The Brown Note

It's certainly the worst Australian election campaign by an opposition party in the 30 years ive lived in this country. There was never a prospect of the Liberal party being elected, but no one predicted how bad this campaign would be. Constant missteps, zero policies, wildly unpopular MAGA worship, a leader who seems like he barely speaks to his own troops and the impression they all woke up on the day of the exam having never studied the subject.

The landmark British TV series shines a light on the online forces shaping young minds and turning young boys into misogynists, but it stops short of offering any solutions to an apparently unsolvable problem. Here I try to do just that.

The review

https://thebrownnote.podbean.com/e/adolescence-review/

With the combined impacts of the totalitarian chaos inside America, the tariffs and Trumps continual abuse of longstanding allies, for the first time in maybe seventy years, countries are starting to cut the apron strings from the United States. Both economically and militarily - the World is waking up to a World without America.

One positive about Trump, if not for America, then certainly for the rest of the western world, is it has seen a massive swing towards left-leaning parties and away from right. Canada has seen a 27 point lead for the right disappear to 2 in under 3 months. No one in other countries wants to elect anyone remotely like him.

I posted a similar piece last year, when Elon Musk threw his weight and his wealth into the ring for Donald Trump. I was very wrong, as Trump won, and for a brief shining moment, it looked as though this obnoxious try hard really was king of the world. Ironically, Trump winning will end up costing Musk twice as much.

There's a big mistake people are making in calling Elon Musk president and claiming Trump is his B$tch. Trump, the most disloyal human bieng perhaps ever born, is simply and ruthlessly using Musk, not only for his money, but to "flood the zone". He will sit back, fleece him dry, let him help dominate the news cycle, then cast him adrift without a thought - just as he has done his whole life. Trump is king here, Musk is just his court jester.

If he benefited from insider trading, yes. The Australian want-to-be prime minister bought shares in the big four banks, in 2009, at the height of the global financial crisis, after not buying any in the preceding three years. He promptly sold the shares under two weeks later after the Labor government announced a massive bank bail out, sending the shares rocketing in value. He's alleged to have been briefed on the impending bailout before it happened. We need to know.

So how IS that multi-decade 400 billion dollar Australian defense pact with America looking today? I must admit, I thought World War 3 was inevitable, I just didn't think America would be on the other side. What will Trump demand over this? Australian mineral resources? Nuclear missile bases in Darwin? Perhaps even scarier is Five Eyes, the hugely secretive intelligence alliance between America, the UK, Aus, NZ and Canada - sharing our most top secret intelligence and assets with an ally of Putin.

There are a couple of themes being promoted by the infernal trio about Europe when it comes to military spending (not enough!) and immigration (to many brown people!). What this ignores is the elephant in the room. Europe didn't invade Afghanistan, Europe didn't invade Iraq, or overthrow the government of Libya, or try to topple Iran and Syria. Europe would not need to spend so much on its militaries or receive so many immigrants from these areas if it wasn't for American wars in the first place.

And at the end of it all, the whole world is in shock that Trump did exactly what was 100% certain he would do all along, side with Putin. But this war, with no possible victory for Ukraine and unending suffering and destruction for the Ukrainian people, never needed to happen and had no good outcome for Ukraine anyway. A look at the decades long road to war - just so the West could attack Russia, and vast sums of money could be made - and how none of it needed to happen but we in the West made damn sure it did.