JD Tuccille articulates, brilliantly, one of the main reasons I am a classical liberal who belives in limited, constrained and small government:
But it’s easier to reconcile a fading, honesty-challenged presidential candidate with a desire for “a smaller government providing fewer services” than it is to credibly claim that an even more badly eroded politician and his unethical minions are exactly the sort of folks you want presiding over an all-powerful state. Frankly, a healthy cynicism about the competency and the decency of government officials is a credible response to what was on display on Thursday evening when Biden spent 90-plus minutes demonstrating that he and his supporters had been lying about his mental and physical fitness to not only run for a second term, but to carry out the duties of office right now.
The idea of an all-powerful, benevolent Daddy federal state is a lot harder to sustain if it appears the head of it is not playing with a full deck of cards, or even knows he’s in a casino.
And if Trump’s comparatively less-bad performance still didn’t fill you with confidence that he’s a person you want presiding over a bigger, more activist government, that’s the appropriate take, too. He didn’t face-plant like his opponent, but the former president gave us every reason to believe that, under his control, a smaller, less-involved government is preferable for reasons ideological, practical, and involving self-preservation.
Exactly. Let’s not forget that the size of the federal debt did not shrink under Mr Trump. And he’s no Calvin Coolidge. Alas.
The final paragraph is right on the money:
The belief that government should do more, provide more, and embrace us all in a warm and nurturing embrace requires an enormous leap of faith. At the least, those exercising such vast power must be wise and well-intentioned. As last week’s debate reminded us, that’s a wildly unrealistic assumption.
It appears too few in the commentariat seem to join the dots between the “aren’t the presidential candidates/political classes awful?” with “and perhaps we should constrain government and make it do less” sort of viewpoint.
I wonder how much the Founders thought about the problems of an ageing president who was losing his mind, of an opponent such as Trump, and other sort of characters, when they composed the architecture of the republic, with its checks, balances and principles. But at times like these, all the abuse that gets thrown at the Founders (some of them kept slaves, etc) needs to be put in context, and that people should be grateful for their wisdom and understanding of the need for government to be restrained. We could use a bit of that mindset around the world.
The more I see of “modern politics”, the politicians, and the underlying philosophy of it all?
The more I lean towards anarchy. I wouldn’t trust most of the people I’ve encountered in the political realm with my dog, let alone giving them the power of life over death or taxation.
Frankly, I think we’d do better if the first alien that shows up and says “…take me to your leader…” gets handed the job, himself. “Yeah, that’s you… What took you so long to get here?”
If there is a single lesson to be learned from the last 150-odd years of world history, that would be that humanity isn’t fit to govern itself. Period. As a collective whole, we’re about like that silly kid down the block who keeps persisting in self-destructive folly, pursuing every whim and fad.
I’m getting a damn bumper sticker made: “None of the Above: 2024”
I consider myself to be best described as a Classic Liberal – defined by Wikipedia:
“Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics and civil liberties under the rule of law, with special emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom and freedom of speech.”
Although I realised some decades ago that no modern UK party matched this definition I felt that the Conservatives were the closest match. Ever since Cameron was PM, and *especially* now he is Foreign Secretary, I have been bitterly disappointed by their march away from Classic Liberalism.
So now I look to Reform to pick up the standard. We’ll see how they do.
America has 50 governments, good, bad, batshit crazy. The federal government is meant to provide for the common defence and very little else. No Medicare, Medicaid, Education Department, Housing and Urban Development, none of it. If citizens of a given state want any of that, they can vote for it and pay for it, without any magic Uncle Sam money created out of thin air. You want social programmes? Fine, so long as you pay for them.
The entire federal government of the USA should be cut by 80%. Washington DC should be a sleepy city on the Potomac, and the office of President of the USA should have less importance to the life of the average citizen than the efficiency of his local dog catcher.
Too late now though. The sucker’s going down, and will take us all with it.
For anyone delusional enough to think that there is such a thing as “good government” being possible?
