In 1865, the United States ratified the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery (with exceptions... but never mind); this was, without question, a good thing, and if it had happened in isolation, it would be as little discussed as the 19th Amendment.

It did not happen in isolation, though, it happened after a war that killed 2% of the population, devastated vast regions, and did not need to happen, but was contrived (as a result of market speculation in slave futures facing a near-certain end; it was the equivalent of like $17 Trillion in today's money, that just disappeared); it happened alongside the 14th and 15th Amendments, which radically changed the nature of the relationship between the federal government and the states in ways that could never have happened if the Southern states had been in a position to object; and it notably failed to account for the wellbeing of the freed slaves, who largely wound up back on the exact same plantation they had been slaves on, only now no one cared if they got enough to eat.

161 years later, the Southeast still has twice the infant mortality rate as the rest of the country. The Southern states are at the bottom of education rankings. Even if you have insurance, the quality of medical care makes it nearly pointless. The economy never recovered, and only appears to be decent, now, because cheap labor means steady employment. 43% of African-Americans live in these states; they are the ones most affected.

And even the attempts to fix it have been problematic: Affirmative Action mostly helps the wealthiest minorities, not the ones who truly need the help; Critical Race Theory originated in a paper about how Desegregation was implemented in such a way that it contributed to the undermining of black communities; and the poor whites who also need the help, but aren't getting it at all, have a choice of sympathizing and trying to deal with their own disenfranchisement on a cognitive level, or smoking some meth and blaming black people and immigrants... at least some of them are going to take the latter choice.

The whole fiasco almost could not have gone worse.

No one thought that Hitler was just going to start exterminating "untermenschen," and even to those who might have suspected, that wasn't reason enough to go to war; World War 2 was about economics, control of shipping lanes, access to resources (especially oil). We were lucky that Hitler was as evil as he was, otherwise the maneuvering that FDR went through to provoke the Japanese into attacking us would have looked a lot worse. For that matter, the Japanese were worse, but since it was other non-whites they were massacring, we didn't care.

About 50 million people died from starvation in the 20th century because of disputes over self-determination and political systems, with both sides insisting that the deaths were worth it (but of course it was the other sides' fault).

And even those aren't the worst catastrophes in history:

-The Taiping Rebellion may, in fact, have been the deadliest war in history, with an upper estimated death toll of 100 million people between 1850 and 1864. It was led by a Christian convert opposed to the legitimately corrupt imperial court... and both sides were backed by the same Western powers who sucked China dry in the process.

-The Trans-Atlantic slave trade was justified, in the first place, by claiming that converting them to Christianity saved their souls and so overbalanced whatever happened to their mortal bodies.

-The Native American genocide, while directly caused mostly by disease, was the result of exploration, a generally positively-viewed endeavor.

-Tobacco has killed an estimated 100-200 million people, expected to exceed 1 billion by the end of the century, entirely due to modern farming techniques that have increased yields of all crops (and the relentless pursuit of profit at the expense of human health).

-Something that the guy who invented the Orange Julius did, but it wasn't inventing the Orange Julius, it was later than that; I'm not sure, it was a dream, I invented a time machine to go back and kill him, but it was in the 1960s, and when I woke up and looked it up, he invented it in like 1929. Plus I was wearing a suit of armor and he was riding an ostrich, so I had to swing from the vines hanging off of the buildings (in downtown Chicago) to catch up, and then, of course, the floor turned to lava.

Paywall-free link: https://removepaywalls.com/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/20/opinion/voters-political-parties-coalitions.html

In short, having lost the argument that there are only two sides of politics, our Lords and Masters have decided to define the acceptable "other" groups that we are allowed to belong to:

>We find that 21 percent of voters — including 42 percent of self-identified Democrats — fall into the Loyal Left, a group that is progressive on most issues and especially outraged by what its members see as widespread political corruption. They’re also most likely to say they’re “extremely motivated” to vote in the midterms, and over half say that their politics are very important to their personal identity. A good avatar for this group might be Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

...and that's as "Left" as you are allowed to be; a loyal Democrat who makes centrist comments in ways that sound extreme. I would call this group, "Tribal Democrats."

Note also their use of statistics to imply that half of voters are Democrats, when it's more like 28%.

>Their closest cousins are what we call Electability Democrats. Making up 10 percent of voters overall (and about 19 percent of the Democratic Party), these voters are also fired up to vote in the midterms and progressive on economic matters. However, this group is slightly more ethnically diverse than the Loyal Left, which is overwhelmingly white, and also diverges sharply on several key cultural questions. Electability Democrats generally oppose the idea of defunding the police, take more conservative views on the participation of transgender individuals in competitive sports and are more middle-of-the-road on immigration issues. Asked which group I’d sort James Carville into, I’d put him here.

