After Doombama: Mapping the Former United States

Splitting the US by FacebookThe United States has been trying to fragment ever since it was founded as a patchwork nation in the late 18th century. It has never truly been one homogeneous nation of persons sharing the same religion, the same educational level, the same ethnicity, the same class, or the same outlook. Outsiders sometimes tried to take advantage of the internal divisions. The British Empire never expected the US to last so long, and took many active steps to hasten its disintegration -- to the point of siding with the Confederacy in the US Civil War.Russian Wishful Thinking
The most powerful disuniting and disintegrating force the US has faced since 1865 is undoubtedly the presidency of Barack Obama -- the president sworn to defend a constitution that he hates. Mr. Obama's most potent weapon against the US is economic doom, created via exponential debt.
The Obama - Pelosi regime is taking budget deficits to an unprecedented level. It is difficult to visualise the end result of this exponential "snowballing" train wreck of deficits -- slippery mixed metaphors cannot even touch it.
Mexican Wishful Thinking
Videogame SimulationsA fragmentation of the US is not impossible. Although Vermont and Louisiana were both explored and developed by French settlers, it is difficult to see them as part of the same country at times. Alaska has little in common with California. Mississippi and Minnesota may be connected by one river, but they are worlds apart in many ways.Holding the 50 states (57?) together has always been a monumental task -- even for presidents who actually loved the United States and the US Constitution. Imagine how difficult the task will be in the aftermath of a president whose young mind was imprinted with a hatred of the US, and who has managed to leverage that animosity -- concealed behind a thin veneer of aloof "cool" -- into the power to frac and crack at the heart of the republic to his heart's content?

The US is experiencing many powerful fragmentary forces as a result of immigration policy, as a result of affirmative action neo-tribalist faux multiculturalism, as a result of a culture war that simmers when it doesn't burn outright, and as a result of a media and academia that genuinely appears to wish to create greater schisms and divides.

Doombama -- as instantiated in the Obama - Pelosi reich -- has another three to seven years of havoc to wreak upon the American citizen and taxpayer. No one knows what will remain at the end of that time. Draw your own map.

No America In Sight...Only Third World As Far As the Eye Can See

The swooning frenzy over the choice of Barack Obama as President of the United States must be one of the most absurd waves of self-deception and swirling fantasy ever to sweep through an advanced civilisation. At least Mandela-worship – its nearest equivalent – is focused on a man who actually did something.

I really don’t see how the Obama devotees can ever in future mock the Moonies, the Scientologists or people who claim to have been abducted in flying saucers. This is a cult like the one which grew up around Princess Diana, bereft of reason and hostile to facts. _Peter Hitchens

Actully, Hitchens is going easy on the crowing flocks of Obamaworld enthusiasts. He does have a way with words that can be instructive at times. Here is what he thinks of Obama madness:

If you can believe that this undistinguished and conventionally Left-wing machine politician is a sort of secular saviour, then you can believe anything. He plainly doesn’t believe it himself. His cliche-stuffed, PC clunker of an acceptance speech suffered badly from nerves. It was what you would expect from someone who knew he’d promised too much and that from now on the easy bit was over.

He needn’t worry too much. From now on, the rough boys and girls of America’s Democratic Party apparatus, many recycled from Bill Clinton’s stained and crumpled entourage, will crowd round him, to collect the rich spoils of his victory and also tell him what to do, which is what he is used to. _DailyMail

It is the triumph of political extravaganza over human logic. The defeat of rational thought by information control and selectively metered access to news.

If the nonsensical claims made for this election were true, then every positive discrimination programme aimed at helping black people into jobs they otherwise wouldn’t get should be abandoned forthwith. Nothing of the kind will happen. On the contrary, there will probably be more of them.

And if those who voted for Obama were all proving their anti-racist nobility, that presumably means that those many millions who didn’t vote for him were proving themselves to be hopeless bigots. This is obviously untrue. _DM

But then there is no need to be naive here. True and untrue is obviously whatever the gatekeepers decide is true and untrue. Reality simply does not signify.

...among the Mexicans, Salvadorans and the other Third World nationalities, there was something like ecstasy. They grasped the real significance of this moment. They knew it meant that America had finally switched sides in a global cultural war. Forget the Cold War, or even the Iraq War. The United States, having for the most part a deeply conservative people, had until now just about stood out against many of the mistakes which have ruined so much of the rest of the world. _DM

For a long time America's foundations have been cracking, settling, sinking into a dysfunctional way of thinking that defines the third world, and an increasingly decadent and corrupt Europe and Latin America. With the election of Obama, the distinction is without a difference.

