"The great thing about the internet is that you get to meet people you
would otherwise only meet if you were committed to the same asylum."
- Robert Brault
- Robert Brault
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Friday, August 21, 2026
Dan, I Allegedly, "3 Serious Economic Warnings You Can't Ignore"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 8/21/26
"3 Serious Economic Warnings You Can't Ignore"
"The economy is flashing serious warning signs, from rising bankruptcies and recession concerns to growing pressure on the global food supply. Ukraine’s grain exports have been disrupted, raising concerns about higher food prices and potential supply problems heading into 2027. At the same time, consumers are facing higher costs, tighter credit and growing financial uncertainty. Then there is the $40 trillion national debt and the growing debate over how Americans can protect their financial security. In this video, Dan breaks down three major economic warnings: the recession threat, the food supply warning and the financial security warning - and explains why preparing for what could come next matters. We also hear from Jack Hanney, CEO of Patriot Gold Group, about gold, silver and protecting wealth during economic uncertainty."
Comments here:
"Reflections on Turning 70 in America 2.0"
"Reflections on Turning 70 in America 2.0"
by Donald Jefferies
"I don’t really feel any different. But, boy that number is frightening. It’s a scary milestone. 70. The big seven-o. It sounds so old. When I was a kid, when I was a young adult, when I was middle age, anyone 70 years old seemed decrepit. Elderly. On their last legs. On the brink of “pushing up daisies,” as my dear mother used to put it.
I’m trying to tell myself that you’re only as old as you feel. That it’s just a number, as so many younger people have told me. If I go by how I feel, then I’m about 14. Wondering when I will mature, and finally adopt the persona of a grown adult. If I went to my local senior center, I would probably see some people there who are younger than me. I’m not interested in hanging out with them. Playing checkers, or whatever it is that oldsters play now. Watching reruns of Matlock. I visited my brother’s senior center, and ate their food. They make it purposely bland, without spices, or even salt and pepper. Without flavor. Like hospital food. That’s good enough for the senior set. They don’t need or deserve anything better. They had plenty of time in the past to eat tastier foods. It’s time to quiet down. Don’t get too excited - it’s not good for your blood pressure. They’ve begrudgingly admitted that salt has no impact on blood pressure, but the oldsters still go without it. Lies and propaganda die hard.
Probably because I was born so late in life, with my parents being in their 50s during my childhood, I’ve always felt a strong bond with old people. I loved to hear them talk about their lives. The distant past, which seemed so exotic to me. I knew plenty of elderly people who were born in the 1890s. The nineteenth century. The last Civil War veteran died a few weeks before I was born. The last Civil War widow died in 2003. Those old timers had some very young brides back then. When I first entered the workforce in the mid-1970s, the WWII generation was still large and in charge. Retired veterans everywhere, running everything. I’m older than all of them were then, and they seemed really old to this long haired, card-carrying member of the ACLU. I think back on those times, and it just doesn’t seem possible that I’m living in the same world. The internet was supposedly in its infancy in the Pentagon, of all places. I can’t imagine my life without the internet now. I doubt I’d be writing without the internet.
Fear of aging is fear of death. I have fear of aging, because I have a great fear of death. I remember watching Gunsmoke with my father as a very young child, and learning that everyone eventually dies. Not just the bad guys gunned down in the streets of TV westerns. I was crushed. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. When you have old parents, with perpetual ailments, death is always in the air. I used to walk by their bedroom when they were asleep, checking to hear the sounds of their breathing. I feared them dying, and expected them to die, for so long that their deaths were anticlimactic. Now I’m older than my father ever was, and getting close to my mother’s age when she died. Still I hate doctors enough to refuse to go to them. I don’t really worry about myself in quite the same way, but I am terrified at the prospect of dying. I have faith. I don’t believe this can possibly be all there is to existence. But the finality, at least in terms of this world, hits like a sledgehammer. The inevitability. Which I can’t accept.
When I reached 60, I started thinking that I really can’t shoot baskets any more. What if I dropped dead like Pete Maravich and so many other anonymous souls? I’ve kind of stopped doing my Zumba workout, and switched to tai chi. Which is pretty satisfying, but am I giving in to Old Man Syndrome? If I feel up to it, why shouldn’t I just do something? I’ve slowed down, mostly because I’m aware of that number hanging over my head. But not much. I workout every other day. I used to average over 20,000 steps a day, now I get 20,000 every other day. Then take it a bit easier on the “off” days, with 10-12,000 steps. I still race up stairs. Some of the time. Not all of the time, like I used to. We have a lot of stairs, and I’m starting to think too much about falling. So many old people break something when they fall. My uncle was 94, on no prescription meds at all, but he fell and that was it. Denied him a chance at 100. We don’t have great longevity, but my father had first cousins on both sides who made it to 101 and 104.
