Very good. I accept your premise on the current negotiations. I reserve the right to believe it was stupidity that brought us here. The world is not Manhattan real estate, it has much greater moral consequence.
He had a better deal than JCPOA reportedly in Oman at the brink of the war. But Bibi pulls the strings.
We will never be relied upon for at least a generation.
Exactly. I agree the 'person with the wrong personality and wrong toolkit' to meet the moment was elected. Remember that the wrong person voluntarily chose the moment. That is the stupidity coming in. This conflict was not thrust upon Trump - he chose it.
The system that produced him/this regime is what’s stupid. I have never seen a more blind and stunted personages in power - oil, finance, media, and Red State politics - it’s frankly unimaginable.
How dumb do you have to be to not see, at this level of economic integration, that income inequality and authoritarian bullying will produce, in any state, but PARTICULARLY in the hegemon, this exact consequence?
We’re killing the planet for another 40 years of shareholder return. WHAAAAT??!! That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
All the productivity gains in work from technology goes not to Labor, but to Capital?? What happens when we don’t need workers and they all starve?
How dumb do you have to be to promote propaganda at a time when the truth is so absolutely essential to making a sane decision?
You have to be two things: willfully ignorant, and arrogant.
Ask yourselves: who, in your life, meets those two criteria? And who, in POWER, matches those two criteria.
You’ll find Fundamentalists there. And Luddites. And the greedy, and the hateful.
Idolatry worthy of the Whore of Babylon.
This is what our “system” has produced. Pretty fucking dumb.
It’s a combination of nepo babies born on third base who thought they hit a triple and people who are good at ONE SPECIFIC THING that is very profitable who think they are renaissance men.
Trump is the master conman who can united all the rich and powerful morons behind him.
As for shareholder return: Trump will almost certainly be dead within the next decade. Why would he care about 40 years?
What is unsustainable, ends. In today’s language, the US never planned to take the off-ramp to become the largest partner of the community of nations. We strung out the transition to equality; then quit trying after 35 years of the end of Soviet-era thinking. Iron Man’s rusting.
Irresistible power doesn’t exist; neither does trust.
I think China’s way farther along than we think. They study foreign cultures, and shape their approaches. They can talk to Iran.
The pressure backing up on oil transit. This will end soon. Dams break. China doesn’t plan for doing boom-booms in the Gulf. They don’t need to. This is the Great Game that the US never understood. We are the sassiest scamps on the planet, but nobody is distracted. The grownups have work to do now.
"China has been running a thirty-year positioning game. Belt and Road, yuan internationalization, parallel institutions — all of it premised on a 2040-2050 handoff, a gradual American decline that would provide enough runway to build the replacement architecture."
"In a Treasury Department document enumerating the 2015 charges, regulators said Trump Taj Mahal Associates and the Taj Mahal Casino “failed to implement and maintain an effective anti-money laundering program; (b) failed to report suspicious activity related to several financial transactions at the casino; (c) failed to properly file Currency Transaction Reports; and (d) failed to keep appropriate records as required by the BSA and its implementing regulations.”"
It is plausible that these 4 failures were intentional giving credence to a "financial mismanagement" reason for the bankrupt casinos, when the plan all along was to launder [fill in the blank] money. Fast forward to this administrations mismanagement of foreign relations and how it has affected the petrodollar... could this also be planned in that the elite, who stand to see a reduction in their wealth and power from a 2040-2050 handoff to China, have used Trump (as the money launderer's allegedly did) to collapse the petrodollar early in order to institute a hegemonic cryptocurrency that they control? Or is this too implausible?
As a 'plain ole' person, who while not politically experienced, is reasonably well read (IMHO) and from my perspective, is a realist, I find your analysis compelling. It's disconcerting to discover that the country that I have lived in for nearly 66 years, never really existed...we are taught otherwise and it's something that, if you lead a 'typical' life, it only becomes apparent slowly. It used to be possible to pretend that it was what we were taught, but no longer, if your head is not buried in the sand. That ended for me in 2016. 2020-2024 was a gasp for air, we're back underwater now.