Allow me to invite you into a situation wherein you observe small children at play and dividing things up “fairly”. Do that a few times, and then get back to me, once you observe humanity at its most essential, basic form. Then, contemplate how little is done to correct the behavior of the little monsters you see identified by these observations, and try telling me that you want them running the world in future years.
Decent people do not seek power over others. That’s a fact; the percentage of such persons is unknown. The ones who do seek power and authority over others? They’re almost universally the ones who wind up in charge of things, because they want that. They live for that power, for whatever varied reasons they might have.
The fact that our various systems of governance, whether corporate or national, puts these people in charge? That’s the essential flaw of it all. If your system throws up Boris Johnsons, Nancy Pelosis, and Gavin Newsomes, your system is flawed at a deep and fundamental level. Such aberrant people should only wind up in charge of things as an anomaly, a failure of the system to prevent such things. Instead, our system goes about systematically identifying them, reinforcing their behavior, enabling them, and then rewarding them with adulation and vast unearned wealth.
Someone like Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden should leave office stripped of all wealth and reduced to poverty for their utter malfeasance and lack of rectitude. Not to mention, the inimical effects of their actions; since they actually leave enriched and honored…?
Yeah, all y’all are idiots. I see the majority of people are all out in the streets, looking for that savior figure, the “man on a horse”, who is going to come in and correct everything, fix all their problems… When the reality is that said “man on a horse” is actually the next big thing in charlatans who will make things much, much worse… And, then profit from the misery of his fellow man.
Meili may be this century’s exception, but I await the revelation that he’s actually standing on feet of clay of some sort. Remains to be seen if that’s relevant to his performance as head of state for Argentina.
Reform have a very low bar to jump 😀
@JohnK, actually a lot more than 50 governments. Where I live we have a city government, a school board government, a county government, a state government and the federal government. One of the core ideas of the constitution (and state constitutions) is the idea of federalism. The founders introduced several ways to prevent tyranny — that is to say the over accumulation of power by one person — one was competition among the branches, one was to whitelist what the government can do rather than black list what they can’t do, and perhaps most importantly the idea of fracturing government up into separate competing domains.
The story of American tyranny is the reversal of this process. The accumulation of power at the center by several means: massively overstepping the “Whitelist” of what they are allowed to do; flooding us with agencies that have regulatory power over everything from the color of your toothpaste to the size of your airplane seat; and thirdly by attaching all these other fractured domains under the leash of the federal government by way of the income tax and the control that giving us back our own money gives them. And similarly all that money also made individuals as well as states utterly dependent of the feds through things like social security, the tax laws, and on and on.
Historically there are five specific times in history which are inflection points of transformation.
1. The civil war which dramatically overturned the basic ideas of states as independent and sovereign (notwithstanding the just cause that it was fought over)
2. A series of amendments passed in the 1920s, including the 16th instituting the income tax and the ability of the federal government to control all the money, the 17th making for direct election of senators further decreasing the power of the states over the federal government, and also the institution of the Federal Reserve which was the precursor for all the terrible things that happened next.
3. The New Deal which, due to the economic terror caused mainly by the mismanagement of the currency by the fed, lead to the debasement of the dollar and the centralization of power under a bazillion three letter agencies that people became utterly dependent on for work. And of course, social security.
4. The 1960s and the civil rights transformation again undermining the power of the states and further squeezing particularly black people into government dependence of the welfare state. Of course the fall of the Jim Crow laws was a victory, but black society has spiraled into poverty and despair in a manner largely tied to the price they paid in terms of dependency for that victory.
5. The past few years have been disastrous. Starting with September 11th and the utter destruction of civil rights through things like the TSA and the patriot act or the Sarbanes Oxley Act, of too big to fail, or the Global Warming crisis, but really it catalyzed most strongly in 2020 with the Covid pandemic when Americans (and everyone else) gave up almost entirely on the idea of their own rights or their own sovereignty and utterly changed the way we vote into a much more corruptable system without the consent of the government.
