As the blowback resulting from Trump’s foolhardy attack on Iran begin to directly impact Americans, it’s natural to hope for substantive, positive political change in the U.S. of A.
Polls show Trump hemorrhaging support from all quarters, even among his base.
Polls show the Democratic leadership is deeply unpopular, even with a majority of Democratic voters.
In Maine, polls show sitting Governor Janet Mills is getting crushed by Graham Platner heading into the June 9th primary vote which will determine the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate.
Platner has already survived a brutal oppo dump that dropped just as Mills (backed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer) entered the race last fall, including getting caught with a nazi tattoo on his chest.
Platner’s rhetoric is getting remarkably leftist, even using the old Coal Miner’s Union song “Which Side Are You On” in a campaign ad.
And the average price of gasoline in the US has only just hit $4/gallon.
Just wait until it’s $6/gallon nationally and $10/gallon in California.
And wait until more than 45% of the American public figures out that Trump’s War on Iran is not only “not going well”, but that the empire has already suffered a crushing, permanent blow.
This is all happening in a context of economic collapse that was well underway before Trump’s February 28th attack.
In review, we’ve got:
- Looming US military defeat
- Looming economic crash
- Trump and the MAGA movement bleeding out
- A rotten, unpopular Dem leadership class hated by all sides
Seems like a recipe for political turmoil, maybe even serious political change, right?
Right.
Yes. This part is obvious.
The not-so-obvious part is this: who will fill the looming political vacuum?
The answer is simple, if not obvious: the political void will be filled by those who are most prepared to seize the moment, and possibly just seize power.
The MAGA forces that brought Trump to power are the most to blame for his disastrous reign.
The Christian Zionists who latched onto MAGA (and took it over) have made their play and it is ending disastrously in West Asia. They could only have emerged as a force in a completely degenerate United States built on delusion and propaganda.
Their day is done.
So, who else?
The Techbros, as the biggest winners to emerge in the neo-liberal era, intend to conquer and dominate the coming era.
They’ve had the most cash and are used to running rings around incumbent powers.
They’ve planned feverishly for the coming opportunity and have massive resources to back their play.
Except they’ve sunk it all on a bet on Large Language Models aka AI which is seemingly on the verge of imploding disastrously (at least from a financial and economic perspective).
Should we join Whitney Webb and Taylor Lorenz in warning against the Techbros?
How scared should we be of the idiot who wasted $83 billion on “the Metaverse”?
Thought much about being “de-banked“? Might want to consider it before “hitting the streets” or just doing journalism.
Americans think it can’t happen here? Well just avoid Ohio and you’ll be fine….for now.
Sean Paul Kelley
Blue Owl just dove right into an empty pool from the high dive!
41% of investors demanded redemptions. Blue Owl slammed the door shut.
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/private-credit-bank-run-begins-blue-owl-gates-after-shocking-41-tech-fund-investors-ask
Moreoever, half of 2026 planned datacenters are cancelled or delayed.
The crisis moves closer every day. Goldman’s dimwitted concession that there would be an April Inflection looks right on point.
spud
the problem with tech bros. is that they do what Lenin said they would, bring the rope to their own hanging party.
just look at the idiot running argentina. i am sure they will slaughter many, as they turn on themselves and their base. that type just can’ help it.
the tech bros. can’t even build systems that are reliable, and can resist easy hacking, and are domed to constant breakdowns.
they will do incredible damage in the end, but will fail.
Don Ford
The massive energy requirements for these data centers troubles me.
Mordor.
Whitney Webb knows of what she speaks.
Nat Wilson Turner
She absolutely does. That was a teaser toward a follow up post.
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Platner’s rhetoric is getting remarkably leftist, even using the old Coal Miner’s Union song “Which Side Are You On” in a campaign ad.
The guy is as fake as Mamdani. Rhetoric schmetoric.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/Normanfrankelestian/posts/32563502066630330/
An oysterman. Too funny.
Platner is about as progressive as Newt Gingrich.
His opponent is no better. That’s the problem, or one of the many problems, with electoral politics. The choices are selected in advance and they are not viable choices. No one, or not many people, would have chosen these clowns except the wealthy elite and various other nefarious influencers operating in the shadows. Influencers like the scumbag Frantzman.
Jan Wiklund
Concerning trhe last paragraph Cory Doctorow had a brilliant piece about it a few days ago: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/09/autocrats-of-trade-2/#witness-the-firepower-of-this-fully-armed-and-operational-battle-station
The superrich are simply so pampered by yesmen that they loose their bearings.
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We will have to rely on the Iranians for any hope of justice. The Dems are complicit and could never and would never deliver proper justice to the fascists. They are either fascists themselves or feckless fascist quislings and enablers.
Iran has already indicated it is targeting the Tech Bros in a sense. If Iran really wanted to get their goat, they could create a deck of cards like the GOP did during the Iraq war with all the terrorists represented.
At the top of that deck would be the following. Remember, this is existential for Iran and these creeps are complicit in America’s attack on their people. It’s existential for us too.
Musk
Theil
Karp
Ellison
That’s but a few. Feel free to add to the list.
Nat Wilson Turner
@Like & Subscribe the problem is the Iranians have won this war and they will ultimately send us packing out of West Asia and then we Americans will be left to our own devices as to how to deal with the fallout.
Iran will break it but they won’t buy it.
We’re on our own.
Feral Finster
Do you know what they call a person elected to congress by a handful of votes, in an election with a whopping 15% turnout, and they had to cheat even to eke out that margin of victory?
They call that person a “congressman”.
Not only that, but their vote in congress does not come with an asterisk or anything. It counts just the same as any other congressman’s vote.
By a similar token, democrats and liberals love to tell themselves that they “held their nose” when they voted for the latest Team D corporate imperialist muppet, as if that changed anything. Their vote “with reservations” counts exactly the same as any other vote.
Trump and his policies are wildly unpopular, granted. So what? His orders still have the force of law and there are plenty of toadies willing to carry them out. People, innocent people will die as a result. Trump and his minions don’t care. Hell, they delight in their sadism.
The Team D strategy is to let Trump make an ass of himself, then swoop in as the only viable alternative. It won’t fix anything, they won’t fix anything, they don’t want to fix anything, but they’ll get power, the power of life and death over their enemies, and that is the only thing that matters.
GrimJim
There will be no Revolution, only Collapse.
There will be no Justice, only Wrath.
There will be no Law, only Chaos.
There will be no Hope, only Blood.
Nat Wilson Turner
@GrimJim gotta call BS on that one Mr Negative Nelly. There will be a lot of Collapse, Wrath, Chaos, and Blood but humans are self-organizing machines par excellance and the American people have been ratfucked, lied to and held back by a class of rentiers who have just broken the system. There will be huge pockets of Revolution, Justice, Law, and Hope.
Hell as far as Hope goes, it’s the Thing With Feathers and cannot be killed.
Nat Wilson Turner
@Jan Wiklund great link, thanks!
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The not-so-obvious part is this: who will fill the looming political vacuum?
The answer is simple, if not obvious: the political void will be filled by those who are most prepared to seize the moment, and possibly just seize power.
Yes, the answer is as simple as that. Lenin and his Bolsheviks knew although it could be argued Lenin was effectively the Bolsheviks. He and his Bolsheviks and Bolshevism seized the day. Carpe Diem, if you will, in a nod to the hedonist, zionist propaganda Dead Poets Society that I referenced in another comment to a previous thread.
The Bolsheviks, or Lenin if you prefer, used the Russian proclivity for brutal violence to seize political power and maintain it. Lenin understood it was necessary, even though much of it was senseless and misdirected, in order to socially and economically transform Russia. He unleashed the peasants and rode that wind of guided and nudged chaos. A mighty gamble, but one that paid off — at least in the short term. In the long term, not so much considering Russia has come full circle or perhaps it never left square one. Same as it ever was — same at it ever was.
Speaking of books and mulling things over until your teeth, gums and jaw are palpitating in pain, A People’s Tragedy is like the fish and the loaves. It’s an endless supply of profound thought threads. The gift that keeps givin’.