With the nervous apprehension of hitting 70, and the perhaps psychosomatic awareness of more frequent aches and pains, I decided to do something to make myself feel better. About me, as the insane Tik Tok therapists might say. So I started counting my calories. I’ve lost 15 pounds in just a few weeks. And it does make me feel better, because I look better. Just like my uncle, I don’t take any prescriptions. But I do ingest a huge number of vitamins and supplements. I think and I hope they help. But I don’t sleep much. Then again, I never really have slept normally. I can’t picture them using me for a sleep study. I can count on one hand the times I’ve slept through the night in my entire life. 70 years of life. I’ve always awakened every hour or two, three at the most. I don’t know why. I’m sure I have decades of REM deprivation. It’s natural to be an insomniac when you have the things running through your mind that I do. Paranoia. Various phobias. Stressing over the safety and welfare of those I love.
This year has been one of great personal loss. My dear sister Janet, and her incomparable daughter Denise, four days apart from each other. John Barbour, the most rewarding friendship I ever had. My next door neighbor and friend, gone from cancer, who was four years younger than me. One of the Lake Braddock monthly lunch bunch, whom I met through my good friend Vince Agnelli. Died suddenly at only 65. Combined with the loss of my brother four years ago, my 70th birthday party is not going to be quite the big celebration I once envisioned it as. I counted eight people who have died from my 60th birthday party. Time flies, and we can’t slow it down. We don’t even understand it. I’ve often wondered if time is a construct, like the idolators claim race is. If there were no clocks, no calendars to keep track of it, how would we know what time it was? What day it was? Under such circumstances, would we still age? Do we age because “time” tells us we are aging? I can’t help but wonder.
Like one of my favorite poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay, “I know. But I am not resigned.” I’ve even speculated that there is a “death gene” in us all. Do we die because we think we must? Why do some people age so much more gracefully than others? Just looking at some of those I graduated with from Oakton High School in 1974, there is massive disparity in the way they look. Some look great. Vibrant. Still alluring. Others look like generic grandparents. Fragile. Harmless. Couldn’t some of that at least be mental? I used to be told how much younger I looked. Now most people don’t say anything about it. I take this to mean that they aren’t surprised at my age, when they used to always be surprised. I look in the mirror and still pretty much like what I see, especially with the recent weight loss. Maybe it’s just my ego at work. Like my lone remaining sibling, my oldest sister, I place great stock in at least trying to look good. Standing up straight. I blanche when I see all the hunched over oldsters.
The past is prologue. But each of our genealogical pasts represents our personal prologues. I’ve traced my ancestry as best I could. I found a genuine Revolutionary War hero in my family tree. On my mother’s side, John Follin was captured by the British and escaped from his prisoner of war status by walking on foot from Pennsylvania back to Virginia. He had an incredible thirty children by two different wives. My ancestors were fruitful and multiplied. On my father’s side, I verified the legend that his second cousin married Rutherford B. Hayes III. Naturally, we never met this side of the family, being common riff-raff and all. I found a picture of that cousin’s mother, who came from real poverty, and wasn’t surprised to see that she was a hot late nineteenth century babe, which put her into a position to marry a wealthy lawyer that ran in the same circles as the Hayes family did. So that’s my connection to the rich and powerful. I’ve had no favors bestowed upon me by Rutherford B’s heirs.
When you reach my age, you’re going to spend a lot of time looking back. Wondering how life would have worked out, if I’d done things differently. If I’d asked Twyla Turner to the prom. If I’d concentrated less on the JFK assassination and UFOs, and focused on getting a college degree. If I’d stopped being a radical for even a moment. Compromised just a little bit. Conformed in some way. But I was always fighting the system. In school. At work. Socially. And eventually the world at large. Which would eventually result in ten books, and lots of internet columns like this. I don’t think it’s in me to compromise my beliefs and values. But then again, there was never a super model with a gigantic trust fund dangling before me in temptation. I don’t think I would have ever sold out, but no one tried to force me to, either. I kind of relished being a relative failure. An outsider ranting at the Man. Maybe that was foolish.
Money never meant anything to me. As my wise Chinese friend, the legendary Danny Liu told me back in the 1980s after he read my palm, “I’m sorry, man, but you can never have much money.” He was eerily prophetic, although I’ve never really been in dire financial straits. I struggled financially sometimes, like 80 percent of us do. When I wrote "Survival of the Richest", it was heartfelt because I’d lived paycheck to paycheck my entire life, and rarely had much savings in the bank. But I never missed a meal. I’ve had most of the shiny toys of the modern era. And I was blessed with a patient and understanding wife, and two wonderful children. In 1998, despite not really being in a position to afford it, we somehow bought our dream home. My real estate license came in handy, and we got a real bargain. I’ve lived in a peaceful, idyllic neighborhood ever since. There was no question in my mind that I had the lowest income in my subdivision. A small fish in a nice big neighborhood. That’s an ideal situation.
It took me many years, and lots of historical research, to realize just how lucky I’d been to be born a Boomer. The much maligned Boomers. We had idyllic childhoods, primarily because our parents enjoyed the greatest economy this country, or the world, has ever seen. Every job paid a living wage. A television was in every home. Kids could be entertained by the best of Hollywood, much of it produced during their parents’ childhoods. The Three Stooges. The Little Rascals. Popeye. The classic Warner Brothers cartoons. Recent, thrilling shows like The Adventures of Superman. George “Superman” Reeves was already dead, unquestionably murdered but labeled suicide. That didn’t stop us from enjoying the reruns. Both comic books and baseball cards were sacred to little boys like me. Fortunately, I was already developing the habit of not throwing anything away. If you saw my house, you’d understand. But some of those cards and comics are worth real money now. I took good care of them.
