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@verucassault I believe its more of a matter that the USA stopped considering itself as part of the world in general (culturally). After the end of the Cold War, we had no clear enemy to be united against, so we either sat on our laurels, or turned inwards. However, that, I feel, was just a continuation of what was being done on a societal level. A nation is never fully at peace unless it is the sole nation in the universe, even then stability is not guaranteed. China has been learning from the past, while we continually distance ourselves from it. In a world without major military clashes, soft power is everything, and the US has been slowly throwing all of it's soft power away. Russia and China have been accelerating that process. I think a relatively good explanation of what is going on with such things like the CCP trying to sway the political landscape in the US, can be done by Kraut with is video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhMAt3BluAU

@shinkutsume 9 minutes in and I see this is an hour long video. LOL OK. I'm getting a history on Chinese economy. I will listen to this as I work. But I just want to point out... " the USA stopped considering itself as part of the world in general (culturally). After the end of the Cold War, we had no clear enemy to be united against" The US has been in several actual wars since the Cold War. We had the Gulf War in the 90s, the War in Afganistan after the World Trade bombing in 2001, then a revisit to the War in Iraq 2003 b/c dem WMDs. We did have help in those wars from several countries, 39 countries participated in the Gulf War, 6 (Australia, Canada, Demark, France, Germany, and Norway) assisted the US in the War in Afganistan, and a whopping 49 were involved in the Iraq War. NATO power and all that. This sounds like we have many allies backing us, united against whatever is going on. You can argue these were all false flags for dem oils which is a popular theory, but I don't see how you can say we turned our backs to the entire planet after the Cold War. There was a sentiment of isolationism that occurred leading up to WWII because of all the soldiers lost 3 decades prior to WWI. But it didn't take long for the US to start dabbling in other external political affairs. There was the Bay of Pigs, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, etc. I'm sure you know these things and I'm probably missing some, I wasn't a history major, I digress. " soft power is everything, and the US has been slowly throwing all of it's soft power away..." This goes in hand with the corruption we were all discussing last night. For my entire life I recall iving 3 decades of it in a recession and the rest were nice soft spots in between one recession to the next. This was all mostly due to politics. People say things were good during the Reagan era but I was honestly too young to know wtf was going on. Bush era was meh, although this was when the Gulf War started. I do remember that. Things seemed good during the Clinton era, but Clinton had major dealing in destroying our economy for the next couple of decades through the deal he orchestrated in getting China a permanent place in the World Trade Organization. https://slate.com/business/2016/09/when-china-joined-the-wto-it-kick-started-the-chinese-economy-and-roused-a-giant.html '“This is a good day for America,” Clinton said afterward. “In 10 years from now we will look back on this day and be glad we did this. We will see that we have given ourselves a chance to build the kind of future we want.” Things have not worked out quite as the 42nd president hoped. Normalizing trade with China set our rival on a path to becoming the industrial powerhouse the world knows today, decimating American factory towns in the process and upending old assumptions about how trade affects the economy. Thanks to a growing body of academic research, we’re only just now beginning to understand the extent of the economic fallout, as well as the degree to which it has helped poison our politics."' ---That's all I'll post from that. You can read the rest if you like. Essentially after this happened many of the jobs in America moved out of country and many of the suppliers those companies used, started dealing with China because cost was cheaper, cheaper labor (also CHILD LABOR - that's something I guess they didn't learn yet from history [referring recent things happening with Apple and Samsung knowingly utilizing suppliers that have child labor https://youtu.be/omDmMQykuvU < this vid is just a couple days old]. I read the description of the video, though I expect at some point the narrator/creator will talk about Trump at the end? The description: "As I described it when I put it up to be voted on, I believe Trump's single biggest failure as a president is his handling of China and the way his ineffective and lack-luster foreign policy allowed for a communist dictatorship to rise and build a superpower within a block of unfree states that can even rival the United States and has by now even found ways to influence the politics of democratic nations.' He sure is hanging a lot of blame on Trump for something that started back in 2000. But he was declaring he would make better deals for the US back in 2000 despite the move to let them in the WTO. Here's another good read about that. https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-the-world-opened-the-gates-of-china-1532701482 "A coalition of labor, environmental and human-rights groups opposed China’s admission to the WTO. Robert Scott, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-backed research group, cranked out alarming numbers. In 2000, he forecast that nearly a million U.S. manufacturing jobs would be lost to Chinese competition. Donald Trump was absent from the debate. In 2000, he toyed with a run for president and wrote a campaign book, “The America We Deserve,” which called China the U.S.’s “biggest long-term challenge.” But he didn’t mention the WTO decision. He did say he would appoint himself U.S. Trade Representative and negotiate better deals." Anyway, I will continue to listen to this video. It is interesting hearing about economic history from the perspective of China vs US. Again, thanks for the share. https://media1.tenor.com/images/bc58975b4797d945c2cdffe2dda64a0f/tenor.gif

