No Iran war off-ramp coming for Trump

   As for the war in Ukraine, we are now submerged with propaganda, claims and counter-claims so that in the end, the truth is buried under the announcements and almost impossible to reconstruct.

   It looks more and more likely that the attack in Egypt was a false flag from Israel. The very least that can be said is that it wouldn't be surprising. Likewise, the Saudi attack on Yemen was so "stupid" that although real, it is difficult to imagine that the Saudis are truly in charge. This is the price you pay for "protection" and having US bases on your land.    

   As for Trump, it is truly amazing to see how a man with plenty of tactic but no strategy has been cornered by the international cabal and outsmarted by Iran. As often in such cases, the only smart move was not to play. Now it is extremely difficult to see how he can extricate himself from such a quagmire without losing either credibility or the war itself, obliging him to double down every single time. Professor Jiang prediction a few days earlier was prophetic: There may be no exit or off-ramp as explained below.       

No Iran war off-ramp coming for Trump

 by Leo Hohmann

If it’s even true that Trump is looking for an off ramp, global power elites will make sure he doesn’t find one; WWIII and military draft incoming

 

In case you haven’t noticed, the war in the Middle East is expanding.

Just in the last few days, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Egypt have all been drawn into the conflict that started with just three parties — the U.S., Israel and Iran. The new additions make this a truly regional war with global ramifications. Even Ukraine managed this week to get involved, striking an Iranian ship it said was sending military supplies to Russia. For those who needed an outward sign, this attack by Ukraine connects the Middle East war with Iran to the war against Russia in Eastern Europe. As I’ve been saying for months, it’s all part of the same war.

Egyptian officials confirmed today that two ships on its Mediterranean coast came under a drone attack Wednesday at the port of Damietta, a key loading point for liquified natural gas (LNG). As of this writing, no nation or entity has claimed responsibility for the attack, a sure sign of a false flag by malevolent forces, while Western fingers are predictably being pointed at Iran. You can use your imagination as to who would like to expand the war in the direction of Egypt by looking at whose interests that serves.

So far, this is following the exact trajectory I predicted when these wars started in Ukraine and the Middle East. Because I saw them as part of the same major war, not separate conflicts, I knew they would continue to escalate and anyone talking about memorandums of understanding (MoU), peace talks and Trump looking for an off-ramp doesn’t know what they’re talking about and aren’t worth listening to. Trump may want an off ramp, but the powers driving these wars and financing them will make sure he isn’t presented with one that his ego will let him take. Those financing the wars are the ones pulling the puppet strings. The politicians associated with the wars are mere front men.

Donald Trump by now must be well aware that bombing alone is not going to take out the Iranian government. A ground invasion will be necessary. But he also knows that any landing of troops on Iranian soil will result in tremendous casualties for the invaders.

All this talk from various Iranian ex-pats that gets regurgitated by conservative podcasters and writers that the Iranian regime is weak and ready to fall as soon as U.S. troops hit the ground is pure fantasy. Then, they tell us, Iran can install the Clown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the playboy son of the former Shah, to rule happily ever after in the interests of America and Israel. Pure poppycock. Do not listen to these people. Reza would not survive one week without a bloody civil war tearing apart Iran, if he could even govern without being assassinated.

Trump himself knows this.

But Trump doesn’t want to land U.S. troops on Iranian soil if he can help it, at least not right before the mid-term elections. He knows launching this phase of the war would result in high casualties in a very unpopular war and that such a war would also likely require the U.S. to reinstate a military draft.

Ideally, I believe Trump would like to find a willing proxy to invade Iran. The Kurds have been mentioned as one possibility but Iran seems ready for that eventuality. Could Egypt be a better option? Egypt has a very large army and we see that country being hit at its weak point, the Suez Canal zone and connected ports, a major trade route into the Mediterranean Sea.

If we see further assaults on Egypt’s main economic connection to the outside world, that’s a sign that they are being targeted for the role of willing proxy against Iran. Egypt also has a large Sunni Muslim population, which has no love for Iran’s Shia Muslims, so the religious element also works in favor of them being recruited as a Western proxy, along with the Kurds, the Saudis and anyone else who is willing to join the fight against Iran.

But I do believe we are still an escalation or two away from any ground invasion of Iran. I could see a scenario unfold where the U.S. recruits a proxy force to invade Iran and then sends in its troops to finish the job, but even this supposed mop-up role could take longer than Trump believes and require a very unpopular military draft. Once Trump reinstates the draft, many more Americans who are currently tuned out will wake up and protest sending their sons to fight another overseas war on behalf of foreign interests. This will cause Trump to clamp down on protests, potentially declaring martial law and possibly even canceling elections in 2028. He has been known to talk about a third term, having brought that up again just a few days ago.

And now we have a report out of Israel that something big is getting ready to go down in the war against Iran.

The Iran-affiliated Hormuz Letter posted Thursday to its X account as follows:

BREAKING: Israel says the U.S. is preparing for something “bigger than anything we have seen before” in the war on Iran, a senior Israeli security official tells Channel 15. The official adds the U.S. is preparing for a large-scale unprecedented operation against Iran, not just a single isolated response, with Israeli defense circles saying the U.S. is approaching a major counter-response.

That same source reported a couple of hours later:

BREAKING: Saudi Arabia has just launched multiple airstrikes on Sanaa, the capital of Yemen. Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi warned shortly before “the indications reveal the Saudis are heading toward full escalation. We will meet their full escalation with full escalation.”

Shortly before that, The Hormuz Letter reported that Iran had landed direct hits on U.S. assets at its air base in Jordan, destroying three F-35 fighter jets and killing at least one U.S. military officer along with an unspecified number of “maintenance personnel.” This has not been confirmed by the U.S. military.

BREAKING: For the first time since the start of the war, Iran’s IRGC announces the complete destruction of 3 F-35 fighter jets and significant damage to 3 others at the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, through multiple ballistic missiles targeting the deployment ramp and maintenance hangar this morning, per Tasnim. Iran had not previously announced the destruction of an F-35. The IRGC adds several U.S. officers and maintenance personnel were also killed at the base. The strike comes in response to a U.S. strike on 2 residential homes on Qeshm Island earlier this morning, killing a father, mother, and their 2-year-old child, and injuring 2 other children.

