Of Two Minds

Regardless of who holds the office, America’s Imperial Project and its Imperial Presidency are due for a grand reckoning. While elections and party politics generate the emotions and headlines, the truly consequential change in American governance has been the ascendancy of the Imperial Presidency over the past 75 years, since the end of World War II.

Wake up, America, and see the Fed for what it really is: a totalitarian tool of kleptocracy. You know what happens when fire suppression policies limit forest fires: deadwood piles up and all the trees killed by bark beetles are awaiting a spark to ignite.

This “capitalism” is only attractive to parasites, predators, kleptocrats, legalized looters, embezzlers, fraudsters and all those insiders whose palms get greased along the way.

What the political class and the Financial Nobility don’t yet grasp is that ALICE will never go back to her insecure, low-wage job, ever. Meet ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, at least she was employed until the pandemic presented impossible choices between taking care of her children and their education, and her aging parents, and keeping her demanding, low-wage job.

For all these reasons, the risks of systemic collapse are much higher than commonly anticipated. There’s an irony in discussing since we all have an instinctive reaction to visible risk, we think we understand it. But alas, we don’t, especially when the risk is invisible and systemic.

Don’t expect healthcare or any other hollowed-out, heavily optimized system to function as it once did. A great many Americans will be shocked when our healthcare systems start failing because they believed the PR that “we have the finest healthcare system in the world.”