Trump’s Laughable Sanction Threats Against Russia

Yup. I think he actually floated the idea of getting China to lean on Russia and I’m like oh, sure, that’ll work! “Hey, Xi Jinping, I’m going to be coming after you as soon as I’m done with this Ukraine stuff . . . so, help me fix it!”

Funny that he joked about thinking Spain was in the BRICS and yet a strategy of marshalling, even claiming, resources in this hemisphere is the response I would expect from someone who sees the growing power and consolidation of Asia.

Now, budget surplus is not automatically good. It’s no use for a state to save in its own currency as it could make as much of it as it likes, just pressing a button. A budget surplus would rather indicates a failure of investment in future production. Or perhaps an economy full of bottlenecks, since the only use of budgetary surpluses would be to curb inflation and you say inflation is high regardless of surpluses. It seems that there are more money in the economy than things to buy for the money, which is not a high rating of the Russian economy…

A timely post. Whatever slim hopes I had that the Trump admin would be less insanely bellicose or deluded than Brain-Bleed Biden’s, I now directly drop, & apologize for my naive hope. (Really, Obama should have taught me the futility of hope at least 15 years ago.)

I’ve noted to friends how Trump’s ignorance & blustering are the exact opposite of Teddy Roosevelt’s (running an Empire on the way up) “Speak softly, & carry a Big Stick.” Coming into office with mostly futile threats against a plethora of “rivals”– Ghina, Panama, Cuba, Canada, Mexico, Spain (!), okay, in the case of Greenland, with a population of 57,000 people, that one could well fly, at least in the short term.

Really, all he accomplishes with respect to the other World “leaders” (the ones who live in the Reality-based sphere) is signal how truly clueless & out-of-touch he is. Russia has lost a million men & Ukraine only 700K!!? Get real. (He’s spoon-fed CIA propaganda and has not a single aide who can tell him the truth?) Spain is in BRICS!! Putin is “losing very badly”!? Immigrants in Ohio are kidnapping & eating cats? WTF? Perhaps his brain has started to decline on a level with Biden– “Sad!!”

At this time, Grand Master Karl Rove’s solipsistic “We’re an Empire now, & we create our own Reality” has truly metastasized into a full-blown Cancer among the Elites. Apart from enslaved and rapidly declining Europe, especially the “Baltic Chihuahuas” (hat tip to Ray McGovern & Larry Johnson, ex-CIA), the rest of the world clearly sees the US is over-extended and rapidly declining domestically.

The single Bear-Trap that Trump may not push the U$ blindly into, I think, is war with Iran on behalf of the Zio-Nazis. Surely there are many in the Pentagon who know what an epoch-level disaster this would be.

He has already flagrantly betrayed his MAGA base by being Sieg-Heil Elon’s subordinate Co-President and UPPING Immigration of Indentured Servitude B-1 Visa holders from India and elsewhere while spewing his usual anti-immigrant garbage, hypocrisy that is as clear as his orange tint. (In one of the recent Boeing near-disaster groundings, it was revealed that the 3 Engineers responsible for systems on that plane were $9 per hour Indians.)

He had only 3 solid achievements in his first term: 1. Aborting Obama’s monstrous TPP Treaty; 2. Overturning Roe v. Wade (pretty Pyrrhic victory for down-ballot R’s, until Biden gave the party more juice), 3. The giant tax-cuts for the richest (which Joe of course continued.)

This administration will be a giant dumpster fire. I have heard that Rick Grenell is the single sane, competent person he wants to appoint (just like in the thousands of fuck-ups Biden had a single Lina Khan). One competent sailor can’t save a sinking ship.

Do ANY of the purported targets of Trump’s 2nd McKinley Imperial Admin have the minimal “Survival of the fittest” instincts to team up and oppose the steroid-level boasts that Drumf et al are promising? I wouldn’t bet on it. On the other hand, I wouldn’t bet on lasting success for an Octopus that puts its tentacles into an infinitude of targets.

It was “Toria” Nuland that pushed the Bush Jr./Obama/Biden Junta into stupidly putting NATO into a “land war in Asia” against von Clausewitz’s direct advice, & no Trump tantrums will now delay reaping that whirlwind. I could not verify the purported VonC quote that “Whomever tries to control everything ends up controlling nothing,” but as a student of Taoism I am certain this is so. The only good news, then, is that the end of the American Nightmare continues to accelerate.

The only substantial advantages he currently maintains are: (a) expelling the traitorous clowns like the 51 CIA/DHS/ etc. clowns who lied about the Hunter Biden laptop “is a fraud” and that ilk, & (b) they now know & accept that he is every bit the Swamp-Creature that they are, so he will not face another Russiagate hoax, nor will a 3rd assassination attempt likely get green-lighted. But he will do plenty of things to utterly discredit himself beyond the horrified snowflake Libs who’ve been wetting their pants about him for 9 years and counting.

The rest of the world will be greatly relieved. If I were betting I’d give the US pseudo-Hegemony of the world 2-3 years after the Ukraine proxy war collapses. So it could happen under Trump, or whatever monster they install next. As long as it’s during my lifetime, I will be a happy camper.

