Part4

Between the preferences of the machinery of both parties, media ownership - including web companies, increasingly militarised police, ai + agents having the potential to effect the kind of 1980's de-industrialisation on the middle class, and the rise of a surveillance state that would make the stasi blush, voting for the lesser of two evils isn't going to do it any more. The lesser of two evils, both complicit in the construction of the explicit oligarchy America how has, is responsible for this.

You might extend the fuse a bit, but that will result in a bigger bomb. If it isn't too late already, you need to look to the likes of Sanders. Or you need a No Kings protest every day, or as often as possible. Or a permanent Occupy Washington, which I think would come at serious risk of harm for the participants. It is critical now for America's future.

Recently I have been looking at how ai is likely to impact my job. There are things I would do career-wise, if I were in my twenties, that are not realistic at my age.

Ageism exists, so does the simple fact that an employee in their twenties can put in much longer hours (at least until they burn out) than I (who was worked to burnout in my 20's/30's).

I have to think carefully about what I am going to be able to do as I get older and weaker, in what I am sure is going to be a more economically constrained time.

That "I don't have much time left, better get mine" can be driven by fear, or legitimate concern, rather than selfishness, at least in some cases. Yeah others just want to pull up the drawbridge when they get economically secure. Capitalism pits us against each other, join a union, vote for genuine socialists or similar, or read a few books and try and change things.

What the rest of the world is mainly doing is jockeying for position while watching America rapidly lose global reserve currency status.

It is happening far more quickly than I think the vast majority of people without privileged information imagined. Trump wants a weakened dollar and is getting it. No one wants this to happen overnight; the instability this process is allowing and will cause is risky enough. Everyone wants to avoid simmering global conflict erupting into WW3. Well maybe Putin is up for it, I don't know. The US is a belligerent ally, and has the biggest military in the world so it is about treading lightly and hopefully preparing.

It is about minimising risk, eating shit giving in to Trump's pathetic demands for fealty, while preparing for the new economic order to emerge. America cannot pay its military without everyone trusting it enough to buy its debt. America cannot pay its debts without its military supporting the dollar. So it is a tricky unwinding of decades of geo-political norms. The world cannot wait to see who America votes for every four years for global stability, so it is done. It is clear to me that very few Americans I came into contact with online ever appreciated this balancing act, or how important their vast military spending was to their country's wealth post ww2.

I feel bad for the average non-Trump voting American because as a Brit I can tell you that there is always resentment that plays out once a country loses that reserve currency status. A people can make a mistake, but a second Trump vote is unforgivable. It is America throwing itself off a cliff economically, over the longer term. Billionaires are clearly getting stuck into filling their boots - this collapse is going to make some people very rich.