Regarding inflation and corporate profits

The pandemic and supply chain disruption have damaged a lot of businesses, with many having gone bankrupt. But not all. The solidly liberal Hightower Lowdown (HL) sees corporate greed as the major factor in the inflation. The HL argument is as follows:

What the GOP bemoans as America’s inflation problem[1], is actually a corporate greed problem.

Of course, the greedmeisters and their apologists are deeply offended by this charge, huffing in outrage that their pursuit of corporate profit has not driven any price surges. In our economy of free market competition, they snap, consumer prices are established by the Holy Law of Supply and Demand. They lecture that when shortages occur, prices naturally rise, and that incentivizes additional production, which magically establishes a new supply/demand balance. Even if one producer or a monopolistic cabal of producers tries to overcharge consumers, these theoretical new competitors will draw customers from the gougers and keep prices in check. In the sanctuary of this concept, the free market is a virtuous, self-regulating circle of competitive fairness. Its zealous devotees have successfully convinced nearly all public policy makers to avoid government intrusion into its delicate mechanism.

But there’s one big problem with their virtuous circle: It’s a laissez-fairyland fraud that implodes when it hits the hard reality that our economy doesn’t remotely resemble a competitive marketplace. As the Lowdown detailed in October, nearly every economic sector in the US (from high tech to farm and food) has been locked down by a handful of overpowering corporate giants. For some 40 years, corporate-directed government policies have (1) intentionally promoted (even subsidized) mega-mergers; (2) gleefully green-lighted anticompetitive business tactics; and (3) aggressively inculcated and celebrated the economic lie that bigger is better. Thus, in short order and with practically no public awareness, much less discussion, America has been transformed into Monopoly Nation.

Brand name corporations are not being forced to markup price tags just to cover rising costs for raw materials, labor, transportation, etc. Indeed, in a competitive marketplace, they’d have to eat much of those increases by taking a bit less in profits. (The giants have been stockpiling record profits for years, so they could easily weather a downtick.) They’re now raising prices not simply to maintain exorbitant profits, but instead to squeeze even greater profits from hard-hit consumers. And then they cynically exploit the public’s worry about inflation to create more inflation.

Consider diapers, a necessity for many families. As corporate watchdog Judd Legum recently reported, the huge consumer product seller Procter & Gamble announced last April that Covid-driven production costs were forcing it to raise the price for its Pampers brand. At the time, it had just posted a quarterly profit of $3.8 billion, and P&G could easily have absorbed a temporary rise in its costs. But instead of holding the price to ease their customers’ economic pain, the conglomerate used a global health crisis to justify upping diaper prices. Six months later, P&G’s quarterly profit topped $5 billion and, in that same quarter, P&G spent $3 billion to buy back shares of its own stock–a Wall Street manipulation that artificially bloats the wealth of top execs and other big shareholders. In sum, P&G used the excuse of inflation to inflate the price of diapers, then used the extra money extracted from families to inflate the value of its stock in a ploy to further enrich its biggest shareholders. And why wouldn’t savvy consumers switch from Pampers to Huggies, the brand sold by Kimberly-Clark, P&G’s main “competitor”? Because co-monopolist Kimberly-Clark goosed up its prices at the same time. (The two companies control 80% of the global disposable diaper market.)

In 2019, the year before Covid-19 hit, big US corporations hauled in roughly a trillion dollars in profit. Only two years later, during the pandemic, they grabbed more than $1.7 trillion. Antitrust analyst Matt Stoller finds that this huge profit jump accounts for 60% of the inflation now slapping US families. The CEO of Kroger, the supermarket goliath, gloated last summer that “a little bit of inflation is always good in our business,” adding that “we’ve been very comfortable with our ability to pass on the increases” to consumers. “Comfortable” indeed. Last year, Kroger spent $1.5 billion of its monopoly profits on stock buybacks to reward executives and other big shareholders. In January, McDonald’s gushed to its shareholders that 2021 had been “a banner year.” Executives bragged that despite the supply disruptions of the pandemic and higher costs for meat and labor, they used the chain’s pricing power to up prices, thus increasing corporate profits by a stunning 59% over the previous year. And the party goes on: “We’re going to have the best growth we’ve ever had this year,” Wall Street banking titan Jamie Dimon exulted at the start of 2022. 

The same monopoly pricing power that abuses consumers can simultaneously exert “monopsony” power. While monopoly refers to a market with very few sellers, monopsony is a concentrated, non-competitive market with only a handful of dominant buyers. Monopsony empowers those few buyers to dictate prices and onerous terms of business to myriad independent sellers of components, ingredients, and services.