And now the US, like Britain before it, has begun the long slow descent into the Third World. How sad. Where now is our last best hope on Earth? _Peter Hitchens

The mistake, of course, is to look for a government of any kind as a last best hope of Earth. As Obamanation settles over the US like a shroud, the distinction between the government and the country may become more clear to those still capable of seeing and understanding. With that insight comes a choice.

America Crumbling and In Decline

If you consume a lot of European or Russian media, the title of this post will be old hat to you. Of course America is crumbling! We read about it in the papers and see it on the TV news every day, it's pounded into our heads. It must be true! And since human nature deplores a power vacuum, what power bloc is poised to step into the void left by the decline of America?

In contrast to the declinists’ arguments and analyses, America boasts a position of unmatched preponderance. No single country or even grouping of countries has emerged as a plausible counterpart or peer competitor, and apart from the very long-term possibility of China, none is likely to do so.

...Europe faces steep obstacles in achieving anything resembling a common foreign and security policy. Its cumbersome institutions, public demands for enormous rates of domestic expenditure, hamstrung attempts at political integration, as well as its Hamlet-like uncertainties about the use of force and military spending, give Europe a global impact far less than its size and wealth would otherwise dictate...With the passage of time as well as the coming to power of Atlanticist leaders in Germany (Merkel), France (Sarkozy), and Italy (Berlusconi), there appears to be, if anything, even less inclination to stand in America’s way.

...Russia remains overwhelmingly dependent on the current boom in energy and commodity prices—and correspondingly vulnerable in the event of their decline. The country suffers from pervasive corruption, with a ranking from Transparency International that puts it at 121 among 163 countries in this category. Its population, already less than half that of the U.S. and plagued with alcoholism, chronic violence, a decrepit health-care system, and a male life expectancy of fewer than 60 years of age (lower than that of Bangladesh), shrinks by some half a million people per year.

Japan...only recently recovered from the effects of its economic collapse in the early 1990s. Moreover, as a result of China’s newfound economic weight and military power, Japan has moved into a closer embrace with the United States than ever before. This has meant greater cooperation from military logistics through to the strategic realm, and it has even included logistical and personnel support in Iraq. The Japanese case offers a basic reminder of something declinists too often forget: When assessing a rising power such as China, one ought to consider the near-historical certainty that the rising power will provoke a counterbalancing of its own.

...India’s substantial shift toward the United States, made partly in response to China’s awakening, offers another example of “bandwagoning” with us rather than balancing against us.

...China may indeed emerge as a great power rival to the United States. But this seems very, very unlikely in the near or medium term.

...The overall size and dynamism of [America's] economy remains unmatched, and America continues to lead the rest of the world in measures of competitiveness, technology, and innovation. Here, higher education and science count as an enormous asset. America’s major research universities lead the world in stature and rankings, occupying seventeen of the top twenty slots. Broad demographic trends also favor the United States, whereas countries typically mentioned as peer competitors sag under the weight of aging populations. This is not only true for Russia, Europe, and Japan, but also for China, whose long-standing one-child policy has had an anticipated effect.

...Over the years, America’s staying power has been regularly and chronically underestimated—by condescending French and British statesmen in the nineteenth century, by German, Japanese, and Soviet militarists in the twentieth, and by homegrown prophets of doom today. The critiques come and go. The object of their contempt never does..._WorldAffairsJournal

America has serious problems--most brought on by irresponsible and excessive government. Either Americans will learn to rein in the malignant bureaucracies and ballooning agencies of government, or they will continue to suffer from their excesses. If government is allowed to continue growing unchecked, the predictions of America crumbling will eventually occur. And if it does, the shaking will not subside for a very long time.

US Congressional Asylum: Criminally Insane?

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Fuel prices are high enough in the US to squeeze budgets of families and corporations. The mood is grim in many parts of the country, and people are looking for someone to blame. What we are seeing now resembles nothing so much as a lynching mob. And the US Congress has witlessly placed itself firmly front and center--following an invalid and obsolete ideology. An ideology that threatens to sink the US economy. More and more people are seeing what the Congress is doing, and they do not like it even a little bit.