Sadly, I think things get worse, before they have any chance of getting better. I don't like things now, will like them less in the future, I expect, before I follow in Elvis's footsteps.
Thanks yock1960. I’m a bit older than you and I too have found it “disconcerting to discover that the country that I have lived in for nearly 66 years, never really existed...we are taught otherwise “ They’ve done a number on my head, thinking of the propaganda I learned abt the USA. No. 1 being the Constitution is NOT sacrosanct, after 22y of living & schooling in the USA with all that pumped into my brain to find out it was not. 🤯
Way, way, way too many indicators of AI writing in this piece. All the big tells appear multiple times. It seriously degrades any sense that the author actually knows what they are writing about.
I forward Bryan's notes and posts around more than anything I read on Substack, for reasons of his expertise. I love expertise. Any system with a degree of freedom produces something like an ecosystem, I believe, with a high degrees of differentiation AND integration. Which isn't to say it works. Indeterminate systems need to be tended. Letting shit happen can and often does result in instability and boom and bust, in economies and elsewhere. Laissez-faire is a scam promoted by those who benefit, or think they will benefit, from boom and bust. Or maybe they don't think at all but it's tautological and circular and a matter of faith.
I bought into Taleb's black swan argument when I read it and think I understood it but, in any case, my observation on the subject matter at hand is that you don't want an insane, tribal voting bloc in your society and we have one. A voting bloc that was cultivated by special interests and got more crazy over time as they were told, over and over, that the lies and resentments they nurtured were right and justified. We're saddled with these people and an infrastructure with inconceivable amounts of money behind it, I'm thinking the think tanks, that has demonstrated it's able to wrench the government out of the context in which it makes sense.
A context within which the government is intelligible in relation to its democratic function -- what it's designed to do. Within which it's at least legal. The government isn't supposed to be a business or even especially efficient at what it does or only in so far as it can within the imposed constraints. The government is deliberately inefficient to protect us from tyranny. To buffer us against short-term shit. To look out for the longer term viability of a state that enables the freedom and welfare of its constituents under their consent. So there's that. I recall a French guy saying the worst thing that happened to them was feeling they had won in WWI.
That their heads went up their asses, or those of the military and the ruling elite. I don't know about that but I think about us coming out of WWII, thinking we were God's gift and a chosen nation which was already a problem owing to our Puritanical and Calvinist roots. Feeling special is good. Everybody should feel special. Even societal groups should feel special. But in ways that are based in reality and on behaviors and that don't necessitate feeling special at the expense of other people. So I agree with Bryan about the nature of this problem and I'm pessimistic. We have a voting bloc that's fortified and impervious to reason. Even reasonableness.
They start at 'fuck you.' Really, 'fuck y'all' because it has southern, evangelical origins. And they aren't going anywhere.
"The question now is not how the war in Iran ends. The question is what kind of world exists after it ends — and whether you’ve built anything that doesn’t depend on the answer being good."
Do you have suggestions for building something useful no matter how this war ends?
The very worst possible leaders to ever be on the world stage. Alas, the price of eggs … indeed.
Very good. I accept your premise on the current negotiations. I reserve the right to believe it was stupidity that brought us here. The world is not Manhattan real estate, it has much greater moral consequence.
He had a better deal than JCPOA reportedly in Oman at the brink of the war. But Bibi pulls the strings.
We will never be relied upon for at least a generation.
Exactly. I agree the 'person with the wrong personality and wrong toolkit' to meet the moment was elected. Remember that the wrong person voluntarily chose the moment. That is the stupidity coming in. This conflict was not thrust upon Trump - he chose it.
The system that produced him/this regime is what’s stupid. I have never seen a more blind and stunted personages in power - oil, finance, media, and Red State politics - it’s frankly unimaginable.
