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Until there is an unequivocal and total rejection of the delusional religion of "American Exceptionalism " and a complete repudiation of the belief that the US is an "indispensable nation," nothing will change. Like an alcoholic who believes he/she does not have a drinking problem, the neocon fanatics will continue their endless war making to maintain global hegemony no matter the cost in both blood and treasure.

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And The American People will continue to do absolutely NOTHING about that. That's how this nation got into this mess in the first place: The American People LET it happen.

Like Ben Franklin said back in 1787 about the just-concluded Constitutional Convention: "We have given you a Republic; but only if You can keep it."

[ https://blogs.loc.gov/manuscripts/2022/01/a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it-elizabeth-willing-powel-benjamin-franklin-and-the-james-mchenry-journal/ ]

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The world around us changes as we live denial, but the of reckoning cannot be put off for ever. As MLK Jr put it, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But it sure takes a long time!

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Businessmen have waged war against the people of this country since the 1800s. Except for their minor setback after the Depression they caused, they spent the next 70 years undoing the relatively small gains of the New Deal. Now, wealthy kleptocrats run everything from the government to the banks to the "news". They have mostly undone the New Deal, and have waged war against most of the rest of the world. Until the US public wises up to their "divide and conquer" strategies, we are in for a rough ride. It is why I always say, people unite, left and right. As soon as regular people realize that their "hatred" of the Red or Blue teams is a manufactured rift, and not in their best interests, the kleptocrats are in for a rough ride.

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The only reason "businessmen" have successfully waged their "war" is because of the system of government and governance that the US has: One in which the legal power, administrative authority, and, above all, the bottomless-pit spending capability of that government is available to the highest bidder.

And the beginning of that system was Roosevelt's New Deal and Wilson's Federal Reserve System. The New Deal did NOT end The Great Depression; it aggravated and prolonged it. The only way that Depression ended was because of World War II. And, of course, The Fed made all that possible by legalizing counterfeit money thru the printing press and its other financial, fiscal, and fiduciary tricks of the trade.

And the reason "regular people" don't do anything about all this is because a critical mass of them benefit directly and/or indirectly from that system of government and governance, and are quite content with letting somebody else pick up the tab and pay the bills in terms of the national, sovereign Debt [and Interest payments on that Debt] and all the Unfunded Government Liabilities that government has run up. Even if the suckers getting stuck with all the bills are their own Children and Grandchildren.

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Nov 19, 2023
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Jonathan Cook , the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

"The White House faces a dilemma. It has the power to stop the death and destruction in Gaza in its tracks, at any time of its choosing. But it chooses not to.

The US is determined to back its client state to the hilt, giving Israel licence to wreck the tiny coastal enclave, whatever the cost in Palestinian lives.

But the optics – and that is all that concerns Washington – are disastrous.

Even the western media is struggling to obscure the veritable mountain of crushed and bleeding bodies in Gaza. The known death toll has now surpassed 11,000, with thousands more buried under rubble. Those who survive face a genocidal policy, starving them of food, water and power.

But the US's goal is not a solution or a resolution. It is permanent war. It is perpetuating the “cycle of violence”. It is greasing the tank treads of the West’s profitable war machine by spawning the very enemies that western publics are told they need protecting from.

Whether Palestinians are returned to the Stone Age in Gaza, as Israeli military commanders have long desired, or expelled to live in refugee camps in Sinai, they will not accept a fate in which they are treated as “human animals”.

Their fight will go on. And Israel and Washington will have to keep inventing new, ever more fanciful stories to try to persuade us that the West’s hands are clean."

https://informationclearinghouse.blog/2023/11/17/israel-palestine-war-dont-be-fooled-biden-is-fully-signed-up-to-genocide-in-gaza/

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your eloquence is surpassed only by your humanitarianism and commitment to truth and justice, dennis. thank you.

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Nov 19, 2023
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your comment, ray, bespeaks the naked reality regarding those whom we care for and identify w/ amongst the besieged and beleaguered palestinian victims of israel's perpetual violence. yes, we humans are all 'animals' of course [we are not plants, fungus or prokaryotes], but the israeli/US covalent-bond crwth are a particularly nasty taxonomic manifestation of our animal classification.

