Examples of Flashpoints
You may be tempted to avert your gaze. This is upsetting stuff. Don't.
In yesterday’s podcast I compared the present-day world to pre-WWI Europe. We have instability in Europe, China is blustering but on very shaky economic and demographic legs, and for reasons I still fail to understand, major Western powers are blustering at unstable and weaker governments.
Now I will temper this with an acknowledgement. Orwell was 110% right about governments creating enemies or amplifying acts of others to MAKE them enemies. It’s about projecting phony power for domestic consumption. For example, our present Regime was well on the way to record gas prices and inflation. And they were remarkably lame in their response to Russia’s pending attack on Ukraine. And voila, we have Brandon STILL using the terms Putin price hikes and Putin’s gas prices when Putin’s actions had very little impact on our economy to date. So in the short term, they were making up an enemy to blame for their own ineptitude.
In the long term, we WILL see significant impacts on our economy because of the Ukraine situation. But that will be the result of our actions, or lack of helpful actions, as much as anything Putin does. And yes, I am absolutely lumping our present Regime with bad actors around the globe. The only two assumptions you can make about the Regime are 1. Biden’s handlers are utterly corrupt, and bent on the acquisition of untrammeled power or 2. they are remarkably stupid, and bumbling so badly they are making all the world’s problems worse. There is no number 3.
Tell ya what, we’ll pursue that specific point more after the Bartlett episode(s). But we’ve reset the stage from yesterday.
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A key point in yesterday’s podcast was my mention of someone doing something to throw a match on the shit pile our world powers have created. Just a weird act a group or country might see as advantageous, and BOOM, we have mass conflagration.
WITH THAT IN MIND: I want you to view the linked video below. The entire video is a college education in one hour. But listen most closely to what Peter Zeihan says at the 35 minute mark about the “raft” (a nest of supertankers off Portugal used to shuttle Russian oil), and Latvia. Those would be EXACTLY the type of events that could send the present global situation into a tail spin. I am sure there are a thousand other fail points. But those are two concrete examples of potential targets.
And remember, in this situation, China would have nothing to lose and everything to gain through sudden aggression. It would then be a matter of survival for them in the most immediate sense of the word.
Early in the video, Zeihan describes the system that has sustained the industrial world as fragile. That is a perfect characterization.
One final thought about the video. If you are middle age, tell your kids to breed! If you are a young adult, your survival and quality of life depends on you reproducing yourself. That’s at least one baby per adult. Get to work.