Indrajit Samarajiva

1. Dot-Dot-Dot

I thought I'd write a poem cause it's less words and faster but it's much more difficult and takes forever. Not doing that again.

History is full of dot-dot-dots,
Ellipsis where the historian knows it's over,
but the historical subject does not.
Such a moment is upon us now.
Dot-dot-dot...

The planes have already gone blup-blup-blup,
'Off the side' of aircraft carriers,
Whose only job was to keep them up.
At least four 'off the side',
Blup-blup-blup.

The ships have already fled, cluck-cluck-cluck
They came to project power, but left in a rush,
Under a hail of projectiles and shit out of luck,
Yemen played chicken and won.
Cluck-cluck-cluck.

The proxies are all bled, drip-drip-drop,
Ukraine fights with elders, 'Israel' kills children,
And for what?
Russia thrives and the colony dies,
Drip-drip-drop

The tariffs are a joke, yuk-yuk-yuk,
They tried to bully China and so what?
America became a joke to itself and to us,
As China just called their bluff.
Yuk-yuk-yuk.

If you connect the dot-dot-dots,

White Empire is already dun-dun-duuun,
The Titanic's already hit the iceberg,
Though the band plays on and on.
We've already passed the historical moment,
Dun-dun-duuun.

2. Military Industrial Simple

The military industrial complex is actually very simple. The entire shtick, the entire shenanigans of the military-industrial simpletons is nice world, shame if something happened to it. The mafia business model, known to blue-collar criminals as a bust-out and to white-collar criminals as an LBO (leverage buyout).

The Mafia Model

The blue-collar criminal Henry Hill explained it well enough in Goodfellas,

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Alternately you can reference Anthony Soprano in his titular series.

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A white-collar bust-out describes the military industrial complex from the imperial perspective. It's the art of the steal, looting the imperial treasury by losing imperial wars. They don't want the Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Ukrainian governments to succeed, they just want them to bleed (money) then move onto the next hypocrisy. It's ultimately the good faith and credit of the US Republic that's being busted out, used to fund a war machine that doesn't work except for laundering money back into the Beltway Mafia.

If you didn't watch the videos, I'll repeat. A bust-out works where the mafia takes control of your restaurant (say), runs up bills on the joints credit, steals or sells goods out the back, and never pays the debt back. When it all goes to shit, they burn the place down for the insurance money, or just leave. This is broadly what private-equity (La Cosa Nostra for less spicy whites) has done to the US as a whole, ever since Ike warned about the military industrial complex. They took control of the American Republic after World War II, ran up forever war bills on the joints credit, overcharge or just steal money out the unauditable Pentagon, and never pay the mounting debt back. Now it's all going shit and they're burning the place down, dumping and pumping the entire US economy in a last orgy of insider trading.

Cockleburs

But the bust-out metaphor only tells you what's happening from the perspective of the imperial core. What does the bust-out of the American military mean to the rest of the world, where the bombs fall? For that we'll use cockleburs.

For the angle on that angle, we can turn to the white-collar criminal O'Henry, whose short stories I devoured as a kid. In his short story Shoes, he describes a Central American town where no one wears shoes because they were unnecessary, and the American consul who makes them necessary with one telegram (spoiler alert). The telegram reads, in its entirety,

TO PINKNEY DAWSON, Dalesburg, Ala.

Draft for $100 comes to you next mail. Ship me immediately 500 pounds stiff, dry cockleburrs. New use here in arts. Market price twenty cents pound. Further orders likely. Rush.

The story ends here, but as with all O'Henry twists, you get the jist. The American Consul makes the town so uninhabitable without shoes (cockleburs hurt to step on) that they have to buy the shoes he just happens to produce to reduce the pain he introduced. In the same way America spreads chaos across the world in order to sell more arms. The more chaos the better. They're not bothered by this at all, cockleburs is the business model.

America acts so troubled by the problems in the world, but that's like a soap company acting troubled by dirt. It's just advertising, and CNN and BBC get their cut of the blood money accordingly. America is the world's biggest arms dealer and they create the world's biggest problems and embiggen them through privatized propaganda. They create both supply and demand, forming a vicious circle that drives their business cycle. America wants to have its hands full, and they don't care if the blood washes off, that's for bleeding hearts like Lady Macbeth, who should go kill themselves. The more blood the better, blood money is the business model.

Marketing

From this perspective, all the Autocrats™, Terrorists®, and Conflicts©, are not 'problems to be solved' any more than dirtiness is a problem to be solved for Dove. The 'threats' are, in fact, the center of the whole marketing campaign, and the threats themselves are manufactured. There's always been 'oriental despots' everywhere, but what does that have to do with someone in America, whose treasury you're trying to loot? Nothing really, unless marketing puts them on the mental map before the bombs do. The more problems the better when you're in the 'solutions' business. Luckily both demand and supply can be manufactured, if you're a terrible human.

It's also much better if your solutions don't actually work. The bombs just need to look like they work, so the suckers keep buying more. Thus America creates more terrorism everywhere they go to 'eliminate terrorism' (like in AFRICOM). Why the fuck would they want to eliminate terrorism? This would be like Dove eliminating dirt. They're homicidal, not suicidal.

America loses repeatedly to nouns (terrorism, drugs, poverty) because they're ultimately about numbers, everything else is just marketing. There is no sincerity in the American news any more than during the commercials. They are no more sincere about human rights and democracy than Coke is sincere about you having a good time with your friends. They're just trying to sell you something, death in different dosages.

It's really blood simple, a term Joel Coen used for a movie I didn't watch, based on a book I haven't read. Coen told Time Out, "It's an expression he used to describe what happens to somebody psychologically once they've committed murder. They go 'blood simple' in the slang sense of 'simple,' meaning crazy. But it's left up to the audience to ponder the implications; they're never spelled out in the film itself." America was founded on murder, they live and die by murder, and when they inherited the British 'license to kill' post WWII, they went fully blood simple.

What undoes the military industrial complex is not the blood, however, but the simple. American weapons, once honed on actual adversaries in World Wars have been unhoned massacring defenseless civilians. They've gotten really good at bombing people without air defenses and now find themselves losing to actual peers in Russia, actual badasses in Yemen, and actually unable to face Iran and China directly. The military industrial complex never had to work (as mentioned, it's better if it doesn't) but it had to appear to work, and now appearances are no longer deceiving. The White Empire (NATO, all those bitches) has lost a huge land battle to Russia, a huge naval battle to Yemen, and no longer has air superiority over its most superior colony, 'Israel'.

Whereas it took America decades to lose in Vietnam and Afghanistan, they're losing in years to Russia and Iran, far too little time to run the scam. Now it actually looks like a scam and, worst of all, they're expending too many munitions to even resupply them. The thing with a bust-out is that you actually cannibalize the business, which is what America has done to the military industrial complex. Whereas they used to actually manufacture shells and ships, now they barely manufacture shit. They got fat on 10 year contracts delivering million dollar missiles that don't work and are stuck when facing skinny Yemen in a hot war.

Even if anyone was buying the bullshit of American military superiority anymore, they're not selling it. The stocks might go up for a bit, but they don't have stock. They are at, as discussed, the end of the bust-out. America can still print money but they can't print bullets, and now their credit's looking shaky also. What was once a manufactured fraud has become a pure financial fraud. The deranged demand for war is still there, but Empire can no longer arrange the production to complete the vicious loop, they were losing wars forever, but now they're losing them too fast. They can't keep up the illusion. Thus the vicious circle becomes a death spiral. They're going down more ugly than ever, but make no mistake, America is in the midst of a long retreat, not a resurgence.

All that's left is the dénouement of every bust-out. As Henry Hill said, "and then finally, when there's nothing left, and when you can't borrow another buck from the bank [coming] or buy another case of booze, you bust the joint out. You light a match." And thus finally, from this perspective, Trump is not some aberration. He is the historical arsonist, arriving right on schedule.

3. HarmonyOS–The OS To Unite All OSes, and Untie From The West

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I've been slowly decolonizing my digital, but as commenters often say, yet you're typing this on an iPhone. It's stupid but true. Whatever software you use, the hardware itself is insecure, down to the kernel, which can quite possibly explode in your hands. Meanwhile, the border Gestapo have machines to hoover up Apple and Android data (with your passcode, or do not pass Go) and the Cloud Gestapo infests Mac and Windows too. Any security is superficial as long as you remain in the imperial tech stack, which goes all the way down. There is no alternative to the designated alternatives or at least, there wasn't, until now.

Like some freak event isolating finches onto an island where they evolve into a new species, Huawei was cut out of the imperial IT system, their executive abducted in the 51st state, and they were otherwise told to fuck off and die years ago. But they did not roll over. Huawei (a Chinese, employee-owned company) had an 'all-scenario' strategy brewing and they got cooking. Their idea was HarmonyOS, an operating system not just for smartphones, but for computers, cars, watches, TVs, whatever you could throw at it. This was not merely a replacement Android but another idea entirely.

All the old OSes evolved in a different world where computers and phones were very different beasts and watches and TVs and cars were not even thought of. But to people today these are all just screens, hiding a spaghetti western of operating systems and crude hacks keeping the illusion going. It's often a huge operation connecting your phone to a car, or moving a movie to a TV, and nevermind controlling the thing with your watch, because the system isn't designed to operate that way. You can find crude hacks or apps to make these things work, but nothing is designed to 'just work' this way, you have to go way back into the technologies evolutionary history to do this, ie start over. Which was precisely the opportunity given to Huawei by its extradition from the imperial ecosystem.

Because Huawei was cast out of the walled garden, they got an evolutionary opportunity. They could design an OS for this century instead of one permanently rooted to the old. I'm not saying that HarmonyOS magically solves these problems, but they are able to address the problems at a much more fundamental level because they are starting over. They could imagine what integrated OSes would mean from the ground up, rather than building rickety skybridges between existing skyscrapers, each holding millions of people, all screaming if you move one bit of furniture. Thus, besides being just an iOS/Android alternative, HarmonyOS is actually an iOS/Mac/watchOS/TV OS/CarPlay/Android/Windows/Chrome/WearOS/Android TV/Android Automotive alternative. One pipe instead of spaghetti soup. This is not actually a replacement or a copy, it's something entirely new.

I've been impatiently watching the evolution of Huawei's HarmonyOS for years (I want out), and it's finally borne full fruit. Every Huawei phone shipping (in China at least) is running HarmonyOS this year, along with most tablets, watches, some cars, and now computers. HarmonyOS has evolved around artificial US sanctions, yes, but also around the artificial separation between different OS types (computer, phone, car, etc). The OS is not so much about discord with the US as it is harmony across devices. This is new, and it's real now too. HarmonyOS already has more market share than Apple (phones) in China and the international versions should be coming soon.

HarmonyOS also changes the developer environment dramatically. I have, in another life, tried developed apps for phones (which like a two-person team) and it's difficult. At the time we made iOS, Android, and Windows Phone apps, and all were a pain in the ass to keep going as a single product. We also had a website running on completely different technology, whereas smartwatches and Smart TVs were not even thought of. And I can't imagine stuff now. The tech stack has turned into spaghetti soup. In yet another life we tried to do Smart TV development and that was a rats nest also. Even within TVs there were like six OSes, and backwards compatibility was wildly unreliably. Looking at all this it was like, damn, someone should just start over. Which is what Huawei has done. It's hard getting developers onto a new system but, honestly, developers more than anybody want one.

HarmonyOS harmonizes the OSes, at least within the huge and varied Huawei ecosystem. For years you've been able to theoretically build stuff that's "developed once, across devices," but now you can practically do it. These devices are being sold some, like the trifold phone, in massive numbers. HarmonyOS is a viable competitor to the two OSes that infest every product category because it competes in all of them. It negates the competitive disadvantage it has in any one sector by attacking all of them. They don't just replace the old user experience, they create a new one.

The simplest manifestation I've seen is that you can move files from a phone to a computer with hand gestures. But Huawei is a 'decoupled OS', it's not tied to any device type, so you could do much more than this. "Virtualized hardware" means that an app could agnostically a Bluetooth speaker, an external camera, sensors, a computing power from other devices at the OS level, not from a user hacking them all together. What does this mean, practically? I dunno, I could at least get a movie from my computer to my TV faster than just downloading it from the Internet, the way it is now with Airdrop.

And, more to the point, I could drop out out of the western tech ecosystem entirely, and legitimately type this not on an iPhone or a MacBook, and shut that one (reincarnating) internet commenter up forever. The guys on AliExpress will flash HarmonyOS onto Pura or Mate Huawei phones now, or I may just reverse Faxian to get the scriptures from the East this time round.

4. Word War Infinity

After America made its bones on World War II, they never gave up that filthy lucre. Eisenhower gave a warning which was really an advertisement. The military industrial complex took over. 'After' WWII, America kept waging war on the whole world, including a war on the English language. Here we'll discuss how they massacred the language I learned as a boy, and used it to hide the worst war crimes in the best marketing.

America disappeared the word 'war' itself after 1945. We still use the word, of course, but who cares what we say? We cannot declare war, we can just say it. And America never declared war again. As part of the same, quite successful, cover up, the American Department of War became the Department of Defense in 1949. Because the world belonged to them now, and the only offense was resistance. As that bitch Winston Churchill said, "the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old." It came as he foretold, though of course his idea of liberation was subjugation for everyone else in the world. That's how it unfolded.

America took up the white supremacists burden after World War II, assimilating Nazis into NATO and nuking entire cities to put the fear of Great Satan into the USSR. Finishing Hitler's world war against communists was branded the 'Cold War', which is just how white people feel about wars in the rest of the world. Again, since 1950 and 1969, the word war became verboten. Truman called the Korean War a 'police action' and Johnson got a blank cheque to 'maintain international peace' in Vietnam. For bad measure, the term genocide was copyrighted and licensed to 'Israel', to copy forever. It was all the perfect war crime. A White Empire that didn't exist, waging wars that never happened. And they would've gotten away with it too, were it not for the blasted Palestinians.

America is obviously evil now, you can see it every day if you open your eyes to the holocaust currently happening in Gaza. However, the idea that America was always this evil is still a bit dissonant to people. They still think as that slick war criminal Bill Clinton said that, "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America," which is like curing cancer with cancer. This cognitive dissonance is because we've been bombarded with relentless post-war propaganda and live in dark of movies more than the white hole of reality that we're currently spiralling down into.

Remember that America whited-out the Soviets actually beating the Nazis. Also see that America assimilated and became Nacis, what I call National Capitalists. Killing commies and getting the Jews out of Europe was Hitler's fever dream, and the Americans did it for him. For his part, Hitler became the American Antichrist, he died for their sins, so they could sin eternally. Hitler was just the heel, in American wrestling terms, of the white boot stomping on a human face forever, as George Orwell put it.

Like in American wrestling, the fix was always in, and they 'fixed' the English language so you couldn't even talk about it coherently. What words do we even use? War was never declared again, and American Empire itself is omertà. I came up with the name White Empire because to us on the bottom, it's all the same thing, just crazy white people colonizing us, but everyone calls American Empire different names, and this gives it a great power. The power of invisibility.

All the endless war just blends into the background like nothing at all, a bunch of news stories with no context, a series of 'conflicts' that come out of nowhere, a bunch of crime scenes where America always appears, but just helping out. The truth is that since World War II never ended we have lived through an endless American war against the world which isn't even called cold anymore, they've lost all feeling entirely.

However, if you feel something for Palestine you must logically feel it for Iraq, and Korea, and Vietnam, and all the hundreds of peoples attacked in this world war, some over and over. Extend your feelings about the present through the past, and you will find the dead crying out to you in multitudes. America is literally built on an Indian graveyard, the place is completely and irredeemably haunted. To my own shame, this has all been written about a lot, the white-out only works if you don't look around. To start, I'd suggest taking all of Empire's condemnations as reading recommendations, this usually works out. It is possible and indeed necessary to rewrite history, even if you barely have words to grasp at. Palestine is where all the myths of a caring American Empire come to die, the idea that they fight against genocide and that they ended the world war, instead of continuing it to this day and, unfortunately, tomorrow.

Now here comes the radicalization part, if you're ready for it. Mashallah, the best of men of the Resistance are writing a new history in their precious red blood, along with many innocents from the gentle population. The old and dying empire is literally trying to kill the future in Palestine, by killing so many children. But as Vladimir Putin said, referring to the historical White Empire, "They are used to, for centuries, stuffing their bellies with human flesh and their pockets with money. But they need to understand that their vampire's ball is coming to an end."

Next episode we'll discuss how. It's really military industrial simple.

I say next episode because I uploaded this as a TikTok but it got community guidelined. I'm just trying that out, I'll upload it sliced up there if you're interested.

5. The Two Contradictions Of Nacism

National Capitalism (Nacism) is the idea that capitalists should run nations. As we reach the 'into the ground' part of that calculation, the whole project is plagued by two glaring contradictions. If capitalism is the best, how can it get better? If communism is the worst, why get redder? Master Sun said you need to know both yourself and your enemy, and Nacis know neither. Mazer Rackham said the enemy is your teacher, but the Nacis have dropped out of history class to smoke their own propaganda. Thus they end up like the Nazis of yore, genociding pointlessly and retreating from Russians. Unable to resolve their contradictions, the Nacis become one. A dead man walking, whistling through the graveyard of better people.

The First Contradiction Is No Contradictions

In 1989, Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history, calling time saying "the fundamental principles of socio-political organization have not advanced terribly far since 1806." He declared National Capitalism the last ideology standing, and said it would be a thousand years right. Describing the ideal Naci state, Fukuyama said, "We might summarize the content of the universal homogenous state as liberal democracy in the political sphere combined with easy access to VCRs and stereos in the economic." So really just the Nazi Axis again, with the Japanese safely nuked into submission.

Fukuyama dismissed contradictions entirely saying "surely, the class issue has actually been successfully resolved in the West." This was laughable when he wrote it, and should be a riot today. Fukuyama also said, "Are there, in other words, any fundamental "contradictions" in human life that cannot be resolved in the context of modern liberalism, that would be resolvable by an alternative political-economic structure?" Like an over-confident American at a job interview, Fukuyama said, essentially, our only contradiction is that we have no contradictions.

This belief in no contradictions leads to one big contradiction, which is that you actually do have contradictions, you're just not paying attention. America actually does have class issues, it does have cash issues, it has the same issues any other society has, and none of them disappeared by virtue of the USSR falling over. That was a different country a continent away, America didn't cause the fall of the USSR and they're not immune to the effects of ideological sclerosis themselves. Competition with the USSR had, in fact, motivated the USA; fear of socialism led to many of their social programs, and the productive power of socialism inspired their own production. The fall of their competitor was the worst thing that happened to them, they stopped competing after that. Without the USSR, the USA was like Larry Bird without Magic Johnson. They honestly didn't know what to do with themselves, and retired in pain shortly afterwards.

Since the end of the Cold War (actually a hot war for colored people), America has been pointlessly dunking on Muslims in a long genocide now culminating in Gaza, pointlessly punking Russia in a conflict now fulminating in Ukraine, and pointedly dumping Japan for China, a trade now terminating in trade war. Now that great power conflict has resumed, however, America discovers that they're not a great power anymore. Their proxy army is beaten by Russia, their paltry navy is beaten by Yemen, their pussy air force is only good for bombing children from afar, and their pathetic economy is beaten by China. The Nacis are catching a righteous beating, and you can't say they didn't have it coming. They're still trying to cross the bar to hit China but can't even get there without everyone else hitting them first.

Like the hare losing the race to sleeps, America thought the space race gave them the earth for keeps. In your dreams. The Nacis thus fell into the worst of contradictions, which is thinking that you have none (only true for the deceased, or about to be). This leads to all sorts of diseased thinking, and morbid symptoms (now is the time of morons). Worst importantly, it leads to stasis, which is death for any organism that must adapt or die.

But why improve ideologically, if all other ideologies are disproven? Why progress historically if history is over? Why hedge your bets at all if you're hegemon? This is how the end of history became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The capitalist hare fell asleep thinking no way the commie tortoise could outrun them, and now it's too late. All they can do is cry foul and blame the judges for a race they set and just slept through of their own accord. Thus the first lesson of the first contradiction is this. If you rest on your laurels, they soon enough become a funerary wreath soon enough.

Catchecism-22

The Nacis second contradiction is that they need direct government intervention to beat the commies, but they can't because that would make them commies. America has made the very idea of governance seem communist and a bit gay, which makes them ungovernable. All the US government can do is give money away to rich people and hope that some invisible hand compels them to do something useful, which it doesn't, it's just giving everyone the finger while pocketing the difference. Sometimes government has to 'just do it' themselves, but private companies have trademarked the very phrase and you just can't. Even Naci dicktators can't do much directly, just raise tariffs on a spreadsheet. They can't even control interest rates cause that's run by a private banking cartel (the Fed is not, in fact, federal). America has been dismantling the very idea of government for decades and now they get what they wished for. The place is ungovernable and the people are helpless.