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"Military budgets now approach $1 trillion yearly....."

https://www.scientificamerican.com/report/the-new-nuclear-age/

Does that include the 1.5 trillion dollars over the next 6 years for upgrades and redesign of our nuclear arsenal? Ukraine and Israel "aid"?

Any good business plan should include "cost increases " for expansion and growth like the upcoming war I see on the horizon in the middle east (and possibly China and North Korea).

All to keep us safe in the US?

It's not so much that Americans are complacent, Americans are being ruled by brute force physically , financially and emotionally.

Physically you can be killed for protesting, running a red light or sleeping in your own home (if you have one).

Financially you have to deal with rising prices for essentials, shrinking wages and insecure employment and housing and medical care.

Emotionally we are deluged with lies and disinformation propaganda from the government and the media daily.

We are a nation of laws. Far too many with a corrupt unaccountable justice, political and economic system designed to control the majority of Americans and protect the wealthy. Americans are being terrorized by their own government and living in fear with justifiable reasons.

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Nikki Haley is ranting about the need to cut Social Security and Medicare funding because they "are going to go bankrupt" but not a word about the military budget where there is no accounting done and no question of a limit. Here is proof that the US is out to support profit, not the people, and Haley believes she can become President! She is literally banking on megadonors who like to hear her message.

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The only thing I can think of about the new nukes is that Biden knows the green energy policies aren't going to solve global warming but nuclear Armageddon will.

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Nov 20, 2023
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Does this mean that I have a home to look forward to? A nice cozy FEMA camp supplied courtesy of Dick Cheney and Halliburton? Bless them!

And thanks for pointing that out about HS.

I forget that American citizens are now the enemy of the US government. Guess the brainwashing propaganda machine has gotten to me too.

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Nov 21, 2023
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Haven't seen it so I don't know what your reply means. Can you explain?

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I suppose y'all have seen the ridiculous op-ed by Biden today in the WaPost. If not, try not to throw up. Here is the title & subheading:

The U.S. won’t back down from the challenge of Putin and Hamas

Our goal should not be simply to stop the war for today — it should be to end the war forever, break the cycle of violence and build something stronger in Gaza.

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The Biden op-ed is truly repulsive, disgusting and abhorrent. We are ruled by absolute megalomaniacs who are hell-bent on dominating the entire globe---no matter the cost in blood and treasure. The National Security State must be completely dismantled from top to bottom to end this madness. If not, the war-making, either through proxy or otherwise, will continue endlessly. The US political class does not give a rat's ass about the American people. They are totally beholden and loyal to their donors and to the National Security State, who are the puppet masters. The politicians are mere puppets spewing out hypocritical lies and fabrications, all designed to fuel the flames of xenophobia, hatred and division.

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WILL THE NEXT ADOLF HITLER PLEASE STAND UP: AMERICA'S PECULIAR GENOCIDE FETISH FROM MANIFEST DESTINY TO THE NEW NAKBA by Exile In Happy Valley 1119234

https://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/2023/11/will-next-adolf-hitler-please-stand-up.html

Not to be rude but America really does love to get all hot and bothered about genocide. From the news to the Hill, there seems to be a constant hunt for the next big holocaust that only America can stop with all its omnipotent exceptionalism. Another "good war" to prove to the world that we're still really the good guys after all. With this quest in mind, every two-bit, tinpot despot seems to get hyped as the next Hitler on the brink of another Final Solution. Saddam Hussein must be stopped before he can gas the rest of the Kurds. Muammar Gaddafi must be stopped before he can turn Benghazi into Buchenwald. Bashar al-Assad must be stopped before Vladimir Putin must be stopped before Xi Jinping must be stopped...

There are just so many goddamn Hitlers to be stopped and so little time. Just cut a fucking check to Raytheon already so we can save the world again! Don't get my sarcasm wrong, I'm not trying to say there aren't monsters out there. It just feels like certain Americans need a holocaust to stop a little too badly and all too often the result tends to be a lot of really stupid wars against over-hyped monsters that end up looking like rodents compared to the creatures we replace them with. And then there's Gaza.

