Baffled European

Tag: cruelty

  • Gone with the Revenge from Alcatraz

    Star Wars day yesterday, and the White House was on the ball. They are on a run at the moment, what with the Pope picture and that. Anyway, they wound up their AI generator and let it produce a suitable picture for the occasion. The result was a president with the physique of Conan the Barbarian, holding a light sabre. A red light sabre at that: the computer is intelligent enough to give him the weapon of one of the space nazis.

    Maybe it was this that prompted the next semi-coherent orange order. He has now added a 100% tariff, his favourite word, to all movies produced outside the USA. He doesn’t trust foreign movies because they are “messaging and propaganda” and therefore a “National Security threat”.

    This is part of a broader complaint. Parasite, a South Korean film, won an Oscar for best picture a few years ago, “what the hell was that all about? Can we get Gone With The Wind back, please?”

    Is this the impulse behind his plans to reopen Alcatraz? It’s been closed for over 60 years and is now a tourist attraction. Doesn’t matter, there won’t be any tourists anymore. Is it because he saw Clint Eastwood there in a film once? Good film that. Fine actor. Morgan Freeman as well, he’s black you know. Or was that the Shawshank Redemption?

    People voted for this. I hope they are all satisfied with what they’ve got.

  • There’s only two Steve Jacksons

    It’s a strange fact that there is a Steve Jackson in the UK, who produces role-playing games, and a Steve Jackson in the USA, who produces card and board games. Although in the same business, there is rarely confusion. It’s a small market and customers know who they are dealing with. The two Steves have indeed worked together in the past.

    Steve Jackson USA is taking a real pasting from the new tariffs. Trouble is, his games have special dice, woodwork, plastics and tooling. They can’t source these from the USA. Not for lack of trying. There are simply no companies in the US that produce these parts. Even those who are interested do not have the capacity or expertise.

    The upshot of this is that a game which cost $25 will now cost $40. This is entirely because of the additional costs of the tariffs. They now have the choice of redesigning their games so that all parts can be sourced from the USA, or accepting that people can simply no longer afford to buy what is now a luxury product.

    That’s how it hits a small business in the USA. Spare a thought for Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a French collectivity near Newfoundland. They export $3.5m worth of seafood to the US each year. Because they don’t import anything, they have been hit with a 99% tariff, essentially destroying their economy. For a product that the USA evidently cannot produce themselves.

  • Procrastination makes you go blind

    Big protests in Türkiye. Erdogan has imprisoned his main rival. The Türks have clearly had enough of their dictator and are trying to get rid of him. I wish them all the best.

    Reading through news feeds and the stories of protests, authoritarianism and government violence, I have to check carefully if it is about Türkiye or the USA. Judging by responses on social media, I’m not the only one to be confused.

    The US media is not so confused. They know how to deal with stories like this. It’s some unstable foreign country, where they don’t value freedom anyway because they are not white and what else do you expect. The complacency of the media can be explained to a large extent by their oligarch owners.

    And the opposition? AOC is making an effort, but the Democrats are relying on procedure and precedent to solve the problem. They have set their red line for when the government defies the Supreme Court. Then they will spring into action.

    Two problems with this. First is that the bad guys already routinely ignore other courts already, no need to wait. Second, it presumes that there will be a clash between the Executive and Supreme Court.

    The mob is running rampant. Their mates in the Supreme Court will just nod approvingly. The Democrat strategy is to pray to their constitution to save them, until such time as they are told to shut up.

  • Performative politics

    The USA has a new war on drugs. This time it is not crack cocaine, but the opiate fentanyl. This has been a growing problem in recent years and everybody promised to sort it out as part of their election campaigns.

    So far, the president has cancelled scanning machines to check for smuggled drugs, and pardoned a notorious drug dealer who profited from sales of the drug in its early days. He has hit Canada and Mexico with tariffs – this was the original of many reasons for the tariffs – and is threatening military action against his neighbours if they don’t sort out the US fetanyl problem.

    This seems to fit into a pattern of typical policy making for Maga. First, get rid of any policy that is grounded in reality or might be effective in any way. Second, invent an insane policy that cannot possibly work, but insist it is the only way, or that it will get results fast.

    The point of all of this is not to actually do anything, but to give the appearance of doing something. This policy will never solve the fetanyl problem, because it does nothing to address either the problem or its causes. However, they can say they are doing something to their supporters. When everything gets worse, they can blame Canada, Mexico, Kulaks, leftists, whoever, in order to distract from the fact that they aren’t doing anything.

    I have a feeling this is going to be normal governance.

  • Corruption powers

    Apparently you can have a private dinner with the President of the USA for a “donation” of $5 million, although it is not clear where this money goes. He has also suspended a law that forbids USAians from bribing foreign governments. This sets the tone for his government.

    It’s weirdly consistent the way all anti-fraud and anti-corruption agencies across the USA are being closed down. It runs across government and through each department.

    I reckon it’s certain that most of the members of the criminal cartel have had run-ins with all these agencies in the past. Now the mob is in charge, they are out for revenge. On this level, I understand why they are doing it.

    At the same time, in the real world, they are reducing government services across the board, even though the demand for those services has not changed. So how do you get access to these rare services? You pay a bribe. The official has no problems in accepting this, assuming they don’t demand it up front, because there are no comebacks.

    Somehow I see this as an accelerated corruption drive. The USA is a fairly honest and corruption-free society. These measures seem designed to corrupt everything as quickly as possible.

    Even if congress were to remove this maniac tomorrow, it would take years to unpick the mess he has caused. The more this corruption sets in and becomes endemic, the longer it will take.