I would call this group, "Establishment Democrats."

The NYT then lists two other "left-leaning" groups:

>The American Institutionalists, who represent 11 percent of all voters, are the most likely to have a high income or a graduate degree. They are whiter and older; more than half were born before 1965. They tend to get their news from broadcast TV rather than social media. While they are frustrated with our political moment and 77 percent feel unfavorably toward President Trump, they maintain an abiding faith in America and its institutions, and in our ability to change — even reverse — course when Mr. Trump leaves office.

The last of the Petty Bourgeois; there's nothing "left-wing" about this group, they just have an idealized view of the past.

>The Young and Disillusioned are pretty much the opposite. They are 9 percent of the electorate but an even smaller share of the Democrats’ most reliable voters because they are, as the name says, young and disillusioned. Social media is their top source of news, and politics is not a major part of their identity. They’re lower down on the income scale and occasionally have libertarian leanings on guns, foreign policy and regulation. They’re worried about the cost of living and distrustful of the media and politicians alike.

And this is just a catchall for anything they didn't understand, covering some of the left, but cutting it apart by age and mixing in nonsense issues for no good reason.

OK, now for the "Right:"

>On the right, first, look to a tribe we call Middle American Optimists, making up 11 percent of voters this year. They’ve little love for Democrats, and two-thirds voted for Mr. Trump in 2024. So far, they think he is doing an OK job as president, but they’re less than thrilled about the state of the economy. They’re younger and less churchgoing, and unsurprisingly much less conservative on both cultural and economic issues than the rest of their brethren on the political right.

Wait, these have to be a significant chunk of Trump supporters, but they are *LESS* conservative on "cultural and economic" issues? What other issues are there?

>Critical to Mr. Trump’s reinvention of the G.O.P. has been our next group, the New Republican Populists, who are about 6 percent of the 2026 electorate. They are quite religious, live in more rural areas and oppose abortion, while rejecting much of the traditional conservative economic orthodoxy — they’re unlikely to say that you can just pull yourself up by your bootstraps. They’re OK with a bigger government, depending on what services it provides. They are, if you will, “Medicare for all, abortion for none” voters.

OK, these people I know, but none of them support Medicare for All, less because they are unsympathetic, but because people they disagree with do support it. This is entirely misunderstanding the nature of contemporary political ideology.

>That brings us to the Moderate Right, who are 13 percent of voters and a group whose members are fairly pro-establishment in contrast with their more anti-establishment right-of-center peers. They still subscribe to a more traditional conservative view on economics and are fairly socially conservative. But perhaps by virtue of being a more female-heavy tribe, they’re also moderate on the issue of abortion and more open to the view that sexism remains a problem in society. Make no mistake: Most are still favorably disposed toward Mr. Trump, half report being Fox News viewers and three-quarters choose the Republican candidate in a generic matchup. But these days, they’re just not as excited about all of it — Come back, Nikki Haley.

"MODERATE?!" These aren't moderates, these are the fringe wackos! Oh, they're "moderate" on abortion, are they? Nikki Haley is a far-right nutcase who wants to make war on the world and thought that the Spanish Inquisition didn't go far enough.

>The Loyal Right remains enthusiastic about Mr. Trump and ready to turn out for Republicans in this year’s midterms, but its size — 18 percent of the electorate — makes it insufficient, on its own, for retaining a Republican majority.

So... the "Moderate Right," but firmly against abortion? Isn't that just, "The Right?"

“I don't care who does the electing, as long as I get to do the nominating”

― William "Boss" Tweed

I'm not on that list; most of the people I know do not fall into those groups. All they have done here is reshape the Overton Window so that it's no longer square, it's like a jigsaw piece conveniently cutting out the views they don't want to have to address.

I have an odd background; by happenstance, I have my family archives, including an 18th century bible listing names and birthdates; between this and online databases, I can piece together 65 generations of my family (including my grandson), at least in theory, as the odds are that there is a mistake, two different people with the same name, instance of bastardy, etc, are decent.

The oldest names are Norse gods, the divine claim of descent justifying the early kings of Sweden, from whom many Vikings claimed descent; they invaded Normandy and become Christian. 150 years later, they invaded England, becoming Catholic incidentally after the Great Schism; 500 years after that, they became Protestant and invaded Ireland. Then they invaded America...