For a brief tutorial on monopsony, let me call in Professor Hamburger. More than any of the other price hikes in 2021, the 21% spurt in the cost of hamburger and other beef products may have jolted Americans the most. Over a few short months, a restaurant burger or a package of ground beef became noticeably pricier, and tight-budget families wondered why cattle ranchers were hitting them with such an increase.

They weren’t. In fact, back at the ranch, the hardy families that raise cattle were being slammed, too–not by price increases, but by disastrous decreases. As Prof. Hamburger explains, this double whammy is the direct result of our government’s abdication of its antitrust responsibility. Since the 1980s, state and federal politicians and regulators have blithely allowed a handful of ever-bigger meat processors to buy out or force out hundreds of feedlots and packing houses that previously competed to purchase from local cattle raisers.

Consequently, we have a BS beef economy in which producers and consumers alike are now at the tender mercies of a meat cartel: 85% of the US beef market is controlled by just four multibillion-dollar goliaths. (JBS and National Beef are Brazilian owned; Tyson Foods and Cargill Inc are US-based multinationals.) Despite already wallowing in fabulous profits, this beef cartel has been raising consumer prices during the pandemic, not to stay afloat, mind you, but to profiteer. And it’s working nicely for them. Their profit margin at the end of 2021 was 300%(!) higher than the previous year.

Meanwhile, the same monopoly that’s ripping off customers has been using its monopsony power to bankrupt the beef industry’s last competitive segment: independent cattle raisers. Not only have the Big Four eliminated local and regional cattle-buying competition, but they’ve also divided the national ranching territory, so they don’t have to bid against each other. The result is a corrupted marketing system that traps and strangles ranchers.

The New York Times recently reported, Steve Charter [discussed here], a third-generation Montana rancher, hoped for a good sale when he saw supermarket beef prices rising, so he took 120 head to an auction that delivers cattle to a JBS plant. He was told he had to commit to selling only to JBS, at a price to be dictated later by the Brazilian behemoth. “I wanted to tell him to go to hell,” Charter says, “But what choice did I have?” There were no other bidders, and cattle are expensive to keep. His break-even price was $1.30 a pound. “Without any consulting or dealing,” he says, “they just decided that they were going to pay me $1 a pound.”

Question: Setting aside its liberal bias, is HL's argument convincing that big corporation profits are significantly or mostly contributing to inflation, or is this cherry picked liberal propaganda that unreasonably distorts reality?

Footnote: The GOP is pounding on Biden and Democratic politics for current inflation. According to HL, a key GOP argument asserts that Biden lavished giveaways on millions of lazy workers, which led to slackers refusing to go to work. In turn, that lead to widespread disruptions in the global supply chain, causing shortages. That forced corporations to raise prices, and that swamps the middle class with systemic inflation. 

Assuming that HL reasonably summarizes a key Republican argument blaming Biden and the Dems, (i) it is conveniently silent about high profits for at least some giant corporations with limited competition, and (ii) it ignores the fact that global supply chain disruptions, e.g., shortage of silicon chips for electronics, have little to do with American workers refusing to take jobs. Presumably, that's why this is called global supply chain disruptions, not American supply chain disruptions.

Pragmatic rationalism: Summary and links to discussions

The context

Intolerance is almost inevitably accompanied by a natural and true inability to comprehend or make allowance for opposite points of view. . . . We find here with significant uniformity what one psychologist has called ‘logic-proof compartments.’ The logic-proof compartment has always been with us. -- Master propagandist Edward Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion, 1923

We found ourselves at the end of chapter 3 with a dystopian assessment of democracy, an apparent ill-suited match between the mental apparatus of the public and the high-minded requirements of democracy: People should be well informed about politically important matters, but they are not. People should think rationally, but they most often do not. -- Political psychologist George Marcus, Political Psychology: Neuroscience, Genetics, and Politics, 2013

“. . . . the typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. . . . cherished ideas and judgments we bring to politics are stereotypes and simplifications with little room for adjustment as the facts change. . . . . the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. Although we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage it.” -- Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, Democracy For Realists: Why Elections Do not Produce Responsive Governments, 2016

The tedious thing

The issue of my political ideology comes up from time to time, usually when I'm being criticized as unreasonably biased, partisan, socialist, stupid or whatever. It's tedious to repeatedly explain my ideology, pragmatic rationalism (PR). A post summarizing it and linking to past posts is in order. 