@Mark Level,

I don’t know if you have ever heard of a blogger named Ran Prieur, but I find his blog to be real interesting, wide ranging, with his own personal thoughts and observations on things and stuff. And worthwhile links to worthwhile things. He is a leaner tougher meaner hippie for today’s leaner tougher meaner times of today.

I bring him just now because he makes a prediction similar to yours for Trump and perhaps the US, but for different reasons, partly informed by fantasy-game-playing side of his activities and personality.

His latest writing on Trump and the near term future seems so worthwhile to me that I will offer a link to his blog. I will also offer a few quotes from it as a teaser for people to read to see whether they want to click the link or not in order to read the rest of it or not.

. . . ” January 20. The most important thing to remember about Donald Trump is that he’s chaotic neutral. He plays the role of a lawful evil politician, and will do some lawful evil things, but his real mission in this world is to destroy institutions and inspire individuals to say fuck it.

I think he’s actually going to tell the military to invade Greenland. One of two things will happen. They’ll refuse, thus driving a wedge between the military and the presidency. Or they’ll do it, driving a wedge into NATO. That’s what Trump is, a driver of wedges, an arch-divider, an agent of the ongoing atomization of humanity. That’s not necessarily bad. There’s a general feeling that a lot of things need to be broken down right now.” . . . Here is the link to Ran Prieur. http://www.ranprieur.com/

Here is the ” some men just want to watch the world burn” scene from a Batman movie.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIYkhb2NjfE
I think that Trump is the closest thing we have to The Joker in American political society today.

I also ” think” that Trump may be a SubGenius without realizing it. He sometimes seems close to being a real-life reincarnation of J. R. ‘Bob’ Dobbs come back among us to disarray the world.

Face of Trump: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66612345?0=utm_source=ground.news&1=utm_medium=referral

Face of J. R. ‘Bob’ Dobbs: https://civitai.com/images/892621

I also think Trump will want to invade Greenland.

He’ll be told he can’t do that without a declaration of war by Congress, which even with the Republicans in charge, won’t happen… ok, well, maybe. I don’t think they are quite that nuts.

Anyway, he’ll go around that by using some sort of post-9/11 “terrorism” declaration that is still in effect a generation later.

That’s when we find out how badly he’s purged the military of men and women who will follow their oath to the Constitution.

Assuming we don’t then see a 25th A takedown or worse, a military coup, they invade.

That activates NATO section 5, and Denmark calls on all other NATO members to help defend them against the United States.

And then… what? What madness follows thereafter?

NATO falls apart? NATO joins with Russia against the new, bigger, clearer threat?

Everyone dumps the dollar, which collapses?

All countries cease trade with the US?

Trump threatens anyone who does any of this with nuclear reprisal?

The rabbit hole is deep with this one…

I continue to feel I do not have nearly enough objective information, economic or military, to judge how well Russia’s war in Ukraine going, from a Russian perspective.

I think it more than fair to acknowledge the fact that Russia is advancing relentlessly, gaining territory almost every day . . . but very slowly. They grind through these Donbass settlements, destroying everything as they go, but at a rate of conquest that could continue for a very long time. Big arrow moves to envelope Odessa or reach the Dneister seem a remote prospect, a different kind of war from the one we see. Territorial gain is a form of scorekeeping but I am skeptical in general about scorekeeping in war when you have no definite concept of the end game. It is easy to say, “just wait for the Russians to win and impose a peace” but hard to say how Russia would ever be in a position to “impose” terms on Ukraine.

Ukraine could collapse as a state — that seems somewhat plausible to me on the basis of thin facts and my vivid imagination — into civil war or simple civil incapacity. But, wouldn’t that just bring Western “peacekeepers” into the territory Russia does not and cannot occupy? That doesn’t shape up as Russia “imposing” a peace or a settlement, imho.

Another dubious way to keep score is casualties. Again, secrecy keeps everyone doubting and the propagandists in business. I can make guesses. A guess of 80,000 kia on the Russian side implies a staggering blow to the modern Russian state, even if half were Wagner mercenaries in a more desperate (for Russia) phase.

The impact of Ukraine’s campaign of sporadic attacks on Russian refineries and gas infrastructure is hard to assess without hard data and fewer doubts set up by conflicting claims.

Russia has to negotiate with the EU and NATO and NATO’s Uncle Sam, who are masters of not-negotiating anything. Where is the leverage to impose terms short of political revolution across Europe? (Could happen. I might even hope for it a bit.)

Ukraine has been one game among several as Romania, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, maybe Syria and Türkiye, are in play. Previously French West Africa? In the geopolitical game, winning temporarily on the Ukraine Donbass board leaves a number of other boards to play.

China has respected western sanctions well enough to deprive Russia of munitions and military hardware. I am sure the Chinese have made the unsubtle diplomatic point that if China started supplying munitions, the tide would turn in Russia’s favor far more dramatically. And, maybe China intervening diplomatically, showing their big stick without swinging it (I hope) becomes a key.

