It’s impossible to explain how the economy works to overheated prattlers like this woman. They are used and abused by every slick operator in sight and they get angrier and angrier because the world is too complicated for their intellectual capabilities.
This is the great flaw of democracy. The masses need to be reassured and made to feel important. It’s like driving a car in very bad traffic with a wailing toddler in the back seat.
I don’t know, at least neoliberalism teaches the fans of this screamy “Tony” a lesson about what they should concentrate their attention on. Maybe neoliberalism is better and we should just accept it.
I saw this post because it mentions Ukraine but the actual issue is not the point. My social media in 2020 were filled by identical shouty Tonys who were convinced they would die on the spot if everybody didn’t remain locked down indefinitely. These are all manifestations of the same phenomenon. The world is complicated, and people freak out because they don’t have the intelligence to process it. Before, they had God and knew they didn’t need to understand everything. But now they have appointed themselves God, and the responsibility is overwhelming them.
Here’s more proof on a completely different topic:
Since there is no God, the only explanation is that the hurricane must have been caused by people’s actions. Be it global warming or evil globalists changing weather, it doesn’t matter.
Democracy without God means these Taras and Tonys get to keep us all hostage to their anxiety. So maybe it is doomed since we’ve ditched one of its main pillars of support.
Clarissa's Blog 
I honestly don’t get how some of you can see and feel with your very eyes the changing climate and still continue to deny it is changing. That’s not politics, that’s not neoliberalism, that is objective fact that and is currently smacking, killing, and destroying everything in its path.
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ed
Stop it. Get some help.
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Madam, that screamy woman is precisely why I don’t support Democracy, especially with the sort of electorate we have in the US. I would only support democracy if it was a modified form of Athenian democracy, only people who passed a test on civics and US History can vote and no one on welfare can vote since they’ll only vote for who ever gives them stuff. Too many people think either that the government is a piggy bank that will give them stuff, or that the government should ban anything they don’t like. If that makes me a fascist, I don’t care. They don’t even know what fascist means
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No, I get it. What you are saying is spot-on. As people increasingly lose all understanding of personal boundaries and think that gushing emotions non-stop is the only way to go, democracy loses sense.
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Democracy only works when people are educated about the issues and know how the government works and have a working knowledge of their country’s history. I’ve encountered a lot of young people who don’t know what state they live in, can name an amendment to the Constitution or any president other than Washington, Lincoln, JFK, Obama or whoever the current president is. These kids are going to vote in the future 😖
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I’m all for that, but only if it includes corporate welfare.
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I agree, too many businesses suck on the government tit. Even farmers are sucking on the government teat, all these subsidies for corn which is why there’s corn in so many foodstuffs which is very unhealthy for people
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ShadowsCollide
But how long should it take for say some of the 82 Airborne’s Engineer Brigade loaded with personnel, equipnent, materiel to supply food, water, and medicine from its Chinook helicopters in Ft. Braggs to Ashville? Those screaming women might be uneducated nominds, but then maybe, just maybe, they might have a valid point ;-D.
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“might have a valid point”
Nobody here, AFAIK, is arguing FEMA is doing a good job… the point is that this shouty human being doesn’t understand how anything works and is trying to connect unrelated things in a kneejerk emotional way that doesn’t make any sense….
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that doesn’t make any sense
That is the point, that young woman was having an emotional breakdown because the horror that she was seeing made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Why was the government of her nation, admittedly the richest, and most powerful in the world, not helping her family when they were in such desperate need?
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Did you see the nails and the hair? People in an emotional breakdown don’t put on makeup and spend an hour doing their hair to pose on social media.
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Did you see the nails and the hair?
No, there was nothing abnormal in her nails or hair. But she did have a large tattoo and cursed quite a bit ;-D
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I fully realize that men can’t know the effort and time it takes to look like this. 🙂
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Fair enough, I was married for more than 40 years, but my wife and her four sisters were naturally beautiful. None of them seemed to need much in the way of makeup, maybe a touch of blush on her cheeks and even more rarely some mascara. She just didn’t need much of the usual female warpaint ;-D
Now hair, that is different, hers were waist long and so slow to dry. Her family were very religious, and while her mother was strict, a woman’s hair was considered her glory. So my wife generally wore it up and covered at church, that is how she was raised.