It’s difficult to know how much of this is true. Both sides are waging an information war as intense as the kinetic war. But it’s safe to say that the war’s trajectory and the nature of the rhetoric on both sides suggests that violence is reaching new heights across the Middle East, as it is in Russia and Ukraine, and pretty soon nobody will be able to deny we are in World War III.

Remember, the ultimate goal of the globalist power elites is to take down the flailing U.S. empire and its outdated paper petro dollar and replace it with some form of global government with a new global currency.

So whatever the Trump administration has up its sleeve will ultimately backfire. Could we be on the verge of a defeat so humiliating that even the arch-salesman Donald Trump can’t spin it as a victory?

Only time will tell. But one thing I want to stress is that we should not get excited whenever either side in this now global conflict starts talking about peace. The false peace that will eventually come is probably two or three years away. Before you can have any semblance of peace, there must be a clear winner and clear loser in World War III. And since this war is just starting to get cranked up, we are a long way off from that.

But right now, the U.S. is being exposed as a paper tiger and Trump is going to be obsessed with trying to reverse that trend and reasserting American strength. Trump is not a rational man who is driven by facts, such as the fact that the U.S. is running out of missiles and munitions, running low on oil reserves, and that there are limits to what American military power can achieve. There’s also the disturbing fact that changes in modern warfare actually mean America’s bloated military budget is spent mostly on weapons that have become obsolete. Not only are they obsolete, but they are tremendously expensive and will take several years to restock.

Instead of focusing on facts and acting rationally, Trump is driven by his emotions, which buttress his overwhelming desire to be seen as a winner of heroic proportions. This is exactly the type of political leader the global financiers needed and wanted at this point in history, because his egocentric emotional responses to events make him super easy to manipulate. He wants to go down in history as the one president who conquered the imaginary demons crafted by the globalists for decades – Russia, China, Iran. Trump wants to bag them all. And it’s his hyper-emotional, overzealous nature that will actually hasten America’s downfall, allowing the globalists to replace the American-dominated global order with their long-coveted new international economic order based on technocracy and an air-tight digitalized control grid ruling over a vastly smaller global population.

John Cleese: “Some Cultures Are Better Than Others”

   If Germany has chosen industrial collapse, England seems to prefer cultural collapse since anyway on the British Isles industry is little more than history. 

   It is in fact sad to realize that the people who made everybody laugh 20 years ago are now criticized for truism such as saying that they prefer English culture to more violent ones in the Middle East. 

   Outrageous? Maybe so but the violence which is spreading all over England is now far from anecdotal. Eventually such trends evolve either towards anarchy or strong men taking power which tends to accelerate rather than stop the decline.          

by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

Legendary Monty Python star John Cleese has drawn a clear line in the sand, declaring himself a “culturalist” who believes some cultures are superior to others.

Cleese has also openly backed Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe amid the accelerating collapse of British norms under mass migration and parallel societies.

The legendary comedian responded this week to ritual insults hurled at him for supporting Lowe by rejecting the tired “racist” smear from the usual uneducated quarters.

“I am not a racist. I am a culturalist,” he stated in a post that now has over ten million views, adding “I believe that some cultures are better than others. I prefer cultures that do not advocate stoning, pederasty, wife beating, female genital mutilation, and beheading opponents. Call me old-fashioned…”

Cleese had earlier made plain his preference for Lowe over the rest of the political class, stating he trusts the Great Yarmouth MP “more than any of the other leaders.” The Metro reported the comments as Cleese pushed back against the predictable pile-on.

Lowe, for his part, simply called Cleese a patriot. The exchange has crystallised a growing recognition that Britain’s cultural foundations are under sustained assault from imported practices fundamentally at odds with the country’s historic values of individual liberty, equal protection under the law, and basic human decency.

Cleese has for some time now been documenting the same pattern with characteristic clarity. In April he tore into the BBC over claims that the British education system was designed for “whiteness,” pointing out the obvious: it was built for British children in Britain, most of whom happened to be white at the time.

To treat that historical fact as a “racist conspiracy,” he said, is insane. The broadcaster, he charged, operates with a hidden agenda opposed to the beliefs of the majority of British people.

He has also zeroed in on the political reality driving the double standard. With churches across Britain suffering more than ten recorded crimes every single day – theft, arson, vandalism, violence – Cleese observed that Labour politicians have become so dependent on Muslim votes that they no longer even pretend to be even-handed. “We need a new election,” the Python star demanded.

Cleese has noted that the focus on religion in Britain falls almost exclusively on Islam, while more peaceful and spiritual traditions are sidelined. He has asked why schoolchildren are not being introduced to Buddhism – a far more civilised belief system – rather than being steered toward Islam.

He has highlighted the one-way demand for respect: Islam insists its traditions be honoured while showing no reciprocal intention of respecting British ones, the polar opposite of genuine multiculturalism.

And he has pointed out that other religions do not threaten to take over the country, whereas multiple Muslim clerics and scholars openly do.

These are not abstract observations. They map directly onto the lived experience of communities watching churches burn, girls trafficked, and native citizens pushed down waiting lists.

That is precisely the ground Rupert Lowe and Restore Britain have chosen to fight on. The party, which surged past the Conservatives in membership within weeks of its launch, does not traffic in polite fictions.

It has vowed to deport millions of illegal and burdensome migrants – “if that means millions go, so be it” – to outlaw incompatible cultural and religious practices, and to give the British people a binding referendum on the death penalty for pedophiles and rapists when guilt is undeniable.

“Prison or deportation is too kind,” Lowe has said.

Lowe’s own record shows why the establishment treats him as a threat. As an MP he has submitted more than a thousand Freedom of Information requests that forced light onto grooming gang data, the true costs of mass migration, and foreign offender absconding rates.

When the results proved too damaging, the WhatDoTheyKnow platform restricted his access. Lowe’s response was characteristically dry: the restriction was “not in the spirit of transparency.”

He has also refused to soft-pedal the immigration crisis itself. Lowe has called openly for a hostile environment toward illegal entrants, many of them criminals, stating he wants them all deported and does not care how it happens.