I guess all people think the times they grew up in were the best. As Carly Simon told us, “These are the good old days.” I can’t imagine Gen Z will one day look back fondly on their youth, with a horrific economy producing few real job opportunities, a severe affordability problem with housing, food, gas, and everything else, no memorable music or films, and a cultural climate filled with male incels, increasing obesity, and a mad transgender movement. But maybe they will. Especially if things get worse, which looks probable. But I can still listen to the best music ever produced. At least in the opinion of virtually all Boomers. It still sounds great, decades later. Preserved for eternity, along with all those classic television shows and movies. Preserved far better than any of us. But we have our memories. As the old song went, “They can’t take that away from me.” Memories of lovely young girls. Who are now either dead already or resemble your grandmother. Of strapping boys who now wield a cane or walker.
I love talking about the past. It’s no accident that I concentrate much of my writing on history. But I would really enjoy looking forward, to the kind of future all those 1950s documentaries predicted. Moving sidewalks. Flying cars, like The Jetsons. Medical miracles, resulting in the eradication of pain and disease, with dramatically increased lifespans. Instead, we have the same old gas guzzlers. Or for many young people, expensive Ubers, since they can’t afford their own car. We have the worst medical system ever seen, with skyrocketing childhood cancer rates and chronic diseases. And a plummeting life expectancy. Not what Walt Disney envisioned with his Tomorrowland. The elderly hippies aren’t as interesting to talk to as the elderly WWII era people. They are mostly preoccupied with getting marijuana gummies and their Viagra. Senior citizens who smoked pot and had sex in closets as youths, still trying to be intimate. Not a pretty sight. And spare me the gray pony tails and man buns.
I’ve been very blessed. Way more than I remotely deserved. I never really worked hard, or had much ambition, outside of wanting to be some kind of writer. So many people I know- good people- never had kids, never got married. They’re old now too, if they’re still alive. But they’re alone. Old age is hell, as my dear mother used to say, but old age alone must be a special kind of hell. I think of those who already, by my age, are in some kind of retirement community, at best. At worst, they are being mistreated in nursing homes, and rarely visited by loved ones, if they have any. So call me lucky. I’m doing exactly what I want to do every day. How many people can say that? I may pick up the guitar again, if I can figure out how to tune it. Or take up banjo. Maybe tap dancing. But mostly keep writing. And podcasting. 70. It’s an imposing number. But I think of all I know who never lived to see it. A 70 year old today is not the same as when I was a child. It’s the new 50. Just a number. Which I’m reluctantly embracing."
So very familiar, Donald, thank you!
Considering on September 14 I'll be 75...
- CP
"Some Shattering Illusions of Our Declining Empire"
"Some Shattering Illusions of Our Declining Empire"
by George O’Neill Jr.
"Now that the lofty 250th-anniversary rhetoric about the greatness of our country has faded, it is time to face the reality of our country’s actual behavior. The U.S. fashions itself as a generous and benevolent world leader enforcing the “rules-based order”—a deceptive construct used by globalist elites to bully other countries. The rules are arbitrarily changed to suit the bullies and are regularly fashioned into pretexts for military action against uncooperative nations. In short, it is a hoax, untethered from the principles and ideals of our founders.
Almost daily we witness some spectacle illustrating the appalling corruption of our country’s leadership. The recent release of Anthony Fauci’s diary entries confirms long-held suspicions about the Covid-19 narrative, which we now know even Fauci himself did not fully believe. Think of the millions of lives ruined and harmed by that corruption. Yet this vain phony, when asked to testify before Congress, hid behind half a dozen lawyers and refused to answer any questions. What a fine example of transparency from one of our leading scientists and civil servants! What else are our leaders still hiding about the worldwide disaster caused by Covid-related deceptions and manipulations? There has not yet been any meaningful examination of our medical profession, which largely acted as cowards during the pandemic, adhering to the bogus official narrative at the expense of the welfare of their patients.
Our leadership has not even begun to scratch the surface of the horrors created by the many secret - and potentially illegal - biolabs scattered around the globe, supported by funds often hidden from voters under the guise of “national security.” The Fauci crowd appears to have been deeply involved in that dark world.
America’s Middle East policy remains a source of shame. The U.S. Treasury secretary brags about ruining the currency of the Iranian people, against whom we have waged a war of aggression. In Gaza, Washington has enabled a brutal assault on a vulnerable population. Not many years ago, most Americans considered standing up for the vulnerable and innocent an honorable act of a true American. Not our leaders. These days, opposing the harm of politically inconvenient innocents attracts name-calling, ostracism, and sanctions. What would our Founding Fathers have thought of that?
