Chaos Blankets the World and Leaves No Easy Answers
David Haggith

Today’s news, low in meaningful economic content, has a lot to do with yesterday’s editorial. Election tampering is already happening by people who are mailing packets of white powder to election officials to intimidate them. Nothing toxic, just intimidation.

Civil war/revolts brewing

Now we also have a survey showing that 14% of all Republicans say they will do something to overturn the election results if their side loses, while only 1% of Democrats say the same thing. The survey didn’t ask what they would do. Almost 50% of Republicans state ahead of the election they won’t accept the results if they lose, making it a foregone conclusion that the only way they can lose, in their opinion, is if the Biden-Harris camp cheats. However, about a quarter of Democrats say the same thing.

Clearly, they are large parts of both groups who have decided a loss automatically means they got cheated, no matter which side loses, and I suspect the number of people who will revolt against the election on the Democrat side will turn out to be quite a bit more than 1%. We just don’t know if either side means they’ll revolt against the results legally or violently.

Elizabeth Andersen, the group’s executive director, said the results are “kind of startling” and amount to about one-third of Americans being unwilling to accept the presidential election results if their candidate loses….

“You can see quite low levels of trust in the process, particularly among Republicans, but also, in some areas, among Democrats,” Andersen said. “It’s not zero by any stretch of the imagination. So that really seems to us like a recipe for potential conflict in the aftermath of the election….”

Last week, the Public Religion Research Institute found that 1 in 6 Americans supports political violence, including about 1 in 4 Republicans.

A survey from the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University released in May found that 36% of local election officials experienced harassment or abuse, and 16% were threatened.

It promises to be a toxic election year, no matter who loses.

Wars and rumors of war abound

It’s hot and ugly on the war front today. Israel just ingeniously (evil genius?) found a way to maim a few-thousands people by blowing up their pagers, knocking their nuts off, ripping their bowels out, blowing a leg off and sometimes killing a few, including people merely standing nearby. 

While the target was Hezbollah, and the only pagers blown up apparently belonged to Hezbollah members, it’s unclear how many of the wounded were actual Hezbollah fighters. It sounds like many were, but when you make 2700+ pagers blow up simultaneously in marketplaces and wherever the people happen to be, some are are going to be standing next to their little daughters who get taken out or mutilated in the blast, too. Some are going to be driving a bus or doing something that results in civilian dying. The risk for “collateral” damage to non-combatants is very high

It is possible some entity other than Israel detonated the devices since Israel has not claimed responsibility. Neither has it denied it. The US says it doesn’t know who was behind the explosions.

A Hezbollah official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the explosion of the pagers was the “biggest security breach” the group has experienced since October 7, when Israel’s war on Gaza began following the Hamas-led attacks on Israel.

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon was among the wounded.

War is ugly business, but it would seem that a maiming spree that can so easily injure women standing by their spouses or children standing beside dad would not be in Israel’s best interest as a method of fighting.

How the method worked technically is not apparently known at this point:

Elijah Magnier, an independent military and political analyst, said Hezbollah relies heavily on pagers to prevent Israel from intercepting its communications, and he speculated that the pagers would have had to have been tampered with before being distributed to Hezbollah members.

But it is not a new kind of evil genius:

“This is not a new system. It has been used in the past … so in this case, there has been involvement of a third party … to allow access …to remotely activate the explosions,” he told Al Jazeera.

It seems more effective as intense psychological warfare than in actually taking Hezbollah fighters out of commission, but maybe many of the wounded are disabled enough to remain out of fighting shape for months to come. Ugly business.

Ugly business for Russia and Ukraine, too, where over a million people have died because of the invasion and Ukraine’s choice to defend its own turf. 

The war between Russia and Ukraine, now stretching into its third year, has left a devastating mark on both nations. What began as a conflict over borders has spiralled into a human catastrophe, with the toll of dead and wounded surpassing a staggering one million, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. This staggering figure comes as both nations, already grappling with shrinking populations before the conflict, face long-term consequences….

