Late-stage imperialism

 https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2024-08-27/america-late-stage-imperial-decline

Meet Steve Hsu 

For those unfamiliar with Steve Hsu, he is one of America's most impressive polymaths. He earned a bachelors degree from Caltech when he was only 19. Here he is with one of his professors, the great Richard Feynman. 

Hsu went on to earn a PhD in physics, and is currently a physics professor at Michigan State University. He also started and sold an Internet company, and founded a genomics company, where he applies some of the original research he has done into human genetics. 

I suspect being the son of Chinese immigrants colors his view of America relative to China, but nevertheless, when someone of Hsu's talents speaks, he's worth listening to. In a post on X on Monday, Dr. Hsu explained why he thinks America as entered the "looting and grifting" phase of "late stage imperial decline". 

I've shared Hsu's post in full below. Following that, we'll close with a brief note on three trades we have teed up for later today. 

Authored by Steve Hsu on X

Why I Am Pessimistic About America

A longtime reader asked me why I'm pessimistic about "midwits" in US government, politics, and policy. My answer follows below.

In my view we're in late stage imperial decline. This is the "looting and grifting" stage, and it's very rare for really talented people to want to go into government - they're much more likely to be found in tech startups or maybe in academic labs or at hedge funds. There is no Kissinger or even Hermann Kahn or George Kennan in public service.

It's not the structure of the US system, it has more to do with the vibes of this era. PRC [The People's Republic of China] is in a totally different phase - lots of kids there want to work hard to build their Nation and still believe in heroic ideals.

This follows the general pattern of imperial growth and decline: The Fate Of Empires.

In my lifetime, the US passed through what Glubb called the Age of Affluence, and is beginning the Age of Decline.

Money replaces honour and adventure as the objective of the best young men. Moreover, men do not normally seek to make money for their country or their community, but for themselves. Gradually, and almost imperceptibly, the Age of Affluence silences the voice of duty. The object of the young and the ambitious is no longer fame, honour or service, but cash. Education undergoes the same gradual transformation. No longer do schools aim at producing brave patriots ready to serve their country. [ Or to discover great things for all mankind! ] Parents and students alike seek the educational qualifications which will command the highest salaries.

The 21st century American reality (the Age of Decadence):

Yeah, I calculated the NPV [Net Present Value], and, you know, it's just not worth it for me. I really believe in your project, though. And, I share your passion. Good luck.

agreeing with left vs right

 

Cenk Uygur

@cenkuygur

·

10h

Agree with an online right-winger 2%, their reaction: Welcome to the party! MAGA welcomes you. Agree with an online leftist only 98%, their reaction: Nazi!

Condescending leftists

From the WSJ:

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/big-brother-is-teaching-you-mind-your-own-business-tim-walz-2024-election-af9a8772?mod=trending_now_opn_3

Big Brother Is Teaching You

‘Mind your own damn business,’ Tim Walz says, belying the Democrats’ didactic attitude.

---

By 

Gerard Baker

Sept. 2, 2024 11:56 am ET

Democratic vice presidential nominee Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks at an event in Boston, Aug. 28. PHOTO: STEVEN SENNE/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Mind your own damn business.

It’s a clever slogan, appealing to the most basic of human desires and American rights: the desire to be left alone and the right to be free from interference by an overbearing government.

Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and Democratic vice-presidential nominee, has made it his catchphrase. During the weekend his wife, Gwen, repeated the line without the profanity but with added context for emphasis. Speaking at an Educators for Harris-Walz event in Virginia, Mrs. Walz, a former high-school English teacher took aim at JD Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, over a comment he once made criticizing left-wing teachers who don’t have children of their own.

Mrs. Walz said, “Let me use my teacher voice: Mr. Vance, how about you mind your own business?”

Her remarks were part of a campaign by Democrats to claim that pro-traditional-family statements by Mr. Vance imply opposition to nontraditional means of reproduction, including fertility treatments such as those the Walzes used to create their family. There’s no evidence Mr. Vance opposes those treatments, and last week Donald Trump committed—somewhat rashly—to compel insurance companies to cover in vitro fertilization.

But it was the “teacher voice” remark that I found instructive.

It unintentionally captured the Democratic idea of the polity they seek to lead and reshape. It spoke to how they view themselves—and us. They are the teachers, equipped with the knowledge and authority to direct their hapless charges. We are the students, naive and ill-informed, sometimes attentive but too often insubordinate, with minds that need to be shaped and disciplined.

This self-image of Democrats and their role in government as benevolent, omniscient educators emerges from a mindset that represents a greater challenge to our freedoms than any attempts at interference in the lives of law-abiding Americans the Republicans are accused of planning. The didactic ethic, in which our leaders treat us as people who can’t make good decisions for ourselves, has been vividly on display in the last decade

We aren’t well-informed enough to understand the damage fossil fuel-energy production is doing to the environment. So we need to be told what kind of car we can drive and what kind of stove we can cook on. We can’t be trusted with information from unreliable sources. Like schoolchildren reading naughty books and listening to schoolyard gossip, we must be protected from “misinformation.” We aren’t sufficiently developed to comprehend the dangers of firearms. So our leaders must determine who can have access to them. We didn’t have their deep grasp of the science behind pandemics. So we had to be instructed to stay home, wear masks and submit ourselves to vaccination on pain of losing our livelihoods. Lacking their sophisticated biological knowledge and understanding of geopolitics, we weren’t permitted to speculate about what caused Covid-19 either. We must accept the teacher’s word on the subject.