The current wars have exposed the shortcomings of our nearly trillion-dollar military and its multi-billion-dollar weapons systems. If the Covid mess is any indication, we should assume there is hidden and shockingly ugly information about the behavior and practices of the military-industrial complex. The failure of our various expensive defense systems to protect our Persian Gulf “allies” from Iranian missile and drone attacks is a tragic example of government dishonesty. Despite repeated failures, the administration continues to brag of its ability to destroy Iran’s military and shoot down its remaining missiles and drones. After years of being told we possess the “most powerful military” in history, Americans are beginning to realize it is a fantasy. The success of that false narrative rests on decades of fighting people riding donkeys and bicycles.
Our government classifies and redacts documents as a matter of course. Think of the billions of pages we are still not allowed to see - especially information about the most important events in our country’s history. Many significant, history-changing events remain shrouded in secrecy. How is it that information is still being withheld about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? After six decades, what bad behavior are they still “protecting” from the public? Most Americans suspect the official government narrative was false, yet officials continue to withhold information that might shed light on that crime. The same is true for the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., our government’s willful abandonment of U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam, the September 11 attacks, and the late, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. Not to mention the disgusting manipulations and secret operations used to drag our country into the long list of dishonest, illegal, and failed wars we have “fought.”
Our political leadership’s frenzied efforts to hide the Epstein files make it look as though the “national security” excuse is merely a convenient tool to obscure malfeasance, rape, blackmail, bribery, and plain old corruption. They clearly believe they are not subject to the same pesky and inconvenient laws as the rest of us who live in the country. So much for equal protection under the law and the “rules-based order.”
We watch with horror the chaos, death, and destruction currently being wreaked on the world - and on our own country - by our “exceptional nation.” Why has the second Trump administration bombed at least seven countries and engaged in underhanded efforts to weaken and harm the political systems of others? None of this serves the interests of the American people; it serves only the special interests of our elites. All this from a president who campaigned on an America First policy, an end to forever wars, and the promotion of peace. It looks like we were fooled again. Presidential candidate after presidential candidate promises peace, and we get war after war. The system is subverted by corruption.
As the failure of the illegal war against Iran becomes increasingly obvious, more Americans are realizing that it in no way serves their interests. As the war against Russia in Ukraine grinds toward failure, American and European leaders continue more frantically than ever to promote the fantasy that Ukraine can defeat Russia in that sad and disastrous conflict.
There is one positive development: The American people, especially the younger generation, are beginning to recognize the corruption at the top of our country and the magnitude of the war lies. They understand that the special interests driving these belligerent policies care nothing about the well-being of the general populace or of our nation. There has always been skepticism toward powerful special interests, but we are moving past skepticism into righteous fury. This is also true of our “allies,” who watched U.S. elites prioritize Israel over American security when the missiles started flying.
Ours is not an “exceptional nation.” It is not the “shining city on a hill.” It is not “a thousand points of light.” Not anymore. It is a declining empire with a declining military - one unable to protect its allies, yet still seeking to bully and harm any country that angers its corrupt elites. Our military defenses are so ineffective that Iran - a country one-fourth our size, with an economy smaller than our bloated military budget - can practically name its next round of targets knowing our mighty military can do little to stop them."
With a governing elite that serves foreign and special interests rather than the people and a sweeping surveillance state that stretches from sea to shining sea, Americans are becoming increasingly disillusioned. A sobering question to consider: When the illusion finally shatters, who will be left willing to defend a government that wouldn’t defend its own?"
Hat tip to The Burning Platform for this material.
"Why Comfortable People Don't Revolt: Propaganda, Debt, and Control"
"Why Comfortable People Don't Revolt:
Propaganda, Debt, and Control"
by Chris MacIntosh
"The question serious analysts must ask is not "why do governments expand?" That is self-evident, a structural feature of any bureaucracy. The appropriate question is "why do populations permit it?" The answer requires understanding the propaganda apparatus that Western states have built, refined, and now operate at industrial scale.
The modern architecture of consent management dates to the First World War. Woodrow Wilson’s Committee on Public Information, run by George Creel, demonstrated that a population could be mobilized for any purpose - including a war most Americans had no interest in fighting - through systematic control of information, the manufacture of enemy imagery, and the weaponization of social pressure.
Edward Bernays, Freud’s nephew and the inventor of modern public relations, drew the explicit lesson: the techniques of wartime propaganda could be applied in peacetime, continuously, to manage democratic populations who had been given the formal appearance of self-governance.
Bernays wrote in 1928: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society." He meant this approvingly. The masses, in his view, required management. The only question was who would do the managing.
Walter Lippmann, a despicable little parasite who was also the era’s most influential political journalist and advisor to presidents, concurred. In "Public Opinion" (1922), he argued that the complexity of modern society exceeded the cognitive capacity of ordinary citizens. The solution was an expert class - a "specialized class whose personal interests reach beyond the locality" - who would process reality and present the public with a manageable, simplified version of it. Democracy would be preserved as ceremony; governance would be conducted by administrators insulated from democratic pressure.
This was not conspiracy. It was, in its originators’ minds, practical social engineering for the modern age. The conspiracy came later, when the machinery was captured by interests with specific agendas - and when those agendas diverged sharply from the welfare of the managed populations.