In 1986, America's patron Satan said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." This has become a capitalist catechism, what I call Catechism-22. The basic idea is that governing itself is suspiciously communist. 'Small government' has been the animating principle of American politics since the 1980s and they haven't had an original idea since. They just keep reanimating Reagan in different forms, and he was just a phony spokesman in the first place.

Remember that every US President since 1980 has been a pale Reagan impersonator, including Reagan himself. From senile Reagan to venal Reagan now, it's all Reagan, all the way down. Like the astronaut from Ohio said, always has been. America was always by the money, for the money, and everything else was just marketing. At the beginning, rich people thought they should keep their money from the king using 'the people', and now they want to keep their money from the people using a king. Americans pretend like they follow a leader, but America has always followed the money. This does not really connect to anything but I'm keeping it because the lines are good.

To return to the party line, Catechism-22 states that governing itself is communist and quite possibly gay. You want to have as small a government as possible, small enough to drown in a bathtub as Grover Norquist said. The catch is that America needs, nay, requires government programs to beat the communists, but they can't do it because that would make them fucking communists! As the book Catch-22 goes, "Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle. "That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "It's the best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed."

The Catch-22 of the book was that you had to stop flying bombing runs if you were crazy, but if you wanted to stop those suicidal raids you were obviously not crazy and had to do it. Catechism-22 is that America has to do government programs to beat the commies, but if they want to do government programs they are commies and have to beat themselves up over it.

Hence the venal Reagan, Donald Trump is caught in all sorts of contradictions. He wants to rebuild manufacturing without building a single factory. He wants to refine rare earths without building a single refinery. He wants to reorient the entire workforce, but without hiring people. Governments can actually just do things, but that idea has been trademarked by Nike and you just can't. All they can do is motivate rich people with money or poor people with poverty, psychological experiments on entire populations without consent or even a coherent theory. They do they worst and hope for the best and call this economics. Nacis can't do anything directly because that would imply a nation not run by capitalists, which isn't Nacism, which is the best ever, as mentioned.

The End Of The End Of History

The USA's ideological rigidity becomes its undoing just as it was for the USSR. It's not necessarily the content but being overly content that leads to ruin. As Isabella Weber said (in How China Escaped Shock Therapy),

In fact, we may observe a parallel between the idealization of the planned economy in Soviet Marxism, where the whole national economy was imagined to function as one centrally planned factory, and the idealization of a market economy underlying the shock therapy approach. While the two theoretical approaches oppose one another on the question of the superiority of a plan or a market as a regulating mechanism, they are united in striving for an optimal, rational economy.

China, on the other hand, learned the opposite lesson from the collapse of the USSR. They learned that they had to change, and they had to learn, from whatever source. So at the same time America was rolling and smoking its laurels, China was working hard at 'reform and opening up', using Marxism as a living science instead of a dying dogma. As Xi Jinping said at Karl Marx's 200th birthday party,

Approaching scientific theories requires a scientific attitude. Engels once made the profound point that, "Marx's whole way of thinking is not so much a doctrine as a method. It provides not so much readymade dogmas, as aids to further investigation and the method for such investigation."  Engels also noted that theories "[are] a historical product, which at different times assumes very different forms and, therewith, very different contents." The basic principles of scientific socialism cannot be discarded; once discarded it would cease to be socialism. Likewise, scientific socialism is not an immutable dogma. I once said that China's great social transformation is not a masterplate from which we simply continue our history and culture, nor a pattern from which we mechanically apply the ideas of classic Marxist authors, nor a reprint of the practice of socialism in other countries, nor a duplicate of modernization from abroad. There is no orthodox, immutable version of socialism. It is only by closely linking the basic principles of scientific socialism with a country's specific realities, history, cultural traditions, and contemporary needs, and by continually conducting inquiries and reviews in the practice of socialism, that a blueprint can become a bright reality.

The vitality of theory is in its continued innovation, and promoting the continued development of Marxism is the sacred duty of Chinese Communists. We need to be persistent in wielding Marxism to observe and decipher the world today and lead us through it, applying the lively and plentiful experiences drawn from contemporary China to drive the development of Marxism, and utilizing an extensive worldview to draw on the civilizational achievements of all of humankind. We need to be persistent in protecting our foundations while constantly innovating to continually outdo ourselves, and learning widely from the strengths of others to continually improve ourselves.

Personally, I have read a lot about China (and Weber's book a lot of times) to try and learn China's 'masterplate' to apply to my own basket case country (Sri Lanka). But as Xi said, it doesn't work like that. You cannot assume that there is some end state of development, unless you aspire to dénouement, and you cannot stop learning and adapting, unless you aspire to denial. Like the Buddha's path through misery, Marxism offers a path through history, but you have to walk it with your own feet and your eyes open to the endless changes around you. As Darwin didn't say, "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change."

Contradictions, in this sense, are not something to be avoided, but the very engine of adaptation, the polarity of power, what motivates a society to change along with its changing environment. Like pain, contradictions teach us about our environment and how to move away from what hurts and towards what's good. If you think you've eliminated contradictions you've just gone numb and your toes are about to start falling off. And if you think you've nothing to learn, especially from your enemies, you've already gone dumb and the fall has already begun.

How do you reason with such unreason? How do you logic such illogic? Nacism is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a fortune cookie which they daren't open cause it's Chinese. The National Capitalists could learn something from their mortal enemy, communism, but that would make them fucking commies, so they'd rather die stupid. The Nacis could learn from history, but they already declared an end to it, and cannot open a book they've already burned. All they can do is unload high-powered weaponry on children in a vain attempt to kill the future but the future, inshallah, comes. Nacism cannot resolve contradictions it doesn't admit with tools it will not use. So it goes the way of Nazism. To the historical dustbin, forsooth, but unfortunately not soon enough.

6. Interview With Donald Trump (1987)

@indi.ca8

An interview with Donald Trump, 1987, using an AI cloned voice and his ghostwritten book, The Art of The Deal

♬ original sound - indi.ca

Hello, I'm indi.ca and welcome to the first edition of Literal Book Talks, where I use demonic AI to talk to books. Today we're going to interview Donald Trump from 1987, as published in the book Art Of The Deal. But before we get to the unholy ghost, let's talk to his ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz.

indi.ca: So Tony, how much of this book did Donald write?

Schwartz: I seriously doubt that Trump has ever read a book straight through in his adult life.

indi.ca: So how much of this is Trump? How much is 'true'? How much can we read into a book by a man who doesn't read?

Schwartz: I put lipstick on a pig. More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.

Trump has been written about a thousand ways from Sunday, but this fundamental aspect of who he is doesn't seem to be fully understood. It's implicit in a lot of what people write, but it's never explicit—or, at least, I haven't seen it. And that is that it's impossible to keep him focussed on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement, for more than a few minutes, and even then...

indi.ca: Lol, OK. So understand that we're talking to a facsimile of a liar, not the actual spirit of Donald Trump, which was hocked to the devil long ago. So let's bring on our main guest and start the show.

Hello, Donald Trump 1987, as published in The Art Of The Deal and reincarnated through demonic AI. How's it hanging Ghost Trump?

Trump: You're the greatest!

indi.ca: Thank you. Now, you're President of the United States. Who saw that coming? Well, maybe you did. For reference, here's you talking to Larry King in 1987.

0:00 /19:21 1×

Now here you are, the proverbial dog who caught the car. In order to interrogate you further, I've actually used this clip to clone your voice.

So, zombie Trump, now that your disensouled body has become President twice, what do you think of your predecessors?

Trump: I think of Jimmy Carter. After he lost the election to Ronald Reagan, Carter came to see me in my office. He told me he was seeking contributions to the Jimmy Carter Library. I asked how much he had in mind. And he said, "Donald, I would be very appreciative if you contributed five million dollars."

I was dumbfounded. I didn't even answer him.

But that experience also taught me something. Until then, I'd never understood how Jimmy Carter became president. The answer is that as poorly qualified as he was for the job, Jimmy Carter had the nerve, the guts, the balls, to ask for something extraordinary. That ability above all helped him get elected president. But then, of course, the American people caught on pretty quickly that Carter couldn't do the job, and he lost in a landslide when he ran for reelection.

Ronald Reagan is another example. He is so smooth and so effective a performer that he completely won over the American people. Only now, nearly seven years later, are people beginning to question whether there's anything beneath that smile.

indi.ca: How long do you think you'll get away with it?

Trump: You can't con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don't deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.

indi.ca: Why are you even doing this? Someone in the comments said their dog actually caught a car once, it was a convertible and they jumped in. But then, of course, it had no idea what to do. I guess it was just exciting? Is it the same feeling for you?

Trump: The real excitement is playing the game. I don't spend a lot of time worrying about what I should have done differently, or what's going to happen next. If you ask me exactly what the deals I'm about to describe all add up to in the end, I'm not sure I have a very good answer. Except that I've had a very good time making them.

Why, everyone said to me, would I even consider this deal? For one reason only: I believed that, managed well, it had the potential to earn a ton of money.

indi.ca: Reading your book, it sounds like you have some obvious daddy issues. I remember when you first won the Presidency, you thanked your parents like it was a prize you won, like they'd approve of you from hell. For reference, I'd like to briefly introduce the ghost of Philip Larkin here, reading his famous poem, which I think applies to White people, but not cross-culturally.

Larkin:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   
    They may not mean to, but they do.   
They fill you with the faults they had
    And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   
Who half the time were soppy-stern
    And half at one another's throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
    It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
    And don't have any kids yourself.

indi.ca: So, how fucked up is you Donald? How was your relationship with your father?

Trump: We had a relationship that was almost businesslike. I sometimes wonder if we'd have gotten along so well if I hadn't been as business-oriented as I am.

indi.ca: But your father basically drove your brother to drink and death right? What happened to Fredo Trumpeon?

