IF the USA dealt with the drug problem in their own country it would help enormously. Why are so many taking drugs? Is it because they feel so helpless?
I doubt the U.S. gene pool is so much more hapless than that of other countries, especially given the diversity of our population. The problem in the U.S. is that this nation alone, as far as I can tell, is the only one lacking BOTH the extended family and a meaningful social safety net (due to our predatory capitalist system). One or the other is necessary for children to grow up with some measure of dependable protection and, therefore, good mental health. (For many years Mexico was essentially a dictatorship and materially poor as well, but much more socially functional prior to the drug war, and in many ways even since, than the U.S. The reason? The extended family.) If we could do one single thing to bring down the rates of addiction, violence, and general dysfunction in this country, my guess is that universal healthcare would do it. More would be better, especially paid parental leave, and humanizing our school system would do wonders, but it's access to health support, and the provision of witnesses to children and their lives inherent in it, that explains the more functional populations found in the social democracies. (Israel, of course, is a glaring exception. Their social safety net is made meaningless by the sick indoctrination of its children and the litany of other crazy-making features of that society.) Of course, if we could return to the extended family that would be just as salutary, if not more. The way to do this is to encourage people to live again in multi-generational households. As challenging as this would be for a population addicted to "going it alone," it may be more in reach than ever getting healthcare out of our imperial Congress critters.
Examples of adverse childhood experiences include:
Natural disasters
Violence
Abuse or assault
Neglect
Life-threatening illness
Loss of a friend or family member
Parental separation, divorce or deployment
Witnessing or being involved in a serious accident
Witnessing the death of another person
Social drivers of health may also cause childhood trauma. These are environmental factors that can lead to adverse childhood experiences with a lasting impact. These factors may include:
It's the most self medicating society in the world. From cradle to death. Both legal and illegal. Helpless doesn't begin to describe it. The soul knows and hurts.
"Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism" by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, 2020. Just a few years short of this country's 250th birthday. Something to celebrate, huh?
The point of the War On Venezuela is to show Latin American governments what happens if they think they are in any wise sovereign. "Drugs" are a pretext. Nothing more.
Note how Trump just pardoned the pro-American presidential candidate in Honduras on trafficking charges.
Do you think that, if Americans can start to see through the Israel lobby, as we are, that we can also unpack regime change and forever wars? Seems to me that the latter is no more difficult than the former.
I think there's evidence that this is currently happening. Maybe not on the scale we need, but I never thought we'd have young white guys questioning JD Vance about our underwriting of Israel.
If it's not Venezuela, then it's Honduras. If not, Washington, D.C., then it's Chicago. The military tentacles are out of control in self-destructive mode.
War is the default psychology in the US. And when we rant against AI and the objectors tell us that we're naive, it's inevitable, it's woven into stuff we're going to be compelled to use, so just accept it — one gigantic reason we rant is that fuck-faces like Alex Karp, his CTO Sankar et al. are perennially talking war --- AI war with China, supporting our warfighters, etc etc etc.
Pull your head out of your ass and unless you start shouting "I object", all you'll hear is "war war war". John McCain lives forever in the American psyche.
"Two months ago after the so-called 'ceasefire' deal was announced the New York Times editorial board banged out a piece saying that Gaza is going to need 'deradicalization programs' in order to 'remove Hamas’s pervasive radicalizing influence over Gazan society.'"
I am so scared for the people of Venezuela and the people in my country Nigeria. Nothing good comes from receiving "intervention" from the United States
In Trump's first term he had John Bolton on TV pushing how much the USA would benefit from taking over Venezuela's oil. I was impressed. See for yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wifJII9W6ZI
From a Marxist perspective, AI, owned by the capitlaists, will displace and deskill workers, increase surplus value and private profits, and alienated workers even more from the products they produce.
However, Marx opened up the possibility in nations which were the most technologically advanced and with the most concentrated wealth of a revolution in which the means of production, which would include AI, would be socialized, thus freeing people from drudgery and shortening the workday. This possibilty exists if workers unite and create a revolution, which need not necessarily be violent (as Marx pointed out in the the most liberal and progressive nations with democratic means) to transform AI and all means of production into tools owned and managed democratically by the working class, which would, under those circumstances, end a society based on economic classes and be a liberting force.
