I can’t believe we’re here again. Most believe the United States is within hours of launching our own attack on Iran, if we haven’t already. It’s a catastrophic return to the evils of the Bush administration. It’s pretty clear we’ve learned nothing. Today’s video is an attempt to help people learn something. Though on a day like today, it’s hard to see why I bother.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results. After 45 solid years of Reaganite bipartisan rampaging in the direction of deregulation and “market-based solutions”, the Trump presidency can only be seen as a sort of psychopathy. To every action there is a reaction, and I believe the United States has been moving one direction for 45 years, first steadily, then psychotically. We’ve got 45 more months of Trump, but I think it’s already time to start thinking about what comes after. Not just after Trump, but after his complete discrediting of the past 45 years of political orthodoxy in the United States. I hope you enjoy my first effort at that.
I’m very worried about war with Iran. But even I am getting sick of hearing myself say it. If you ask me today, I tend to think that the Trump administration is too busy with other stuff to manage an attack on Iran. But all it takes is a single stray missile landing in one of the US’s way-too-many bases across the Middle East. The worst thing can always happen. One selfish old man, Joe Biden, inflicted a completely unnecessary second Trump term on us. Nothing that strange has to occur to drop us into our next trillion dollar war. Join us as we talk through what that might look like, and how horrifically absurd it is that it’s a real prospect.
Wow, I guess I’ve been doing this a little while. Ten years ago this month, this channel had an early success with a video entitled “3 Reasons China Will Never Rule The World”. A lot has happened over the past ten years. In a discord chat earlier this month, MFF’s social media manager Loga suggested I update that decade old video. Today’s video is my attempt to do exactly that. Am I still as skeptical of claims of Chinese power in the age of Trump? Check out today’s video to find out.
Trump won’t make peace with Russia. Simply put, he can’t. Too many of his donors, and too many of his campaign promises are riding on his amping up US oil and gas production. He can’t keep that production up if he crashes prices, and that’s what would be necessary to get peace with Russia. I got annoyed enough at these simple facts being left out of all the coverage over the past week that I went ahead and made an unproduced video on the topic.
I could see a lot of people not liking what I did with this video. It’s pretty likely that I’ll have more to say about Israel and the horrors it’s inflicting on its neighbors in the coming months. But before I dive into that, it’s important to understand why Israel is allowed, or even encouraged to be the worst version of itself possible. There are a lot of weird conspiratorial, antisemitic theories out there, that serve to exonerate Washington, DC. It’s not a Jewish plot though. It’s a very clear, very obvious strategy executed by our government. Israel may be uglier, but it’s not that different from what we’re doing in Ukraine and Taiwan. Hell, even Biden makes the connection, as I’ve pointed out in earlier videos. I think most serious geopolitics people, which is how I see my audience, acknowledge that Israel is up to something horrible. What I suspect some in the audience may resent, is my suggestion that the cause of Taiwan and Ukraine may be tainted in similar ways.
Well, I didn’t expect that to take three years! With today’s video, “How Yemen Beat Saudi Arabia” I have completed my most epic video project ever, the “Yemen vs. Empire” series. Initially planned as a trilogy, the series ballooned up to six episodes. And the episodes got longer every time. The first episode, covering the conflict with the Ottomans from the 1500s to the early 20th century, was fifteen minutes long. This final episode is 57 minutes long, well over twice as long as any other video I have ever produced. As is the case with most projects, the closer I get to the present day, the more unsettled the story is, and the more I feel compelled to include.
Throughout this series, I’ve been touched to hear from Yemenis who find the information provided unbiased, and even useful for their own understanding. I wonder if that will continue as I bring the story down to the present day, with its very live controversies? Can’t wait to find out. I am so happy to have put this whole project out into the world, and deeply grateful to the patrons who have made it possible.
Well, I was wrong, and Trump won. Joe Biden is the man most responsible for this catastrophe. It may seem a little self-indulgent, but with today’s video I’m going back to a list of suggestions I made for Biden in early 2021. Was I right about what would help stop Trump? Would it have helped if Biden had followed my suggestions? I don’t know. I won’t be charging anyone for this public working out of my own thoughts & feelings. I hope it’s watchable.
This one was fairly straightforward. It’s easy to get caught up in the roiling clusterbomb that is US foreign and domestic policy failure in 2024. But we should be paying more attention to what China is up too. On a lot of levels China is weaker looking than they have been in decades. The upward economic trajectory is slowing, and their demographics are apocalyptic. But they are still the second greatest power in the world, and they are just beginning to figure out what that can mean. And they are getting smarter. Very quickly.
These “YouTube Drama” videos are fun to produce. It sometimes seems a bit silly to be taking a 22-year old to task for his views, but the fact is that Whatifalthist is a 22-year old with a viewership of 100s of thousands. And these videos are very important for my channel. There was a recent survey on my discord server, asking how people first found my content. Most of them, the most committed members of my audience, found me through one of my critiques of other YouTubers. Here’s hoping this one does well! I don’t think I’ll be revisiting this particular creator any time soon.