Missive #108

Read Will Rogers column 88 years ago: August 11, 1935

We had a violent thunderstorm Wednesday that started a little after noon. There was hail again but this time mixed with rain. Both the rain and hail coming at Desperado vertically rather that horizontally. I’m guessing that the wind was a steady 20 mph with guest approaching 30 from the way Desperado was rocking. A lot of close lightning and loud thunder that had Erik trembling once more.

The Reserve weather reporting station claims that the total storm left 0.67″ of rain. I think we got at least that much and more. There was also hail 1-2″ thick on the ground until the rain runoff washed most of it away. Where the hail drifted against something on a northern exposure the drifts were 3-4″ deep and stayed there for about an hour after the initial storm had passed. We then got multiple showers throughout the rest of the day. A lot of water puddles this morning but the ground was not very muddy where there was no standing water. —— Saw the bull elk again yesterday morning.

I have quoted the Conclusion to a good posting, United States Plan B, by Larry Johnson. A suggested read.

As early as 2018, informed observers could tell that the US Establishment strategy for dealing withRussia (Plan A) was unlikely to succeed.  The reasons were: 1) The US lacked the factories necessary for an industrial war, 2) The US lacked advanced weapons to counter Russia’s hypersonics, and 3) The US reliance on sanctions would prove counterproductive.  At that point, the US should have gone to a backup or alternative strategy (Plan B), but no such plan seemed to be available.

There was a potential, but unwritten, alternative strategy: To support the US dollar by adding additional measures to compliment the earlier Petrodollar scheme, and to eliminate measures that weakened use of the dollar.  Unfortunately for the US Establishment, the US went ahead with Plan A, with the result that it not only failed to sink Russia, but also mostly ruined any chance for a realistic Plan B.  As it stands now, the US is facing another military debacle in Ukraine, a resurgent Russia, a collapsing US domestic environment, and a Global East and South leaving the West behind.  To make matters worse, one might say that there is no alternative being considered publicly that might work.

This quote is the closing to a good article, China Remains Resilient and Dynamic in Competition with U.S. written by an American (Thomas W. Pauken II) living in China.

The United States of America has turned into a far different nation than when I was growing up there in the 1980s and 90s. Back then, Americans were amazing story-tellers, loved laughing and telling jokes while they were very optimistic by nature. If they had to endure tough times, they thought “tomorrow will be a better day,” just like the song lyrics from the popular Broadway play, Annie.

They had a ‘can do’ attitude and as a young student we were taught to never say, “can’t” since that makes you a quitter or coward. I have lived and worked in China since October 2010 and only visited my homeland twice for short trips before coming to the country last month. The U.S. has changed and not for the better.

I saw few people laughing and telling jokes, including my friends and family members. People were bleaker and it was like they all had felt a sense of impending doom, but could not figure out why that was so. Nobody believed the U.S. economy was robust, although the Western media would often report to the contrary.

There’s the impression that when arriving into America you enter a stage of lies and U.S. citizens have lost faith in their government. They play-act as imposters but know that eventually people from outside the country will uncover the truth.

The U.S. is losing and China is winning. The game is not over for Americans but time is fast running out. They believe that endorsing ‘anti-China’ publicity campaigns could turn the tide in their favor, but they have succumbed to delusions on that matter. The blame China games will only isolate the country much further.

A philosophical truism is that people love a winner and will support the victor. The U.S. society is disintegrating before our very own eyes, and it’s a tragedy in real-time.