We're Caught in the Death Throes of a Dying Empire
This is how it unfolds
The Present
Well we got Trump.
I could leave it there and that alone should do it: a man described as lacking every virtue for which we have a word.
I didn’t say it, Sam Harris did:
Sam Harris: trump lacks every virtue for which we have a word: wisdom, curiosity, compassion, generosity, discipline, courage. Whatever your list, he’s got none of these things, but his supporters know that. he’s a paragon of greed and narcissism and pettiness and malice.¹
…. and Trump is our President Elect of the United States. The man who represents American ideals, character and ethos is in fact a convicted felon².
What does it say about a country that tells felons they can’t legally own guns — but it’s okay for them to have access to nuclear codes that can burn the planet down?
You don’t need to answer that, but it’s useful to frame everything else I say in the context of this simple fact: America chose to be led by a convicted felon. Everything that follows is merely a reflection or an extrapolation of this — how could it be otherwise?
The Future
47 will be in the catbird seat of having control over all three arms of the government. Sitting pretty in the executive suites, his minions are strewn through the house and the senate in numbers sufficient to pass any proposed legislation. Couple that with what is widely perceived to be a biased Supreme court, all the levers of power now reside with Donald J. Trump.
I have no doubt he will use it to his advantage.
Cruelty will be Legislated
If you haven’t heard of the Laken Riley act, it was passed in the House and is expected to receive bipartisan support in the Senate. The Act intends to detain undocumented immigrants who commit any act that is deemed illegal including burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.
Minor acts will now lead to detention and eventual deportation. But given our legislative bottlenecks, this can take years. If Trump fulfils his campaign promise, millions of people will have to be detained.
Detention facilities will quickly be overwhelmed and turn into what historically have been called detention camps. Inmates at detention camps can and will be made to work.
Hitler did the same thing. Heck we did it too. Remember the Japanese Internment Camps of WWII? From History.com³:
Assembly Centers offered work to prisoners with the policy that they should not be paid more than an Army private. Jobs ranged from doctors to teachers to laborers and mechanics. A couple were the sites of camouflage net factories, which provided work.
Over 1,000 incarcerated Japanese Americans were sent to other states to do seasonal farm work.
We are set to repeat history.
Our very own 13th Amendment allows enslavement for crimes, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that 1000 (or more) prison inmates are currently being used to fight the current California wildfires⁴ — because get this — the budget for the fire department was brutally slashed⁵.
Extrapolating just a little bit further, adequate detention facilities need to be built, maintained and staffed. Detainees need to be transported, clothed, fed and surveilled. All of these new industries will be supported by the White House which will soon have access to plantation sized amounts of slave labor.
Do you think your job is safe from people being paid $10 or less per day to do actual work? Rest assured, both blue collar and white collar jobs will be affected.
A large slave labor force is being created right out in the open and this will have devastating effects on employment as corporations will seize the opportunity to petition the prison system for cheap labor, neatly sanitized and sanctioned by the White House.
Draconian control over Women is incoming
Birth rates are collapsing globally and a significant part of the issue is that women quite rightly have control over their bodily autonomy and choose not to birth the next generation.
But how will worker bees be created to work in factories? Who will fight our wars? Who will take care of the elderly and work their bodies into early graves to support the machines that sacrifice us for the elite?
The elite absolutely know without a compliant labor pool to support their parasitic oligarchy, their lives implode. They don’t care if you can’t afford to live or to take care of your children, only that you have them. From the lips of Maye Musk herself:
…you know you don’t have to go to the movies, you don’t have to go out for dinner you can just spend time with the most wonderful gifts you can ever have, the children.
How do you feel about them apples?
Authoritarianism abroad
When confronting the issue, authoritarian states like Russia are coming up with ridiculous ideas. Russia suggests creating a ‘Ministry of Sex’ which would create policy to increase birth rates⁶.
Among the initiatives are: state-sponsored funding for first dates, financial rewards for students who have children, and government-paid wedding nights in hotels to encourage procreation.
Less sane proposals include turning off the lights and the internet after 10.00 p.m. and procreation during lunch breaks at work. The intention is for women to have 8 children or more.
You should also know that the law in Russia was amended to restrict the dissemination of information that “promotes a conscious refusal to have children.” This includes films containing “child-free propaganda” and any related content — they are already prohibited in advertising and media.
It shouldn’t surprise you, that’s exactly what’s coming to a town near you in the USA?
Authoritarianism at home
TikTok and other independent media will likely be banned to prevent spreading of antenatal information and lifestyles. Book bans are already in place and spreading.
We already know abortions have been criminalized. Likely this will go Federal, to be rapidly followed by restricted access to birth control even as they find ways to scrutinize women’s monthly cycles for compliance⁷.
Alternate lifestyles are currently being demonized and protections are being rolled back for the LGBTQ community.
It’s interesting to note — alternate lifestyles are inherently anti-natalist and this is why they are so violently opposed by those that require the society to be propped up by increased birth rates.
The people squarely opposed to any alternate lifestyles include the elites with vested interests in worker bees and Christian Nationalists with interests in controlling everyone’s sexuality. It seems without a defined gender binary, it’s difficult to impose rigid roles within which women can be controlled.
The final insult will be State sponsored media being used to promote SAHM (stay at home mother) lifestyles where women are reduced to breeding machines, isolated and forced back into lives of servitude and co-dependent misery.
Good times (not).
Natalism affects Men
I still remember the morning my wife told me she was pregnant. The gentle shake of my shoulder, her wide eyes and the two blue lines on the pregnancy test.
