"Expiration dates are gonna make me expirate!!!" (opens in separate window)

The Artificial Demon

friday, august 8th, 2025

By now, it must be kind of obvious that Mr. Putin of Russia was staged-up into a demon for the convenience of Hillary Clinton — resulting in a decade of deformed US foreign relations that has dragged us to the edge of a third world war. Nice work, Democratic Party!

I will proffer a harsh truth to you: the best outcome in Ukraine would be for Russia to win the war as expeditiously as possible, neutralize and disarm the place, change-out its illegitimate government, and let it revert to being the frontier backwater it was for eight decades previous, when it was not a problem for the other nations of the region.

Mr. Putin has put up with our country’s psychotic nonsense with remarkable patience. The idea that he seeks to conquer western Europe was a preposterous confection of the neocon crazies in our State Department and Intel “community.”

The long game for the neocon crazies has been to use NATO as the instrument to break up Russia and gain control of its resources. This was after Secretary of State James Baker told Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990, in discussions over German reunification, that “not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” Starting in 1999 with the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland, sixteen additional nations were induced to join NATO, encroaching on Russia’s borders, with new military bases and missiles. It was a stupid game.

And it failed. Ukraine was the final gambit. The US destabilized it on purpose in 2014, installed a series of governments we could control, made it a ward of US taxpayers, sprinkled it with bio-weapons labs and money laundries, and gave Mr. Zelenskyy the go-ahead to start shelling the Donbas provinces adjacent to Russia. After years of that, Mr. Putin moved to stop it in 2022. The development of drone weapons, along with US-based satellite targeting tech, has prolonged the war. But, of course, the Russians, too, have modernized their own weapons arsenal to match that. The current state of things is a slow Russian grind to defeat a Ukraine that has run out of available fighting men and is apparently short of all weapons besides its drones.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump promised to end the Ukraine war in a New York minute. That proved more difficult and complicated than he realized. He said lately in so many words that he has “lost patience” with Mr. Putin for failing to join a ceasefire as a prelude to peace talks. Accordingly, Mr. Trump set a fifty-day deadline and then shortened it to twelve-days, running out on August 8-9 (accounting for time zones). Failure to comply will cause Russia to suffer a new round of sanctions. Mr. Putin has shrugged off that threat, saying that time has proven Russia to be sanction-proofed.

Some kind of game is afoot in all this. Neither Trump nor Putin could possibly want to turn this fiasco in Ukraine into a greater war that will destroy what’s left of Western Civilization. You might find this startling, but for all our efforts to anathemize Russia, it is still a part of Western Civ. After its soviet experiment failed, Russia wanted above all to reintegrate economically with Europe, but the neocons here and the globalists of Europe would not allow that. They became determined instead to wreck Russia — a vicious ethos likely to have emanated from the UK, with its lingering imperial delusions. (For Germany, it has brought only economic suicide.)

You might suspect that Mr. Trump has to pretend to be tough with Russia to counter the still-lingering suspicion — germinated by the Hillary Clinton campaign a decade ago — that he is “Putin’s puppet.” By coincidence, strange or not, that trope is now unraveling with the release of the RussiaGate intel archive that the rogue DOJ and FBI squirreled away since the Trump 1.0 term in office. Mr. Patel found a trove of documentary evidence in a burn-bag in a back room at FBI headquarters. DNI Tulsi Gabbard retrieves more previously-hidden evidence by the day from the vast NSA data base. It ought to be clear now that the initial Hillary Clinton campaign prank metastasized into the worst perversion of abusive government power in our country’s history, and is yet on-going.

The major news organs, who were accomplices in RussiaGate, won’t publish or broadcast any of the recent discoveries about exactly how the hoax evolved into a body of delusion that took over the brains of half of the country and led to a string of additional vicious hoaxes including the Covid-19 operation, the stolen election of 2020, and the J-6 prosecutions. Maybe nothing can be done about the perfidious New York Times or Washington Post because the First Amendment allows lies to be printed within the limits of the libel laws. But the TV networks have additional obligations to the public interest under the broadcast regulations and they can lose their licenses. Perhaps they should and will.

For the moment, realize that we are in the middle of a maelstrom. Arrests and prosecutions are coming, and Mr. Trump’s clock is ticking on the Ukraine war. Upping the ante on the war is the last thing our country needs. The RussiaGate disclosures afford the president an out on his strong-arm tactics with Mr. Putin and his support of the Zelenskyy regime.

© 8.01.2025 by James Howard Kunstler, "ClusterFuck Nation".

A Day In The Life.

Up at 8:30a on Friday, a DELIGHTFUL 64°F, forecast to hit only 77°, cloudy morning, I made coffee, fired-up the Win-7 Pentium HP Desktop to let 32 million lines of code load, had a couple smokes in the garage and checked the leftover errands list. I scanned the news and weather, tuned into the "CP Show LIVE", from 9-12.

I still wasn't feeling 100%, but was definitely better than yesterday, so I decided to stay-in for the afternoon, and reschedule today's errands to next Monday or Tuesday. The weather was beautiful, so I spent some time on the back patio, did paperwork, and grabbed a nice 3hr nap. Back up around 5, I had dinner, watched the evening news, but switched to History's "unXplained" and MT's "Garage Squad" until 11:30p, and unplugged.

I remember "NORMAL"

Up at 9a on Saturday, a 67°, blue sky, low humidity, beautiful morning, I made coffee, fired-up the HP Desktop, and had a smoke in the garage. I scanned the news and weather, tuned into a Podcast of the "CP Show" from last Thursday, and checked eMail. Hard to believe it's August, already. The minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years, just seem to fly by so fast. Tempus fugit.

I turned-off the AC, opened the condo up, and enjoyed the fresh air. I worked on some condo chores for the rest of the afternoon, had dinner and watched the evening news. Both Saturday and Sunday are meager TV nights, but I found History's "Ancient Aliens" series, and watched until 1a. Lights out.

Up at 8a on Sunday, a high clouds, clear, beautiful 66° morning, I tuned into the F1 Hungary Grand Prix at 9a, on my computer -- streaming TV isn't available on my xfinity/Commiecast subscription package -- and watched until 11a. Good race. I went upstairs, and got ready for the day. Laundry and chores. Meh.

After I got the 2 loads of laundry done, I removed and put away all front porch/ back patio tables and furniture, since the condo units will be power washed tomorrow. That gave me a chance to clean-off both porch and patio's minor debris, and get the mat shook out. Hells bells, the place looks unlived-in, now, with all the outside stuff gone from view, like the 2 abandoned units on either side of me.

I had dinner -- just starting to get an appetite back -- watched FNC's pathetic excuse for a weekend news show, and switched to TWC's "Claw Hunters" MT's "Junkyard Empire" until 12 midnight, and unplugged.

America doesn’t have a racial problem. America has a problem race.

Partially awake at 6a, and finally up at 8a on Monday, a sunny, high-clouds, cool 62°, morning, I made coffee, had a smoke and listened to the truck's (annoying) generator loudly 'humming' as the power washers started on the complex's buildings' facades. I tuned into the "CP Show LIVE" from 9-12, brewed a 2nd carafe of Kona Coffee, and left at 12:15p for my 4 errand trip. (BS)

Traffic was heavy in spots, and light in other spots, depending which construction choke point I was at, but I made pretty good time. Back by 1:45p, I unloaded, had some lunch and did paperwork. At 6p, I watched the evening news, switched to History's (excellent) "Life After People" until 10, then changed to MT's "Iron Resurrection", until 12 midnight, and bagged it. My cleaning lady's in at 8:30a.

Up at 5:45a on Tuesday, to a 64°, just getting light, milky white sky, 'CODE ORANGE' poor air quality (Canadian wildfires) morning. I made coffee, had a smoke and scanned the weather and news sites. JoAnne got to work, I did some paperwork, and took a short snooze on the LR couch, and when I woke, she was finished and gone. I had more coffee, some lunch, and waited for Sherry's arrival, around 1p.

She and I had a wonderful time, as usual, until around 5:30, and she headed home. I watched the evening news at 6, had dinner, and switched to History's "Secret of Skinwalker Ranch" until 11p, and bagged it for the night.

Up at 8:30a on Wednesday, another cloudy (Canada wildfire smoke haze), humid, terrible air quality, 71° morning, I made coffee, tuned into the "CP Show LIVE", scanned the news and weather, and planned the day. So much lunacy in the world, every day, I don't know where to start. After doing inventory in the garage for Zero Sugar Gold Peak Tea, I left at 1p, for Saubel's Market, to p/u whatever cases they had remaining. Heh, so much for a case or two. I got $156 worth of other 'stuff', and 5 cases of tea. I hate it when that happens...

After unloading the Jeep and getting all that stuff put away, I had lunch and did some weeding, and re-scanned the news and weather. No nap today. T-storm cells were moving thru the York area, and we got light showers, but we could always use more. After the evening news, I switched to History's "American Pickers" until midnight, and unplugged.

Up at 8a on Thursday, another hazy, 65°, windless, humid morning. Summer's still here, and it'll be getting even worse next week. I made coffee, tuned into the "CP Show LIVE", skipped breakfast and lounged around util 12 noon. I had a couple errands to do, and paperwork to finish-up before next week's load trickles in. I worked thru lunch, into mid-afternoon, and started getting weak from no food. After a large BLT, I was even more tired, and took a 2hr nap on the LR couch. After some dinner, I watched the usual FNC news, but because Thursday is such a crappy night for TV shows I enjoy, I skipped it and finished-up the paperwork, and crashed early.

Tomorrow starts a new week here in the "Journal", and with the oppressive heat/humidity returning -- hey, it's Summer! -- I'm going to be limited for any prolonged outdoor activity. I'll figure it out, as I always manage to do.

Trump’s Unknown Frontiers.

Donald Trump’s far-ranging counter-revolution, to quote the old Star Trek mission statement, seeks “To boldly go where no one has gone before.”

Because no conservative president has dared to question the last 70 years of progressive cultural, social, economic, and political dominance, all traditional wisdom, all our renowned “experts,” and all the self-described “authorities” have no real credibility in their mostly flawed analyses and wrong prognoses. Trump is rewriting the rules of politics, economics, and culture—and no one, not even the experts, knows what happens when the old orthodoxy finally breaks.

Read what our legacy media predicted in March for this summer’s economy, or in January for the future of the border, or what would happen should the U.S. Air Force enter Iranian airspace.

Take the border. “Comprehensive immigration reform” (a euphemism for rolling amnesties and a still-open border) was the establishment’s answer to 10,000 foreign nationals storming the border during peak surges of the Biden administration.

But no president had ever simultaneously 1) pressured Mexico to close its borders and patrol ours, 2) announced a plan to complete a border wall along the entire US-Mexico boundary, 3) stopped catch-and-release, 4) ceased refugee applications after illegally entering the U.S., 5) introduced policies encouraging voluntary self-deportation, and 6) prevented all illegal entries at the border.

The result is that we do not know the full effects of these combined border policies.

So far, one million foreign nationals have lost jobs, and 2 million Americans have gained them since Trump’s inauguration. How much money will be saved in local, state, and federal entitlements if illegal immigrants return home?

How much trauma and costs will be avoided if 500,000 criminal aliens are deported?

How many serious and lethal hit-and-run accidents will be prevented?

To what degree will the idea of citizenship be reenergized once it is not reduced to the equivalency of mere residence?

How many emergency rooms will have more space for U.S. citizens? No one knows, but the consequences could be enormous.

The U.S. has never applied so many tariffs in so many ways upon so many goods from so many countries. As a result, economists have sworn since March that we are headed to a recession, stock collapse, stagflation, and high unemployment.

But do they really know the profit margins of our mercantile importers, who tariff our goods but expect easy entry for their exports to the U.S.?

Can importers pay a 15% tariff, still make a handsome profit, and not raise costs excessively on the U.S. consumer? If trade surpluses do not matter and tariffs hurt those who implement them, why do sophisticated Europeans, adroit Japanese, and smart Chinese prefer surpluses and tariffs to our deficits and zero or low tariffs? Are they on to something?

Do moderate tariffs encourage rather than retard American enterprise, on the theory that it will not be undercut by dumping and exchange manipulation and can also compete with far cheaper energy and transportation costs?

No one really knows these answers because the U.S. has never tried the current policy in quite the present way before. We do know that the radical free trade and asymmetrical tariffs of the last half-century empowered China to world power status with a dangerous military and hollowed out the U.S. industrial interior.

Is the $2 trillion budget deficit, as predicted, set in stone? Will the national debt only grow to unsustainable levels? However, federal agencies have never announced annual cuts of nearly $200 billion—along with a ten percent reduction in the budget deficit.

Never has the government promised to deregulate and fast-track permits for construction, energy development, and manufacturing from 2-3 years to mere months. What will the financial results be?

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum suggests that $15 trillion in new foreign investments are now promised. If accurate, what will such influxes do to employment? To federal revenues? To the economy in general?

Is it possible that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent could be right that $300 billion in federal income will come from new tariffs—if true, that might reduce the deficit by another 15 percent?

What is the effect on the economy of cheaper energy costs when production is slated to rise without draining the strategic petroleum reserve on the eve of elections?

No one has ever questioned universities before so systematically.

We do know that student loan debt has spiraled to $1.7 trillion. Graduation rates have dropped to about 50-60 percent of those who enroll. The average student now takes six—not four—years to graduate. Today’s graduates, by all accounts, leave universities with fewer analytical skills, less language fluency, and reduced general knowledge than in past decades. Faculties have never been more weaponized, with 90-95 percent reportedly holding progressive views.

If universities are taxed on their endowments, will that not force them to reconsider their efforts to maintain their non-profit status?

Will 15 percent limits on overhead charges on federal grants force researchers to watch their budgets and universities to curb their bloated administrative legions?

What is so wrong with curbing the tuition gouging and profiteering off foreign students, and limiting their numbers to ensure access to underserved, deserving Americans?

Will the end of segregated dorms, safe spaces, and “affinity” graduations lead to more integration and assimilation than do the current tribal fixations on race and ethnicity? Historically, does tribalism or assimilation best serve a nation?

Will meritocratic admissions improve student skills, rewarding those who study hard and encouraging those who do not to emulate those who do? Will minorities who are admitted under meritocratic criteria be seen as more or less qualified?

Are far fewer administrators, more emphasis on instruction and less on politics, and more students from the heartland and fewer from communist China or the illiberal Middle East such bad things?

In the last 50 years, affirmative action transmogrified into DEI racial separatism, chauvinism, and a system of reparatory spoils, played and manipulated by grifters, opportunists, and fakers, from Elizabeth Warren-style phonies and Jussie Smollett-like con artists to opportunists like Zohran Mamdani who game the system.

Has any chauvinistic multiracial democracy—like Brazil or India—or any multiethnic or multireligious confederation—such as Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, or Iraq—ever succeeded by prioritizing caste, race, religious sectarianism, or ethnic tribalism?

Can any top-down imposed policy ever be successful when 70 percent of the electorate opposes it?

Can any government that institutionalizes bias and preferences succeed while ignoring class in favor of race—without ever clearly defining which racial criteria justify the entire spoils system, or why?

In our postmodern 21st-century system, no one knows exactly what will happen when race becomes incidental rather than essential. But we do know from history where we were headed under the current aberrant system.

Abroad, in the last 30 years, NATO was voluntarily hollowed out—largely praised in the abstract by European grandees and shorted and ignored in the concrete by Euro budget technocrats. Yet since the days of the Cold War, NATO members had not met their defense expenditure promises.

Now, most NATO members have met those commitments. Frontline NATO states like Sweden, Finland, and Poland are far better armed and prepared than legacy Western members like Belgium, Spain, or Italy. If there follows a rearmed and recommitted NATO, will not the world become a safer place?

We were told for a half-century to steer clear of Iran, the supposed unhinged, lethal bully of the Middle East. Their henchmen blew up barracks and embassies, took and executed hostages, and sowed terror throughout the Middle East with their killer surrogates Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

But Iran had never really fought, much less won a war, since it pleaded with Saddam Hussein for an armistice from the catastrophic Iran-Iraq conflict.

What will be the effect on the Middle East with a currently impotent Iran, an inert Hezbollah, and a subterranean Hamas in hiding? More importantly, what is the current regional role of Iran without a nuclear program, air defenses, a navy, or expeditionary terrorist forces? Again, no one knows.

Finally, we have never seen anything quite so radical as the new Democratic Party, at least not since the McGovern blowout of 1972. In its 24/7, 360-degree fixation on hating Donald Trump and his MAGA agenda, rarely has a party embraced signature policies that are so despised by the American people. As a result, we have no idea what the result will be other than a national implosion at the polls.

Why would any political party embrace open borders, the influx of 12 million illegal aliens, 600 sanctuary cities, biological men dominating women’s sports, dismantling the oil, gas, coal, and nuclear industries, prosecutors who release rather than indict and convict violent criminals, defunding the police, tribal fixations and racial spoils systems in defiance of the Supreme Court, the terrorists of Hamas over democratic Israel, and overt campus anti-Semitism?

We are in the middle of a counter-revolution, whose fate will likely be decided in 15 months by the midterm elections and the status of the late 2026 economy.

Structural changes across the economy, culture, and politics of the country are underway. Our bicoastal experts and authorities are mostly predicting a multifaceted systems failure—without explaining why or how.

Yet the only constant in their predictions is that when and if they prove wrong, they will not pivot, correct, or apologize, but simply move on to their next flawed prognosis, fortified by their titles and letters after their names—but otherwise little else.

© 80.04.2025 by Victor Davis Hanson, "American Greatness".