Every American Needs to See This | Really Graceful
TIMESTAMPS:
The Endless Frontier Intro: 0:00-0:13
What happened in Venezuela the first week of January 2026: 0:14-01:38
Why now? 01:40-02:15
What is the Monroe Doctrine? 02:16-02:45
Venezuela and the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative: 02:46-03:36
Trumps warning to Mexico, Cuba, and Columbia: 03:40-05:01
Russian-Flagged Venezuela Oil Tankers Seized, Ghost Fleet: 05:02-06:00
Responding to comments from my last video: 06:01-07:06
USA Acquisition of Greenland: 07:07-07:33
USA to pay Greenlanders 100,000 to buy Greenland: 07:34-08:19
Denmark's reaction/NATO reaction to USA wanting Greenland: 08:22-08:56
Trump proposes 1.5 trillion military budget 08:57-10:20
What's going on with Iranian Protests? Why are Iranians protesting? 10:21-11:49
Iran and China's Belt and Road Initiative: 11:50-12:48
Closing thoughts: 12:49-13:48
What is the North American Technate?: 15:00-27:35.
Grand Illusion
“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” — Stephen Miller to Jake Tapper on CNN, Jan. 5, 2026.
“He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist. Such a saying may sound hard; but, after all, that’s how it is.” — Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf
“The Fascist State expresses the will to exercise power and to command. Here the Roman tradition is embodied in a conception of strength. Imperial power, as understood by the Fascist doctrine, is not only territorial, or military, or commercial; it is also spiritual and ethical... Fascism sees in the imperialistic spirit — i.e., in the tendency of nations to expand — a manifestation of their vitality.” — Benito Mussolini in The Doctrine of Fascism
All empires, when they are dying, worship the idol of war. War will save the empire. War will resurrect past glory. War will teach an unruly world to obey. But those who bow down before the idol of war, blinded by hypermasculinity and hubris, are unaware that while idols begin by calling for the sacrifice of others, they end by demanding self-sacrifice. Ekpyrosis, the inevitable conflagration that destroys the world according to the ancient Stoics, is part of the cyclical nature of time. There is no escape. Fortuna . There is a time for individual death. There is a time for collective death. In the end, with weary citizens yearning for extinction, empires light their own funeral pyre.
Our high priests of war, Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine, are no different from the fools and charlatans who snuffed out empires of the past — the haughty leaders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the militarists in imperial Germany and the hapless court of Tsarist Russia in World War I. They were followed by the fascists in Italy under Benito Mussolini, Germany under Adolf Hitler and the military rulers of imperial Japan in World War II.
These political entities committed collective suicide.
They drank the same fatal elixir Miller and those in the Trump White House imbibe. They too tried to use industrial violence to reshape the universe. They too considered themselves to be omnipotent. They too saw themselves in the face of the idol of war. They too demanded to be obeyed and worshiped.
Destruction to them is creation. Dissent is sedition. The world is one-dimensional. The strong versus the weak. Only our nation is great. Other nations, even allies, are dismissed with contempt.
These architects of imperial folly are buffoons and killer clowns. They are ridiculed and hated by those rooted in a reality-based world. They are followed slavishly by the desperate and the disenfranchised. The simplicity of the message is its appeal. A magic incantation will bring back the lost world, the golden age, however mythic. Reality is viewed exclusively through the lens of ultranationalism. The flip side of ultranationalism is racism.
“The nationalist is by definition an ignoramus,” wrote Yugoslav-Serbian novelist Danilo Kiš. “Nationalism is the line of least resistance, the easy way. The nationalist is untroubled, he knows or thinks he knows what his values are, his, that’s to say national, that’s to say the values of the nation he belongs to, ethical and political; he is not interested in others, they are no concern of his, hell — it’s other people (other nations, other tribes). They don’t even need investigating. The nationalist sees other people in his own image — as nationalists.”
These stunted human beings are unable to read others. They threaten. They terrorize. They kill. The art of power politics between nations or individuals is far beyond their tiny imaginations. They lack the intelligence — emotional and intellectual — to cope with the complex, ever-shifting sands of old and new alliances. They cannot see themselves as the world sees them.
Diplomacy is often a dark and deceptive art. It is by its nature manipulative. But it requires an understanding of other cultures and traditions. It requires getting inside the heads of adversaries and allies. For Trump and his minions, this is an impossibility.