Trump: My older brother, Freddy, the first son, had perhaps the hardest time in our family. My father is a wonderful man, but he is also very much a business guy and strong and tough as hell. My brother was just the opposite. Handsome as could be, he loved parties and had a great, warm personality and a real zest for life. He didn't have an enemy in the world. Naturally, my father very much wanted his oldest son in the business, but unfortunately, business just wasn't for Freddy. He went to work with my father reluctantly, and he never had a feel for real estate. He wasn't the kind of guy who could stand up to a killer contractor or negotiate with a rough supplier. Because my father was so strong, there were inevitably confrontations between the two of them. In most cases, Freddy came out on the short end.

indi.ca: Yeah, so Fredo quit to become an airline pilot which he seemed to enjoy, but your dad made fun of him and the working class in general by calling him a bus driver, dismissively. Fred's daughter Mary was largely cut out of the will. And, incidentally, before your current national fraud, the amount you inherited, if invested in index funds would have made you as wealthy as all your running around. Anyways, Mary, who said your dad, whose name was actually Frederick Christ Trump, was a real piece of work. She said that this anti-Christ "dismantled [her dad] by devaluing and degrading every aspect of his personality." What did you do while this was going on?

Trump: I can remember saying to him, even though I was eight years younger, "Come on, Freddy, what are you doing? You're wasting your time." I regret now that I ever said that.

indi.ca: OK, spare me the psychoanalysis, actually. That actually seems to benefit psychos. I'm sure your dad would be proud. You're both dicks. What do you even know about the world to try running it?

Trump: When I'm in another city and I take a cab, I'll always make it a point to ask the cabdriver questions. I ask and I ask and I ask, until I begin to get a gut feeling about something. And that's when I make a decision. I have learned much more from conducting my own random surveys than I could ever have learned from the greatest of consulting firms.

I also had a good time when I went out at night, I was working. I met a lot of very successful, very wealthy men at Le Club. I was learning how the New York scene operates and I was meeting the sort of people with whom I'd eventually work on deals. I also met the sort of wealthy people, particularly Europeans and South Americans, who eventually bought the most expensive apartments in Trump Tower and Trump Plaza.

indi.ca: So are these rich people your point of reference for the international economy?

Trump: The cycles of buyers at Trump Tower became something of a barometer of what was going on in the international economy. At first, the big buyers were the Arabs, when oil prices were going through the roof. Then, of course, oil prices fell and the Arabs went home. In 1981, we got a sudden wave of buyers from France. I wasn't sure why, but then I realized the reason was that François Mitterrand had been elected president, and anyone smart and wealthy realized immediately that Mitterrand was going to hurt the French economy. It wasn't just that he was a socialist.

After the European cycle, we got the South Americans and the Mexicans, when the dollar was weak and their economies still seemed fairly strong. Then, when inflation set in, their currencies were devalued, and their governments tried to restrict the outflow of cash, that cycle ended.

indi.ca: So what you're doing now is ending what Ray Dalio would call a supercycle, which affects American finance bros. In the 1980s, did you see those guys coming up?

Trump: During the past several years, we've had two new groups buying. One is American—specifically, Wall Street types, brokers and investment bankers who've made instant fortunes during the bull market frenzy.

indi.ca: As a real estate guy, what do you think of these finance guys?

It's ridiculous, when you think about it. You get stockbrokers, barely twenty-five years old, who suddenly earn $600,000 a year because clients they've never met call up and say, "I'll take fifty thousand shares of General Motors." The broker pushes a button on a computer and, presto, he's got a huge commission. As soon as the stock market falls out—which it will, because it too runs in cycles—most of these guys will be out on the street looking for work.

indi.ca: As a politician you're complaining about China cheating America, but this has always been your basic idea of foreign policy. Your policy has always been that foreigners are ripping America off. So what did you have to say in the 80s, about other Asians?

Trump: I have great respect for what the Japanese have done with their economy, but for my money they are often very difficult to do business with. For starters, they come in to see you in groups of six or eight or even twelve, and so you've got to convince all of them to make any given deal. You may succeed with one or two or three, but it's far harder to convince all twelve. In addition, they rarely smile and they are so serious that they don't make doing business fun. Fortunately, they have a lot of money to spend, and they seem to like real estate. What's unfortunate is that for decades now they have become wealthier in large measure by screwing the United States with a self-serving trade policy that our political leaders have never been able to fully understand or counteract.

indi.ca: Yes, so this is the same thing you blame the Chinese for now. As Pink Floyd said, all in all, it's just another chink in the wall.

Anyways, with decelerating trade and accelerating genocide you're really changing the face of the world. Reading your old stuff it's surprising how much your beliefs and practices are actually very consistent, I think people are just surprised that you're actually doing it. Can you explain your plan?

Trump: I never had a master plan. I just got fed up one day and decided to do something about it. The most important influence on me growing up was my father. I learned, get in, get it done, get it done right, and get out.

indi.ca: So what does getting out mean? From the outside, it looks like you're dump-and-pumping the whole US economy. Aren't you running the country like a casino?

Trump: I like the casino business. I like the scale, which is huge, I like the glamour, and most of all, I like the cash flow. If you know what you are doing and you run your operation reasonably well, you can make a very nice profit. If you run it very well, you can make a ton of money.

I've never had any great moral problems with gambling because most of the objections seem hypocritical to me. The New York Stock Exchange happens to be the biggest casino in the world. The only thing that makes it different from the average casino is that the players dress in blue pinstripe suits and carry leather briefcases. If you allow people to gamble in the stock market, where more money is made and lost than in all the casinos of the world put together, I see nothing terribly different about permitting people to bet on blackjack or craps or roulette.

indi.ca: What about all the lawyer politicians and politcal committees and political consultants trying to stop you?

Trump: I don't like lawyers. I think all they do is delay deals, instead of making deals, and every answer they give you is no, and they are always looking to settle instead of fight. Roy Cohn said he agreed with me. I liked that and so then I said, "I'm just not built that way. I'd rather fight than fold, because as soon as you fold once, you get the reputation of being a folder."

To me, committees are what insecure people create in order to put off making hard decisions. I like consultants even less than I like committees. When it comes to making a smart decision, the most distinguished planning committee working with the highest-priced consultants doesn't hold a candle to a group of guys with a reasonable amount of common sense and their own money on the line.

indi.ca: What about your sinking approval ratings?

Trump: You can probably guess how much stock I put in polls.

indi.ca: Aren't you making things more complicated? For example, you're trying to negotiate over 180 trade deals separately, including with penguins, who are notoriously fishy. However, the World Trade Organization exists, and gave America plenty of control for decades. Why are you over-complicating things?

Trump: I have an almost perverse attraction to complicated deals, partly because they tend to be more interesting, but also because it is more likely you can get a good price on a difficult deal. That's just my makeup. I fight when I feel I'm getting screwed, even if it's costly and difficult and highly risky.

indi.ca: Who are people even supposed to be negotiating with?

If you're going to make a deal of any significance, you have to go to the top. You're better off dealing with a total killer with real passion. When he says no, sometimes you can talk him out of it. You rant and you rave, and he rants and raves back, and you end up making a deal. But when a machine says no, it's very tough.

indi.ca: Besides trade, you're also continuing the American genocide of Palestine. How is that a good deal?

My original plan was very straightforward. We'd let the tenants know that we intended to eventually demolish the building. Then we'd offer them help in finding suitable new apartments, as well as cash incentives to move.

indi.ca: So Hamas, being heroes, actually refused huge cash offers to give up their land and people. How would describe 'Israel's' terror campaign in response?

It happens to be very easy to vacate a building if, like so many landlords, you don't mind being a bad guy. When these landlords buy buildings they intend to vacate, they use corporate names that are difficult to trace. Then they hire thugs to come in with sledgehammers and smash up the boiler, rip out the stairways, and create floods by cutting holes in pipes. They import truckloads of junkies, prostitutes, and thieves and move them into vacant apartments to terrorize holdout tenants.
That's what I call harassment.

indi.ca: Despite all the child killing and mass starvation, you're losing. As Henry Kissinger said, the guerrilla army wins by not losing, and Hamas and Ansarallah and Hezbollah have taken massive damage, but they have not lost. Same for the one free state in the region, Iran. Meanwhile conventional armies in Russia are winning by winning, and China, as the meme goes, does nothing and wins. Everywhere people stand up to you, you fold. How does that work?

Trump: Bullies may act tough, but they're really closet cowards. The only people bullies push around are the ones they know they can beat. Confront a strong, competent person, and he'll fight back harder than ever. Confront a bully, and in most cases he'll fold like a deck of cards.

indi.ca: What are you even doing in Ukraine? You seem to be cutting them down and then expecting them to negotiate with even less leverage?

Trump: I know from my own experience that the only way to get even the best contractor to finish a job on time and on budget is to lean on him very, very hard. You can get any job done through sheer force of will.

indi.ca: You're also shitting on erstwhile allies like occupied Europe? Why?

Trump: Sometimes, part of making a deal is denigrating your competition.

indi.ca: Yes, this comes up in Art Of The Deal a lot, you seem to negotiate by trashing the thing you want to buy, or making it worse. Like when you were trying to buy the land for Trump Tower, or the Commodore Hotel, you seemed to publicly push existing projects to failure before buying them.

Trump: If you want to buy something, it's obviously in your best interest to convince the seller that what he's got isn't worth very much.

indi.ca: In terms of press, your attitude also doesn't seem to have changed. I mean, why fix it if it's not broken.

Trump: I'm a businessman, and I learned a lesson from experience: good publicity is preferable to bad, but from a bottom-line perspective, bad publicity is sometimes better than no publicity at all. Controversy, in short, sells.

One thing I've learned about the press is that they're always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better. It's in the nature of the job, and I understand that. The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.

I'm not saying that they necessarily like me. Sometimes they write positively, and sometimes they write negatively. But from a pure business point of view, the benefits of being written about have far outweighed the drawbacks.

indi.ca: So, before we put this genie back in the bottle, what's next for the world?

Trump: Fortunately, I don't know the answer, because if I did, that would take half the fun out of it. This much I do know: it won't be the same.

indi.ca: And finally, finally, what does it profit you to do all this and lose your own soul?

Trump: I enjoy Mar-a-Lago almost in spite of myself. It may be as close to paradise as I'm going to get.

7. Everybody Doesn't Want To Rule The World

I was playing Bananagrams with a British guy and he said someone's got to take over the world after America and I said why? Just because there have been multiple reincarnations of White Empire doesn't mean we can't have multiple civilizations like the rest of history. Even the idea of China replacing America as hegemon is an American idea that needs replacing. The idea that someone must sit astride history yelling stop, like Francis Fukuyama did. If you read China directly, they just don't think like this and never did. Anyways, the guy beat me at Bananagrams. Stupid English language.