Short summary: PR is an ideology based on moral values of (i) acceptance of facts, true truths and sound reasoning, especially whenever they are inconvenient or cognitive dissonance-inducing, (ii) service to the public interest (it's complicated but it favors democracy, civil liberties, the rule of law, transparency, honesty, balancing of public and private interests, reasonable regulation of commerce, etc.), and (iii) reasonable compromise to ward off authoritarianism.

PR is intended to be an anti-biasing, anti-ideology ideology. It is intended to help reduce emotion to increase rationality and acceptance of inconvenient facts, truths and sound reasoning. It mostly ignores things like conservatism, liberalism, socialism, capitalism, Christianity and so forth. Disputes about those are essentially contested, and thus for the most part resolvable only by compromise or brute force. 

PR focuses mostly on what most people claim their politics is based on, facts, true truths, sound reasoning, what's best for the people and the country (service to the public interest) and for pro-democracy people, reasonable compromise. Things like personal morals, self-esteem and group loyalty are baked into the 'service to the public interest' moral value. Maybe most of those can be called less contested concepts, especially facts. Despite facts being either mostly or completely objective, they are still often contested, usually they are inconvenient, i.e., when they generate cognitive dissonance.

PR is an anti-biasing, anti-ideology ideology: Political, economic and religious ideologies tend to lead the believer's mind to distort, deny or downplay facts, reality, truths and sound reasoning that are inconvenient. Humans hate cognitive dissonance, ambiguity and uncertainty. The human mind evolved to rationalize uncomfortable things into other things or nothings that are more psychologically comfortable. (June 3, 2019 post)

An attempted brief explanation of PR: It's not clear this attempt succeeds, but it's there. (Dec. 28, 2019 post)

Shared traits of bad leaders: Books teach that bad leaders tend to be ruthlessly demagogic and authoritarian. They usually (~97% of the time?) rely more on deceit, lies, slanders, irrational, emotional manipulation and flawed motivated reasoning. The emotional manipulation usually appeals to and foments negative emotions such as unwarranted fear, anger, hate, bigotry, intolerance and distrust, all of which tend to divide and polarize societies. Propaganda based significantly or completely on motivated reasoning generally makes arguments on some combination of emotional manipulation, logic flaws, deceit, lies, opacity and slanders of target individuals, groups and/or nations. (Aug. 10, 2019 post) 

Self-criticism of PR: Many criticisms can be leveled at PR, e.g., it is impractical for whole societies, especially ones awash in propaganda, opacity and deceit like the US. That is probably true. Nonetheless, considering criticisms helps to clarify what might be possible and what probably isn't. (Aug. 13, 2015 post)

How PR fits with social science research: Short answer is that PR fits. It should fit because it is built largely on human cognitive biology, neuroscience, psychology, social behavior science and related sciences. There's also a strong streak of moral philosophy inherent in PR. 

This quote from a 2013 book chapter on ideology exemplifies the fit:

While I will review a great deal of important research on the structure and determinants of political ideology in this chapter it is important not to lose sight of the implications of low levels of political knowledge, instability in measures of issues preferences, and multiple dimensions of issue preferences when evaluating research on individual-level political ideology. At a minimum, these findings encourage us to consider models of ideology that do not require a great deal of sophistication from most people and to be aware of the limits of ideology among nonelites. --- Feldman, S. (2013). Political ideology. In L. Huddy, D. O. Sears, & J. S. Levy (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of political psychology (pp. 591–626). Oxford University Press.

Based on that, a test for PR asks if it is too sophisticated for nonelites to adopt a pro-rationalism mindset that looks to facts, true truths and sound reasoning as a major basis for political thinking and belief. (Aug. 15, 2021 post)

Complexity is unavoidably embedded in PR: Politics is very complicated, despite strenuous argument from some that it isn't. It just is. That is inherent in the human condition and the workings of the human mind. Therefore, PR is necessarily complicated, although at one time I used to naïvely think it was simple. Now I know better.

For example, service to the public interest and many of the concepts it includes are complex because they are essentially contested. There is thus no authoritative definition or agreement on definitions about when and how they apply in various circumstances. That is an unavoidable aspect of politics. That is why reasonable compromise is necessary in a democracy. In a dictatorship, autocracy, neo-fascism, plutocracy or other non-democratic form of government, definitions and compromise are at the whim of the person or people in power. (July 11, 2020 post)

Regarding mental pathways: Where Ukrainians are going

It may be the case that my own mind is setting and hardening in its positions on all kinds of things, political and otherwise. I now routinely extrapolate from human cognitive biology, social behavior, moral philosophy and the limited current events and history I think I know and understand. It took years to get here, but here I am. 