Russia is big enough for a degree of autarky that few other countries could bear and they had years to prepare. European Russia is full of greenhouses, for example, that were not even conceived of thirty years ago. But, 1 Ruble = $0.01 was not conceivable either when a five cent Ruble was low. That, too, is becoming a slow grind. I have seen the end result of 60 years of sanctions grind in Cuba and it ain’t pretty.

@different clue

Not to insult you, or the guy you linked to, but the D&D morality grid is an extremely simplified abstraction in a game already filled with abstractions. It’s simply not even vaguely useful to attempt to apply it to reality.

That’s before even getting to the fact that I’m extremely dubious of any notion that Trump has any motivation or planning beyond ‘what will bring joy to Trump over the next sixty minutes’.

His 2016 run was almost certainly an elaborate PR stunt that was never meant to succeed. It was meant to give him another thing he could slap on his brand. He won the nomination because the legacy GOP was an exhausted husk (in particular he managed to destroy the Bush political dynasty, or rather revealed it had no credibility left and collapsed at the slightest push). He was tapping into the zeitgeist of the moment when he swept the field.

He then barely won the presidency because he was running against a truly uniquely awful, inept, and unlikeable candidate.

He then turned out to in fact be an awful president and lost to another awful, unlikeable candidate, one already losing his mind, because that candidate simply wasn’t Trump.

Biden then headed (‘headed’) a shockingly inept administration, clearly lost his mind even more such that it couldn’t be denied, and was made to withdraw to be replaced by another awful, unlikeable candidate who lost in a crushing defeat. Trump won a lot of votes for simply not being Harros (or Biden).

Trumps administrations are filled with whatever he can scrap from underneath the barrel (his pool is even smaller than George W. Bush’s potential employees from the evangelical sphere). He’s surrounded by whoever is willing to lower themselves to hitch up to his brand. His opinions are often those of whomever he last talked to fifteen minutes ago, but that’s before he goes on to beef with half of them.

Trump keeps winning because the US political landscape is so empty of anyone even acknowledging the many real problems, let alone promising to do anything about them, that there’s a vacuum that Trump can simply walk in to fill. It doesn’t matter how much of an obvious charlatan he is. He’s all on offer.

Trumps repeated successes is a symphony of a larger political decline, but not for the reasons smug liberals think (their analysis never extends beyond saying voters are stupid). Trump is less an agent of anything and mostly just riding a series of waves because no one else will even pick up a surfboard.

It doesn’t matter how much of an obvious charlatan he (Trump) is. He’s all on offer.
——
In some ways people decided they wanted a charlatan that was open about it instead of one that tried to pretend they weren’t one.
“He tells it like it is” didn’t mean he tells the truth. It meant unlike the standard politician he didn’t try to pretend to be an intellectual good guy.
In many ways it is refreshing to go from obvious dishonest justifications to the quite part being said outload.
“we’re bringing peace and freedom to the middle east” verse “only for the oil”
“immigrants are harming the economy” verse “Mexicans are all rapists”
“down to earth cowboy” verse “I have a nicer big boat and am billionaire”
Ironically compared to other republicans Trump is hated more among the center/left because he is more honest. If you take out the substanceless reality TV drama, and daily outrageous comments Trumps first admisntration did what standard republicans do.

People prefer a charlatan that will provide entertainment verse one that doesn’t.

@Soredomos,

Thank you for not meaning to insult me. If I have been accidentally insulted anyway, I will just live with it. As abstract and super-simplifed as the D&D agent-types grid is, I still found it interesting to think about it the way Ran Prieur presented it.

A “chaos agent” doesn’t have to be a deliberate chaos agent deliberately plotting chaos in his James Bond villain’s lair. He/she/it can be just a natural spreader of chaos without intending anything. A rotting load of carrion isn’t trying to stink up a room on purpose, for example.

” That’s before even getting to the fact that I’m extremely dubious of any notion that Trump has any motivation or planning beyond ‘what will bring joy to Trump over the next sixty minutes’. ” . . . almost seems a kind of acknowledgement that Trump is indeed at the very least a chaos-generator. Seeking joy over the next 60 minutes may be all that is needed, Perhaps he is a chaos black-body radiator, absorbing energy and emitting chaos.

If Trump does order US armed forces to invade or occupy Greenland, that would be a specific prediction being borne out by events. That would raise the question: was Ran Prieur lucky or good?

If Trump orders a Greenland invasion and he has made the armed services into his private services to the point where the armed services go right ahead and invade Greenland, what would EUroNATO do? I don’t know. It “could” shrink down into being the North East Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NEATO). I doubt that the antirussianitic racist antirussianite countries of EUrope would ever join with Russia in any co-defensive organization. There will be no NEAAPTO ( North East Atlantic And Pacific Treaty Organization) formed.

@Mago and Mark Level,

I never was in the Church of the Subgenius. I think the Subgeniuses would regard me as a mal-aligned normal if they even knew of me at all. That doesn’t mean I didn’t buy some of their books. I did buy some of their books . . . when they showed up on remainder ( bwah hah hah!). And I went online and read Subgenius Pamphlet Number One.