The Chinese Perspective

China had better naval technology for a naval empire in the 1600s and just didn't. China came to Sri Lanka, gave us stuff, and then fucked off because they weren't interested. Maintaining a naval empire was a pain in the ass and expensive and they didn't need it. Broke-ass Europe, however, was already a pain in the ass to itself, and needed new places to extort for the solar energy (leading to racism, if you'd like a digression). It's important to remember Europeans were looking for India and China. Because that's where the wealth was. We weren't looking for them, nor were we colonizing each other. The world is simply returning to this mean, which cruel Europeans still cannot conceive. Just minding your own damn business.

As Zhou Bo (Tsinghua University) said in a recent interview (shout out Karl Sanchez for his great and diverse sourcing),

Zhou Bo: if you simply define the "world order" as a so-called "liberal international order", it is actually a kind of historical myopia. Because if you really look at it that way, it's a bit like living in a Francis Fukuyama-esque world – the world where "history ends."

Geraldine: So you mean, it's actually a Western-imposed worldview, right?

Zhou Bo: Yes, the so-called "liberal international order" only looked like that at best, during the period when the Soviet Union collapsed and China had not yet fully emerged. But if you really believe in that order, it's easy to fall into narcissism; as soon as you find that you are no longer strong, you will start looking for "enemies". This is actually very dangerous. But if you believe that this world order is a collection of civilizations, then you ask yourself: How do I coexist with others? Yes, the so-called "liberal international order" only looked like that at best, during the period when the Soviet Union collapsed and China had not yet fully emerged. But if you really believe in that order, it's easy to fall into narcissism; as soon as you find that you are no longer strong, you will start looking for "enemies". This is actually very dangerous. But if you believe that this world order is a collection of civilizations, then you ask yourself: How do I coexist with others?

His Australian interlocutors simply could not get this. Some dude named Hamish said, "China wants to be a major global power, so why not exert influence in its relationship with Russia to bring about an end to the war in Ukraine?" Zhou responded "That's because you're looking at this issue from a European perspective. And when China looks at this relationship, it must first look at it from a bilateral perspective." Zhou went onto relate Russia's very real security concerns about NATO, going back to the end of history, but the Australians are still stuck there. They don't know when to begin. So the ham-fisted Hamish said, "I don't think we can resolve this difference of opinion in this episode," because they simply cannot understand differences of opinion. They think everyone must be like them or they're just wrong. As Zhou said, it's "easy to fall into narcissism," and westerners are literally drowning in their own reflection.

Oriental Despots

I was talking to someone else in the comments here and they said China, Russia, and Iran are autocracies where people can't speak freely. This dissection of the world into democracies and autocracies was always nastily narcissistic (they hate us for our freedom) and now it's just nasty. There's a whole-ass genocide going on, and you want me to believe people talking out their asses? As a great Iraqi said, if Satan came and was fighting America I would be with Satan, because America is the Great Satan! I can travel to China, Russia, and Iran freely, but would be arrested in America (I'm a big Hamas supporter). Just note that supporting the resistance against genocide is banned in the West, whereas the group is not proscribed in most of the world. That's free speech for you, on the most important subject that matters.

Westerners think they know other countries because they hear their names a lot, but they rarely (if ever) read them directly. Their self-aggrandizing and propagandizing media constantly repeats names and memes about other countries and never lets other people speak for themselves. They're really just sniffing their own brain farts and, as the saying goes, he who smelt it dealt it. Westerners casually deny the most basic pre-condition for conversation, which is respect. They don't even talk to the rest of the world, they just talk about.

If you treat China, Russia, and Iran as civilizations—that is, with civility—you can actually learn something. Vladimir Putin and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are historical figures with deep historical knowledge, they're worth engaging with especially if you consider them enemies. Once you do engage with them, it's hard not to respect them and you definitely learn something, these are philosopher kings compared to the sound-bite simpletons that pass for western leaders. Westerners talk about free speech, but these 'autocratic' leaders have given their people the most basic condition for free speech, which is freedom from western domination. Westerners are so narcissistic that they only want to see mirrors, and are deeply confused and angered when they see other faces, saying other things. They want to smash such things, and call the wreckage Freedom™.

Back To China

China, which we'll focus on here, has a much wider range and depth of discussion than the West. There's huge debate within guardrails, but what westerners don't get is that they have guardrails also. The range of platformed perspectives in the West is actually much smaller, with the bullshit just heaped taller. Americans talk about left and right, which is a joke. Their 'left' is hard right anywhere else in the world.

Returning to China, Reading The China Dream 'maps' the intellectual environment into Liberals, New Left (ie Marxists), and New Confucians. This itself is a simplification, but it's already much more diverse than what passes for western thought. The Western debate is all within liberalism (who should we bomb, never should we bomb). The whole culture suffers from a deep historical myopia which confuses repeating the same shit over and over with debate and discussion. You cannot even discuss Marx without unexplaining all the propaganda against him, and he's just a philosopher. You cannot even start a conversation with these people because, again, basic respect is missing.

I was once invited for an interview with an Australian radio station and after talking to me for a minute they were like 'you're not a Marxist, are you?' I was like, 'no, I'm a Buddhist, but I've read Marx,' and that was too much for them. I was uninvited. Westerners don't understand how deeply self-censored their corporate media is. It's just privatized propaganda. The Overton Window of acceptable debate within the West is actually very small. As Noam Chomsky said, "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

Just today, however, I saw a child's hand hanging from a window, where 'Israeli' (re: American) bombs had flung it. We can effectively say that the Overton Window is closed, and people are being openly defenestrated (myself included). Now people are being told that they have to accept and even support genocide, and they always were. And yet actually civilized people must still explain themselves to settler-colonizers, like Australians, who are merely more successful 'Israelis'.

Take, for example, this conversation:

Hamish: So why are Chinese Navy ships circumnavigating Australia? What is the purpose of this? How do we interpret this behavior?

Zhou Bo: Then I should probably remind you why your warships sail so close to China's coastline? And why did your military planes invade the airspace of the Paracel Islands? That's China's airspace. And you've not done this once or twice, but many times.

Hamish: But our official position is that we're ensuring freedom of navigation in international trade lanes. There is a difference between the two.

China is expected to explain itself, but the 'official position' of White Empire (Australia is not a real country) is expected to be self-explanatory. As Bush's brain Karl Rove said, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

This was honestly evil when he said it (in 2004), back when America controlled global navigation, was the world's #1 trading partner, and could command and conquer. But now it's just evil, both wrong and wrong. America today is a vanishing minority of ship building, an astonishing majority of shit-stirring, and cannot control the Red Sea, never mind the South China Sea. Hence Zhou can turn the imperial language back on itself, inquiring politely about the empire's new clothes, or lack thereof.

Zhou Bo: I mean, our ships are also conducting "freedom of navigation" operations around Australia.

Hamish: And what's the purpose?

Zhou Bo: First of all, it's the high seas, and we have the right to sail. There is no international regulation that prohibits us from doing that. In fact, the question should be to ask you: Why did you cross the Taiwan Strait? What are you passing through there for? You don't really have much real trade through there, do you? One-third of your trade is with Chinese mainland, and warships don't need to cross the Taiwan Strait to transport these goods.

Hamish: So you mean, the interpretation that we should get from this is, "You don't do this to us"?

Zhou Bo: I don't think the Chinese government has ever expressed its views in this way, but international law does allow us to do so. But if you can ask yourself, I think that's good for you.

Hamish: (laughs) So let's end here, shall we?

As you can see, the Australians have to keep ending conversations because they're fundamentally incapable of starting them at all. They cannot approach other civilizations with respect at all. Every civilization should either be trying to be like White Empire or they're wrong, and must explain themselves, endlessly, because Empire cannot actually listen and is just looking for an excuse to hit you. The Tears For Fears song goes everybody wants to rule the world, but this is false. Everybody doesn't. Most of the world just wants to be left alone, to fight with our neighbors and family perhaps, but not to get involved in every conflict everywhere all at once. Who has the bandwidth for this? Only these bandits who couldn't stand each other in Europe.

Simply existing where you are is a strange concept for people with a deep 'white hole' at the center of their unsettled colonial souls. This is nonetheless normal and the world is simply returning to the pre-colonial mean, though the cruelty only seems to increase at the end. They leave us a ruined world, literally getting hellishly hot while they incinerate the future, ie children. But the base layer of reality persists underneath, and increasingly on top. As Zhou Bo said, in conclusion, To put it simply, "I believe that the current international order is not fundamentally different from the past: it has always been a collection of different countries, different social systems, different national identities, different cultures, and most importantly, different civilizations." To westerners who can only understand our rhythm and blues through white interlocutors, let me put it even more simply. "Let it be." If you stop asking stupid fucking questions and listen to the world struggling to be free, "There will be an answer, Let it be."

Read Karl Sanchez, generally.

8. Talk Is Cheap: Trump Can't Negotiate Because No One Believes Him

People ask if I've heard the latest thing Donald Trump has said, and my sincere response is, who gives a shit? Not the person who said it, so why should the one who read it? They say whatever they want to say, and change it the next day. We're supposed to hang on every word, like links on a chain. I just don't anymore, and neither do the people they're negotiating with. Unlike and smash unsubscribe.

China, Russia, Iran 0:00 /0:49 1×

China are serious people. When Trump tried to go tit-for-tat they just gave him one slap and left it at that. China raised tariffs once and said, "if the United States continues to impose tariffs on Chinese exports to the United States, China will ignore it." They diplomatically dropped the microphone, and haven't returned Trump's phone calls asking for a phone call since. China said, "Even if the United States continues to impose higher tariffs, it will no longer have economic significance and will become a joke in the history of the world economy." This unusually salty talk from usually staid diplomats. That's how done they are with this bullshit. China produces rare earths while America produces brain farts, who do you think is winning a trade war? The people that trade or the people that tirade? Pick your fighter.

0:00 /1:41 1×

Russia are also serious people. When Trump tried to end a war that started over a decade ago in 24 hours they just didn't, because they're winning on their own terms. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said, "We take the Americans' proposed models and solutions very seriously, but we also cannot accept them as is… Russia cannot accept U.S. proposals to end the war in Ukraine in their current form because they do not solve the problems Moscow considers the cause of the conflict." Talks go on, but the fighting goes on'er, and Ukraine's a goner the longer it goes on like this. Trump is publicly grumping and dumping Ukraine, throwing a monkey wrench into any leverage (we'll get to this). Again, who do you think will win a hot war? The reincarnated Red Army or the deindustrialized West, who can print all the money in the world, but can't buy a clue?