...they are against business, against investments in domestic energy supply and for aggressive carbon controls... __Source

High oil prices are beginning to cook up a dangerous inflationary brew. By the time the next president is settled into office, the inflationary trend could be irrevocable--if Congress continues down its current slippery slope.

No profits. No exploration. No drilling. And no domestic oil with which to correct our dependence on foreign oil and thus provide a measure of security to a nation that runs on oil. __Source

Obama, McCain, and the Democratic Party dominated US Congress are all pointing the finger at big oil companies. They have put huge deposits of shale oil off-limits, have hamstrung coal-to-liquids processes that could provide oil at $30 a barrel, have paralysed the nuclear energy industry, and a number of Democratic Congressmen are even calling for nationalising the oil refinery industry.

But a rapidly growing proportion of US voters can clearly see that it is Congress itself that is limiting the options of the American economy. Even a national media that is sycophantic toward both Obama and the Democratic Party cannot stop the groundswell of awareness by the public, of how the Congress is shutting off US energy options.

If Congress continues along this road, there will be a price to pay. Oynklent Green [OTC:OYNK] is monitoring the situation closely.

Excerpted and modified from a previously published Abu Al-Fin piece

Will California Secede from the US and Join the EU?

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In many ways, California stands out from the rest of the US. With its coastal Mediterranean climate, and adherence to dieoff.org style energy deprivation policies, California might fit into the EU better than the US, in many ways.

1. The percentage of residents on welfare in the Golden State is now more than triple that of the rest of the U.S. If it reflected the rest of the country, California would have 800,000 fewer people receiving welfare.
2. While caseloads in the rest of the U.S. have dropped over 30% in the past five years, California’s has gone up about 6%.
3. As a result, though it has only about 12% of the total U.S. population, California’s share of the welfare caseload has risen from 22% in 2002 to over 30%.
4. There are more welfare recipients per family in California, and that number has crept upward in the past couple of years, perhaps indicating that California welfare mothers are bearing more children that those in the rest of the U.S.

Governor Schwarzenegger and his state were very fortunate during his first few years in office. The economic growth created by the Bush tax cuts came at just the right time. The state also received some lucky onetime windfalls, including the hundreds of millions of dollars founders and insiders at Google coughed up when they cashed in their stock options.

Unfortunately, it appears that the good fortune enabled the state to avoid serious expenditure reform in welfare, and surely other areas, which Schwarzenegger should have aggressively undertaken when he took office. __Source

California's flight from reason began many decades ago, but for a number of reasons, has not yet fully reaped its sad consequence. Elected representatives such as Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, and Maxine Waters attest to the depleted mental resources of the California voter. As more industries, more intelligent citizens, and large employers limp their way out of the state for better economic opportunity, the toxic concentration of obliviousness grows ever higher within the golden state.

California can still be a pleasant place to visit. But if you're thinking of starting a business there, you may want to think again.

Obama's New Lapel Pin: Obama's New America

Barack Obama is already looking ahead to his new America--an America with 57 states, or is it 58? 59? 60? One can never have too many states in a country, after all, and Obama only wants to be sure he has enough.

Yesterday The Ticket broke the stunning news of America's acquisition of seven, maybe eight, new states, according to future president Barack Obama.

He was speaking at the start of a two-day swoop through Oregon, which is already a state.

In Beaverton, which is not a state yet, the Democrat let it slip that during this marathon 16-month party presidential nomination struggle against a bunch of dropouts and this female political zombie from New York who won't surrender short of a silver stake, he had already visited 57 states with one more to go.

That's not counting the existing states of Alaska and Hawaii, he said, which his staff decided aren't important enough to visit. __LAT

Whether this more aggressive Obama is looking to add minor states such as Puerto Rico or Mexico to the US, or whether he has become bold enough to begin adding larger new states such as South America and Africa, remains to be clarified by the Obama campaign.

A more expansionary Obama may come as a surprise to many of his supporters, who were planning to vote for him based merely on Obama's promises to withdraw US forces from Iraq. But if Obama is planning to withdraw the US military from Iraq only to use the troops to enlarge his brave new empire, some of his supporters may begin to have second thoughts.

This not the sort of talk one expects from presidential candidates. Rather, it is the sort of talk one expects from Caesars and Tsars.

While we wait for further clarification from the Obama campaign, we might want to start a betting pool on which countries are likely to be added to the US first. What am I bid for Venezuela?

US Economy Deathwatch: Economic Nihilism Chic?

