In the good old, brutal days, an empire faced a clean, honest choice: it devoured its rivals, or its rivals devoured it. Victory paid dividends you could weigh and count — booty, tribute, and slaves.
I remember Vietnam, they didn't quit, our political class sold us out. I participated in that mess! Based on reading about 5000 years of history, it shows the Persians won't quit either. We either "finish" the job or walk away as we did in Vietnam.......sadly.
It would indeed have been child’s play to keep us off the shoals of destruction. But our leaders, elected and otherwise, have proven to be less than competent navigators and captains of the good ship USA. They, and we collectively, have pretended that we are entitled to unlimited bounty. The consequences of such naivety are now evident.
Not incompetent; they are in fact quite skilled at pillaging the treasury, sending the sons and daughters of its founding stock to die in useless wars, and importing third world barbarians to man their fields, factories, delivery trucks, and landscape businesses.
Agree with the first half of your reply, but not the second half. I am thankful for the “barbarians” who do the work no one else will do: cleaning, landscaping, roofing, painting, harvesting, etc.
You say, "the work no one else will do". What happened before we had the open borders nuts inundate our country with desperate, uneducated miserable souls. I think when I was growing up, 83 years ago, all of the work you describe was competently done and provided one with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. I still do the landscaping, harvesting, and painting myself. The culture is rotten and if these fools keep infiltrating our local city councils, school boards, etc. we will wind up like Europe. Look at how amazed these World Cup tourists are at our bountiful and great country. Also how they are being treated by our people. There is no place like America in the whole world. As I am sure many of the people on this board have done, travel to other countries and see the difference in the people. You will never see the happiness that you see in most Americans faces when they see a stranger from another country. We are proud of our country because it was a gift from God when he inspired those great and brave founding fathers to rise up and declare freedom and liberty and compose the greatest document(s) ever written by man, except of course, the Bible.
The absence of imported competition would require our native sons to perform such work but of course if it weren’t for the low cost of hiring it out to said imports perhaps the lazy, soft natives would do it themselves. But what is the cost of cheap imported labor and fast food modernity? A crumbling homeland populated with entitled citizens who can’t even change a tire.
When was the last time any reader of this blog paid a teenager to mow their lawn, shovel snow off their driveway, deliver a daily paper, shine our shoes, and God forgive paint their fence? Fly-over country maybe, East and West Coast ???
I just had my house painted. The guy did a better job than I would have done myself; I am a fanatical perfectionist. He charged $4,500.00, a fair price. One person, white, did it in 2.5 days. He was young, full of energy, could do 2 houses a week, $9,000.00 or $36,000.00 a month.
These jobs no one wants to do, pay very well to the industrious.
I hate illegal immigration. Before you call me racist, I have two Korean kids and one Black grandson, the other is a mix, white and Korean.
I also was in PC, Honduras for two years. I preferred the Latin Culture to my own.
As a teenager in the 60’s, I had a bad feeling when silver certificates were being replaced by federal reserve notes. Although I was too uninformed to connect the dots, it just didn’t feel right. As a young man in 1971, still financially ignorant, Nixon’s gold shock also caused me turmoil. But it all came together as I aged. I wondered how I could have bought a house in 1978 for $30,000 but a pickup truck in the early 2000’s cost about the same? I wonder no more. The genie will no longer fit into the bottle it came from.
How ever not one tiny bit of how to fix it, just bitching and complaining, that’s his specialty. He thinks he could do a much better job. We have a leader who’s trying to make changes, and then we have his opponents who are trying to kill him. Bills constantly helping with that.
Bill's candid remarks about our nation's proclivity for unnecessary wars and for evermore debt are worrisome, especially as it is likely a Democratic Administration will be ensconced on January 20, 2028.
Democrats are likely to sail the ship of state into ever deeper debt -- not by needless war -- but by expanding access to the public trough.
A good history summary and sadly fairly accurate. Both parties have done a good job of taking us backwards since the end of WW2 and August 1971. I hate to say it, but only God can turn this around and he usually lets mankind dig his own hole to fall into.