How dumb do you have to be to not see, at this level of economic integration, that income inequality and authoritarian bullying will produce, in any state, but PARTICULARLY in the hegemon, this exact consequence?
We’re killing the planet for another 40 years of shareholder return. WHAAAAT??!! That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.
All the productivity gains in work from technology goes not to Labor, but to Capital?? What happens when we don’t need workers and they all starve?
How dumb do you have to be to promote propaganda at a time when the truth is so absolutely essential to making a sane decision?
You have to be two things: willfully ignorant, and arrogant.
Ask yourselves: who, in your life, meets those two criteria? And who, in POWER, matches those two criteria.
You’ll find Fundamentalists there. And Luddites. And the greedy, and the hateful.
Idolatry worthy of the Whore of Babylon.
This is what our “system” has produced. Pretty fucking dumb.
Stupidity with money.
It’s a combination of nepo babies born on third base who thought they hit a triple and people who are good at ONE SPECIFIC THING that is very profitable who think they are renaissance men.
Trump is the master conman who can united all the rich and powerful morons behind him.
As for shareholder return: Trump will almost certainly be dead within the next decade. Why would he care about 40 years?
I appreciate your informed take here....you fleshed out your thesis well, and wow, it makes tragic sense.
The United States is speed running 500 years of Chinese mistakes into a four year term.
What is unsustainable, ends. In today’s language, the US never planned to take the off-ramp to become the largest partner of the community of nations. We strung out the transition to equality; then quit trying after 35 years of the end of Soviet-era thinking. Iron Man’s rusting.
Irresistible power doesn’t exist; neither does trust.
I think China’s way farther along than we think. They study foreign cultures, and shape their approaches. They can talk to Iran.
The pressure backing up on oil transit. This will end soon. Dams break. China doesn’t plan for doing boom-booms in the Gulf. They don’t need to. This is the Great Game that the US never understood. We are the sassiest scamps on the planet, but nobody is distracted. The grownups have work to do now.
"China has been running a thirty-year positioning game. Belt and Road, yuan internationalization, parallel institutions — all of it premised on a 2040-2050 handoff, a gradual American decline that would provide enough runway to build the replacement architecture."
David Sirota and Lydia O'Neal published this June 2017 piece in the International Business Times, Trump’s Businesses Have A History Of Money Laundering Charges (https://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/trumps-businesses-have-history-money-laundering-charges-2552684).
"In a Treasury Department document enumerating the 2015 charges, regulators said Trump Taj Mahal Associates and the Taj Mahal Casino “failed to implement and maintain an effective anti-money laundering program; (b) failed to report suspicious activity related to several financial transactions at the casino; (c) failed to properly file Currency Transaction Reports; and (d) failed to keep appropriate records as required by the BSA and its implementing regulations.”"
It is plausible that these 4 failures were intentional giving credence to a "financial mismanagement" reason for the bankrupt casinos, when the plan all along was to launder [fill in the blank] money. Fast forward to this administrations mismanagement of foreign relations and how it has affected the petrodollar... could this also be planned in that the elite, who stand to see a reduction in their wealth and power from a 2040-2050 handoff to China, have used Trump (as the money launderer's allegedly did) to collapse the petrodollar early in order to institute a hegemonic cryptocurrency that they control? Or is this too implausible?
The American empire dies in the fire of its own financial ruin. The USA just spend more on debt interest than defense. Leviathan falls.
As a 'plain ole' person, who while not politically experienced, is reasonably well read (IMHO) and from my perspective, is a realist, I find your analysis compelling. It's disconcerting to discover that the country that I have lived in for nearly 66 years, never really existed...we are taught otherwise and it's something that, if you lead a 'typical' life, it only becomes apparent slowly. It used to be possible to pretend that it was what we were taught, but no longer, if your head is not buried in the sand. That ended for me in 2016. 2020-2024 was a gasp for air, we're back underwater now.