Some 12,000 people annihilated in just over a month, most of them women and children. That is 1 out of every 200 people in the Gaza Strip or 0.5% of a population of 2.3 million impoverished people dead, wiped from the map in a blitzkrieg carpet bombing campaign that has reduced everything that moves in that tiny enclave to guts and rubble. Refugee camps, residential neighborhoods, apartment blocks, schools, bakeries, hospitals, mosques, churches... No target is off limits, and every last Palestinian is painted as a potential enemy of civilization. All while Benjamin Netanyahu, a flamboyantly racist gangster with an open disdain for democracy, consolidates his power and plots to push an entire race of people out into the wastelands of the Sinai Peninsula with a steam shovel or kill them trying.

Well, here it is America, here's your fucking holocaust giftwrapped like a holiday goose and complete with its very own Hitler and a clearly mapped out Final Solution. You wanna be the hero so goddamn badly? Here's your shot. Bibi's bombing babies and somebody needs to stop him before it's too late. We'll even let you wear the cape if it turns you on.

There's just one little problem here. The campaign to erase Gaza from the face of the map may be the next big thing in genocide but it turns out that America-the-beautiful is the power behind the new Hitler making it happen. Every bomb, every bullet, every canister of white phosphorous that gasses the ghettos of Gaza comes directly from your pocket, and to make things even more confounding, all the usual assholes from the news to the Hill seem to be using the ghost of the Holocaust to justify committing another goddamn Holocaust.

The Israelis are Jews after all, and the Jews were the targets of genocide. There go, the Jews get to commit one free genocide against another stateless people even if they had nothing to do with the last genocide. By this bizarre logic, the Navajos should be allowed to wipe out the Basques and we should help them do it. It is a bastardly bewitching paradigm to fuck with but sadly, it is also far from a new one. In fact, this weird genocidal algebra is the voodoo that all modern western imperialism was built on.

An empire is an infernal machine that runs on a fuel called conquest and conquest requires two primary components to succeed, annihilation and justification. Nazi Germany and the original Hitler had the first in spades and they used America's conquest of the New World as a model for their plot to conquer the old one. Manifest Destiny was the first Reich, a savage campaign that successfully stole an entire hemisphere and turned that graveyard into a booming playground for a master race to reign over for a thousand years. 56 million indigenous people exterminated from Utqiagvik to Tierra del Fuego in just over a century flat.

This was the dream, the nightmare that Adolf Hitler aspired to. Contrary to popular mythology, there was nothing particularly special or even all that unusual about Nazi Germany. Fascism itself is just a colorful collection of excuses to elevate the state to take the place of God on the white man's mantle. The Third Reich was little more than an American copycat crime. Hitler just lacked the patience to pull it off. He tried to rush Manifest Destiny, killing 17 million civilians including about 6 million Jews in a decade before he could convince the world to let him get away with it. The Nazis failed because they committed their atrocities faster than they could justify them, which is half the game.

America on the other hand succeeded because we used monsters like Hitler to justify our own atrocities. World War Two, the supposedly "good" war, became the template for this grift. America spent its first century and a half committing every single horror that Hitler copied twice and then we took our campaign global to stop him. With the fall of the Third Reich, America managed to reinvent itself as the only solution to every other final solution and it worked.

It didn't matter that Hitler was actually done in by his fellow monster Stalin or that America vaporized entire cities like Dresden and Hiroshima just to steal his thunder, the mythology of America-the-indispensable-solution stuck and every time we get carried away with our latest massacre in Indochina or our latest quagmire in Babylon and our mask of sanity begins to slip, we just go right back to searching for another Hitler to stop.

All too often this quest has involved genocide too. America has used quisling thugs like Suharto and Muhammad bin Salman to slaughter over 200,000 people in East Timor and nearly 400,000 in Yemen, respectively. We wiped out entire tribes in Central America in the name of fighting communism, including 200,000 people in the tiny slave colony of Guatemala alone. And perhaps the sickest thing is that America has all too often used genocide to excuse genocide, whether we're killing Gypsy babushkas in Kosovo or starving half a million babies in Iraq.

