Pay attention to what the American President … and the Chair of the Fed declared
Inflection Point with what’s next. On a rare, hand drawn graph…
“Good evening, my fellow Americans. We’re facing an inflection point in history — one of those moments where the decisions we make today are going to determine the future for decades to come.” ~ from President Joe Biden’s Address to the Nation Thursday night on the 19th of October 2023.
“We’re facing an inflection point in history…”
Those words are significant. He’s preparing the world for war.
“That’s what I’d like to talk with you about tonight. “ Except he really did not further address the inflection point.
Biden’s speech, however, was short, even terse. He did not ramble. He did not stumble and fall down nor gaze off in a daze. His mind was as clear and sharp as a laser. Biden remained focused and stood in his power. Joe Biden was impressively presidential regardless of whether or not people agreed with him or liked him. The key phrase in his speech, however, seems ignored by the majority of news media pundits. Let’s address Biden’s key phrase in regards to all of us in America and in the world “facing an inflection point in history.”
Imagine a simple graph, the bottom line representing the arrow of time as it moves left to right into the future. Another line starts in the lower left corner and steadily angles up on a low grade towards the future. This represents the thinking of “most people” who ignore faraway news, who think “it” won’t happen to them, and are too busy doing other things to really care. It’s all upward progress and everything going to get better eventually anyway, so many believe and assume.
The third line of normalcy wiggles along the bottom then began to shoot straight up as it encounters multiple crises, one after another and many compounding together. This third line is what’s actually happening. It represents reality, not what “most people” want to believe about reality. This line quickly bends to shoot straight up and crosses over the line of illusion most people believe to be true but isn’t. Where the line of what’s really happening crosses over what is mundanely thought to be real but isn’t is our inflection point. The following gap is one of distortion. The greater the field of distortion the greater the apocalypse.
There is a fourth line, too. It starts on the far left at a right angle to the passage of time and goes straight up. It measures intensity. As line 3, that of reality, shoots straight up higher and higher, such means life quickly grows more and more intense with rapid, chaotic change and increasing levels of violence and calamity. You can see where all this may be going, yes?
The President had just returned from a whirlwind trip into the war-wracked Middle East to visit Israel in the wake of Hamas massacres and kidnapping of civilians inside Israel followed by relentless Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip. Fighting was breaking out with Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias along Israel’s norther borders with Lebanon and Syria. American forces at combat bases in Syria and Iraq, where several wars overlap including the conflict against remnants of the Islamic pseudo-Caliphate (ISIS/ISIL/Daesh) came under waves of attacks by other Iranian-backed militia groups. US Navy forces in the Red Sea had just shot down a volley of long-range missiles and drones fired by Houthis, Iranian allies in the Yemeni Civil Wars. They had been launched along the Red Sea at Israel all the way from the mountains of Yemen.
The inflection point Biden refers to is the possibility American forces will engage in yet another unwanted but necessary war. He is preparing the American people for the possibility of entering into a major regional and possible world war. This time against well-armed militias and nation-state militaries. Biden also linked the Russo-Ukrainian War with the Middle Eastern wars. Not to mention North Korea versus South Korea and Japan, China versus Taiwan, China versus Japan, China versus multiple countries in the South China Sea, the civil war in Myanmar, the Sino-Indo border disputes, the crises in the Caucasus, the rash of coups with wars spreading across Africa, and several interrelated crises in Latin America including the southern US border. So Biden is also preparing Americans for the possibility, however remote in actuality, of a world war.
There is no calm, rational reason for a world war to erupt. The economies of many nations on our enemies’ list are ravaged by wars, sanctions, demographic collapse, climate change, and deglobalization. The United States itself is in the grip of political dysfunction as it struggles to exit from the double chaos of Trump and the Covid Pandemic. The USA is wrestling with persistent inflation, political polarization bordering on low-intensity civil war, and rebuilding both domestic industry and a national military. It makes no sense for any nation to rally itself into waging a world war with others. Yet humans tend to think backwards in a crisis, believing that going to war will be good for their sputtering economies and help solidify their despotic regimes. Strong emotions such as rage, revenge, hate, and fear tend to overwhelm logic and reason.
There was another important speech made earlier the same day as Biden’s address. Jerome Powell, the Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System of the United States, addressed the nation in regards to the U.S. capitalist economy including overall fiscal health, monetary policy issues, inflation, employment rates, interest rates, and the national debt. Powell has long been an advocate to first fix the economy and reduce inflation before paying down and off the national debt. Esoteric, arcane, and neo-utopian ideas to reform or replace the current economic system are not addressed here. Data-driven pragmatism without upheaval is the standard and preferred systemic approach. Powell did remind people the size of the U.S. debt itself is not a concern. Then he declared, “The path we’re on is unsustainable, and we’ll have to get off that path sooner rather than later.” Later in the evening, President Biden goes on national TV to announce he’s to ask Congress for what turns out to be nearly $106 billion dollars in supplemental funding, most of it foreign aid for Ukraine and Israel-Palestine but also large amounts for other regions including to secure the US borders and interdict drug smuggling and human trafficking.
Apparently none of them are paying attention to the warnings of analysts as diverse as Ray Dahlio, Jared Diamond, and Peter Zeihan. Already buffeted by global climate disruption, the vast drain on our national treasure by endless wars abroad, the COVID Pandemic, the chaos and dysfunction in American governance at all levels, the harsh, ugly political and socio-cultural polarization, the United States of America and its defacto global neo-empire has already entered the discord of a major inflection point in the rise and fall of civilizations and their states throughout history. Entering into another major regional “forever war” in the Middle East involving Iran would tip the USA off the cliff into exponential change. If this new regional war merges with the wars in Eastern Europe and Africa and the conflicts in East Asia to generate a world war, then it would be catastrophic. Even if the US and its allies win, is the likely outcome of such a Phyrric conflict, what would be left to build anything with?
The short-sighted intensity of the moment, with belief systems girded by hate, fear, rage, bitterness, and vengeance, war planning went on, of course, and goes on still. Military and intelligence leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran met with their Russian counterparts in Moscow a month earlier. The leaders of Russia and China and also of Russia and North Korea met recently. They’re not just sitting around speculating about the Abominable Snowman. Something’s going down. They’re planning action steps. America and its allies around the world are preparing for something, too? What? Emotions are running high right now, and there’s a sense nations are lining up into opposing camps. Biden referred to Russia and Hamas as seeking to destroy their democratic neighbors next door. This is an important distinction as well as Biden seeks to point out, hey, it’s time to pick and choose a side even if you don’t like everything about your side.
Historically, few expected the three World Wars of 1914-1991 to occur. Each one began as a series of local conflicts that merged into one global conflagration. When a world war was finally realized and acknowledged, many believed the war would nonetheless be short. The problem with this in the nuclear age is Dr. Albert Einstein may be right: there’s so much hatred out in our world Einstein allegedly declared the final world war will be fought with sticks, stones, and spears.
Get ready and keep preparing yourselves, your families, and your communities to face any emergency.
William Dudley Bass
Friday 20 October 2023
Shoreline/Seattle, Washington
United States of America
Copyright © 2023 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.