In that vein, I am beginning to see striking similarities between my mental trip starting from defending rank and file Republicans and conservatives. I defended them because for decades they had been deceived, lied to, emotionally manipulated and taught to accept crackpot motivated reasoning as sound thinking. However, my sympathy decreased in the years after they elected Trump. Over time, his morally rotten, corrupt, mendacious personality became undeniably clear for all to see and understand. The same is now true about the moral rot that has radicalized and corrupted the old Republican Party. Now, I don't see large differences in culpability between the elite Republican propagandists, manipulators and betrayers and the rank and file who are deceived, manipulated and betrayed. 

Another society looks to be undergoing a similar mindset shift. This one is happening fast and going farther, into real hate. The affected minds are cooking in a pressurize cauldron of war, death and destruction. The New York Times writes:

Much of the bitterness is directed at President Vladimir V. Putin, but Ukrainians also chastise ordinary Russians, calling them complicit.

Trapped in his apartment on the outskirts of Kyiv during fierce battles over the weekend, the well-known Ukrainian poet Oleksandr Irvanets composed a few lines that encapsulated the national mood.

“I shout out to the whole world,” he wrote in a short poem published online by his fans, who have since lost touch with the writer and were worried that he may have fallen behind Russian lines. “I won’t forgive anyone!”

If there is one overriding emotion gripping Ukraine right now, it is hate.

It is a deep, seething bitterness for President Vladimir V. Putin, his military and his government. But Ukrainians are not giving a pass to ordinary Russians, either, calling them complicit through years of political passivity. The hatred is vented by mothers in bomb shelters, by volunteers preparing to fight on the front lines, by intellectuals and by artists. 

The emotion is so powerful it could not be assuaged even by an Orthodox religious holiday on Sunday intended to foster forgiveness before Lent. Called Forgiveness Sunday, the holiday is recognized in both the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox churches.

And this hatred has overwhelmed the close personal ties between two Slavic nations, where many people have family living in both countries. 

Billboards have gone up along roadsides in gigantic block letters, telling Russians in profanity-laced language to get out. Social media posts in spaces often shared by Russians and Ukrainians have been awash in furious comments.

Some Ukrainians have posted pictures of people killed in the military assault in Russian chat rooms on the Telegram app. They have vented by writing on the reviews pages for websites of Moscow restaurants.

And they have been mocking Russians in scathing terms for complaining about hardships with banking transactions or the collapsing ruble currency because of international sanctions.

“Damn, what’s wrong with Apple Pay?” Stanislav Bobrytsky, a Ukrainian computer programmer also trapped in the fighting around the capital, Kyiv, wrote sarcastically about how Russians are responding to the war. “I cannot pay for a latte in my favorite coffee shop.”  

Many Ukrainians chastise Russians for increasingly accepting middle-class comforts afforded by the country’s oil wealth in exchange for declining to resist limits on their freedoms. They blame millions of Russians, who Ukrainians say gave up on the post-Soviet dreams of freedom and openness to the West, for enabling the war.

I clearly see the mental pathway that many Ukrainians are on. They are learning to hate. That's a pathway I am on. I'm not at the point of hate, but it is in sight. 

The intensity of my negative emotions and feelings toward the elites in the Republican Party is significantly greater than for the rank and file. The elites are the deceivers, irrational manipulators and betrayers. The ranks and file are the deceived, irrationally manipulated and betrayed. They're just not the same. Not yet at least. The time could come when they merge into one. 

Can the Ukrainian people be blamed for where the their mental pathway took them? Can Americans be blamed for taking a pathway similar to mine about some of our fellow Americans?

Ukrainians in Kyiv last week making incendiary bombs 

to be used against Russian forces

Ukrainian volunteers in intense military intelligence, 

first aid and weapons training

Where Republican Party allegiance lies

Over time, the label neo-fascist or American fascist fits the Republican Party elites, donors and leadership better and better. The latest blast of GOP neo-fascism comes from Republicans in congress. The Hill reports in an article, Republicans warn Justice Department probe of Trump would trigger political war:

Republican lawmakers are warning that any Department of Justice prosecution of former President Trump will turn into a political battle, setting a high bar for Attorney General Merrick Garland to act on an expected criminal referral from the House’s Jan. 6 committee.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol previewed its likely referral to the Justice Department in a court filing made public last week and experts say the evidence assembled by House investigators would provide a strong impetus for prosecutors to act.