So it has been a long time coming, and of course things like the elimination of slavery and the elimination of Jim Crow have been massive victories. But the damage is so great there is really no recovery. The idea, for example, that Senators be appointed by state governments or that we can get by without an income tax are so far outside the Overton window as to be ludicrous. And given that there is no way back, no matter how much people might think that Trump is going to save them. He isn’t. Even if he had the right policies, we are too far gone.
Which is why smart Americans have a plan to deal with this reality that doesn’t involve deluding themselves into thinking that voting will save them. Politicians got us into this mess and they sure as hell aren’t getting us out of it. So we need to be smart. We need to consider either moving somewhere else more friendly to us, or we need to build a bubble to protect our freedoms and assets as best we can. I think if Americans put as much effort into this as they do watching politics on the TV they’d be much better off for it.
I know this will be annoying, but I think Americans would have sleepwalked their way into corporate fascism (sans nationalism) if it hadn’t been for Donald Trump. I don’t think that he set out to do this, mind you. In fact, I don’t think he had any idea how corrupt and malignant or mafia like the government bureaucracy had become. Some how, his mere existence pulled the curtain back, like in Oz. He didn’t do it. It was their bizarre, histripnic over reaction to him. They exposed themselves.
Re the debate. If you saw the debate, did you notice that the moderates didn’t bat an eye at Bidens performance, did you see his physical infirmity when Jill Biden helped him down a couple of steps from the stage, as Tapper was approaching?
Fraser:
I was making the point that the USA has 50 states and 50 governments. The federal government is meant to perform very few duties, the main one of which is to provide for the common defence. Other than that, nothing much. The nitty gritty of government should be at the state level.
Sadly, I agree with your chronology of decline, and I agree that there is no going back now. This thing can’t be saved. The various federal agencies which should not exist will never allow themselves to be abolished, however much they deserve it.
There are many many issues which are at a boiling point in US society. The US debt is indeed one of them, and Trump did not cause the debt to shrink, yes.
But . . .
A prez, by himself – no loyal Congress awaiting his next word, voting in his bills, etc – can accomplish little in a budgetary sense. Biden has shown us that the US prez can accomplish some things through exec orders, but his exec orders seem to be losing in the USSC lately. So, I’d not put too much of the debt blame on Trump’s shoulders. (He did manage to ram through his income tax drops, which do not help that debt, but I’d count these as welcome starve-the-beast sort of tax cuts.)
And, we here count the other issues – climate stupidity, border erasure, ESG, DEI, censorship, agency power, etc. – as being just as important – maybe more important, because they have more immediate impact.
Trump will likely do things on these issues – dependent, of course, on how many senators and reps we elect to help him – that will go a long way towards either improving our society, or at least stemming the decline (depending on how badly you think we’re doing right now.) So, all in all, a Trump presidency will be a good thing if you have a more libertarian view of America’s best future.
Trump offends you. That’s clear. Frankly, many of us here see this as a great time to be offensive and aggressive and conservative. He’s the only candidate offering to go along for that particular ride.
Exasperated said:
“I know this will be annoying, but I think Americans would have sleepwalked their way into corporate fascism (sans nationalism) if it hadn’t been for Donald Trump. I don’t think that he set out to do this, mind you. In fact, I don’t think he had any idea how corrupt and malignant or mafia like the government bureaucracy had become. Some how, his mere existence pulled the curtain back, like in Oz. He didn’t do it. It was their bizarre, histripnic over reaction to him. They exposed themselves.”
The thing that’s puzzled me over the establishment’s reaction to Trump is this: What the hell are they afraid of?
Why didn’t the “establishment” just go with the flow and roll him? They obviously could have done it, and oh so very easily. Look at how they inserted Barr and Sessions into the administration, and how Trump trustingly put all sorts of jackasses into positions within his administration at the behest of the “powers-that-were”.
The reaction to Trump, and all the precedents they established by going after him…? What the hell were they thinking? What was worth that sort of sacrifice?
