The US Is A Powder Keg

BY TYLER DURDEN
WEDNESDAY, NOV 17, 2021 - 08:20 PM
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

Last night I did my usual grocery run. I don’t shop at stores with philosophies. I go for el cheapo places that don’t have olive bars and don’t play Schubert on the intercom. I just want the stuff I need at the lowest possible prices. Even I was stunned at the 40% increase in my usual bill. I thought I was buying in a minimalist way.

Later I looked more carefully at what went wrong. I bought beef and bacon. Beef price increases are now at double-digit rates, and bacon is even higher. You are paying much more per pound than one year ago. Pork and chicken are less, but that could change.

Turkeys are in short supply for Thanksgiving. It will be the most expensive Thanksgiving meal in our lifetimes.

Stores don’t tag groceries based on the percentage increases in prices. Those you have to remember from last week and last month. Indeed, stores have every reason to disguise this. Manufacturers too, which is why packaging these days is holding ever less product. This is called “shrinkflation.” It is an epidemic right now, as manufacturers are struggling to survive huge increases in their own costs.



Biggest Inflation Spike in Over 30 Years
The Consumer Price Index came out this week. It revealed that consumer prices soared 6.2% in October, the biggest inflation spike in over 30 years. And it’s probably even worse than the official figures show.

Meanwhile, the Producer Price Index revealed that the year-over-year change in the index for construction materials is up almost 20%.

Now let’s look at gasoline. You experience it daily, the high prices at the pump. Last year at this time, the average price per gallon was $1.81. Now it is $3.40. It is also rising as demand intensifies and supply faces restrictions.

Most important here are the monetary effects, as all the money that the Fed sloshed up in the last 20 months reduces its value or what it can buy. This inflation will never hit all products and all sectors evenly. It moves from sector to sector. These days the toxin is moving so fast and in so many directions it makes one’s head spin.

Not So Thrifty
We keep hoping each month to get good news. Perhaps the Fed will prove correct that inflation is only transitory. Sadly, that is not likely. They have been way off in their predictions. The Producer Price Index is the one to watch because these price increases get passed on to consumer prices as inventory is depleted.

Clothing is a case in point. We are already facing high prices and shortages on the shelves. This is driving people to the thrift stores. The major headlines are starting to show this. Thrift store prices too are on the increase, as I predicted last month.

The percent change in the producer prices that go into making polyester clothing is now up 23.6%.

Even if monetary policy is fixed, even if supply chains are repaired, even if the clogs at the dock are unclogged, it will be months before this figures into consumer prices. Sadly, there is almost no chance that any of these good changes happen, meaning that these higher and higher prices are here to stay.

A Broken State
As I’ve mentioned before, there is something about American political culture that is especially averse to inflation. People frankly hate it, especially since we’ve lived 40-plus years without consumer inflation being a particularly pressing problem. Now looking at price trends creates shock and even hatred. It is hitting the Biden administration particularly hard.

A USA Today poll shows that Biden’s approval has sunk to 38%. The trend line here is truly devastating. We can speculate why. Inflation plays a role. But also the vaccine mandate seems to have hit the Biden approval rating very hard.

In the coming month, millions of jobs could be affected by this. The protests are growing in every city, and the people protesting are union members, city employees and even tech workers. They are furious that government would presume the right to tell people what medicines they must inject into their bodies.

Some of the protesters are themselves vaccinated against their will. They are bitter and angry about it. The news of adverse outcomes from vaccination is leaking out through family networks and alternative news venues, though it continues to be suppressed by the media. So this mandate is now being seen as a direct threat to individual health.

That’s something that will inspire people to take to the streets.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a stay against OSHA’s mandate on businesses. The Biden administration attempted a response, but the result was lame. It just said that it stands by the mandate on health grounds, period. Perhaps this won’t surprise you, but the president himself instructed businesses to go ahead and proceed, essentially advocating that they ignore the court ruling.

In other words, the Biden administration has gone completely lawless, not just ignoring the U.S. Constitution but also advocating that businesses ignore the courts. That’s dangerously close to announcing that we now live with dictatorship.

It’s no wonder that even Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is talking about secession from the union. If he is saying this, I truly cannot imagine the kind of anger there is among the citizens.

If you wanted to live in exciting times, you chose a great time to be alive. The conditions are ripe not only for continuing electoral bloodbaths but more street protests, explosive town halls, hate-filled school board meetings and much worse. A more divisive and destructive policy is hard to imagine.

Sadly, these policies are dividing friends and family. Some people with vaccinations don’t see the big deal here. Just get the jab, they say, and then you can be free. Others find this idea to be outrageous, an immoral acquiescence to power that can only lead to even worse outcomes.

Powder Keg
I just watched several hours of testimony from big shots at the NIH and the CDC. It might as well have been a paid advertisement from Moderna and Pfizer. Nearly every word out of the bureaucrats’ mouths was structured to push the vaccines that most everyone knows by now have failed to live up to their promise.

Indeed, if they were as good and safe as they say, government would not need to mandate them. The mandates, ironically, undermine public confidence. It’s hard to imagine that public confidence in everything could fall further, but it will.

To top it off, making all the above much worse, the vaccination is now coming for the kids.

Mandates will surely follow. You want revolution in this country? This is a good way to foment one. The current regime has another year of unchecked power. It seems unfathomable. So far, they have not been deterred by anything, not the courts, not public opinion, not even sinking election prospects.

The U.S. has become a powder keg.

Has America gone past the tipping point? It may well have. So what now?





Onward and upward,
airforce

I’m highly skeptical that America could descend into civil war in either the near-term or mid-term, except by the intentional and profound influence of our extremely resourceful betters. The probability that our oligarchs would choose to produce such a circumstance is highly unlikely, as I perceive no benefit, yet an incredible cost. Meanwhile the American right has become so docile, especially now after years of bitter submission and political hopelessness, that they’ve largely come to terms with the new order and have firmly planted their heads in the sand to avoid further exposure to unsettling information, or unpleasant implications. Americans appear to exist in a state of Mass Psychosis, Cognitive Dissonance and Dunning-Krueger Effect. We’re talking about a nation of people who are almost exclusively bereft of the capacity for critical thought, who are wildly uninformed and who are both selfish and unprincipled.

What could motivate such a people to willfully commit their treasure, blood and toil to an all-or-nothing struggle of total war? The left are by far the most aggressive and audacious group of Americans, but they’ve already emerged victorious from their cultural revolution and the momentum shows that complete victory is precisely inevitable for them. They have infiltrated and ceased control over every influential aspect of our society and are presently shifting every aspect of our society to the far-left, while using their control over corporations, media, social media and education to indoctrinate every malleable adult and virtually every child. The right, on the other hand, has done nothing meaningful and has hardly even engaged in trivial counter-revolutionary action.

The radicalized left have no need to initiate a civil war, and the neutered right have no inclination to initiate it. What future event could inspire the right otherwise? Firearms confiscation? The right haven’t seen fit to use those arms to defend any of the myriad interests which have been compromised or rights which have been nullified. That was the very point of their right to keep and bear arms - to preserve an avenue of effective resistance should the interests and rights of the people be trampled by a tyrannical government. The right didn’t utilize those tools for their intended purpose, so why should the right now sacrifice their very lives in order to secure possession of those tools which they won’t even otherwise use appropriately?

I’m confident that another US Civil War in our lifetimes is highly unlikely, unless a societal collapse occurs in the long-term, which I judge to be unlikely.

No one ever plans on a civil war years in advance. Things just have a way of falling into place, and suddenly it's there.

Look at our own civil war. Both John Brown, who conducted the raid on Harper's Ferry, and Lysander Spooner who supported him, were adamantly opposed to a civil war. Both wanted a slave revolt or, better yet, for slave owners to be so terrified of a slave revolt that they themselves would free them. Yet their actions were simply one in a long string that inevitably led to the war.

What disparate incidents could lead to a modern civil war? Well, a year ago, the left was so terrified by a bunch of trespassers that they're still going bonkers over these "insurrectionists" and "traitors." Clearly, a civil war or a societal collapse doesn't seem so unlikely to them. They were so afraid of some nutso with horns that they threatened him with twenty years in prison. So yes, the Left is afraid. And you saw what they did to Kyle Rittenhouse.