Every writer--including journalists--learns how to "shade" the nuance of a story. Two news stories reporting on the exact same phenomenon, can read startlingly differently in terms of nuance and implication. The naive reader of newspapers, and viewer of newscasts, will typically fail to detect the implicit bias of the writer. If the consumer of news were only more aware of the "marketing" nature of news organisations, he would be just as skeptical of the news as he is of advertising.

The world's largest national economy, the US economy, is far from predictable--yet most economic analysts of the world appear to be writing from the deathbed of that economy. In my experience, economic prognostication as filtered through the journalistic and news media, is exceptionally poor and unreliable.

Certainly both widespread optimism and pessimism toward an economy can be self-fulfilling prophecy. Given the news and popular media's dominant function as chief dispersers of economic "memes", or "mind viruses", it is not surprising that the media can--over time--propagate a profound sense of economic malaise. This sense of malaise eventually percolates to the highest levels of economic decision-making, potentially bringing about in economic reality, the malaise which had only been psychological.

I will provide links to two stories, as examples--and exercises, if you wish. The Geography of Recession from the Economist, and America for Sale, from Fortune (via CNNMoney).

Bruce Hall provides the links and more commentary.

Hegemony Rules: One Could Do Much Worse

Update 7Feb08: This Bloomberg.com article looks at the recent revival of a recurrent media theme: The Imminent Demise of the United States. As so many times in the past, the current rumours appear to be a bit premature. H/T StaticNoise

Besides waking up to global jihad on 2001Sep11, the other phenomenon to moderate my previously rather radical libertarianism is a better understanding of hegemony.

Trade flourishes under hegemony. That is the lesson I took from Power and Plenty, a dense, arduous survey of economic history written by Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O'Rourke. In addition to the Mongol empire, they describe the increased trade under the hegemonies of the Romans, the Muslim Caliphate, and various dynasties in China and Latin America during the first millenium. Of course, the most recent example of trade under hegemony has been what Walter Russell Mead in God and Gold calls the maritime powers of Great Britain and the United States.

It makes sense once you think about it. Disparate peoples can coexist in three ways: in isolation, under hegemony, or at war. In the absence of hegemony, peaceful intercourse is an elusive ideal.___TCS

The current world hegemony--Pax Americana--is often demonised, but is not likely to be improved upon for centuries. The two current serious alternatives: Chinese hegemony or the global caliphate, leave much to be desired.

China is quickly converting its portion of Asia into a vast wasteland, with poisoned land, water, and air. As China's economic influence and control spreads to other nations of East Asia, Africa, and South America, ecological devastation follows. In the area of human rights, China's record at home and abroad is likewise dismal. A Chinese world hegemony would be a nightmare for everyone.

What about a world Islamic Caliphate? Sharia for everyone, dhimmitude for all non-muslims. The streets running with the blood of infidels, apostates, heretics, homosexuals and adulterers. Makes you want to pull all US troops inside US borders, right?

Face it, the world is much better off under Pax Americana than it was during the European wars of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Thinking about either Nazi Germany or Soviet Russian world hegemonies would be too painful, so I'll skip those. Besides, a number of science fiction authors have done much better jobs doing that than I have time for currently.

Now, anyone can observe the DJIA and NASDAQ averages on the sidebar here. US markets experienced a 3% drop on "Super-Tuesday." I am in a selling mood myself, considering the likely winners in the US political contest. But what will be more interesting, is to watch the Asian stock markets to see how they react. Chinese stock markets in Hong Kong and Shanghai have been very schizoid recently, on mere rumours of a US recession. If the recession ever becomes more than a rumour, watch out.

Any nation that hyper-reacts so badly to the economic state of a hegemon, is not ready to become a hegemon itself. How much time before China is ready? That may depend upon who is the next US President.

Why Startups Condense in America

Why is america currently the location for so many new startups and innovators? Why are there certain locations in america, inside the US and Canada, where startups are particularly likely? Writer Paul Graham has a few ideas, which he penned in his essay, "Why Startups Condense in America."

Here is a list of his reasons:

1. The US allows immigration.
2. The US is a rich country.
3. The US is not a police state.
4. American universities are better.
5. You can fire people in america.
6. In america, work is less identified with employment.
7. America is not too fussy.
8. America has a large domestic market.
9. America has venture funding.
10. America has dynamic typing for careers.

