America is in Deep Trouble

I hate to break it to you, but Donald Trump isn’t going to make America great again. He doesn’t have the insight or courage to stand up to the financial elite, and he’s insufferably authoritarian. This is not a recipe for greatness.

Democrats are even worse. At the most ideal moment possible, the party was gifted an energetic populist movement primed for activism thanks to a seventy-four year old non-Democrat who unified tens of millions of Americans sick of the way things were going, but couldn’t get behind Trump. How did the party respond? By rigging its primary and forcing down our collective throats one of the most corrupt, unethical, political monsters in American history. Afterwards, how did the party respond following her loss to Donald Trump? By making zero meaningful changes in party leadership, by endlessly propagating CIA-fueled Russia conspiracy theories and by very publicly rejecting Bernie Sanders and his supporters in choosing Tom Perez to run the DNC (for more read this excellent article).

As demented as many of Trump’s views are, at least he’s talking about shaking up the system. The only things Democrats have done since the election is attempt to co-opt Sanders, dress in all white and hyperventilate about Russia. The party is so worthless, it doesn’t even deserve to exist anymore. Then there’s the corporate media. The elitist propaganda mouthpieces that are even more destructive than our two deranged political parties, and that’s saying a lot. We are in big trouble as a people.

The past 36 hours have been really telling. The reaction to two events have demonstrated to me just how much trouble this country is in. The first event revolves around Trump’s speech to Congress. I watched the speech, and was thoroughly unimpressed. Like his critics, who falsely claim Trump is the root of all evil as opposed to a symptom of an evil system, Trump appears more interested in targeting symptoms as opposed to the core problems. While “draining the swamp” is a great slogan, he shows no intention of actually doing it. Rather, he’s filled his economic advisor positions with a cadre of particularly gross parasitic Wall Street cretins. This wasn’t the surprising part of Trump’s speech, however. The truly surprising, and disturbing part, was the tremendous praise heaped upon him by the corporate media afterwards, further proving the point that corporate media is worthless.

Why did the corporate media like the speech so much? Mainly it had to do with the moment Trump honored Carryn Owens, the widow of slain Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens. Will this standing ovation do anything to improve the lives of struggling Americans? Does it tell us anything at all about how Trump will handle foreign policy and out of control militarism in order to prevent deaths like this going forward? Of course not. What it tells you is that all the corporate media cares about is pomp and circumstance. Corporate media is obsessed with the show, the red carpet, with superficiality. Even if you loved the speech, it was a freakin’ speech. I’m not comparing Trump to such men, but the most heinous thugs in human history were great at giving speeches. Actions, not words are what matter, as we should have learned from eight years of Obama.

Moving along, the second event that solidified to me the amount of trouble we’re in as a nation relates to Jeff Sessions. As all of you already know based on my recent posts, I think Jeff Sessions is a dangerous, disconnected, goon. A fossil from another era, a hypocrite, and a terrible choice for Attorney General. That said, I think the controversy about what he told Congress related to his meetings with Russia is being blown grossly out of proportion. Here’s the clip in case you haven’t seen it:

What’s the big deal here? From what we know, he was simply a Senator who met with the Russian Ambassador publicly. These meetings consisted of one at a Heritage Foundation event in July 2016, where other ambassadors were present. The other was in Sessions’ Senate office in September.

As The Washington Post reported:

Two months before the September meeting, Sessions attended a Heritage Foundation event in July on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention that was attended by about 50 ambassadors. When the event was over, a small group of ambassadors approached Sessions as he was leaving the podium, and Kislyak was among them, the Justice Department official said.

These encounters seem pretty transparent, it’s not as if they were slinking around back allies handing-off envelopes filled with cash. It seems obvious to me that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lying to Congress about unconstitutional government spying on American citizens was far worse, and he wasn’t forced to resign.

Of all the terrible things about Jeff Sessions, this is the least of my concerns. Naturally, it’s being portrayed as one of the greatest scandals in U.S. history by the corporate media as well as establishment Democrats (to understand why, see: How the Corporate Media Continues to Use the Russia Scapegoat as a Distraction from Status Quo Failure). Proving once again that the only thing Democrats can really get passionate about is anti-Russia hysteria. A hysteria which the corporate media is likewise obsessed with, despite countless really significant domestic issues which remain unaddressed.

For example, take a look at the following images recently published by New York Magazine and The New Yorker.

