Faithful Execution

Many US officials take an oath of office to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.  The Presidential oath is special, it also requires the President faithfully execute the laws of the United States.

Trump is violating both (and would be removed from office immediately if Congress was doing its job).

What does my Deep State theory say about this?  Has the "Deep State" lost control?

No!  This is, of course, what the Deep State has always wanted!  Democracy?  No it's Scamocracy (and has been since the Kennedy assassination).

Last time around, the Deep State tied rubberbands around Trump with the baseless Russiagate accusations.  The purpose of those sanctions were to help steer Trump to delivering weapons to Ukraine (which even Obama had refused) as well as to keep "liberals" (ie Democrats) hating Russia.

This time around, the Deep State approach is different.  The War in Ukraine didn't turn out to lead to the breakup of Russia as planned, and it wants (much as Trump does, at least at some level) to end the War in Ukraine and pivot to China and Iran.

To this end, instead of rubberbands, the Deep State has mixed Orange Sunshine (Manson's favorite LSD) into Trump's Kool-aid.  In effect, they are saying, "Let Trump be Trump!"

My interpretation is that the Deep State wants Trump to do the war pivot (of course), wrecking as much as possible (fine), and then ultimately going up in flames (because they still don't really trust him, and would like to substitute someone they can totally control like Vance as soon as the necessary changes are made).

Right now, however, the war pivot isn't going very well.  Instead of pivoting, we are getting a larger and larger pile up.

So maybe just wrecking everything will work, the deep state must be thinking now.

Left, Conservative, and Liberal in World Affairs

https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2025-03-26/idiots-guide-world-affairs/

America Moving to Left ???

 MAGA Red and other right wingnuts are now proclaiming that America has been "moving to the left."

That's funny, because the America I live in has been steadily moving to the right all my life.  This has been analyzed many times: the rightward shifting of The Overton Window of mainstream acceptible politics is described in a large number of books.  Many have observed we still live in The Reagan Era with both parties emulating Reagan with one twist or another, but not really fundamentally changing matters.

In my lifetime, the New Deal era started by FDR gave way to the Neoliberal/Neoconservative era, which is clearly much farther to the right.

President Johnson unveiled the War on Poverty, Nixon unveiled the War on Drugs, and Clinton unveiled the War on the War on Poverty, ending the most fundamental aid program, AFDC, which guaranteed income support for needy mothers, and replacing it with a cheap limited duration and highly contingent substitute.

One key metric of social democracy (now called "leftist" because we've moved so far to the right) is union membership, which has been declining all my life.  Likewise, income inequality has been increasing all my life, to the extent that we now live in a second Gilded Age reflected by our current President who likes gold toilets.

Under Biden, universities were pressured by the US government to lock up students.  Trump took this one step further by threatening the funding of the universities unless they make even more draconian policies.

An apparent disciple of Ayn Rand has been given free reign to hack away at US government programs that he doesn't like.  It's worth noting that Naziism was most fundamentally about the elimination of socialism (European Jews were targeted because socialism was believed to have come from them).

We've moved so far the the right that fascism is now centrist in America.

We can only choose how much and how far, and with Trump Americans are going to see good and deep right now.

Fighting Darkness

The best way to fight darkness is with light.  (Heat isn't quite as much helpful.)

First thing, Fascists strangle expression of opposing views for that reason, and we must not let them.

Sadly, it's hard to light a single candle when faced with the high powered wind blowers of mass media.

AI is the perfect Fascist tool

 One of the first big uses of AI in society was the targeting of Palestinians in Gaza for assassination.  Hundreds of doctors, journalists, and others were targeted, part of the overall effort to make Gaza unlivable for Palestinians going forwards.

Apparently the Trump project to crack down on critics of Israel is also using AI, a fact briefly mentioned in this report by Jonathan Cook.  We can imagine AI has become useful in cracking down on critics of Israel in Germany and UK as well, whose prosecutions point to social media postings.

With AI, robots can scour people's social media accounts, with little fear that the AI itself might change it's mind or learn from the writing of the people it is reading.

So, by just "obeying orders," it's the perfect fascist tool.  If it's unable to make the fine distinctions that a well educated and thoughtful person might be able to do, that's a plus in these applications.

The Tesla Implosion

 Fairly straight up version from a marketing guy.

"Autopsy" from a sustainability guy.

From about 2011-2017 I was sure a Tesla was going to be my next car.  Then the Model 3 (on which I had purchased a "reservation") was very disappointing to me.  No dashboard, back window too high, and too wide for my garage.  By then I was becoming more and more disappointed that Tesla was not ushering in a new era of EV's, like a Henry Ford, but only making increasingly cranky statement pieces for whitewashing the unsustainable lifestyles of the rich people who buy them.

Back in 2009, I was impressed that Musk had done what others had long said was impossible: and EV with a range similar to a gasoline powered car.  It wasn't really that it was impossible, but there weren't enough moneybags to invest in it.  Somehow Elon got that done, so I respected him a lot.

Now I've lost all respect.  Elon Musk is Ayn Rand in drag and Hitler with a chainsaw.  Other people had actually designed the Tesla, all the ideas (and in all his other companies) were nothing new, Musk was simply able to sell them better to the corrupt and stupid capitalists of the western world.

And EV's aren't The Answer anyway, perhaps not even a help if not employed to actually reduce overall environmental destruction.  So what if one's car doesn't produce greenhouse gasses but the new infrastructure to build them toasts the planet?

The key point of being sustainable is to give up everything excessive.  And Teslas are full of excessive.

  

Pivoting to China and World War 3

 A decade ago, Professor John Mearsheimer was calling for greater peace with Russia and preparing for war with China instead.

Going back even further, around 1969 Gore Vidal also called the US fixation on fighting Russia stupid.  He argued for allying with Russia to keep China from taking over.  China was clearly going to have the top position eventually, and other major powers needed to ally ensure they wouldn't dominate.

About three decades ago for a brief moment we had something like peace (and lots of trade) with both Russia and China.  That started disappearing as soon as the Clinton Administration started reneging on the previous administration's promises not to expand NATO...  Then NATO sponsored wars in the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Ukraine.  The US sponsored Color Revolutions in many countries--including 2 in Ukraine because the first didn't run as intended--to oust Russian-friendly governments in Russia's backyards and replace them with highly dependent, corrupt, sold-out, and mostly unpopular western client states.  And here we are, at the precipice of WW3. 

 Brian Berletic argues the Trump Administration is not making the change (a reset with Russia) that it advertised and many of its fans believe (and that Maga Blue Democrats wrongly deplore).  Instead, he shows what the Trump Administration is doing is really just a continuation of previous policies.  They are unloading and outsourcing the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine to Europe, in order to free resources for war (and Berletic emphasizes that the moves make it clear that US has hot war in mind, not just economic war or cold war) with China.

So, yes, WW3.