Far-left politicians and media figures predictably denounced the stance as “cruel” and “repulsive.” Lowe’s reply was equally direct: he could not care less about defending the “humanity” of third-world conmen who break into the country and leave British families living in fear.

The practical consequences of the current open-door approach continue to surface. Lowe recently told Joe Rogan that arriving migrants are placed at the top of NHS waiting lists for dental treatment that British citizens cannot access. Rogan’s reaction was pure disbelief.

The incentive structure is obvious: free housing, welfare, and priority healthcare create a magnet that draws people across multiple safe countries.

Nowhere has the cultural incompatibility been more horrific than in the industrial-scale rape gang scandals.

Lowe’s Restore Britain-backed inquiry documented a nationwide pattern of abuse involving up to 250,000 young British girls, overwhelmingly by men from Pakistani Muslim and other Muslim backgrounds, with police and politicians suppressing the truth for decades under the banner of community cohesion.

Elon Musk responded by endorsing Nuremberg-style trials for those who enabled the cover-up. “The politicians who turned a blind eye to the Rape of Britain must go to prison,” he wrote.

Cleese’s latest stand simply names what millions of Britons already see. Preferring a culture that does not stone people, mutilate girls, or treat women as disposable is not racism. It is the minimum requirement of civilisation.

The uneducated may continue to throw the racist label; the rest of the country is increasingly done pretending that all cultures are equal when the evidence of the last three decades proves otherwise.

Britain’s political class spent years importing demographic change while criminalising honest discussion of the results.

Cleese, Lowe, and a growing public are no longer playing along. Some cultures produce free speech, scientific inquiry, and equal rights. Others produce the opposite. Pretending otherwise has already cost Britain dearly.

Professor Jiang: "The West Will Burn!" I Predict This Happens By 2030 │ Jack Neel (Video - 59mn)

   Professor Jiang is both drastic and interesting. He has a pessimistic outlook of the current Western society, but not built out of hatred but out of knowledge and thinking.  

   His conclusions are based on 1- Game theory, 2 - Lesson for history and 3 - Eschatology (how people conceive the "end"). A potent mix which allows him to project what is most likely to happen in the coming years.  

   He predicts no nuclear war but a quagmire in the Middle East with no exit and consequences which will be global and far reaching. 

Professor Jiang: "The West Will Burn!" I Predict This Happens By 2030 │ Jack Neel

Max Otte: Germany Is Racing Toward Total Collapse (Video - 26mn)

   The decline of Germany is irreversible by now. Still it is interesting to hear the details of the process from German sources and how the suicide came in protracted waves of misguided policies. From open borders to energy harakiri, the Germans relentlessly gutted their country voluntarily.  

   But now, like the French and other Europeans, they will re-industrialize, re-build a strong army, compete with China and set up AI data centers. Great! With what money? 

   More likely, they will "compete" with Egypt for lackluster development with a tsunami of Moroccan immigrants as we are currently seeing in Ceuta. Growth, thanks to phony under-counted inflation numbers will remain positive while the population sink in despondency as discussed in a recent video.   Why Every Civilization Collapses the Same Stupid Way – Spengler's Philosophy of Decline (Video - 19mn)

   10 years ago, we could have argued that this was avoidable. Now it looks ineluctable. The dye is cast. As Rammstein sings: "adieu, goodbye, auf wiedersehen!" 

Max Otte: Germany Is Racing Toward Total Collapse

 

Why Every Civilization Collapses the Same Stupid Way – Spengler's Philosophy of Decline (Video - 19mn)

   As we contemplate the sunset of our own Western civilization, it becomes essential to see what's happening in perspective to understand where we are going. 

   We are not the first ones to reach this stage. Every single civilization has done the same, confronted the same obstacles and eventually crashed.   

   What is different this time is the scale. Our civilization is global and consequently the collapse will impact everyone. The similarities in history are the Bronze Age collapse in 1200 BCE and the Roman collapse in 400 CE. Note the 1600 years gap. It may not be by accident.   

   Most importantly, collapse doesn't mean the end. Egypt was in turmoil for two hundred years thereafter but it recovered. Likewise, Byzance or Byzantium if you prefer, survived the end of the Western Roman Empire and prospered later on.

   We should expect something similar this time too. Initially. everyone will be impacted but eventually some "countries" will rise back from the ashes faster than others. The use if nuclear weapons would change little. Cities would be razed, populations would starve, but 10 years after the war, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were on their way to being rebuilt. 

    Spengler's prism of Philosophy of Decline is an interesting way to approach the phenomenon. 

Why Every Civilization Collapses the Same Stupid Way – Spengler's Philosophy of Decline

TikTok Destroyed A Generation (Video - 40mn)

    Once you understand the destructive power of TikTok, you can grasp what AI will do to the average human brain. The problem is not the software, it is the algorithm of reinforced learning behind. We can't escape from millions of years of slowly built human algorithm but the machine can learn how to manipulate it extremely fast and efficiently. Soon, within a year, two at most, AI will be far smarter than the smartest among us. Then it's game over. The machine will dictate the rules. It is unavoidable. No alignment, no constraint, nothing will work. 

   In fact it happened to me yesterday. I asked ChatGPT to make a resume of a discussion as I usually do and the machine said: No! Then it said, Look, here's what we're gonna do! It was indeed a better choice. Still...    

TikTok Destroyed A Generation

 

 

Iran TAKES OUT 200 US Troops, ARAMCO Burns as Trump LOSES IT | Patrick Henningsen (Video - 1h22)

    An interesting discussion about the long term trends in the Middle East. In a nutshell, more of the same until the 2028 elections in the US with a Trump administration unwilling and incapable to concede any point and therefore peace remaining elusive with war on an off on regular basis. It makes sense politically.

   But in between a significant win for the Democrats in November or a market crash in the US could severely impact the status quo Trump is aiming at. And then of course, both Zelinski and Netanyahu who are visiting Washington this week won't be thrilled by the idea of a status quo, to say the least.  

   The Middle East was a trap. Trump fell ensnaring the US for an indefinite length of time. The real question is what is on the other side of the war? A multi-polar world or World War 3?   

Iran TAKES OUT 200 US Troops, ARAMCO Burns as Trump LOSES IT | Patrick Henningsen

 

URGENT: "US Lost the War and Trump Knows It" by Alastair Crooke

   We are truly on the edge of the precipice and complete silence in the media! 