Not content with ensuring our compliance with their social studies and science curricula, our governor-didacts insist on teaching us ethics. We need to be educated in how sinful we are as white people, as Americans, guilty inheritors of Western civilization. We must learn the new catechism of critical theory and expiate our sin.

The lesson, as it were, of all this is that only lifelong government employees like Kamala Harris and Mr. Walz (and, once upon a time, President Biden) can guide and instruct the rest of us on how we live, to reprimand and reform us when we go wrong.

Democrats want to make their idea of freedom the decisive issue in this election. They insist that “weird” Republicans want to take away basic liberties; they claim that in everything from “reproductive rights” and the status of immigrants to laws that regulate voting, Messrs. Trump and Vance and the Supreme Court would impose a right-wing despotism on the American people.

But their own conception of the continuingly expanding role of government as some benign teaching authority represents a much tighter limitation on the freedoms of most Americans. We can decry Mr. Trump’s personal autocratic sensibilities, but the claim that he is bent on imposing some form of theocratic tyranny is absurd. The justices are merely undoing decades of judicial activism in which judges got to make policy. Giving power—whether over abortion, or the ambit of regulatory agencies—back to voters and their representatives is liberating, not enslaving. Can we really look at what the left has sought to do in the last few years and deny that another administration of the current ideological tenor would further limit our freedoms?

Partisan hyperbole is our modern scourge, so let’s not call them communists. We should recognize them for what they are—like all government bigwigs through history they think they know better. The inevitable upshot of that self-assurance is their right to take powers away from the people.

So let me use my “student voice” to ask the Harrises and Walzes of the world: How about you mind your own business for once?

RFK Jr. on Ukraine war and Blackrock

RFK Jr. spells it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD6kvDHbIYY

-RFK Jr. explains why NATO keeps adding countries - so those new countries have to buy NATO-specific weapons from Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop etc ($$$)

-the US “loaned” more than $100 billion to Ukraine so it could impose loan conditions like selling gov’t assets - guess what’s been sold to Monsanto to pay war bills? Ukraine’s farmland - the bread basket of Europe Guess who got a multi-trillion $$ contract to rebuild Ukraine’s infrastructure after the war and who has a massive equity stake in every company listed above? BlackRock This entire money laundering death machine plunging us into WW3 serves 1 ultimate master: BlackRock

Note: BlackRock has $10 trillion under management. Millions of Americans indirectly own BlackRock through their pension funds and other investments.

_____

Transcript:

0:00 this is a war that should have never happened. It's a war the Russians tried repeatedly to settle on terms that were very very beneficial to Ukraine and us. The major thing they wanted was for us to keep NATO out of the Ukraine. The big military contractors want to add new countries to NATO all the time. Why? Because then that country has to conform its military purchases to NATO weapon specifications which means certain companies Northup Grumman, General Dynamics Boeing and Lockheed get a trapped Market.

March of 2022 we committed $13 billion. Just to give you an example we could have built a home for almost every homeless person in this country.

We then committed another 24 billion since then two months ago and now president Biden is asking for another 60 billion.

But the big big expenses are going to come after the war when we have to rebuild you all the things that we destroyed.

1:05 Mitch McConnell was asked can we really afford to spend 113 billion to Ukraine? He said don't worry it's not really going to Ukraine, it's going to American defense manufacturers. So he just admitted it's a money laundering scheme.

And who do you think owns every one of those companies? Black Rock.

So Tim Scott during the Republican debate said don't worry, it's not a gift to Ukraine it's a loan. So raise your hand if you think that that loan's ever getting paid back.

Yeah, of course it's not. So why do they call it a loan? Because if they call it a loan they can impose loan conditions.

And what are the loan conditions that we impose?

Number one, an extreme austerity program so if you're poor in Ukraine you're going to be poor forever.

Number two, most important, Ukraine has to put all--all--of its government owned assets up for sale to multinational corporations, including all of its agricultural land, the biggest single asset. In Europe, in Ukraine, there's been a thousand years of war fought over that land. It's the richest farmland in the world. It is the Bread Basket of Europe.

500,000 kids almost, Ukrainian kids, have died to keep that land as part of Ukraine. They almost certainly didn't know about this loan condition. They've already sold 30% of it the buyers were Dupont Cargill and Monsanto.

Who do you think owns all of those companies? Blackrock. Yeah, Black Rock. And then in December President Biden gave out the contract to rebuild Ukraine and who do you think got that contract?

BlackRock.

So they're doing this right in front of us. They don't even care that we know anymore cuz they know that they can get away with it.

And how do they know that? Because they have a strategy and that strategy is old, an old strategy which is they keep us at war with each other. They keep us hating on each other. They keep the Republicans and Democrats fighting each other and black against white and all these divisions that they sow.