Let's Get Serious
A bullshit-free look at the problems that face us
We haven’t been this close to a nuclear exchange since Khrushchev and Kennedy squabbled over Cuba. Relations with Russia continue to deteriorate and the Ukrainian conflict threatens to spill over into a new Great War. And while storms brew over the steppes, China continues building its fleets and arming its troops.
But wait, there’s more!
The war in Israel grinds on, with death tolls rising on all sides. Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Ansarallah militias have thrown their drones and shells into the fray, and Iran has successfully landed hypersonic missiles on at least one Israeli base. And while neither Israel nor Iran have officially announced it, both are believed to have nuclear weapons.
The Cuban Missile Crisis involved two confident opponents at their zenith. America has lost its postwar confidence. Stagflation and the Saigon withdrawal marked the end of that era, just as the Ukraine crisis marked the end of the unipolar world. At a time when we no longer have the manufacturing muscle that drove us to victory in a two-front war, we’re one itchy trigger finger away from a three-front crisis.
Faced with these triple threats, one might hope that cooler heads would prevail. But our bureaucratic and diplomatic classes rush enthusiastically toward the abyss. Our state department rattles sabers and issues ultimatums it can’t enforce. Western Rome fell because of crumbling supply lines and barbarian incursions. The Global American Empire seems determined to commit suicide by stupidity.
Amidst all the posturing, preening, and nose-honking it can be difficult to anticipate what happens next. Figuring out a brilliant strategist’s next move is child’s play compared to guessing what an idiot will do next. But just because your leaders have come to believe their own propaganda doesn’t mean that you have to.
To that end, here are a few pointers for finding sanity in a world that’s gone mad. Instead of winding you up with jargon, I’ve given you a simple analysis of the facts. My comments may seem overly obvious to you. I don’t see anything in them that a clever middle school student couldn’t grasp. But America’s foreign policy appears to be guided by people who find them irrelevant or incomprehensible.
Many commenters reduce politics to raw weapons power. The meme pictured above is one example. California Representative and horizontal hoo-hah enjoyer Eric Swalwell’s notorious comment that American gun owners could never win a revolution because “we have nukes” is another.
These commenters are not entirely wrong. All else being equal, the side with better weapons generally wins. Alas, all else is rarely equal. You wouldn’t think a bunch of rice farmers with scavenged rifles would stand a chance against the US military, but here we are.
When you’re considering your chances in a conflict, here are a few other factors that I expect to prove important in the weeks and months to come.
A Brief Parable About Arms Procurement
In 1975 the Jecklin Float promised an audiophile experience like nothing you ever heard before. The sound was no longer constricted and distorted by ear pads. It was like having a speaker by each ear.
Alas, the Jecklin Float failed on the open market. Its $300 pricetag — around $1,750 in 2024 dollars — was too rich for most consumers. (Koss Pro 4AAAs, popular in 1970s recording studios, were just $85). Its electrostatic drivers were easily blown by loud music or stray record pops. Repairs required costly shipping to Switzerland. Stereophile reviewers found the sound excellent in some regards but lacking in others. And, of course, there were … other … issues.
The Jecklin Float soon went the way of the dinosaur. Today a German company offers the Float QA, an improved, if still goofy-looking, version, for discerning and difficult to embarrass audiophiles. But as a mass market commodity, the Float failed due to price, reliability, and repair issues.
Think about how the Jecklin Float might have fared were it propped up by lavish government subsidies. Now let’s turn our attention to the F-35 Lightning, our most notorious recent example of underperforming “cutting-edge” weaponry.
Technology Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be
Gunpowder fueled the Colonial Era and atom bombs ended the Second World War. It’s not surprising that the West has a fetish for game-changing weaponry. From robot soldiers to rail guns, we’ve spent enormous sums on cutting-edge technology that promises to come to fruition Any Day Now.
But wars are won by cheap, easily manufactured weaponry. When you’re sending $2m missiles to take out $2k Houthi drones, you’ve lost the war. Because you only have a limited number of expensive missiles, you can easily be bled dry by cheap drones. Once that’s done, your opponent can break out the heavy artillery. Iran used this approach during its 13 April 2024 attack on Israel.
Technology brings complexity and complexity brings failure points. The more sophisticated your system, the more things can go wrong. Battlefronts are muddy, messy places. When somebody is shooting at you, the latest laser scope is a nice extra. A gun that will fire back reliably is critical.
It’s not enough to have robot soldiers. You need robot soldiers you can deploy in bulk and arm in the field. It’s not enough to have AI-powered artillery weapons. You need AI-powered artillery weapons that won’t short out when it rains or turn into paperweights if the software crashes.