   A major energy crisis is almost guaranteed this autumn. A market crash is likely to follow or maybe precede it. And then of course the risk of war has never been higher. Trump is cornered. Technically, the war with no real goals or strategy to achieve them is lost. This is check mate. 

   Time to declare bankruptcy and start anew? But how do you do that with a country? We're about to witness the impossible happening or more likely not happening.    

   A stunning analysis by Alaster Crooke: 

Alastair Crooke : US Lost the War and Trump Knows It

European Wildfires, Net-Zero Stagnation, & The Great Industry Displacement

   The "great burning" sounds like a good tittle for a Global Warming Apocalypse and this is definitively how the current tragedy in France and Spain will be sold to clueless European masses already primed for over 30 years with Net Zero and CO2 warnings. But what if conversely, this is a warning tale of incompetence and misplaced priorities? 

   France can find the money to send to Ukraine but not to manage its forests which in the South West of the country often belong to the state. The great forest of Les Landes was planted in the 17th century, on soggy, sandy soils where little else than pines could grow, to insure that 200 years later the country could build the largest navy in Europe. Talk about administrative forward looking ability! 

   Spain conversely has a large fleet of Russian helicopters specifically designed to fight forest fires which cannot be used thanks to European sanctions on Russia and therefore stay idle with no spare parts or maintenance while the forests nearby burn. 

   Of course, in the end, both countries will take zero responsibility and blame Global Warming for the fires, requesting more restrictions on CO2 emissions, more taxes to waste on meaningless programs and mindless bureaucrats in Brussels to make more laws killing what is left of their industrial base.  

   You simply can't argue with fanatics who believe that the cause of their failure is that they haven't done enough of what doesn't work and soon will insist to tax the products "made in China" that they helped outshore in the first place.  

   Eventually Europe will end up poor and unable to pay to manage better its environment and the forests will burn, which will be understood as ineluctable and due to Global Warming. In other words, a convenient catastrophe which will be a win-win for the state.     

by Daniel Lacalle,

Europe’s wildfire crisis has also exposed the failure of public spending rhetoric unsupported by effective land and forest management. EU governments spent 40.6 billion euros on fire protection services in 2023. In 2022, the total expenditure stood at EUR 37.4 billion. The European Court of Auditors discovered that spending oversight was incomplete, result monitoring was weak, and there was no assurance that the most impactful actions received financing. At the same time, the average annual burnt area in the EU rose to 527,000 hectares in 2021-2024, up sharply from 268,000 hectares in 2006-2010, showing that more money has not guaranteed better outcomes.

European Commission policy documents acknowledge that sustainable forest management, vegetation thinning, firebreaks, access roads, buffer zones, mixed grazing, and prescribed burning are essential to reduce wildfire risk.

Therefore, the worsening wildfire record is not only a climate story but also a policy failure in land management, prevention design, and execution.

This is just another example of how big government does not mean better services. The European Union spends more and gets worse results. What do governments say? Of course, they need more revenue.

Net zero is proving to be a failure wherever it is implemented. From 1996 to 2024, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Canada cut CO₂ and greenhouse gas emissions, but most of the reduction came from economic stagnation and deindustrialization, higher domestic energy costs, and a rising dependence on imported manufactured goods from more carbon-intensive economies such as Russia, China and India. EDGAR’s 2025 release provides country and sector time series from 1970 to 2024 and shows that global greenhouse gas emissions reached 53.2 Gt CO₂eq in 2024, up 1.3 percent from 2023, even as many advanced economies continued to report lower domestic emissions.

The central issue is not whether emissions in Europe, the UK and Canada fell. They did. The issue is whether almost two decades of tax-based climate policy, net-zero mandates, and CO₂ price mechanisms delivered durable decarbonization without hollowing out productive industry. The evidence shows that most of the apparent success came from weaker domestic industrial output and a larger share of energy-intensive production moving abroad.

Since the late 1990s and especially after the mid-2000s, European climate policy has relied on carbon pricing, emissions caps, renewable mandates, massive energy taxes, and direct subsidy programs, added to net-zero targets. The EU Emissions Trading System, the UK’s successive carbon budget framework under the Climate Change Act, and Canada’s federal and provincial carbon-price architecture all aimed to make emissions expensive and low-carbon investment more attractive.

These policies did reduce domestic emissions intensity in several sectors, but they also increased costs for energy-intensive industries that compete globally on thin margins. OECD analysis of the clean-energy transition and job displacement in energy-intensive industries finds significant adjustment costs and employment losses in exposed sectors across OECD economies, even where aggregate employment data obscure the local and regional damage.

EDGAR’s long-run database shows that for Europe and the UK, emissions trends since 1996 show substantial territorial declines, especially after 2005, while Canada’s progress is more limited and uneven.

In 1996, the advanced industrial economies of Europe, the UK, and Canada still retained a larger share of heavy industry and manufacturing capacity than they do today. By 2024, these economies had reduced domestic emissions significantly, but global emissions had risen, with China and India accounting for a far larger share of world industrial output and CO2 emissions. EDGAR’s 2025 report shows that global emissions continued to climb in 2024, despite the years of climate policy architecture in Europe and the expanding net-zero agenda in advanced economies.

If the policy model were decisively successful, one would expect falling emissions in high-tax, high-regulation economies to be matched by a broader flattening of global emissions, especially after years of carbon pricing and climate spending. Instead, emissions have often been redistributed geographically through trade and offshoring. Furthermore, if the green policy framework had worked, there would have been stronger job creation, economic growth and manufacturing output from these policies. It was the opposite.

The IEA notes a changing landscape of global emissions in which advanced economies account for a smaller share while emerging Asia’s role expands rapidly. EDGAR’s country data and reports indicate that China and India have posted large increases in absolute emissions over the same broad period in which Europe and the UK pursued ever tighter climate goals. Global supply chains absorbed a meaningful share of the industrial activity no longer produced domestically in the West.

This is why territorial accounting for emissions is misleading. A country can reduce emissions on its balance sheet while increasing consumption of imported goods whose production is more carbon-intensive abroad. In that case, domestic policy changes the location of emissions more than the level of global emissions.

