Mostly Asian History was intended as a non-politcal publication devoted to, you guessed it, mostly Asian history. However with the appearance of the horrors of Trump 2.0 I have from time to time written about politics and tried to spread the word and my interpretation of what’s going on in the world and my country. I think it’s important that we all speak out, spread the word, and do not comply in advance with wannabe tyrants. Lately time has been tight, so here’s what I offer this week. Sources and leads to understand a very important and under-reported aspect of the modern world and the changes we are going through. The rise and appearance of anti-democratic tech billionaires in politics. And Gil Duran and his media outlet The Nerd Reich are widely recognized as one of the best sources out there to gain understanding of this problem.
I believe that the next few months as we head towards and past the November mid term elections are going to be some of the most important and interesting in American history. Stand by and prepare. And to properly prepare and respond, an important step is to try and understand what is happening around us, where and how it cameto be, and what is likely to happen next.
Trump is clearly a problem and the Federal government, the international order, and the US economy is falling apart. But is the election and actions of Trump 2.0 and his Keystone Cabinet a cause or a symptom of widespread problems?
Before you answer, remember what did Trump do as his first real act in office? Turned the US government over to his largest campaign donor, Elon Musk (an anti-immigrant immigrant tech billionaire) and told him to fire anyone he wanted and destroy anyone and anything he wanted and don’t worry about data security or human health or the morality or morale or effectiveness of any government agency. And he did so and millions have died because of it and many of our government agencies are now at their lowest efficiency and morale anywhere.
And since then Elon Musk has made so much money from government contracts it’s frightening.
And before that Trump made the strange choice of choosing a man who is currently but has not always been known under the name of “JD Vance” as vice-president. Why? The man had little experience, had called Trump “America’s Hitler,” he’s not terribly effectivfe or talented, and he is entirely unlikeable and untrustworthy and just plain creepy. Why did he do this?
Because tech billionaire PETER THIEL, another large campaign donor and man behind the Palantir surveillance system, wanted Trump to choose JD Vance as Vice-President.
And when Trump responded to the No Kings 2 protest by having a tantrum and knocking down the Wing of the White House who was it who immediaely showed up and promised, and later apparently retracted the promise, of paying for the new construction? Tech billionaires. The same Tech billionaries who often sit at Trump’s table at official ceremonies and events.
While I lack a PhD, I do have a master’s degree and work hard at understanding the study of history and how historians do their thing. And one important question that historians ask when they begin to look at an important event is
Why did the massive event known as World War One break out in 1914 and devolve into long, ugly years of ugly, violent, yet monotonous trench warfare that continued until pure attrition cause the collapse of one side’s economy? Why did it not happen, for instance, in 1884 or 1944? instead? Why did the trench warfare happen like this in Western Europe and not, for instance, in China or Massachusetts?
Why did the American Revolutionary War take place when it did and not fifty years earlier or later? And why did the first modern democracy arise at this time on the east coast of what is now the United States and not, for instance, in Latin America or Russia?
Same for the American Civil War? Or in China, the Boxer Rebellion? Or in China why did the attempted reforms of the so-called 1898 Hundred Days Reforms fail when almost everything that was attempted in the area of reforms was ultimately put in place withing the next ten or twenty years?
And here we are in the USA. We as a nation have elected, twice I am ashamed to say, for the first time ever a man with zero background in government, military, or public service (he was even banned from administering charities in his home state due to his and his family’s proven corruption) and whose primary area of prominence is as a reality tv star. Yes, he ran businesses and casinos and sold real estate, but none of that terribly well. His pathway to prominence was through working to appear on TV and in the newspapers.
And by “the economy,” I don’t just mean inflation. It did not help and it did increase the desire for a change in leadership but the BIG PICTURE ECONOMY. THE UNDERLYING MASS ECONOMY
Obviously, Donald Trump while lacking in many areas and at this point clearly demonstrating poor mental health and dementia (for goodness sakes, as I write apparently this afternoon, he threatened to renname Lake Ontario, an obviously absurd threat, which he apparently finds not just believable but also threatening no doubt in part perhaps because most people in his immediate circle are too sycophantic to tell him that most Americans still think and refer to the Gulf of Mexico by it proper name the Gulf of Mexico. But at his prime he was masterful at manipulating crowds, particularly crowds of uneducated poorly informed emotional and frustrated people. The man did have serious skills in that area. It has alwasy been a mistake to underestimate Donald Trump and dismiss him as an idiot,
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