Do these publications realize how utterly ridiculous they look to anyone capable of critical thought?

So what have we learned from all this? For starters, it should be abundantly clear by now that no one is coming to save us, and no one will be making America great again for us. We need to focus on making ourselves great. Once we do that, we will be able to surmount all obstacles and make this world a better place, but don’t think the path will be easy. I think we are in for an extraordinarily bumpy ride, and the only thing we’ll be able to depend on is the decency and goodwill of our fellow citizens. The government isn’t going to save us, we need to save ourselves.

For more on that topic, see: Why Increased Consciousness is the Only Path Forward

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In Liberty,
Michael Krieger

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38 thoughts on “America is in Deep Trouble”

  1. So you are setting your self up as chief honcho? Your conclusion is hilarious. As brilliant as you are you sound like Don Lemon who also saw nothing of value with President Trumps words. American spirits are down. Morale was low until President Trump’s began to demonstrate that Americans are a great people. Until that point our souls emitted barely a faint spark. You are a writer. Why can’t you use words to inspire rather than drag us back into solipsism?
    .

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    • Here’s the thing. I don’t find Donald Trump inspiring. Different people find different things inspiring, and that’s ok. You clearly find Trump inspiring. I don’t.
      I think personal empowerment is inspiring, and I think that’s what we need most at the moment.
      I simply don’t think Trump or anyone else will “make American great.” I accept that you disagree.

  2. Excellent article. Those who have realized what the situation is have known that the people have been used and abused for much longer than the recent election cycle and knew Trump would be completely ineffectual in correcting Washington et al for the people. He will of course be of great use in fooling the public for the elites for as long as they can pull it off. Your conclusion that all the people have is each other is right on and why we see so much division among the people being instigated by the various corporate sponsored NGOs, while the MSM tries to keep the vast majority as confused as possible as to which way is up.

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  3. So when the “Russia Hacked the Elections” Charade is proven false, and I’m almost 100% certain it will be, what credibility will the DNC and statist quo media have? They’re almost dead now and when they had the opportunity to bring life back in to the party with Ellis as chairman, they chose the old standby. What a joke.

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    • Sadly i don’t think there is anything that will change the Dems’ minds about the Russia narrative. These people are convinced that being friendly or even having just a conversation with a Russian diplomat is actual grounds for a treason charge. But apparently a $25M donation to the Clinton foundation from Saudi Arabia is no biggie.

      And this is the “progressive” wing of the country apparently. With new heroes such as John McCain, W, and the CIA. I need a drink…

  4. You are misinterpreting. I am talking about actions that are uplifting. But some men are having a difficult time with a strong alpha male. Do you feel.threatened? So therefore he has to be authoritarian and you are missing the message. Your expectation is that it all should be a lot more perfect. This is what there is, Bub. Help make something positive instead of complaining about the pebble under your mattress. An endless pile of mattresses will never bring you relief from the pebble. But I suppose that’s how you are at this point. Finally we are all jaded, obsessed with our comforts, and suspicious of any action meant for change.
    .

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    • Laluz, first of all, Ron Paul is ten times the man Trump will ever be.

      Second, Trump is just another crooked real-estate developer who’s been ethically challenged his entire career. Yes, Hillary would have been even worse. But that doesn’t give him any sort of pass.

      The sooner Trump supporters realize that, the better.

  5. Struth !, you are a hard marker MIckael Kriegerski. Firstly, you are so right about “Actions” & not chat that really matters so ought we expect miracles in only a few weeks? I might be proved wrong but seems to me Trump actually is a “Conviction politician” and a doer…….& if he is “Authoritarian” that is how things really get done…..It’s the “Committee system” with all the vested interests & compromises that keeps failing us…..It’s a fair bet he almost certainly will consult widely & take advice…he wouldn’t have’t got too far if he did not,…also, as an “Authoritarian” there is a good chance his his underlings will perform or be discarded. I am hopeful….Cheers x

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  6. This is an excellent article. I quit looking at The New Yorker several years ago when the cartoons started to deteriorate. 8.99 Rubles for this bad drawing. How cute.
    Thanks to Max Keiser for telling us about Liberty Blitzkrieg. The Van Jones interview was inspiring.

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  7. The rise and fall of nations and empires, an endless procession throughout 5,000 years of human civilisation.

    What were the chances of the US being the first nation to maintain this position in the history of human civilisation?

    Almost zero.

    A new nation becomes an old nation.