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Hurricane conspiracy theorists…
(bangs head on desk)
Just pray the eye of this one, goes south of Tampa Bay. They’ve bumped the track a hair south over the last day or so, so I’m hopeful. Pushing 15′ of water into the bay (what would happen if it lands just a hair north of the bay), is worst-case stuff. We do NOT want that.
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…and yeah, I don’t get it, but a lot of people really REALLY want to believe that everything that happens on earth is directly and minutely controlled by humans. Sigh.
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methylethyl
Agreed, we humans are simply not important. Our little blue planet is currently in an interglacial period, and we should all be very, very thankful for that.
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Indeed!
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I pray for your safety. This one looks very scary.
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This one’s going to miss us. We’re safe. I know that, and it still loosens my bowels when I read the NOAA bulletins. I pray people are heeding the evac orders. 15ft storm surge is nothing to mess around with.
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Oh, thank God. I’m so glad you’ll be safe. It looks like a terrible calamity. The first time I saw what it looked like on the advisory, I was terrified.
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Yeah, hoping for some deflation there before tomorrow night, but the Gulf is really warm right now. We’ll see. Michael got us with 156mph winds at landfall, and that took out our whole power grid– nearly every light pole in the county, all the traffic lights, all the road signs, laid waste to our main hospital, damaged nearly every building, stripped every leaf and branch off every tree around (and just broke all the pine trees), took out every privacy fence, leveled our air-force base, and there was no large building in town with a big open roofed space– churches, auditoriums, grocery stores, the mall, gyms, everything– that was still intact after. Something about the architectural requirements of spanning a large empty space with a huge roof, it doesn’t hold up to wind. Steel buildings especially, they flex a lot, and the walls fall off. The landscape was unrecognizable: we could not navigate our own hometown without GPS. There were no familiar landmarks.
So yeah, looking at that sucker trying to make up its mind between coming in at 145 or 180… the memory attached to that is pretty visceral, and that part of the state is more heavily populated.
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Yeah, this narrative doesn’t work anymore. Here’s a question: what’s so special about the defense industry that using sending its products free to other countries is so good for the economy, or it doesn’t really matter to the economy? If it’s such a wonderful model, why don’t other industries copy it? Why doesn’t Nike make its clothes free and send it to other countries and improve the US economy that way? Why doesn’t Ford or US Steel?
Convoluted accounting explanations as to why the american taxpayer needs to be paying for (even outdated) military equipment for other countries are not convincing anymore, sorry. These explanations sound like that Seinfeld bit.
I’d love to see some shitlib accountant tell me why this is a good thing, actually.
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“what’s so special about the defense industry”
Short answer: Pax Americana. The US has been the provider of maritime global trade security for the past 80 or so years. The US itself has profited immeasurably from that, despite the costs (which are significant) and inconveniences (again… significant).
As the US withdraws from that, global insecurity will increase as actors like russia, Iran, China (none of which benefit from international stability) will disrupt global trade (see Houthis, the) which will make life worse for everyone (including the US).
If the US wants to be a superpower it has to invest heavily in military even if the US military isn’t so great at traditional military things.
If the US wants to be a hermit kingdom then it needs to rebuild domestic manufacturing and wean itself from global supply chains.
There’s no real, realistic middleground for the US. It can lead or it can be irrelevant and become russia and china’s punching bag.
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Well, then, let’s be honest about why we’re doing this. I’m tired of hearing that americans should be grateful for the ECONOMIC STIMULUS that magically happens when we send shit for free to other countries. And I’m tired of hearing that americans are stupid for questioning this policy, which is literally the premise of this and several other posts on this blog.
The president of this country is blackmailing the congress to force it to approve aid to Ukraine before he’ll sign off on aid for americans affected by this deadly hurricane. Lindsey graham appears on TV to discuss the hurricane and the first thing that comes out of his rotten fucking mouth is Israel.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/30/fema-disaster-low-funds-00113468
Americans are dying, dude. And these motherfuckers are more concerned with israel and ukraine.
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I responded before seeing this comment but exactly. Every country that was a superpower and then stop being one found itself in a bad place. Look at Russia that is consumed by a massive freakout precisely because of that change in status. There’s no example of anybody retreating from the role of a global superpower and experiencing any sort of improvement. Spain ended up with a civil war and a 36-year dictatorship as a result. France – we are all seeing what it is today. And I’m not even talking about the consequences for everybody else. Look at what Africa is today as a result of Europeans deciding to become small and insignificant.