You also need a steady supply of all the rare earths, semiconductors, and other parts required, as well as skilled workers who can assemble them. America is short on all these things right now, and those shortages are only going to get more pronounced as the American Empire continues its tailspin.
In WW II the Americans came out on top because of their colossal manufacturing capability. Both the Germans and the Japanese had superior technology, but a near-unlimited supply of adequate planes and serviceable tanks won the day.
Both Russia and China have strong manufacturing centers and the ability to muster large numbers of troops. America has neither. And yet American diplomats continue to bluster and threaten while an increasingly irritated world rolls its eyes.
Location, Location, Location…
Soldiers located several thousand miles away are potential power. They do not become actual power until it is deployed at the battlefront. Moving those troops requires a great deal of money, resources, and planning.
According to Global Affairs, there are officially 171,736 active-duty US military troops in at least 80 countries. But out of that number, the majority are in three countries: Japan (53,973), Germany (35,781), and South Korea (25,372). That leaves just 56,610 to keep watch over the other 77 countries and their 450 or so military bases.
Any soldiers you transfer to the front leave their previous postings more vulnerable to regional enemies. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a region where the US has no enemies. This means American options with regard to moving troops and weaponry are highly constrained.
America’s imperial forces are greatly overextended. The American military is also working with a recruiting shortfall and an increasingly out of shape and ill-educated population of potential soldiers. The draft is not a politically viable option, and even if it were it would do nothing to lower draftee BMIs or raise their literacy levels.
Any sustained conflict in Ukraine, Israel, Iran, Russia, or China will require troops and materiel we don’t have. It’s not clear if American bureaucrats and military strategists are aware of this. If they are foolish enough to embroil American troops in any of these conflicts, they (and we) will soon see this firsthand.
Watch Out For Fear-Biters
Those who see the DOOM coming might start pulling back the terminus stones from an overextended American Empire. They might work toward mutual relationships based on cooperation rather than intimidation. They might seek ways to cushion the blow of the petrodollar’s demise.
Our diplomats may be keeping up a public pose while working through backchannels for a peaceful wind down. If not, they are sincerely taking a 1964 posture with no idea they are living in a 2024 world. You can’t escape the consequences of their stupidity, but you can anticipate them and plan accordingly. And that includes planning for their behavior when they finally panic.
Most dogs bite not out of aggression but fear. A significant percentage of American citizens will view the next President as a usurper, and America is likely to lose badly in any upcoming conflict. As the American Empire continues on its downward slide, we can expect our ruling classes to grow increasingly nervous. This means we can anticipate further crackdowns on “disinformation” and “extremism.”
In the past, many of us have bragged about our sizable stack of suspended accounts and canceled posts. We did this in much the same spirit as the shitlibs spout slogans for street cred. It was an entertaining way of showing our credentials, but only a few of us managed to graduate from online suspensions to FBI visits.
By now “fedposting” is a social faux pas, but many still push the envelope for shits and giggles. Calls to have politicians, hedge fund managers, or ethnicities executed for treason, carted off to Guantanamo, or even “[fedposted]” may be painfully obvious jokes. But they can also be used as evidence against you.
Am I telling you to shut up? Not at all. I’m telling you that troublemakers will be targeted, and the lowest-hanging fruit will be picked first. I’m willing to go to jail for my beliefs. I’d rather not lose my bank account over assassination jokes. Choose your provocations wisely, as they may soon become more costly than they have been to date.
Already I hear cries of “censorship” and “First Amendment.” On both sides, the people who scream the loudest about tyranny don’t behave like people living under tyranny. If we’re ruled by a ruthless dictatorship, why are you surprised that it’s censoring people and ignoring the First Amendment? Did you really expect that your opponents were going to play fair?
We can expect 2024 to end with widespread discontent and 2025 to open with a considerably more violent replay of January 6, 2021. I’m not telling you to buy gold, stock up on prepper kits, or support any political cause or faction. I’m saying that things aren’t good and they’re soon going to get considerably worse.
Nothing I’ve written above is complicated. But internalizing those basic principles will put you well ahead of most diplomats and foreign affairs journalists. The person who accepts reality as it is has an enormous advantage over the opponent who insists things are the way he wants them to be.
'Your mission - should you choose to accept it - is to keep your shit together while everything seems to be going haywire.'
More and more I see the sentiment of 'wanting' open conflict. People getting that pre-WWI jitters, frustrations boiling over. Otherwise peacable commentators speaking closer to 'when' rather than 'if'. Playing for keeps is the assumption, respect is satirical, and contempt is growing.
It's almost as if bottling up all collective armed conflict in largely irrelevant dustbowls has given the whole globe septic shock, and now a fever is attempting to purge the poisons.