There is a giant problem with this scenario, which Marx could not have foreseen. The energy and mineral resources to perpetuate this gargantuan, growth-based, wasteful economy are not there; this includes sinks, i.e. the climate and biodiversity crises are barreling down on us, likely to put an end to this civilization within a couple of decades if we can't make extremely rapid transition to sustainable practices--which those with power are not even talking about let alone making all speed in planning the fastest possible conversion. Perhaps your fantasy world could have come about if we had eased off population growth and economic growth a few decades ago, ended the growth of a vicious and wasteful war economy and of inequality
The problem is being addressed: "There is no single “perfect” alternative yet — but the path forward involves a combination of:
Battery chemistries that reduce or eliminate cobalt, lithium, or rare earths.
Motor designs that avoid permanent magnets.
Circular economy and recycling to reuse critical materials.
Diversifying renewable energy sources that are metal-light.
Norway, Japan, and the EU are already funding battery and motor R&D to target these alternatives, aiming for rare-earth-free, low-pollution green energy systems by the end of the decade."
My "fantasy world?" It is not a fantasy but a mission for workers to unite and seize the means of production. It can be done in many ways. IN liberarian socialism, workers organize into coops and democratically own and run their enterprises. In Spain, Mondragon has shown how this is NOT FANTASY but a successful operation for over 60 yrs, with 80,000 members and a federation of hundreds of coops, from steel foundaries to banks to candle makers. Alterative models, such as coops or in Norway, state-owned enterprises in a democratic system, are not fantasies but actual models of how we can rearrange our economic lives to benefit the working class.
In fact Norway, is a good example, a very socialized nation in which the state owned oil reserves are extracted and sold on the world market by private companies who are then taxed at 78% to fund the world's largest Sovereign Wealth Fund (which funds pensions), in a nation of 5 million, worth over 1 million per household. Norway is using its 40 yrs of oil to built a society that is sustainable once the oil is gone: it is already 99% electrified by green energy, 90% of all new cars are electric (and charged with green energy) , and at the same time, "Norway is actively working to reduce reliance on critical or rare metals in EV batteries through several strategies:
Cobalt-free chemistries – Companies like Morrow Batteries are developing battery cathodes using manganese instead of cobalt, reducing dependence on ethically and geopolitically sensitive metals.
Locally sourced anode materials – Firms such as Vianode are producing synthetic graphite in Norway to replace imported natural graphite.
Battery recycling – Facilities like Hydrovolt recover lithium, nickel, manganese, and graphite from used batteries, cutting the need for new mining.
Exploration of alternative materials – Some research focuses on biomass-derived carbon or other sustainable inputs to further minimize reliance on scarce or hard-to-source metals."
This is a strategy that uses current technologies to create an alternativer reality, in which NOrway will have a power system totally run on renewable energy and with a diversified economy to sustain its prosperity when the oil is depleted.
So let us cease whining about the current system and use our enegy to change it, inventing alternative methods of organzing labor and producing energy, focusing on recyling and repurposing what aleady exists to create a sustainable world,. The old world is tearing itself down; our job is to take the broken pieces and create a new model that is democratic, sustainable, and healthy. This requieres imagination, and that is why the arts are the seedbed of new forms of social and economic realities.
I don’t even know what to say anymore. The US and world 🌎 is so Fucked now that the only solution is to get rid of 90 % or more of our governments, peacefully if possible and start over again. Wish this were possible.
Incidentally Ray McGovern was with the CIA for decades, giving the Daily Briefing to seven presidents. My one concern reading it is the fear that these monsters want the Ukraine war wrapped up so they can free resources for a war on Venezuela and perhaps Colombia.
Also want to note that Caitlin says US regime change wars "ever end well," but that depends on for whom. Some say these are failed wars because the countries are left in ruins with barely functional governments; I say that's the intention. Countries with weak governments can't defend their natural resources against looting.
But they also pretty much say they want to make war on Venezuela, and Nutandyahoo wants war with Iran with the US doing most of it, and US politicians don't like saying no to him--maybe the US can just save words and declare war on the entire world? Including US cities.
We can cry about new means of exploiitation or invent ways to appropriate them for liberation.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
― Buckminster Fuller
Ursula K. Le Guin
“I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.”
Another California libertarian socialist who has provided alternatives to envision is Kim Stanley Robinson, in his trilogy Three Californias "Before Kim Stanley Robinson terraformed Mars, he wrote three science fiction novels set in Orange County, California, where he grew up. These alternate futures―one a post-apocalypse, one an if-this-goes-on future reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, and one an ecological utopia―form a whole that illuminates, enchants, and inspires--collected here as Three Californias.
