Generational Dynamics World View News

[Navigator]

Some thoughts on Trump and Musk.

I believe that Musk thought that Trump would do something to reduce government debt. He also knew that if he helped Trump, a lot (and he did), that Trump would owe him some favors. And he could get into the government to help reduce its spending, which is an existential threat to the overall economy. Musk has more or less sucked up to every administration, of both parties. He was very chummy with Obama. He built his empire on the back of government subsidies and contracts and tax breaks, and he certainly wanted to control what happened to those. I don't think that he anticipated the backlash Tesla would receive as a consequence of his support of Trump. His current backlash may, in part, be due to his needing to distance himself from Trump.

Trump is not a fiscal conservative. Far from it. Neither is the Republican Congress (as a whole). The "big beautiful bill" is as full of pork as any federal budget in the last 65 years (that is, since JFK). The reality is that there is no hope of solving the government debt crisis, and it just gets worse every year, dragging the rest of the economy down with it.

Radical fiscal action is needed, and it can only be done by congress. Yet it is politically unfeasible. The general public does NOT understand that there is a limit to how much the government can borrow, and we are well past that point. Take the now notable town hall in Iowa where people were shouting at their Senator that any reduction in Medicaid would mean that "people will die" (to which she replied "we are all going to die"). The logic of limiting how much should the government spend on someone is lost on the vast majority. Should the government spend $50M to save the life of someone (who, by the way, did nothing to earn such a benefit)? What if everyone needed that? Where would these funds come from? Far too many think the government can just "wave a magic wand" and take care of it all.

We passed the point of "no return" fiscally as a nation in 2009.

[FullMoon]

Instead of "CCP members" I should have said "anyone with any connection to the CCP", which is basically any student from mainland China. They all need to go. These people are not our friends. They are the enemy. They are doing everything possible to weaken us from within.

When war does come, it won't just include a loss of the electrical grid. They are planning to attack any kind of infrastructure and industry. The fungus plot was just showing that they will go after agriculture as well.

So preparation is not just for loss of electricity, it will be for a temporary disruption of just about everything that we take for granted that is conveyed to us by any kind of distribution. Gasoline, food, water, heating fuels, medicine. They will go about disrupting all of this.

It will be the"mutually assured destruction" that everyone feared during the Cold War. We already know that 60-80%+ population drop, some say 90%+ are expected. And we're probably set up and ready to do something likewise to them. That's probably why we're operating in the Cold War methodology with proxy wars ongoing, testing each other's weaponry and resolve. Because both sides can destroy each other WITHOUT nuclear weapons. But unfortunately our capable generation has passed and now we have people who apparently think they can play with fire during park fire season.

Instead of "CCP members" I should have said "anyone with any connection to the CCP", which is basically any student from mainland China. They all need to go. These people are not our friends. They are the enemy. They are doing everything possible to weaken us from within

The idea that maintaining economic and cultural ties helps prevent war is a good one. We can all agree that getting potential spies out of key industries and upgrading our security infrastructure specifically towards potential enemy operatives is critical right now. But MOST CCP connected people only on it for benefits and will be hard pressed to help a government that they themselves don't like.
And we have Alqaeda, Iranian, Russian and Chinese all walked across the border and have set up shop just like the drug cartels have. Any one of them can probably fly a little drone. Or better yet, just let it go with AI installed with a payload. If we keep prodding Russia, maybe they'll give up the START treaty and share some of their vast holdings of the good stuff terrorists could use.
We need a bit more tact in our diplomacy. Some kind of idea that war really is something that needs to be avoided at all costs. Because 80-90% population reduction changes everything. Maybe that's what some of the bunker billionaires want. All of us useless eaters out of the way....
Unless a huge solar flare(expected any time now) does the job for them.

[Navigator]

I certainly anticipate a very major war, the likes of which hasn't been seen for 80 years. But I personally don't think we are going to see a 50-60% or higher reduction in the world population.

I think that we are up for a high tech version of WW 1, very similar to what is going on in Ukraine, just on a much much larger scale. Loss of life will be significant. Even hundreds of millions, but that would still be a far cry from 50% of world population which is now around 8.25 Billion. Even a 1 Billion reduction in world population is only 12%.

Having said that, I think that we will only have a short respite after WW 3. Which I believe will act as a "final warning" to the world. After that I can certainly see nut jobs like Hitler/Stalin/Mao rising out of the ashes and engaging in widespread nuclear warfare. THEN we will see quite dramatic reductions in world population.

[spottybrowncow]

Andrew Branca, a lawyer specializing in self-defense (covered the Kyle Rittenhouse trial for legalinsurrection.com), also has a political blog.
I found his recent posting on the Trump / Musk feud to be enlightening. It's lengthy, and parts can be skipped, but it's actually quite entertaining in its entirety. He gives an excellent argument for supporting the Big Beautiful Bill, despite the pork. Reason? It would be the most powerful anti-illegal-immigration bill ever passed, and he states that illegal immigration, not the debt, is the current existential crisis for the U.S. During the campaign, Musk gave a very concise analysis of why the democrats were so anxious to move illegal aliens to the 7 swing states, so I'm a little surprised to see him break with Trump over this now. Possibly it's a result of Asperger's. After all, neither Trump nor Musk are "normal" in the usual sense, as "normal" people don't have lives quite like either of them.
As always, looking forward to hearing other GD members' comments.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35yjmDx_2Kk

[tim]

I miss John's analysis. I'm surprised after all these years nobody has picked up the torch and continued with generational theory.

Lots of speculation based on personal bias of whats going to happen, John's was the only one trending correct for over 20 years.

Were getting closer to the point where we can call John's predictions accurate or not.

When the time comes its clear John was correct all along we most likely won't be able to contact each other or visit this forum.

[tim]

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ ... eral-warns

China Is Preparing a “Pearl Harbor” Attack on America, US General Warns

But the main thrust of Beijing’s attack is likely to come far above the Earth, in outer space—where America’s satellites are vulnerable to innovative new Chinese weapons.

United States Air Force Brigadier General Doug Wickert, the commander of the Air Force’s 412th Test Wing, warned an audience of airmen that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is preparing to conduct a Pearl Harbor-style attack on the United States as part of China’s larger effort to conquer Taiwan. Gen. Wickert’s nearly 40-minute talk is available for viewing on YouTube, and it already has well over 400,000 views.

[tim]

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-prepar ... 025-05-16/

US prepares for long war with China that might hit its bases, homeland: Peter Apps

LONDON, May 16 (Reuters) - Earlier this month, U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Doug Wickert summoned nearby civic leaders to Edwards Air Force Base in California to warn them that if China attacks Taiwan in the coming years, they should be prepared for their immediate region to suffer potentially massive disruption from the very start.

In a remarkable briefing shared by the base on social media and promoted in a press release, Wickert - one of America's most experienced test pilots now commanding the 412th Test Wing - outlined China's rapid military growth and preparations to fight a major war.

Cutting-edge U.S. aircraft manufactured in California’s nearby “Aerospace Valley”, particularly the B-21 “Raider” now replacing the 1990s B-2 stealth bomber, were key to keeping Beijing deterred, he said. However, if deterrence failed that meant China’s would likely strike the U.S. including nearby Northrop Grumman factories where those planes were built.

"If this war happens, it's going to happen here," Wickert told them, suggesting attacks could include a cyber offensive that included long-term disruption to power supplies and other national infrastructure. "It's going to come to us. That is why we are having this conversation... The more ready we are, the more likely to change Chairman Xi’s calculus."

[tim]

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/0 ... ity-pearl/

Air Force Commander Prepares California Desert Community for Pearl Harbor-Like Strike by China

In May, the commander of Edwards Air Force Base, California, talked openly about the need for local leaders to prepare for a Pearl Harbor-like strike on his base and others inside the United States.

Brig. Gen. Doug Wickert delivered “a sobering assessment of China’s growing military capabilities” in a briefing to community leaders, according to an Air Force press release. Wickert, commander of the 412th Test Wing, spoke at Antelope Valley College on May 7.

Edwards Air Force Base is in the Mojave Desert, about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

According to the press release, Wickert referenced the 1941 attack on Naval Station Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in his briefing, drawing parallels to warnings about Pearl Harbor’s vulnerability before the attack.

Such frank talk about the possible impact on a community around a U.S. military base, in the event of a war with China over Taiwan, is rare.

Notably, Wickert’s comments appear to be fully endorsed and approved by the Department of Defense, signaling a changing attitude.

In January 2023, Gen. Mike Minihan, commander of Air Mobility Command, which controls much of the air transport and air refueling capacity of the Department of Defense, wrote in a letter to his command: “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025. [Chinese leader Xi Jinping] secured his third term and set his war council in October 2022.

“Taiwan’s presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a reason. United States’ presidential elections are in 2024 and will offer Xi a distracted America. Xi’s team, reason, and opportunity are all aligned for 2025.”

Minihan wrote the letter to prepare his command for conflict. The Department of Defense quickly replied at the time, “These comments are not representative of the department’s view on China.”

A Wake-Up Call for Community Leaders

Wickert’s audience consisted of local community leaders, the leadership of critical infrastructure providers to the base, and members of Congress.

Rep. Vince Fong (R-Calif.) opened the briefing by discussing the necessity for stateside military installations to stay operational in the face of complex catastrophes, including military actions by adversaries.
Wickert compared Edwards, a massive facility focused on testing, research, and development, to its counterpart in the Chinese air force.