Once I got past the initial happiness, I soon went into overdrive. I was incentivized to go back to school. To get a better degree so that I could get promoted and make more money.
Why?
Because I needed a better house, a safer car and money to put by for college, baby clothes and to create the ideal family I was told requires these things. The big house, the car and backyard barbecues on a soft green lawn inside a white picket fence.
That’s what having children did to me. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
That little baby girl turned me into a work zombie. I went at it and though it was borne out of love and care, I literally sacrificed my health to do it. Stomach Ulcers and late nights filled with bad food sent me to the emergency room with chest pains — later to be fixed with double cardiac stents and strict warnings to do better or be dead.
But that’s what society requires of us as men. And for too many of us, we listen, we jump through the hoops, we become the mass media’s idea of a good father and corporations everywhere rejoice as we sacrifice ourselves for their bottom lines.
Woe betide any evil outside force that threatens our families and homes, we’ll strap up and go to war to defend them. Having children mobilizes men to work and to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. The problem is that the definition of ‘good’ is given to us by those with financial incentives to define it in their interests.
Look out for the propaganda machine to crank up, to start working overtime telling us who our enemies are, and what we must do to defend ourselves, our families and those we love.
These messages will be funneled through state sanctioned social media to drum up support for the agenda of the elites in charge of our government.
It’s the same old playbook every time and we fall for it every time.
The Collapse in Government
You tell me, is our government, (currently the Biden administration) fulfilling its mandate to run the country?
From where I sit, I see our judicial system in complete collapse. There is no accountability left when we elect a convicted felon to the highest office in the land.
States are defunding fire departments to beef up police departments instead. Infrastructure is crumbling. Public health is a disaster, riddled with conspiracy theories and junk science.
The education department is soon going to be shuttered. Life is increasingly unaffordable and the branches of government are being staffed by billionaires who do not care about the affairs of the common man/woman.
And in preparation for the predictable protests, police cities are being set up even as funding for social programs are being defunded.
A Return to Colonization
Drunk off power and hubris, our ersatz leaders will do their utmost to quell protests at home even as they broaden their begrudging eyes abroad. Talk of expanding the empire to include Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal might be more prophecy than platitude.
What I find interesting is that access to the natural resources located in sovereign countries — many of whom are allies — are actively being coveted by our leadership on both sides of our political divide.
This isn’t Trump’s foreign policy alone. The Biden White House is currently funding a genocide as they watch with covetous eyes at the mineral resources buried under Gaza. All that remains to be done is to get the indigenous population out of the way.
We’re good at that.
Even more interestingly, many of these resources are currently secreted under ice and snow. As climate change progresses, they will become increasingly accessible. How terrible it must be for our rapacious leadership to see another country to possess material wealth just sitting there like candy in a baby’s hand.
It sure strikes me as odd, that though so few of our current leaders acknowledge climate change publicly, they sure seem ready and willing to take advantage of the changes it’s bringing but privately and in their best interests.
Trump’s incoming National Advisor said it best:
You can call it Munroe Doctrine 2.0 but this is all part of the America first agenda and it’s been ignored for far too long….
Will we turn to war to expand our empire? Given the rhetoric of 47, it sure seems that’s where this is headed. And make no mistake about it, if a draft has to be instituted to prop up the ranks of the military, our current regime has the authority and the will to do it. Don’t be surprised when it happens.
Forgive me for saying this but it seems our lives are only there to benefit the whims and fancies of those who consider themselves to be our betters.
Sadly, I think we are so brow beaten and psychologically battered, we will allow them to have their way. It’s going to be a rocky ride from here on in. Brace yourself.
In the meantime,
Walk good.
Mitch.
Links:
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/10/trump-sentencing-felon-president-00197587
https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/japanese-american-relocation
https://www.newsweek.com/california-wildfires-inmates-fire-camps-2013262
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/13829117/putins-ministry-russia-libido-birth-rates/
You had me interested until you mentioned genocide and Gaza. You are looking out through eyes of dogma.
I think you are way over the top. Sure, there are some fringes that support higher birth rates for whatever reason but I cannot see this sort of thing becoming as formal as you claim. The GOP, let alone Trump doesn’t control the three branches of your government structure in anything but theory. The margins in Congress are razor thin and the Supreme Court doesn’t always line up 6:3.
I think that it will be chaos and disaster and I don’t necessarily see free and fair elections as an easy way out - not that the USA has ever had such a thing - but you are giving Trump way too much credit. The guy is a self-serving idiot, not an evil genius. His advisors can come up with plans to do this and that but Trump's underlying incompetence in management all but ensures that whatever he tries to do will be fraught with difficulty and uncertainty.
America's threat isn’t Trump and his crew of corrupt minions, it is other nations taking advantage of the confusion.
This is good. And I do see what you mean about dumbing down the same over on Medium (I read both). Keep it up my friend. This is the place to let it all out and piss off a few readers along the way. That seems to be working, based on one of your new commentators here. I do look forward to many more like this in the future.
As for the article, I tend to agree with some. Trump is a moron who doesn't have a clue on how to run a government. He couldn't run a little country in South America on his own, much less the largest economy (for now) in the world. His adversarial cabinet picks will indeed sow chaos, a lot of them will get fired and so on over the next four years. Meanwhile, the U.S. will simmer and bubble, waiting to boil over.
Will the U.S. survive? Probably, but not in its current form. By the time we are finished with the next four years, the U.S will have turned a corner and not in a good way. What that's going to look like is anyone's guess right now.
All we can do is hang on for the wild ride ahead and hope we can keep a roof over our heads and food on the table in the meanwhile.