But Republican lawmakers and strategists warn that any federal prosecution of Trump will be accused of being politically motivated, boost Trump within the GOP and turn into a partisan food fight at a time when President Biden is pivoting to the center and trying to keep his 2020 campaign promise to unify the country.

Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said any criminal referral from the House “would probably have as much political taint on it as you can get.”

“To me it’s clearly politically driven,” he said.

Braun said Democrats are scrambling to change up the political narrative in response to Biden’s moribund job approval ratings and predicted launching a federal prosecution of Trump would be viewed along partisan lines.

“At least half the country would say it’s all politically motivated,” he said.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said “the Department of Justice has a high bar” to clear before launching an investigation of Trump and raised concerns over the partisan fighting that surrounded the formation of the Jan. 6 committee. 

Republican strategists close to Trump are predicting a battle royale if the Department of Justice moves to indict the former president."

“I think it could backfire in a way that they have no clue,” said Republican pollster Jim McLaughlin. “I think it’s going to backfire because it just so political and it’s tainted.

“The country wants to move on. Nobody is proud of what happened on Jan. 6 but people are like, ‘With all the problems we have going on in the country right now, this is going to be the focus of the Democrats?’ ”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a close Trump ally and senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told The Hill Thursday any recommendation to prosecute from the House select committee would lack credibility.

“I don’t see anything coming out of this committee not tainted by politics,” he said.

A key GOP complaint is that Pelosi didn't seat radical right Republican Trump supporters like Jim Jordan on the 1/6 investigation committee. That's is understandable because Republicans like Jordan had and still have no interest in truth. Their interests are partisan political. They have every interest in sabotaging and slowing a congressional investigation as much as they possibly could. Is that political? Yes, because the Republicans politicized it right from the get-go. Does it change the underlying facts? No, because Trump did what he and his conspirators did, even though the Republicans deny it and desperately do not want the public to know. 

From a demagogic despot's or demagogic political party's point of view, an ignorant public is a much better public than an informed one. An ignorant public is more open to lies, irrational emotional manipulation and partisan motivated reasoning than an informed public. If that sounds implausible, just looks at what the Russian dictator Putin has done to real truth about Ukraine and how effective it has been in deceiving the Russian people.

The Russian public, either deceived about Ukraine and 

believing Putin's lies or aware of the truth and afraid to speak

A couple of thoughts come to mind. First, the GOP owes allegiance first to Trump, but also to its laissez-faire capitalist donors and Republican Christian nationalist authoritarians. Republican rhetoric and actions are more evidence in an already significant accumulation of evidence that the GOP is loyal to none of democracy, the American people as a whole, the US Constitution, the rule of law, and inconvenient facts or truths. 

Second, I recall the time in 2016 when Obama had the chance to raise and criticize Trump's authoritarian activities and Russian attacks on the election. Obama backed down in the face of McConnell threatening to politicize the matter and further polarize an already highly polarized electorate. Well, the Republicans are still playing the same card by making the same threats over similar issues. 

Yes, Trump supporters would say a DoJ investigation and/or prosecution of him for crimes and treason is politically motivated. They are already saying that. They have been saying that ever since the issue of investigation and prosecution of Trump was first mentioned in 2017, maybe even in 2016. Starting a prosecution now will change very little. Social hyper-polarization and political battle lines are drawn and set in stone. People either fight for or against democracy, actual truth, the rule of law, civil liberties. The Republicans fight against. The Democrats . . . . who knows what they are doing.

To be direct, if Republicans were in charge of the House, there would be no serious 1/6 investigation, most likely no investigation at all. If there was not investigation, then there would be nothing to whitewash. The public would never know the truth of what Trump and his conspirators did. It would be whitewashed as much as Republicans could whitewash it.

Finally, Republicans making these threats now make a mistake. Such threats are unnecessary. Biden and Garland have been quite clear by their words and/or actions that they are not going to investigate for prosecute Trump for his crimes and treason. The rule of law has fallen for rich and powerful elites, especially cooked or treasonous neo-fascist Republicans. All the radical right Republicans have to do is keep their foul mouths shut and whatever the 1/6 Committee in the House does or finds will just fade into oblivion and go unpunished. 

The Republican party elites, major donors and politicians clearly are anti-democratic neo-fascists. The open question is how effective their propaganda, deceit, lies, irrational emotional manipulation and slanders will be in the 2022 and 2024 elections. So far, it has been quite effective. The next two elections ought to make clear whether democracy, truth and the rule of law will fall to autocratic Republican neo-fascism, lies and the rule of the dictator. Time will tell. 