Israel is just following our playbook because Israel is our playbook. The ovens of Auschwitz weren't even cool when we weaponized the anguish of the Jewish people and directed it at their fellow Semites in Palestine in order to build another European-style ethno-state on the doorstep of the Persian Gulf. And then there's Gaza. Sunrise, sunset.

America is right to seek the destruction of the next Hitler because as long as psychopaths have nation states and standing armies to hijack, there will always be another Hitler. But America doesn't need to travel far and wide to find him. They need only to search their bathroom mirrors. America is the next Hitler because America was the first Hitler, and we can put a stop to a thousand genocides from Papua New Guinea to the Gaza Strip just by bringing the war home and confronting the enemy within.

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Don't forget the role that money plays in history, it is more than you usually read in conventional history because historians rarely study money. Look who is pulling the strings in America today... It has rarely been different.

https://theses.gla.ac.uk/81723/ The Bankers did it? I have read this before over the years in different places, so I did a search. Her is something titled,

The bankers of Brumaire: the financiers behind Napoleon's ascent

Stokle, Mark (2020) The bankers of Brumaire: the financiers behind Napoleon's ascent. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Due to Embargo and/or Third Party Copyright restrictions, this thesis is not available in this service.

Abstract

Napoleon Bonaparte’s relation with bankers and military contractors is not the first aspect which springs to mind when one reflects on his rise to power. And yet, the support of the influential business lobby and its political allies played a determining role in his toppling of the Directory – the last French revolutionary government – on 18-19 Brumaire (9-10 Nov. 1799). Who then were these financiers who wielded such power? What was their relationship with Bonaparte and the directorial regime? And why did they forsake the Revolution and support the establishment of military dictatorship in France?

By adopting a financial perspective and exploring the opaque networks connecting businessmen, politicians and military leaders during the directorial period, this thesis develops new interpretations of revolutionary events and assesses the influence exerted by leading magnates over the state’s political and economic policies.

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"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws."

"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from it's profits or so dependent on it's favors, that there will be no opposition from that class."

"I care not who controls a nation's political affairs, so long as I control her currency."

~ Mayer Amschel Rothschild

[ https://www.azquotes.com/author/21034-Mayer_Amschel_Rothschild ]

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And because Rothschild was Jewish, those quotes will no doubt be dismissed as "anti-Semitic."

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no worries, rj... as you say, we need not all be peering thru the same lens to deduce what seems plausible for us to struggle towards in an effort to focus on what constitutes a beneficent, vivifying, and fecund life... concomitantly, to reach satisfactory goals on behalf of others, find clarity and purpose, in the optative hope that, by the time we achieve our respective endpoints, what has preceded those endpoints can be perceived as worth the struggle, even for myopic blokesses like me.

dennis, you, myself, and our multifarious consociate strugglers offer disparate pathways for contemplation, but one is no more valid than another, so long as the focus remains on beneficence rather than rebarbative slings. for instance, many of my students in the palestinian refugee camps this past year, as well as colleagues and local volunteers, were atheistic, apatheistic, agnostic, or insouciant nullifidians. liberating themselves from their cultural zeitgeist was a significant challenge, so they learned not to discuss religion, religious tracts, religious dogma, or doctrinaire religiosity altogether.

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Somebody needs to go to jail over this. But they won't. And the "defense/security" budget will just keep on growing, and growing, and growing. Along with the National Debt [now at $33.7 TRILLION and growing by leaps and bounds]... :

PENTAGON FAILS AUDIT FOR SIXTH STRAIGHT YEAR: Fiscal Times / 111723

The Pentagon failed its annual financial audit for the sixth straight year, the Defense Department’s chief financial officer announced Wednesday.

CFO Michael J. McCord told reporters that the Pentagon, with $3.8 trillion in assets and $4 trillion in liabilities, is making progress toward a clean audit, but that the failure “is not a surprise” and that the department still has years’ worth of work to do to reach its goal. “Things are showing progress, but it's not enough,” he said.