Credit Expansion as Social Control: The propaganda apparatus alone is insufficient to maintain compliant populations. People who are struggling economically have little to lose and much to gain from resistance. The second pillar of modern social management is therefore material: keep the population comfortable enough that compliance feels rational. The credit expansion of the post-Bretton Woods era served this function with extraordinary efficiency.
The Nixon Shock of 1971 - the closure of the gold window, the final severing of money from any physical constraint - did not immediately impoverish ordinary people. Instead, it created something more insidious: the illusion of prosperity, financed by debt, distributed through asset price inflation, and sustained by ever-lower interest rates.
In the United States, median real wages stagnated after 1971. The economic pie did not stop growing, but the share accruing to labour contracted sharply relative to capital. The compensation was the credit card, the home equity line, the student loan, the 30-year mortgage on an asset perpetually inflated by the monetary expansion that was compressing real wages in the first place. People felt wealthier because their houses were worth more. They did not feel wealthier because they were more productive or better compensated.
The distinction matters enormously. One generates genuine capital; the other generates a debt-financed simulacrum of capital that must eventually be reconciled. The political consequence was exactly what Hyman Minsky would have predicted: financial stability bred risk appetite, risk appetite bred leverage, leverage bred fragility.
But crucially, the fragility was concentrated in the financial system - not in the felt experience of ordinary households. As long as asset prices rose, people felt fine. They did not ask questions. The combination of material comfort and media management neutralized the impulse to resist.
Comfortable people do not revolt. The genius of the modern system is that it has made debt feel like wealth and dependency feel like security. Propaganda can conceal reality, and easy credit can postpone the consequences - but neither can repeal economic law forever. When the debt-fueled illusion finally breaks, the resulting upheaval will be devastating."
Bill Bonner, "One Preposterous Flim-flam After Another"
"One Preposterous Flim-flam After Another"
by Bill Bonner
Poitou, France - "There goes the neighborhood. Up the river from us in Ireland...comes another rich guy. The Irish Times: "With a rumored pricetag of between €20 to €30 million, Strancally Castle has been bought by Meta giant, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan. This morning, The Irish Times reports that the 440-acre estate was sold several weeks ago from Michael and Giancarla Alen-Buckley to the Zuckerbergs."
We already have one billionaire next door - James Dyson, the vacuum cleaner fellow. The last thing we need is another one. Helicopters overhead. Lights on the river. Black vans with ‘security’ agents. The big billionaires lower the quality of life - even for themselves. Mark and Priscilla are surely a nice couple. But when we see them carrying their silverware and linens into Strancally Castle…it will be time to leave.
Also lowering the quality of life is Scott Bessent. Scarcely 24 hours had passed when speculators realized they had been fooled. They had bid up prices (lowering yields) on 30-year bonds on the strength of Treasury Secretary’s pledge to intervene in the market. He is going to buy the long bonds. Of course, he has no money, so he will have to sell short-dated paper to buy the long-dated paper. Which is to say, he proposes to make your mortgage cheaper and your credit cards more expensive. For a few moments it seemed as though he might convince speculators to play along. But then...ABC News:
"Bond yields jumped Thursday, erasing the declines stemming from the Treasury Department’s unusual intervention in the debt market a day earlier. In early trading, the 10-year Treasury bond yield rose as high as 4.71%, its highest level since Tuesday. The 30-year yield spiked to as high as 5.627%, rising just above the level yields were at when the Treasury Department’s action Wednesday."
The real problem is neither long rates, nor short rates, but the sheer tonnage of paper itself. The very same day that Bessent announced his plan to manipulate interest rates the feds elsewhere announced another milestone - federal debt weighed in at $40 trillion. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:
"For perspective, it took nearly 200 years for America’s gross debt to reach $1 trillion for the first time in 1981. At that time, President Reagan told the nation in a televised address, “If we as a nation needed a warning, let that be it.” Jumping to America’s 250th year, we are spending more than that just on interest payments on our debt. And other warnings signs are flashing too, with debt held by the public recently exceeding the size of our economy, the deficit-to-GDP ratio running twice as high as where it should be, and interest costs exceeding our national defense budget. $40 trillion of debt doesn’t exist solely on the government’s ledgers; it is felt throughout the economy and finds its way to the pocketbooks of people one way or another. The more we borrow, the more we exacerbate inflation, squeeze out other priorities in the budget, and leave ourselves vulnerable to emergencies at home and turmoil abroad."
Since Independence Day, July 4, the US has added more than a half trillion to its debt. Over the last 12 months, $3 trillion has piled on - more than ever before....and during the last three years, Zuckerberg has gotten about $100 billion richer. Those facts are not neighbors by coincidence. Everything, every asset class...every shopping decision...and every dollar has been distorted, stretched...twisted, puffed up and corrupted. Everything gets crushed under a huge mass of fake money and paper wealth.
And there is the aforementioned Bessent. He says the Treasury doesn’t intend to: ‘Mitigate episodes of acute market stress.’ And yet, that is exactly what he is trying to do...in the worst way...at the worst time. Instead of signaling strength, he admitted weakness. Instead of demonstrating his ability to control yields, he proved helpless.