America Will Invade Canada Before the Year 2100

 

But it could happen far, far sooner

Let’s face it, friends:

America is over.

• We poisoned all our rivers and we’re running out of freshwater, with 96 out of 204 basins in trouble and the western seaboard on fire.
• We’re like a thirsty ex-boyfriend in our desperate search for ever-harder-to-extract oil and gas, fracking our foundations to smithereens.
• Our infrastructure is crumbling and our cities are overcrowded like a Tokyo metro station.
• Our virgin forests have been destroyed and aren’t coming back.
• We’re trying to coax GMO crops from dead dirt instead of living soil, leaving us with sickly and anemic food.

Eventually, despotic American politicians will wake up and realize there’s a simple solution to all their self-imposed problems:

Invade Canada.

Looking north

America has invaded Canada four times in the past — and lost every time — but you know what they say: The fifth time’s the charm.

(And they no longer have the British and French to defend them.)

For an even-somewhat dictatorial American President and his sociopathic cabinet of corporate inside traders, Canada would be the pearl of great price; and an impossibility not to devour whole. After all:

• Canada has freshwater. Buckets of it. In fact, Canada has 20% of the global freshwater supply and the third-most renewable freshwater on earth.
• Canada has oil and gas galore. Sure, Alberta’s tar sands are an absolute carbon bomb, but that’s why we’re building Mars rockets, right?
• Canada has minerals, including rare ones, and plenty of nuclear material. (More on those trillions later.)
• Canada has land. So much space. You could give a free 3.6-acre plot to every American citizen and still have over one billion acres of Crown land left over.
• Canada has soil. (You know, the stuff we used to grow food in?) The Prairies are the breadbasket of the world, and as totally-definitely-not-global-warming desertifies the American south and pushes the growing region north, taking over Canada might be the most efficient way to feed America.

Plus, Canada would be the easiest country to invade ever.

It has a 5,525-mile undefended border with the States, and over 75% of the Canadian population lives within 93 miles of the American border. In fact, over half of all Canadians live south of North Dakota.

The invasion would be over by the time those public-pajama-wearing Canucks got back from their morning Tim Horton’s run.

Pretexts for invasion

It goes without saying that the invasion of Canada will come to pass under a Republican administration.

In fact, leading Canadian thinkers are already sounding the alarm bells about the impending fascist takeover of America and what it means for Canada.

If/when a monopoly-loving right-wing dictatorship takes over America in the next few decades, it’s only a matter of time before they set their sights north and concoct a pretext for invasion.

Because fake conservatives haven’t had a new idea in generations, they’ll likely re-play one of the hits from their back catalog:

“The Central America”

The reality is that Canada only exists because they’re obedient little lap dogs for their southern neighbo(u)rs. Just as the CIA has couped and/or ousted dozens of progressive (and elected) Latin leaders, if a too-progressive Canadian Prime Minister waded into “communist” territory and, say, nationalized the oil pipelines, the American military-industrial complex would happily jump into action.

“Protection”

Should Russia continue to breach Canada’s sovereign territory in the far north — and more importantly, if it interferes with future American deep-sea oil exploration in the region — America might move to “protect the interests of all involved.”

“Terrorism”

Specifically, two or more terrorist attacks.

This horror script basically writes itself: A jihadi emigrates to Canada. They cross the border and blow themselves up in a Mall of America or a JC Penny. A few months later, a second Canadian jihadi sets off a pipe bomb in an American KFC. The tough-guy President has to respond. Clearly, Canada is a safe harbor for terrorists, at least as bad as Iraq or Afghanistan — just look at how many immigrants they let in. We need to secure the North American border to keep ourselves safe from terrorism.

Canada’s valiant defense

It’s quaint to think that Canada’s allies would come to its defense in a war against the US, but NATO would simply crumble and collapse in the face of such an outsized foe. America and the Atlantic Ocean are just far too big.

In reality — with the exception of a few rifle-toting Quebecers and the 617 First Nations who actually own everything above the 49th parallel — Canada would immediately surrender at the first whiff of invasion.

