Joe Biden is responsible for a genocide in Israel, because Israel couldn’t do it without American support. (And this isn’t his only mass murder. He engineered a famine in Afghanistan.)
Obama said that he and Joe were responsible for making the US the biggest oil and gas producer in the world. Biden has, in office as President, made that brag too, meaning he owns it.
He is also responsible for all the deaths in Ukraine since March of last year, when the US, thru the UK PM Boris Johnson, scuttled a peace deal. As a result, Ukraine will almost certainly wind up losing much more land and hundreds of thousands more dead. Most likely it will wind up a landlocked nation. The IMF and the EU will then loot it to the ground with neoliberal policies.
Never let the US use you as their proxy in a war. They always fuck you over.
Biden also has overseen the institutionalization of a permanent pandemic without instituting proper mitigations. The official numbers are a vast under-count, since they only count reported deaths and most jurisdictions no longer report Covid deaths. This before we get to Long Covid. Joe now owns that, and that will be tens of millions disabled Americans and early deaths and hundreds of millions. I’ll do a post on some numbers on how many children are getting it soon. It always amuses me how Americans and Europeans go on and on about how much they love their children, when every piece of evidence indicates the exact opposite. (Regular readers will recall how I wrote, again and again, not to send children back to school till proper ventilation and filtering was put in place. Billions for weapons, none for protecting your kids.)
As for the US economic numbers, they are fake, because inflation is vastly understated and anyone who pretends otherwise is an economist, an idiot, or on the payroll—and often all three, since being an economist or believing in economic models is the equivalent of being hit repeatedly in the head by Muhammad Ali in his prime.
Joe accelerated the trade war with China started by Trump. As a result, China will become the world leader in microchips, which they were not pursuing before the sanctions. Within 2 to 3 years they will cause a microchip glut on everything the but high end chips They will, within 10 years, be the world leaders in auto production and within 15 years, the world leaders in civic aviation.
Sanctions against Russia have failed and Russia’s economy is growing fast. It is now larger than Germany’s and far healthier in the ways that will matter as things get worse.
Joe’s policies in Ukraine and Europe are leading to German de-industrializing. Europe is doomed, in so many ways. When AMOC goes, and models are showing that could happen as soon as next year (though I don’t expect it quite that soon), well, European agriculture will collapse, and there will be famine and a huge wave of refugees out of Europe. The irony will be deep. I wonder if Russia and Africa will accept many European refugees.
(The industrial movement makes no real difference to climate change, it’s just moving production from place to place but it is going to hurt almost every country which is an ally of America.)
And humans wonder why they live in Hell.
It’s because we deserve it, at least as a species.
Many readers and hundreds of millions to billions of people are going to lose everything due to the effects of climate change and ecological collapse. When that happens remember that many voted for it again and again and made excuse after excuse for the people accelerating it, the worst of whom definitely includes Democrats as well as Republicans
As for the US, the sooner it collapses, the better it will be for humanity as a whole. The empire was the global hegemon during the time when everyone knew about climate change, and it not only didn’t stop it, it put the pedal to the metal.
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Richard Holsworth
“I think we are living through a horrible tragedy because we are also powerless in the face of this thing that is unleashing. At least, I say: bear witness! The only thing that remains if we cannot resist concretely is to testify. Let’s resist in our minds, let’s not be fooled, let’s not forget, let’s have the courage to face things head-on.”
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2024/01/24/edgar-morin-faced-with-the-polycrisis-humanity-is-going-through-the-first-resistance-is-that-of-the-spirit_6460205_23.html
Jan Wiklund
About AMOC in wikipedia:
“Earth system models used in Coupled Model Intercomparison Project indicate that shutdown is only likely after high levels of warming are sustained well after 2100,[15][16][17] but they have been criticized by some researchers for what they saw as excessive stability,[18] and a number of lower-complexity studies argue that a collapse can happen considerably earlier.[19][20] One of those lower-complexity projections suggests that AMOC collapse could happen around 2057,[21] but many scientists are skeptical of the claim.[22] On the other hand, paleoceanographic research suggests that the AMOC may be even more stable than what is predicted by most models.[23][24] Some research instead suggests that the traditionally overlooked Southern Ocean overturning circulation may be more prone to collapse.”
