I’ve said many times that the weight of helplessness is a heavy mental burden for us all to carry. I’m living an ocean away, yet the car crash that is American politics has deeply affected me, unlike anything I have experienced before, and I am not alone. I have friends here in the UK and Europe who feel the same. So when people ask me why I care or tell me to keep my nose out, I would say this. We no longer live in an isolationist world. The US is not the norm; it has, by self-choice, become the exception. In a geopolitical world, for all its failings, we have somehow, despite numerous challenges, delivered a more prosperous and safer planet since the end of the Second World War.
Since Trump was elected, the U.S. has withdrawn from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in October 2017 and from the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in June 2018. That’s before we discuss the Paris Climate agreement and the longstanding non-recognition of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. The truth of the matter is, NOBODY from any respected democracy respects or, more importantly, trusts the United States any longer. This is the harsh reality we find ourselves in. The thing about making enemies is, you never know when you might need help. If this administration falls, people around the world would be dancing in the streets, because nobody likes an extortionist political thug.
The conflicts we are seeing today are often of our own making, as powerful nations jostle for position on the world stage. Far too many countries have an inflated sense of their own power. Conflict is all too often started by old men who seem unable to develop strength through respect and a commitment to the collective good. Since time began, no one has benefited from aggression or war. Empires come and go, as do despots and thugs, and Trump will be no exception, as he is slowly finding out.
The problem with power is that mutually assured destruction is an expensive path to tread. The cock measuring display by great powers does nothing to further living standards for those whose tax dollars fund their geopolitical aggression and misadventures. It’s interesting to see just how US military spending as a percentage of GDP has changed over the years.
In 1953, during the Korean War, US defence spending was at an eye-watering 13.5%. By 1968, during the Vietnam War and the birth of the modern-day military-industrial complex, it was at 9.4%. Under Clinton, defence spending dropped to 3.1%, then shot up again to 4.8% under GW Bush and the folly that was the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, before falling again under Obama to 3.3%. In Trump’s first term, there was a slight increase to 3.7 by 2020, when he was allegedly rebuilding an army that had no bullets. It’s never difficult to track the correlation between deprivation and defence spending, as is very evident today.
The bottom line is that trillions have been spent under presidents from both parties. However, under Republicans, the military-industrial complex always looks forward to gorging itself on taxpayer dollars. The alarming truth is, the Pentagon has NEVER PASSED AN AUDIT. DOD has failed every audit since it first began the agency-wide consolidated audits in late 2017. There seems little doubt it would have failed the same audits if they had been conducted for decades. The US military complex has been an unmonitored slush fund of taxpayer money for wealthy industrialists for decades under the guise of protecting a population that they steal from every year.
There is no question that politicians of all stripes are like the reckless errant teenagers of wealthy parents who have no sense of the value of money as they spend someone else’s money like it’s going out of fashion. Trump has claimed over and over again that he has built the greatest economy in history, and NOBODY has the balls to say ‘Stop insulting our intelligence’. It’s the same when he sits there with a straight face and says, ‘prices are down’ and affordability is not an issue, while scrambling to remove tariffs he persistently claims are making America rich again.
The whole economy is becoming a Ponzi scheme, and the terrifying thing is that when the walls come tumbling down, the people who will pay the price are the bottom 90%. The everyday Americans who simply want a life where they don’t have to work three jobs to survive. The US stock market is completely disconnected from reality, where Wall Street and Main Street may as well be on different continents. The AI promise is like a runaway train carrying hundreds of billions of dollars to Neverland, with everyone praying it will not derail on its fantasy journey to the land of milk and honey. Trump is hurtling down a track on the arrogant assumption that a handful of companies passing trillions of dollars around amongst themselves can convince the markets that there’s a big payday just around the corner.