If the morons in power had just kept their mouths shut, played along, given Trump his time in office, then the whole game would have gone on. Instead, they did what they did. What the hell motivated them, working against him so openly from day one? What was there to fear from Trump? Why the animosity, the obvious hatred?
Was it merely because he was an outsider? Or, were there things they feared he’d find out or do against them? What on earth could have been worth the risks they’ve taken?
I mean, if the idjits had just left well enough alone, and slow-rolled Trump by giving up a few concessions, then the game would still be on, and he’d be out of office, permanently, in a few short months. Instead, the morons did what they did, and now we’re sitting here with a potential civil war on our hands.
What could have possibly been worth that?
This is so true. All he really wanted at the start was some adulation and hero-worship. Biden and Obama and Hilary turned him into what he stands for today.
Which works out great for people like me, who want someone transgressive and brash and deplorable. He’s now our flag.
bobby b said:
Whatever the truth about Trump and his path to the Presidency in 2016, I still want to know what the hell was worth blowing everything the f*ck up, for these people. I refuse to believe that it’s sheer pique at him having won, when it was “her turn”, but… If they’re that ego-driven in those circles, and they’re all willing to throw it all away just to “get Trump” for having had the audacity to win the 2016 election? I don’t think they’d be where they are. There has to be some element of sanity, of reality, in their calculations.
I mean… If they blew it all up, just to get back at Trump for being Trump, and winning…? WTF does that say about them? It’s almost more frightening than the idea that they’re a control-freak cabal with a plan. If they’re purely ego-driven, and have no sense of internal control, such that they’d freak out like this just because he won, and there was nothing there really to hide…?
That’s a terrifying set of thoughts and implications. These assholes have the football with the launch codes; is there a possibility that they decide to play Samson at the Temple?
Maybe they really drank their own kool-aid and believed everything they said about Trump, in which case they would feel morally obliged to oppose him no matter what?
I don’t get the sense that the inner circle running things is that delusional, but that’s a possible explanation.
I used to do intelligence work in the military. One of the principles of said work is that you never, ever interpret things. You gather information, you observe, and you let that show you what is going on. To attempt an interpretation without sufficient evidence is folly.
So, I don’t try to work out what the hell is actually going on. About all I can do at this point is observe that the actions don’t line up with what they’ve been telling us or what they’ve been saying for years and years.
Something drove them to pull out all the stops to “get Trump” and make his administration fail. Which it did, in a lot of ways, despite him having fulfilled a lot of what he promised.
What I still don’t see is anything explaining why they’d feel that need, what made it necessary.
It’s like with Nixon and Watergate; you had the things that were going on at the time, that made the headlines in the early 1970s. You could tell from the barest outlines that there was something else going on there, but you had no idea what it was. Until the information about Mark Felt being Deep Throat and his manipulation of Woodward and Bernstein came out in the early 1990s, you really didn’t have a good explanation for why the whole thing had gone down… I mean, after all, the FBI had no issues with putting agents into the Goldwater Campaign headquarters and giving reports to LBJ, so why did they suddenly get their backs up when Nixon did what he did?
It wasn’t until years later that you got the Mark Felt information, and then things started to make sense. In the current imbroglio with regards to Trump, I’m still not seeing what could possibly justify “them” doing so much to set new precedents and violate norms the way they are. They’re literally burning credibility and precedent that’s going to cost them down the line, and if they don’t understand that…? I don’t see how they got to where they are, right now. You can’t be that dense and still finagle your way to the positions of power that they’re in, so what’s the explanation for them pissing all this away, just to “get Trump”? What the hell are they afraid of?
Alternatively, they really could be just this stupid, but… I dunno. I find that a low-order probability.
@Kirk
Perhaps one reason (among many) for the resistance to Trump is his desire to tackle the Deep State. In practical terms he introduced ‘Schedule F’ in the dying months of his Presidency. From Wikipedia:
“It would have contained policy-related positions, removing their civil service protections and making them easy to fire. It was never fully implemented, and no one was appointed to it before it was repealed at the beginning of the Biden administration.”
