Plowshares into Swords
The welfare state model no longer works; the center — consensual democracy — wobbles towards the extremes. What to do? Beat our plowshares into swords?
Monday, September 15th, 2025
Bill Bonner, from Poitou, France
Fox News reports:
Federal budget deficit grows $92B to nearly $2T even as Trump tariffs increase revenue
CBO reports $92B increase from last year driven by Social Security, Medicare and debt interest payments
Money Talks News adds:
American Household Debt Hits Record $18.4 Trillion As Credit Card Balances Surge Nationwide
With household debt reaching historic highs of nearly $70,000 per adult, families face mounting financial pressure.
Debt, debt, debt...war, war, war?
The trumpets are sounding. The pipes are calling. And guns are coming out all over the place.
Abroad...US/Israel desperadoes have opened two new ‘theatres of war.’ The US bombed Iran. And the Israelis bombed Qatar, murdering the negotiators who had been invited to work out a settlement to the Gaza war.
In Latin America, the Trump administration whacked a civilian boat, claiming that the US is at war with the occupants.
In Europe, meanwhile, the war in the Ukraine continues...Germany guns up...and the fighting threatens to spread.
More ominously, the guns are out in the homeland too. We guessed nearly a quarter of a century ago that the ‘war on terror’ would eventually come home. Many public officials and ‘influencers’ seem to welcome it.
A US senator laments that the Trump administration has made war on drug cartels because drugs are the number one killer of young Americans, not those of ‘voting age,’ but of ‘fighting age.’
And many seem to think that it’s time to load the cannon with this ‘fighting age’ fodder.
There’s been no Reichstag fire so far, but comedian Sam Hyde has the matches: “Time to do your f**king job and seize power...if you want to be more than a footnote in the ‘American Collapse’ section of future history books, it's now or never.”
And Steve Bannon smells smoke: “We have to have steely resolve,” he said on his ‘War Room’ show. “Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are.”
“If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die,” wrote Elon Musk on X.
More from Fox:
‘They Are at War With Us’: Jesse Watters Responds to Charlie Kirk’s Death
“Trump gets hit in the ear, Charlie [Kirk] gets shot dead...Think about it... it’s happening. You’ve got trans shooters, you’ve got riots in L.A. They are at war with us, whether we want to accept it or, they are at war with us. And what are we going to do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that’s the question we are going to have to ask ourselves.”
But war is not just for the red states. It was Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama who laid the groundwork for the war in the Ukraine. And it was Joe Biden who gave the green light to the Israelis to massacre Gaza.
Recall, too, Joe Biden’s grotesque ‘hellish blood red’ speech. Then, it was the ‘far right’ that was the enemy:
“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”
But now, with Trump in office, the foot is in the other shoe. The ‘far left’ is the threat. Stephen Miller:
“The Democrat [sic] Party does not fight for, care about, or represent American citizens. It is an entity devoted exclusively [his emphasis] to the defense of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.”
Why so much ‘war talk?’ Is there a connection between so much debt and so much martial madness? Maybe.
The empire is in decline. Demographics, regulatory tightening, fake money and the mis-allocation of trillions of dollars (much of it on pointless wars) have sapped the vitality of the economy. The Federal government gets bigger and bigger, but there is no longer enough output to pay for it.
The interest on the debt alone takes more more than a trillion dollars a year. The US faces a financial crisis. And for the first time in history, our children face a poorer future.
The welfare state model no longer works; the center — consensual democracy — wobbles towards the extremes. What to do? Beat our plowshares into swords?
More to come...
Regards,
Bill Bonner
Mr. Bonner,
The twenty some odd countries surrounding Israel are quite pleased at the degradation of Iran:
whose proxies lie in the terror apparatus of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, et al
whose leaders are billionaire cowards in Doha.
"What to do?" Good question if, at some point, details are to be entertained. However, the primary decision of "Fight or Flight" remains. I'm a fighter by nature and therefore will give my support now to much vilified "man in the Ring" to whom this poisoned chalice "debt cup" has been passed.
I'll also mourn the memory of the frontline fighter, Charlie Kirk and will root for those who will step up to fill the void that has been left. Will pray that non-violence remains as our guiding force.
But we have come now to a place where we need to address the root of this violence. Violence that sees very young school children shot through a stained glass window as they sat in church. Violence that seeks to silence their opposition with bullets.
There's that word again - "opposition". Not to be confused with "oppressor". But who will teach the difference rather than dedicate themselves to erasing boundaries in their lust for power?
Isn't that the better question?