If you have better sources, please link to them.
david lamy
COVID and climate change are the dual heads of the hydra that will devour most of us.
There are ample studies that demonstrate the whole body deterioration that a COVID infection can confer. A more subtle consequence is COVID’s effect on the judgement and attentiveness of a person who has been infected. Most of our politicians have contracted this nothingburger and seem to have become increasingly devoted to doubling down on bad policy.
Of course, many politicians besides being in denial of the medical complications an infection can provide, are receiving campaign donations from big pharma to keep pushing a vaccine only public health strategy. The others simply deny that COVID exists.
Wash, rinse, and repeat for addressing climate change. One part of our political class is in denial, the other part pushes for technological miracles to counter the unsustainable life style that is prevalent in the Global North.
At some point in the future, instant gratification will be seen as a sin. Sharing will be a virtue and an unavoidable necessity. (Anecdote: It’s winter in my little city and why does everyone need their own snowblower? I’ll admit to not sharing my shovel, but …)
North America does have a chance to muddle through. There are resources available. But we need to shed our political class so that a simpler, and more humble life is possible.
Feral Finster
Sociopaths such as Biden and those around him, Team R and Team D alike, care only for reward and punishment.
GrimJim
And from my replies one can see that I believe that US collapse is a hell of a lot closer than most could ever imagine.
The current health and strength of the socio-political-economic state of this country, and the West in general, is so grossly overestimated it is ridiculous.
The problems of course started in the ’60s, when the US really started pissing away it’s economic advantage to feed the MIC. It really roared into gear with Reagan and Thatcher and Neo-Liberalism, and went completely iff the rails during the Great Recession, when the Masters of the Universe swallowed their own propaganda hook, line, and sinker (as a generation raised in it often will).
The modern post-industrial economy is now so thoroughly patched over that no one even knows how the machine beneath it, which actually produces wealth, works, let alone what is even supposed to look like. It’s like a cargo cult, or those techno-priesthoods from early science-fiction, where if you perform the right rituals everything you desire simply appears out of thin air.
And win or lose, Trump and his people (the symptoms not the cause) will bring it all crashing down by gutting the rituals of empire that are the glue that holds the patchwork economy and “rules-based” system together.
And then… Crash. Because it is nothing more than patches all the way down…
Curt Kastens
Speaking of the famine in Afghanistan. I saw a report on Climate and Economy that Iranian resevoirs are only 20% full as winter comes to an end. To me that looks like a leading natural indicator that Iranian agricultural production will rapidly decline starting in 2024. China may be able to bail Iran out in 2024 if needed 2025 as well. But what about after that?
Oakchair
These issues are all systemic. It’s not a case of a bad leader, but rather a corrupt system that selects for bad leaders.
Our Medical system demonized a Nobel prize winning drug that has been used for decades specifically for infections. This drug has over 40 randomized studies showing it reduce deaths in Covid by 69% in delayed treatment and 84% in early treatment.
https://colleenhuber.substack.com/p/ivermectin-is-safe-and-effective
This same industry then forced people to take a vaccine which the corporations own Randomized study showed increased serious adverse events by over 65% (severe adverse events (1.2% vs. 0.7%)) and mortality by 7%. Later the FDA corrected the mortality data because it turns out the clinical trial showed 24% more deaths in the vaccine group instead of 7%
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110345
Who here has heard the medical establishment or news media discuss any of these facts?
mago
Oh the karma . . .
different clue
This actually sounds like a counter-intuitive argument for re-electing Joebama Biden in 2024. Because if the sooner the US collapses, the better it will be for humanity as a whole, then the President who will collapse the US soonest, hardest and deepest would be best for humanity as a whole.
And assuming that a President Biden Unbound would double-double down on his current policies and approaches, he would be the President to collapse the US soonest, hardest, and deepest. If the time has come to fly the plane into the side of the mountain, Joebama Biden is the pilot for the job.
Whereas President Trump would abandon the Far Empire as fast as possible to concentrate all remaining forces into keeping control over the Near Empire, meaning a President Trump would work hardest on retaining US control over the Northwestern Quadrisphere at the very least, and over the entire Western Hemisphere if possible.
