Feels like a pretty significant shift in uhh.. well we aren't supposed to say "vibes" anymore, but in the last couple weeks the people ringing the alarm bells on the bubble economy have gone from the outsider freaks and heterodox economists, to like, Bloomberg and FT. People at my work now talk about an economic bubble like it's accepted common sense. Feels weird, sky is getting green, tornado weather.
Related to the FEMA piece, as FEMA's limited resources rendered it ill-equipped to handle disasters during the Biden administration and things have gotten even worse under Trump:
Wrote a whole thing about my family and I's Hurricane Helene experience and erased it by accident, but it was a nightmare situation (ran out of food, bf and I got stranded in my car, stuck in one area with no way to leave) that felt like living in a post-apocalyptic hell for 36 hours, and it was sobering to realize how ill-equipped we are as a country to handle natural disasters. Was also living in Texas during the 2021 snowstorm, which was another holy shit experience, and we're only going to have more of them due to climate change.
But yeah, sure, let's just throw up some more data centers so people can use our planet's limited resources to generate slop videos of Stephen Hawking on a half pipe.
Wow, that's crazy about your experience with Helene. I, too, experienced the 2021 Texas storm. I was lucky. The only problem I had to deal with was having my outflow sewer pipes frozen for about 3 days, and I had to resort to creating a chamber pot. Of course, I stayed bundled and chilled because I kept my thermostat at about 62, trying to keep the grid from failing any more than it already was for so many. The upshot is we learn to prepare for the fragility ahead.
I was watching youtube video about how privilege is actually a gilded cage. Basically, the thesis is that those without the benefits of privilege must develop resilience and resourcefulness to survive, while those with systemic advantages start to mistake rewarded mediocrity with excellence. When the resilient inevitably start to outcompete their coddled counterparts the result is almost never introspection and self improvement but rather loud, ugly grievance.
America and Americans have confused the historical accident of being the only economy (with any infrastructure) left standing after WW2 with exceptionalism. The reckoning of American mediocrity in a competitive global world is the story of where we find ourselves today.
The pain, cognitive dissonance and denial that this reckoning causes is real and we have two political parties united in lying to the American people about the root cause. Conservatives blame liberals and any marginalized group they can find while the neo-liberal consensus tries to sell, "well actually things are pretty good."
Of those two lies, it's no wonder the far right has been ascendant.
This! "America and Americans have confused the historical accident of being the only economy (with any infrastructure) left standing after WW2 with exceptionalism."
Right! Exceptionalism is a euphemism for the ugly kind of faux superiority. In a mature population, it would be relegated to a brief juvenile interlude.
No Kings is performative theater, a very small piece of the potential solutions puzzle. It’s better than sitting on the couch, but the effects will be minimal.
If you really want the bang for the buck, recruit as many No Kings participants as you can to be in DC a little over two weeks later, on Nov 5. A hundred thousand people there will begin to put fear in the pockets of the oligarchs, and the bought and paid for politicians; that’s the only way out of this mess.
It doesn't take long to meet up with an old friend before the conversation turns to some activity of daily living that went sideways. It often centers around poor customer service, the Internet, cost of insurances, traffic, COL, techno bullshit, basically just a rant about how nothing works and things are FUBR. It' generally about the crapification of America and its acceleration. Our government institutions and major economic indicators can no longer hide the fact we a barely functioning society. Talk to any normy at ground level and they will tell you they spend an exorbitant amount of time compensating for the fact things don't work. The level of the country's fragility should stop everyone in their tracks, but if you been paying attention you realize its been a long time coming.
Whatever the fascist Trump administration is doing has one purpose and that is to make the capitalist wealth and ruling class richer and more powerful. It's Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poor to give to the rich. Jailing the working class poor to explode profits in the private prison industry, hassling and abusing the poor for pure kicks and for big money, and because they are unable to fight back. Fighting "crime" is really just attacking the weakest individuals in the country, those who are dispossessed, have zero access to the legal system, health care, "jobs," education, etc. If they want to fight crime, why not try starting at the top some time? Unthinkable. When the rich commit crimes (like not paying taxes or murdering people every single day with unaffordable health care), they are lauded for being "smart." When they legalize corruption, they are "playing by the rules." When you or I make one mistake, we are potentially doomed.
Our technology and our numbers (of people) have created risks never before faced by humanity. Unfortunately, too many prefer to deal with those risks by ignoring or outright denying them. Listening to experts specifying how to behave and what to do interferes with people’s autonomy, their striving for control over their lives. Hence, the rejection of experts, the attraction of simple minded buffoons, and a quickening pace towards a painful encounter with calamity.