The annual audit is conducted by independent public accounting firms and the DOD Office of the Inspector General. Some 1,600 auditors and 700 site visits were involved and the Pentagon spent a reported $187 million on the process, which includes 29 standalone audits of military services, all of which must pass for the overall audit to be scored as clean. There is also an overall department-wide audit.

Just seven of the standalones passed this year, the same as last year, while one received a qualified opinion, which falls short of passing. Three component audits are still pending.

“While we acknowledged enhancements in the DoD's financial management procedures, significant challenges persist in generating thorough and precise financial statements,” Inspector General Robert P. Storch said in a statement.

The audit identified 28 material weaknesses, three significant deficiencies and seven instances of noncompliance with laws, regulations, contracts and grant agreements, the inspector general’s office said. No new Pentagon-wide material weaknesses were reported this time.

The auditors also found that about half of the Defense Department’s assets can’t be accounted for. "This does not mean that the other 50% is unaccounted for," McCord explained. "The department has tight control of its assets — but too many of our financial management systems, such as some of our property systems of record, still cannot meet auditing standards. We are working hard to accelerate the retirement of these older systems and bring more of our asset records up to accounting standards.”

The Pentagon has reportedly faced pressure from lawmakers to achieve a clean audit by 2027, but McCord and the DoD called on Congress and the defense industry to help.

“Our congressional defense committees can help,” McCord said, “by doing their part in stabilizing the budget process and avoiding continuing resolutions and repeated threats of government shutdowns, such as the one we are living through yet again this week; by ensuring timely continuity and confirmation of our military and civilian leadership; by providing adequate and consistent resources for replacing DOD legacy systems; and through continued support of the department's financial transformation efforts.”

[ https://www.thefiscaltimes.com/newsletter/20231116-Pentagon-Fails-Audit-Sixth-Straight-Year ]

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The Decline of America ~ the Empire and the Nation-State ~ has ended; and the Fall has begun. Why? For the simple reason that America is ~ and has been for a long, long time:

- a Bankrupt Debtor State;

- an Imperialist Warfare State;

- a Redistributionist Welfare State;

- a Secrecy/Surveillance/Security/proto-Police State;

- an Autocratic/Oligarchic/Plutocratic/Patriarchal Deep State;

- a Failing or at best Flailing Nation-State;

- an Overshoot State; and, perhaps most importantly,

- a People and Nation no longer merely "divided," but fractured~ even to the point of disintegration~ in ways not seen in more than 160 years, since the eve of what may end up being merely the First American Civil War.

So the question then becomes: Will the United States survive to celebrate its 250th birthday on July 4, 2026, 958 days from today? And if it does, will the American People be in any condition or mood to celebrate anything?

A better question than WILL the US survive is: CAN it survive? And an even better question is: SHOULD it survive?

For starters: Will there be a national election in November, 2024? And if there is, will there be an Inauguration and seating of the next Congress in January, 2025? What would it take to prevent those things from happening? Another 9/11? Another Pandemic, but one that kills young and healthy people like the last one killed old and sick ones? Another "too Big to let fail" 2008-esque financial "“¢risi$”? How about Wars in Europe, the Middle east, Asia, and with Mexico along the border?

And even if there is an election, what kind of choice is Biden and Trump? Or anybody else on the current national political theatrical stage or waiting in the wings?

The key thing to remember here is that virtually everybody and anybody who has ever come along wanting to "Save The World" actually, really has only ever wanted ~ and wants ~ to Rule The World. And that they will fail on either count.

And the main lesson to be learned from Napoleon and Hitler is very simple: Do not even think about invading, conquering, and ruling Russia. Because it ain't gonna happen.

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Can it survive? America is already dead. Younger generations than the boomers (who have brought us to this) have no future to look forward to other than climate catastrophe,, endless war, and poverty with a real possibility of nuclear Armageddon. The only reason for the optimistic view of " can it survive " is because the change is slow rather than overnight. The death rattle is in Americas throat now.

You nailed it otherwise.

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The first Question this Boomer ~ guilty as charged ~ has, Toma, is this:

Have ALL of the individuals in All those younger Generations given up any and all hope of CHANGING America so as to avoid the end of "America: The Experiment," and its descent into either total chaos or its only alternative, total Tyranny?