After all, it’s the equivalent of me playing basketball blind-folded against MJ and Lebron:

• The US has a population of 333 million versus Canada’s 38 million.
• America has 30X more combat aircraft.
• The US has 71 nuclear submarines versus Canada’s zero.
• America has 6,417 attack helicopters versus Canada’s zero.
• The US spends nearly $700 billion per year on arms versus Canada’s $21 billion.
• Canada has 67,492 active troops versus America’s 1,426,713. (And with the exchange rate, it’s even worse…)
• America has an unconscionable 3,750 nukes, versus Canada’s zero.
• Over 377,000 Canadians are already American citizens, so there’s a huge potential spy force if the US takes the Germany Stalag 17 route.
• U.S. foreign direct investment in Canada was a massive $402.3 billion in 2019 — they already control many of Canada’s oil fields and could easily cripple supply lines.
• Also never forget that Canada really is a nation of immigrants: Around 1 million Canadians have dual citizenship, and nearly 250,000 people emigrate to Canada each year. Do you really think most of these people will want to immediately enlist to fight America?

All told, the American invasion of Canada would be the largest and most peaceful takeover in world history.

In fact, the words “war”, “invasion,” “takeover,” and “annex” would never be used — behind closed doors, Canadian politicians would give up the ghost and then announce it on CBC as a “merger of friends.”

It’s not all bad news

Ideological extremists don’t like to admit it, but there are upsides and downsides to literally everything on earth.

Bitcoin has pros and cons.
Fiat currency has pros and cons.
Inflation has pros and cons.
The Republican party has… amateurs and con-men.

Everything should be subjected to a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, and the American invasion of Canada should be no different.

There are obviously a massive number of downsides that frothy readers will soon spew all over the comments section, but there are also some real upsides:

1. Canada would gain military security.
   Russia is already eating Canada’s lunch over the much-disputed Artic and is illegally operating within its rival’s exclusive economic zone. America will send a massive fleet to guard its new territory all the way to Santa’s American-made North Pole. Plus, we could install a high-speed rail line from LA to Alaska. Plus plus, we’d now be the biggest nation in world history, with more land than all European nations combined.
2. Americans might get Westminster Parliamentary democracy.
   If the US invaded Canada, it wouldn’t be to enslave the population. The provinces and territories would become American states. If America kept its idiotic electoral college, Canadian voters would actually have a huge advantage at the polls. After punching the numbers, North America might realize it makes more sense to go with the Canadian expression of fake democracy instead — watering down northern power, but also giving slightly more power to the average American citizen overall.
3. States rights.
   Ontario hates the west, the east hates Ontario, Quebec hates everyone, and Alberta wants to secede. If America gave its new territories states rights, it would give the provinces more power and thus alleviate a lot of the tension that currently exists within the Canadian power structure.
4. Americans might get universal healthcare.
   If there’s one thing Canadians will fight to the death over, it’s universal healthcare. Once the Yankees get in and actually do the math, they’ll realize that getting rid of for-profit healthcare insurance companies is a boon for cost savings and adopt it continent-wide.
5. Education.
   Not that Gen Alpha is stupid enough to pay six-figure debt for a paper certificate on the wall, but Canadian students with wealthy parents would gain domestic access to the Ivy League and likely dominate it rather quickly. After all, Canadians are smarter than Americans. It would also end Canada’s chronic brain drain to the USA — not to mention Canada’s tragic loss of the two Ryans, Reynolds and Gosling.
6. The White House.
   Finally, Canadians would have a Presidential residence to be proud of. 24 Sussex is an embarrassment to architecture and a war crime against eyesight. (It’s so ugly that Justin Trudeau won’t even live in it.)
7. No more border crossings.
   Canadians love to visit the US. In fact, nearly a tenth of the population — over 3.5 million people — visit Florida every winter. They even have a name for them: Snowbirds. With a merged nation, Canadians will save 176.4 quintillion hours of life each December while they wait to cross Rainbow Bridge.
8. Canada can stop devaluing its dollar.
   One dirty secret about Canada’s sociopathic little politicians is that they purposefully keep the loonie devalued in order to keep exports flowing to America. That’s right: Rather than letting their people have a strong currency so they can acquire cheaper goods from overseas, they weaken citizen purchasing power for the benefit of their corporate backers. When you think about it, it’s the most American thing about Canada.
9. America could ditch the $USD.
   This is America’s great chance to ditch the much-abused $USD and start fresh with a more sound currency, maybe based on real wealth, and reclaim its place as the global reserve currency. Or Bitcoin, whatever. As long as Canadians get to keep the toonie. There’s nothing better than finding a two-dollar coin under your car seat.
10. Roadtrips!
    Millions of young Canadians would ditch the cold and hit the road, pumping billions in spending into touristy hotspots across the warmer South. Eventually, those Millennials and Gen-Zers will get bored and want to settle down, and unlike Canada where you can’t buy a derelict shack for less than $500,000, they’ll settle in (relatively) more affordable areas like Detroit and West Texas, revitalizing hundreds of dying towns across America.
11. Cash money.
    Not only would the border elimination increase productivity and domestic trade, but the combined economy would be bigger than the European Union, able to take all comers — especially the massive threat of state capitalism as practiced by Ch!na. People have literally written books about the merger, which would make it the unchallengeable global economic superpower, securing Western values like pseudo-democracy, free-ish speech, and two-gallon Slurpees.
12. Canada will see an influx of investment.
    Canada has the capacity to triple its hydroelectric output. The Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world. The Artic is hella windy. With American investment dollars pouring in, the new nation of North America could be well on its way to clean energy sovereignty when you add in midwest solar and Yellowstone+Hawaii geothermal. Plus, there are a known $17 trillion in untapped Canadian resources that American investment could unlock, ensuring high-paid employment for millions of Canadians for generations to come.