When the bull market does end and the next recession does hit, it is not hard to predict what this administration will do. They will strongarm an end to the independence of the Federal Reserve in order to get it to lower interest rates, trying to temporarily paper over the damage, like shooting amphetamines into a dead tired man instead of letting him sleep. They will deny and be deceptive and try to hide the extent of the problem, wiping out as much financial transparency as they can, thereby causing more uncertainty and exacerbating the situation. And they will pursue their campaign of distraction with more urgency than ever, frantically demonizing immigrants and political opponents and other disfavored groups even more than they are now, with all of the attendant awful human rights abuses that will go with that.
Horrible but true. The mountain of denial and stupidity is like seeing the tidal wave coming and rushing to get your surfboard. Where are the "real" leaders?
Tough times don’t last, but tough people do. As a millennial, I’m personally tired of living through consistently traumatic events. And I’m tired of the elder ghouls downplaying it.
"Because none of these responses will in fact fix the substance of the underlying problem, it is a good bet that the next financial crisis and recession will be a particularly ugly one—economically, politically, and in the sheer quantity of destruction of American power and prestige in the world."
So much of my own life feels so fragile. Why should I bother finally getting my Masters in education? How can my husband and I even consider buying what I was hoping would be our final home? How can we plan a retirement in ten years when there may not be a 401K or social security or medicare? How can anyone even consider having a child right now? Obviously there have been other times in history where people worried about their futures, but the situations--usually some war--were never this all-encompassing to include the devastation of the entire planet.
Feels like a pretty significant shift in uhh.. well we aren't supposed to say "vibes" anymore, but in the last couple weeks the people ringing the alarm bells on the bubble economy have gone from the outsider freaks and heterodox economists, to like, Bloomberg and FT. People at my work now talk about an economic bubble like it's accepted common sense. Feels weird, sky is getting green, tornado weather.
Related to the FEMA piece, as FEMA's limited resources rendered it ill-equipped to handle disasters during the Biden administration and things have gotten even worse under Trump:
Wrote a whole thing about my family and I's Hurricane Helene experience and erased it by accident, but it was a nightmare situation (ran out of food, bf and I got stranded in my car, stuck in one area with no way to leave) that felt like living in a post-apocalyptic hell for 36 hours, and it was sobering to realize how ill-equipped we are as a country to handle natural disasters. Was also living in Texas during the 2021 snowstorm, which was another holy shit experience, and we're only going to have more of them due to climate change.
But yeah, sure, let's just throw up some more data centers so people can use our planet's limited resources to generate slop videos of Stephen Hawking on a half pipe.
Wow, that's crazy about your experience with Helene. I, too, experienced the 2021 Texas storm. I was lucky. The only problem I had to deal with was having my outflow sewer pipes frozen for about 3 days, and I had to resort to creating a chamber pot. Of course, I stayed bundled and chilled because I kept my thermostat at about 62, trying to keep the grid from failing any more than it already was for so many. The upshot is we learn to prepare for the fragility ahead.
I was watching youtube video about how privilege is actually a gilded cage. Basically, the thesis is that those without the benefits of privilege must develop resilience and resourcefulness to survive, while those with systemic advantages start to mistake rewarded mediocrity with excellence. When the resilient inevitably start to outcompete their coddled counterparts the result is almost never introspection and self improvement but rather loud, ugly grievance.
America and Americans have confused the historical accident of being the only economy (with any infrastructure) left standing after WW2 with exceptionalism. The reckoning of American mediocrity in a competitive global world is the story of where we find ourselves today.
The pain, cognitive dissonance and denial that this reckoning causes is real and we have two political parties united in lying to the American people about the root cause. Conservatives blame liberals and any marginalized group they can find while the neo-liberal consensus tries to sell, "well actually things are pretty good."
Of those two lies, it's no wonder the far right has been ascendant.
This! "America and Americans have confused the historical accident of being the only economy (with any infrastructure) left standing after WW2 with exceptionalism."
Right! Exceptionalism is a euphemism for the ugly kind of faux superiority. In a mature population, it would be relegated to a brief juvenile interlude.
Strong things bend, rather than break: hopefully the Administration breaks before the nation does.
MAKE A PLAN!
No Kings demonstration on October 18. Spread the word! 👑👑👑👑👑
To find a location, follow this link!
https://www.nokings.org/
No Kings is performative theater, a very small piece of the potential solutions puzzle. It’s better than sitting on the couch, but the effects will be minimal.
