It's not like the U.S. consumers haven't experienced this before in the past but, with Trump as unpopular as he is right now, this big hike in the cost of living once again, will likely cause a lot of turmoil across the country.

Then there is the concern about war crimes being committed in Iran by the Americans. There is mounting evidence that when the Iranian school in southern Iran was bombed and all of those children were killed, it was a double tap. In other words, they bombed the school, then bombed it again when the emergency services arrived to help. Which is a war crime. Of course, the news media is saying that they're still investigating this but there's enough satellite evidence to make the case. Not that I think the U.S. government or the pilots will ever be held accountable but still, this is where we are.

As I mentioned in the intro here, Spring has arrived, sort of. The outside temps are averaging about 25 C the last couple of days and will likely remain through the weekend. But, according to the weather forecasters, another polar vortex is being predicted for next week. Which will drop the temps back down to near 0 C once again. So don't get too comfortable yet. We're not out of the woods as far as the old crone of winter is concerned. She's trying to hang on for a little longer.

My wife is outside as I write this, doing all kinds of spring cleaning to take advantage of the warm weather while she has it. She is also browbeating me into helping her do spring cleaning inside the house too. I have my own list of chores she wants me to complete for her today. She's a bit miffed with me because she thinks that listening to the news for a couple of hours a day and writing blog articles instead of helping her outside is wasteful.

She's like most people, they trust the government to take care of things beyond their own households so they can concentrate on the little things like spring cleaning.

What none of them understand, and most don't want to, is what happens when the economy crashes and we have blinders on before it all comes tumbling down around us. I'm old enough to remember previous American recession/depressions from the oil embargoes of the mid 1970's, to the not depression in 2009-2010. Things got pretty bad for the average consumer then.

What's coming will be a lot worse as the U.S. government because it is so far in debt, as far as their ability to pay that their debts goes compared to the money it brings in, will break them once that gap gets to the point of no return, and, according to some leading independent economists, we're there. This new war/not war with Iran will probably be the last straw. Once the bills for all of the war materials and military operational expenses come due soon, there won't be any more money to pay those bills. Or the Trump government will take more money away from its citizens well being to pay those bills.

Either way, it spells doom for this iteration of the federal government. What I am seeing is the lead up to a physical fight between the federal government and American citizens ahead of the elections next November. More protests in the streets, and federal troops sent to quell the protests. People are going to get hurt on both sides.

I've seen this movie before. From the protests in the U.S. past, to mass protests in other countries, it rarely bodes well for the governments. So far, the U.S. has managed in all of these years to hang on to their democracy but right now, that's hanging on by a thread. I'm not saying anything new here because the United States has been close before but this time it's different. The U.S. now has an ineffectual government that doesn't want to listen to anyone, much less its citizens. In other countries where I've seen this personally, those governments ended up turning into something much worse before the shooting was all finished. I could offer examples but there are so many from the last fifty years that the list would be so long.

I'm not sure where all of this is heading. I'm a little scared, only because I've seen this before and I know where this is heading even if the Americans manage to save their democratic government institutions once again. We now live in one of the most surveilled countries in the world since 9/11 and it's getting worse under this current government. Not that I think a new president will back off in the future. I think only paranoid countries like Israel, North Korea, Russia and China are in this category.

I've also come to the conclusion that immigrating to another, supposedly, safer country may not be the answer as no country is inherently safe just because their tourist brochures say so. Besides, my wife is a Trump supporter in that she listens to the Chinese language news media that tells her that Trump is a good guy and he's doing his best for the country. I can't seem to convince her otherwise.

The only way she would ever leave the U.S., is if the government comes after her to deport her, like they have with so many thousands of others. She knows about this but prefers, like so many other immigrants with a valid green card, to ignore what she hears in the news because she thinks she's safe. I keep telling her that I'm not even safe, much less her, but she dismisses me with a wave of her hand and goes off to do something to distract her from all of the bad news.

And it's exactly this attitude that will be the downfall of the United States as a democracy. This apathy that a large majority of the citizens have about their government. All the citizens want is a stable life, where they don't have to worry about having a place to live, enough food to eat, being able to see a doctor when needed and so on. When that's threatened, they expect their government to handle it without bothering them with the details.

I'm no different. I also want a stable life style without worrying whether whatever I write on a public platform will be flagged by the government for sedition. Whether my government pensions that I sacrificed so much of my life for could be taken away from me, leaving me penniless and homeless.

But this the world we find ourselves in these days here in the United States. There are state governments fighting its own citizens over ideology, such as the state of Kansas deciding to strip away all drivers licenses and birth certificates of those people who identify as Trans, as if that will just make them all leave the state and disappear. Which it will for a lot of them, but they will never all just disappear from the American white Christian world. I'm sorry but you can't just make them all disappear. Not in this interconnected world we live in now here in the 21st century.

And that's the other problem with Americans and some others around the world. They want to live in a bubble from the past when these things like LGBTQ and Trans people were kept out of the public awareness. This while the rest of the world moves on around them. It's this attitude that will be the end of the American colonial empire.

I listen to media hosts in the last few days talking about what would happen if Iran were to be broken up into small fiefdoms run by tribal warlords, like Afghanistan and Syria. Imagine what the United States would look like if the same thing happened there? We're almost there now. We have some states wanting to take better care of their citizens, while other states politicians are doing all they can at the expense of their citizens to remain in power.

I have speculated several times in the last couple of years with my articles what that might look like. I'm not going to rehash that today. As a matter of fact, I need to cut this short right now and get ready to go to the grocery store. I have to make a list and eat my midday dinner before going. I typically like to go on Friday afternoons to avoid most of the crowds. I still run into stupid humans who can't seem to pay attention to what's going on around them, which includes running into people with their carts, but at least on a weekday afternoon, there are a lot fewer of them in the stores.

I want to thank those few readers who may actually find this blog and read my musings here. It's too bad that I can't attract more and have a healthy discourse about the things that we're all thinking about as we try to live a normal life in these trying times. Take care. Sláinte