen men’s rights [?] types, and various right-wingers in increasing numbers there.

Yves should perhaps recall that she may be witnessing now the “altruistic [sic] punishment” which she called for during the Election. It appears that the rest of us, including the Gazans, we Americans, i.e., the nation which she fled, and the entire world, will have to suffer the consequences.

For the apocalyptic book recommendations there is
Parable of the Sower and Parable of the talents by Octavia Butler. Published in 1993 the first book is set in 2025 and starts in Los Angeles where the protagonists eventual flee northward as fires consume the entire city.
A racist oligarch runs for president under the campaign of “making America great again” Once in power his supports create concentration camps and separate children from their parents.

“All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you. The only lasting truth is change. God is change.”

“They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.”

“In order to rise From its own ashes, A phoenix First Must Burn.”

“People do blame you for the things they do to you.”

@ Different Clue:

“I wonder how much of Yves Smith’s upset is reality-based as against how much of it is anger that some of the commenters would not flatter the prejudices of others or of Yves Smith herself.”

Cha-ching. And while I may be blunt and I share few of the beliefs of the average frustrated NC or Ian Welsh poster, I honestly try to be respectful.

Every single Clintonite Shitobamacrat Senator voted against Gabbard. That is entirely predictable.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/12/politics/tulsi-gabbard-confirmation-vote-senate/index.html

The two Independent Senators, both King and Sanders, also voted no. I find that very sad. Especially Sanders. I wish he had shown some hatred and vengeance towards the Clintonite Shitobamacrats in this particular case. But his deep psychological failing and weakness were on display here.

The Clintonite Shitobamacrat Party won’t get another President elected for a hundred years, if America even lasts that long.

I would like to see the various State Level Democrats begin quietly defecting from the Democratic Party and becoming State Real Democrats. The Real Democrat Party of (insert State here), etc. Some State Real Democrat Attorneys General at least cared enough to “stop the steal” that they have filed suits in courts against President Musk and his carjacking of key parts of Administrative Government.

@Mitchell Porter,

I first heard about Church of the Subgenius by random accident. I read about it in an issue of Whole Earth Review guest-edited by Jay Kinney who was focusing on various strange and fringe groups and social and cultural phenomena. It seemed kinda innaresting but I didn’t follow it up until I happened to see Book of the Subgenius on remainder in a remainders-focused bookstore. So at $4 or whatever it was, why not? ( And this was back when the dollar was still worth 50 cents).

It was fun reading and some of its wisdom and approaches to things and stuff do seem to be applicable, if used with care and in the right context. I have learned that more-often-than-not, if you act like a dumbshit, they really WILL treat you as an equal, for example.

It also helped flex and stretch the speech center in my brain to the point of being able to coin new words almost as needed, to at least see if they work. ‘ Bulldada’, ‘pornological irritainment’, etc. After enough exposure to that, it becomes easy to engineer words like “borritating’, ‘confrontainment’ etc.

But Subgenius was not the only new words engineer. Walt Disney, or maybe the Disney Group in general, also did it too. ‘ Animatronics’ , ‘ Innovention’, ‘Imagineering’ etc. Maybe Walt Disney was a Subgenius unknown as such even to himself.

About Jay Kinney: I first heard about Jay Kinney from Anarchy Comics, which a friend had a copy of. I later learned he had a blogsite too. ( Does he still?)
Here’s a pdf of an issue of Anarchy Comics issue I once bought.
https://archive.org/details/anarchy-comics-03-1981/Anarchy%20Comics%2001%2C%201978/

And yes, it looks like Jay Kinney still has a web presence.
https://jaykinney.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Kinney

Anarchist author Bob Black joined Church of the Subgenius for a while before fighting with them and then leaving. He wrote an article about them called Pullers of Wool which I have never been able to find. He wrote another article about one of the Insider Subgeniuses who sent him a small bomb in the mail. I used to be able to find that article but I can’t find it or the bunch of articles it came from either now. Here is a wiki about Bob Black in case that helps anyone find these things, if they are interested.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bob_Black