And re that "death rattle: As an orthopedic surgeon/sailing buddy of mine once put it after almost losing a patient during a hip replacement: "As long as You can still hear a rattle, the patient is not dead."

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Thank you. Succinct is your muse. You do it do well. Most diatribes go on and on. Less words so much better....at least for this reader.

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"... the unending race to keep up with foreign military and economic competition threatens to erode the very values that make one's society worth defending in the first place."

That's from "...the heavens and the earth: A Political History of the Space Age" by Walter A. McDougall. I'd say ol' Walt hit the nail on the head.

A poll I'd like to see: How many members of Congress actually vote in accordance with the wishes of their constituents who, after all, sent them to D.C. as their representative?

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Howz things in the Netherlands my friend?

" A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift, is approaching spiritual death. I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. I am increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Windswept, wet, and chilly. To be expected living within minutes of the North Sea. Keeps the Germans away (they come to the beach in convoys in Summer)!

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These links may answer your question. It's already been done.

The you tube link gives the analysis and the second is from where I got the link. You might want to read some of his essays.

https://youtu.be/5tu32CCA_Ig?feature=shared

https://leftymathprof.wordpress.com/reforms-fail/

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That McDougall book was tops.

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Good piece. Shared to FB

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AMERICA: IT'S TIME TO BREAK UP: We're Going From Dysfunction To Dystopia. It's Time For Something Like A "National Divorce." It's Time For Decentralization. By Max Borders / UNDERTHROW 111623

Source: https://underthrow.substack.com/p/america-its-time-to-break-up ; EMPHASES added.

“Our country has become an ideological war zone, with battles being fought over Black Lives Matter, abortion, school curriculums, and child gender reassignments. Everything has been politicized, from entertainment to diet to the FBI…. [T]here are two culturally and politically dominant factions in this country, and they are not living peacefully together. We are in an abusive relationship. I want a divorce.” ~ Angela McArdle

In the 20th century, Americans had national unity. This unity was achieved through centralized media and government schools inculcating civic narratives. Having a couple of enemies never hurt, and this wasn’t so much a conspiracy as a sign of the times. In those days, you could find common ground in the Constitution or the fight against Nazis or Commies.

Those days are over.

Today, illiberal extremists hover over the Republic’s dried detritus: On the far left, there are mobs with Molotov cocktails; on the far right, there are reactionaries with tiki torches. These extremists are not just hotheads; they risk the Republic’s going up in flames.

There are shades of controversy, culture war, and class struggle at every stage in between the extremes. We haven’t seen this kind of national animus since the 1960s, and it will get worse before it gets better. Increasingly, Americans are getting sucked into weird affinity groups and filter bubbles whose members view outsiders as enemies.

In the internet age, no grand civic narrative can long prevail. Manufactured consent was only possible in the days of ABC, NBC, and state-approved social studies books. We now have an information ecology polluted by sensationalism, groupthink, availability cascades, and meme wars. Those who color outside tribal lines are greeted with hostility. Why? Too many people have become unmoored from the values and practices that give life meaning. And far too many have divorced themselves from the liberal ideals that animated the American Founding.

As America plunges headlong into a debt crisis, the culture wars continue to distract us. For better or worse, we’re being pulled apart as the government—and the people—go broke.

SO WHAT CAN BE DONE?

It’s time to break up.

There are all manner of ways to do it—from muscular subsidiarity to separatism. But the core message is clear: Trouble is coming if we don’t find a way more loosely to self-organize according to different conceptions of the good.

And we must be prepared for it: mind, body, and system.

My 2001 AFTER COLLAPSE is not a prepper’s book—though taking on a prepper’s mentality doesn’t seem like a punchline anymore. Each chapter corresponds with seven dimensions along which America is breaking down:

Our socio-economic models are FAULTY.

Our state and corporate hierarchies are FALTERING.

Our belief in the founding ideals is FADING.

Our systems of mutual aid are DYING.

Our collective intelligence is FRACTURED.

Our civil discourse is DETERIORATING.

Our government is in DEBT AND DISORDER.