The report suggested that 80,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died, while 400,000 had been wounded. Meanwhile, Western intelligence estimates suggest Russian losses range from 200,000 dead to around 400,000 wounded….

Ukraine has resisted fully mobilising men aged 18 to 25, a group that typically forms the backbone of a nation’s military force. This decision stems from concerns about the country's demographic future, as these men have yet to start families. Citing military officials, the report added that the average age of Ukrainian soldiers has now risen to over 43….

Both nations were already grappling with population declines due to economic instability before the conflict. The war has only worsened this trend. For Ukraine, the loss of millions of citizens to Russian occupation and displacement, either as refugees or under Russian control, has further eroded its population base. Experts estimate that Russia's attempts to annex Ukrainian territories and absorb their populations are part of President Vladimir Putin’s larger plan to bolster Russia’s demographic strength.

Ugly business; but, of course, Ukraine is going to defend itself to the last man or woman standing, regardless of help from the West. We certainly would if Russia invaded the US. You have to realize Ukraine faced decades of severe Russian oppression during Russia’s soviet empire days, and there is no way Ukrainians are going to let themselves go back to that now that they are finally free of it. Not a chance. Same thing with Poland and Latvia and Estonia and other small satellite nations of the former Russian empire that escaped the Iron Curtain.

I don’t understand why ANYONE blames Ukrainians for defending their territorial integrity. The people of the United States would do EXACTLY the same thing if Russia invaded the US, regardless of Russia’s reasons—even if Russia’s reasons were noble, such as saving us from the oppression of a US government that operates outside of its own constitution or that cheats in elections or because we are nation with hundreds of thousands of Nazis inside its borders (as we are). We’d fight to the last person standing, too, saying “Leave us to solve our own flaws,” and we’d be glad for anyone who helped us out. That’s just a fact. We wouldn’t go gentle into that dark night of falling behind the Iron Curtain or Russian power.

The war in Ukraine is very ugly business that could easily end by Putin just stopping his invasion, but he’s not going to do that either. He claims it is essential for Russia’s security, even though no attack was ever launched from Ukrainian soil against Russia prior to the invasion and even though Russia always had more nuclear weapons all along that border than the entire NATO front in Europe. Those are reasons that appear to have some arguable merit that are meant to cover the imperial ambitions that Putin clearly emphasized in his long invasion speech years ago.

Clearly NATO inspires huge distrust because of the many wars its had a part in that had nothing to do with protecting the US or any of its allies, such as in Iraq. I get that NATO does plenty of evil expansion of its own for unjust reasons. There are many ways NATO should have worked more with Russian concerns. I wouldn’t argue with that for a second. In fact, I always felt George Bush’s expansion of NATO toward Russia was destroying opportunity for better approaches. I fully agree with all of that. I also think there are ways the US should have worked better with Russia when the Soviet Union fell apart. I always have felt that way. I realize that was difficult to do due to the extreme corruption in Russia, siphoning any funds into criminal (Russian mafia) enterprises operated by the oligarchs who benefited from Soviet funds and assets. Huge corruption! However, I think we could have found ways to do a lot better, and opportunities to build a better relationship between the two countries were lost.

None of that, in my mind, justifies Putin invading Ukraine today in order to lay claim to part of it—something he made very clear was largely being done to right what he considered past losses under the “Great Catastrophe,” as he refers to the collapse of the Soviet Union. That collapse not our fault. Communism is riddled with flaws that assure its demise. We may have spent the Soviets into their military graves, but the system was failing badly throughout the USSR, and people were hurting badly under the iron grip it took to hold it together.

There is no right of expanding your current borders under international law by taking back land from nations that you actually allowed to vote as to whether they wanted to be part of the remaining Russia Federation or not. Ukraine voted no, and Ukraine was specifically give that right to vote itself out of the USSR in the Soviet constitution as a part of what it took to get Ukraine to accept that constitution without a fight in the first place. (Though they were never allowed the opportunity to exercise that constitutional right until the oppressive Soviet government fell apart).

