Back in March of 2022 I wrote, “Make no mistake ~ World War III has already begun.” Ever since then the world has been crashing and burning, literally. The prime symptom, as well as the major cause of the acceleration of this race to the bottom, is the plummeting levels of consciousness world-wide (the root of the problem; vide: The Survival of Life on Earth, Evolutionary Leap Now, The Aura of a Dying Planet, The Prior Problem, End Times, The Meaning of Life, etc.). In this country, the elevation of the seriously deranged Donald Trump (by his equally deranged supporters, toadies, sycophants, brownnosers, and yes-men) has led to the collapse of civilization and life as we know it, just as Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s genocide of Palestinians have been causing the world order to crumble, and all of this going on as the world burns from the increasing consequences of climate change, with the blazes fanned by the fossil fuel companies. Drill, baby, drill, and burn, baby burn.
And now we are in the throes of Trump’s tariff war, which is banging and shredding what was left of world economic stability and trade, whose consequences and knock-on effects are just beginning to be dimly seen. Did Trump expect that China and the rest of the world would fall into line, kissing his ass? (“I am telling you, these countries are calling us up, kissing my ass,” Trump said during a speech at the National Republican Congressional Committee Dinner in Washington, “They are dying to make a deal. ‘Please, please sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything sir,’” imitating a begging foreign leader.) On the contrary, China just raised the ante up to an 84% and then 125% tariff for American products going into China. Some commentators have opined that, since China exports a lot more to the US than the US exports to China, the tariffs would hurt China more severely. But there is another wrinkle in the cloth, in the form of China’s $759 billion of US Treasury securities. As those bonds are being sold off, along with bonds from other holders of US funny paper, the interest rate is being forced upwards in what could turn out to be a run on Uncle Sam, which this country could not sustain for very long without printing up more money, which would only exacerbate the problem, as Germany found out during World War II. Once the world loses its taste for United States’ funny paper, then we enter a whole new phase of desperation in the face of American decline, in which “Quantitative Easing” is the new euphemism for our government Ponzi scheme.
All of these new tariffs constitute an enormous new tax on the American people. First Trump and Musk want to liquidate all government services to free up some money for their monstrous tax cuts for the wealthy, but since that’s not enough to cover their monumental graft, now they want to impose this enormous tax burden on the American people, in the form of tariffs, so that what they grab with their right hand they can pass out to their billionaire cronies with their left hand (the hand is quicker than the eye, and the Devil take the hindmost).
The next phase of the American Dream (or Global Nightmare) might be an escalating war with Iran or China. Most probably it will be Iran that sees the heat, as the classic bully does not attack someone strong enough to fight back, although even Iran can do plenty of damage as it goes down. The latest toxic verbiage spewing out of Trump’s mouth suggests that Iran had better get in the line to kiss Trump’s “ring” or else face a bombing campaign, which Israel is just itching to initiate, in order to distract attention from its ongoing genocide against the Palestinians.
This would be a very worrying development, as it is so typical of the waning days of empire, in which the desperate tyrant of a failing state resorts to the ultima ratio regis “the last argument of kings” ~ their guns and bombs [looking at you, Vladimir Putin]. There is nowhere this can go except further downhill. So the question now becomes whether the fallout (a chilling word, whose connotations are not very comforting) from Donald Trump’s raging tariff mania will bring his government down in time to prevent a disastrous war with Iran (and the rest of the world), or whether the stupid and intransigent buffoons dancing on Trump’s strings will follow him all the way to Armageddon.
The best hope is to hang tight and wait for the mid-term elections.