    The pie has been carved and an established elite look to pull up the drawbridge to keep themselves in the very comfortable position they are in now.

    Social mobility is at the same atrocious level as the UK and they use the same mechanisms for social stratification, private schools and universities (they take no chances in the US).

    Can you remember anyone at the top in the US that didn’t go to an Ivy League University?

    The generations that made fortunes fade into the past to be replaced by generations that inherit fortunes.

    Capitalist dynamism is replaced by rent seeking as the idea now is to conserve fortunes rather than make fortunes; the world of finance dominates to meet this goal. Finance allows the wealthy to use their money to make more money.

    Where can they get the best return on their investments?
    In the new dynamic nations of Asia, not in their own country.

    To conserve fortunes they move taxes off themselves and onto labour making their own nation internationally uncompetitive. They don’t like paying taxes and preside over a decline in the infrastructure that was built when the nation was young and dynamic.

    They even look on the existing businesses, that are now on the stock market, as a revenue stream and these businesses are there for them to cannibalise for personal gain.

    It is the cycle of nations and empires:
    Dynamism, success, complacency and decay

    Adios America.

    The US is making every mistake, they all make.

    American exceptionalism.
    The 1000 year Reich
    The British Empire will last forever

    We are special, no you’re not.

    Military over-reach incurs huge costs that bankrupts nations and empires.

    An interesting study into the rise and fall of empires (civilisations):
    http://www.rexresearch.com/glubb/glubb-empire.pdf

    The last age before the end is the “Age of Decadence”.
    It’s here.

    The tipping point:

    “The immense wealth accumulated in the nation dazzles the onlookers. Enough of the ancient virtues of courage, energy and patriotism survive to enable the state successfully to defend its frontiers. But, beneath the surface, greed for money is gradually replacing duty and public service. Indeed the change might be summarised as being from service to selfishness.”

    There is a certain inevitability to it that reflects human nature.

    Each generation is born into a different part of the cycle that shapes that generation and leads to the next.

    The rise and fall, it’s an inescapable destiny.

    Look at those Wall Street types breaking the back of the nation ransacking its business and industry for personal profit, along with the military/industrial complex and those pampered Ivy League graduates who never bother to look out of their ivory tower.

    Humans aren’t smart enough to learn the lessons of the past.

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    • This summation covered an array of logical thought processes. I agree with this writer, completely. It would behoove the incoming presidential administration as a mandatory reading ,as well as all politicians!

    • “There is nothing new under the sun.” Virtue and vice have not changed. Only the charade of the power holders changes slightly to accomodate new organs of propaganda. If there is a desire for justice but those who hold power apply an unobjective version of it then no true peace results. Unless you know what justice means and are virtuous enough to live it then the power squabbles continue unabated. Selfish, narcissistic leaders reap a whirlwind of misery due to their selfish, egomaniacal methods. Virtue is overlooked in leadership roles. True virtue, not ersatz versions pumped by media slouches.

  8. Very good article, Michael. Although, I think you are a bit rough on Trump and too easy on Bernie, you are spot on with Killary, Sessions, and Munchkin! I am curious of you opinion on Trump’s other nominations, not just Sessions and Munchkin. Please just don’t focus on the later two since they were so obviously bad.

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  9. Michael,

    You have a wonderful website and it’s one of the few, along with Counterpunch and The Intercept, that I check first thing each AM.

    I was a Bernie supporter and then voted Green. I loved that you gave a shout out to Jimmy Dore (on youtube) who I follow regularly because he says stuff that I find myself saying before I see it on his show. I always thought Brokaw was a stuffed shirt, especially with all that BS about the greatest generation. That generation came of age in a golden era of American capitalism with a rising standard of living and consumer innovations that transformed daily life. Lucky them.

    I’ve been a longtime subscriber to the New Yorker but now it seems like they have gone off the rails. First with their blind support for Hillary and now with Trump and the Russians. So disappointing because they do publish many interesting essays.

    The Dems seem determined to keep Sanders or someone like him from ever winning the nomination. Maybe that goes back to 1972. However times have changed and a corporate party indebted to a wealthy donor base will not, and should not, win in today’s world. Their strategy of hoping Trump implodes seems lazy and reckless. We are sleepwalking into a disaster. Maybe Morris Berman is right.

