Stars & Stripes

[mister_coffee]

I think the scary thing is that the above three crises might interact in unexpected and frightening ways.

One thing that might happen here is that if supply chains break down on as large a scale as they are likely to, someone will probably start systematically looting the many part-time homes here for the good stuff.

Another thing is that a lot of critical motor vehicle parts come from China. But probably won't anymore. This has issues for things like public safety, agriculture, and deliveries. But also it might well mean that far fewer people come to the valley this summer. And some who do come might be stuck here with a non-functioning vehicle for a while. And we ought to keep in mind that things like police vehicles and fire trucks get a lot of miles on them in the best cases and in a rural area like this they put even more miles down. Which means more maintenance is required, which means more auto parts that we won't have will need replacing.

The point is that we are out here at the Sharp End of things and are likely to notice some pretty significant impacts. Even if this is 100 percent reversed in the coming days it will take months for the pipeline to get fully started again. In the meantime it looks to be a pretty rough summer here.

[mister_coffee]

In all seriousness, I think we are well down the trail towards an unprecedented amount of civil unrest and chaos in this country.

We have Three Big Things going on at the same time. All of these things are already happening but their impacts are not yet fully felt.

1. With this trade war, we are looking right down the barrel of an unprecedented supply chain collapse. Very few people still alive here have any experience with what that could be like. Based on recent experience, I am doubtful that people are going to respond constructively and cooperate to help their neighbors and community.

2. The DOGE "cuts" and drama and random firings of federal employees greatly reduce the government's capacity to respond to emergencies. Many critical government functions might not be functioning for very long in this environment. We might already be seeing this with the ongoing air traffic control issues. I'd just also note that even small disruptions can amplify into something unmanageable, especially if they cannot be fixed quickly

3. The Administration's open flaunting of court orders and trying to play cute with the courts will inevitably cause a breakdown in the rule of law.

I'd argue that any one of the above things happening would be an unprecedented crisis. Having all three happen at the same time is just unimaginably worse. I find it doubtful that under such conditions to expect that government would even continue functioning in any meaningful sense.

[mister_coffee]

I find it hilarious that someone who completely dismissed the idea of a civil war a few years ago now finds our situation so precarious that someone even writing about the topic might be provoking a civil war.

For the record, the people who are provoking a civil war look like this:

And this:

And of course like this:

[dorankj]

Provoking a civil war? Yeah, there’s some great planning, I’m SURE you’ll win elections any minute now.

[Rideback]

"D. Earl Stephens, retired managing editor of the military's daily newspaper, Stars and Stripes, issues a warning, not only to the average citizen of the U.S. but, I believe, to rank and file military personnel at home and around the world.
He's exhorting them to consider if they will follow the orders of a madman hell bent on destroying the U.S. or follow the U.S. Constitution. I suspect tens of thousands of troops will disobey orders rather than invade Canada (less so with Greenland or Panama, I suspect). Those will be the first shots of the civil war.
“It would be helpful if we stopped pretending this terrible chapter in American history won’t close without bloodshed …
It would be helpful if Americans, and our feeble Democratic politicians in particular, stopped implying by their comatose actions that Democracy is some damn American right and has no end date.
America very well might be arriving at hers, because, yes, it really is that bad right now.
Rather than bringing Ping-Pong paddles and groovy, little signs to a fascist hate-fest disguised as a State of the Union speech, it would be helpful if our meek, out-of-touch Democratic politicians at least pretended they understood the perilous moment we are standing in right now.
We are in deep, deep trouble, and now would be a wonderful, necessary time to step in front of your favorite mirror and honestly ask yourself what you are willing to do to fight for our country’s survival.
We are but six-plus weeks into the repulsive, wannabe-king’s second term and the damage he and his party are causing are already at catastrophic levels.
Our air, water, earned benefits, peace, public safety, civil rights, and human rights are all under immediate threat. Worse? This is only the first course of many that will be served by the vindictive, orange madman, and his pathetic party of supplicants.
The insults, the attacks, endless provocations, and thrashing of our Constitution will continue daily. All this carefully planned evil will be aimed at exactly one thing: breaking us.
Everything he is doing is designed to pound us into submission, and he’s having a grand damn doing it.
This was entirely his aim when he and his pet mutt, JD Vance, double-teamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the behest of Boss Putin in the Oval Office on Friday. The idea was to publicly humiliate the man who has done more to defend America’s interests across the globe than any Republican in memory.
Because Zelenskyy has tasted gun powder and breathed the odious smell of death on the battlefield, he wasn't about to be pushed around by some morbidly obese, 78-year-old yacht club bully and his toady, who think swinging a sand wedge to free a golf ball from some bunker is dangerous business.
Zelenskyy punched back and wasn't having it. He told the truth, and didn't back down. The future of his country is on the line right now, and he acted like it.
And therein lies the playbook for dealing with this sadistic bastard — if only the cautious, too-clever Democratic Party and their weak leaders, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, bothered paying attention.
While Rome burns, they dither.
They act as if we have all the time in the world, when time is something that is not guaranteed right now. They seem to somehow have no idea how bad things are about to get, or most certainly will be when elections they seem to be pinning their hopes on roll around next year.
Everything changed on November 5th, but by the looks of it, very little has changed in the Democratic Party.
This country will never be the same, and the sooner we come to grips with that, and start acting accordingly the better.
What would you do if everything you had and everyone you loved was threatened? Would you act like Zelenskyy or Schumer?
One of the big mistakes of Joe Biden’s presidency was this notion that everything was going to be OK, and that his idea of America matched the actual circumstances of America.
If I had a dollar for every time he said this, I’d fold up shop and move to Tahiti:
“We are the United States of America – there's nothing we can't do if we do it together. We just have to remember who we are.”
It was a noble statement and magical thinking that would have worked great pre-2016, when we could still believe without being laughed at that our two parties could work together in a crisis to protect America.
When we were attacked by the terrible human being who is now somehow leading us January 6, 2021, that magical thinking needed to go out the nearest window.
Instead, our Justice Department twiddled its thumbs and allowed the America-attacker to build himself back up, so that WE would have to deal with him AGAIN.
I seethe just thinking about this, but it is where we are right now, and the sooner we all understand this the better.
The clock is ticking. The bomb is in place.
Which brings me back around to my original premise: At some point, he will do something so heinous … so anti-America … so dangerous … that the people who truly love our country will be forced into the streets to take a life-or-death stand. Sadly, this is actually the best-case scenario, because the worst case is we just go quietly into the dark, gloomy night and become an authoritarian country, where we have zero rights or say in how we are governed.
Yesterday under the cover of his blankets, the America-attacker shared this with us:
Now read the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; OR THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE PEACEABLY TO ASSEMBLE, AND TO PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR A REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES."
He is telling us what he thinks of America and silly things like the Constitution. Kings don’t pay attention to that kind worthless drivel.
And, really, end of the day, it not him who we have most to fear. It’s the stupid, goddam Republicans who are stubbornly in all of our lives. These are the people who have illustrated there is no known pain or sacrifice to our civil liberties or pocketbooks that they won’t absorb just for the satisfaction of watching some poor kid of color going without something they didn’t think she should have.
So the choice is yours: You can continue thinking there is some magical way out of this, or you can begin to take the threat to everything you hold dear seriously, and ACT accordingly.”
— D. Earl Stephens, author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes."