America – The Hegemon in Rapid Fall – by Marc Batko, 10/11/2025

https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2025/10/12/18880650.php

Instead of investing, many corporations borrowed cheap money to buy back their own shares of stock.  Financial bubbles are created by design.  Companies looked better on paper and didn’t become stronger.  This was all illusionary growth!  The biggest asset bubble in history was inflated.  This is all clearly explained by Lena Petrova on World Affairs in Context (cf. YouTube).

America – The Hegemon in Rapid Fall 

By  Marc Batko, [marc1seed [at] yahoo.com, https://www.freetranslations.foundation], 10/10/2025

                The economy is only a part of life, not a steamroller crushing self-determination and creativity.

                “Nothing will really change,” Joe Biden told donors.

Neoliberalism, financialization, and Trumpism have brought late-stage American capitalism to the brink of madness.  The state runs away from its responsibility to feed and house its people while corporations steal away from paying fair taxes.  Trillions are shifted to tax havens like the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, Delaware, and Wyoming.  Hundreds of billions are “invested “ in stock buybacks  so companies appear viable and CEOs can enrich themselves!

Neoliberalism, money out of thin air, is an ideology full of myths and misanthropic socialization.   Dependence on the self-healing market is described as independence.   People are atomized and commodified in a fear-pandemic generated by the West.  Instead of becoming subjects, they become objects serving the market and serving the state that only serves capital.  Imagining themselves free, they are really dependent in a system of exploding inequality.  Radical transformation in enlightenment is vital after the gigantic terminations, layoffs, and plant layoffs of the Trump debacle.

Fair taxation of the rich, affordable housing, subsidized apartments, bank stability, expanded education and food security, vital components of the common good, have all been overlooked in the corporate feudalism of the 21st century.   In Trump’s 2017 tax heists, $8 trillion was given to corporations and households with over $1 million!  Unlike all previous tax bills, there were no hearings.  The doors were locked and the lobbyists ruled the discussions.

China learned from the US and didn’t steal.  In 2025, China posted a 5.4% growth rate while the US fell to minus 1.6%.  Countries like China and Japan are withdrawing  tens of billions in treasury reserves and purchasing gold as though there will be no tomorrow.   Once, the US dollar was a trusted, stable currency.  Now, beginning in 2024, is paying  over $1`trillion in interest on its $37 trillion debt.  Old debts are rolled over into new debts.  Trump demands countries pay tribute money for doing business with the US.

The New Multi-polar World

“When we call China, we get a new airport or sewage system.  When we call Germany or the US, we get a lecture,” said the Nigerian-born head of the WHO.

For 80 years since the end of World War II, the US enjoyed the “exorbitant privilege” of the dollar as the global currency.  Countries in Latin America, South America, the Caribbean and the Global South had to reduce public spending on education, health care and infrastructure to receive financial aid from the US.  Corporations could sue states but states could not sue corporations under NAFTA or the structural adjustment regime.   The clueless demagogue Trump claims the world “has always been ripping us off” and never admits the privilege of the dollar!

With an average growth rate of 7-9% (three times the average growth rate of the US), China has been “the workbench of the world,” the owner of 80% of rare minerals, and the undisputed leader in electric vehicles, computers, semi-conductors, and high-speed rall.  The world has radically changed with the arrival of China and the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Indonesia, Nigeria, Vietnam, and Venezuela.  The era of unquestioned US dominance has ended!  BRICS represents 54% of the world’s population compared to 4.4% for the US and 12% for the G7.

Trump’s draconian immigration policy has caused a massive food crisis where crops rot instead of being harvested and farmers in seven states sell their farms to investors.  Immigrants or harvesters are afraid of being seen on fields and being swept up into ICE detention centers.

Workers are laid off, manufacturing plants in Ohio, Texas, and all over the US are closed.   Companies like General Electric, Coca Cola, Ford, Boeing, John Deere, Caterpillar, Amazon, 3M, Campbell, Alcoa, and GM have moved their headquarter to Mexico, Canada, and South Korea.  Countries forge new supply chains.  Pretending to protect workers, Trump has caused mass unemployment with his punitive and irrational tariffs on the world!   With its $12 billion structuring initiative, Amazon built new distribution centers in Mexico and Vietnam in two months in 2015.

Countries reinvent themselves

Mexico and Canada are transforming and revitalizing themselves into manufacturing and industrial hubs.   Multlateralism without the US is happening all over the world.  In the first eight months of Trump’s second term, the dollar has lost 10-12% of its value.  Countries celebrate their new  independence from the US.   Thanks to BRICS and China’s strength, they can resist the dominance of the US and the dollar.

Perhaps the US will reinvent itself as the giant manufacturer of pretzels, soda cola, and paper clips!  After decades of regime change, judging other countries’ elections and structural adjustment, the US must concede weightier and more complex industries to China, Vietnam, Brazil, and India!   As in Jesus’ parable of the Great Feast, the poor, disabled, and despised received invitations after the first invitees made excuses and declined.

True liberation

In his 1980 classic “One-dimensional Man,” Herbert Marcuse warned of the narrowing and emptying of hyper-materialist and hyper-individualist America.  One-dimensional society could become a society of fear.  People must be liberated from false needs, false consciousness, and alienation, Marc use proclaimed.

In “Theology of Hope” (1980), the German Protestant theologian Jurgen Moltmann explained that humans could go beyond everything past and present in the promise of the coming.  The future must be protected and anticipated in the present, not extrapolated from the present.   Understanding Christianity as an historical and not a tribal faith, God is before us and not only above us, the infinite, inexpressible, and transcendent Creator of all things out of nothing.   Social justice and the eschatological God were the two crucial realities in secularized cultures. 

“God is not necessary but more than necessary,” said Tubingen theologian Eberhard Juengel  (cf “God as the Mystery of the World,” 1983].  The world can exist without God.  Resistance becomes the form of God when authoritarian demagogues replace reason and the rule of law with tantrums and executive orders.  Religion often becomes a form of unbelief and obliviousness, Karl Barth warned.  God was “total help for total need,” Karl Barth proclaimed in the darkness of Germany in 1933.

“God was a mighty fortress never failing, Our helper amid the mortal ills prevailing,” Martin Luther sang in the 16th century.

The world is the place or “Sitz im Leben” of the church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer emphasized.  “Only those who say a word for the Jews could sing Gregorian.”  “The language of proclamation runs crossway to the language of time.”  “We are God’s hands and feet,” Dorothee Soelle exclaimed.  Heaven is the affair or province of the angels’ the earth is our mission field, Jurgen Moltmann taught.

Jesus was the Messiah, more than a prophet or teacher.  His parables and teachings represent a cornucopia of lessons on humility and selflessness and warnings about self-righteousness, pride, and inauthenticity.  “Whoever exalts himself wlll be humbled and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”  The tax collector who only said “O God  be merciful to me a sinner!” went home justified, not the Pharisee who boasted of his virtuous life.

Mathematical truth and Esoteric truth

The esteemed film director Werner Herzog distinguished mathematical truth from ecstatic truth or truths of nature.  In his “The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser,” he urges us to question assumptions and be uncomfortable.  Raised without human contact, Kaspar ignored the difference between animate and inanimate life and thought the rolling apple obeyed its own laws!  “Can you hear the screaming men call silence?  Do you know children speak in poetry?”  So “The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser” begins in questioning our conformity and obliviousness.

In “Truth and Method” [1960], the German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer separated the human sciences (philosophy, literature, history, sociology, political science, and play) from the natural sciences.  Their methods are necessarily different as experiment differs from experience.  The natural sciences stress verifiability and predictability while the human sciences rely on inwardness.

Without the ability to read, diversity goes out the window, said Elisabeth Bronfin.  After teaching education for three decades in Europe and the US, she was most amazed by the denial of students.  We cannot see the contradictions and ambiguities in our everyday lives when we don’t see the contradictions and paradoxes in literature.

Beware of hypocrites, Jesus warned.  They see the speck in their brother’s eye, but not the log in their own eye!  They clean the outside of the cup and leave the inside filthy!  They ignore the weightier matters of the law and are even indifferent to crucified people!   Liberation theology makes the poor our teachers and the preferred hearers of the gospel.  The poor are God’s incognito.  “What you have done to the least of these, you have done to me,” Jesus said in his last admonition on the Great Judgment (Matthew 25).

Pinocchio and the Emperors’ new clothes

The Washington Post listed 30,000 lies told by Donald Trump in his first term (2016-2020).  In his 2025 speech at the United Nations, he said “the US is in a manufacturing boom” and “climate change is the biggest con in the history of the world.”!  Clinging to their xenophobia, entitlement psychosis, and trickle-down mythology, MAGA sycophants hate facts and refuse truth.   At the end of his fairy tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Hans Christian Andersen has a child cry out “But he is naked!’   Only those who praised the emperor’s invisible new clothes could be promoted!

A fear pandemic is occurring in Trump’s America as happened in Hitler’s Germany!   American culpability doesn’t disappear through obliviousness or optimization.  Trump and Hegseth assembled 800 generals and admirals in Virginia in October 2025 to lecture them on climbing stairs and maliciously claim Joe Biden fell down the stairs every day during his term.  The next day, some generals posted on social media that Trump should resign since he is incapable of performing his duties and respecting the separation of powers or basic civility.      

Beware of racists, Zionists, and fundamentalists who reject change and criticism!  Jesus set the command of love in place of unfeeling, vicious law when he condemned those stoning an adulteress and approved plucking corn on the Sabbath.  “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

Cheap grace is marked by self-righteousness, putting one’s little garden above the weightier matters of food, housing, taxation , survival and human dignity.  German Catholics and Protestants knew about concentration camps just as Americans Catholics and Protestants knew about Trump’s contempt for rule of law and destruction of language.

Bonhoeffer said Kairos time is the time of decision when the actions of the powerful undermine the gospel and necessitate disobedience.  Democracy is life and resistance is hope.  In an unjust society, telling the truth is a revolutionary act, George Orwell declared.

Christianity is about life, not doctrines, ceremonies, self-righteousness, works righteousness or defending fascists and mass murderers.  The UN Charter denounces the right of the stronger as the law of the jungle.  Peace is a risk and a venture and cannot be found on the way of security, Bonhoeffer explained.  Christianity is about challenging injustice, reversing assumptions, and healing prejudices, stereotypes and myths, defending the rights of the vulnerable, nature and coming generations.

Chaos has reigned in the US for 270 days since the rule of law and separation of powers were replaced by executive orders and one-man rule or one-man circus!  Lies, obscenities, threats and insults were all designed to consolidate power in a security or emergency state.  Trump has repeated the Hitler words – vermin, killers, and invaders.  Following the authoritarian playbook, Trump has been a scaremonger and demagogue, pretending to protect American workers while watching helplessly ad plants close and thousands of workers are laid off.

In the Big, Ugly Bill, Trump and MAGA Republicans cut Medicaid spending $1 trillion over 10 years, significantly reduced SNAP food assistance and allocated $170 billion for ICE detention camps and recruitment campaigns.  This was a repetition of Trump’s 2017 tax heists when $8 trillion was given to corporations and households with over $1 million.  According to MSNBC, Trump amassed more debt in his first term than all US presidents combined!

From hegemon to blackmailer

Trump has demanded tribute money from Europe ($750 billion + $350 billion) for the privilege of doing business with the US.  With uncertainty and punitive vindictiveness, Trump’s erratic tariffs were a spectacle.  A 50% tariff was levied on Brazilian goods including coffee as retribution for Bolsonaro’s conviction for his unlawful coup attempt.  A 50% tariff was levied on goods from India for purchasing Russian oil. A 50% tariff on steel and aluminum raised car, soft-drink and home construction costs.

From constitutional state to security/ emergency state

Trump created a fear pandemic by threatening judges, journalists, universities, law offices, demonstrators, governors, senators and representatives.  He ordered troops to Los Angeles, Washington DC. , Chicago, Memphis, and Portland to heroize himself as a peacemaker.  He conjures an emergency though no invasion or rebellion threatens!  This is all part of the authoritarian playbook: threats lead to fear and paralysis.  What a dark time for freedom of speech, due process, separation of powers and habeas corpus!

The USAID organization founded by President John F.  Kennedy employed 10,000 workers in 2024 and distributed $35 billion in food, vaccines, and life-saving medicines to the desperately poor  in Egypt, Syria, the Congo and all over the world.  Then the organization was suddenly disbanded in 2025 after billionaire Elon Musk called it a “criminal organization” and Donald Trump said it was led by “violent leftist radicals”!

Trump and Mike Johnson ordered all Republican representatives to stay away from Congress next week and enjoy a paid vacation.  Their goal as described by the 970-page Project 2025 is to destroy the US government.  They are ordering the military to destroy major (Democratic) cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Memphis, NYC, and Portland Oregon under the guise of training American troops.  Affordable housing, universal health care, taxing corporations and the super-rich, redressing the mass layoffs and plant closings and bank instability have all been completely ignored.   MAGA Republicans scapegoat immigrants harvesting crops and helping in hospitals and restaurants while massively cutting Medicaid, Veterans Assistance, housing and food assistance, and IRS workers.

Trump is Robin Hood in reverse, a pathological narcissist and sociopath, a convicted felon, pedophile, bankrupted businessman, snake-oil salesman, and a demagogue ready to lead the country off the cliff.  A federal judge appointed by Trump said deploying troops risked entering a state of martial law and was unconstitutional.  Chemical gas was inflicted on the people of Chicago while 1000 peaceful protestors were arrested.  Trump and Mike Johnson are giddy about the government shutdown and oblivious to the expiration of Obama health care subsidies at the end of 2025 on which tens of millions depend.

Millions are shocked and outraged about the crimes of overreach and neglect.  Congress is the only institution that can remove a lawless president.  The impeachment process includes a 2/3 vote in the Senate after being impeached in the House.  Donald Trump is preparing to turn this country into a military dictatorship and most people seem not to notice or not to care.

Trump’s Police State Propaganda

ICE and other federal gents conducted a violent, middle-of-the-night raid on an apartment building in Chicago – just days after Trump said the military should go after “the enemy within.”  Our tax dollars are using propaganda films.  Trump is declaring war on Venezuela and democratic cities.  Provoking a civil war seems to be his priority!  He is worried about losing the midterms and would like to intimidate voters with troops on the ground.

Trump is reallocating funds from the deportation of criminals to the deportation of foreign workers, people showing up for court cases.  He is criminalizing asylum seekers.  Trump’s tariff’s policy has been an unmitigated disaster.  He lied when he said we didn’t need Canada at all!  Thanks to all the judges, journalists, students and demonstrators who are exposing and denouncing Trump’s reign of terror!

The US economy is very close to falling into a damaging contraction and many states are already in a recession, according to economists at Moody’s Analytics.  They estimate that 22 states and the District of Columbia are now experiencing persistent economic weakness and job losses that are likely to continue.  Another 13 states are treading water including California and New York.  If either of these falter, it would tip the economy into recession, Moody analyst Mark Zandi said.  According to Zandi, the cause of the weakness is economic policy.

Work is evaporating, businesses are closing, long-time residents are leaving, and the creative class is hanging by a thread!  LA’s entertainment economy is looking like a disaster movie!

White House tariffs on imported goods have caused uncertainty, forcing companies to pull back from expansion plans and confusing supply chains.  No labor force growth in 2025 has also hurt the economy.  In addition, federal job cuts tied to the Trump administration Department of Government Efficiency formerly led by Elon Musk have pushed Washington D.C. and its surrounding states into the deepest downturn of any region.  Federal jobs ripple over to private jobs in restaurants and hotels.

Consumer spending may be strong but the job market is weaker than in the past.  You know it’s bad when the government doesn’t want to show you numbers!

The mirror is cracked.  The stock market reflects distortions of excess over decades, financial engineering, cheap money and speculation.  Finance has been turned into an alternative universe.  After the financial crash of 2008, quantitative easing and unprecedented government debts occurred.  These temporary measures became permanent.

Central banks flooded the markets with liquidity.  Trillions of dollars appeared with a few keystrokes.  New money came to financi8al institutions, hedge funds, and corporations.  Consumer inflation  and asset inflation were fueled.  The rich grow richer while the middle class is pressed out of housing unable to save and burdened with rising debt.  Instead of investing, many corporations borrowed cheap money to buy back their own shares of stock.  Financial bubbles are created by design.  Companies looked better on paper and didn’t become stronger.  This was all illusionary growth!  The biggest asset bubble in history was inflated.  This is all clearly explained by Lena Petrova on World Affairs in Context (cf. YouTube).

Markets used to be places of price discovery.  Now they are casinos where prices are set by central bankers and everyone plays because there are no alternatives.  Trust continues to erode as wealth is increasingly concentrated in a few hands.  The middle class feels squeezed out of the future while the elites grow detached from real people!  The system has become self-reinforcing and very fragile. The legitimacy of the entire system could unravel fast.  Asset inflation appears when value comes from manipulation rather than value.  This is the story of a system that has forgotten its purpose, to reward efficiency and enable human progress.  The US is eager for China’s $1 trillion as BRICS’ investments push G7 economies out.

US dollar continues to fall

The US has the most data centers (5300 out of 11,000), China has cheap skilled labor and reliable supply chains.  China has a war chest of $192 billion for semi-conductors.  China giving $1 trillion to the US is highly unlikely.  Was this Bessent’s idea?  The Japanese, Koreans, and Europeans will invest in industries at Trump’s discretion!  China will double down on investing in its own industries.  Investing in energy is vital.  Breaking away from G7 financing is critical.

BRICS is creating a $1 billion fund to invest in sectors such as energy, transition, infrastructure, mining, agriculture, and artificial intelligence.  BNDES, a Brazilian bank, will provide $400 million and China’s CEXIM will come up with $600 million for the initiative.  The new fund which will start operating in 2026 will invest in debt securities and equity stakes in Brazil.

China is going around the world and making friends, very different from Trump’s approach!

Brazil’s coffee exports to the US shrank dramatically.  One big mess after another!  When BRICS becomes the biggest consumer, that will be Game Over for US hegemony (cf. Sean Foo on YouTube).

The tariff war is one big uncoupling of US-China trade.  Bessent, Trump’s secretary of commerce, blasts China for cancelling US farmers (cf. Sean Foo, 10/3/2025).  US imports from China fell from $145 billion in 2020 to $64.8 billion in 2025.  US exports to China fell from $45 billion to $24 billion and are easily replaceable.   Who has power?  China can get oil from Russia and Malaysia.  Trump waged a trade war without a plan while China builds its domestic market.  Soybeans and wheat are produced in Russia.  Why not buy from your own BRICS friends?  Brazil soybean farmers are gaining market share.

The biggest problem for US farmers is the tariff; prices are going up.  Farmers are getting decimated.  Scolding China is very easy.  The king of the world is going to ramp up the pressure once again.  The USDA projects US farm sector debt to increase by 5% in 2025 reaching a total of $591 billion due to higher interests.

Lithium is one of the reasons China can manufacture so many electric vehicles.  China is also expected to hold 70% of global battery capacity by 2030.  The US is trying to jump on one leg!

The trade war is destroying US industry, one industry at a time.  For 80 years, the dollar ruled the world.  BRICS controls 72% of the rare earth economy (cf. Cyrus Janssen, BRICS just build the system that will replace the dollar! (October 5).  Less than 15% of the world’s population lives in the West; 85% are in the Global South.  BRICS with dominance over cobalt is the gatekeeper of the future.  In 2025, the dollar had its worst start since 1973 when the gold standard ended.

68% of BRICS trade bypasses the US dollar.  BRICS is leading the de-dollarization and has 12,500 tons of gold.  Countries do not trust the US since its 2022 confiscation of $300 billion from Russia.  Africa can leapfrog Western energy systems and is investing in rare earth!  Niobium is the 2nd most critical mineral.  Brazil has 97%.  China manufactures minerals for rare earth projects.  Trump tried to hurt China but destroyed US farmers instead! (Cyrus Janssen)