Mr. Marshall, But with Bill, it's not what he writes, but what he leaves out, that bothers me; especially the last two years of his writing. I'm not sure if it's because his mental health is declining or he knows better and has moved leftward in his politics. I find that the Left cherry-picks stats mostly to try to fake out the folks; and, Bill has been doing that almost regularly the last two years. Anyone can toss out a lot of stats. The old Bill used to take up to a week of essays to address one major issue. Rarely do I see this from him---the last two years in particular.
Don't worry. I'm sure any day now Bill will finally explain to everyone here why his neighbor, Joe Biden, opening up the border to tens of millions of unvetted "who knows who" is the ideal way to address a post 9-11 world - all to be overseen by nihilist religious nuts with nukes.
It is true that Rome fell to Odoacer in 476 AD. But that wasn’t the end of the Empire. The Eastern half continued for almost another millenium. Indeed, under Justinian. The Eastern Empire had managed to reconquer Italy and recover Rome by 565AD.
Italy was then slowly abandoned, but the Eastern Roman Empire kept going through many ups and downs for another 900 years, far more than the 250 with which you credit it.
This is still the best place to spend an hour hearing from others and getting it off one's chest........ Trump and his team might still be the best leaders that the US has has for quite some time. Their ability to resist the temptation of committing American boys to war on the ground, yet still get things done, might be considered exemplary in contrast to previous administrations, who tended to either go in boots and all or sit back and do nothing. And quite a bit has been gained through the Persian escapade. Effective defence forces need time in battle to learn how things really work, Russia was getting the upper hand there over the US, as they copped a whipping from Ukraine, on and off. Perhaps the US now has a "much deeper" understanding of modern warfare than its main challenger China, and without the sacrifice of too much pride or resources, unlike the Russians, who are learning, but at great cost. It's also possible that China is now on notice that the US can close the straight of Hormuz, where in that case would China get it's oil, Venezuela is gone (with the US seemingly booking the booty that Bill laments in his opening sentence?) and Russia is having it's oil industry sanctioned by potentially the newest power on the block, daily. One actually wonders if that spat in the White House between Zelensky and Vance was not theatre for the world when something entirely different was discussed. Meanwhile the Trump team have the Europeans increasingly taking care of their own defence with public opinion driving the move to spend more and increase preparedness, how did they do that?? I better stop now, I am starting to think these guys are genius's, and that will never do.
I think you're onto it. I note that Bill is resolute in not weighing any potential for positive connectivity in Trumps actions. Specifically, in reestablishing hegemonic control over western trade routes (Panama, Venezuela, along with drug and human trafficking) and unleashing domestic energy and pharma production, all of which is our lifeblood.
It must be hard for Bill to have to work around these sorts of realities.
Thank you, Bill, for another Debbie Downer bloviation that will turn a nice breakfast into an upset stomach. It's long past time for you to revoke your U.S. citizenship and permanently hold fast to your Irish roots.
There is a forlorn hope. We are at the crossroads. The Republic must return to its roots, government by the people for the people. The whole apparatus of the State is against the people.
It is a one in 40 trillion chance.
Trump, the destroyer of the deep state, is proposing to turn plowshares into swords.
Same old same old on steroids. Our masters are crazy.
The option to withdraw within our borders was always a chimera. Jefferson learned this quickly with his Barbary pirates adventure and then the British taking of our sailors. The illusion didn't last a single generation.
Before 1918, the journey that was the foundation of productive, mythical America, the wonder of the world, was mostly created within its borders.
The concentration on the near and crucial factors created the milieu in which average Americans prospered. It was such Americans that created the envy of the world.
It was a unique circumstance. It no longer exists; it cannot be recreated. Only the people free and energetic creat prosperity.
Our government is ruled and decided by few for the interests of the few. America has become, as all governments were, a feudal system. Such systems, without a productive base, cannot prosper. No real wealth is created, hence debt and printing and musical chairs and the music of enlightenment has stopped too many times, the chairs so few. The greedy and corrupt fight to everyone’s demise over a dwindling pie and the pie is always in the sky of obsessive, useless destructive compulsions.
Let the WS banks become our landlords, own our corporate debt and issue credit cards to own our personal debt - if we truly wish to recreate a feudal system.
They were on the way. Banks had bought up a few hundred thousand homes. Recent Trump EO put a cap on their allowable ownership of residential properties
Our recent wars haven’t been wars at all. Winning hearts and minds or making the world “safe” for democracy are different aims entirely. The wars of old were fought to win. They were over when everyone who wished to continue fighting was either victorious or dead. The Japanese and the Germans were not less tenacious than the Vietnamese or the Iranians.
On another note, could we move on from the 1971 dollar moving off the gold standard scenario. It was 55 years ago and the ship has sailed. It may have broke the system, but it isn't coming back under any current scenario, so get the AI out and let's adapt to what we have to work with now.
Just as we underestimated the tenacity of the VietCong, so did we underestimate the fire power of Iran. The experts doing intel f____d
up and should be fired. And what of Israel licking their wounds? They have been secretive about their defense failure but insiders say the
damages were substantial.
And the parallel Bill draws between Vietnam and Iran is dead on. The VietCong never surrendered nor will
the Iranians. JF
Vietnam and Iran the same?
Oh...that's right...
Vietnam was governed by religious fanatics.
And their nuclear ambitions were imminent.
They sponsored multiple terror organizations for decades.
And they had the means to threaten the sanctity of the world...
<sarc>
I remember Vietnam, they didn't quit, our political class sold us out. I participated in that mess! Based on reading about 5000 years of history, it shows the Persians won't quit either. We either "finish" the job or walk away as we did in Vietnam.......sadly.
Jim Marshall
...from my limited understanding (please feel free to correct me).
Most "Persians" are insulted by labeling them "Iranians".
Our fake money is just more evidence we are ruled by an extraconstitutional crime syndicate.
... our fake money rules the world at the moment.
And it will for a while... despite the ramblings at BPR.
-
Bill would not sell anything if he wrote:
There's not much too worry about right now...
BPR Hold a very heavy cash position. I guess it's not worthless yet.
It would indeed have been child’s play to keep us off the shoals of destruction. But our leaders, elected and otherwise, have proven to be less than competent navigators and captains of the good ship USA. They, and we collectively, have pretended that we are entitled to unlimited bounty. The consequences of such naivety are now evident.
Not incompetent; they are in fact quite skilled at pillaging the treasury, sending the sons and daughters of its founding stock to die in useless wars, and importing third world barbarians to man their fields, factories, delivery trucks, and landscape businesses.
Agree with the first half of your reply, but not the second half. I am thankful for the “barbarians” who do the work no one else will do: cleaning, landscaping, roofing, painting, harvesting, etc.
You say, "the work no one else will do". What happened before we had the open borders nuts inundate our country with desperate, uneducated miserable souls. I think when I was growing up, 83 years ago, all of the work you describe was competently done and provided one with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. I still do the landscaping, harvesting, and painting myself. The culture is rotten and if these fools keep infiltrating our local city councils, school boards, etc. we will wind up like Europe. Look at how amazed these World Cup tourists are at our bountiful and great country. Also how they are being treated by our people. There is no place like America in the whole world. As I am sure many of the people on this board have done, travel to other countries and see the difference in the people. You will never see the happiness that you see in most Americans faces when they see a stranger from another country. We are proud of our country because it was a gift from God when he inspired those great and brave founding fathers to rise up and declare freedom and liberty and compose the greatest document(s) ever written by man, except of course, the Bible.
The absence of imported competition would require our native sons to perform such work but of course if it weren’t for the low cost of hiring it out to said imports perhaps the lazy, soft natives would do it themselves. But what is the cost of cheap imported labor and fast food modernity? A crumbling homeland populated with entitled citizens who can’t even change a tire.
.. a little elbow grease and sweat by our youth is just what this country needs!
When was the last time any reader of this blog paid a teenager to mow their lawn, shovel snow off their driveway, deliver a daily paper, shine our shoes, and God forgive paint their fence? Fly-over country maybe, East and West Coast ???
I have teenagers mow my lawn. I don't even pay them. They're chained in my basement.
With a good work ethic , they'll probably do well in college and beyond.
I just had my house painted. The guy did a better job than I would have done myself; I am a fanatical perfectionist. He charged $4,500.00, a fair price. One person, white, did it in 2.5 days. He was young, full of energy, could do 2 houses a week, $9,000.00 or $36,000.00 a month.