He presented intelligence data on the rapid modernization and “staggering” growth of the Chinese army, the press release states. Using Google Earth imagery, he pointed to Dingxin Test and Training Base in the Gobi Desert, China’s equivalent to Edwards.

“The base sits next to a full-scale two-dimensional replica of Taiwan’s Taichung International Airport,” according to the release.

Wickert said, “It’s kind of clear what their intention is.”

Wickert cited Xi’s 2013 instructions to the Chinese military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.He made the connection to the local California community, stressing “the Antelope Valley’s crucial role in national defense and deterrence,” particularly Northrop Grumman’s B-21 Raider production line at nearby Air Force Plant 42 and the aircraft’s test and development facilities at Edwards.
A third facility close by is the General Atomics-owned Grey Butte Field Airport, used for drone production, training, and research.

“If I was Chairman Xi and it’s time to go [to war], guess what I’m going to target first?” Wickert asked. “So like it or not, we’re all in this together.”

The implication was clear: He expects the Chinese regime to target Edwards Air Force Base, nearby facilities, and all of the U.S. homeland as part of its efforts to seize Taiwan.

[tim]

https://www.generationaldynamics.com/pg ... 110828.htm

New Pentagon report outlines China's military buildup

China is preparing for war over Taiwan. ( 28-Aug-2011 )Summary

The Pentagon has issued its annual report on China's military, and it shows that China is rapidly preparing for all-out war with America over Taiwan.

One of the saddest things that I've had to report on my web site is China's rush towards total war with the United States. I've been describing this for years, but it was always in the distance. A new report by the Pentagon makes it clear that this war is no longer distant, and an attack within the next 12-18 months is a reasonable expectation.

In addition, China is developing a number of capabilities that can directly attack the U.S.:

"China is modernizing its nuclear forces by adding more survivable delivery systems. In recent years, the road mobile, solid propellant CSS-10 Mod 1 and CSS-10 Mod 2 (DF-31 and DF-31A) intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs) have entered service. The CSS- 10 Mod 2, with a range in excess of 11,200 km, can reach most locations within the continental United States."

This is the fulfillment of several threats made by China in years past. In 2005, top-level Chinese army officer General Zhu Chenghu threatened America with nuclear war if America interfered with Taiwan:

"If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond. We ... will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian [a city in central China]. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."

In 2005, Zhu's remarks were an empty threat. Today, they're a real threat.

And, as I reported in 2006, Sha Zukang, the Chinese ambassador to the U.N., furiously and harshly threatened the U.S. over Taiwan. I transcribed the words that he literally screamed in an interview with a BBC reporter:

"The moment that Taiwan declares independence, supported by whomever, China will have no choice but to [use] whatever means available to my government. Nobody should have any illusions on that. ...

It's not a matter of how big Taiwan is, but for China, one INCH of the territory is more valuable than the LIVES of our people."

[With regard to the U.S.'s constant criticism of China's rapid militarization:] It's better for the U.S. to shut up, keep quiet. That's much, much better. China's population is 6 times or 5 times the United States. Why blame China? No. forget it. It's high time to shut up. It's a nation's sovereign right to do what is good for them. But don't tell us what's good for China. Thank you very much."

Will America abandon Taiwan?

I want to address this problem head on, because dozens of people have suggested this to me over the years -- that America can simply abandon Taiwan, let the Chinese have it, rather than risk a major world war.

I want to make it as clear as I can that there is no possibility that America would abandon Taiwan, for several reasons:

Once China attacked, American response would be rapid and automatic, with no time for debate.
China would not target Taiwan alone. China would simultaneously attack America's "weak points," its communications satellites and its cyber capabilities, leaving no choice but to respond.

The U.S. has a defense treaties with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand (ANZUS treaty), Israel, Europe, Iceland, and others. All of these countries have cut back on their own military in the last 60 years because they've counted on U.S. protection. If the U.S. abandoned Taiwan, then every one of these countries would go into total panic, and war would result anyway.

This last point is one of the great ironies of a type that we often see in generational theory -- something adopted early in a generational cycle in order to prevent war later becomes one of the causes of war decades later, during the generational Crisis era. In this case, when these treaties were signed after WW II, when America became policeman of the world, their purpose was to prevent another world war by making it too expensive for anyone to attack a country aligned with the United States. Now that America can no longer provide that level of defense, these treaties guarantee that a war cannot be prevented.

The way the world works

The Pentagon report was mostly ignored by the mainstream media this past week, but there was a little coverage, and one thing that I heard politicians say a couple of times was to the effect: "There's no danger of war with China, because it will be decades before they have the capability to defeat the United States." In fact, the Chinese themselves are saying the same thing (consistent, I would add, with their strategy of secrecy and deception).