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Arguably, that is because global superpower is an inherently unsustainable position. You can extract resources and police the oceans for only so long before the extraction stops paying for the global policing.
Yes, when that wealth tap runs dry, things get worse economically.
That doesn’t mean that a step down economically is worse than trying to maintain the empire that is no longer paying for itself. Sometimes all the choices —-> worse off than you are now. Which is politically unpalatable and nobody will say that. But as long as nobody’s being honest about it, kleptocrats living in the interstices of the lies will be the only ones profiting.
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fwiw, yeah, I’m very sympathetic to, say, ISR and UKR in their efforts to maintain sovereignty. But if rebuilding/expanding/maintaining domestic infrastructure and manufacturing were one of the options on the table … I’d rather see that. Since it’s not, (shrugs). That is not because I don’t think military aid to other countries has its strategic uses– it does, and we should take advantage of those when it’s expedient– but because I think the US global hegemony is going down whether we want it to or not, and the choice is not whether to keep it or not, but whether we use the remaining time and resources to cushion the fall, or just blow it all trying to stop the inevitable.
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The global policing pays for itself many times over. The US dollar being the world currency is a very big deal. American business dominating foreign markets requires that there be markets, stability and potential consumers.
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Right. That has been amazingly beneficial to us for a very long time. But the US petrodollar has been on life support for a long time, and IMO it is no longer a matter of if, but when, it tanks and is replaced by something else.
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Let’s look at the Marshall Plan which was an extraordinary success for America. It was investing the money of US taxpayers into rebuilding for Europeans what Europeans themselves had destroyed. And it was an enormous boon for the US economy. It brought decades of European peace and flourishing which, again, was brilliant for the US economy. Are we now going to deny that truly extraordinary achievement in service of… what exactly? Let’s condemn all of the amazing things this country has done – defeating Nazism, rebuilding Europe, standing up to the USSR, becoming a world leader – and do what instead? Bicker over pronouns? Hope that in the new world order where somebody else becomes what we used to be the new guys in charge will be kind to us? What’s the next step after willingly ceding our world dominance?
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Stimulus payments to support other industries have been done forever. In 2008, it all went to the banking system. And that worked in the sense that in the US the global economic crisis wasn’t nearly as brutal as in Europe. But the banking system isn’t as intertwined with the government as the defense industry, so there are limits to how effective that stimulus could be.
Sending money directly to citizens in response to a disaster was also done very recently. We’ve seen it during COVID. And we are still experiencing the consequences in the form of inflation. The COVID stimulus payments went to all sorts of US entities, from large companies, to cultural institutions, to schools, to small businesses. My university is now 18 million in the hole and doing huge budget cuts to get out of the consequences of that form of stimulus. So that clearly didn’t work.
The US automotive industry has been supported by the government for decades. That didn’t go well because, unlike the defense industry, automotive is completely dependent on the preferences of domestic consumers. What other industry is large enough and has the government as its only customer? I can’t think of anything except defense.
Of course, stimulating the economy is not the #1 goal of US aid to Ukraine and Israel. It’s a nice side effect but definitely not its raison d’etre. The #1 goal is for the US to remain a country. A large, influential country that’s dominant in the world. Look at what happened to the UK when it willingly ceded its world dominance. Look what happened to Spain or to France. Becoming the world’s hegemonic power takes a lot of work. Stepping away from that hard-won place is much easier. But look at the results. Do you want the US turn into Spain? Recede into utter insignificance? Be completely at the mercy of some supranational bunch of bureaucrats?
Trump, by the way, is clearly more in tune with my position than with yours. He was, after all, the first US president to break with the longstanding policy and send weapons to Ukraine. This was one of the first things he did as president. So maybe he has a bigger vision than “Tony”.
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I propose an economic policy that Keynes would be jealous of. Let’s make everything in america and send it to the rest of the world for free! Talk about the economic stimulus this will bring about! All american citizens gainfully employed! It’s just like the Hoover dam!
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Clarissa, the Marshall plan was not to “repair” Europe for an economic boom for us, the Marshall plan was there for one purpose, to build up allied nations in-case the bolsheviks decided to continue eating Europe. It had absolutely nothing to do with anything else.
The enormous economic boom for America would have happened whether the Marshall plan was enabled or not. At the end of the 1940s, exactly 2 nations still had their industrial might intact. America, and Russia. China had been destroyed by Japan, Japan had been firebombed by America, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, the Norse countries, had all been flattened by America and England. England had been destroyed by Churchhill who was not the beloved saint history has made him out to be.