These jobs no one wants to do, pay very well to the industrious.
I hate illegal immigration. Before you call me racist, I have two Korean kids and one Black grandson, the other is a mix, white and Korean.
I also was in PC, Honduras for two years. I preferred the Latin Culture to my own.
The hypocrisy runs amok!
They are immigrants and should be treated like citizens with respect and dignity! Now go clean my toilet!
...don't you mean we are so diverse in our constituency no one can agree.
We always end up with a duressed compromise "the lessor of two evils".
...it was my learing (that's intentional) that "We the People" elect our representatives.
As such, those less than competent navigators and captains on the good ship USA were placed there by U.S. citizens.
What you are in essence conveying is that the U.S. constituency isn't very good at selecting competent leaders.
Can't argue....
That's why IMO not everyone should automatically be awarded the privilege to vote...
-
Our bounty is (practically) unlimited!
Any accepted limitations are by choice and propagated by those negative on America.
-
America has and still does provide more opportunity, more promise than any other country.
If not so, why is immigration a problem?
The Bears Lair has a great solution to the voting problem!
https://www.tbwns.com/2026/07/06/the-bears-lair-how-to-stabilize-the-political-system/
The Bear is right in theory.
I'm just waiting for the sun to rise in the west...
Well, we have mobocracy not democracy!
As a teenager in the 60’s, I had a bad feeling when silver certificates were being replaced by federal reserve notes. Although I was too uninformed to connect the dots, it just didn’t feel right. As a young man in 1971, still financially ignorant, Nixon’s gold shock also caused me turmoil. But it all came together as I aged. I wondered how I could have bought a house in 1978 for $30,000 but a pickup truck in the early 2000’s cost about the same? I wonder no more. The genie will no longer fit into the bottle it came from.
Superb stuff, Bill. Nowhere is there a better summation of our state of the union.
How ever not one tiny bit of how to fix it, just bitching and complaining, that’s his specialty. He thinks he could do a much better job. We have a leader who’s trying to make changes, and then we have his opponents who are trying to kill him. Bills constantly helping with that.
Homer Bell
Bill's candid remarks about our nation's proclivity for unnecessary wars and for evermore debt are worrisome, especially as it is likely a Democratic Administration will be ensconced on January 20, 2028.
Democrats are likely to sail the ship of state into ever deeper debt -- not by needless war -- but by expanding access to the public trough.
Don't worry, Jimm. Dems or Repubs - makes no difference.
...open borders 2.0
Apparently Bill can't see we are in a war. It's only war if Bill can see it. It's especially hard to see if you are blinded by TDS.
A good history summary and sadly fairly accurate. Both parties have done a good job of taking us backwards since the end of WW2 and August 1971. I hate to say it, but only God can turn this around and he usually lets mankind dig his own hole to fall into.
Jim Marshall
Mr. Marshall, But with Bill, it's not what he writes, but what he leaves out, that bothers me; especially the last two years of his writing. I'm not sure if it's because his mental health is declining or he knows better and has moved leftward in his politics. I find that the Left cherry-picks stats mostly to try to fake out the folks; and, Bill has been doing that almost regularly the last two years. Anyone can toss out a lot of stats. The old Bill used to take up to a week of essays to address one major issue. Rarely do I see this from him---the last two years in particular.
Frank, sadly I too think there has been a change. I've been reading Bill for over 25 years and yes sometimes I wonder about some of his writings.
Jim
Don't worry. I'm sure any day now Bill will finally explain to everyone here why his neighbor, Joe Biden, opening up the border to tens of millions of unvetted "who knows who" is the ideal way to address a post 9-11 world - all to be overseen by nihilist religious nuts with nukes.
Any day now...
IMO God doesn't choose anything, but He created the gravity in which for to fall...
It is true that Rome fell to Odoacer in 476 AD. But that wasn’t the end of the Empire. The Eastern half continued for almost another millenium. Indeed, under Justinian. The Eastern Empire had managed to reconquer Italy and recover Rome by 565AD.
Italy was then slowly abandoned, but the Eastern Roman Empire kept going through many ups and downs for another 900 years, far more than the 250 with which you credit it.