What if... there was a limited nuclear war that left the United States blockaded, fragmented, the few survivors living in the ruins of a once-great nation?
What if... this goes on, and technology continues to accelerate, and power continues to be consolidated into corporate culture, a developer’s dream world gone mad: an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls, and designer drugs?
What if... a revolution happens, and the US addresses climate change in a responsible way. Is a future green Utopia all that great when you’re young and in love?"
As Fuller advised, righting reality is a losing battle, and as the inventors of Silicon Valley, who began in a model straight out of libertarians socialism, have shown with their model of disruption and replacement, we can use our energy best by inventing new futures, repurposoing the tools that have been used to enslave us to liberate us from the old matrix.
IF the USA dealt with the drug problem in their own country it would help enormously. Why are so many taking drugs? Is it because they feel so helpless?
Gabor Mate, a doctor who works with addicts in Canada, says childhood trauma is at the root of addiction.
Also the addiction gene is inherited.
I doubt the U.S. gene pool is so much more hapless than that of other countries, especially given the diversity of our population. The problem in the U.S. is that this nation alone, as far as I can tell, is the only one lacking BOTH the extended family and a meaningful social safety net (due to our predatory capitalist system). One or the other is necessary for children to grow up with some measure of dependable protection and, therefore, good mental health. (For many years Mexico was essentially a dictatorship and materially poor as well, but much more socially functional prior to the drug war, and in many ways even since, than the U.S. The reason? The extended family.) If we could do one single thing to bring down the rates of addiction, violence, and general dysfunction in this country, my guess is that universal healthcare would do it. More would be better, especially paid parental leave, and humanizing our school system would do wonders, but it's access to health support, and the provision of witnesses to children and their lives inherent in it, that explains the more functional populations found in the social democracies. (Israel, of course, is a glaring exception. Their social safety net is made meaningless by the sick indoctrination of its children and the litany of other crazy-making features of that society.) Of course, if we could return to the extended family that would be just as salutary, if not more. The way to do this is to encourage people to live again in multi-generational households. As challenging as this would be for a population addicted to "going it alone," it may be more in reach than ever getting healthcare out of our imperial Congress critters.
I agree with him but the US is going down. More people feeling helpless?
What defines trauma? Following that line of thinking, where does it end? Is it not traumatic leaving the womb?
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/24875-adverse-childhood-experiences-ace
Examples of adverse childhood experiences include:
Natural disasters
Violence
Abuse or assault
Neglect
Life-threatening illness
Loss of a friend or family member
Parental separation, divorce or deployment
Witnessing or being involved in a serious accident
Witnessing the death of another person
Social drivers of health may also cause childhood trauma. These are environmental factors that can lead to adverse childhood experiences with a lasting impact. These factors may include:
Housing instability or frequent moves
Feeling unsafe in your community
Lack of access to good healthcare
Food insecurity
Limited access to quality education
Financial issues
Discrimination
Agree, August.
I was sexually abused as a very young child by a non-immediate family member and the only thing I’m addicted to is nicotine.
OH a smoker, me too unfortunately.
IMO - it's more hopeless than helpless - it's an escape from the pain of living, the pain of feeling worthless and being seen as worthless in society.
It's the most self medicating society in the world. From cradle to death. Both legal and illegal. Helpless doesn't begin to describe it. The soul knows and hurts.
"Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism" by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, 2020. Just a few years short of this country's 250th birthday. Something to celebrate, huh?
Of course. There would be no drug trade in Latin America worth discussing, were it not for the insatiable First World appetite for drugs.
Hi Jenny
That’s been my argument all along. There wouldn’t be so many drugs flowing into Amerikkka if there wasn’t such a fuckin demand.
Here we prefer jail over rehab.
I wonder how many drug addicts are thrown in prison?
ALL of them, Jenny, unless they’re well-connected.
..........and all waiting for Lawyers I suspect!
The point of the War On Venezuela is to show Latin American governments what happens if they think they are in any wise sovereign. "Drugs" are a pretext. Nothing more.
Note how Trump just pardoned the pro-American presidential candidate in Honduras on trafficking charges.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/us/politics/trump-honduras-venezuela.html
Do you think that, if Americans can start to see through the Israel lobby, as we are, that we can also unpack regime change and forever wars? Seems to me that the latter is no more difficult than the former.