Now it would be hypocritical of me to say that the Marshall plan didn’t help Europe, it certainly did, but when you are the only free country who has the industrial might to make things, the resources and logistic lines intact, and the maritime trade fleet still intact. Yea of course we were going to have an economic boom, one that would last until the other nations got back on their feet. And even then continue at least in a small part till traitors sold our manufacturing industry to China.
Continuing, America did not want to be involved with European problems. History is quite clear on this. Prior to us joining WWI and WWII any time it was brought to congress for the US to join, it was refused. There was huge support to stay out of European Wars. The only reason we joined either was because the parties who wanted us to join in manufactured reasons for us to get involved in order to ignore public opinion. Kind of like we have seen in the last few years, decades, etc.
It was never our place to be the global police, nor to enforce Pax Americana. Our responsibility was the Western Hemisphere. This was our domain and yet after we were forced into the wars it was abandoned in order to “enforce our rules” on everyone else.
World dominance is always and has always been an extremely foolish goal. The Good Lord split humanity into various peoples for a very good reason. Even ignoring that, any time one Empire tries to rule everything it generally is remarkably bad for just about everyone before it eventually collapses upon its own weight. The Kingdoms are meant to rule their own peoples and areas, not try to expand out of greed wrapped in hypocrisy.
Lastly in regards to Spain, their country is a prime example of what not to do. They got greedy and wrecked their economy with the endless shipments of Gold from the new world. That is really what killed their attempt at Empire. Then they allowed communists into their country. Its not well covered in American history, but the “Republicians” during the civil war in the 1930s were communists by another name. Their actions were absolutely horrific. Spain was lucky to have General Franco winning the war. If he hadn’t Europe would probably have fallen to Stalin.
But to get back to my main point, you said, “Recede into utter insignificance? Be completely at the mercy of some supranational bunch of bureaucrats?” Are we not already under the control of a bunch of unelected bureaucrats? Is not all of Europe? When Trump was president, who was refusing to follow his orders, who was leaking info out of the white house. It wasn’t the politicians or military. When you hear about the absolute filth entering into the schools, who is running the show? Its not your senator. As for receding into utter insignificance. Why should we care what other countries and peoples do? The only two groups America should care for are its people first, and its allies second, and a far second at that. If Greece tomorrow decided it has had enough of Turkey flooding it with muslims and africans, and decides to go out and kill them all to discourage the rest from coming in. They should probably find a better solution, but it is their lands and their peoples. Why should we force them to follow our laws and morals.
You can argue that the money sent to foreign nations is not a large amount of money, or that we need to maintain our global political presence, or it keeps people safe. In the end though it boils down to putting other nations and peoples first. Trying to rule other nations and peoples. And lastly caring more about foreigners feelings that the stability of our own people. It has to end. We need to pull back. Pax Americana is ending regardless, it is best if we pull back before we lose everything, and let the world sort itself out.
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But why wouldn’t the US want commies to just take Europe? You are saying it like it’s a self-explanatory goal. It’s another hemisphere, so let them have at it, right?
I’m well-aware that the resistance to make the US the world hegemon has always existed in the US. Thankfully, that line of thinking lost and we enjoyed unparalleled peace and prosperity as a result. I don’t see how anybody can refer to the post-WWII world as “remarkably bad.” Compared to everything that came before, it has been extraordinary.
That the US is nothing like Europe was evident during COVID. And earlier during the 2008 Recession. Europeans gave up sovereignty, and the results aren’t pretty.
As to “let the world sort itself out”, I’m sorry but that kind of world doesn’t exist anymore. The economy is completely globalized. Thinking that our lifestyle won’t be impacted if global markets begin to collapse is, honestly, incomprehensible. There is no longer an economy of isolated regions. Everything is interconnected like never before.
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I also have to mention that “the Western hemisphere” is a human-made convention. It has no practical, real-world meaning. There’s no “Western hemisphere” economy that’s apart from the rest of the global economy. Let’s not operate with meaningless categories that have no relevance in real world.
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And just one example of the success of Pax Americana. The US is constantly negotiating the tensions between India and Pakistan. If we don’t do that and they start lobbing miles at each other, how great will things be for us in this hemisphere? Does anybody sincerely think we won’t suffer catastrophic consequences?