In years to come, people will look back and say, ‘And we fell for that?’ Economies around the world are on the edge of a global market correction that looks set to deliver an economic tsunami of epic proportions. The world has been taken to this precipice by a madman who NOBODY has had the balls to challenge for fear of what stupid thing he might do next. This is a man screaming that inflation is down while at the same time rolling back tariffs in a desperate attempt to arrest and out of control affordability crisis that saw the American people punish the Republican Party in off-season elections.
As I have said all along, this is a fantasy economy built on increasing taxes by around 18% on hard-working Americans, disguising a regressive federal sales tax (tariffs) as revenue being paid by foreign countries. It is a premeditated, bare-faced act of deception. Trump is emptying the bank accounts of everyday Americans to fund a failed economic agenda that is on the cusp of triggering the most significant market correction in our lifetime. As with all failed CEOs, he can see the disaster coming, and he’s using YOUR MONEY to insulate himself and his friends from a fiscal catastrophe of his own making.
The lies have become like a ticking wall clock; you become so familiar with the noise that it disappears after a while. Just as owners broke the will of slaves during the slave trade, Trump and his oligarch friends are attempting to break the will of the bottom 90% to pave the way for a technology solution that they believe will enable them to accelerate the bottom line by shedding jobs like the trees are currently shedding autumn leaves. I really think people haven’t begun to consider the scale of job losses coming down the track.
The assumption that unskilled workers will always be the first to go is totally misplaced. The AI revolution, when it reaches full maturity, is going to decimate what were considered high-skilled middle-class jobs, held by people who are carrying tens of thousands of dollars of student debt from an education that AI has rendered irrelevant. There is a big argument about whether AI is just a passing phase. It absolutely IS NOT. It is, without question, as big an inflexion point as the Industrial Revolution. It has already changed the world forever. It’s been driving stock market trades for a long time before it came to mainstream public attention.
It bears a spooky resemblance to the fact that pornography drove the development of the internet and media streaming; had it not been for the insatiable demand for explicit sexual content without having to suffer the uncomfortable visit to a sex shop, who knows how long it would have taken to develop the media CODECs that deliver content over the internet today. So thank sex for the new pornography of the 21st century, social media. It mainlines the same dopamine hits that power right hands around the world (unless you’re left-handed), given the gift of a computer screen, tablet, or smartphone. The single common denominator of it all is PROFIT.
AI is already revolutionising the world, and much of what it can do can benefit the common good. However, as with any technological progress, those in power immediately seek to take it hostage and use it to secure power and wealth, and that is what we are living through now. Palantir did not become the powerhouse stock on the back of doing the right thing to advance society. It did it by weaponising the technology to kill perceived enemies. The role of AI in research is unquestionable. Yet, the Trump administration is slashing and burning academic research while investing billions in using AI not just against foreign adversaries but also against Americans at home.
This is why I am concerned that there is no political solution to this problem. Regardless of which political party is in office, the objectives of corporate America will remain unchallenged unless there is a political reset within the Democratic Party, and this was my whole reason for my suggestion of the ‘Democratic Sniff Test Register’, which you can read more about using the link below.
WE can't keep pretending rescue is on the horizon. 'We the people' are the only solution
Before you read this post, it’s important to read the preceding piece, which I have linked below for your convenience.
In the next part of this post, we’ll dig deeper to look at the broader implications of attempting to unseat a president based on alleged complicity in the acts of a convicted pedophile, now deceased. The coming days will indeed be very interesting as Trump tries to play down the relevance of the Epstein files. Remember, he’s had weeks to cook the books on what the DOJ holds on this burning issue. Anyone expecting a smoking gun should, in my view, think again. You don’t resist like Trump has, then suddenly roll over. It’s not who he is. I smell a rat, I have to say.
This was an excellent I share your views
Incredibly insightful peace i will definitely be subscribing for more. I live in America and lost faith in both political parties when I realized it was just theater to keep the masses believing it was a democracy. The Illusion of a free country.
I forget how the saying goes
It's easier to trick a man than to convince the man that he's been tricked.