The world doesn't work that way. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor when anyone could have told them that they would lose the war. General Beauregard and the Confederates attacked Fort Sumter when anyone could have told them that the South would lose. Logic and rationality are for non-crisis wars. Generational crisis wars are launched on raw emotion, with little logic.

Here's how historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch describes the beginning of war in his 2001 book, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery:

"The passions excited in the national psyche by the onset of war show how deeply invested the masses now were in its potential outcome. Propaganda had reinforced their conviction that "everything was at stake," and the threat of death and defeat functioned like a tightly coiled spring, further heightening the tension. The almost festive jubilation that accompanied the declarations of war in Charleston in 1861, Paris in 1870, and the capitals of the major European powers in 1914 were anticipatory celebrations of victory-since nations are as incapable of imagining their own defeat as individuals are of conceiving their own death. The new desire to humiliate the enemy, noted by Burckhardt, was merely a reaction to the unprecedented posturing in which nations now engaged when declaring war.

The deployment of armies on the battlefield is the classic manifestation of collective self-confidence. If both sides are not convinced of their military superiority, there will be no confrontation; rather, those who lack confidence will simply flee the field. Accordingly, the battle is decided the moment the confidence of one side fails. The will to fight ("morale") evaporates, the military formation collapses, and the army seeks salvation in flight or, if it is lucky, in organized retreat. The Greek term for this point in space (on the battlefield) and time (the course of the battle) was trope. The victors demarcated the spot with the weapons of the vanquished and later with monuments, yielding the term tropaion, from which we get our word trophy." (p. 6-7)

The euphoria lasts until something goes wrong. Panic occurs when a military disaster occurs. In his 1832 book, On War, General Carl von Clausewitz describes what happens:

"The effect of defeat outside the army -- on the people and on the government -- is a sudden collapse of the wildest expectations, and total destruction of self-confidence. The destruction of these feelings creates a vacuum, and that vacuum gets filled by a fear that grows corrosively, leading to total paralysis. It's a blow to the whole nervous system of the losing side, as if caused by an electric charge. This effect may appear to a greater or lesser degree, but it's never completely missing. Then, instead of rushing to repair the misfortune with a spirit of determination, everyone fears that his efforts will be futile; or he does nothing, leaving everything to Fate."

This is what happens when reality sets in -- whether by the Bataan Death March or the Battle of Bull Run.

I've been following this issue closely for years, and there is absolutely no question in my mind that the Chinese WILL launch a preemptive attack to acquire Taiwan at some point. This is a highly nationalistic issue for the Chinese, and they will not be deterred. It could happen at any time, but based on the Pentagon report, the next 12-18 months seems pretty likely.

Some people suggest that the Taiwanese people will eventually decide that they WANT to be part of China again. But once again, that ignores the strength of nationalism, this time on the Taiwanese side. Taiwan's indigenous Hokkein people want no part of Beijing, and Han Chinese on Taiwan moved sharply towards separatism after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, and after the passing, in the 1990s, of the elderly leaders of the Kuomintang Party who were survivors of Mao's Communist Revolution. See my 2004 article Taiwan's Wild Election Battle)

The survivors of World War II understood how dangerous xenophobia and nationalism are, after they'd seen it in Germany's Naziism, Italy's Fascism, and elsewhere.

The Chinese learned the same lesson from their own civil war, and from Japanese nationalism and xenophobia. And Hu Jintao, China's president, is a survivor of Mao's Communist Revolution, and may well be only person left in China's government desirous of peace, as I discussed in 2006 in "Eerie similarity: Chinese President Hu Jintao and Donald Rumsfeld." In that article, I quoted the following analyst description of Hu:

"Yet in this sense, Hu reflects present-day China: As leader, he has not yet found a clear pathway, sources say. His country is at a major juncture of greater expectation, but with no clear direction or footing, socially or politically. Hu is not a zealous ideologue, a visionary economist, nor is he ready to force a war over Taiwan. He is cautious, lawyerly, a survivor, say numerous scholars, diplomats, and party sources. To the Chinese, he is as much a mystery as he is to the foreign community in Beijing. Whether he has yet consolidated power in China's secretive leadership enclave is still speculated about."

But Hu's time is almost gone. In 2012 there will be a planned generational change in China's leadership, and Hu will be replaced by younger people who ARE zealous ideologues and who ARE ready to force a war over Taiwan.

China's war with America over Taiwan will not be a rational decision. It will be pursued by a nihilistic younger Chinese generation in the same way that America's Generation-X pursued the destruction of the global financial system. It will be both immensely destructive and immensely self-destructive.

It's worth repeating what General Zhu said:

"If the Americans are determined to interfere [then] we will be determined to respond. We ... will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all of the cities east of Xian [a city in central China]. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds ... of cities will be destroyed by the Chinese."

There's nothing rational about this, but it's the way the world is going.