Is anyone else seeing a pattern, here? I mean, the last few generations have been academically non-religious, and we haven't invaded somewhere else and stayed there, for a while, but that's my, "cultural heritage," i.e. change with the winds and find someone weaker to take stuff from.

Am I supposed to be proud of that? Hold on to it? Value it as some received wisdom handed down through the generations?

No! These people raped, looted, and pillaged their way from Scandinavia to Tennessee; they were drunkards, liars, cheats, thieves, skilled mostly at violence and mayhem, their primary virtue being that they were not underhanded enough to be politically successful.

Is anyone else's story any better? African-Americans, "We were sold into slavery by our own people?" Hispanics, "We were so crowded that when foreigners showed up with new diseases, it nearly wiped us out?" Jews, "Our own leaders were willing to use us as scapegoats to deflect the blame generated by greedy men to benefit themselves?" The Irish, "I'm supposed to be staggering drunk at 10am on a random Tuesday morning, I don't care if the trial starts today?" (in fairness, I got out of that one, self defense)

Oh, not for when they commit crimes, but as a condition of employment; after they get elected, they show up for their first day of orientation, find their office, fill out their paperwork, then get strung up and given 20 lashes.

We would at least get more... interesting... candidates.

The most glaring example, of course, is Zionism, but there is also the Black Power movement, Hindutva, and some oddities like the MRAsian community and some troubling trends of "white supremacist" Hispanics (e.g Nick Fuentes).

White supremacy is, of course, a more visible issue, especially in North America and Europe, but none of these should be considered legitimate or acceptable political positions for anyone to hold.

A friend of mine is going through a divorce, and I'm trying to buy before he puts his collection up for consignment; this is a Ruger American Rimfire in .22 WMR with a Simmons 3-9x scope he says came with it.

I don't want to rip him off, but at the same time, he's going to lose a good bit through consignment.

What's a fair price to offer for it?

"Hitler Ate Sugar"

Up until the 1930s, the Swastika (also called Gammadion or Fylfot) was universally seen as a positive symbol, representing prosperity and good luck; indeed, many early aviators such as Matilde Moisant wore Swastika pins on their flight suits as good luck charms. It is an ancient symbol going back at least 4,500 years, remaining in wide use in the East, and rediscovered by the West in the 18th century.

It was first used as a symbol of anti-Semitism about 1912, by Romanian fascist politician Alexandru Cuza... and now that is all that it means. One group of people decided to suborn its meaning for political purposes, and now no one can use it without being associated with them.

Is that all it takes? Then why aren't we all claiming membership or association with some group we dislike, and then twisting it out of shape to discredit them?

What's In A Name?

The fascists did exactly that, with the whole, "National Socialist," thing, as if that ever made sense in the first place; the ultimate goal of left-wing thought is the utter destruction of national distinctions, a world solidarity that transcends such divisive notions.

Nevertheless, though, for 80 years, reactionaries have been able to say, "The Nazis were Socialist, it's right there in the name!"

We have "Democrats" who oppose democracy, "Republicans" who reject republican governance, "Greens" who deny the scientific consensus on environmental policy, "Libertarians" who only believe in freedom for themselves, "Progressives" trying to stifle political discourse...

Well, Yes, But Also No, And Then Again, Yes...

The "Confederate Flag" is an especially odd one.

First, the actual flag of the Confederacy was very similar to the US flag, just with fewer stripes and a different number of stars.

The "Confederate Flag" that most people think of was the Battle Flag, which was developed in order to avoid confusion on the battlefield; the original design used a Palmetto and Crescent with an upright St George's Cross, but due to complaints from Jewish members of the Confederate government, it was changed to a diagonal St Andrew's Cross, and the Palmetto and Crescent were removed to avoid confusion with the South Carolina state flag.

Even then, for over 80 years after the Civil War, it was not viewed as a symbol of racism or hatred; most people would not even recognize the official flags of the Confederacy. It was the third incarnation of the Ku Klux Klan which adopted it as a symbol in the 1950s, after which it became associated with racism and bigotry. Note that, historically, there were far more KKK members in the North than in the South...

Today, polls are nearly evenly split on viewing it as a symbol of regional pride as opposed to a symbol of hatred.

What To Expect When You Are Expecting Associative Delegitimization

Ironically, this only works on communities that operate on an in-group preference; this is why Capitalism is easier to criticize than Socialism (without putting a value judgement on that statement one way or another...). Every group is propagandized to be afraid of the group "below" them trying to climb ahead, so they are focused on punching down instead of building up.