If he wins and re-applies ‘Schedule F’ then many of the ‘movers and shakers’ in the Civil Service might find their jobs at risk.
We know Trump isn’t a one off. You could argue he is the face of a resistance occurring in Western countries. So maybe he is a tool for them, a scapegoat or a fall guy for the midwits to rally against.
The civil service minions are only a part of the picture; what the hell motivated the elected and appointed to do what they did?
I think there’s something else, lurking in the background. No idea what; it’s just that the things I can see out in the open do not make any sense, motivation-wise. Right now, we can only speculate.
There are a lot of things like that, in our current situation: Why, for example, are they running up the deficit the way they are? Do they know something we don’t, and thatthe debt will never need to be repaid? Or, are they insane enough to think that they can destroy the current system, and somehow survive and prosper in the aftermath?
In order for the attacks on Trump to make sense, you have to posit a rational motivating factor. What is it? And, if it’s purely irrational, that doesn’t match up with the evidence and past actions we know about.
The whole thing is utterly inexplicable, and I think we’ve long since passed the point where you could even try to extrapolate a rational explanation for what these people are doing.
Regarding my comment above. I’m not suggesting it was Trump’s intent to be “the Resistance”, but he is/was perceived as that by the paranoid Left.
Alternatively, they really could be just this stupid, but… I dunno. I find that a low-order probability.
For me the jury is out. I’ve watched/listened to people who give every appearance of being intelligent until they open their mouths about Trump. It is as though something flipped the switch, and suddenly they sound insane. If they are acting, they sure fool me.
Trump may be a stand in for the Resistance, I don’t know. For sure, he is a stand in for the Deplorables, who are hated and disdained beyond all reason. I think, in part, because they lost whatever clout they had, when the American economy was gutted in favor of a service economy. They are scapegoated every bit as much as Trump.
If the powers-that-are and -were had actually listened to and responded appropriately to the concerns of the “deplorables”, then Trump would have never succeeded. The reason you have Trump is precisely because they acted to destroy the Tea Party and ignore the very real issues that led to it even erupting the way it did.
What they’ve done with things since 2010 or so is analogous to tying down the pressure-relief valve on a boiler. The pressure has risen higher and higher as they fail to address all these issues, and when the boiler finally bursts…? They’re not going to like it.
The rest of us aren’t going to be any happier.
bobby b
There are many many issues which are at a boiling point in US society. The US debt is indeed one of them, and Trump did not cause the debt to shrink, yes.
I’m not sure too many people care too much about the debt, even though they certainly should. But the point about Trump and the debt is that he is not a “pay down the debt” guy, in fact he is a guy who made his fortune based on leveraged debt with an occasional bankruptcy to take the edge off. And as to his presidency, he was the biggest spending president in history even before covid (when he went hog wild) with the exception of scrambled-eggs-for-brains who currently resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
I agree with many of your points, for some of the things that really are boiling over Trump will improve things: the border for sure, the student debt bribery, the DEI nonsense and the horrible changes to Title IX, inflation possibly, the Wars possibly, though not in the way many of the denizens of these parts would want, and a few other things. And that will make our lives better. However, expect to see riots in the streets to accompany all of this.
But the debt problem is an insurmountable time bomb for the country, and that, along with the fact that a very large number of Americans have given up on the idea of freedom, and are happy to suckle at the poisonous breast of government, that there really is no turning back. Even if we are not too far gone already, which we are, there is no political will in the people to make the right choices to go back.
So, as I try to do, ending on a positive note, just because the west is heading for the crapper doesn’t mean you must. Find a better place to live and set up shop there (they have planes and zoom, you can still visit your loved ones.) Or if you can’t, put a plan in place to protect you from the worst of the depredations heading your way. They are coming, and if you prepare now you will survive much better.
