Welcome to, or back to, the intoxicating yet sober Gauntlet of Balthazar for some recent observations in the spheres of global politics and economics.
Indeed, the Gauntlet has been (mostly) silent regarding the installation of former Vice-President Joseph R. Biden to the executive branch of the U.S. government in the wake of the 2020 elections. The Gauntlet made no statements regarding the hypocrisy of DNC media mouth-pieces framing a handful of unarmed Coors-light-drinking yahoos (cajoled by undercover Fed agents no less) as a legitimate threat to the nation after turning a blind eye...no, strike that, an encouraging eye, to month after month of literal urban chaos, dozens of deaths, and billions in property damage and theft - all in the name of so-called "racial equity", otherwise known as Marxism. Even to the most casual and uninformed this seemed exceedingly rich coming from a political party that was founded on a pro-slavery platform and standing against the largely abolitionist Republicans, and never balked from encouraging a good riot, even calling them "patriotic".
You might find it interesting to note that since the Democrat's emergence in 1832, almost every race and / or political riot that has ever occurred in the United States involved Democrats or their partners on the left and far left, and this went into high gear starting with the 1968 Democratic convention and hasn't stopped since. I'm pretty sure that it is exceedingly rare, unicorn rare, to find a Registered Republican involved in the Watts, L.A., Antifa, or any other acts of civil violence in the history of America. But I digress.
This might have been mentioned here before, but as a child I was raised with two very simple maxims that my late father repeated fairly frequently. He would say, with a pause implying a colon; Joe Biden: the stupidest man in America. This was inevitably always followed by, John McCain: the evilest man in America. While the first statement is very clear, the second goes on to frame the problem within the Republican Party, and that is, the existence of Neo-Con's.
The left, which has just moved further to the left in the period of their cultural hegemony (revving up in the 1960's, dipping into Neo-Lib kleptocracy in the 1980's, and arriving with the dial turned up to "11" in the last few years), were quite content with Republicans who they could walk over and who generally agreed with them. They were, and are, amazingly unaware of the various factions at play on the right, and as the Gauntlet has propounded many times on this blog, the philosophic tension of U.S. political parties has always been an intra-party struggle on the right with the left-right conflict only supplying a media circus in D.C.
The debate goes back to 1789, when the law-and-order Federalist's under Adams and Hamilton came to blows with Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans and their libertarian leanings. Many current Democrats attempt to look to Jefferson for the philosophic antecedent of their party, but the Jeffersonian Republicans fragmented and many joined John Quincey Adam's Whig party. Eventually these sides of the same coin re-minted themselves the National Republican Party, and then the G.O.P., under Lincoln.
Over time the Democrats glomed ideas from all over the political spectrum, including the early Socialists, globalists, Eugenicists, Malthusians, and even some Republican thought, and after their debacle of starting a brutal Civil War that they lost, their operatives in the north desperately looked around for new constituencies. They found these eager voters in the ranks of Blacks who had moved out of the south and in "off-white" immigrant groups such as the Jews, Italians, Irish, Latinos, Asians, etc., and the party took on a Janus-like two face of representing racist Southern Democrats until the 1980's as well as Northern Democrats who positioned themselves as "White Knights" to protect minorities from "the man".
Yes, "the man". Who was this man? Surely this was a Waspy white boogie-man, but he was also a corporate overlord...a horrible capitalist who clearly exploited the down-trodden working class. And yes, in the 1980's I think we all (both left and right) kinda hated "the man". But, professional politicians quickly realized that by kissing up to "the man" this brought them lots and lots of money, and so the Liberals morphed into Neo-Lib kleptocrats, and the Conservatives became war-hawk Neo-Con's. Both embraced the deep state, and sold out American interests to foreign entities and Mega-Corps, and did their damnedest to keep the U.S. in so-called "endless wars".
This situation might have gone on forever were it not for the emergence of the Tea Party and men like Andrew Breitbart; who reminded Conservatives about their roots in the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, and Whig Parties. The Republican Party started to change, kinda, but as the Republican base changed Neo-Con's like Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush (and his whole family), Liz Chaney, and a host of others, lost ground to Libertarian-Republicans like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and of course, Donald Trump.
Even the most staunch anti-Trump liberal, or never-Trumper Neo-Con traitor, must now admit that aside from his "mean tweets", and an all-out media attack that lasted his entire term, the crap that is happening now would have never gone down on his watch. We now have an administration in power that controls the Executive branch as well as the House and Senate, and they have absolutely no idea of what they are doing, or maybe they do, and just don't care about the collateral damage they're inviting on the road to their liberal utopia.
So let's look at just what is going on.
Let's not even get into Biden's botched Afghanistan withdrawal, his shitty fascistic Co-vid mandates, or the endless flood of illegals (and drugs) that cross the southern border every day, and let's just focus on the biggest problem - the U.S. dollar. You see, Biden has allowed the Federal Reserve to print money like it's going out of style. In fact something like two-thirds of all currency in circulation right now has been printed just in the last year. While that alone is a terrifying fact, debasing a currency only has one inevitable economic effect, and that is inflation. Currently the inflation rate is at 8%, and some analysts believe we will see double-digit inflation before long. This will bring gasoline to nine dollars a gallon, if not higher, and as Mr. Biden is convinced that we shouldn't have fossil fuel at all, he went out of his way to destroy the energy independence we possessed only two years ago.