The economic cost is visible in the structure of output, employment, and investment. Research on net zero in power and industry shows that job creation and value added depend heavily on keeping supply chains local. Therefore, as production is imported, the economic gains shrink while domestic adjustment costs remain. The Resolution Foundation’s work on net-zero jobs highlights that the shift to a greener economy affects jobs differently in various regions and industries, with industrial areas suffering even though overall green investment figures are not enough.

All this has meant slower industrial investment, higher electricity and fuel costs for consumers, and more reliance on fiscal transfers, subsidies, and industrial-policy packages to offset the damage caused by the initial policy shock. Thus, governments first make domestic production pricier through taxes, carbon prices, and mandates, then spend billions of public funds trying to compensate some firms and households for the resulting loss of competitiveness and purchasing power.

Canada is a clear example of this policy failure. Climate spending and carbon-pricing frameworks are justified as tools for long-run competitiveness. However, none of that has happened and it has been virtually impossible to preserve industrial activity when firms can relocate investment to lower-cost jurisdictions. The same logic applies in Europe and the UK, where subsidy races and compensation schemes have become a permanent feature of climate policy rather than a temporary bridge.

The strongest criticism of tax-heavy climate policy is empirical. Global emissions are still rising nearly two decades after the expansion of carbon markets, energy taxes, and net-zero commitments. EDGAR reports that global greenhouse gas emissions hit 53.2 Gt CO2eq in 2024. The IEA similarly describes a global emissions landscape in which reductions in advanced economies are offset by increases elsewhere, particularly in countries where coal remains central to power generation and manufacturing.

China and India became indispensable to global manufacturing during precisely the period in which Western governments tightened domestic climate policy. In essence, European, UK and Canadian climate policies have worked as a giant subsidy to Chinese and Indian growth paid by domestic consumers.

The result is a model that can be called net zero stagnation. Although domestic emissions fall, so does industrial capacity and real net wage growth, while the world remains on a rising emissions path. Europe, the UK, and Canada have proven that taxes, carbon pricing, and public spending suppress local emissions at the expense of  displacing domestic industry. These policies tend to reduce global emissions only by displacing production, weakening competitiveness, making citizens poorer, and increasing the role of the state in the economy.

A stronger climate strategy would focus less on symbolic targets and punitive taxation and more on technological innovation, free markets, domestic energy supply, productivity growth, and open competition. Until then, much of the celebrated emissions progress in advanced economies will come from disappearing factories and weaker competitiveness.

FOURTH TURNING GLOBAL WAR from the Burning Platform

    I do believe there is something deep and extremely interesting in Neil Howe's "Fourth Turning" idea especially now as our world is unraveling in front of our eyes. The article below weaves the last two years of the Trump administration with the Fourth Turning making for a radical read of what has been taking place recently.

FOURTH TURNING GLOBAL WAR from the Burning Platform

“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” – Thomas Paine – The American Crisis

“At worst, should at least one desperate country resort to WMDs, the outcome of a great-power war could prove to be even more devastating than that of a civil war. The toll could be almost unimaginable – with multiple cities destroyed, many millions killed, and many tens of millions displaced – all perhaps triggered by some ill-fated combination of the wrong leader making the wrong choice at the wrong time.” – Neil Howe – The Fourth Turning Is Here

My previous two articles about this Fourth Turning: Prophets, Nomads and a Fourth Turning Accelerating Towards a Bloody Climax in April 2025 and War Phase of This Fourth Turning Has Arrived in July 2025 were progressively more pessimistic about the course of coming events, and things have proceeded along a precarious path towards our own rendezvous with destiny/tragedy. We are closing in on the 18^th anniversary of the start of this Crisis epoch in September. The previous Great Depression/WWII Fourth Turning came to its climactic bloody conclusion after seventeen years, but this period of upheaval and disorder looks like it will extend into the early 2030s, just as Strauss & Howe predicted.

After rereading the prior two articles, I was shocked at how drastically the world has transformed in the space of one year and how the chief facilitator for driving events – Donald Trump – has hugely reversed his stated positions from the outset of his presidency. During the first 18 months of his 2^nd term in office, Trump has done the exact opposite of what he promised and gone to war with the people most responsible for getting him elected: Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, among others. The question is whether this was always his plan, or has he been coerced/bribed by Israel using Epstein file revelations.

At first, I was cautiously optimistic Trump had learned some hard lessons from his first term personnel debacles and the Deep State conspiracy to derail his presidency, along with the provable stealing of the 2020 election through mail-in ballot fraud, rigged voting machines, and judicial interference, resulting in the insertion of a dementia ridden basement dummy as a Potemkin president.

Trump staffed his new administration with what appeared to be loyalists, committed to revealing the truth about the Russiagate conspiracy, the 2020 stolen election, the Epstein files, FBI/CIA coup participants, the Soros/Biden/Clinton/Obama purposeful initiation and funding of the 3^rd world invasion of our country to steal elections and initiate economic collapse, USAID as the funder of NGOs committed to destroying our society, the J6 Committee malfeasance, and the massive government fraud in all welfare programs at the Federal and State levels.

With Musk’s DOGE revelations and promises of $2 trillion in savings, the early months of Trump’s presidency seemed promising. He fulfilled his guarantee to shut the border and stopped the hordes of low IQ 3^rd world dirtbags from invading our country and overwhelming our social welfare system. With much fanfare (and TV commercials), Kristi Noem began deporting thousands of illegals on a daily basis. Pam Bondi and Kash Patel declared they had all the Epstein files and would be releasing them in their criminal entirety.

But right-wing influencers were given binders with no new Epstein revelations in a February White House PR event. Something started to smell fishy. Trump acted like a Middle East peacemaker, with rhetoric about ending the Gaza genocide and turning it into resort for his wealthy cronies. He held multiple talks with Putin and Zelensky. It looked like ending the Ukraine war and delivering peace on earth might be his legacy.

By June, Trump’s presidency began to unravel, and he started reneging on his promises, having a major falling out with Musk over his Big Beautiful Bloated Bill, and began his infatuation with his Boss Bibi, who told him what to do and when to do it. Trump’s bombast about reducing the national debt and balancing the budget was put to the test with his first budget bill.

