(M)y take is the real reason is simple economics. People are seriously struggling financially.

Your take is the right one. In fact it reminds me of a saying related to political elections: It's the economy stupid

At the end of the day, we all come at life, which is a game, from a personal/family perspective. According to the rules of the game, we need money to play.

As our leaders (to which we've become utterly remote from in the modern world) controlling our money flow, we require you to at least keep it going in the normal range. You can have your never-ending litany of excuses/crises for not keeping it flowing (as the rich get richer), but that will wear thin pretty quickly.

In spite of what the Biden administration was saying, inflation is off the charts. I just found out yesterday my health insurance premiums for next year will go up by at least 14%.

No shit. By my estimation, the price of stuff has gone up by 30-50%, due to Covid. That means the money you earned is now worth 30-50% less.

Inflation should be 0 or less. If GDP is going UP, prices should be doing DOWN. Supply and demand. If technology is making us more efficient, we should be working less to maintain the same standard of living. It's just math. But that's not happening. Tech is making us more efficient. It is allowing us to produce more, yet prices go up and we're getting poorer.

That's the key point - what the fuck is up with that? Long-distance telephone calls did get cheaper, but i can't think of anything else.

Harris and the dems were a total shitshow. What a fucking disaster.

Somewhere along the line (80s?), the Dems became the machine/ORG-GODS. It was on the nose when Hilary was anointed as Season 2 of the Clinton dynasty, Biden was a classic party-machine guy, literally being propped up every second time he navigated stairs, a cognitive shell for the machine, then when you can no longer maintain that farce, pass-on to Harris, without a primary.

The primaries is one of my favourite things about American politics. I love the drama, i like to see the actors perform in a kind of political-slam, see who's got what it takes to go into the grand final.

In the Westminster System, it's all about being unified. It's anathema for party-machines to air internal jostling for leadership in public. All the jostling/blood-letting goes on, but it's done under cover of the night ... where, without the public gaze, the viciousness is way worse.

It's a democracy for fuck's sake, who cares if people within a certain organization disagree on various points? You'd be worried if they didn't. For the Dem-machine to take that interesting theatre away from the people ... it's the kind of counter-productive thing that machines are prone to.

Prices are going up due to the US being 35 Trillion, with a T, in debt.

This is a key point of yours from way-back that i've noticed - i respect your analysis in general - so i'd like to understand it better. Inflation is driven by debt. I know about the supply & demand factor, but i haven't thought about national debt as a driver. If it is, that's one of those death-spiral things.

Now, Trump will continue with lowering of interest rates to put cash into the economy, and everyone will initially praise the miricle recovery. But by doing so (and it's already started; the fed cut rates today), by cutting rates, they'll be printing more money and pumping it into the economy, causing further inflation.

Which is the point where it all becomes a giant Ponzi scheme (which i think is your meaning). Well, we know from previous discussions, there is no one point - it's an incremental thing - but it's a scenario we've become engulfed by. (Consistent with being stuck in a game-simulation - the game being the Ponzi-scheme.)

It also sounds like it's gonna end badly, but you've mentioned before that there is potential/necessity to string it out. To pick your brains, how long can the whole money-printing fake universe be strung out? Can it last indefinitely?

The republicants aren't any better. They have the Christian Nationalists running the show while they, those in office, try to pretend they have any control of what's going on. I saw one comment today pointing out that the Christians are going to make it hard for Kennedy to enact his vision.

The Church is a classic ORG-GODS. They don't have the public-image clout that they've had for 1600 years, but the accumulated power behind that 1600 years hasn't evaporated. By make it hard, i'd be concerned that could amount to make him dead. I don't know what the odds are of Kennedy, Trump, & Musk all making it through the next 4-years alive, but 5-1 sounds roughly right.

Americans need to vote third party to send the message to these two other parties that we do have options.

We do have choices.

I agree, but i'm growing less optimistic about the viability of that. I'm not sure what percent alternative candidates got, but i think it was about 3-5% combined? It's a long way from there to actual power. Short of a revolution, i think we're stuck in the two-party system (in the US). If anything, i see it heading towards a one-party system with the rise of globalism.

If Kennedy can play that game to effect change, that's something at least. All remains to be seen, but in terms of my life-time, on the One-health corruption issue, it's the only glimmer of hope that i see.