Sadly, I think things get worse, before they have any chance of getting better. I don't like things now, will like them less in the future, I expect, before I follow in Elvis's footsteps.
Thanks yock1960. I’m a bit older than you and I too have found it “disconcerting to discover that the country that I have lived in for nearly 66 years, never really existed...we are taught otherwise “ They’ve done a number on my head, thinking of the propaganda I learned abt the USA. No. 1 being the Constitution is NOT sacrosanct, after 22y of living & schooling in the USA with all that pumped into my brain to find out it was not. 🤯
Iran has won. And the world is acting accordingly.
The most expensive army in the world haven't defeat Bedouins with Temu drones.
The most serious and reliable diplomacy is not Washington, but a shitty theocracy of murderers.
The petrodollar is a security tax that doesn't guarantee security.
From the Donbas to the Persian Gulf, the cheap drone has massively changed the global balance of power.
The most expensive army in the world is doing the 21st century version of cavalry charges against entrenched machine guns.
Against robot machine guns that don’t bleed
Re: "The US has made neither decision. It is executing a third option — theatrical belligerence with no commitment to either endpoint."
Brought to you by a humunculus who learned all he knows about leadership from starring in a reality TV show.
Way, way, way too many indicators of AI writing in this piece. All the big tells appear multiple times. It seriously degrades any sense that the author actually knows what they are writing about.
Thank you
I forward Bryan's notes and posts around more than anything I read on Substack, for reasons of his expertise. I love expertise. Any system with a degree of freedom produces something like an ecosystem, I believe, with a high degrees of differentiation AND integration. Which isn't to say it works. Indeterminate systems need to be tended. Letting shit happen can and often does result in instability and boom and bust, in economies and elsewhere. Laissez-faire is a scam promoted by those who benefit, or think they will benefit, from boom and bust. Or maybe they don't think at all but it's tautological and circular and a matter of faith.
I bought into Taleb's black swan argument when I read it and think I understood it but, in any case, my observation on the subject matter at hand is that you don't want an insane, tribal voting bloc in your society and we have one. A voting bloc that was cultivated by special interests and got more crazy over time as they were told, over and over, that the lies and resentments they nurtured were right and justified. We're saddled with these people and an infrastructure with inconceivable amounts of money behind it, I'm thinking the think tanks, that has demonstrated it's able to wrench the government out of the context in which it makes sense.
A context within which the government is intelligible in relation to its democratic function -- what it's designed to do. Within which it's at least legal. The government isn't supposed to be a business or even especially efficient at what it does or only in so far as it can within the imposed constraints. The government is deliberately inefficient to protect us from tyranny. To buffer us against short-term shit. To look out for the longer term viability of a state that enables the freedom and welfare of its constituents under their consent. So there's that. I recall a French guy saying the worst thing that happened to them was feeling they had won in WWI.
That their heads went up their asses, or those of the military and the ruling elite. I don't know about that but I think about us coming out of WWII, thinking we were God's gift and a chosen nation which was already a problem owing to our Puritanical and Calvinist roots. Feeling special is good. Everybody should feel special. Even societal groups should feel special. But in ways that are based in reality and on behaviors and that don't necessitate feeling special at the expense of other people. So I agree with Bryan about the nature of this problem and I'm pessimistic. We have a voting bloc that's fortified and impervious to reason. Even reasonableness.
They start at 'fuck you.' Really, 'fuck y'all' because it has southern, evangelical origins. And they aren't going anywhere.
John Mearsheimer's Misreading of Trump, China, and Iran's Martyrs' War
https://substack.com/@theveseyrepublic
Apr 18, 2026
"The question now is not how the war in Iran ends. The question is what kind of world exists after it ends — and whether you’ve built anything that doesn’t depend on the answer being good."
Do you have suggestions for building something useful no matter how this war ends?