You’ll recall that the US could borrow, in 2020, at below 1% interest. It might have locked-in the whole pile at the lowest rates in human history...and forsworn deficits forever. Had it done so, today, just five years later, the situation would be entirely different...with $28 trillion in debt (rather than $40 trillion) and an annual interest bill of $378 billion (rather than $1 trillion+).
And now...facing rising interest rates all over the world...and a US debt headed to $50 trillion in a few short years...Bessent says we will ‘grow our way out’ from under the debt pile. But over the last twelve months, US debt grew six times faster than GDP.
One preposterous flim-flam after another. Bessent aims to keep rates on the long end down. Because it’s the 30-year bond that determines mortgage rates. And people with mortgages...or who want them but can’t afford them...vote. And now that Bessent is unloading his tacky furniture in the mortgage market…and joining the local bridge club… There goes the whole neighborhood."
o
Jim Kunstler, "Remember the Names"
"Remember the Names"
by Jim Kunstler
“It’s subversion and nothing about it is accidental. it’s a well worn playbook
to use the democratic institutions of a high trust state to destroy a civilization.”
- El Gato Malo on Substack
"An eerie quiet masks the panic rising among the many players in the long-running train of crimes carried out under color-of-law against the people of the this country that goes roughly under the clunky name of The Grand Conspiracy. What is Joe DiGenova up to, exactly, in the Southern District of Florida, with its several grand juries grinding away? Indictments will fly, for sure, but then who will flip on whom? It won’t take a whole lot of flippers to seal many fates in this skein of sedition and treason. The tension must be terrible for them.
The question has long been: how do you even begin to organize a set of coherent cases around this roaring avalanche of nefarious acts that got bigger with each successive attempt at cover-up? Let’s see if we can block out a panoramic picture of potential prosecutions. The gigantic mess must be separated into packets.
It’s probably best to begin with the FBI’s “Midyear Exam” op of 2016 - the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. You can bet that the server contained evidence of HRC’s two seminal crimes that kicked things off: 1) the transfer of US military technology to Russia’s Skolkovo high-tech hub and payments from seventeen companies involved coincidentally received by the Clinton Foundation when she was Sec’y of State; and 2) the “Uranium One” deal transferring US-owned nuke material to Russia (via Canada) that required a State Dept signoff by HRC - coincident with husband Bill receiving a half-million dollar “lecture fee” from a Russian bank. Players involved in Midyear Exam: Comey, Strzok, McCabe, Page, then-AG Loretta Lynch.
That potential embarrassment of this sketchy business was simply squashed by Lynch and Comey, while HRC took care to physically destroy the server and devices linked to it. But it also prompted the creation of the Russian collusion prank against then-candidate Donald Trump, (“Crossfire Hurricane”) to distract attention from all that. . . which turned into the huge RussiaGate operation that marshaled the FBI, the CIA, the Senate Intel Committee, and offices deep in the Pentagon to put over a gigantic hoax. It was green-lighted by President Barack Obama and organized by CIA-Director John Brennan, with FBI Director Comey and DNI James Clapper. Supporting players (potential defendants) include Susan Rice, Sally Yates, Veep Joe Biden (or “Joe Biden”), then White House aide Lisa Monaco, and CIA agent Eric Ciaramella (who wrote the actual Intel Community Assessment that jump-started the op). McCabe, Stzrok, Page, Ohr (and wife, Nellie), Rosenstein, and many FBI agents are potential defendants. Also Gina Haspel, CIA London station chief, who coordinated with the UK’s MI6 agent, Christopher Steele of the Steele Dossier. Throw in DOD-sponsored spook Stefan Halper and FBI liaison in London, Alan Kohler. After May, 2017, Christopher Wray was responsible for all FBI mischief and FISA Court irregularities (along with FISA Judge James Boasberg).
The Mueller Investigation was a subset of RussiaGate, but deserves its own case packet. It was an attempt to legitimize the RussiaGate hoax, and to keep the news media fed with innuendo. In effect it was a hoax unto itself, consumed $32-million, and ran nearly two years. It produced exactly nothing in evidence that President Trump had “colluded” with Russia about anything. Since Robert Mueller was mentally incapacitated, the investigation was run by subordinates, Aaron Zebley, Andrew Weissmann. Attorneys Jeanie Rhee, Elizabeth Prelogar, Brandon Van Grack and others. It was a fraud on the public and probably an obstruction of justice.
Impeachment No. 1 (the Ukraine phone call impeachment) was an entirely false operation cooked up by lawfare ninja Norm Eisen in collusion with Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Adam Schiff, with assistance from CIA agent (“whistleblower”) Eric Ciaramella and NSC member Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, with a boost from then-IC Inspector General Michael Atkinson. Eisen later admitted on a video that the aim of the impeachment was to “prebunk” Veep “Joe Biden’s” bribery and grift activities in Ukraine as the Democratic party prepared to run him for president in 2020. Ciaramella had accompanied Veep “Joe Biden” on several trips to Ukraine and knew what “JB” was up to there. Indict them all for sedition and treason.