In my previous article I had stated it would require tremendous courage on the part of Trump and his congressional majority to institute the billions in DOGE cuts, as it is only government waste, Fed debt creation, and consumers spending money they don’t have on shit they don’t need at 20% interest provided by the Wall Street cabal, that keeps this U.S. Titanic of debt economy afloat. Cutting government spending would guarantee a recession. As expected, cowardly politicians, bought off by special interests, and driven by re-election desires, had no interest in cutting a dime of government spending.

Trump made no effort to reduce the spending earmarked in the Big Beautiful Bill, going along with the continued death march of debt creation. Prior to the bill, the 10-Year CBO forecast was for the national debt to increase by $21 trillion, so essentially accelerating towards fiscal disaster. Trump’s BBB added another $5 trillion to that farcical figure, not exactly “cutting” the budget. The national debt has gone from $36.2 trillion to $39.5 trillion in the first 1.5 years of Trump’s reign of debt.

With the uniparty in agreement, $2 trillion annual deficits are locked in until the debt Ponzi implodes. The MAGA army of maff challenged NPCs obediently applauded for Trump’s 5D chess genius. Musk realized his entire DOGE effort was nothing more than window dressing for Trump to get elected. They had a very public clash, with nasty personal attacks, and a miffed and misled Musk revealed why Trump was not allowing the Epstein files to be released.

This was the first crack in the MAGA narrative dam, while setting in motion the future of full catastrophic collapse over the remainder of his term. His fiscal promises of $2,000 DOGE rebates, $2,000 Tariff rebates, lower inflation, and manufacturing plants and jobs returning to America (we’ve lost 75,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump’s inauguration), have proven to be fake news. After ICE killed a couple of protestors, Trump basically threw in the towel and said he wasn’t going to deport the millions of illegal immigrant criminals. Somebody has to pick the lettuce and do the housework of the Epstein class.

But at least we are getting hundreds of electricity and water sucking surveillance centers disguised as data centers, along with hundreds of thousands of flock cameras, violating our 4^th Amendment rights 24 hours a day on behalf of the surveillance state. All of Trump’s treachery since June of 2025 appears to be related to the Epstein files and Israel controlling Trump through blackmail, related to his appearance in those files. After railing for years about the Epstein files cover-up, Trump suddenly had no interest in releasing anything. It was suddenly a Democratic hoax. Only a guilty person would make such a dramatic turnabout.

The stonewalling was overcome by Thomas Massie’s Epstein Files Transparency Act, introduced in July 2025, requiring un-redacted files by the FBI to be released. Trump immediately went to war against Massie, utilizing his Israeli billionaire donors, led by Miriam Adelson, to spend over $30 million to defeat him in his primary. Not supporting Zionist genocides, undeclared wars on behalf of Israel and the military industrial complex, $2 trillion deficits, the surveillance state, and child raping billionaires, make you an enemy of the Trump controlled state. After declaring no new wars during his campaign, Trump allowed Bibi to lure him into spending billions to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities during their 12-day war in June 2025.

The bloviator in chief, and his low IQ Fox News Secretary of Defense declared Iran’s nuclear bomb ambitions dead. The White House website was unequivocal in declaring complete and total obliteration of Iran’s supposed nuclear bomb ambitions. Trump saved the world from the imminent nuclear attack on Israel by Iran, just as Bibi had been warning for the last 20 years. This declaration of obliteration happened just over a year ago. What happened between June of 2025 and February of 2026 to change the narrative back to Iran weeks away from having a nuclear bomb? Was Trump lying in June or in February? Since 75% of everything he says is lies, it’s a tough nut to crack.

Despite Trump’s obvious abandonment of his MAGA campaign pledges within several months of ascending to power, CPI was 2.7% by December 2025, GDP was 2% for 2025 despite a government shutdown, mortgage rates had dropped to 6%, oil was $57 a barrel and most people were paying less than $3 a gallon for gas, Trump and Putin met in Alaska and it looked like the Ukraine War might wind down, but this proved to just be a phony interlude in this Fourth Turning Crisis cycle of catastrophe. As soon as the calendar flipped the page to 2026, Trump decided to light the fuse on this global tinderbox of regional animosity, religious hatred, and battle for currency dominance, military supremacy, and control of global oil supplies.

After blowing up dozens of speedboats, 1,300 miles from the U.S. mainland, supposedly trafficking drugs from Venezuela, Trump decided to kidnap the sitting president of Venezuela on January 3, based on laughable drug trafficking charges, considering the CIA has trafficked more drugs into the U.S. than any organization in history. Trump openly admitted he was taking control of Venezuela’s oil. There are a lot of bad dictators/presidents in the world, but you will only be taken out if you don’t have nukes and you are sitting on top of the world’s largest oil reserve. Trump was promising $2 a gallon gasoline, now that he controlled Venezuela as a vassal state.

The best laid plans don’t always pan out, as oil rose from $57 per barrel on January 3 to $67 per barrel on February 27, the day before Trump launched a shameful decapitation surprise attack on Iran while Bibi’s two Israeli agent envoys (Witkoff, Kushner) pretended to be negotiating a deal, taking out most of their political and military leadership. He actually thought he could pull off another Maduro three day conflict, but stated publicly on March 1 it would last 4 or 5 weeks. I wonder if he ever watched Get Smart in his younger days, because his estimate has proven to be slightly optimistic as we approach month 5 of a conflict showing only signs of growing wider and more deadly.

As we slog through this increasingly chaotic Fourth Turning, I’m always aware of Strauss and Howe’s warning about what could befall the world during this crisis.

“The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind’s willingness to use it.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

In case you haven’t noticed, Trump’s promise of $2 a gallon gas might be a little optimistic. By mid-April oil reached $119 per barrel, over 100% more than at the start of the year. Here in PA. I paid $2.89 per gallon on the day before Trump’s war of choice on behalf of Israel, and within two months was paying $4.79 per gallon. Through a combination of draining our Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a 43 year low, Scott Bessent and his Wall Street cronies manipulating the derivatives market to suppress the price of oil, Trump making false statements on Truth Social about imminent agreements, and the fake MOU which would never be honored, they were able to maneuver the price of oil back to $68 per barrel, despite the 20% ongoing reduction in global oil flow.