The punchline? ONLY DECENTRALIZATION CAN SAVE US. Let me focus on that point for a moment.

DECENTRALIZATION: A CONSCIOUS DECOUPLING

Breaking up is hard to do, but it’s not that hard.

We have to create more space for institutional pluralism. So, it might be time to further break up the country into sovereign units. Peaceful secession. A loose confederation. At least more federalism. Let people experiment and be united in experimentation. Let the Bernie Sanders supporters turn Vermont into a socialist, buy-local paradise. Let Northern California break off from the Bay Area and SoCal to form the state of Jefferson. Let New Hampshire become even freer. Let the Republic of Texas separate, even if Austin “keeps it weird” as an independent city-state.

This is nothing new. And it works.

Polycentric legal frameworks like those in Switzerland or the Hanseatic League should help us localize tug-of-war-style politics. We don’t have to stop trading with one another (and we shouldn’t, of course). But we’d have to stop trying to impose monolithic laws upon people who prefer to live in different political, cultural, or economic niches. And, of course, we have some laws on the books that might help us achieve such a condition.

SUBSIDIARITY RULES

Some might object that the Articles of Confederation were tried and failed. How will the colonies put down rebellions? the powdered wigs wondered at the time. Then, our Constitution was born. But times have changed. It’s time to replace the need for revolution with the built-in blessings of decentralization. (Or isn’t there a law for that already on the books?)

Perhaps the Articles of Confederation were insufficient, but we have the means to fashion a robust system that allows for plenty of checks and escape hatches. Debates over the proper size and role of government would be over, and each jurisdiction would have to prove itself. Fifty experiments, at least, would allow us all to vote with our U-Hauls.

“Where every man is a sharer in the direction of his ward-republic, or of some of the higher ones, and feels that he is a participator in the government of affairs not merely at an election, one day in the year, but every day.” – Thomas Jefferson, 1816, on Ward Republics

A LESS PERFECT UNION, A MORE ANTIFRAGILE AMERICA

Such a system would be a step in creating a more antifragile condition. As Nassim Taleb put the matter, channeling Vince Graham:

“I am, at the Fed level, libertarian; at the state level, Republican; at the local level, Democrat; and at the family and friends level, a socialist.” If that saying doesn’t convince you of the fatuousness of left vs. right labels, nothing will.

Taleb’s quip is based on the idea that local experimentation shouldn’t result in system-wide catastrophes and that we should go local with our pieties.

So, California’s catastrophes should remain with California. Such a system would drop much of the incentive to think of one’s political ideals as something to be forced down the throats of 330 million souls. Californians could spend lavishly on its failed policies. Texans would no longer be required to subsidize California’s profligacy, as they were during one of the multi-trillion-dollar pandemic spending bills, despite Silicon Valley’s cash cows.

Instead of a monolithic federal government imposing its capricious will, each jurisdiction would have to use what Dierdre McCloskey calls “sweet talk” to persuade more human souls into their authority. This way, we create more experiments in living and insulate more people from the dangers of centralization. Some of these might lean theocratic. Some might lean socialist. A few, perhaps, might be genuinely free. As long as each serves its customers sustainably, then so be it. Indeed, some of these experiments might include jurisdictions that are not affixed to a territory at all. The more systems there are, the more likely one can find something closer to the right fit, whereas, currently, a naked Emperor is trying to drape its invisible robes around us all.

NO NEED FOR CIVIL WAR.

Remember, though, we don’t want to set up a situation in which the country is divided merely between Social-Justice Statists and Nationalist Theocrats. We must incorporate an ultimate right of self-determination, which should be baked in as another check on power.

There are too many incentives that keep the current system in place. So, it’s time for a national divorce. Decentralization is the light at the end of a very dark tunnel for America. Eventually, we may not have a choice — but at that stage, the breakup will be far uglier and more painful than the one we agree to now.

This is excerpted from the book UNDERTHROW: How Jefferson's Dangerous Idea Will Spark A New Revolution, published in 2023 by Social Evolution..

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Nov 21, 2023Edited
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Shouldn't "hateful conduct" be bombing hospitals, Killing children, and ethnic cleansing?

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