You don’t need to build a bunker, but if all your assets are all denominated in dollars, or if you haven’t structured your income to keep the government’s sticky fingers out of it, or you don’t have a glock and a lot of ammo, and are not intimately familiar when you can legally use it to defend yourself, you need to give serious consideration to those things and a hundred other things. If we spent as much time thinking and planning on these things as we do watching political theater on TV or YT we’d all be in a better place (he said, mainly referring to himself.) We are libertarians, surely we know that expecting the government to solve our problems is a very poor choice.
Fraser Orr:
1. How many years of horrid inflation (20%? – 40%?) would it take to drop the value of all of that debt to livable levels? I fear that is the ultimate fallback of our spending betters.
2. I have somewhat dropped Costa Rica from my list of bug-out spots, for various political and security reasons. Looking for the next possibility now.
3. You said “If we spent as much time thinking and planning on these things as we do watching political theater on TV or YT we’d all be in a better place . . . “. But then, we’d be really boring people. 😉
Though I’m not a Doomsday prepper, I think a lot about how to survive with limited water and limited energy. I’d guess I’m pretty boring. One thing we’ve focused on is various family members learning as much as they can on various survival skills. For example, one of my granddaughters has shown an interest in water purification, another on dehydrating food ……
Knowledge and skills will have to be pooled. Sorry, off topic, I know, except that it highlights the mistrust of the people who operate our infrastructure.
BTW: One of my favorite short vids (30 seconds?) – an interview that makes it clear that we need Trump back.
Here.
@bobby b
1. How many years of horrid inflation (20%? – 40%?) would it take to drop the value of all of that debt to livable levels? I fear that is the ultimate fallback of our spending betters.
I get that that is the plan. The reason why we will not see Weimar Germany hyperinflation is exactly that reason — America’s debts are denominated in dollars, and America controls dollars. But… I’d equally ask you how many years of horrid inflation will it take before people burn down the Whitehouse? How are social security recipients going to feel when the effective amount they receive is a quarter of what they used to receive? How is the US government going to continue to spend more than they take in when nobody wants to buy their bonds any more? Even if they are paying 20% interest. And most important, what is America going to do when the world stops using the dollar as the currency of international trade because each dollar you hold looses 30% of its value every year? FFS it’d be like doing trade using bitcoin, except that bitcoin sometimes goes up in value. Right now the BRICS countries are trying hard to make that happen.
2. I have somewhat dropped Costa Rica from my list of bug-out spots, for various political and security reasons. Looking for the next possibility now.
Dubai and Singapore are both great alternatives even if they are hot as hell. You might also consider a nice sleepy South American country like Uruguay. And of course Switzerland is always an option.
3. You said “If we spent as much time thinking and planning on these things as we do watching political theater on TV or YT we’d all be in a better place . . . “. But then, we’d be really boring people.
You should try hanging out with people who like this stuff. You’d like them, they like to go out and shoot stuff.
BTW that video you shared…. yeah, that is pretty awesome. Nobody does foreign policy like Trump. Compared to what cream-puff-for-brains, our current president did, it is just embarrassing what shame he brought on America, and a particular shame for the thirteen people who died — even though apparently Biden couldn’t remember that.
FO: “Dubai and Singapore are both great alternatives . . . ”
I’m way too old to attempt a new language, esp tough ones like Arabic or Malay. Next alternative is right down the same road from Costa Rica. I have friends and contacts in Colombia who swear it’s expat heaven. (Just not next to the Ven border.) Warm, but not killer. Fun place if you’re at least middle class.
@bobby b
I have also heard great things about Columbia, though my Spanish is pretty rough. And, FWIW, people mostly speak English in Dubai and Singapore.
You should take a trip down to Columbia and let us all know what you think.
Donald John Trump was once part of the establishment – which is why I passionately opposed him in 2016, when I strongly supported Ted Cruz.
However, after years of utterly vicious abuse and persecution of Donald John Trump and his friends and family, by the establishment – President Trump now hates the establishment as much as they hate him.