If you really want the bang for the buck, recruit as many No Kings participants as you can to be in DC a little over two weeks later, on Nov 5. A hundred thousand people there will begin to put fear in the pockets of the oligarchs, and the bought and paid for politicians; that’s the only way out of this mess.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/10/13/theres-a-man-with-a-gun-over-there/
It doesn't take long to meet up with an old friend before the conversation turns to some activity of daily living that went sideways. It often centers around poor customer service, the Internet, cost of insurances, traffic, COL, techno bullshit, basically just a rant about how nothing works and things are FUBR. It' generally about the crapification of America and its acceleration. Our government institutions and major economic indicators can no longer hide the fact we a barely functioning society. Talk to any normy at ground level and they will tell you they spend an exorbitant amount of time compensating for the fact things don't work. The level of the country's fragility should stop everyone in their tracks, but if you been paying attention you realize its been a long time coming.
Whatever the fascist Trump administration is doing has one purpose and that is to make the capitalist wealth and ruling class richer and more powerful. It's Robin Hood in reverse, taking from the poor to give to the rich. Jailing the working class poor to explode profits in the private prison industry, hassling and abusing the poor for pure kicks and for big money, and because they are unable to fight back. Fighting "crime" is really just attacking the weakest individuals in the country, those who are dispossessed, have zero access to the legal system, health care, "jobs," education, etc. If they want to fight crime, why not try starting at the top some time? Unthinkable. When the rich commit crimes (like not paying taxes or murdering people every single day with unaffordable health care), they are lauded for being "smart." When they legalize corruption, they are "playing by the rules." When you or I make one mistake, we are potentially doomed.
Spot on, as usual.
Thank you.
Our technology and our numbers (of people) have created risks never before faced by humanity. Unfortunately, too many prefer to deal with those risks by ignoring or outright denying them. Listening to experts specifying how to behave and what to do interferes with people’s autonomy, their striving for control over their lives. Hence, the rejection of experts, the attraction of simple minded buffoons, and a quickening pace towards a painful encounter with calamity.
Ask AI if Bitcoin is a scam. It will say yes, just like the tulip craze.
You do have to ask the question in a specific way or it will tailor its answer to the bias of the questioner.
Of course you are right about these issues. The problem is nobody cares. Until it affects them.
Then they will want to blame everyone but themselves.
Much of it is greed. A lot is ignorance too.
We are cutting important things while still wasting money and giving the rich tax cuts.
I'm ashamed to be an American at this time. We are an entitled and spoiled bunch and had it so good. Now we are throwing it all away.
To this is prescient paragraph:
When the bull market does end and the next recession does hit, it is not hard to predict what this administration will do. They will strongarm an end to the independence of the Federal Reserve in order to get it to lower interest rates, trying to temporarily paper over the damage, like shooting amphetamines into a dead tired man instead of letting him sleep. They will deny and be deceptive and try to hide the extent of the problem, wiping out as much financial transparency as they can, thereby causing more uncertainty and exacerbating the situation. And they will pursue their campaign of distraction with more urgency than ever, frantically demonizing immigrants and political opponents and other disfavored groups even more than they are now, with all of the attendant awful human rights abuses that will go with that.
I will add one item, to wit:
And they will blame us Jews.
Horrible but true. The mountain of denial and stupidity is like seeing the tidal wave coming and rushing to get your surfboard. Where are the "real" leaders?
There are none. It’s up to us; same as it ever was.
Roosevelt didn’t give us the New Deal; the communists, socialists, Wobblies, radicals, labor organizers, and striking workers did.
Tough times don’t last, but tough people do. As a millennial, I’m personally tired of living through consistently traumatic events. And I’m tired of the elder ghouls downplaying it.
"Because none of these responses will in fact fix the substance of the underlying problem, it is a good bet that the next financial crisis and recession will be a particularly ugly one—economically, politically, and in the sheer quantity of destruction of American power and prestige in the world."
I feel this is a possibility as well.
So much of my own life feels so fragile. Why should I bother finally getting my Masters in education? How can my husband and I even consider buying what I was hoping would be our final home? How can we plan a retirement in ten years when there may not be a 401K or social security or medicare? How can anyone even consider having a child right now? Obviously there have been other times in history where people worried about their futures, but the situations--usually some war--were never this all-encompassing to include the devastation of the entire planet.
Social security and Medicare and 401ks will all still be around in ten years, don’t worry.
very apt -- the Biden years felt like a band-aid on Trump I How many years will it take to recover from the disaster now unfolding?