Skillful diplomats, such as Prince Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian Empire’s foreign minister who dominated European politics after the defeat of Napoleon, do so by crafting agreements and treaties such as the Concert of Europe and the Congress of Vienna. Metternich, no friend of liberalism, adroitly kept Europe stable until the revolutions of 1848.
I reported on Richard Holbrooke, the assistant secretary of state, as he negotiated an end to the war in Bosnia. He was bombastic and enthralled with his own celebrity. But he played the Balkan warlords off each other in the former Yugoslavia until they acquiesced to stop the fighting — with some help from NATO warplanes that pounded Serb positions on the hills around Sarajevo — and signed the Dayton Peace Accords.
Holbrooke had little regard for the diplomats who diddled in conference halls in Geneva while 100,000 people died or disappeared in Bosnia, an estimated 900,000 became refugees and 1.3 million were internally displaced. He had a loathing for military commanders who refused to take risks. He detested the Croatian, Serbian and Muslim leaders he had to corral into signing the peace accord.
Holbrooke, whose blustering style and volcanic eruptions were legendary, left bruised egos and slighted, embittered colleagues in his wake. But he knew how to cajole and mold his adversaries to his will. He was likened, in a not very flattering comparison, to Jules Cardinal Mazarin, the crafty 17th-century prelate and statesman who solidified France’s supremacy among the European powers. “He flatters, he lies, he humiliates: he is a sort of brutal and schizophrenic Mazarin,” a French diplomat told Le Figaro, of Holbrooke, during the Dayton talks.
True.
But Holbrooke, however mercurial, understood the interplay between force and diplomacy. This understanding is essential. It is why nations have diplomats. It is why great diplomats are as important as great generals.
Gangster states have no need of diplomacy. Trump and Rubio, for this reason, have gutted the State Department, along with other forms of “soft” power that achieve influence without resorting to force, including the U.S. role in the United Nations, the U.S. Agency of International Development, the U.S. Institute for Peace — renamed Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace after most of the board and staff were fired — and Voice of America.
Diplomats in gangster states are reduced to the role of errand boys. Hitler’s Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop**,** whose primary experience in foreign affairs before 1933 was selling fake German champagne in Britain, appointed party hacks from the SA or Brownshirts — the paramilitary wing of the party — to diplomatic posts abroad. Benito Mussolini’s Foreign Minister was his son-in-law, Galeazzo Ciano. Mussolini — who believed that “war is to man what maternity is to woman” — later executed Ciano for disloyalty. Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steven Charles Witkoff, is a real estate developer, often accompanied on diplomatic missions by Trump’s feckless son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce quipped that fascism had created a fourth form of government, “onagrocracy,” a government by braying asses, to add to Aristotle’s traditional triumvirate of tyranny, oligarchy and democracy.
Our ruling class, Democrats and Republicans, piece by piece, dismantled democracy. In Germany and Italy, the constitutional state, as well, collapsed long before the arrival of fascism. Trump, who is the symptom, not the disease, inherited the corpse. He is making good use of it.
“I believe that to maintain our empire abroad requires resources and commitments that will inevitably undercut our domestic democracy and in the end produce a military dictatorship or its civilian equivalent,” Chalmers Johnson wrote two decades ago in his book, “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic.”
He warned:
The founders of our nation understood this well and tried to create a form of government — a republic — that would prevent this from occurring. But the combination of huge standing armies, almost continuous wars, military Keynesianism, and ruinous military expenses have destroyed our republican structure in favor of an imperial presidency. We are on the cusp of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation is started down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play — isolation, overstretch, the uniting of forces opposed to imperialism, and bankruptcy. Nemesis stalks our life as a free nation.
The American Empire, defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan — as it was at the Bay of Pigs and in Vietnam — learns nothing. It leaps into each new military fiasco as if the previous military fiascos did not happen. It believes it needs no allies. It will rule the world.
If occupying Greenland blows up NATO, so what? If funding and arming Israel to carry out genocide and bombing Iran and Yemen alienates huge swaths of the Global South and enrages the Muslim world, who cares? If invading and kidnapping the president of Venezuela stinks of Yankee imperialism, tough! No one else matters.
Nations that stomp around the globe like King Kong infect themselves with a fatal virus.
Johnson warned that if we continue to cling to our empire, as the Roman Republic did, we will “lose our democracy and grimly await the eventual blowback that imperialism generates.”
Blowback is next and with it the collapse of the crumbling edifice of the American Empire. It is an old story. Although to us, and the cabal of misfits ensconced in our version of Ubu Roi’s court, it will come as a terrible shock.
