The Smile on the Face of the Tiger

“Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.” – Winston Churchill

I was reminded this week also of the limerick about the lady smiling as she rides the tiger – and how they return from the ride with the tiger smiling and the lady inside. I wonder this week if certain politicians (American and European mostly) and a good many of our own very dear national media figures are riding the tigers with a desperate smile plastered on their faces. They’ve had a good time and have scored richly remunerative leadership positions, or climbed to the top of the national media heap in advocating for various progressive causes, or in defending such causes through various media organs.

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When the Lights Go Out

I see by the news headlines that there were sudden, massive but mercifully brief power outages in Southern France this last week. Accident or deliberate sabotage; of course there is a radical group claiming responsibility. Doing the work that the Green-worshiping governing bodies won’t do, or at least can’t be caught openly doing, yet. All to protect the Erf, although I suspect that the Erf can very readily protect itself in the long run, as long as careless bureaucrats, cost-cutting industries and so-called “green” technologies aren’t pouring poisonous substances out onto it in wholesale lots. I recall reading some years ago an energy-consumption proposal by an especially Erf-maddened theoretician, apparently a man of a particularly savagely Spartan bent who outlined a plan of his own devising: that only one in a hundred households could enjoy a then-current early 21st-Century lifestyle, with electric-powered appliances, lights, computers, HVAC and all. The other 99 households would be permitted a single low-watt light bulb and nothing else. The way that I read it at the time, this particular theorist was utterly serious about replicating a two-tier society of privilege; a few nobles living in comfort, and everyone else in conditions of medieval squalor, by woodfire and candlelight. I seriously wonder if this Erf theoretician was any relation to Al Gore and the other save-the-Erf-by-grinding-down-everyone-else World Economic Forum coterie; a life in the lap of luxury and convenience, while everyone else grubs for a miserable, serf-like existence.

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True Colors

I have to hand it to the Great Orange One, and his cohorts – The Donald (or his staff and advisors) have a supernatural gift for deliberately or unconsciously goading individuals and establishments into revealing their true unsavory, appalling and unashamed selves. It’s been an eye-opener … although some of the revelations really aren’t much of a surprise. Everyone paying the least bit of attention to coverage of Joe Biden’s public appearances over the last half-dozen years saw that yes, indeedy, the President was wandering farther and farther off into dementia-land. Now prominent members of what I am now calling “The White House Press Corpse” claim unconvincingly that Biden’s dissolving mental condition all came as a shocking surprise to them, and the truth about that was deliberately concealed from them by his staff/doctors/the Tooth Fairy. It’s clear now – if it wasn’t before – that the official Washington Press Corpse has been paid the big bucks to be the Democrat Party in-house stenographer, and not to venture a toe into any circumstance where they might just stumble and fall over an inconvenient fact or two. Credibility of the establishment media with a good part of the news-consuming public is right down there with fast-talking hucksters advertising cheap Chineseium on late-night cable channels, and guys in flashy coats selling aluminum siding or reclaimed used cars. We’ve established what they are, and now we know what the price is.

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Fone Fakery And Other Follies

This may just be a curious coincidence, but during the recent brief period in which India and Pakistan appeared on the verge of all total thermonuclear war, my daughter and I noticed that the number of spam phone calls and messages received on our cellphones fell off precipitously. It also just may be a coincidence that when we answer somewhat questionable phone calls, which we must for business reasons – quite often we wind up having a brief conversation with a person speaking English, often very bad English, with a marked Indian/South Asian accent. Neither of us can limit ourselves to answering calls only from a contact list as is often recommended, since the spam organizations have begun spoofing local numbers, and we can’t totally ignore local calls. My cellphone is the main conduit for potential clients to connect with the Teeny Publishing Bidness, and my daughter’s cellphone is similarly the main method of communicating with new and existing real estate clients and realtors.

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The US Wars with China and the War with Itself

The US is currently at war with China over trade, economic policy, technology, capital and
geopolitics (Dalio, The Changing World Order, 2021, Chapter 13). While the US has no formal
treaty obligation with Taiwan and President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
recognized China’s claim five decades ago, President Biden repeatedly said the US would
intervene militarily to defend the island. Only a global hegemon could make such a threat.
China is destined to once again be a great dynasty, as it has been at least twenty times over the
last 22 centuries. The US was the sole global hegemon by 1945 as all the major empires of the
world were at this stage in decline, setting the stage for a century (the historical norm) of global
dominance. But within two decades, with the ascendance of FDR protégé Lyndon Johnson, a
War in Vietnam and a “Great Society” at home, the US was in decline.

In spite of the creation of OMB in 1970, the flight from the dollar that forced President Nixon to
default on gold convertibility in 1971 and the creation of the CBO in 1974 to stem the debt
crisis, starting in 1975 30 states petitioned for a federal balanced budget amendment. Since
then, US debt has grown 100-fold, current spending is twice revenue, the Federal Reserve is
financing half that deficit and the dollar has fallen 98% relative to gold. Such debt super-cycles
end in national bankruptcy-ending empire the way Hemmingway described: “slowly at first,
then all at once.”

National denial has global consequences. Britain entered into the Great War as a declining
power to thwart Germany, then a rising power. World War II was really an extension of the
Great War, when a German veteran, a lance corporal, came to power on the false narrative that
the Bolsheviks and Jews caused their loss. Britain lost the empire but remained in denial until a
speculator dethroned the pound Sterling in 1992. Similarly, the Soviet Union was in denial (as
was the US CIA) right up to the point of total collapse from within in 1989.

The US is now arguably in the position of Great Britain prior to the Great War as a military
power, but faces internal dissent that is arguably worse than that of the former Soviet Union. It
can follow the British path to weaken the rising power while restoring US hegemony, remain in
denial and continue on its current path toward civil war or revolution, or seek a softer landing
based on a restoration of US founding principles. Faced with these choices politicians generally
find war more politically palatable than the short-term pain of restructuring, even when that
results in complete destruction, asserting “nobody could have seen this coming.”

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