Foreboding

[lostnfound]

Last time, in 2017, i thought he would reverse years of progress for women and minorities, defund social programs, privatize social security and sell of public lands, and steal a lot of money. As McConnell filled 2 Supreme Court slots that the GOP wasn’t entitled to, and voting rights were under attack, I worried whether we’d ever have a real democracy again, but i thought we’d at least keep a pretense of one. And I believed it was safe to assume that he was a traitor beholden to Putin. I figured our goal was to get Democrats elected in 2018 and 2020 to halt the damage.

I figured that after the 2020 election, Democrats would work like hell to recover the economy after the pandemic, help people survive and restore decency — which they did. But I expected a laser focus on prevention, by prosecuting and punishing those who helped a foreign power put a compromised tool into power. I wanted sunlight on the treason. We just had to get them elected, and the seriousness of the situation would arouse the nation’s defenses, its immune system awakened.

In November 2024, I felt immediately — knew it in my bones — that the US was going to be beaten to a pulp in some form of the ‘Shock Doctrine’. I expected they would tank some aspects of the economy, whether it was the US dollar or the US stock market or rip-roaring inflation, or a combination thereof. This incidentally makes it easier to “reverse years of progress for women and minorities, defund social programs, privatize social security and sell of public lands, and steal a lot of money.” Creating chaos, I expected. The high and mighty U.S., for all the depleting of the working class, is still a fat cow to be slaughtered. This isn’t “Trump”.

I didn’t expect they’d depopulate NASA, NIH, and so much more. They are systematically undermining the US’s leadership position in science and technology, university education, foreign affairs, and the economy. This is a strategy, for both “fun” and “profit”. The hard thing to understand are the simple-minded ideas like “why would they want to tank the economy that’s making them rich?” Well, to buy more of it at cheaper prices, maybe. The Party Of Oligarchs (POO) can own the whole country before it’s over, or that’s the goal. The land, the buildings, all the rights, the people, the law. [The messaging, the media, the history books, the right to be heard.]

In November 2024, i understood that the forces that got Trump elected were bigger than just Putin or Trump. So it isn’t about him, it’s about them. Foreboding in 2016 is like driving on the highway suspecting you have a tire about to blow, and you might end up wrecking or in the ditch. You hope you can make it to the rest stop. Foreboding in 2024 and 2025 is like knowing that you’re stuck in a wooden boat slightly upstream of Niagara Falls. After the sound and the fury, the wreckage will be everywhere and plain to see.