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    • Tom Brokaw is a member of the Rockefeller/CFR, along with Bill Clinton, George Soros and Lynn Forester de Rothschild. Other CFR members include Amy Davidson, Hendrik Herzberg, Jane Kramer, Evan Osnos, David Remnick, and Robin Wright of the New Yorker. This helps explain the “blind support” for the Clintons. See member lists at cfr org.

  10. Excellent Michael! This is an 1852 moment, when the dominant Whig party became defunct. It’s time to shift to alternative options. There is no other way out of this quagmire…

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  11. Sir, you miss the role Trump has to play. He maybe my POTUS, but I elected him to be my murder weapon. Nothing more, nothing less. If he can gum up the works, make the deep state sweat, bring down some of the clowns in Congress, well then he gets my vote again.

    Also America is not in trouble. Its going to be around for a long, long time. What is in trouble is the US Govt. America is not the US Govt. One is a place the other is a concept that a long list of leaders have screwed up royally on.

    Now back to our regularly scheduled rant.

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  12. I was really hopeful upon Trump’s election for him to do real reform at the highest echelons of financial reform to see real hiring increases; instead we’re mostly seeing people pad their personal wealth rather than distributing it down corporate chains of command (Trickle-down economics my ass). And corporate media is doubling down on ignoring these issues brought up like the imminent debt ceiling being broken, keeping the Volcker Rule in effect to discourage real investment, and facing the Obama status quo head-on that puts real strain on proposing a balanced budget. Both sides are hellbent on their own polarized agenda and pushing irrelevant social issues into the spotlight while not even mentioning real implementable policy changes. America will continue to be in bad shape, and I don’t see a roadmap towards debt solvency until its people realize how deep-seated its problems are.

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  13. I will focus on the Russian hysteria because it seems primary to me. One senatorial/Democratic/IC/media fop after another shows their utter contempt for the rule of law. If anyone from the administration had illegal dealings with Russia the answer is to be found in our courts system. Instead, these foppes scream for war.

    Just as Bush/Obama/Trump see war as the only response to a terrorist act, they refuse to use the criminal justice system for the purpose it was intended.

    We have a criminal justice system. They want it subverted. They also want a war, badly. They destroy both the rule of law and get that longed for war in one try.

    Ordinary Democrats have now taken to utterly rejecting the criminal justice system. They too despise it. They too want war. The only trials they will allow are trials in the court of public manufactured opinion.

    Further, Republicans are not holding Trump to account anymore than Democrats held Obama to account.

    We need people to stand up for the rule of law and against war. One can work, the other never does. I am hoping enough people will understand this and come to the defense of a civilian govt. with a civilian rule of law. That would stop much of the current madness and it would help stop the blood lust for war.

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  14. I agree with this article. Trump may be sincere but that doesn’t matter. He’s no match for the parasites currently eating away at the USA.

    If the American people do not unite and take back this country, it is done for and so are we.

    No one can save us but ourselves. The sooner we realize that, the sooner we can change this ugly, corrupted system.

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  15. The problem with “draining the swamp” is that when you replace the players, they are still operating in the same swamp. It’s not the elected/appointed people in D.C., it’s the system that we have created over the past two and a half centuries. The fatal flaw of the Constitution was a lack of term limits. There is a reckoning in our immediate future and the role of these swamp things will be simple: pain distribution.

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  16. Most of the people in my town are self-absorbed slobs who have toasted their brains with a variety of drugs. Their primary mission in life is to buy stuff they can’t afford to one up each other. They gave up on God a generation ago and think they’re better for it. Most of them would rob me blind before they’d lift a finger to help. My job is to protect the people I love from this vermin and hope that they die off quickly. I couldn’t care less about Trump either way. Those of us who have lived the right way with our eyes wide open know that America died a long time ago.

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    • Non sequitur, and you’ve no idea whether GS would have appeared in their cabinets.
      So much for giving incoming Presidents 100 days, eh?

    • You have no idea if Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein would’ve been authoritarian or not. I did what you did, and now you’re crying about it.

      I didn’t give Obama 100 days either. You don’t need 100 days to spot a fraud.

  17. I agree about the hyperbole concerning Sessions. One of my favorite sayings is to note that: Oysters throughout the Chesapeake Bay are burrowing in deeply to avoid yet another search for pearls to clutch by the politicians.

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  18. The point of Trump’s election was strictly consequence. We’ve had 24 years of non-Presidents led by the nose by their cabinet members and careerist bureaucrats and lobbyists. There’s a price to pay for that. Whether people voted for a strong Putin-style leader or to feel great again is inconsequential. We are now witnessing a morbidly obese and carcinogenic political system gagging on its own bile. If they succeed in throwing him up (getting him impeached or assassinated), the cancer is still in place, eat away the country from the inside out.

    It is absolutely true that Trump cannot save America. Nobody can. Not even the most intelligent and hardworking and conscientious and charismatic person can do so.

    This is the lesson of China. Every time one of its dynasties collapsed, the last emperor was often one of the best, trying to save his throne and the whole nation from total disaster. But he never could. The dynasty HAD to collapse, along with the whole nation, until out of the chaos a new leader and new dynasty could rise to take matters in hand — but only AFTER all of the fundamental problems that led to the previous dynasty’s collapse had been washed away.

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  19. The route to total corruption of the system, create a world where no one knows what capitalism actually is.

    We are here.

    Small state, basic capitalism existed in the 18th and 19th centuries, it gives nothing freely. Ross Perot tried to warn us in 1992.

    The rich are fabulously rich and the poor live in squalor.

    Propaganda has made capitalism into something it isn’t and even those at the top haven’t got a clue.

    If you want things biased in your favour, bias the economics that everything runs on.

    The Classical Economists looked out on a world of small state, basic capitalism in the 18th and 19th Centuries and observed it. It is nothing like our expectations today because they are just made up.

    Adam Smith in the 18th century:

    “The Labour and time of the poor is in civilised countries sacrificed to the maintaining of the rich in ease and luxury. The Landlord is maintained in idleness and luxury by the labour of his tenants. The moneyed man is supported by his extractions from the industrious merchant and the needy who are obliged to support him in ease by a return for the use of his money.”

    We still have a UK aristocracy that is maintained in luxury and leisure and can see associates of the Royal Family that are maintained in luxury and leisure by trust funds. As these people are doing nothing productive, nothing can be trickling down, the system is trickling up to maintain them.

    Adam Smith in the 18th century:

    “But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.”

    Exactly the opposite of today’s thinking, what does he mean?

    When rates of profit are high, capitalism is cannibalising itself by:
    1) Not engaging in long term investment for the future
    2) Paying insufficient wages to maintain demand for its products and services

    Today’s problems with growth and demand.

    Amazon re-invested its profits and didn’t suck them out as dividends and look how big it’s grown. Ignoring today’s economics can work wonders.

    The Classical Economists direct observations come to some very unpleasant conclusions for the ruling class; they are parasites on the economic system using their land and capital to collect rent and interest to maintain themselves in luxury and ease (Adam Smith above).

    What can these vested interests do to maintain their life of privilege that stretches back centuries?

    Promote a bottom-up economics that has carefully crafted assumptions that hide their parasitic nature. It’s called neoclassical economics and it’s what we use today.

    The distinction between “earned” and “unearned” income disappears and the once separate areas of “capital” and “land” are conflated. The landowners, landlords and usurers are now just productive members of society and not parasites riding on the back of other people’s hard work.

    Unearned income is so easy, it’s the UK favourite today.

    Most of the UK now dreams of giving up work and living off the “unearned” income from a BTL portfolio, extracting the “earned” income of generation rent.

    The UK dream is to be like the idle rich, rentier, living off “unearned” income and doing nothing productive.

    Powerful vested interests come up with neoclassical economics so that it works in their favour and only bottom-up economics can be easily corrupted. Top-down economics is based on real world observation.

    Their neoclassical economics blows up in 1929 due to its own internal flaws but the powerful vested interests still love it as they designed it to work in their favour.

    Keynes comes up with new ideas that herald the New Deal and a way out of the Great Depression.

    The powerful vested interests don’t want to lose their beloved neoclassical economics and fuse it with Keynes ideas to roll out after the war. This gives them the opportunity to get rid of some of Keynes’s more unpleasant conclusions, generally tone it down and remove all the really obvious conflicts with their neoclassical economics. The only real Keynesian economics was in the New Deal.

    When the Keynesian synthesis fails in the 1970s, they seize the opportunity to bring back their really biased neoclassical economics.

    It still doesn’t work of course.

    It’s reliance on debt based consumption and debt based speculation, tend to end in debt deflation, e.g. the Great Depression, today’s secular stagnation.

    Today’s secular stagnation is only being achieved by the Central Banker’s pumping in their trillions to stave off debt deflation and there are plenty of asset bubbles still to burst.

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