Socialists open themselves up to attack, though, when they start trying to favor one group or another for historical or political reasons, or worse, try to oppress groups they view as undeserving. That way lies the darker history of left-wing movements, not intrinsic to left-wing philosophy, but nor is that philosophy any more immune to excessive zeal than any other.

The only path to success is to include everyone, to address the concerns even of people you don't like, and to come to reasonable compromises that you actually intend to honor into the future.

All of us, or none of us.

Much is made of, "Male Privilege," in feminist discourse, and I am not about to deny it:

-In many situations, men are taken more seriously than women, on the presumption that we are innately more skilled or knowledgeable about this or that particular, e.g. cars, tools, sports, etc

-There are absolutely, "Boy's Clubs," in certain industries that make it difficult for women to find or advance in employment.

-Men face less expectation to perform "domestic" chores such as cleaning or child-rearing; in an emergency, men are often put in charge even if they are clearly unsuited for the task compared to a woman in the group.

These are not small things and by no means am I suggesting that women face no issues in the world or that we should not work to fix them or that the right-wing jerks trying to exploit the "men's side" of the "gender war" should be taken at all seriously. Screw them; strong letter to follow.

Some of the claims are either incorrect or otherwise problematic, though:

-"Men don't have to be afraid just walking down the street." In point of fact, men are 80% of the victims of violent crime, and more than that of random violence; women are overwhelmingly assaulted by people they know, and their reports to the police dramatically more likely to be acted upon. There are not even good numbers on the worst forms of male child abuse, because so few reports are followed up on.

-"Men make more money." This is the, "Elon Musk and 10 bums in an elevator, on average they are all billionaires," fallacy; yea, most of the richest people are men, but then, men work significantly more hours per year, and more years over their lifetime. If you cut out the top 0.1% and look at actual hourly wage, men are getting screwed.

-"Some fields are so discriminatory that women just can't break in." Name one; the closest you can get is Hedge Fund manager, and it's less that women can't break into that field than that the demands of the job are prohibitive for any woman that wants to have children, i.e. 80 hour weeks with no vacations for 20 years. The "Boy's Clubs" can be sued for discrimination. Academia is actively trying to get more women into fields like Physics and Computer Science (and largely failing due to lack of interest), yet there are no programs trying to get more men into Biology or Nursing, despite them being similarly skewed the other way (on top of the extreme gender disparity in college students and faculty; 60% female).

-"Women face discrimination in reproductive rights." First, let me say that I am pro-choice and happy to support women's reproductive rights. Second, why do you refuse to even acknowledge men's reproductive rights? They have been trying to develop male birth control pills since 1971, and the backlash was so fierce that the very idea has been forgotten; vasectomies are often irreversible, have higher failure and complication rates than tubal ligation, and the social stigma in many communities often rises to the level of violence; men are held financially liable for children even in cases where the woman committed fraud or sexual assault in order to become pregnant, while also regularly being denied equal parental involvement.

At any rate, let's look at, "Female Privilege:"

-Women asking for or apparently in need of help are dramatically more likely to receive it, in so many different ways that it would exceed the character limit of this post to try to explain them all, the short list is: Homelessness, sudden collapse in public, standing next to a car with a flat tire or the hood open, being the victim of abuse and/or crime, having a visible disability, drowning, trapped in a house fire, mental health, etc. One discrepancy: Women are less likely to receive bystander CPR if they collapse in public, but the reason is that men are afraid to be accused of inappropriate touching if they do so.

-Women are presumed to be adequate and competent parents, while men, even if clearly experienced, are not (and the one exception to the rule about receiving help; men with children will CONSTANTLY be asked if they need help or know... anything). The result in family courts is that men face a much higher burden to get custody or even visitation, child support is set higher for men than the rare occasion that a father has primary custody, etc.

-Women are not expected to take on dirty, dangerous, or demeaning jobs; mining, logging, sanitation, construction, etc. 92% of on-the-job deaths are men.

-Women are not required to sign up for military conscription. Note that I oppose all military conscription, at all, but if they are going to require it, it should be gender-neutral.

-Women are less likely to be arrested, charged, prosecuted, and convicted of the exact same crime with the exact same record as men, and receive, on average, 60% shorter sentences.

Note that most of these fall under the general concept of women having inherent value, whereas men are valued only for their actions, and implicit expectation to contribute to society (while the analog for women is to have children as their contribution).

This is not the Oppression Olympics

I am not interested in getting into any kind of argument about "which side has it worst." That's divisive, and these issues require solidarity.

Both men and women face issues; both men and women have privileges; both men and women need and deserve help.

If I have an issue, it is exactly that point wherein women are more likely to get help when they need it; not that they do not deserve help, but that men do, too.

Because the alternative is to decide that women don't deserve help, either, and that would be a terrible world.

not saying these are EXACTLY the reasons of hatred towards each other. I'm just saying it's mostly because of these things.

Exhibit A: The Fast and The Furious franchise.

The original founding document of the United States was the Articles of Confederation; if you think of an historical version of a combined European Union and NATO, you've got the right idea. It was basically a free trade and mutual defense pact, not much more.

The standard version of history taught in school is that the Articles were too weak, did not give the federal government sufficient power, and had to be replaced with a stronger system in order to address problems that had come up. Note that they never mention what those problems were (other than Shays' Rebellion, which was a perfectly legitimate response to unfair taxation and market manipulation), or why they didn't give it more than six years to work out before (illegally!) calling the Constitutional Convention and then using threats of economic retaliation to force states to ratify it.

The truth is that the "problem" was not that the federal government was weak, but that it was too democratic and egalitarian. Many states were allowing women and blacks to vote! Western settlers were creating their own governments to protect themselves from exploitation by wealthy Eastern interests. Jefferson almost managed to contain slavery in the Old South in 1784, and the changing demographics meant that by 1800, such a measure would pass. Worse, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 implicitly created the legal standard by which all land in the United States is held publicly, and "property ownership" means a grant of rights to use land, not actual ownership.

What the Constitution actually did was to create an elite-controlled central government with just enough power to suppress populist governance, but not enough power to restrain the wealthy elite; it also explicitly gave out-sized political power to the slave-owning states (through the 3/5 "compromise") and strictly limited the ability of the government to impose on property owners (i.e. the Takings Clause).

Worse, the Supreme Court has taken the position that, in some circumstances, the Articles of Confederation actually override the Constitution... but only in one direction, i.e. in support of more centralized and elite power, e.g. Texas v. White, which held that the preamble to the Articles of Confederation overrides the Xth Amendment to the Constitution (literally rendering it moot), even though literally the First Article of the AoC would have required the opposite judgment in that case.

Even the Bill of Rights is merely a list of broken promises; the government can, has, and will abuse the legal system to punish speech, protest, religious belief, dissent, attempts to arm against the government, resistance to illegal search and seizure, refusal to incriminate oneself, or demand for a jury of peers or legal counsel. As the Chief of the Tennessee Highway Patrol recently posted on X: "On our roads, your rights mean less than nothing... you can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride."

And we are not allowed to protest this crime, much less fight back against it.

#Aporia

Elections are not democratic. By their very nature, elections favor those with time and money to campaign, charisma to convince others to support them, and the opportunistic and unprincipled, who will make whatever promises necessary to obtain power.

#Prolegomenon

"The appointment of magistrates by lot is thought to be democratic, and the election of them oligarchic." - Aristotle

The city councils of Athens was known as Boule, from "koinoboulio," literally, "common will." Initially a council of nobles, it was opened to all but the poorest classes by the time of Solon, and from 508-332 BCE, its members were selected by lot from the ten tribes of the trittys, or subdivisions of Attica. Members served for one year, and no man could serve more than twice in his life.

In addition, the Archai, magistrates, were also selected by lot and oversaw public services like sanitation, building safety, market weights and measures, etc. Six thousand citizens were selected each year to serve as jurors, and would be randomly assigned to cases.

Notably, some positions remained elected, in particular those that required some level of expertise, experience, or training; the Strategoi, for example, were military leaders who needed both expertise and support of the people who would be following them.

#Neokratia

The total population of Athens in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE was perhaps a quarter million, most of whom were barred from political participation by sex, criminal record, foreign allegiance, or status in slavery. In many ways, a direct adoption of this system in the modern day would be unworkable.

What could work would be a representative hierarchal sortition; local councils could be selected by lot, and they would send a representative to the regional council, who would send a representative to a state council, who could send a representative to a federal council.

Judges, sheriffs, magistrates, etc, could likewise be selected by lot, while the president, governor, etc could remain as elected positions (with much reduced powers).