The 2020 election op was pulled off in coordination with the Covid-1 scam that positioned the nation for massive mail-in ballot fraud, which was coordinated by lawfare ninja Marc Elias, then employed by the Democratic Party law firm Perkins Coie. Elias was assisted by Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook, now Meta), whose nonprofit, Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), distributed over $400-million to roughly 2500 election districts around the country, much of it used to pay select officials who would count and report mail-in ballots. The mail-in ballot fraud had been planned and gamed-out previously by the non-profit org Transition Integrity Project, run by Rosa Brooks and Nils Gilman.
In October 2020, fifty-one former intel officials signed a public letter denouncing the Hunter Biden laptop as having “the earmarks of Russian disinformation.” The letter was organized by Antony Blinken and former CIA-Director Michael Morrell. It was done in coordination with a social media campaign to suppress public knowledge of the laptop (and the Biden family record of international grift inside it) to influence the presidential election a month later. Potential fraud indictments.
The Jan 6 riot at the US Capitol has never been adequately investigated. FBI Director Wray was allowed to evade answering to Congress about the number of FBI agents and associated employees (including CIA personnel) that were mixed in with the crowd to provoke the intrusion inside the building and related violence. Speaker Nancy Pelosi engineered the situation so that the certification of electoral vote slates would not be challenged as procedure allowed. Sedition and Treason.
The Jan 6 Congressional Committee was a fraud on the American people put together by Speaker Nancy Pelosi to coverup her involvement in the crimes behind the Jan 6 Capitol riot. The members involved likely enjoy Congressional immunity for the spectacle itself, but perhaps not for destroying all the evidence that was collected in the course of the investigation. Chairman Bennie G. Thompson was responsible for that.
The Mar-a-Lago raid of August 2022 was authorized by Attorney General Merrick Garland and carried out by FBI Director Wray with Assistant Director Steven D’Antuono. Three months later, Garland appointed Jack Smith Special Counsel to oversee the Mar-a-Lago documents case, which he botched, resulting in its dismissal two years later. The raid itself arguably lacked probable cause and was based on an improper scope of evidence sought. Indict Merrick Garland under 18 U.S.C. § 241, conspiracy against rights.
The lawfare operations of 2023-2024 in several jurisdictions resulted in indictments against candidate Donald Trump and others in Fulton County, GA, and New York City. The Fulton County case under DA Fani Willis (later disqualified for “the appearance of impropriety”) was assisted by the “Joe Biden” White House, possibly by attorneys Richard Sauber and Beth Mueller in the WH Counsel’s Office, giving it the odor of a purely political prosecution. In the the Stormy Daniels hush money case against Donald Trump brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, DOJ officer Matthew Colangelo left his cushy position as Principal Deputy Associate US Attorney General to take a job assisting DA Bragg in the NYC court. Colangelo delivered the opening statement at the 2024 trial and played a central role in the prosecution. The trial was presided over by political judge Juan Merchan. Just days ago, The New York Times reported that the Democratic Party fundraising company, Authentic Campaigns, previously owned by Judge Merchan’s daughter, Loren Merchan, has been under investigation the past year. Anybody detect the odor of politics? Malicious prosecution, improper judicial conduct.
Many of the political celebrities mentioned above, and probably many not-so-well-known players, must be freaking out as the waves ominously pound the beach and the summer days tick down toward the ill winds of fall. I’m pretty sure that readers and commentors can add some candidates to the list of potential indictments, and perhaps some ops I might have overlooked. (The entire odious Covid-19 affair is partly a separate matter, but that has also commenced a new phase with the guilty plea deal announced days ago by Dr. Fauci’s chief advisor, Dr. David Morens.) Even former President Obama looks boxed-in. He enjoys immunity from actions he took as president, but that immunity prevents him from hiding behind the fifth amendment as a now-private citizen in a court of law. Things are livening up."
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
- John F. Kennedy
Adventures With Danno, "Meijer Grocery Deals!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 8/21/26
"Meijer Grocery Deals!"
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Thursday, August 20, 2026
"Alert! This is Very Suspicious, A Major Attack Seems Imminent"
Canadian Prepper, 8/20/26
"Alert! This is Very Suspicious,
A Major Attack Seems Imminent"
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"A Look to the Heavens"
"The small, northern constellation Triangulum harbors this magnificent face-on spiral galaxy, M33. Its popular names include the Pinwheel Galaxy or just the Triangulum Galaxy. M33 is over 50,000 light-years in diameter, third largest in the Local Group of galaxies after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), and our own Milky Way. About 3 million light-years from the Milky Way, M33 is itself thought to be a satellite of the Andromeda Galaxy and astronomers in these two galaxies would likely have spectacular views of each other's grand spiral star systems.
As for the view from planet Earth, this sharp image shows off M33's blue star clusters and pinkish star forming regions along the galaxy's loosely wound spiral arms. In fact, the cavernous NGC 604 is the brightest star forming region, seen here at about the 4 o'clock position from the galaxy center. Like M31, M33's population of well-measured variable stars have helped make this nearby spiral a cosmic yardstick for establishing the distance scale of the Universe."