Then, Graham goes on to explain how a country might incorporate these traits, then go further yet to beat america:

There are also a couple things you could do to beat America at the national level. One would be to have lower capital gains taxes. It doesn't seem critical to have the lowest income taxes, because to take advantage of those, people have to move. [7] But if capital gains rates vary, you move assets, not yourself, so changes are reflected at market speeds. The lower the rate, the cheaper it is to buy stock in growing companies as opposed to real estate, or bonds, or stocks bought for the dividends they pay.

So if you want to encourage startups you should have a low rate on capital gains. Politicians are caught between a rock and a hard place here, however: make the capital gains rate low and be accused of creating "tax breaks for the rich," or make it high and starve growing companies of investment capital. As Galbraith said, politics is a matter of choosing between the unpalatable and the disastrous. A lot of governments experimented with the disastrous in the twentieth century; now the trend seems to be toward the merely unpalatable.

Oddly enough, the leaders now are European countries like Belgium, which has a capital gains tax rate of zero.

....American immigration policy keeps out most smart people, and channels the rest into unproductive jobs. It would be easy to do better. Imagine if, instead, you treated immigration like recruiting-- if you made a conscious effort to seek out the smartest people and get them to come to your country.

A country that got immigration right would have a huge advantage. At this point you could become a mecca for smart people simply by having an immigration system that let them in.

He could have added that american immigration policy lets a lot of not-so-smart people sneak in. People who are a burden on the law enforcement and welfare systems. That cannot be good for startups, unless you are referring to prison startups.

Knowing how to create wealth is one of the hardest things for politically oriented people to comprehend. Redistributing wealth comes easy to politicians and bureaucrats--creating wealth is almost impossible for them.

That is why for the purpose of nurturing the geese that lay the golden eggs, it is best for the politicians to step back, and give the innovative and entrepreneurial people some room. You have to create the wealth before you can re-distribute it, you politician morons. Think for once!

Illegal Immigration: Reconquista!

Twelve million and counting? A massive influx of uneducated economic immigrants demanding full rights of citizenship without even a nod to legal compliance? Demanding it--seizing it in a quasi-larcenous yet unyielding grip--because they can? Is this the reconquista of North America? Tell me it is not so, amigo.

Look at the countries that produced these migrants. Look at their home societies. Is there anything in the source cultures of these illegals that suggests that they have learned to create a prosperous middle class civil society on their own? Could they create a North America as it is, on their own? Of course not. They come to North America because of what was already created here, by people of entirely different cultural backgrounds. The cultural background is of vital importance to the ability to create a working and prosperous civil society.

If the illegals were willing to watch and learn, had the patience to adopt the successful features of the North American culture--were willing to assimilate--there might be hope for them. But the faces of these immigrants are the faces of impatient demands for what they have not earned. They want the prosperity of North America--but they want it on their terms. It is an impossibility that they cannot comprehend, because they are unprepared, uneducated, unassimilated.

No one can doubt the ability of the illegal immigration movement to mass large and passionate crowds of protest. It is a movement full of its own importance, manned by minions of healthy marchers displaying vacuous, self-satisfied smiles of triumph. "I am carwash-hear me roar! I am grasscut, give me more! I am parts assembler, kiss the floor?"

This political movement is not a movement of economic accomplishment. It is a movement of economic parasitism, leaching off an already prospering society, performing many functions that robots will certainly do better, before long.

This is a movement--a massive movement--of social protest, backed up by twelve million illegals, and the threat of hundreds of millions more. This is not a threat of prosperity, it is a threat of destruction. It is a demand with a knife at the throat.

The fact that the illegals would cut their own prosperity out from under themselves if they were to get what they demand--that they themselves would be swamped by further and vaster human waves in the future--is beyond their own capacity to envision. The "reforms" they demand at gunpoint are actually terms of unconditional surrender which would guarantee the third-world-ification of North America--just as Europe is being third-world-ified by its welfare dependent muslim influx.

Civilisation has always had to fight against decay. When civilisation loses the will to fight--when civilisation is intimidated by the mere numbers of those who could not maintain civilisation on their own--civilisation falls. For every illegal in North America, there are hundreds more illegals watching for the opportunity to jump in.

Mexico is a wealthy country in comparison to most of the world. If Mexicans are willing to crash the gates for a fistful of dollars, you can be sure the far more impoverished of the world are waiting for a chance to crash the Mexican's party.

Reconquista? Perhaps. But only the first in a series, and the triumphant marchers and gate crashers of today will certainly be the overthrown gatekeepers of tomorrow.