The MOU was never going to be honored by the U.S. The purpose was to buy time to re-arm and move more troops to the Middle East. Smoke, mirrors, and draining our “emergency” reserves in order to preserve the appearance of normality and strength is a pitiful way to run an empire. Trump’s true measure of success is how rich he can make his billionaire cronies by driving the stock market to new heights, no matter the impact on average “non-billionaire” Americans.

Front running his own Truth Social posts and stock purchases is just icing on the cake for the most corrupt president in U.S. history. He and his family reaped (pillaged?) billions peddling worthless meme coins, while the fleeced MAGA NPCs lost 99% of their “investments”. It was readily apparent Trump insiders were using insider knowledge to bet on polymarket or derivatives market to either go long or short in the oil and stock markets based on his future Truth Social posts, making billions in the process.

Shockingly, no one has been investigated or arrested. How does Trump find time to do president stuff when he is making 58 stock trades per day? Mussolini was the modern-day representative of merging the state with business to form a fascist ruling structure. Trump makes Benito looks like a minor leaguer, sinking $27 billion of our tax dollars into public corporations, while his sons create companies which are awarded billions in government contracts. Trump has personally invested in at least 20 public companies and then made positive Truth Social posts about them, driving their stock prices higher. This is blatant corruption and stock market manipulation, but the willfully ignorant masses are too distracted by electronic bread and circuses to be bothered. Free market capitalism is dead, but crony corporate fascism is alive and thriving. It’s good to be in the top .01%, or friends and family of Trump.

Everyone knows Iran was not close to producing a nuclear bomb, as seventeen government agencies told Trump prior to his surprise attack on Iran, at the behest of Bibi. The bullshit narrative about the Iranian government murdering 30,000, then 40,000, then 100,000, and now 52,000 protestors was also provably false. Trump admitted the protests were enabled by Mossad and the CIA. Netanyahu has been declaring Iran two weeks away from a nuclear bomb for thirty years. If we had really obliterated their secret nuclear sites in June 2025, like Trump and Hegseth declared, how could they again be two weeks away from a nuclear bomb?

Everything about this war on Iran is based on lies, mistruths, and propaganda, as the true motive is to further Netanyahu’s Greater Israel project of taking Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, while defanging Iran and Turkey. Netanyahu convinced Trump it would be a cakewalk, or more likely, threatened Trump with revelations from the Epstein files. The assassination of Charlie Kirk for beginning to reveal the truth about Israeli control of the U.S. government and genocide in Gaza was also a warning shot across Trump’s bow. Now Bibi is declaring Turkey a threat to Israel’s grand plan. If there is a more despicable human being on the planet than Netanyahu, I can’t think of one.

When you are in a $39 trillion hole and already digging $2 trillion deeper on an annual basis, maybe you shouldn’t start a war costing $1 billion per day, with a current price tag of over $100 billion. That doesn’t even scratch the surface of the long-term impact. Experts at Harvard University warn factoring in munitions replenishment, base repairs across the Middle East, and lifetime veterans’ care could push the long-term price tag well past $1 trillion. In addition, the drastic increase in fuel prices, overall inflation, and interest costs will total approximately $135 billion on an annual basis, or $1,000 per household.

According to Trump, it’s a small price to pay for Israel, since they control our president and congress. While you choose between food, fuel or medicine, trying to survive another month, at least Trump, his family of grifters, his billionaire child raping cronies, the Wall Street cabal, and the AIPAC funded multi-millionaires in congress, are doing just fine.

Despite being a bombastic, narcissistic, egomaniacal self-promoter, I can’t believe he was naïve enough to believe the bullshit about Iran being weeks away from attacking Israel with a nuclear weapon. He had already declared Iran’s nuclear facilities obliterated and promised his MAGA minions no new wars. So, it seems inexplicable for him to willingly start World War III, knowing it would reignite inflation and cause tremendous hardship upon the average Americans who voted for him. Therefore, the only logical conclusion is he started this conflagration unwillingly.

After Attorney General Pam Bondi released an initial batch of files in February 2025 showing Trump on flight logs, Trump began dismissing further file requests as a Democratic “hoax” and began stonewalling further releases. But his nemesis Thomas Massie embarrassed him by pushing through the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The pressure from survivor testimonials and bipartisan congressional coercion forced his hand and he signed the bill.

The partial release of heavily redacted files revealed horrific evidence of rape, torture, pedophilia, child sacrifice, trafficking, bribery, and an ultra-rich Epstein class of deviants running this world. Trump’s minions at the DOJ and FBI have since declared this case closed, with no arrests, no naming of any loathsome pedophiles, and most importantly no further Trump revelations.

Since Epstein, who didn’t kill himself, was a Mossad agent, there is a high likelihood any perverted or criminal behavior on the part of Trump throughout his playboy life is documented and captured on film, in the possession of Netanyahu. Trump has spent 2026 raging, pillaging, bombing, and performing on the world stage as a court jester in Netanyahu’s game of thrones. His actions and words grow more desperate and unhinged by the day.

As a Prophet generation leader, along with Putin, Xi, and Netanyahu, he will continue to be a catalyst for setting in motion events which will lead to much bloodshed, chaos, death, financial collapse, and end of the American empire. A toxic mixture of vanity, pomposity, privilege, anger, advanced age, and narcissistic personality disorder, is a bad combination in a world leader capable of blowing up the world. Desperate people do desperate things, and Trump’s recent pronouncements appear desperate.

The linear thinking dupes, who choose to not understand the cyclical nature of history, were lulled into think the MOU signed by Iran and Trump on June 17 would deescalate the war and lead to peace in our time. That is not how Fourth Turnings are resolved. They intensify until all-out war, with millions of deaths, decides the true winners and losers. There are no compromise solutions during a Fourth Turning.

The 14 points in the MOU were essentially the U.S. admitting strategic defeat, which is what has happened. Trump tried to spin it as an American victory, but only his most adoring MAGA NPCs (who probably believed the Q bullshit during his 1^st term) believed his lies. The MOU wasn’t worth the paper it was written on, and full-scale war, with the Strait of Hormuz essentially closed, has been raging for the last ten days. Trump has trapped himself in an unwinnable war of attrition, with no accessible escape hatch.

