The demographic time bomb pressuring democracy

In my opinion, Earth is seriously overpopulated with humans. I recon there are about 4-5 billion too many of us to sustain a good quality of life, the environment and democracy. Unfortunately, there is a major problem with decreasing population. It put serious pressure on democracy. A NYT analysis article (not paywalled) discusses the damage from a declining population that most or all advanced countries are facing: 

How a Demographic ‘Doom Loop’ Helped Germany’s Far Right

The Alternative for Germany party came in second in federal elections doubling its vote share from four years ago, on Sunday, doubling its vote share from four years ago, in the strongest showing for a German far-right party since World War II. Some segments of the party, known as the AfD, have been classified as extremist by German intelligence.

How could that happen in Germany, a country whose history has taught a bitter lesson about the dangers of right-wing extremism?

Many experts have pointed to the role of immigration, particularly the surge of Muslim refugees from Syria and other Middle Eastern countries in the mid-2010s, which has persuaded many people to abandon the long-dominant parties of the center-left and center-right.

But new research suggests an additional factor. The AfD posted its biggest wins in the former East Germany, where young people have been moving away from former industrial regions and rural areas to seek opportunities in cities. For years there has been a very strong correlation between the level of out-migration and the level of AfD support ....

The article points out that East Germans expected a post-unification peace dividend, but that never happened. On top of that, austerity measures and cuts to local services triggered support for far-right populist parties. Other Eastern European countries had a few years to adjust their economies before joining the European Union in 2004, but eastern Germany got had no time for economic adjustments. People with human capital would leave, leaving behind a lot of other people. Those left behind were disproportionately from the demographics most likely to support the AfD and extremism. People in the left-behind regions are radicalizing into far right extremist, authoritarian politics. 

So what? That's Germany, this is the US!

The left-behind phenomenon in the US and Germany have strong parallels. Rural US communities are facing demographic shifts, federal policy disconnects, and a perceived moral decline. That makes disaffected people open to political radicalization, just as is the case in Germany. In the US and Germany, economic prosperity gravitates toward the cities, leaving rural areas unequal. The loss of manufacturing jobs and agricultural consolidation hollowed out rural economies in both the U.S. Midwest and Germany's eastern states. U.S. rural areas face systemic underinvestment. In the US, 60% of "persistent poverty counties" are rural. Those disparities amplify narratives of federal neglect. That is a theme weaponized by groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. They frame themselves as defenders of "forgotten" communities. In American Appalachia, 43% of counties lack community mental health centers. That enables crackpot conspiracy theories to fill knowledge voids.

Population declines in Japan and Europe mirror Roman Empire fertility patterns. Aging populations strain healthcare and pension systems. Some research indicates (and this) that modern states face added risks from climate change and energy scarcity, which could trigger synchronous collapses. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic’s negative effect on labor markets and supply chains demonstrated how demographic disruption can be a potent threat.

Population loss is a separate but overlapping phenomenon from economic shifts from rural to urban areas. It has historically been part of the story of the collapse of great civilizations. In the past, high populations depleted environmental resources, which in turn put pressure on governments and societies. In one study, 10 of 12 empire collapses was found to be accompanied by an interplay between environmental degradation and population decline. Although historical collapses were regional, globalization created new kinds of interdependencies between nations. That creates new possibilities for global civilization disruptions, maybe even collapses. 

Translated into MAGA politics and policy

At present, it seems very unlikely that MAGA's authoritarianism and deep corruption are going to significantly improve the rural poverty situation or the decline in rural economies. Without major immigration, US population would decrease. Now that MAGA is blocking large-scale immigration, one can expect the US population to level off and then slowly decline. 

In the past empires have had a very difficult time dealing with environmental damage and ensuing population decline. Given that US politics is mostly reactive and not proactive, and often incompetent or corrupt, the same can reasonably be expected here. 

Counterintuitive as it is, the most likely upshot is that under MAGA, unhappiness in most American rural areas will continue to simmer unabated. MAGA simply does not care about regular people. Rural Americans will probably continue to further radicalize into extremism and authoritarianism. If nothing else, MAGA knows how to effectively deflect blame from itself onto anything or anyone else that it chooses to blame. That's pretty much like what is going on in Germany now.

A little fun at Trump's expense

 This thread is not about kleptocracy or Trump being a kleptomaniac.

Instead it is a thread being concerned about where his loyalties lie and his health.

First, his loyalties, seem to be Elon Musk.

Of course, the White House is saying that the video is fake and was a hack, but come on, we ALL know that Trump indeed does kiss Musk's feet (even if they are both left feet).

As for Trump's health:

A large bruise that appeared on Donald Trump's hand is down to him shaking a lot of hands, the White House has said.

You buying that? Looks mighty suspicious to me.

Germaine's indescribable sadness: MAGA plans to sell off public lands

INTRODUCTION

“Over the last half century alone, the losses have been extraordinary. Millions of acres of forest logged, much of it old growth; tens of millions of animals slaughtered by Wildlife Services; every year more than 155 million acres of BLM land and 100 million acres of national forests destructively grazed; hundreds of thousands of miles of new roads blazed, some 2.8 million roadless acres in our forests gone; tens of thousands of acres drilled for oil and gas or mined for precious metals and ores; the sage grouse headed for extinction, the last of the wild bison trapped in a tiny national park, the grizzly bear and the wolf clinging to vestiges of the wild. .... The country has operated under both parties in accordance with ‘the one true faith, the mad faith that says the economy must grow always bigger and at a faster pace on a planet of finite resources that can’t handle the growth.’ .... Grazing is today the most widespread single use of the public domain, occurring on 270 million acres of national forest and BLM land. The grazing of privately owned cattle on public lands has polluted streams, decimated native plants, and turned a biologically diverse ecosystem into a monoculture of grassland.” Christopher Ketcham, This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism and Corruption are Ruining the American West, 2019

djt signs the EO that sells out or precious

heritage to MAGA kleptocrats, grifters and thugs

Thinking about and writing this literally brings tears to my eyes. Literally. It makes me think about what we are on the verge of irretrievably losing to a bunch of morally rotted, arrogant, cruel, lying, MAGA kleptocrat thugs. I cannot adequately describe how bad this makes me feel. (now can you see why I posted a warning about resort to violence 2 days ago? -- emotions are running high)

Despite me consciously walling-off the moral rot and insulting outrages of djt and MAGA elites, this bit really gets to me. Not sure why. But I just cannot wall this horror off. 

This is one of the saddest and most demoralizing of all the posts I’ve ever written. In Nov. of 2023, I wrote two posts about a 2019 book by Christopher Ketcham, This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism and Corruption are Ruining the American West (post 1, post 2). Those two come fairly close to how I felt about writing and posting this. 

A simple three-step MAGA plan explains the staggering scope and arrogance of what djt and elite MAGA kleptocrats plan to do, in my opinion: 1) First they establish an American sovereign wealth fund. 2) Then they fund it by selling public property. 3) Finally, they loot the sovereign fund as much as they can get away with. Anyone caught stealing will be pardoned by djt, who in turn will receive a legal gratuity, formerly known as an illegal kickback. 

Public land amounts to about 28% of the US, about 640 million acres or ~1 million sq mi. Most of that land is west of state borders from Minnesota south to Louisiana and stretches from the Canada border to the Mexico border. Maps of public land are below.

BLOG POST

American Progress reports that on Feb. 3, 2025, djt signed an executive order to create a US sovereign wealth fund. To fund it, MAGA implicitly proposes selling off some or all land the US owns and manages. American Progress writes, seriously understating the gravity of the situation:

President Donald Trump’s executive order to create a sovereign wealth fund requires that the United States come up with heaps of cash quickly, which may make selling out and selling off public lands irresistible.

On February 3, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to create a sovereign wealth fund (SWF), saying the United States will have one of the largest funds in the world. That requires raising trillions of dollars very quickly. For context, Norway’s fund is currently worth $1.8 trillion U.S. dollars. Sovereign wealth funds are typically financed with surplus revenue from trade or natural resource development. Given that the United States is roughly $36 trillion in debt, experts question where the money would come from. The Trump administration seems to be signaling that selling out and selling off the nation’s public lands to the highest bidder might provide the necessary funding. Selling federal public lands would turn America’s treasured places into a financial asset for the Trump administration without the need for surplus revenue, making it a potentially** enticing idea for the administration.

** Potentially my ass. Public land is the target that MAGA kleptocrats intend to loot, and nobody and nothing is going to stop them.

At the signing ceremony, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explained where some of the money might come from: “We are going to monetize the asset side of the U.S. balance sheet for the American people. We are going to put the assets to work.”

What exactly does this mean? Doug Burgum, President Trump’s secretary of the interior, explained that the nation’s parks, public lands, and natural resources—including timber, fossil fuels, and minerals—are assets on “the nation’s balance sheet.” Burgum speculated in his confirmation hearing that federal lands could be worth as much as $200 trillion {a number that the shameless MAGA liar Burgum pulled out of his morally rotted MAGA backside -- total value is ~$2.67 to ~$4.5 trillion [1]}.

The US has no budget surplus! Duh. All those MAGA and radical right tax cuts for rich and powerful people and corporations still have not paid for themselves. And they never will. That was known to everyone. But that is just an inconvenient truth for government haters and MAGA to lie about and rationalize into non-existence.

Bottom line: djt and MAGA elites are on the verge of setting up the biggest theft of anything and everyone in all of human history. This is going to be at or near the top whopper among the few biggest whoppers ever.

Yabbut, whaddabout the rule of law?? That’ll stop the theft!

Gosh, I so much wish that was true. But it ain’t. It just ain’t. Let’s just get straight to the ghastly point.

The executive order djt signed to create his personal sovereign wealth fund does not explicitly mention any protections to prevent Trump or MAGA elites from misusing or stealing wealth from the fund. djt’s executive order directs the development of a plan that includes recommendations for funding mechanisms, investment strategies, fund structure, and a governance model, but it does not specify any safeguards against misuse by political figures or elites.

A cornucopia of corruption, theft and sleaze is on the near horizon. Next 12-18 months will be very interesting, assuming the MSM has not been shut down before then. If djt and MAGA elites manage to finish shutting down the MSM, we’re probably not gonna know what the hell is going on. djt’s and elite MAGA’s kleptocratic intent is crystal clear. Can they pull it off? Maybe. My guess, they have about a 60% chance of doing the dirty deep, done dirt cheap.

Q: The usual -- is Germaine off his meds or his rocker, or is he maybe making a valid, troubling point or two? 

Update! Germaine’s now solidly entrenched state of mind: I’m absolutely done with entertaining the idea that djt and his cadre of elite MAGA thugs are messy but survivable aberrations or otherwise not much to worry about.[2] They are true authoritarians. djt is our hypocritical, deeply corrupt, morally rotted dictator, MAGA billionaires are our hypocritical, deeply corrupt, morally rotted plutocrat thugs, and MAGA Christian nationalists are our hypocritical, deeply corrupt, morally rotted sharia law theocrat thugs. We are undeniably in a state of full-blown war on democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties, honest, pluralistic governance, the public interest, the environment, and inconvenient facts, true truths and sound reasoning. This is full blow war, not a tempest in a teapot. Not a little or moderate kerfuffle. Full-blown war to the death of democracy if the thugs can pull it off. 