Trump Warns Against Escalation As EU Threatens To Dump US Treasuries Over Greenland Crisis
Ed Dowd: 'Kooky' Valuations & Weak Economy To Lead To Downturn By Midterm Elections
How the U.S. Reputation is Changing Round the World /Larry Johnson & Lt Col Daniel Davis
Why is this reported as a "good" thing and as a responsible solution? More evidence of how low the nation has descended.
U.S. is SAVAGE - US ‘baby boxes’ offer anonymous baby drop-off
A mother in Alabama surrendered her newborn through a baby box at a fire station, one of 20 now installed across the state and more than 400 nationwide, mostly in conservative states with near or total abortion bans. The temperature-controlled boxes allow anonymous, safe surrenders with no questions asked. Last year, 100 babies were surrendered safely in the US and all survived, whilst 22 were abandoned outdoors and half died. Supporters say the boxes save lives, but experts raise concerns about lack of medical care, counseling for mothers, and potential unreported crimes including rape or abuse. Source: Al Jazeera News.
They'd Cut the Feed if This Was the State of the Union 2026
The State of the Union 2026 was a performance. Standing ovations, handshakes, applause lines — and not a single word of truth. So we wrote the one they'd never give. The honest State of the Union. The version that names numbers, names names, and doesn't care who claps. Rent is $2,000 a month. Food is up 30% since 2020. Beef up 16% in a year. Coffee up 12%. Real wages for low-income workers went DOWN. Meanwhile the Pentagon is asking for a trillion dollars and just created a $13.4 billion budget line for autonomous weapons. Robots that kill people got their own line item before your kids got a funded school. The Trump SOTU 2026 promised transparency. The Epstein files came out redacted. Promised lower prices. Tariffs jacked them up. The OBBBA tax cuts, Jerome Powell 2026 rate decisions, stagflation 2026 warning signs — none of it is helping the person doing math in the cereal aisle trying to figure out if they can afford both milk and electricity this week. The 2026 economy is not recovering. US inflation 2026 is eating paychecks faster than wages grow. The 2026 midterms are coming and both sides are selling you the same lie in different packaging. US foreign policy 2026 under America First 2026 means a trillion for defense and nothing for you. Learning Resources Inc v Trump tells you everything about where executive power actually points. This isn't a SOTU reaction. This isn't political satire 2026 — although it reads like it because the truth sounds absurd now. This is unfiltered politics. The SOTU 2026 highlights they'll never put on the news. The state of the union is broken. And you already knew that. - ETP.
If you're in the US Military, You Are Not Fighting For Your Country
If you are in the US military you are not currently fighting for your country - you’re fighting for a small group of inhumanly rich transnational billionaires who do not believe in nation-states in the same way you do. -G.S.
MARINE: “No one wants to fight for Israel.”
Marine dragged for protesting another foreign war
On March 4, 2026 an Ex-Marine Brian McGinnis was dragged out of a Senate hearing after voicing opposition to the war with Iran. Article: https://thenerdstash.com/us-marine-suffers-brutal-injury-protesting-iran-war-in-washington-dc-senate-hearing-they-broke-his-arm/
This just got MUCH worse - America is running out of missiles — and it’s happening fast
New reporting says the White House is bringing top defense executives in for emergency meetings because strikes on Iran are draining U.S. stockpiles of long-range munitions and air-defense interceptors. We’re talking Tomahawks, Patriots, and the high-end weapons that take months (or years) to replace — not “infinite” supplies like politicians keep claiming. - C.M.
Billionaires Want Us Homeless
Rent is unaffordable. Buying is impossible. So people are turning to manufactured homes, RV living, and converting Home Depot storage sheds into houses. If you can think of an affordable option, the billionaires have already bought it. - V.W.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:27 People Can’t Afford Their Rent
01:21 People Can’t Buy A House
02:29 Investors Are Now Building “Built-to-Rent” Communities
03:25 Mortgages Are Increasing
04:04 Property Taxes Are Increasing
04:45 Can’t Afford Mortgage But House Is Worth Less Now
05:38 Seniors Lose House to Unpaid Property Taxes
06:34 Manufactured Homes Are No Longer Affordable
08:26 Do Not Buy Clayton Homes
10:57 Vanlife Is Displacement
11:53 Living In An RV Is No Longer Affordable
13:33 Sheds Being Used as Living Spaces.