A financial analyst quoted for the Barron’s story explained, “The backdrop of continued geopolitical stress is contributing to more persistent inflation and more caution.”

Who caused all this geopolitical stress? It did not exist four years ago.

As a core plank of its neocon foreign policy, Team Biden deliberately provoked Russia into invading Ukraine, and then set out to leverage the Proxy War to remove Putin, destroy Russia’s economy, and eradicate Russia as a potentially competitive superpower.  Even if you somehow disbelieve NATO provoked Russia, the rest is undeniable. Without Congressional authorization, Biden undertook a Fifth Generation world war against Russia, a war via proxy, a war via economics, a war via propaganda and destabilization, and a war via thinly-disguised infrastructure sabotage, like blowing up Russia’s Nordstream pipeline.

It sort of snuck up on us, but it is evident Biden’s gamble failed. Sure, the clock is still running, the players are still going through the motions, but the crowd can see it’s over. There are six minutes left in the fourth quarter and the home team is down by three touchdowns. Might as well head for the parking lot.

From the current state of the world, it looks more and more like Biden’s disastrous defeat has been carefully scripted from Day One by the meritocratic Russian team, which outplayed our cross-dressing, diverse, inclusive neocon nitwits. Let us count the ways:

1. Biden has lost the economic war (see above). Instead of harming Russia’s economy, sanctions have only improved it, boomeranging on the U.S., which is paying an incalculable price.
2. Most informed commenters think the Proxy War in Ukraine is now just a matter of time before a politically-catastrophic surrender becomes necessary. Options for NATO to directly intervene in Ukraine evaporated when Iran launched its drone swarm against Israel, because the U.S. is now pinned. We can no longer commit to a major effort to save Ukraine, because we must now keep our military free for deployment to the Middle East in case a broader war breaks out. The rest of NATO must enter Ukraine without the United States. They won’t.
3. Russia has quietly forged alliances with all the U.S.’s most mortal enemies, and has armed them with paradigm-busting, air-defense-defeating hypersonic technology. Specifically, the Russia-Iran-China-North Korea axis now shares the ability to sink U.S. aircraft carriers, which is how the United States projects force around the world. By arming Iran and North Korea, the Russians have created other problems of regional instability for which the U.S. must now plan and must feebly attempt to contain, further distracting from our faltering Proxy War in Ukraine.
4. Russia’s lead in hypersonic weapons technology removes the option of nuclear war from the table, even if Biden’s deranged neocons ever thought it was an option.
5. Intellectual, anticommunist, and conservative commenter James Lindsay persuasively argues that DEI, which like sewer water has now seeped into every nook and crevice of our public and private institutions, is actually a long-term socio-political military strategy by our enemies, principally China, to destabilize the United States. DEI is rendering impotent our military, our government, our universities, and even our strategically-critical corporations staffed by graduates of those undermined universities (think Boeing). If James is right, and I think he is, China’s destruction-by-DEI plan is working perfectly.
6. The world is noticing. Yesterday, BRICS announced this on its website: “Russian Federation Council: 40 countries want to join BRICS.” Russia’s fast-growing BRICS alliance has inflicted a potentially mortal blow to American hegemony. Economists will correctly argue the dollar cannot be easily displaced. But that’s beside the point. The real threat is that Russia has given hope, a home, and a place to rally to countries long-frustrated with America’s constant post-Cold War bullying. Apparently there are a lot of frustrated countries, thanks largely to Joe Biden.

The worst thing about all this is every single one of those developments was completely predictable. Joe Biden is a human wrecking ball. His advisors are over-promoted, under-qualified DEI hires who have no idea what they are doing and are completely unprepared to compete with the Russians, who are cleaning our clock.

Biden must go. And here are seven more suggestions for what we could do to get our country safe and back on track.

1. We must admit we’re in a hole and stop digging.
2. We have to acknowledge we’ve lost, abandon the Ukraine project, and close our borders up tight. Send illegals back where they came from, or anywhere but here. Let France have them.
3. Support historic allies like the British (and Israel) and also stop mucking about the rest of the world. We must focus on rebuilding our own country. Rebuild our economy. Rebuild our military.
4. Limit the government to only a hundred classified documents a year, and require secret classifications to expire in five years.
5. Restore merit as the lodestar of all organized effort in America, public and private, just as it used to be. Delete victim status and grievance politics.
6. Restore patriotism, morality, honor, and family as central values in American life.
7. Enforce it by shaming and driving out of public life (lovingly and compassionately) people who advocate for bat-guano crazy ideas like the implausible notion that men can transform into women with enough surgery and medicine.