Right now, most of the "battles" are Antifa and the Proud Boys trading insults and trying to goad each other into throwing the first punch, pretty much schoolyard stuff. What could incite a real war or insurrection? Or a societal collapse? I don't know, my ESP was never that good. But history tells us it's certainly possible. And it appears to be getting more likely every day.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Brown and Spooner were both wealthy entrepreneurs who used their uncommon resources to influence the direction of the nation. One might argue that they were therefore minor oligarchs. In modern civil wars, we observe foreign powers and oligarchs organizing and inciting civil wars, and it appears unlikely any of those civil wars would have occurred without that action. I’m unsure that “minor oligarchs” could drive a superpower like modern America to civil war, but it’s certainly possible, as would be one or more foreign powers organizing the same. It would undoubtedly require extensive resources, effort, and risk, but absolutely possible.


In recent years, both the left and the right commonly perceived a civil war as reasonably possible. I don’t think very many had more than a vague recognition of mutual hostility and national dysfunction for that perception, and I’m not sure that I place much value in the perceptions of the mass man anyway.


You’re absolutely right. A civil war is possible, and a high intensity conflict of that nature could begin a year from now or even a day from now via a catalyst which both of us are oblivious of. I’m just saying, if an American civil war does kick off of the near-term or mid-term, it must certainly be due to causes I’m unaware of, because I’m not seeing any strong indicators for one at this time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not really expecting an all-out war. But an economic collapse and a break-up, like the old Soviet Union? Quite possible, maybe even probably if we don't get our financial house in order soon. And I think we may be past the point of no return on that.

If it's any consolation - which it's not - China's economy will probably collapse before ours does.

Onward and upward,
airforce

With the global supply chain as interconnected as it is, and with as heavily invested the west is in China… when China’s house of cards tumbles it will twist s world with it. As we’ve seen the last 1 3/4 years, the powers that be will always jump at the first hint of an emergency to restrict liberty and expand centralized power in their hands. A global economic meltdown would in their eyes be used as evidence of how capitalism doesn’t work

Yes, and that would be a tragedy. The free market will have nothing to do with China's collapse. Quite the opposite, in fact.



Onward and upward,
airforce

Indeed… liberal “logic” is never rooted in reality or reason. Always short sighted lies of opportunity to push their agenda in any way possible!

The CIA organized the Soviet breakup, and that occurred after many years of extensive planning, preparation and investment. I could imagine, for instance, Russia one day organizing the secession of Alaska, China organizing the secession of Cascadia (California, Oregon and Washington). Either accomplishment would bare tremendous benefit to them, and would be a severe blow to the United States. As far as a natural breakup, one would expect that to involve a split along political lines, the left and right separating from one another. I find that implausible, because the left and right are both distributed throughout the nation and neither Left America nor Right America would be continuous. Both groups are angry toward and desire to dominate the other anyway, so I would sooner expect a civil war in which each group fights for dominance until one group conquers all of the territory of the other. As the left are already imminently victorious in their revolution and on the path to absolute political, economic and social control of the nation, this would have to be a conflict initiated by the neutered right, which appears highly unlikely. Without societal collapse, I can’t imagine a Balkanization of America in which many nations are carved out of it, united for reasons beyond the left-right paradigm.


Historically, any nation which has seen the debt-to-GDP ratio which America holds never recovered and always failed. However, America utilizes fiat currency, which is relatively new, and the warning signs and reasons for such an economy to collapse isn’t yet established. It’s therefore entirely possible that fiat America is immune to such things, especially for as long as it remains the world’s dominant Great Power.


If PRC were ever to, for whatever reason, cease trade with nations highly dependent on its goods, like America, it would certainly be devastating, and could absolutely result in societal collapse. To give an adversary the power to potentially destroy you simply by ceasing trade with you is rather unwise.

There is nothing new about fiat currency. See Genesis 47:15.



The CIA did have a hand in the collapse of the USSR, by making the Russians think we were on the verge of making the "Star Wars" antimissile defense system a reality and goading them to spend more on military technology. But the reality is, the USSR's financial problems were already terminal. They had a disastrous war (in Afghanistan, no less), and the Baltic states were getting restless. It was going to fail anyway, it was only a matter of time.

Onward and upward,
airforce