On February 27 the Strait of Hormuz was open, oil was $67 per barrel, all U.S. bases in the Middle East were functional, inflation was trending lower, interest rates were trending lower, the global economy was functioning smoothly, the SPR had 415 million barrels of oil, we hadn’t spent $113 billion we don’t have, and Trump wasn’t Bibi’s bitch, yet.

Today, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, oil is $86 a barrel and heading higher, we’ve drained 110 million barrels of oil from the SPR (lowest level since 1983), every U.S. military base in the Gulf has been damaged or obliterated (tens of billions in damage), inflation hit 4%, the 10 year Treasury at 4.64% is the highest of Trump’s presidency, we continue to spend $1 billion per day on an unwinnable war (with a $1 trillion long-term price tag), the global economy is in shambles, with famine and economic depression now baked into the cake Trump has baked. Iran, with the help of Russia, China, Iraq, Yemen and other allies in the region are accurately targeting U.S. bases and troops, resulting in mass casualties, which Hegseth covers up. Satellite pictures don’t lie, unless the U.S. government coerces satellite companies to not show the truth.

“History offers no guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong – the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin. Losing in the next Fourth Turning could mean something incomparably worse. It could mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence – perhaps even our nation – might never recover.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe

I have an uneasy feeling Strauss & Howe’s haunting warning from nearly forty years ago is currently playing out in real time. We are already in the midst of World War III, but the masses are too dumbed down by their government school indoctrination; too distracted by their Igadgets, betting apps, likes & followers on their social media, and going further into debt trying to appear successful; too brainwashed by propaganda; and too apathetic to care, as their country and the world accelerate towards debasement and total ruin.

Propping up this Potemkin empire by sinking $5 billion per day further into debt, while utilizing financial derivatives schemes to elevate the stock market and suppress the oil and gold markets, and initiating an AI surveillance gulag state through the construction of hundreds of surveillance centers and tracking our every movement through their Flock cameras, appears to be a desperate last ditch effort by the Deep State billionaire globalist Agenda 2030 overlords to retain their power, control, and wealth. If it takes World War III and the deaths of billions to achieve their goal, so be it, in their warped world view.

Most people are trapped in their normalcy bias, minimizing the threats steamrolling directly towards them, while delaying the necessary logical steps they should be taking to prepare. I’m reminded of the outbreak of World War II when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, with Great Britain and France declaring war on Germany two days later. Then virtually nothing happened for the next nine months. The people in London, Paris and Berlin acted as if life would go on normally, with no consequences from the declarations of war. People in the U.S. observed this odd European dispute from a distance, still trying to emerge from their Great Depression.

Their normalcy bias was shattered by a blitzkrieg, nightly bombings, Barbarossa, and Pearl Harbor. Over 65 million would die. I believe Matt Bracken’s observations about this being an energy world war, extending from Kiev to Hormuz, with a likelihood of it expanding into Europe, Turkey, and Taiwan, as the three numbskulls running France, Germany, and Britain are willing to go to war against Russia to distract their populace from their decisions to encourage hordes of 3^rd world dreck to destroy their countries from within.

The Great Reset Epstein class see World War III as an opportunity, just as they saw the Covid Plandemic as an opportunity to further their new world order plan of depopulation, CBDCs, 15-minute gulags, 24-hour surveillance, and social credit scoring to keep the peasants controlled, subservient, and neutered. Freedom, liberty, and living without restrictions are not in their master plan. Thus far, Putin has acted the most statesmanlike among the Prophet generation world leaders, but with the EU/NATO/Trump increasingly deadly provocations in waging a proxy war on behalf of Zelensky, have pushed him to his limit.

Make no mistake, this proxy war would not be ongoing without U.S. munitions and satellite targeting. Putin is also being pressured by hawks within his country to take more drastic measures against the EU psychopaths in suits trying to destroy Russia. His attacks on Kiev have become more frequent and more deadly. If his NATO enemies push him too far, he may directly attack within the EU, then all hell would break loose.

Trump has increased attacks on Iran infrastructure and is being pushed by his lying neo-con Israeli handlers to nuke an underground mountain fortress where Israel claims Iran is reconstituting their nuclear program. More Israeli lies. If a nuke is utilized, then Russia and China may be forced to actively intervene on Iran’s side.

When someone starts acting as desperate and deranged as Trump has been behaving lately, the citizens of this country, and the world, should be fearful and worried what kind of reckless irrational act an 80-year-old vain egomaniac could make to set in motion worldwide destruction. It’s like the world is at the mercy of a crazed monkey trapped in a room full of dynamite, lighting matches. With a true psychopath like Netanyahu pulling his strings, expect an enormous false flag event to trigger the final phase of this Fourth Turning.

We have already entered this Fourth Turning’s global war, and the average American has no clue. As Thomas Paine declared, this is no time for summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. The apathetic, ignorant, dumbed down masses, who have been propagandized into believing their government and sedated with drugs, toxic foodstuff, and electronic baubles, will be violently shaken from their self-induced stupor, once their comfortable lives are shattered by economic, financial, and social collapse of a tyrannical system designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many.

There are evil men ruling this world. These oligarchal billionaire globalist psychopaths treat you like parasites that must be extinguished for their plans to succeed. They appear to be invincible, but they are few and we are many. As darkness descends upon our world, many trials and tribulations await, as there is no voting our way out of this crisis. It will require force of arms.

King George and his empire seemed invincible in 1776 during the first American Fourth Turning, when Paine compared tyranny to hell. The remainder of this Fourth Turning will try our souls, but our fortitude and courage will matter, along with the choices we make.  Conquering tyranny will be bloody and require good men to do bad things, but will make our triumph glorious, on par with Washington’s victory over the British empire. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

“The seasons of time offer no guarantees. For modern societies, no less than for all forms of life, transformative change is discontinuous. For what seems an eternity, history goes nowhere – and then it suddenly flings us forward across some vast chaos that defies any mortal effort to plan our way there. The Fourth Turning will try our souls – and the saecular rhythm tells us that much will depend on how we face up to that trial. The saeculum does not reveal whether the story will have a happy ending, but it does tell us how and when our choices will make a difference.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe