China is Racing Ahead While America Worships Market Gods
America is slip-and-sliding headfirst into darkness, and neither Trump's chaos nor the Democratic Party's complacency will save us. It's time for a shake up.
Last week I watched a video from my friend Saikat Chakrabarti. At first, it seemed insightful—maybe even a bit prophetic—but now it feels downright prescient. He warned that if you keep trying to interpret Trump’s moves as attempts to genuinely fix things, help working-class people, or bring manufacturing back to America, you’ll always end up bewildered and befuddled—like CNBC’s Jim Cramer recently admitted, “Trump’s tariffs make me feel like a sucker.” Because Trump’s tariff hike was never about economics or policy, and certainly not about bringing jobs home. It was a basic smash-and-grab, a nakedly nihilistic, mafia-style raid on the market, exactly what you’d expect from someone whose entire life has been about extracting as much wealth as possible for himself.
Most of the business world knew these tariffs were insane. Even the folks privately supporting the idea shook their heads. But viewed through the lens of sheer greed and market manipulation, Trump’s move suddenly makes chilling sense. It wasn’t meant to fix our broken economy or restore dignity to American workers—it was designed to create market chaos. Trump and his cronies profit off volatility, shorting the crash and buying the dip.
Meanwhile, our nearly trillion-dollar-a-year military keeps getting caught off guard by China’s technological leaps—hypersonic missiles, high-speed rail, sophisticated robotics, flying taxis. Yet our leaders posture arrogantly, rattling sabers as though our global dominance is unquestioned. Vice President J.D. Vance proudly declared, “We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture,” unintentionally highlighting the exact vulnerability we refuse to acknowledge.
We treat global leadership like it’s our inalienable birthright—something that requires no effort, investment, or innovation. Our politicians and pundits sneer at China, dismissing their progress as merely the result of cheap labor or state cheating. But China hasn’t beaten us by cheating—they’ve beaten us by investing, designing, educating, and practicing the very things that once made America great.
Our business leaders aren’t interested in heavy lifting. Stock buybacks, Wall Street tricks, and quick profits are easier than the hard work required to rebuild America’s industrial and technological capabilities. Apple’s 700,000 employees building iPhones and MacBooks in China, supported by 30,000 engineers, aren’t proof of inevitability—they’re evidence of our surrender. Tim Cook openly admitted the reason Apple can’t produce these products in America: we lack the necessary skills, manufacturing capacity, and infrastructure. Our leaders shrug, claiming reshoring these jobs is “too difficult,” that America’s industrial base is simply “too broken to fix.”
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The Democratic Party needs a shake up. Our economic system is broken. It doesn’t work for ordinary Americans, doesn’t strengthen the nation, and soon won’t even serve the wealthy few who’ve benefited most. Figures like Larry Fink, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg aren’t nation-builders—they’re wealth-builders, dedicated only to personal enrichment.
Yet Democratic leaders, like Hakeem Jeffries, insist “Republicans are on the run,” as if simply waiting for Trump to fail spectacularly will solve our problems. But waiting for Republicans to implode isn’t a vision. It isn’t leadership. It’s surrendering our fate to chaos and chance. Even if Democrats reclaim the House in 2026, what exactly will they do with it? Around what ideas will they unite? They have no new destination, no bold solutions, no compelling vision for where America must head next.
We need a Democratic Party that sees these realities clearly and fights for an economy driven by genuine innovation, robust infrastructure, and a thriving American workforce. We need leaders in the House, the Senate, and the White House who inspire our industries and our people—leaders who demonstrate that America is still worth investing in, capable of becoming a high-tech, efficient, just society again.
The 2026 primary and general elections aren’t just another election cycle—they’re pivotal moments defining what the Democratic Party stands for and shaping America for decades. These elections will determine whether we approach 2028 with a bold vision or retreat further into denial and division. They will decide the America we build for future generations.
We are blind to our decline, refusing to face reality and clinging to outdated ideas. Our education system fails us. We complain about immigrants “taking our jobs,” yet we’re forced to import critical talent because we’ve neglected our workforce. Where is the urgency we once showed during wartime, rapidly training millions for essential tasks?
The truth: we’re sliding into irrelevance, following forgotten brands like Blockbuster and Radio Shack into history. Short-term thinking has dismantled our industrial and intellectual capabilities, eroding the foundations of our former strength.
Yet despair isn’t our only option. If you believe America can still engineer, innovate, and build—if you still believe in a country that stands for something real, not oligarch profits or corporate greed—it’s time to stand up. We must rebuild our rusted industrial parks, resurrect our decayed mill towns, repair our bridges, roads, and trains. We need citizens ready to engineer, innovate, and doctor our way back to prosperity.
This isn’t left or right, Democrat or Republican. It’s about survival, independence, dignity—about reclaiming control of our future before it’s too late.
Leaders like Saikat Chakrabarti understand this urgency. He's challenging entrenched power, running to replace Nancy Pelosi and championing the Mission for America—a vision to restore America's strength and purpose.
Join this fight. Support candidates who recognize the crisis and have the courage to act decisively. Be part of a movement to reclaim this country seat by seat, election by election. America doesn’t have to slide irreversibly into decline—we can rise again with strength, clarity, and pride.
The time to act is now—because tomorrow might be too late.
Corbin
I’m in agreement with your analysis. But to find answers that matter most, it’s important to boil our circumstances down to their essence: What makes a great society is one that loves - and I do mean loves - to work and learn, preferably at the same time, toward a more beneficial and fair future that solves more problems than it creates.
And, when we boil down the problems that are common between both rich and poor, you will find that our troubles begin when we don’t revel in education and work, but indulge in playtime the likes of the lost boys and girls in Pinocchio - and it’s not a fairy tale, it’s a legit warning that to play all the time is to become a jackass. Same is true when we don’t act with integrity with each other, bar none.
Quite frankly, we must commit to educating the spoiled rotten out of ourselves, while working together to design and build a future that is healthy and sustainable for one and all. No more hatred between business owners and workers, Democrats and Republicans, teachers and students, parents and children, rich and poor, black and white, etc. These are complementary opposites that need each other, very much, and they only work when we choose to work together with respect and integrity. Right now, it’s not happy cooperation between opposites, but abuse on a physio-psycho-emotional scale.
A job that doesn’t pay a living wage is slavery. A school that doesn’t teach people to think for themselves and expand their learning beyond what is taught over a lifetime, has created slaves for abusive masters. The same is true in homes where children are there to serve abusive caregivers instead of being taught to be well-rounded, respectful citizens.
Maybe none of this is well said, as wording things right doesn’t come easy for me, but it has been well thought out and would take only a little effort to see the truth of it. We need, but do not have, a small set of common core values that will insure we stay creatures of integrity no matter how much we change our environment as time goes by. Nature knows how to program itself so that diversity flourishes while still keeping invasive species in check. Humanity has yet to learn how to keep its invasive traits in check. Now is the time to fix that. The Founders of our Constitution understood it, which is why they built a system of checks and balances. We can never allow the destruction of the checks and balances that keep us on an even keel, able to navigate the challenges of life.
Yes! The so called leaders of American corporations haven’t the slightest interest in rebuilding the American economy. They want profits for themselves and their class. The government is not strong enough to impose taxes on them. Weak legal barriers allow dangerous activities like crypto. Only a true uprising has a chance to capture the power of government.