The latest quote from that tome is from Maxim Gorky, who Lenin respected by the way and thus Lenin spared Gorky the worst of the Red Terror even though Gorky was quite critical of Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
Citing the words of the Anarchist sailor Zhelezniakov, that ‘for the welfare of the Russian people even a million people could be killed’, Gorky warned the readers of Novaia zhisn’ on 17 January:
A million ‘free citizens’ could indeed be killed in our country. Even more could be killed. Why shouldn’t they be killed? There are many people in Russia and plenty of murderers, but when it comes to prosecuting them, the regime of the People’s Commissars encounters certain mysterious obstacles, as it apparently did in the investigation of the foul murder of Shingarev and Kokoshkin. A wholesale extermination of those who think differently is an old and tested method of Russian governments, from Ivan the Terrible to Nicholas II … so why should Vladimir Lenin renounce such a simple method?
Nothing has changed in Russia, has it? All that blood shed, all that pain and suffering, and for what?
different clue
What this is . . . is a Darwin Filtration interval. We are on a Long Death March through the Valley of Selection. Who among us will emerge alive at the far end of the Valley?
Only Darwin knows.
People and groups of people can only make their best guesses as to what enhances their survival chances and learn how to do or have those things. Part of their motivation should be to save things worth saving and then worth sharing with/ teaching to other survivors coming back out of the far end of the Valley of Selection.
More and more I come to think that . . . . Wherever I stand, I stand with Black America. They already have a time-tested Survival Culture and way of doing things.
Darwin may or may not approve. Time will tell.
different clue
Oh, and . . . Canada should build a Big Beautiful Wall while it still can, in order to at least try denying entry to the 150 million Illegal Mexamericaribbean Alien refugees who will try surging in at some future time . . . if they are still alive enough to do so.
GrimJim
@Nat the coming Collapse in the US is going to be like (Yugoslavia x Rwanda)^11.
Usans are so atomized the vast majority of them do not even know their neighbors, even those to either side or across the hall in an apartment building.
Those if the Management caste think leadership stems from their titles. Those who are forced to obey them daydream of killing them.
There are whole swaths of people who prefer to hide in their rooms living through screens and think that food and other necessities just appear at the store (or these days, materialize with no contact on their doorstep).
What happens to them when their meds stop coming and the screens go black?
Conversely, in MAGAland, all the coal rollers and sticksfolk actually believe they can get by without the wider world of international trade, when everything they own and use, from their coal rollers to their MAGA hats to their fertilizer and their gasoline traverses oceans to get to them.
When the whole house of cards really, truly falls, and us covered the STHTF, Usans will turn on each other en masses just to eat for a day.
The Justice-Hope-Law types will die in droves singing Kumbayah while drowning in the inchoate flood of Wrath-Chaos-Blood.
One third of the “nation” will try to slaughter another third, while those caught in the middle will either fly or also die.
If I’m wrong I owe you a Coke.
bruce wilder
Consider the assassination of Charlie Kirk, please. He was a Christian Zionist and MAGA, but dissented ever so hesitantly from the Gaza genocide and war with Iran and promptly preceded Ali Hosseini Khamenei to heaven.
I don’t fancy many will be leaving their foxholes, let alone survive long enough to organize a following. Instead, we will get a very few dipsticks like AOC and Platner and “No Kings” just to take the temperature on potential revolt. We are being monitored, not organized or informed. And would-be leaders promptly culled.
You can certainly regret that Chuck Shumer and worse pick the candidates for the Dems. But up against the policy of political assassination, what organizing tip would you recommend? And, if not assassination, as you say, there is “debanking”. EU de-banking sanctions certainly puts Brexit and the EU’s “democratic deficit” in a new light. Or it would, if we could remember more than a goldfish. Should we blame Farage or the Telegraph’s Evans-Pritchard?
spud
the U.S.A. went full blown fascist in 1993. capital over sovereignty, capital over civil society, capital over labor rights.
bill clinton gutted Gatt and article one, section eight of the constitution, and article six.
corporations now control trade and all financial transactions, including government.
corporations now write the rules that government operates under. bill clinton gutted the new deal/fair deal, and turned a whole generation of women into prostitutes and meth dealers.
bill clinton free trade gutted labor rights and labor unions.
bill clinton was really the one who started the forever wars.
those wars were based on brutal theft of labor and resources of people of color. now its eating its seed corn.
“for free trade to work, bill clinton came right out and said we need to invade others countries to force them into free trade, and be ready to invade anyone who dares say no
” Bill Clinton elaborated:
“If we’re going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world Europe has got to be the key; that’s what this Kosovo thing is all about… It’s globalism versus tribalism.”