"If".
I think there's evidence that this is currently happening. Maybe not on the scale we need, but I never thought we'd have young white guys questioning JD Vance about our underwriting of Israel.
The only people that matter are the rulers.
If it's not Venezuela, then it's Honduras. If not, Washington, D.C., then it's Chicago. The military tentacles are out of control in self-destructive mode.
And is there evil cabal planning involved, or is it just that absurd child Hegseth playing with his toy soldiers and posturing?
Give him a break. He was traumatized as a child.
War is the default psychology in the US. And when we rant against AI and the objectors tell us that we're naive, it's inevitable, it's woven into stuff we're going to be compelled to use, so just accept it — one gigantic reason we rant is that fuck-faces like Alex Karp, his CTO Sankar et al. are perennially talking war --- AI war with China, supporting our warfighters, etc etc etc.
Pull your head out of your ass and unless you start shouting "I object", all you'll hear is "war war war". John McCain lives forever in the American psyche.
Caitlyn you are a light in the darkness. I believe Trump’s “Thanksgiving” pronouncement was produced by AI.
Happily I didn't see it.
Trump pardoned two turkeys: Ahmed al-Sharaa and Juan Orlando Hernandez.
His T-Day pronouncement may as well have been "AI" because he has no "I", empathy or soul.
How can people continue to believe the lies justifying the sabre rattling in Venezuela, Iran, China, etc.? Are we really so thoroughly brainwashed?
Our side is supporting a bloody genocide, FFS. Isn't this a pretty big clue that our leaders are not the good guys?
Strawberry fields, nothing is real...
"Two months ago after the so-called 'ceasefire' deal was announced the New York Times editorial board banged out a piece saying that Gaza is going to need 'deradicalization programs' in order to 'remove Hamas’s pervasive radicalizing influence over Gazan society.'"
Where do they come up with this crap? Oh, wait, is it really any surprise https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-the-israel-lobbyists-writing-americas-news/288575/?
I am so scared for the people of Venezuela and the people in my country Nigeria. Nothing good comes from receiving "intervention" from the United States
In Trump's first term he had John Bolton on TV pushing how much the USA would benefit from taking over Venezuela's oil. I was impressed. See for yourself https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wifJII9W6ZI
From a Marxist perspective, AI, owned by the capitlaists, will displace and deskill workers, increase surplus value and private profits, and alienated workers even more from the products they produce.
However, Marx opened up the possibility in nations which were the most technologically advanced and with the most concentrated wealth of a revolution in which the means of production, which would include AI, would be socialized, thus freeing people from drudgery and shortening the workday. This possibilty exists if workers unite and create a revolution, which need not necessarily be violent (as Marx pointed out in the the most liberal and progressive nations with democratic means) to transform AI and all means of production into tools owned and managed democratically by the working class, which would, under those circumstances, end a society based on economic classes and be a liberting force.
There is a giant problem with this scenario, which Marx could not have foreseen. The energy and mineral resources to perpetuate this gargantuan, growth-based, wasteful economy are not there; this includes sinks, i.e. the climate and biodiversity crises are barreling down on us, likely to put an end to this civilization within a couple of decades if we can't make extremely rapid transition to sustainable practices--which those with power are not even talking about let alone making all speed in planning the fastest possible conversion. Perhaps your fantasy world could have come about if we had eased off population growth and economic growth a few decades ago, ended the growth of a vicious and wasteful war economy and of inequality
The problem is being addressed: "There is no single “perfect” alternative yet — but the path forward involves a combination of:
Battery chemistries that reduce or eliminate cobalt, lithium, or rare earths.
Motor designs that avoid permanent magnets.
Circular economy and recycling to reuse critical materials.
Diversifying renewable energy sources that are metal-light.
Norway, Japan, and the EU are already funding battery and motor R&D to target these alternatives, aiming for rare-earth-free, low-pollution green energy systems by the end of the decade."
My "fantasy world?" It is not a fantasy but a mission for workers to unite and seize the means of production. It can be done in many ways. IN liberarian socialism, workers organize into coops and democratically own and run their enterprises. In Spain, Mondragon has shown how this is NOT FANTASY but a successful operation for over 60 yrs, with 80,000 members and a federation of hundreds of coops, from steel foundaries to banks to candle makers. Alterative models, such as coops or in Norway, state-owned enterprises in a democratic system, are not fantasies but actual models of how we can rearrange our economic lives to benefit the working class.