Ironically, since we don't possess the technology to fully replace the fuel economy, he now has begged OPEC, Venezuela, and his friends in Iran for oil rather than have U.S. companies pump it out of our own soil. While voters on the left turned a blind eye to his stupidity, his creepy touching of little girls, and his increasing senility, they wanted "kind grandpa" over "mean tweet orange-man", and voted a complete incompetent (and his equally incompetent friends) into office. I mean really, does anyone actual believe that this bozo got more of the Black vote than Obama did, twice. Yeah, let's go with that.
Needless to say, the leaders of these countries won't even take his calls (how embarrassing!), and more over , Iran launched a missile at the U.S. embassy in Iraq, and the Prince of Saudi Arabia stated that he was considering selling oil to China in Yuan. Mind you, the last two leaders who suggested bumping the petro-dollar for some other currency were Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, and we know what happened there.
Even though the U.S. accounts for almost a third of the Gross World Product, at this point the dollar is only holding on because it is the reserve currency of the world and oil is traded in petro-dollar. If that goes, it will go into a free-fall regardless of how many interest rate hikes the Fed puts into effect.
Of course, these heads of state would never have tried this under a President like Trump, which of course brings us to what is going on in Ukraine and China. You see, the roots of Russia's invasion of Ukraine go back to the 2014 revolution in that nation which was backed by the Obama White House (and yes, Biden was the point man on Ukraine and shook them down for money), and even troops and missiles were placed in eastern Poland to Mau-Mau Putin at that time. The deal was simple all along, Russia wanted their Soviet-period nukes back, and the world promised Ukraine that if they disarmed we would back them up. As any proponent of the second amendment of the U.S. constitution would tell you, you don't give up your weapon and then discuss terms. The Armenians and Jews found this out the hard way. But once again, I digress.
Anyway, with the election of Zelenskyy the Ukraine started to make overtures to the west, and this made Russia very, very nervous. They had a hard enough time dealing with the fact of Ukraine not being part of their Empire, or Federation, or whatever, as it had been for a thousand years, but to have NATO troops a few miles from Moscow. No way. So, Putin's invasion was thoroughly expected. He clearly waited for Trump to leave office and for Co-vid to die down before he made his move.
I should state here that I don't really have a dog in this fight, but obviously, if Ukraine could have remained an independent sovereign republic with no one dying that would have been ideal, but I can't help but feel that this was completely avoidable if managed properly. Spilled milk, I guess.
Many people were very concerned that the U.S. would go to war over this, but the Gauntlet knew that in the event of an invasion, Joe Biden would send a very pithily worded e-mail at best. And that is what he did. Putin was prepared for sanctions, and even the one's that went into effect don't really hit Russia where it hurts. Of course, China is standing by watching all this, fidgeting with their notion of taking Taiwan.
With Trump's hands hog-tied by the House he could only help Hong Kong so much, but even so, Republicans were on the right side of the issues - backing up Hong Kong protestors, Uiyger concentration camp internees, and religious minority persecution in China, while the left...they kissed Chi-Comm ass via their "woke" corporate connections to Nike, Apple, Disney, and Amazon.
They have never expressed a concern that all of our essential goods - such as computer chips, energy transformers, and antibiotics, are all being exclusively produced in the east. Just imagine what would happen to the U.S. if the supply chain stopped and these items were unavailable. All the more reason to manufacture in America - which Trump was also pumping up and Joseph "Hey, man, I got an idea - let's give the technology to China" Biden is in the process of beating down.
The correct response the day after the invasion should have been to move aircraft carriers into the South China Sea, and maybe knock out a missile installation in Iran, or perhaps flatten a site where they're working on nukes. But, with geniuses in charge like this, none of that happened.
I fully expect that Biden will further embolden Iran, and this will force Israel's hand to do something about it, ironically moving Israel and Saudi Arabia closer together. I mean, is it an accident that Trump had three Arab Gulf states sign historic peace accords with Israel - a fact that Jewish Democrat politicians should have some cognitive dissonance in acknowledging, if they weren't so possessed by ideological indoctrination and Trump Derangement Syndrome.
When they're good and ready, China will probably attempt to take Taiwan, with some difficulty, and the world will look on as "influencers" change their social media emojis to the Taiwanese flag, and latte liberals spend time telling each other that they "care, so very, very, much" about "the kids", as they cringe-chant "USA, USA" - lifted from actual patriots.
Unless the U.S. pivots quickly we're in for a hell of a ride, but if I might take the Gauntlet off for a moment I would add that I see America as being in the throes of a cultural shift from the sixty-some-odd year domination of liberalism over our culture to a neo-traditionalist wave that will force the U.S. to "toughen up". History is cyclical and often the laxest times can lead the way to a more reserved culture. It happened in the shift from the Enlightenment to the Victorian Age in England, and it happened in the evolution of the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire.
Don't fool yourself that it can't happen to the currently "soft" west.
In the end, if America is brought low, and manufacturing shrinks and the economy is devastated, we might very well end up like Russia (a gas station with nukes) for while, but this will inevitably lead to a more aggressive phase of our history in which our descendants will be forced to more pro-actively carve a niche out of the global order, by influence if possible, and by force if necessary.
So, in that potential far, or near future, look out Venezuela. And Canada. And Greenland. And Northern Mexico. And Iran. And so on...
Till next time.