Iran are also serious people. They have serious missiles that can incinerate America's Persian Gulf bases without nukes, by the American military's own admission. America is trying to run their Path To Persia war plan from 2009, which is just nuking the old WMD lie in the media microwave and hope nobody notices. Since we first saw WMD I ago, Iran has advanced everything but the nuke, and proved it in True Promise I, II, and III. Even what passes for serious minds within the Pentagon know that war with Iran would mean losing oil, bases, and just losing, as much as 'Israel' tries to mind control them.

Iran is ready to defend itself, whatever the cost, and simply do not accept Trump as boss of anything except pulling Netanyahu's chair out. Ayatollah Khamenei is an old hand and knows that the Americans are not to be trusted, leaving nothing but broken treaties behind them (just ask the Actual Americans). Khamenei said, "One must not negotiate with a government like the US government," and though the steadfast President Raisi is gone, the Iranians are still not morons. Who do you think will win a Holy War over their own holy land? Those reduced to bombing refugee camps and hospitals, or those defending them?

All of these countries are serious people with serious capabilities that America just ignores because they're thousands of kilometers from their home and have no skin in the game. America uses proxies like prophylactics and throws them in the historical dustbin. The great innovation of America as head of White Empire is figuring out that there's more money in losing wars than winning them. As Vladimir Putin said, "For centuries they have nurtured a habit of feasting on flesh and filling their pockets with money. But they must realize that the 'vampire's ball' has come to an end."

(China, Russia, Iran)

The traditional imperial, vampirical strategy is divide and conquer, and tactically it's still working. They have pit Chinese vs. Chinese in Taiwan, Slav vs. Slav in Ukraine, and Semite vs Semite in Palestine. These tactics might work in isolation, but in combination, it leads to strategic defeat. As former Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in 1997, "Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an "antihegemonic" coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances." An already old Joe Biden mocked this at the time, but who's laughing now? The nations they used to bully have bulked up, and they're pretty fucking aggrieved.

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Today China, Russia, and Iran have superior military technology than America (quantity is its own quantity), especially given home field advantage (defender wins a tie). Combined they're unbeatable, though they haven't Voltroned yet. But get them angry enough and we'll see.

Each of these countries have hypersonic missiles that air defenses cannot stop while America throws avionic fits against defenceless children. Against men in the field, drones in the air, and missiles in the sky, America loses. This is proven. Yemen has got them on the ropes, and Iran, Russia, and China are each an order of magnitude stronger than the one before them. It's 10x, 100x, 1000x difficulty, and America can't get past round one. This goes unheralded but it's historic. Brave Yemen has defeated the top naval empire ever in the Red Sea. They are truly Top-Gs, fighting genocide for the side, Allah surely is pleased.

Home field advantage is huge in warfare. How you fare is very much where you are. In Risk, defender wins a tie because defending is mathematically easier. Remember that Iran, Russia, and China don't have to be stronger than America overall, they just have to be stronger than America in Iran, Russia, and China. Meanwhile America has to be stronger everywhere. America also has to divide (and supply) its forces across two oceans and a sea. And they already lost control of the sea!

Remember that China, Russia, and Iran are defending their own soil, while America offends only the conscience and soils themselves in public. America can destroy hospitals but not Hamas, Ukraine but not Russia, and civilians but not Ansarallah. Remember that Hamas, underneath a concentration camp, has fought the entire White Empire to a draw. This is a historic moment, buried by the histrionics media, but nonetheless true. Hamas defeated 'Israel' on October 7th. The non-entity has been on death support ever since. The IOF have been reduced to delivery boys for American bombs, like DoorDash for knocking houses down.

Deep grievances have thrown deep civilizations together and America is in deep kimchi, as John Mearsheimer says (I don't understand what this means). Now China, Russia, and Iran are conducting military exercises together while America is bent out of shape fighting them all at once. To compare World War III to World War II, China is in the position of America (profiting from afar), Russia is the position of the USSR (fighting the actual war), Iran doesn't fit this analogy, and America are the fucking Nazis—fighting everyone, and wasting time on genocide for some reason. The common wisdom is never start a land war in Asia, and America has started three. As Joe Biden said, which I also don't understand (old white man slang), 'good luck in your Senior year.'

Leverage

Trump talks about leverage like it's a beverage, something he can summon with a button to the Oval Office desk, like a Diet Coke. You can see why the guy is cooked. American leverage is more like Trump's arteries, clogged by years of bad decisions.

Archimedes said give me a lever big enough, and I'll open this pickle urn (he was talking to his wife). The point of a lever is leverage, you have to have more on your side of the stick than the other side. Zelensky wasn't dick the moment he cancelled elections, but Trump has cancelled the petty dictator in public. Trump threw away the toy soldier, mocking him for not wearing a suit. But that was his empty suit, now Trump can't even pretend to like the guy. He threw away his leverage. He did worse when he cut off intelligence and weapons, however briefly. He blinked before negotiations even started and conceded immediately.

It's not even clear that Trump has read The Art Of The Deal, but its writer Tony Schwartz said, "The worst thing you can possibly do in a deal is seem desperate to make it. That makes the other guy smell blood, and then you're dead. The best thing you can do is deal from strength, and leverage is the biggest strength you can have. Leverage is having something the other guy wants. Or better yet, needs. Or best of all, simply can't do without." Does Trump listen to advice, even his own? No, but he never stops talking shit.

Trump promised America a Ukraine deal in 24 hours, reducing his leverage to a ledge which he promptly walked off, like Wile-E Coyote followed by an anvil. The Pottery Barn Rule is 'you broke it, you bought it' and Trump's owns the Ukraine War now. It's a loser and he knows it. The longer Russia waits, the worse Ukraine's position gets, and Trump obviously can't wait to be done with them. This makes him desperate, which is the opposite of leverage. Trump can't get Ukraine or Europe to agree on a deal, nevermind the Russians. He has no leverage and people just aren't listening to him.

Trump is not a serious person, he sent a fucking Real Estate agent to negotiate World War III. That's all Steve Witkoff is, a random real estate guy, made Trump's personal envoy. Yet even this dilettante can understand, you don't get détente by shitting on the house you're listing. Like, this is a real fixer-upper, half-occupied by a neo-Nazi gang I gave a lot of guns to, and I cut the lights off periodically. $1 trillion dollars. This is "a joke in the history of the world" as China said. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, and Russia is just ignoring America and taking possession of more oblasts. "Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, Life goes on, brah" as the Ja-fake-en Beatles said. Or as Notorious BIG said, "real niggas do real things."

In the same way, what leverage does Trump have against China? China has been slowly been building a Belt and Road around America for over a decade, becoming the world's top trading partner by cooperation, not coercion. Feeling jealous, the American economy tried killing itself for attention and experienced every suicide attemptors worst nightmare. Everybody actually does hate them.

Investors don't actually care if a policy is good or evil, they'll incinerate children to gas their yacht up. They don't even care if policy impoverishes their own people, they're not people, just capital personified. Investors just care if a policy is predictable, and Trump is a very unstable genius. Everyone was having a great time at the USD Casino, built on an Indian graveyard, but trust Donald Trump to bankrupt a casino. They said it wasn't possible, but he did it.

Archimedes real quote was, "Give me a place to stand and with a lever I will move the whole world," and America has lost all faith and standing. To stand with Trump is to stand on shifting sands, upon shifting continents, depending on a deeply shifty character who's sifting through your pockets and sniffing your daughter. Besides lack of leverage, Trump doesn't have a stable fulcrum. He's always going off half-cocked, and changes his mind constantly, depending on who's next to him. Even if you wanted to negotiate with Trump, which Trump? What side of the bed did he wake up on? How were his bowel movements?

The fulcrum that leverage stands upon is trust—do words mean anything and do signatures matter—and Trump has rolled that up and smoked it like a blunt. How many documents and treaties has he wiped his ass with, like every Non-Native American before him? Presidents before him threw out the Minsk Accords, none of them took Oslo seriously, and America itself is unceded land, Trump has thrown out the Iran deal and now the WTO and WHO and whatever other acronyms he could think of. America has no diplomatic standing left, just grandstanding.

The Mississippi Delta

Today, the delta between American words and deeds is so wide that it might as well be the Mississippi River. And this isn't just Trump. Democrats and Republicans are just the good-cop/bad-cop of the same police state. Always remember that Biden deported more than Trump, killed more than Trump in Gaza, and killed more of his own people with COVID.

Liberals would love to be Biden time, feeling fine while doing crime, but I'm done with both sides of the lying mouth. Trump at least accelerates American decline, which is a blessing in disguise. The sooner America goes down the better,

America is not bipartisan so much as bipolar, and the multipolar world is increasingly done with them. Even nations nuclear bound to America can't negotiate with Trump, he's just too disorganized and dumb.

I know people would like to isolate the problem to Trump, but America itself is isolated and problematic. They're up shit creek without a paddle and all the babbling in the world won't bail them out. As Teddy Roosevelt said, back when US Presidents killed what they ate, talk softly and carry a big stick. America today talks loudly and carries a limp dick. The POTUS is impotent. He can only bomb hospitals while the Empire itself is on hospice. He can only hype meme coins as the master currency collapses. He can only pretend to negotiate while collapse is nonnegotiable. It is, in fact, safe to ignore what America says, as enraging as it is. The greatest American asset crash is this. Talk is cheap.

9. America Is Crashing Like Sri Lanka Did, Hopefully Worse

Americans are currently experiencing something entirely foreign to them. Consequences. As a confused person from CNBC already noticed, "Stocks are down, the dollar is down, and bond yields are higher. This is incredibly odd for the US." As someone who has lived through total economic collapse in Sri Lanka, yes, that's how it works. Your economy totally collapses. The newsletter also said, "This is the uncomfortable position developing markets can often face in a crisis," and also yes, America is a rapidly undeveloping country. Get used to it.

As I said back when Sri Lanka crashed,

Sri Lanka is just the canary in the coal mine. We followed neoliberal economics in the 1980s just like you did. We settled for cheap consumer goods instead of producing things. We covered up our trade deficits with loans, and by the 2010s we were using one credit card to pay off another.

Collapse on the periphery of White Empire and collapse within is one process. When it reached America was just a timing difference. As I continued,

If you sit in judgment of Sri Lanka you're really missing the point. Don't you use dollars and petrol and liberal democracy too? Aren't they feeling shaky to you? As Warren Buffett said, "when the tide is out you see who's swimming naked." Sri Lanka was certainly swimming naked, but as any Sri Lankan can tell you, if the tide suddenly rushes out, that means a tsunami's about to come. A money-print swimsuit might cover America's nakedness for now, but it won't protect you from the flood. As someone who's already been swept away, let me warn you as only a ghost can.