In 1976, the national debt was about 33% of GDP; ~$620 billion debt against a ~$2 trillion economy, despite being in a period of stagflation following the Viet Nam War and the Oil Crisis. Unemployment was elevated, 7-8%, but key economic indicators such as individual savings and consumer confidence were strong. Manufacturing was a solid quarter of GDP, healthcare was about 5%. The trends were worrisome, but the overall economy was healthy. If your career fell apart or your company went bankrupt, the worst outcome was having to take a factory job, which would at least pay your mortgage and car payment.

In 2026, the national debt is over 125% of GDP; $39 trillion against a $32 trillion economy. Unemployment is listed at 4%, but that's after 50 years of changing the rules, for example we no longer count people who have been out of work for over a month; by the same definition, modern unemployment is as high or higher. Individual savings are essentially non-existent, and consumer confidence tanked after the 2008 "Financial Crisis" (more accurately, an extortion racket of unprecedented proportions) and has never recovered. Manufacturing is 11% of GDP, healthcare is almost 20%. The long-term trends are catastrophic, and overall economic health is dangerously poor. The consequences for career failure, now, are dire; a Wal-Mart wage will barely cover half-rent, much less a mortgage, and forget about a car payment.

To discover how this happened, we have to back up a bit; first, a brief history of the US economy:

Throughout the 19th century, the US economy was characterized by a 10-15 year "Boom and Bust" cycle. This was "free market capitalism" in action; individual actors with little government regulation acting in what they perceived as their own best interests. The issue was that the larger banks, who could spot the trends and predict the busts, structured loans to their own benefit, often bankrupting their clients on purpose. This led to the "Gilded Age" of extreme wealth disparity and ultimately the Federal Reserve, a consortium of private banks with government imprimatur to allow even further exploitation and control.

The first thing they did was notice that they could simply devalue currency to rob their clients at a steady rate, instead of all at once, and so this is when inflation first became an important issue. From 1789 until 1913, total inflation was about 7%; that is, $1 in 1913 was worth about $1.07 in 1789. Total inflation since 1913 is ~3,200%; that is, $1 today was worth $0.03 in 1913. 97% of the wealth created in the last 113 years was simply stolen by the banks.

The next thing they did was notice that they could just print money to pay for anything they wanted and not worry about the debt, because they were going to devalue it out of existence, which led inexorably to the Great Depression. Ironically, Herbert Hoover tried to fix this; he suggested many of the same programs and policies which FDR later enacted, but he didn't have the political clout. It took the next few years of desperation to finally allow the political will to make changes, and even then, FDR had to threaten the Supreme Court to make it happen.

This is known as the "Keynesian Era," from 1936 until the mid-1970s. Simply put, the idea was to smooth out the "Boom and Bust" cycle by stimulating the economy during recessions, then slowing government investment during periods of strong growth to level out and extend the growth. This was the longest period of stable economic growth in the history of the world, and the reason why, even after losing a war and suffering a major economic shock, we were still in pretty good shape.

The banks weren't happy about it, though; without a regular economic cycle, it was harder to extract resources by setting people up to fail, and the financial regulations of the New Deal, in particular, protected normal people from predatory loans. Starting with the Powell Memorandum and the end of Bretton Woods in 1971, inflation spiked and the slow erosion of the middle class had begun. Nixon abandoned full employment, replacing it with a policy of intentional "employment deficit," that is, making sure that there were not enough jobs for everyone in order to drive down wages. Ford allowed the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates during an uptick, explicitly against Keynesian policy. Carter embraced Free Trade, Privatization, Deregulation, and Austerity Economics.

And now we're into the meat of it: Reagan.

"Ronnie Ray-gun" cut taxes across the board, then raised them the next 7 years, but not on high incomes. He authorized endless military boondoggles, the most famous of which was the "Star Wars" program (which explicitly violated several solemn international treaties - or would have, if that money had gone anywhere but into defense company profits); opened up domestic markets to foreign competition without regulation to prevent market capture (i.e. why the US electronics industry died); and blatantly destroyed labor union power (e.g. the air traffic controllers union). Debt-to-GDP hit 50%, unemployment spiked at 11%, domestic manufacturing starts to drop.

Clinton managed to lower Debt-to-GDP, but it was all a bubble; he fully surrendered on trade, pushing NAFTA through Congress, with the resulting "Whoosh" sound as jobs moved South (c. Ross Perot). This is when healthcare costs started to spike due to agri-combine capture of government regulators, and Hillary Clinton intentionally "failed" to find any solution (pro-tip: If you want something to explode, put Hillary Clinton in charge of it). Worse, he pushed through the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the New Deal firewall between commercial and investment banking, which set up a ticking time bomb.

That bomb would have been bad enough, but W was stupid enough to let the dogs off the leash, and got us involved in the absurd "Global War on Terror" (which we started, but never mind...), tanking the economy and exploding the debt. When the subprime mortgage crisis finally hit, we simply did not have the reserves to properly deal with it, and we certainly did not have the political will to face it down.

In case no one ever explained it, here is what happened:

Starting in the 1970s under deregulation, investment banks started playing with derivatives - essentially security options that let you lock down long-term capital by promising high returns but punishing early withdrawal; as regulation eased, they started fluffing the numbers, and the prime culprit was the mortgage market, as it is typically the most secure investment (people pay their mortgage first). Eventually, the crooks took over and just started wildly inflating property values in order to sell variable-rate loans with the promise to refinance, because housing prices were going up faster than the interest rate on the loan.

This couldn't last forever, though, and so when they saw the end in sight, they did two things: First, they took off all the controls and started giving loans to anyone (e.g. "NINJa" loans, for "No Income No Job"), and second, they blindsided the regulators by suborning the ratings agencies, so that by the time the government noticed and had to get involved, the problem was so big that the only solution was a massive bailout... of the banks. The homeowners who had been sold this trap were left out in the cold, and worse, the inflation that came from printing the money to pay for it drove their incomes down.

Obama became the corporate bailout king; Bank of America, AIG, Citigroup, GM, Chrysler, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs... and all of it on the nation's credit card. The PPACA did much the same for the healthcare industry; more money, guaranteed customers, no cost controls, it was an invitation to drive up profits while cutting quality of care, which is exactly what we have seen over the last 15 years. It was such a disaster that Trump seemed like a reasonable alternative, and in all fairness, his economic policy in his first terms was actually starting to produce results until Covid, and I am still at a loss as to how people managed to blame any of that on him.

Covid might have been the final nail in the coffin, and we've just been waiting for the oxygen to run out. Biden just put it all on the credit card, again, and to all appearances slept through most of his term in office. Now we have Trump, again, but his time he is off the chain and attacking the neighbors. The price of oil has skyrocketed, fertilizer supplies were disrupted in the middle of planting season, and our military has been embarrassed, leading Trump to ask for record increases in defense spending, while the Pentagon notes that there is nothing to spend it on; we simply do not have the domestic industry to produce what Trump wants to buy, and the rest of the world is happy to let us twist in the wind.

In 50 years, our GDP went from $2 trillion to $32 trillion; are we 16 times as productive? Do we have 16 times as much stuff? Are we 16 times richer? No, that is the result of inflation, which both makes us an attractive market to sell goods for more money than in foreign countries, but also makes domestic labor more expensive so that manufacturing and industry are less economical. This is great for "consumers" but terrible for "workers," who are mostly the same people, and the net effect has been negative for 50 years.

I am a ~50-year-old white man. My family came to America in 1728, fought in the Revolution, homesteaded in Ohio, and moved to Tennessee, where I live today. Both of my grandfathers fought in WW2; one in the Pacific and one in Europe. My father was a state university professor of history, my son is a Naval officer, and my first grandchild was born yesterday.

That is to say: This is my country, I love it, and I want it to be a good place for my grandchildren to grow up in. Right now, that is not the case.

#EDUCATION

This has been a growing problem for decades, mostly because it became a political chew-toy, but also because even those politicians most claiming to support public education are simultaneously trying to twist it to their own ideological ends. Basing funding on test scores was a major factor in the decline, along with "Common Core" requirements that specifically exclude critical thinking and game theory, but enforcing bad rubric (e.g. the "Table" method of solving polynomials, which is fundamentally flawed in 3 different ways) and ideological bias (i.e. don't even ask about modern economic history, it is entirely absent).

Then Covid came along, and teachers have stopped even pretending to teach. College professors are screaming at the top of their lungs about students who cannot effectively read or write, whose only skill is asking AI questions, and who don't even understand why they should need to know anything. Employers are complaining about job applicants whose skills simply do not live up to their supposed qualifications.

In a participatory democracy, this is a death sentence.

#HEALTHCARE

Far beyond the simple economic issue of insurance Gatekeepers, the field itself has largely devolved into high school clique behavior. If you meet a "top doctor," it's not because they did well in medical school or developed some new treatment or wrote some insightful paper, but because they went to the right parties and glad-handed the right people. Indeed, actually focusing on the patient and effectively treating them for minimal time and cost will get a doctor black-listed.