This is still the best place to spend an hour hearing from others and getting it off one's chest........ Trump and his team might still be the best leaders that the US has has for quite some time. Their ability to resist the temptation of committing American boys to war on the ground, yet still get things done, might be considered exemplary in contrast to previous administrations, who tended to either go in boots and all or sit back and do nothing. And quite a bit has been gained through the Persian escapade. Effective defence forces need time in battle to learn how things really work, Russia was getting the upper hand there over the US, as they copped a whipping from Ukraine, on and off. Perhaps the US now has a "much deeper" understanding of modern warfare than its main challenger China, and without the sacrifice of too much pride or resources, unlike the Russians, who are learning, but at great cost. It's also possible that China is now on notice that the US can close the straight of Hormuz, where in that case would China get it's oil, Venezuela is gone (with the US seemingly booking the booty that Bill laments in his opening sentence?) and Russia is having it's oil industry sanctioned by potentially the newest power on the block, daily. One actually wonders if that spat in the White House between Zelensky and Vance was not theatre for the world when something entirely different was discussed. Meanwhile the Trump team have the Europeans increasingly taking care of their own defence with public opinion driving the move to spend more and increase preparedness, how did they do that?? I better stop now, I am starting to think these guys are genius's, and that will never do.
I think you're onto it. I note that Bill is resolute in not weighing any potential for positive connectivity in Trumps actions. Specifically, in reestablishing hegemonic control over western trade routes (Panama, Venezuela, along with drug and human trafficking) and unleashing domestic energy and pharma production, all of which is our lifeblood.
It must be hard for Bill to have to work around these sorts of realities.
I woke up this morning feeling pretty good...
Seems by reading this reminiscent diatribe, someone else is not having a good morning...
When one lacks access to facts, a response, nonetheless, is always required. The usual response is angrily doubling down.
Thank you, Bill, for another Debbie Downer bloviation that will turn a nice breakfast into an upset stomach. It's long past time for you to revoke your U.S. citizenship and permanently hold fast to your Irish roots.
There is a forlorn hope. We are at the crossroads. The Republic must return to its roots, government by the people for the people. The whole apparatus of the State is against the people.
It is a one in 40 trillion chance.
Trump, the destroyer of the deep state, is proposing to turn plowshares into swords.
Same old same old on steroids. Our masters are crazy.
The option to withdraw within our borders was always a chimera. Jefferson learned this quickly with his Barbary pirates adventure and then the British taking of our sailors. The illusion didn't last a single generation.
Before 1918, the journey that was the foundation of productive, mythical America, the wonder of the world, was mostly created within its borders.
The concentration on the near and crucial factors created the milieu in which average Americans prospered. It was such Americans that created the envy of the world.
It was a unique circumstance. It no longer exists; it cannot be recreated. Only the people free and energetic creat prosperity.
Our government is ruled and decided by few for the interests of the few. America has become, as all governments were, a feudal system. Such systems, without a productive base, cannot prosper. No real wealth is created, hence debt and printing and musical chairs and the music of enlightenment has stopped too many times, the chairs so few. The greedy and corrupt fight to everyone’s demise over a dwindling pie and the pie is always in the sky of obsessive, useless destructive compulsions.
Let the WS banks become our landlords, own our corporate debt and issue credit cards to own our personal debt - if we truly wish to recreate a feudal system.
I thought they already did that.
They were on the way. Banks had bought up a few hundred thousand homes. Recent Trump EO put a cap on their allowable ownership of residential properties
Our recent wars haven’t been wars at all. Winning hearts and minds or making the world “safe” for democracy are different aims entirely. The wars of old were fought to win. They were over when everyone who wished to continue fighting was either victorious or dead. The Japanese and the Germans were not less tenacious than the Vietnamese or the Iranians.
Another great one from Bill Bonner - what a singular voice his is.
Perhaps, soon to become more singular. I'm only here for Tom and Dan.
On another note, could we move on from the 1971 dollar moving off the gold standard scenario. It was 55 years ago and the ship has sailed. It may have broke the system, but it isn't coming back under any current scenario, so get the AI out and let's adapt to what we have to work with now.