Month: October 2026

Back in the day, US presidents used to refer to the shared experience of fighting Japanese imperialism during World War II to persuade the Chinese government to cooperate with us. This kind of appeal worked with some individual Chinese citizens who had suffered through the war, but not with the regime.

Xi has flipped the script. During last week’s summit, he argued that Japan was becoming militaristic again, and that America and China should work together to prevent a revival of Japanese imperialism.

LOL. The real issue for America is Japanese pacifism, not militarism.

J.D.’s Godly Society is based on an American manufacturing renaissance that creates tens of millions of great jobs for male workers. As a result, women can afford to stay home and have lots of babies.

But the future of manufacturing is robots. Virtually every function in a factory can be mechanized. Even the maintenance of the robots could be assigned to specialist robots. This is already starting to happen in China.

In short, we could have J.D.’s domestic manufacturing renaissance with a massive decrease in factory jobs. Then what? How do we get to the Godly Society under those conditions?

He had better hope that the combination of robots and AI bring about endless abundance, and that the owners of the new economy are willing to redistribute their incredible wealth to the rest of us.

Trump has clearly convinced himself that, like Louis XIV, he is the state. It follows from that premise that the peasants–er, taxpayers–should pay for commercials promoting him and his opinions.

The logic is plausible, but the premise is ludicrous. Even GOP bigwigs admit as much, but they won’t do anything to stop him, because while he may not be the state, he is the personification of the base.