“Tribalism” was the word used by 19th century free trade liberals to describe nationalism. And this war was all about threatening any nation which might have ideas of independence.”
“a bill clinton mouth piece,
In a March 28 New York Times article, Thomas Friedman wrote:
“For globalization to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is… The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.”
As NATO troops entered Kosovo, the same newspaper announced Kosovo’s new currency will be the U.S. dollar or German mark, currencies of the two countries most responsible for Yugoslavia’s break-up. And after months of being told that Slobodan Milosevic was the problem, we heard Washington Balkans expert, Daniel Serwer, explain:
“It’s not a single person that’s at issue, there’s a regime in place in Belgrade that is incompatible with the kind of economy that the World Bank… has to insist on…”
Nat Wilson Turner
@different clue ah but Black America is filled with Bougie Sellouts who are among the worst of us and get by entirely by watching what Whitey is doing and trying to keep up. So if you’re talking about the vast majority of Black folks, yes, but not so much those who’ve “ascended” into the top 10 & 1%
Nat Wilson Turner
@GrimJim yea yea, many good and valid points made but if you followed ICE getting its ass kicked out of Minneapolis, you would have seen some pretty incredible self-organizing that kicked the mighty US empire out of town on its ear with little or no help from local Dem electeds much less local police or state national guard (both of whom protected ICE at every opportunity).
different clue
@Nat Wilson Turner,
That is certainly a caution to keep in mind. One wonders to what extent a carefully maintained bougie outward appearance may hide ongoing in-group solidarity from prying eyes of blurry vision. I remember reading in Malcolm X’s autobiography several decades ago an off-hand paragraph where he noted that “many” black people have successfully “passed for white” and have entered white society. And yet they report back to their black relatives what their “white friends and relatives” are saying about black people when they think no black people are there to hear.
Certainly Black America was heavily majority right about whom to vote against and why to do so and how to do it most effectively. Subsequent events have proven their collective warning to be entirely reality-based.
Who else might be good to stand with or at least stay on good terms with? Perhaps Amish in a heavily Amish area. Perhaps one’s local neighborhood Indian Nation if you happen to be near one. Perhaps History of Technology re-enactors if there happen to be any such groups in your area. After all, is it better to have a steam engine and not need it or need a steam engine and not have it?
And beyond that, learn to go gray in place.
different clue
. . . ” the problem with tech bros. is that they do what Lenin said they would, bring the rope to their own hanging party. ” . . .
Oh! Is that a problem?
That sounds like a ray of hope piercing through the Tech Broligarchy’s pall of doom.
different clue
News story showing another little step on Christianazianity’s Long March through the Department of Defense.
” Pentagon Good Friday Service Excluding Catholics Sparks Religious Bias Concerns Amid Broader Criticism Over Leadership Purge ”
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/1sbo43a/pentagon_good_friday_service_excluding_catholics/
Its definitely a deformationary time and perhaps a mutationary time, with all kinds of fast-forward attempts at survivalist developments to create bases from which to attempt “whatever might come next”.
Mark Level
Lol to DiffClue’s post this morning on Catholics being excluded from a Pentagon (Merchants of Death) religious service for Protestant Jesus!! Did anyone inform the Supreme Court?
6 of the 9 are Catholics ranging from Opus Dei to slightly less so– Shat on women and revoked 5 decade old Roe v. Wade the way crazy Kristin Sinibuns gave a thumbs down to Medicare for All, Suck it Peasants!! State-Sponsored Civil War between Catholics and Protestants? GrimJim seems vindicated.
At first glance it seems batshit crazy, but since the Ruling Class has decided Zionist Jews (not all Jews by any means, certainly not Medea Benjamin) are the True Ubermensch, both Dimmies and Rethugs agree, maybe all the fake Trumpist Christianity has already been thrown under a Merkava tank?
(PS: I’m not a Christian but have respect for some aspects of the Jesus myth. Would not commit to either sect, Protestantism is Head not Heart, Catholicism, Heart not Brain, even the Wizard of Oz scriptwriters knew a human being needs both to be whole.)