https://news.knowledia.com/US/en/articles/the-complete-history-of-the-madness-of-12-monkeys-af7b5546a5273aeae76c7995df1ff10c2cc1fb26 Twenty-five years ago, Terry Gilliam and the other outsider creators of '12 Monkeys' gave humanity a warning about our pandemic-filled future, whether they meant to or not In the ensuing decades, authoritarian-minded governments proliferated, environmental catastrophes continued, overpopulation went unabated, and the climate crisis neared the point of no return. More people started to feel like Cole, knowing witnesses to a civilization that seems destined to end during their lifetime. Writing for Vulture in 2018, Abraham Riesman called 12 Monkeys, “[O]ne of the most currently relevant pieces of science fiction ever committed to celluloid.”

@shinkutsume Finally finished. I'm not familiar with this content creator, but while I did enjoy the deep dive into Chinese history, I also feel it wasn't necessary for the point he was trying to make. I think the last 20-25 minutes of the video was essentially the meat of it and explained everything quite thoroughly without talking about China vs the Mongols and how China ruled the trade industry over a thousand years ago. Didn't know the sneaky thing about tariffs so that was interesting. I know half of Australia are not fans of China, and, well now I see why. I know they are doing the same thing here by buying up property and land for whatever reason. I think he pushed blame onto the Trump administration overly so, though part of it, yes, I agree. Things could have been handled better. However, some of the blame he through Trump's way should be delegated to the media (which much is infiltrated or owned by China now) by distracting people with the "clown president" rather than what was going on in the world. Journos are dispised now because of everything that has happened during this administration. Maybe we will learn from all this. Maybe we won't. Regardless, over the next 2-4 years, we will all reap what we have sewn.

Georgia is now in the spotlight for one of the most important elections that will determine the shape of the next 4 years. As an independent voter, I strongly believe that a split congress is highly important for the stock market to continue forward. I really hope a blue wave doesn't give democrats all the power as historically speaking whenever one party holds all the chips the economy sucks. I hope democrats in Georgia can make a non-partisan decision to keep the house and senate split or we are going to be in for some stagnation, possibly even a decline in the economy.

Bitch McConnell is sabotaging his whole party with this dumb bill. The senate run offs dont look optimistic for reps cuz i see so many reps saying they are voting dem cuz of him and people in that party siding with him. Its a mad house. I just want this shit to be over but i dont want dems with all the power biden on his own wants to drop all kinds of dumb shit onto America but a split will make sure none of it gets passed and we can look forward to 2024 with better candidates

@hell_hound7 I agree, Mitch McConnell is a dirty politician on the republican party. We got to see how he wanted to shoehorn in 118 MILLION dollars in the covid bill for horse racing programs in Kentucky. We have 1 TRILLION dollars in student loan debt but this? This is one of the things politicians think need money? Politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell, fuck them all. It feels like no matter who we vote for, it's us, the non-elites, who are getting screwed over in the end.

@verucassault I think I may have not clarified enough with my previous comment. I will need to make a more detailed explanation on what I meant from before. Though that will need to wait for later, as I have a lot of things on my plate. The general video, I said it gives a decent explanation of the situation, but it may not be the best explanation of the additional "Trump factor". I do agree that he has properly labeled China as a threat, however it's more a matter of him underestimating and being too simplistic in how he approached the problem.