Boo!

The fact is that, on paper, America is a more shambolic economy than Sri Lanka's. As I said, "America has a worse debt to GDP ratio than Sri Lanka. Everybody is levered up the ass, betting on a future that will not come to pass."

Now it looks like American elites have decided (through some combination of stupidity and malice) to control demolish themselves as a center of world trade. This has started America's Greatest Depression, preceded by a short gilded age for insider traders. It's the end of the world as Americans know it and, as REM said, I feel fine. Or a twice condemned man said to another at the gallows, first time?

Tariffs Vs. Taxes (Same Thing)

The proximate trigger is for the Greatest Depression is tariffs, one of the few tools a President fully controls on his own, besides all the actual triggers. The Federal Reserve is not part of the federal government (it's a private banking cartel), and Congress technically holds the purse strings. Tariffs are the only trigger a President can pull all on his own, and Trump is trigger-happy to use them. He's holding the whole world up in a murder-suicide pact, unless they buy more Teslas or something.

This obviously isn't working, but the latest explanation is that tariffs will allow America to replace income taxes for people making less than $150,000. I'll indulge this because it's hilarious. You know who else collects taxes this way? Sri Lanka.

I have often called Sri Lanka a kade (shop) with a port attached. We tax everything coming in (tariffs) and effectively double tax everything being sold (VAT, excise) and that's our revenue model. People barely pay income taxes at all. This tax policy retards both consumption and production, because exports also require imports. This is not a good tax policy. It doesn't work.

Now, however, we see America barrelling down the same dead end we just died in, as we try to turn around. It doesn't even make sense. Why are they trying to be like us? Sri Lanka is still colonized by western capital and we did whatever we could to keep the lights on. But America is western capital. They don't need to do this. We would keep sending them our work and resources and they can give us magical paper in return. They don't have to tariff us to death, they're just killing their own golden goose. But for reasons we'll discuss, here we are.

America is becoming a poor country like Sri Lanka by attacking poor countries like Sri Lanka. Trump thought he could eat the developing world, but someone should tell him, you are what you eat. Sri Lanka vomited up its economy, and America is about to hurl out its hegemony.

LKR Vs USD

When Sri Lanka's economy collapsed, the first thing I noticed coming up was the currency. It rapidly depreciated from 200 to the dollar to 350, a 75% increase (from our perspective). People's savings were nuked and prices still haven't recovered.

In the same way, America's currency is depreciating now (relative to its vassals) and barely appreciating against its debt slaves and enemies. The currency is burping much less than Sri Lanka's, but this is a much bigger problem. The US dollar is a reserving currency and people are supposed to flock to it during a crisis. Instead, it's going sideways or down. The problem is not the magnitude. This isn't supposed to happen at all.

Besides going against history, this is also going against the future whole plan. I know it's surprising that there is a plan, but in 2024 current adviser Stephen Miran published A User's Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System, which we have covered previously. Trump is following it as much as he follows anything. Miran's plan at least makes predictions, which we can at least check posthumously.

Miran's plan said that tariffs would pay for themselves because they'll damage foreign currencies more. He said, "the economic and market consequences of tariffs hinge on the extent to which they are matched by offsetting changes in currencies." The idea is that if you tariff country X at 10%, their currency depreciates by 10%, and the US importer would actually save money. Because the US dollar would be stronger, and everyone else would be weakened. Miran's thesis was that, "tariffs are ultimately financed by the tariffed nation, whose real purchasing power and wealth decline." Now, however, the feces has hit the fan and the opposite has happened.

The US dollar has depreciated against its vassals (measured through DXY) and has barely appreciated against people like China and Sri Lanka (which got tariffed the most). For us two, there's been barely 1% currency movement against 50-150% tariffs, which offsets nothing. Of course, Sri Lanka's tariffs are currently suspended down to 10% and China's have been largely circumvented because Trump caved, but nothing like Miran predicted has happened. The math doesn't math because the mathematicians are mendacious morons, telling a mad king what he wants to hear, which is madness.

Bonds Vs Stocks

US bonds, also, are not supposed to move like this. They are in fact moving like Sri Lanka's bonds during our collapse, ie junk nobody trust and which the government has to pay a premium for.

When Sri Lanka defaulted, bond prices went down, because there was no demand for broken promises. That meant yields had to go up, to attract new bondholders. So yields went up to 30%, while bond prices (the tradable value) went down. Bond prices move inversely to yields. That's basically a rule.

Not a rule, but a rule of thumb, is that bond prices generally move opposite to stock prices. If stocks are risky, people retreat into safe bonds. Because Sri Lanka's economy had totally collapsed, however, all bets were off.

In Sri Lanka's collapsed state, stocks and bonds went down together (starting in January 2022) and recovered together (starting in June 2023). Stocks and bonds are supposed to move inverse to each other, but in these perverse conditions, they move together. This is what happens in a total economic collapse. This is what's happening to America today, while they're dazed and confused. 'What are we, a bunch of ASIANS?'

Like USD depreciation, stocks and bonds both crashing is not supposed to happen at all. It's one of the horsemen of the financial fuckupalypse. As our CNBC newsletter says,

Go back to the financial crisis, to Covid, to anytime there's a whiff of panic about a slowing economy and what do you see? Stocks are down, yes, but the dollar shoots higher as global investors pile into safe havens, and U.S. Treasury yields drop sharply. This reaction can be helpful--it cushions the economic blow. Lower Treasury yields mean falling mortgage rates, falling borrowing rates, and so forth. A stronger dollar gives U.S. consumers more purchasing power, so imported goods are cheaper. But now, we're not getting that.

Americans are used to every crisis being an opportunity (for the country), but this is just a crisis. Let's look at stocks and then bonds, and see how it's all gone wrong.

The S&P 500 (as an index of American stocks) is going to shit, so investors should be fleeing to safer bonds (thus lowering their yield, because high demand). But that's not what's happening.

Bond yields are going up, which means there's less demand. This inverts the usual relationship described by C. Broadus in 1993 when he described stock market wobbles. He said, "Gs up, hoes down while you motherfuckers bounce to this." Gilts are supposed to go up when stock holdings go down. But that's not what's happening here. The whole thing is going to the dog pound.

And this isn't even the Chinese weaponize their treasuries, it's the Japanese stabbing their masters in the back. Anecdotally, it's the Japanese dumping. Even the most vassalized, atomized allies don't trust the US treasury. They're voting with their money and just fucking off. As Shakespeare's famous stage directions read, "Exit, pursued by a bear [market]."

Fiat Vs. Gold

So where's all this capital going, if it's not safe in the capital of capitalism? One clue is again behavior of Sri Lankans, or just Asians in general. Asians buy gold all the time, but especially when they're stressed. The default investment thesis is 'what can I fit on my wife and flee for my life with.' Now even professional investors are acting like Asian aunties before their daughter's wedding. They're stacking up on gold and keeping it close.

Gold prices are going up now, but physical gold was flying from January. Huge amounts of physical gold was airlifted to New York before the crisis hit, meaning that the smart money knew what was coming. Physical gold storage today is at higher than during the COVID collapse (still happening btw), meaning the sphincter of global capital is clenching tight. The big banks are not content with paper claims on gold, they want physical gold and they want it on site.

I'm not saying the world is going back to the gold standard, none of this is investment advice. All I'm saying is that the world economy is getting real very fast, and people have stopped being polite. For a long time, China and the smartest money has been stocking up on physical resources in general—gold, silver, grain, oil—things you can hold on to when matters get out of hand. With Trump completely out of pocket, perhaps now you understand.

The era of fiat currency that replaced the gold standard is over. The dollar was only backed by the faith and credit of America, and both have been toasted. Americans, in addition to being evil, have become unpredictable. Investors can forgive the genocide and the wars, but threatening their money is unforgivable. Today America as a vehicle for all your hopes and dreams is looking like a plain old Fiat, not that big, not that safe, and full of clowns.

Great Idiot Theory Of History

As I've elaborated in my Great Idiot Theory, material conditions create probabilities for change, while great men and great idiots create the volatility. In Sri Lanka, for example, our economy was structurally fucked since we neoliberalized in the 80s, but it wasn't until a Great Idiot did a few random things in the 2020s that it all went crazy.

Before the crash, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa had a few bad ideas (cutting already meagre income tax and banning chemical fertilizer quickly) which had big, disproportionate effects. These ideas certainly weren't as bad as the neoliberal ideology of decades, but they spooked the markets (with some help from spooks) and caused cascading capital flight. That's all it takes for a market crash. Just a few dumb stomps and you get a stampede.

In the same way, America's current President is stomping around like a literal bull in a China shop, and capital is fleeing. What I call the Greatest Depression has already begun, with the spark lit by a historical arsonist who'll likely profit from the fall. And that's really the question you should really be asking, cui bono? Who benefits?

Cui Bono

Historically, America does not care if countries collapse and in fact enjoys it. Chaos is a ladder, and as a reserve currency, they're at the top. When countries like Sri Lanka collapse, capital rushes back into safe USDs and USTs and they suck up resources and slaves for pennies on the dollar. Every crisis is an opportunity if you're an opportunist. America is full of what southerners called 'carpetbaggers,' now paired with carpet-bombers for good measure.

Historically, America also does not care about Americans. Remember that America was founded by the property, for the property, everything else is just marketing. America is run by a malevolent AI called Capital, with human shareholders as interchangeable parts. The American economy has never been about the greater good and is always down for a little cannibalism. If there's some incentive to blow things up, they love a little controlled demolition. Which may be what's happening now.

If the American economy goes down slowly, there's just a lot of money to be lost. If it goes down quickly, however, there's a lot of money to be made. On just the whipsaw movements of the last few weeks, people made millions if not billions of dollars. As Trump proudly said in the Oval Office after the first big crash, "He made $2.5 billion today, and he made $900 million." He literally pointed the crony capitalists out, they don't give a fuck.

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Trump has perfected an entirely new form of financial fraud, the dump-and-pump. They dumped the whole US economy and then pumped it with a tweet, to make a quick buck. What Nancy Pelosi made in decades of insider trading, he'll make in one term. Never underestimate the motivation of greed. It's what America was founded on.

Consequences

As someone who has lived through a total collapse, I can tell you how it played out for us. We had two years of unelected government where they stole as much as possible, with the IMF making sure foreign crooks got their taste first. I saw the rich somehow get much richer while the poor suffered and starved. This seems to be the modus operandi for capitalist crashes, and the POTUS is a known operator. Donald Trump has crashed multiple businesses over the years and come out ahead, why not crash a whole country, or the global economy while you're at it?