So, we’re dealing with the aftermath of fallen empire and wrongs that were done or opportunities for better approaches that were lost; and it’s ugly. I fully believe Ukraine would defend itself with rocks and sticks if that is all it had left before it would ever go back behind the Iron Curtain of Russian empire. You have to think about it from their perspective, not ours. They have NO reason to trust Russian government at all, after what they experienced for decades under Russian government.

Nevertheless, Russia wants to use its nukes to threaten the world if it cannot win the war conventionally. Do you cave into nuclear terrorists who try to seize the lands of friendly (albeit also corrupt) neighbors? It is not as if Russia has ever been less corrupt than Ukraine or as if it is not filled with thousands of its own Nazis. It is filled with hundreds of thousands. Standing up against that aggression places the world in serious risk of nuclear war. Letting Russia stomp Ukraine out of existence because it has nuclear weapons, on the other hand, seems like a path that says, whoever has the nukes gets to do as they please, encouraging others to do the same thing when they see how well it works. 

We’re in a situation more dangerous in nuclear terms than the Cold War ever was. The answers to evil dictators like Kim Jung Un and Putin who has reverted to former Soviet ways of boundary expansion, consolidating power around himself with constitutional revisions that are solely to his benefit, and imprisoning those who pretend they have freedom of speech but use words he’s outlawed while assassinating his detractors are not easy answers to come by when the imperialist have nuclear weapons and threaten all the time to actually use them.

Peak stress

No wonder, with all of that in a day’s news, that 41% of Americans say they’re at ‘peak stress’ right now, listing, of course, many reasons besides politics, such as economic duress and global issues like war. 

In a year marked by financial worries and political tension, a new survey has uncovered the staggering impact of stress on everyday Americans. The average person feels their head “spinning” from stress a whopping 156 times per year, translating to about three times a week.

If you feel anxious, you have a lot of company. 

Even more concerning, Americans say they experience brain fog with the same frequency as stress headaches – three times a week. While 30% of those surveyed remain hopeful that their stress levels will decrease by year’s end, a quarter (26%) fear their stress might actually increase.

38% believe this year of chaos has been more stressful than last year. 

The primary sources of anxiety this year include finances (35%), the economy (28%), physical health (25%), the 2024 presidential election (20%), and other world issues (19%).

So, there you have it, the big issues covered here in The Daily Doom are the ones people are stressing out about the most—the “other world issues” most likely being the threats from war.

I wish I could do more in these pages to provide hope alongside the stressful topics I cover, as it is not my wish to add to people’s stress; but it’s hard to find a way to do that when no one in politics seems to be doing anything but adding to the stress and divisions and when our economic troubles have been baked in for years, and we’re still kicking the can down the road. Hard to do it, anyway, outside of religious-based hope for each individual’s life, and I try to tread easily on that because this is news-based and economic based website.

There are some practical things you can do:

Americans also noted various signs that reveal they’re stressed, including trouble sleeping (42%), irritability (37%), fatigue (34%), headaches (33%), and feeling worried or paranoid (31%). To combat stress, many turn to music (47%) or seek comfort in favorite TV shows and movies (39%). Some find solace in snacking (17%) or enjoying a cup of tea (14%).

You could also pay less attention to the news, which would include sites like this, if the news makes you feel stressful. Sometimes checking out is the answer, and I understand if people do what they need to do. It can feel overwhelming.

Nearly half (47%) express a desire for simple stress-reduction options that fit into their busy schedules rather than elaborate routines. When considering a “de-stressing regimen,” respondents are equally split between wanting long-term overall wellness and the ability to alleviate stress quickly (23% each)….

“Just 37 percent of survey respondents think that trendy stress relief options are successful, while nearly half felt confident in more traditional methods like yoga, meditation, or a calming tea.”

It’s a stressful year with no easy answers because few parties are willing to apply good and fair answers that resolve the problems. I’m sorting my own way through it. Let me now if there are ways I can do better.

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