I had a recent health incident (actually still dealing with the long-term consequences...); seven doctors in a row focused on the fact that I wasn't taking any regular medication - despite not having any chronic issues that should require it - and tried to put me on a statin (when my cholesterol isn't high), blood pressure medication (when my BP isn't high), and allopurinol (for gout, which I normally treat with 5 colchicine pills when it flares up every 2-3 years, allopurinol you take daily), entirely ignoring the fact that I couldn't walk and was having problems breathing due to what turned out to be Guillain-Barre Syndrome (a common post-infection complication from food poisoning, which I told them had happened).

They literally wheeled me out of the ER and dumped me on the sidewalk, telling me to check in with my regular doctor, who was the one who had just sent me to the ER (and then promptly dropped me as a patient). Apparently, they just didn't feel like bothering to help me, since I wasn't funding their extortion racket. I had to use telehealth from another country to find out that I had Guillain-Barre, the only treatments for which require hospitalization (e.g. intravenous immunoglobin replacement), so I just had to wait it out and hope it didn't paralyze my lungs, and 30 months later, I am still recovering.

#INFRASTRUCTURE

Of the 617,000 bridges in the US, 46,000 are classified as structurally deficient; the Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh collapsed on the day President Biden went there to make a speech on infrastructure in 2022.

There are 9 million Lead water lines delivering water to people's homes. There are 250,000 water main breaks every year. Power outages have increased in frequency by 78% over the last 20 years.

The so-called "Green Movement" wants to build more solar and wind farms, entirely ignoring the fact that a large fraction of the power generated by those sources is lost because it is made in the wrong place and/or at the wrong time, and we can neither transmit nor store it.

Meanwhile, there are dozens of nuclear power plants under construction elsewhere in the world - China is currently building 40 - and we have none under construction with three possibly decommissioning over the next few years.

#MILITARY

This is of particular concern to me, due to my oldest son being a Naval officer. Fortunately, his ship is 3 years into a 2-year refit (just 3 more years to go!), so he's not in active danger, but that very situation sums up the issue: We cannot support our current military paradigm, in the most literal fashion imaginable.

First, we don't have the designs; the Navy just ordered 25 new Arleigh-Burke-class destroyers, a 50-year-old design, because the last four ship classes intended to replace it didn't work. The Army's new M7 rifle is unreliable and uses exotic ammunition which is in short supply, as well as being larger so soldiers cannot carry as many rounds. 80% of the F-35 fleet is not combat operational, and over 1,300 software faults remain to be solved across the fleet, including at least one which appear to simply turn the plane off in mid-flight.

Second, we don't have the materials. Ships and planes require large amounts of rare Earth metals, 92% of which come from China, which is withholding them as part of the trade war. Warplanes use a lot of Titanium, most of which comes from Russia. Gallium, Germanium, Rhenium... we let our domestic production collapse, and now our greed is being used against us.

Third, we don't have the production capacity. General Dynamics is about to lose a contract to build an artillery munitions plant, which they took the money for but didn't even pretend to build, because they knew that the upstream supply chain could not support it. We tried to ramp up explosive production in 2014 in anticipation of the Ukraine-Russia war, but that has only lead to a series of industrial accidents at explosives and munitions plants, two of which happened in Tennessee in just the last five years.

Fourth, we don't have the people. Due in large part to the failure of public education, but also the mass outsourcing of skilled labor, we simply do not have the number of welders, carpenters, millwrights, mechanics, electricians, etc, that we need to actually build any of this stuff, and we are quickly running out of older workers capable of passing those skills on.

#POLITICS

This is, of course, the root of the problem, but then, that root was planted in poisoned soil, i.e. a corrupt system to allow wealth to determine social status and political power (see Thomas Jefferson's commentary on Alexander Hamilton).

It worked for a while, though, so long as the wealthy elite were sufficiently distributed to have a spectrum of political beliefs and competing interests, but that has ceased to be the case in two different ways: First, concentration of wealth has led to a much smaller elite having more control, and second, the abstraction of inherited wealth through trusts means that the actual political power of that wealth is concentrated in the hands of the money managers.

The result is that we have two political parties whose fundamental views on economic policy and social class are both identical and opposed to the welfare of 99% of the population. Worse, the same people who own them own the media, so the opinions of regular people have been poisoned by propaganda intended to divide them against each other on every conceivable-but-unimportant issue.

#ENDGAME

This is a recipe for societal collapse on a scale never before seen in history. We are in a runaway car heading towards a cliff, and not only has the driver cut the brakes but his foot has the accelerator pressed to the floor.