In fact Norway, is a good example, a very socialized nation in which the state owned oil reserves are extracted and sold on the world market by private companies who are then taxed at 78% to fund the world's largest Sovereign Wealth Fund (which funds pensions), in a nation of 5 million, worth over 1 million per household. Norway is using its 40 yrs of oil to built a society that is sustainable once the oil is gone: it is already 99% electrified by green energy, 90% of all new cars are electric (and charged with green energy) , and at the same time, "Norway is actively working to reduce reliance on critical or rare metals in EV batteries through several strategies:
Cobalt-free chemistries – Companies like Morrow Batteries are developing battery cathodes using manganese instead of cobalt, reducing dependence on ethically and geopolitically sensitive metals.
Locally sourced anode materials – Firms such as Vianode are producing synthetic graphite in Norway to replace imported natural graphite.
Battery recycling – Facilities like Hydrovolt recover lithium, nickel, manganese, and graphite from used batteries, cutting the need for new mining.
Exploration of alternative materials – Some research focuses on biomass-derived carbon or other sustainable inputs to further minimize reliance on scarce or hard-to-source metals."
This is a strategy that uses current technologies to create an alternativer reality, in which NOrway will have a power system totally run on renewable energy and with a diversified economy to sustain its prosperity when the oil is depleted.
So let us cease whining about the current system and use our enegy to change it, inventing alternative methods of organzing labor and producing energy, focusing on recyling and repurposing what aleady exists to create a sustainable world,. The old world is tearing itself down; our job is to take the broken pieces and create a new model that is democratic, sustainable, and healthy. This requieres imagination, and that is why the arts are the seedbed of new forms of social and economic realities.
All governments are reliably disastrous.
The world should shut down all shipping from the US.
By all i mean
Block absolutely everything that carries a product that enriches american corporations.
Weapons, cars, iphones, just press the big pause button. And go throug everything with a candle to find drugs.
I think more drugs will be found then venezuela can produce.
I don’t even know what to say anymore. The US and world 🌎 is so Fucked now that the only solution is to get rid of 90 % or more of our governments, peacefully if possible and start over again. Wish this were possible.
Thank You Caitlin
On the Ukraine war situation, here's an interesting take on the possibilities that the war could be ended if Trump can just push Rubio out of the way
https://popularresistance.org/the-neocon-realist-war-over-ukraine/
Incidentally Ray McGovern was with the CIA for decades, giving the Daily Briefing to seven presidents. My one concern reading it is the fear that these monsters want the Ukraine war wrapped up so they can free resources for a war on Venezuela and perhaps Colombia.
Also want to note that Caitlin says US regime change wars "ever end well," but that depends on for whom. Some say these are failed wars because the countries are left in ruins with barely functional governments; I say that's the intention. Countries with weak governments can't defend their natural resources against looting.
I think they want the resources for war against China. They openly say that this is what they are going to do.
But they also pretty much say they want to make war on Venezuela, and Nutandyahoo wants war with Iran with the US doing most of it, and US politicians don't like saying no to him--maybe the US can just save words and declare war on the entire world? Including US cities.
We can cry about new means of exploiitation or invent ways to appropriate them for liberation.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
― Buckminster Fuller
Ursula K. Le Guin
“I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.”
Another California libertarian socialist who has provided alternatives to envision is Kim Stanley Robinson, in his trilogy Three Californias "Before Kim Stanley Robinson terraformed Mars, he wrote three science fiction novels set in Orange County, California, where he grew up. These alternate futures―one a post-apocalypse, one an if-this-goes-on future reminiscent of Philip K. Dick, and one an ecological utopia―form a whole that illuminates, enchants, and inspires--collected here as Three Californias.
What if... there was a limited nuclear war that left the United States blockaded, fragmented, the few survivors living in the ruins of a once-great nation?
What if... this goes on, and technology continues to accelerate, and power continues to be consolidated into corporate culture, a developer’s dream world gone mad: an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls, and designer drugs?
What if... a revolution happens, and the US addresses climate change in a responsible way. Is a future green Utopia all that great when you’re young and in love?"
As Fuller advised, righting reality is a losing battle, and as the inventors of Silicon Valley, who began in a model straight out of libertarians socialism, have shown with their model of disruption and replacement, we can use our energy best by inventing new futures, repurposoing the tools that have been used to enslave us to liberate us from the old matrix.