This is GOOD – yes GOOD, because there can be no reform of the United States, no saving America from collapse, unless the Corporate State establishment (everything from the media to the FBI and CIA – and all funded, indirectly, by the Federal Reserve with “money” created from NOTHING) is defeated.
So it depends what sort of advisers President Trump has – he will now follow policies that the establishment hates, but (not being an ideological person) he needs to be told what policies they are.
The interest that the close circle around President Trump (including his sons) have in the President of Argentina and in the policies he is following is a hopeful sign – yes hopeful.
There is, perhaps, some hope for the United States – not much of a chance to avoid collapse, but some chance is better than no chance.
Of course the establishment may decide to murder President Trump, or put him in prison on false charges (rubber stamped by the same sort of despicable juries who put a person in prison, to be cut up with knives, for “murder” when they know, they know, that no murder had taken place, or put someone in prison for a joke internet meme – a meme the person did not even invent, and such juries laugh as they do such things), or just rig the 2024 election with vast numbers of fake “mail-in ballots” as they did in 2020.
In which case there will be Civil War.
Make no mistake – it is not just the leaders of the other side who are evil, their ordinary foot-soldiers are evil as well, as they behaviour of their juries (who are made up of these foot-soldiers in the cities) makes horribly clear. They convict the innocent (knowing they are innocent) knowing they will be sent to prison to be tortured, abused, and cut-up (literally) and they laugh as they do it.
These are people who nodded in agreement at what they were told at school and university and nod with agreement at what the “mainstream-media” (including Hollywood) says – one can no more reason with such people than one can reason with a rabid dog.
@bobby b,
Huh? We speak English in Singapore. It’s the lingua franca. Everything of importance is communicated in English. Malay? Pffft, only the local Malays speak Malay nowadays, and even then more and more of the younger generation prefer English.
Most language issues actually stem from the hordes of PRC immigrants who can’t speak english and insist on using Mandarin – they also think we belong to China. *roll eyes*
We’re expensive though, especially rental housing and education (if you have kids or grandkids). You’ll reconsider owning a car and just use our world-class public transport system. Food is relatively cheap even if eating out, and groceries are reasonable – it’s the housing rental that’s scary.
Generally, we’re considered rather stale and boring, but we’re very safe.
Give me a holler if you ever decide to come over to our nice little fascist island city-state.
WRT the video shared by bobby, see also this.
(Read to the end: it’s not just about the Taliban.)
This is not the first time that a President has not had a sound mind.
Both Woodrow Wilson and “FDR” (Franklin Roosevelt) had severe neurological problems in their final period – and “JFK” (President Kennedy) was both crippled in body (the media presented him as an athlete – the Corporate media was almost comical in their lying, even then) and suffering from Addison’s Disease which was killing him, perhaps in desperation he used every drug (legal or illegal) that he could lay his hands on – so it is not an exaggeration to say he was out of his mind a lot of the time.
What is different now, as Johnathan Pearce makes clear, is that the government now dominates every aspect of the lives of ordinary Americans – whereas it did not use to.
However, it would make no real difference if the President was both highly intelligent and saintly in their intentions – the present Credit Money supported Corporate State would still fail, and would still collapse.
Yes Snorri – President Trump is less bad (a lot less bad) on foreign policy than the establishment.
The establishment are rigid in their thinking – and crippled by bureaucracy, by endless rituals and procedures (which are leading to disaster – terrible disaster).
@The Wobbly Guy
I’m guessing from what you say you live in Singapore. I think it is an amazing country — though definitely a bit of a benign tyranny. Low crime, low taxes, pro business, generally open and welcoming, amazing food and dining, a central travel hub with undoubtedly the best airport in the world, a place where everything, including public transport, works really well, with (something we folks ten years off retirement care about) among the best medical care in the world. And it is absolutely beautiful — especially if you like cities, which I do.
My thing about it is that it is so damn hot and humid. How do you survive the heat? (I’m Scottish originally — we are the whitest people on earth because there, the sun don’t shine. So we aren’t build for that kind of weather.)