When Sri Lanka finally had an election we elected a nominally socialist government, which is still doing much the same things, because our freedom is so limited and unwon. But I don't think America can vote their way out of this, and I hope they don't. In fact, I hope America crashes so completely that it just disappears as an entity, an identity, and as an enemy that holds deaths and debt over everyone. Sri Lanka's debt payments resume in 2028… unless the people we owe money to disappear first.

10. Trump Is The Dog Who Caught The Trade Car. Now What?

Japan seppuku'd its economy once at their master's command, but now even the must loyal vassals cannot hear their master's voice nor discern his plan. The Japan trade delegation walked out of the Oval Office, hat in hand. There is no deal to be had with America because there is no one to deal with. Trump is like a dog who caught a car. He doesn't know what the fuck to do with it.

When I'm being chased by dogs, I sometimes stop and ask, "what do you want? WTF do you want? have you thought this through?" Invariably, the dog doesn't know. And so I just keep going as the dog barks, receding into the distance. This is what the world is going to do with Trump, not because it doesn't want to negotiate, but because America itself doesn't have a clue.

As Robert E. Kelly, professor in occupied Korea, said, "A trade deal w/ a major economy is a complicated project; US deal w/ mid-sized economy S Korea took 17 months to work out. W/ Japan or EU, it will [be] even longer." Even with states that already have a gun to their head, it still takes years to negotiate details. Trump now has to negotiate trade deals with 185 entities across the world, some of them populated only by penguins, because who the fuck made this spreadsheet?

Japan got a 50-minute meeting with the President, but such high-level meetings are supposed to be the end of a long process, not the beginning. Agreements are usually worked out long before the signatories sit down and so, predictably, Japan left with nothing but souvenirs and chagrin. Trump's team proudly says people are 'calling for meetings', but this isn't telemarketing for time-shares, there's no great value in gathering 'leads'. These are people that were already doing business with you, until you stopped them. It's like me unplugging the Internet router and crowing that I'm suddenly really popular among my family.

Dutiful nations—which still fear liberation—are dolefully showing up for meetings without agendas and getting nothing because there's nothing to be had. As former Assistant Secretary of War Chas Freeman said, "the Japanese said 'well, what is it that you want?' And the Americans could not explain what they wanted." Where do you go with this? It's like being held up by a guy with no coherent demands. What do you want? My wallet, my watch, directions? Talk to me man!

Guess Who

More to the point, nobody even knows who they're supposed to negotiate with. The President directly, his commerce secretary who spends more time on TV, is his son-in-law still around, should we buy his meme coin? Besides the lack of clarity on what America is saying, it's unclear what side of their mouth they're talking out of on any given day.

As Qian Jing of the Asia Society Policy Institute said, (via SCMP),

Chinese elites are finding the current US messaging a little "disorientating" due to "confusing" communication with the Trump 2.0 team, said Qian Jing, co-founder and managing director of the Centre for China Analysis at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

"For example, there have been about five different [private] channels in the past 10 days engaging with Chinese officials, and all seem to be somehow carrying different messages," Qian said during a panel discussion held by the Asia Society in Hong Kong on Tuesday.

Even within the White House, there's massive confusion as to who's doing what, and with what authority. Major decisions seem to depend on who's physically next to the Orange King at any given point, able to get him to post on social media. As the Wall Street Journal reported,

On April 9, financial markets were going haywire. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wanted President Trump to put a pause on his aggressive global tariff plan. But there was a big obstacle: Peter Navarro...

So that morning, when Navarro was scheduled to meet with economic adviser Kevin Hassett in a different part of the White House, Bessent and Lutnick made their move, according to multiple people familiar with the intervention. They rushed to the Oval Office to see Trump and propose a pause on some of the tariffs—without Navarro there to argue or push back. They knew they had a tight window. The meeting with Bessent and Lutnick wasn't on Trump's schedule.

The two men convinced Trump of the strategy to pause some of the tariffs and to announce it immediately to calm the markets. They stayed until Trump tapped out a Truth Social post, which surprised Navarro, according to one of the people familiar with the episode. Bessent and press secretary Karoline Leavitt almost immediately went to the cameras outside the White House to make a public announcement.

This is like courtiers getting access to the king in the toilet, then rushing out with some proclamation before anyone else can trip them. I'd say things have degenerated, but Joe Biden invisibly quit the election over Twitter, the place has been going down the shitter for a while now.

In this shituation, proximity with the king is what matters, so all 185 affected territories need to negotiate with Trump directly, which is troubling because he little to no attention span for anything. As his blood-money ghostwriter Tony Schwartz has said,

Trump has been written about a thousand ways from Sunday, but this fundamental aspect of who he is doesn't seem to be fully understood. It's implicit in a lot of what people write, but it's never explicit—or, at least, I haven't seen it. And that is that it's impossible to keep him focussed on any topic, other than his own self-aggrandizement, for more than a few minutes, and even then... If he had to be briefed on a crisis in the Situation Room, it's impossible to imagine him paying attention over a long period of time.

How the fuck is this guy going to sustain trade negotiations over the months and years that's required? If only there was an organization for coordinating world trade, like a world trade organization or something. Nevermind. Trump hasn't blown up US trade policy to replace it with something, he's just blown it up for the insider trades we make along the way.

Bureaucracy

A politburo full of crazies like this just leads to complete bureaucrazy. Simpleton spreadsheets spread out into complex chaos. Can you imagine being a customs agent right now? You don't know the rules you're supposed to enforce from minute to minute. Are you supposed to listen to your boss, or watch TV for your boss's boss? The system simply isn't built to turn globally shipping on a dime like this. In fact, US Customs actually seized up and briefly stopped collected some tariffs at all. Trump said "We're making a fortune with tariffs. $2 billion a day. Do you believe it?" and the answer was "no," resoundingly. As Business Insider reported,

Data from US Customs and Border Protections shows that the actual tariff revenue is just a small fraction of what Trump said it is. A spokesperson for CBP told Business Insider that the agency has so far collected $500 million from Trump's broad round of tariffs that went into place on April 5.

And in total, the agency said it has brought in $21 billion in tariff-related revenue through its enforcement of 15 presidential actions since Trump took office nearly three months ago. That works out to a little under $250 million a day over the 86 days since January 20.

It's not just the CBP's data that doesn't match up with Trump's numbers.

The Treasury Department's daily deposit totals for "Customs and Certain Excise Taxes" reported over the seven weekdays since April 5 averages out to $227 million per day. The department's month-to-date total as of Tuesday is around $2.3 billion and its year-to-date total for the fiscal year that started in October is about $55.5 billion.

As Jarred Varanelli, vice president of U.S. sales at logistics firm Savino Del Bene, told CNBC (via), "There has been some confusion on what President Trump has said in social media posts on when the tariff starts and what is written in the executive order. Social media posts are not law on the pause and increase in tariffs. With the constant changes to the regulations, all customs brokers in our industry have a difficult task ahead of them."

That's putting it lightly. People don't realistically know what they're going to pay until they physically receive the goods. It's like Schrödinger's shipping container, you don't know if your business is dead or alive until you open it. In response to this wild uncertainty, DHL America has simply stopped importing any B2C goods worth more than $800, from anywhere at all. DHL simply cannot operate in this environment.

It's not even the amount of tariffs, it's the uncertainty that's gumming up the works. And it's not just DHL. US shipping is down across the board.

Overall US imports are down 64% and exports are down 30% (roughly matching the China drop). Even though Trump has backtracked and exempted a huge number of Chinese goods, the damage is done. If you ship something now, he's highly likely to change his mind while it's coming over. Rather than becoming the workshop of the world again (which requires inputs) America is just closing up shop with a sign that says 'Gone Fishing.' They're reeling countries into negotiate, but then throwing them back because they have no idea what to do with them.

This external collapse is reflected in internal trucking data also. Industry analyst (and cucked Trump voter) Craig Fuller reports that, "Based on trucking volume data, freight markets with large exposure to ag and oil/gas are doing well since the trade war started. Freight markets serving retail and manufacturing are struggling, with heavy manufacturing getting completely obliterated." America is becoming what they ignorantly accused Russia of being, a subsistence gas station with nukes.

Trade Seizure

Trump tried to seize world trade, but instead he's just given his own economy a grand mal seizure. This is why the Chinese call him "川建国 (Chuan Jianguo) which literally means that he builds China with his self-defeating policies — [or] 懂王" (Dong Wang) which means "king of understanding", a satirical take on his "know-it-all" persona." As Miley Cyrus sang, "I came in like a wrecking ball, All I wanted was to break your walls, All you ever did was wreck me."

You could say this drop in trade hurts China also, and it does, but China isn't simultaneously fighting everyone else on Earth. They also have the strategic depth of having a strategy at all. When China goes in for meetings they don't have to negotiate anything, they just say 'shall we be normal?' and people agree. Nobody wins in a trade war, as China has said repeatedly, but unlike America, they are not their own worst enemy.

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American talking heads have talked about 'uniting the world against China' but they're talking out their asses while kissing Trump's pasty. 'Uniting' requires some level of organization, not just untying trade agreements and leaving a business card at the crime scene. America has just issued a ransom note with no coherent demands. They're just spitballing here. Trump's economic moron Stephen Miran offered a "few ideas", which include 1) shut up and take it 2) let us make it 3) buy the guns to hold yourself up with 4) move to America 5) just send money.

I mean, OK, how much? Are countries supposed to trade with the US and then write them a check for the entire trade surplus, ie work for nothing? How do we even communicate capitulation, do we just bribe everyone in the privy council, and hope someone catches Trump in a good mood? Even if most of the world wanted to join America in a crusade against most of the world's top trading partner, who do they call? The President directly? And what do they do? Buy an F-16, shine his shoes? Nobody even knows, least of all the Americans. The Americans are rebels against the economic system they built, and rebels without a clue.

As the hero of The Dark Knight told the two-faced liberal he confused, "Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it, you know, I just do things." Trump just does things. In this case, crashing multiple ships into America as a center of world trade to see where the pieces fall. So, honestly, shout-out to Abu Donald, destroying the Great Satan from within, pissing on the rug and chewing up furniture. I, for one, am here for it. Good dog.

I'm glad to see America burn largely because they're burning Gaza. I've adopted this fundraiser for Muhammad and his family there. If you're able, support them, a loan to God is surely an investment in you.