Weekly Mind Dump: Parallel Universes Divided Against Themselves Cannot Stand

And - Putin's time is running out.

c/o CBC Gem

Week of 2/1-2/8/2026:

A House Divided

The war of the worlds that marks early 21st century America squared off again this weekend over the Super Bowl when (per MAGA) “woke” Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio — aka “Bad Bunny” — competed for attention during half-time with “patriot” Robert James Ritchie — aka “Kid Rock.”

A YouGov America survey released Friday found that 35 percent of respondents preferred Bad Bunny’s show compared to 28 percent who said they favored the Kid Rock-headlined event. According to the New York Times, 6.1 million people opted to watch the Kid Rock event, which was streamed on YouTube, while an estimated 128 million tuned into Bad Bunny’s performance. (Disclosure: a fan of neither performer nor the sports event itself, I missed all of it except for post-event clips).

Kid Rock’s message was: “People who love America, love football, love Jesus.” Bad Bunny’s was “Together we are America.” Rock’s country music line-up was served up to MAGA’s White, conservative, blue collar base, while Bunny’s Latino-themed performance was a lively DEI extravaganza favored by progressives.

Americans are essentially living in parallel dimensions: MAGA and Reality. Lincoln warned us just how dangerous a radically split society is for a nation: “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” adding, “It will become all one thing or all the other.” And the Civil War proved him right.

No one can predict whether another Civil War will be required to sort out today’s differences, which, unlike Southern slave states vs Northern slave-free states, wouldn’t be a regional conflict so much as a nation-wide melee not strictly along geographical lines. I warned nine years ago in “Weimar America: Could Germany’s Past Be America’s Future?” of civil conflict more akin to what took place in Germany between the world wars: “Rather than plunging into a rematch of the War Between the States, we are more likely sliding into a morass of political paralysis and civil strife that resembles Weimar Germany.”

The difference between the American Civil War, Weimar Germany’s domestic ideological battles and the U.S. today is that Trump’s MAGAmerica is steeped in illusion and superstition — fact-free misinformation, or, as MAGA likes to call them, “alternative facts.” This fabulist parallel Earth 2 is what makes our current situation exceptionally perilous. How can people who reject empirical facts be persuaded they’re wrong and return to the real world? You’d have better luck convincing a 7-year old there’s no Santa than separating a MAGA true believer from QAnon bilge.

Alexandra Pelosi, producer of the eye-opening 2023 documentary, The Insurrectionist Next Door, and others examining MAGA world, explained to MS Now’s Stephanie Ruehle last week,

Everybody has their own little feed, their own little world and they live in their own little bubble, and they do not live in the same world that you live in. And they’re getting different information than you’re getting… We used to say that there were two Americas, and now it’s become cults that have their own little followings. It’s not just NBC News versus Fox News. There are all these little subcultures out there… We’re past truth. You try to say, “Let’s just stick to a set of facts”… and they’ll look at you and say, “Well you’ve got your set of facts and I’ve got mine.” And then they’ll give you all these made-up ones they come up with.

What will it take to overcome the epistemological Berlin Wall that divides Americans? The split is so maddening that I fear it will take societal collapse to set the stage to put things back together again. This would entail national economic failure that would impact every American, but, most importantly, finally expose to MAGA believers the lies, corruption and betrayal of their conman hero and his enablers.

Tick-Tock — Putin’s Clock is Running Out

According to unnamed Russian officials, pro-government economists have told Vladimir Putin that Russia has three-to-four months before the banking system seizes up from bad loans and high interest rates, resulting in stagflation, mass business failures and high unemployment. German intelligence estimates that military spending takes up 10 percent of Russia’s GDP and fully half of government spending. Oil revenues, Russia’s biggest foreign exchange earner, are down by 50 percent from a year ago. The government jacked up taxes to try to cover some of the shortfall, but the main result has been to dampen business further. And Putin’s drawing down the nation’s sovereign wealth fund and gold reserves has reduced Russia’s financial resource buffer to a dangerously low level. At the same time, the West is tightening sanctions further, particularly on Russia’s shadow fleet of oil scows.

Meanwhile, Russia continues to suffer staggering losses on the battlefield with Ukraine, with an estimated 1.2 million killed or wounded since the war began. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stated that more than 30,000 Russian troops were killed in December alone — averaging 1,000 a day — to gain only minimal territory. Ukraine is giving Russia a taste of its own medicine, knocking out energy and military production infrastructure largely through its highly impactful drone warfare. The Ukrainian defense minister has announced their aim to up Russian casualties to 50,000 per month. Even if he could muster the requisite financial resources, Putin’s only response would be to implement mass mobilization through conscription, something he has avoided as it would likely spark resistance and destabilize society.

The Russians are waging the wrong kind of warfare by centering their attacks on civilians and related infrastructure. Wars are won based on, as Clausewitz asserts, “the destruction of [the enemy’s] forces,” not on “blind aggressiveness,” which will “destroy the attack itself, not the defense.” Moreover, committing atrocities only feeds the zeal of an enemy’s will to resist.

Shortly after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, I predicted in “Here’s How Putin Will Be Taken Down” that his end will come from economic failure combined with military collapse:

A proliferation of mutinies and desertions would spell grave trouble for Moscow and Putin’s fate. Such actions would cascade up the line, as in 1917, and goad the elites to finally act to remove Putin from power, especially after the inevitable purges and witch hunts that follow a major leader-induced catastrophe.

Keep your eye first on Russia’s teetering economy. Once it stumbles, then watch for the military to follow. Tick-tock…

The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.