Footnote:

1. Data sources: 

https://www.fb.org/market-intel/u-s-agricultural-land-values-and-cropland-cash-rents-reach-record-levels-amid-falling-commodity-prices

https://texasfarmbureau.org/report-shows-agricultural-land-value-up-from-last-year/

https://manhattan.institute/article/unleash-the-potential-of-federal-lands

https://www.blm.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2024-11/BLM-Valuing-Americas-Public-Lands-2024_508.pdf

2. Like with climate science deniers, I won't engage with American authoritarianism and corrupt dictatorship deniers any more. For climate science deniers, I just respectfully tell them (i) we disagree, (ii) give them links to climate science experts, (iii) tell them to convince the actual experts are wrong, and (iv) say that once they have convinced the experts they are wrong, I will change my mind accordingly. Henceforth, the same will apply to anyone who tells me that djt and MAGA are not authoritarian or kleptocratic. I am 100% done with that nonsense. Time for debate is over. Time for desperate defense is now.

A Project 2025 pulse check: Authoritarianism, check . . . . . kleptocracy, check

Slate writes:

Project 2025 Makes Trump’s Goal Chillingly Clear

Donald Trump is a notoriously dishonest man, but one of his oft-used slogans has proved absolutely true: Promises Made, Promises Kept. Unfortunately, this time around, the promises being kept weren’t all made by Trump. They were made by the fanatics who penned Project 2025.

But the mass firings, the power grabs, and the agency shutterings are not just Musk’s doing. They were planned and proposed well before Trump was even elected, right there for everyone to see, in Project 2025.

Trump may have said he had “nothing to do with” the far-right game plan for his presidency—always a dubious claim, given that its architects are either former administration members or people with close ties to it. But now that he’s in office, he’s following their plan almost to the letter.  

And although the details certainly are important, the single message must be this: Trump is trying to be a king or a dictator, and Project 2025 is his monarchical playbook. 

If Trump has done one thing so far, it’s break the federal bureaucracy.

The article goes on to point out that the DJT has been doing closely tracks with the content and strategy that Project 2025 asserts. P2025 strenuously argues that a president has a very short time to implement their policy. Hesitating to sort out policy details wastes that time. Only because P2025 wrote out a very detailed plan, has djt been able to do so much in such a short time. He is not wasting one minute with congress, the courts or anything else. He is in a mode of acting first and fighting against all sources of resistance, including in the federal courts. In federal law enforcement and prosecution, the FIB and DoJ, he will face no resistance at all to essentially anything he does.

djt and MAGA defenders: But it’s just conservatism!

Pro-democracy realists: That is gaslighting, it’s authoritarianism and kleptocracy

State-directed kleptocracy is this century’s brand of authoritarianism, but it is critical to understand that kleptocracy and authoritarianism are mutually supportive and reinforcing activities designed to achieve total control. An authoritarian leader and his or her inner circle can secure state-owned and private assets through kleptocratic means, and kleptocratic means can secure control over key government and democratic institutions.

Source: NED

We constantly hear the MSM, politicians and even Perplexity (artificial intelligence) referring to djt, MAGA elites and Project 2025 as conservatives and conservatism. That is a gigantic, but devastatingly effective lie. Old-fashioned, i.e., pre-MAGA and pre-djt, conservatism is staunchly pro-democracy and pro-rule of law, while grudgingly accepting of inconvenient facts, true truths and sound reasoning. djt and his elite MAGA thugs flatly reject all of that. 

Conservatism is not inherently authoritarian or kleptocratic, even if a policy just happens to be the same for a true conservative and a dictator or kleptocrat. However, conservative rhetoric has been appropriated by djt and MAGA demagogues. They do that to pursue centralized power and personal enrichment while pretending they are doing the opposite. That reality, i.e., fact, not opinion, directly contradicts the foundational principles of conservatism. The current MAGA agenda reflects a blend of populist authoritarianism and kleptocracy, not authentic conservatism rooted in tradition, limited, honest government, transparent fiscal responsibility and loyalty to the Constitution and rule of law.

djt’s and MAGA elites’ (i) centralizing authority via loyalty tests for civil servants, and (ii) attacking and undermining independent institutions, both contradict the conservative principle of limited government. People who want a high-level government job have to spout djt’s whopper lie about the 2020 election being stolen. djt’s and MAGA’s cronyism, misuse of public funds, and deregulation favoring elites all undermine fiscal responsibility and accountability, both of which are core tenets of actual American conservatism.