This reminds me of a belief practiced by some primitive tribes that if they draw a circle around themselves and say some incantations, evil forces wouldn’t be able to touch them.
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“Kingdoms are meant to rule their own peoples and areas”
Shorter W…. you know, the world that Orwell described with Oceania, the Soviet Union and China as rival superpowers scrapping over third world resources sounds pretty sweet.
Why are people so quick to want to turn massive American accomplishments into shameful defeats?
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And if the commies were willing to stay there I would agree with you. However unlike the Nazis despite Hollywood doing their best. The commies have stated from the very beginning and have no issue stating they want to spread their insanity to all the other countries of the world. In there case it is not hypocrisy to say stop the communist spread, as it is not a European problem, but a global problem.
The peace and prosperity would have existed ir-regardless as almost no one had anything left to fight with. This would have led to a time of peace regardless, and the rebuilding phase always brings prosperity, unless it is being done in another country, for the sake of another people. In which case the country and people in question get the prosperity, and those paying for the rebuilding get the bill.
The world can bloody well sort itself out. Right now we have a bunch of busy bodies who can’t help but interfere in other nations. And while yes the economy is being completely globalized, it can be broken apart again. Will our lifestyles be impacted if they collapse, yes, but they have to. There is no choice. The traitors in charge of not just the US, but of Europe and elsewhere have been pushing every nation into debts to the point where the interest payments are starting to outpace the GDP. Eventually the bill will come due, and I would frankly rather pay it now in this generation despite the suffering it will cause when it is still technically possible to pay. Then for it to come due later in my children’s generation when it is no longer possible to do so.
And yes, things have been interconnected. They can also be broken apart again. After all this is not the first time all of humanity was gathered as one people with one language. God himself broke them apart. You think he cannot do so a second time?
Of course the Western Hemisphere is a human made convention. However it is an extremely useful one. The Americas had an ocean on either side of us as natural barriers. Canada when not run by a madman and a bunch of busy bodies, generally tends to follow our lead. Frankly without him they tend to act like they are an additional (however many provinces Canada is made up of,) states in the US. And while I would prefer for us not to interfere in the South or Central nations, our job is to keep the other major powers from doing so. That s the furthest extent of Pax Americana that is still a net positive for Americans. Naturally if one of those nations is stupid enough to start a war with Russia or China, or some African Warlord, let them suffer the consequence of their actions. They are adults, not children, and actions have consequences.
As for the Pax Americana, keeping the peace between India and Pakistan, let them fight it out. They are adults and can either make peace or kill each other on their own. It is not our place to sit there and hold their ears and treat them like children. No one with any degree of pride is willing to accept such a state of affairs if there is even the slightest chance of seeing such a nanny state collapse in flames.
I get it, you think isolationism is a bad thing. That is your prerogative as a free thinking adult. Just as it is mine to declare that it is best for the various peoples and kingdoms to be separate and mind their own business. Just as you would prefer your neighbors to mind their own business and stay out of your house unless invited.
I also understand your worried about an exchange of nukes causing issue for everyone. Here is the thing though. Unless your willing to pick up a rifle and go forcibly conquer both nations, there will always be that risk. Similarly to every day there is a slight chance that a madman in the US, Russia, England, France, Germany, China, Japan, ETC. could unleash one of the nukes, bio-weapons, special weapons, etc. that every nation has built in the last 80-ish years.
So I will reiterate. Pax Americans is draining the US of people, treasury, strength, and is allowing and encouraging our so called leaders to treat the other nations like they are children. This will, not if not might, but will end badly. It has always ended badly in the case of every single Empire that has done this. We need to pull everything back and stop the flood of invaders into the country, stop the flood of money and weapons out of the country at least until things calm down.
As it is, I expect within the decade Pax Americana will be a memory, along with a sizable chunk of America. Likewise I expect Europe to be a battleground, not against Russia, but internal wars. The sooner we pull back, the more we will save in the end.
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I understand your viewpoint and I appreciate you sharing it in detail. But going to my original observation, it is now clear why neoliberalism is going to win. It’s positive, optimistic, it appeals to the innate strength and resilience of human beings. The belief that everything is useless, everything is falling apart, the end is nigh, and we should all just give up and crawl away into a hole will always lose out on the end. We become losers on the day we decide we are losers. So whatever is the anti-loser mentality will win in the end. And the only non-loser worldview on offer is the neoliberal.
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