Such a rich and vibrant culture.

It’s not a world government.

Exactly. The UN is NOT a world government and we need to stop expecting it to act as one. That was never the intention of the UN.

That being said, a lot of people talk about the necessity for the “rule of law,” but there cannot be the rule of law without some kind of government with the authority to enact and ENFORCE laws. If nations are not willing to sign on to something like that, we cannot have the rule of law. Instead we will have the rule of whichever country has the largest, most powerful military and/or economic influence. I know a lot of Americans are fine with that arrangement because that position is currently occupied by the US, and has been for more than half a century, but the US might not always occupy that role. I wonder how those Americans would feel about this arrangement if China, for instance, were the world’s hegemon instead of the US?

The USSR is definitely the nearest analog. That was, what, 35 years ago. That’s very recent, in civilizational terms. A little over 100 years ago, in the early 20th century, several large, powerful empires collapsed. That’s relatively recent, all things considered.

Maybe it doesn’t seem to happen as much today because in the aftermath of all of those empires collapsing, new, more resilient nation states were formed, with more sustainable social, cultural and political systems. But the US is much older than all of them. The oldest democracy still going. Also by far the oldest federated, presidential republic. It’s hard to really compare the resiliency of a country like ours to, say, a much more recently formed parliamentary democracy, especially when most of those nations are much smaller than us by population, and are usually significantly less geographically and ethically diverse.

It’s like they’re daring me at this point.

I don’t want to leave this country. I was born here, my dad was born here, my dad’s dad was born here, etc. But, holy shit, this society is failing. It’s not failed, yet, but it is failing. I want to believe that things can turn around, but it gets harder everyday to hold onto that belief.

It’s especially hard because I feel like my proposals for how things could be fixed are actively, aggressively being fought against by many of my countrymen. Hell, we can’t even agree on the problems, let alone solutions. For a lot of Americans, there is no problem! This is all hunky-dory.

A nation is a shared idea. A nation exists when a group of people all agree that they are a nation. I ain’t in the same nation as these folks. They’ve got their idea of America and I’ve got mine, and they are two different things. I’m not a part of the shared idea anymore. It’s moved away from me. It’s become something that I don’t understand or agree with. I don’t think it’s moral or rational, or sustainable.

Frankly, I think the idea of America as a nation, as it stands right now, is doomed to fail. It’s far too tolerant of greed, ignorance and liars with malicious intent. A society like that won’t last. It will collapse.

So you’re telling me that people don’t like being bombed or shot by a foreign military, all while being told at the point of a gun that they should be grateful because it’s being done for their liberation? Well I’ll be darned.

Pot calls kettle black.

Not sure if you mean in that particular race or ever.

Of course I meant in that particular race. Trump received the most votes of the candidates in the 2024 presidential, general election.

More Americans voted for Trump than any other candidate.

If they didn’t want it, why did they vote for it?

I think this will definitely help. It’s not going to completely fix the problem, but it should help. But, the problem of affordability cannot be fully addressed until profit is taken completely out of housing.

As a species things do just keep getting better for us, except in periods of systemic transition.

I think that’s been generally true since the first agricultural revolution led to the emergence of civilization, 10,000 or so years ago. But, progress has not been linear, it’s been exponential, with most of the progress occurring in just the last few hundred years, since the industrial revolution. In that regard, the progress that we’ve experienced over the last few hundred years has been anomalous.

The way of life that we take for granted today is very different from how most of humanity has lived through the vast majority of history (and that was itself very different from how our species had lived through the vast majority of our existence, with humans living in small hunter-gatherer tribes for most of our time as a species).

Modern life has existed for only the blink of an eye, on evolutionary time scales. Yet, in that time we have used up an incredible amount of natural resources, and we have made significant, irreversible changes to the Earth’s biosphere and climate.

It took our species nearly all of the 10,000 years of civilization’s existence to go from a few million people on the planet to a billion, but it only took a little over two centuries to do from one billion people to over eight billion. That kind of exponential growth simply cannot be sustained indefinitely on a planet with finite resources. Even at maximum possible resource use efficiency, and even with the maximum possible environmental impact mitigation efforts, the Earth still wouldn’t be able to sustain our growth forever. We would reach some hard, physical limit to growth, eventually.

I feel like our whole lives here in the US we’ve been told to expect things to just generally keep getting better, seemingly forever. Like, that’s the narrative of “progress.” The economy just keeps growing, the nation just keeps getting richer, technology just keeps getting better, living standards just keep getting better, so forth and so on. But, that was probably never realistic, or even feasible. I mean, no civilization progresses forever. Essentially every civilization that’s ever existed has followed a pattern of ascension followed by decline. Many of the most notable civilizations ascended very quickly and dramatically, and then collapsed just as quickly and dramatically. Why should we expect to be any different? What makes us think we won’t follow the same pattern as basically every other civilization in history?