When you add it all up, you can absolutely see why some people are interested in the combined U-S-Eh.

In conclusion

People.

I am not saying that the US should actually invade Canada.

It would likely be net-terrible for peace-loving Canadians and for the environment.

I’m just saying that it could happen.

And that it almost certainly will happen.

Because America always gets what America wants.

And if America keeps on its current trajectory toward right-wing fascism and environmental collapse — and there’s nothing that even remotely suggests it will deviate at all — it’s only a matter of time before the stars and stripes fly over Ottawa.

But borders are just legal fictions anyway.

At least Americans will get to discover poutine.

https://survivingtomorrow.org/america-will-invade-canada-before-the-year-2100-29d8f3dd3b24

More evidence of the effect of information control and propaganda

The New York Times writes:

Many Ukrainians are encountering a confounding and frustrating backlash from family members in Russia who have bought into the official Kremlin messaging.

LVIV, Ukraine — Four days after Russia began dropping artillery shells on Kyiv, Misha Katsurin, a Ukrainian restaurateur, was wondering why his father, a church custodian living in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, hadn’t called to check on him.

“There is a war, I’m his son, and he just doesn’t call,” Mr. Katsurin, who is 33, said in an interview. So, Mr. Katsurin picked up the phone and let his father know that Ukraine was under attack by Russia.

“I’m trying to evacuate my children and my wife — everything is extremely scary,” Mr. Katsurin told him.

Mr. Katsurin, who converted his restaurants into volunteer centers and is temporarily staying near the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil. “He started to yell at me and told me, ‘Look, everything is going like this. They are Nazis.’”

As Ukrainians deal with the devastation of the Russian attacks in their homeland, many are also encountering a confounding and almost surreal backlash from family members in Russia, who refuse to believe that Russian soldiers could bomb innocent people, or even that a war is taking place at all.

These relatives have essentially bought into the official Kremlin position: that President Vladimir V. Putin’s army is conducting a limited “special military operation” with the honorable mission of “de-Nazifying” Ukraine. Mr. Putin has referred to the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, a native Russian speaker with a Jewish background, as a “drug-addled Nazi” in his attempts to justify the invasion.
He did not get the response he expected. His father, Andrei, didn’t believe him.

“No, no, no, no stop,” Mr. Katsurin said of his father’s initial response.  

Russian television channels do not show the bombardment of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and its suburbs, or the devastating attacks on Kharkiv, Mariupol, Chernihiv and other Ukrainian cities. They also do not show the peaceful resistance evident in places like Kherson, a major city in the south that Russian troops captured several days ago, and certainly not the protests against the war that have cropped up across Russia.

Does that sound familiar? To me, it sounds just like Republicans in America constantly repeating that there was no significant vote fraud in the 2020 elections and repeating their other lies. Republican rhetoric is almost pure fantasy and lies. But facts and truths do not matter if people never hear them or are unwilling to listen.

In Russia, truth has been silenced as best that Putin and his thugs can. In America, deceived and manipulated people are trapped in echo chambers that do not allow them to hear inconvenient facts or truths. They stay willingly ignorant and disinformed.

One can feel sorry for the Russian people. They cannot help believing in lies and being irrationally manipulated. They live in a brutal dictatorship that has shut down honest information sources and passed laws to punish people for speaking truth in public. 

What is the American's excuse. Is it inexcusable? Or as Republicans like to say, are problems, whatever they might be (real or imagined), are Hillary's and the Democrat's fault?