Bill H
[i]”The not-so-obvious part is this: who will fill the looming political vacuum?[/i]
Actually, it is obvious. It will be the Democrat or the Republican who can do the most clever and believable job of lying to the voting publib.
different clue
I watch more political videos than is good for me, when I am off the clock here at my place of work. But its so fun. So many vids, so little time.
Belle of the Ranch has often-good videos, more info-dense than Beau’s videos were. ( I hope Beau is being restful and happy way out there in the wild somewhere). Parkrose Permaculture has some interesting info-insight videos. I sometimes don’t like her sometime-detours into a slightly smarmy style, but I live with it. Most of the basic LibDem/DemLib videos remain a feast of hopium, copium , schadenfreudium and inflatable foam-rubber triumphalism. I can tell from all the titles that there remains no there there.
Here is what promises to be an interesting video from Parkrose Permaculture, titled:
“They say a Military Coup in the US is imminent??”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L60innl1gJU
So many helpless people feel a Military Coup is their only hope and America’s only way out of the current ArmaRapturite/ Christianazian Trojan-Trump Revolution currently under way. My suspicion is that Parkrose Permaculture will tell us all the reasons why there won’t be a Military Coup, so don’t look there for hope.
different clue
@ Bill H,
If the Dem says ” Vote for ME! Because I am NOT the ArmaRapture Christianazi Candidate” . . . he or she would not exactly be lying. But if he or she promised to actually do something to banish the ArmaRapturites and the Christianazians from public life and political power, then he or she might well be lying. Or perhaps he or she might just be wish-talking out loud.
Would that be enough to get me to vote Dem? It still could be. The other choice would be to allow the ongoing Christianazianity Revolutionaries to get a more ruthless more intelligent Christianazian candidate into the office. Stopping the meter or at least slowing it down could be a good way to create some space and time for non-bipartisan non-cucks to begin planning/ organizing/doing for various life or death power struggles of victory or extermination to come in this country.
Here is another video from Mr. Guard the Leaf, titled:
“Kentucky Bourbon Workers Voted For This. Now They’re Getting Fired.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIIqOZ87dh0
I have only been able to watch the first couple minutes of this video before having to clock in. But I like seeing how Mr. Leaf is getting more nuanced and surgical in his thinking. He is beginning to focus his opposition on the supporters-of and voters-for
Christianazi Racism and Fascism as embodied in the person of Fat Donnie Two-Dolls Trump. He doesn’t give a shit if every single Trump voter loses its undeserved job and neither do I. Our survival in this country depends on the effective desruction of Trump Country and its people and economy down to the point where it is no longer a threat to Civilization in America. As the StormTrumpers themselves loved to say: ” We can’t vote out way out of this”. Voting will have to be part of it, but sustained and protracted Extermicotts against the Legions of Trump will have to be part of it too.
And especially after the midterms . . . those districts still voting for Christianazi Republicans will have to be targetted with long-term extermicotts designed to destroy their power and influence in this country once and for all.
Feral Finster
Nobody should kid themselves. If the military trained for nothing else, they are trained to obey orders without question (“you must disobey an unlawful order” being a sad example of a moral figleaf).
The Wehrmacht suffered far worse defeats and, with one notable and noble exception, remained loyal literally to the very end.
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Feral is correct. The American military will turn its guns on unwashed Americans when Trump orders it to do so and that order is coming if he’s not dispatched one way or another. The American military is a prodigious club of cowards. It should be called Club Cowardice. It couldn’t win a fair fight. Hell, it can’t even “win” an unfair fight. It’s a bully that exists to murder, maim and torture innocent civilians.
Look at the Libtards crying crocodile tears over a couple of planes shot down as though Ghandi himself had been murdered. It’s a couple of planes and the planes’ pilots. It’s hardly worth a mention. Everything with them is for a political end. Their so-called “resistance” is feigned and political. Donald Trump is of no use to them dead or in jail. THAT is the disease known as politics.
Feral Finster
Axtually, it isn’t necessary to shoot anyone in the US.
Simply cut off access to banking, insurance, etc. Similar to what was done to the Trucker Protesters in Canada. Anyone aiding protester gets the same treatment (e.g. Jacques Baud and others in europe).
Try living in the US without a bank account for any length of time. The protesters will fold. Not a shot need be fired.
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It may not be necessary to shoot anyone, but that won’t stop Trump. Necessity has nothing to do with it.