As well as unleashing the Evangelicals to institute Gilead Republic National Christianism at home and unleashing the Rapturaniac Armageddonites to craft Middle East policy abroad.
GrimJim
If you want the fast implosion and the world to burn, maybe even get incinerated in nuclear hellfire faster, vote Trump. He and his people will kick the whole house of cards down with glee, believing that American Exceptionalism or Republican Jeebus will save the day. Then it’s all Mad Max Road Warrior until the plagues and climate change finish it all off.
If you want the slow burn with pockets of half-ass civilization surviving for a few more centuries, vote Biden. At least his people are trying to maintain some semblance of the status quo, even if they don’t really know how. They are screwing things up royally, but they are still trying to keep it all together.
Every pressure cooker is about to blow. Biden is trying to hold on to some, Trump will let them all blow and boil over.
Theocracy. Tyranny. Genocide.
It’s coming for us no matter what we do.
Vote for Biden, and if you are 40- something or older, you might (might) cover that death bet, and even do it in a somewhat comfortable and clean bed.
Vote for Trump, and the living will envy the dead before you know it.
Those are the only differences.
Personally, I’m not voting on the national level this year. I sure as Hell don’t want Trump, and I’ve held my nose and voted Dem most of the time, but I’m not taking any part in this genocide.
different clue
@GrimJim,
You have just made the case for re-electing Biden. If a new Dark Age is descending, and your analysis of what Biden offers is correct; then another Biden term might give tattered and scattered groups of organized Survivalists time to prepare to Survivalize and even do a latter-day version of what the Irish Monks did during the last Dark Age . . . namely save enough records of enough knowledge and information in their Survivalist Retreats ( which they called Monasteries) to re-inform re-emerging society-loads of people about some past civilizational-cultural knowledge and achievements to rebuild some kind of society on.
And if you think the eventual Triumph of the Trump will usher in the age of Intrumpahamwe pogroms all over America against the sorts of people who read blogs like this, then perhaps you want to buy our sort of people ( and their paler “team blue” version-friends-relatives-etc. , a four year interval in which to learn what “combat” and “elementary military skills” they can from paintball tournament games and other such LARPy activities, and buy millions of AR-15s and other suitable organized defense weapons and billions of rounds of ammunition for them, in order to be able to meet the coming Intrumpahamwe Challenge.
Of course that sort of thinking assumes that it has become too late to worry about affecting the longer-range American political system by punishing evil, including the lesser evil, and that a slim chance of successful Brute Survivalism is all that there is left to hope to achieve.
GrimJim
Well, it is all academic to me. With my health I’ll be lucky to make it another 5 to 10 years either way, and, as I do not have any children, I really don’t have any horse to back in the human race.
Of course, I’d prefer to die comfortably in my bed than in a ditch I was forced to dig by my Trumpist Militia murderers, but I’ve never done the smart thing, preferring to do the moral and ethical thing, regardless of consequences.
Not that there would be any tombstone to put that on for an unmarked grave.
Mark Level
You hit the target as usual, Ian. I have little to add, but here is an excellent thread from someone calling themselves “Big Serge” on the West’s current “Zugzwang” (a German term for being in a losing spot at chess & sacrificing piece by piece until defeated) thru strategic overreach . . .
The U$ had a bad run– thankfully, it’s going down in fire & blood a lot faster than earlier iterations (the Romans, Byzantines, etc.) did; link is at https://bigserge.substack.com/p/the-age-of-zugzwang
different clue
I think we could say we are living in the End Beforetimes. That’s a referrence to Mad Max ( or rather a referrence to South Park’s referrence to Mad Max in a South Park episode).
But online all the definitions of ” Beforetimes” now say it refers to the time before Covid. So . . . okay.
Anyway, different people will have different ideas about what it means and where it is going and what to do. Or maybe even how to change it or at least steer it somewhere “good”. One could call such ideas ” Theories Of Change”. One could call the people who believe in these theories and do things based on their belief to be ” Theory Action Groups”. Theory Action Groups and Theories Of Change or TAGs and TOCs for short.
I hope the TAGs all respect eachothers’ TOCs and efforts based thereupon to not try to recruit members from eachother or raid eachothers membership lists. Let every TAG pursue its own TOC.