Even before the U.S. attacked Venezuela, Cuba was struggling with severe blackouts, soaring prices and scarcity of basic goods. Experts say that a disruption in oil shipments from Venezuela and now Mexico could unleash a potentially catastrophic crisis, especially since U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that would impose a tariff on any goods from countries that sell or provide oil to Cuba.

Overall, many Cubans I’ve interviewed have shrugged off what could be impending doom, with experts saying that the Trump administration aims to spark a popular uprising in hopes that a new government will be established. But Cubans have said they will not be manipulated by outside forces. Meanwhile, some are preparing even though they doubt an invasion is looming. Those who can afford it are installing solar panels, while others are growing their own produce.

To any of my fellow Americans reading this who still support this strategy for whatever reason, you need to understand that this strategy DOES NOT WORK. Trying to get the people of a country to overthrow their government by making their lives really hard through external means, DOES NOT WORK. The people don’t blame their government, they blame YOU. WE are the foreigners involving ourselves in THEIR country’s affairs. Even if they don’t like their government, they will see US as the greater threat. And rightfully so. In fact, it will likely influence many of the people who had been upset with their government to start supporting their government, at least conditionally, because now they and their government have a common enemy. By supporting this strategy, you are HELPING the repressive government stay in power. You’re not making things better! STOP! I don’t care what your fucking intentions are, you’re NOT helping the people. So, unless cruelty is the point, unless you just want to hurt Cuban people, fucking STOP!

There was a neoliberal consensus in place for a good three decades, and moderate Democrats were absolutely a part of that consensus group. Then the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath happened, and the consensus fell apart. That doesn’t mean neoliberalism went away immediately following the crisis. Neoliberalism was still the consensus among most elites, but in the general populace the consensus collapsed. The “silent majority” neoliberal middle shrunk, with some going further to the right and some going further to the left.

That’s essentially where we’ve been since: without a popular consensus. In the absence of a popular consensus, different ideological groups have been competing for control. Liberals, socialists, reactionaries, and even fascists, right libertarians and anarchists. But through it all, no real majority consensus has yet emerged. Trump has thrived in the absence of a consensus by leveraging the resentment of various groups to seize as much control as possible, and different groups, both foreign and domestic, have opportunitistically latched onto the Trump movement to try and get what they can. Trump has been a useful idiot for several disparate groups, that are not necessarily ideologically aligned.

We might be seeing a new majority consensus emerge, however. Maybe. It’s hard to say. But there are signs that things could be moving in that direction. But it’s not socialism, it’s good old fashioned, new deal, Keynesian social democracy. And a very, VERY watered down, pro-markets version of it, at that. America is such a conservative country that we can’t allow ourselves to look forward to new possibilities, only back to what’s already been done. We’re so backward that economic policies from the 1930s seem radical to us.

I’m drinking my dinner plans right now. But I drive by a Culver’s all the time. I’ll definitely stop in someday soon and give it a try.

If warming continues to accelerate, we’ll hit 2C before 2050.

Yeah.

I’ve never been to Culver’s. Is it any good?

I don’t hate Jews. But I don’t want Israel controlling US foreign policy, either. Israel is not a part of the US. It’s not a US State or territory. Israel is an independent nation, if they want to bomb Iran that’s their business. I don’t agree with it, but it’s not my country. But Israel wants to have the US on a leash, like we’re their own personal attack dog. That does affect me. That’s MY fucking government they’re controlling. That fucking pisses me off. I don’t fucking care that they’re Jews. It would piss me off if they were Muslim or any other religion or ethnicity. Israel needs to stay the fuck out of my government. They have their own government. Go back to your own government and get the hell out of mine.

“An important caveat, however, is that the acceleration may prove temporary,” said Beaulieu, who has published on the topic but was not involved in the new study. She added that the strong El Niño of 1998 also produced a period of apparent anomalous warming.

“The relative slowdown that followed was interpreted as evidence of a pause in global warming,” she said. “Continued monitoring over the next several years will be essential to determine whether the accelerated warming rate identified here represents a lasting shift or a transient feature of natural variability.”

It might be temporary. It might be transient. Then again, it might not be. We’d be taking a huge risk by proceeding on the assumption that it will only be temporary. If we’re wrong the consequences could be severe. Maybe some people are willing to risk the future on hope, but I don’t think that’s a wise decision.

You ever hear the saying: hope for the best, prepare for the worst? We’re not prepared. Not even close. It’s true the worst case scenario isn’t likely, but it is possible. And worse case, though not necessarily worst care scenarios are also possible, and more likely. We’re not prepared for those either.