The Thought of the U.S. breaking up?

I've never really caught onto the whole social media craze and that's probably why my book sales have been pretty dismal. I keep telling myself that if I truly want to sell more books, I need to be a little more media savvy and I'm working on that.

Which brings me to the main reason why this blog post is a week and half after my last posting. I started taking a photography course at the local community college this fall and it is eating up a bunch of my free time. I'm learning a lot more about taking digital pictures but the homework is more time consuming than I expected.

I had better get used to it as I want to take one more photography class next spring to round out my photography education. This class I'm taking now is a basic how to class on using a DSLR, or digital camera. The next class I want to take is a landscape photography class. This is something I've been a hobbyist at for decades, and now that I have a little more free time, I decided why not learn a little more about this and get me out of my office and off the couch a little more.

To change the subject a little bit, fall is in the air, which affords me a little more colour in the landscape photos this time of year. With that seasonal change, has also come more political violence in the United States with the recent shooting of this right wing nut job, Charlie Kirk. No one deserves to be shot like that but I can't say he didn't invite it with all of his public speaking and podcast.

The worst part is how the right wing media immediately took up the rallying cry to seek vengeance on the political left. Trump put all of the nations flags at half mast fro several days, treating him like some war hero or famous politician. Most of whom only rate a one day lowering of the flag at any given time.

This just goes to show everyone where their loyalties lie. Not with the American public, but to their fanatical base who are out for blood now. There is speculation across the spectrum that this Kirk guy will be the new spark, like the one in Germany back in the 1930's, that set off the Nazi takeover of the German government at the time.

Time will tell. Nothing like that happens overnight. I will be talking more about that in next week's podcast.

In this week's podcast, I mostly talked about Trump's continuing movements to divide the country and slowly erode free and fair elections. I speculate, using some articles from some writers in Substack, and Medium.com, about what might the continent look like if the U.S. were to split up into little nation states of their own.

I don't see that happening anytime soon but the divide between the red republican controlled states and the blue democrat led states is growing wider every week now. Trump wants troops in the streets to quell crime, which is fine if warranted, but what the independent news is also reporting, is that Trump only wants to send in the troops to democrat led states or cities, with African American mayors.

The examples are Los Angeles, who has a black mayor, Washington D.C., which has a black democrat mayor, Chicago, and now Memphis, TN. There were rumours of deployments coming to Boston, with a Chinese mayor and New Orleans, with another black, democrat mayor. Do you see a pattern emerging here? I'm not the first one to see this.

Is intimidation at the voting polls the ultimate mission objective here? It certainly seems like it. We all know how Donald Trump hates to lose elections.

A lot of people are asking the big question of the day. Will the U.S. start seeing an uptick in more political violence now? We've already seen several instances so far this week, and the Kirk incident is another on the list.

In international news, Israel bombed Qatar in order to assassinate some Hamas peace negotiators. Although this is no real surprise in of itself, it has upset the gulf states to the point that they're asking questions about their safety, something Trump guaranteed once upon a time. Ooops!

So what happens if the gulf states start looking for better protection from Israel? If they move away from the U.S. and into the hands of the Russians and Chinese, could this upset the balance of power in the middle east?

Trump is still trying to muscle the EU and the countries of the middle east to give him what he wants in exchange for empty promises. India may be capitulating a little this week, or maybe not. They've become very cozy with the Russians and now, thawing out their trade relations with the Chinese. Modi is coming to the U.S. to see about doing a trade deal with Trump. I wonder a little, about how that's going to turn out.

Will the Indians give in to Trump's demands to stop buying Russian fossil fuel products? Somehow, I don't think so. That would be like cutting their own throats and India isn't that stupid but hey, stranger things have happened.

Trump is angry that his besty, Vladimir Putin, is not stopping his troops from finishing their special military operation in Ukraine, so he wants to pressure the world into not buying any Russian oil. I don't think that's going to happen. There's too much money at stake.

So what's next for Trump? He's so erratic, no one really knows what he's going to do next and that's saying the quiet part out loud. The American economy is slowing dramatically, and Trump wants to invest U.S. treasure in cryptocurrency and gold.

I'm afraid for the fragile American economy and where it's going. France has even bigger debt issues and just had their national credit rating downgraded. Is the U.S. going to follow suit soon? Maybe, with the democrats threatening to halt the government at the end of this month.

The turmoil is getting worse and I don't see a ray of sunshine anywhere right now. Yet, Americans still live their lives as if nothing is wrong. I just had some high school kids come to my door asking for donations for their school. I bluntly told them I was too busy to listen to their spiel and sent them on their way. And I am too busy today.

So many things competing for my time. I have a screen door to fix, laundry to finish, groceries to buy, and I still need to complete my homework assignment for class next Tuesday. Life goes on, despite what's going on in the world around us. I hope things die down and we go back to a low boil that's always been a part of the American political spectrum.

The United States was started on a violent rebellion, and has continued in rebellion over so many different things throughout its history. This historical period is just another one such time of turmoil. During each period, we wonder if the American experiment will come to a crashing end, and yet, we persevere.

We will survive this one as well but, as I told someone not long ago, this current period will radically change the American political landscape for decades to come. I'm not sure what all of those changes will be like, but change is coming, nonetheless.