Chet Raymo, “As Time Goes By”
“As Time Goes By”
by Chet Raymo
“Is time something that is defined by the ticking of a cosmic clock, God’s wristwatch say? Time doesn’t exist except for the current tick. The past is irretrievably gone. The future does not yet exist. Consciousness is awareness of a moment. Or is time a dimension like space? We move through time as we move through space. The past is still there; we’re just not there anymore. The future exists; we’ll get there. We experience time as we experience space, say, by looking out the window of a moving train. Or is time…
Physicists and philosophers have been debating these questions since the pre-Socratics. Plato. Newton. Einstein. Most recently, Lee Smolin. Without resolution. What makes the question so difficult, it seems to me, is that time is inextricably tied up with consciousness. We won’t understand time until we understand consciousness, and vice versa. So far, consciousness is a mystery, in spite of books with titles like “Consciousness Explained”. Will consciousness be explained? Can consciousness be explained? If so, will it require a conceptual breakthrough of revolutionary proportions? Or is the Darwinian/material paradigm enough? Are we in for an insight, or for a surprise?
As I sit here at my desk under the hill, looking out at a vast panorama of earth, sea and sky, filled, it would seem, infinitely full of detail, so full that my awareness can only skim the surface, I have that uneasy sense that it’s going to be damnably difficult to extract consciousness, as a thing, from the universe in its totality. I think of that word “entanglement,” from quantum theory, and I wonder to what extent consciousness is entangled, perhaps even with past and future.
Who knows? Perhaps consciousness, or what I think of as my consciousness, is just a slice of cosmic consciousness, in the same way that the present is a slice of cosmic time. As a good Ockhamist, I am loathe to needlessly multiply hypotheses. But time will tell. Or consciousness will tell. Or something.”
o
"Casablanca, As Time Goes By"
No, You Don’t Have To Care About Any Of This”
“No, You Don’t Have To
Care About Any Of This”
by Joe Jarvis
“Lots of people are trying to force you to care about the things they care about. True, some of these issues are really important. But if you don’t care, you don’t care. You don’t have to pretend. And you don’t owe anyone an explanation. Henry David Thoreau summed it up almost 200 years ago when he said: “It is not a man’s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous, wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him.”
See, a lot of self-righteous people can’t imagine how anyone could make a different calculation about the most important causes in the world. The person who donates to hungry children finds it absurd that others donate to animal shelters while there are still needy kids out there. But this is just another variation of how specializing makes things more efficient. If everyone works on the causes they care about most, their passion and efforts will go the furthest.
But Thoreau continues that even if someone doesn’t want to help eradicate a wrong, it is “his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support.” If you’re not contributing to wrong, that is enough. In fact that is MUCH BETTER than acting like you’re saving the world, when in reality you are contributing to evil.
It’s great to care about important causes, but “I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man’s shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his own contemplations too.” For example, helping poor people is a noble cause. Forcing others to help poor people is pursuing a noble cause “sitting upon another man’s shoulders.” No, he isn’t automatically evil if he doesn’t help the poor, “he may still properly have other concerns to engage him.”
These days you’ll hear people say things like, “it’s not enough to simply not be racist, you have to be actively anti-racist.” Incorrect. It is absolutely enough to simply not perpetuate an evil. They don’t know you. They can’t see inside your head, or into your life. They don’t know what you’re engaged in. But if you are not hurting others, that is enough.
Like imagine if someone told you, it’s not enough to not murder, you have to become a criminologist, and go out there and solve murders. You know I am grateful there are people out there who go into homicide investigation. But it’s not for me.
It’s pretty ironic actually. Because the same people who try to bully you into taking the action that they want you to take would scoff at your demands for a more peaceful and prosperous society.
Because guess what one of my causes is? It’s not enough to simply not steal others money. You must actively oppose the systemic theft the government calls taxes. Oh wait, but they need to steal from me in order to pursue their causes, because they do so “sitting upon another man’s shoulders.” They tell me that a portion of my income, my labor, my time, will be taken without my consent to support the causes they care about, while whatever I had planned for my labor and time will be subordinated to their whims.
But guess what? No one really cares about my cause. So I moved to Puerto Rico to take advantage of tax incentives, and now perfectly legally pay a 4% tax rate. That did a lot more for me than trying to get people to vote – as if there was anyone who would advance my causes anyway. Now, more than ever, as the chaos of the world seems to be reaching a crescendo, it is perfectly reasonable to tune out, and say, you know what, I just don’t care.
All the ships have sailed. It’s much more important to make sure you and your loved ones are in a position of strength moving forward. Everyone is going to tell you that you have to care about this, that your silence on that is as bad as whatever, that you’re either with us or against us…
I care about a lot of things, and have plenty of passionate ideas about how this world should turn out. But now is the time to keep your powder dry, and wits about you. In the board game Risk, you win by building strength while remaining unnoticed. The strongest players fight it out, and weaken each other. It is then, when the smoke clears, that it is easiest to control the board.
Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Live your life. Be a good person. That’s enough. Ignore the noise.”
"A Day Of Reckoning Arrives For U.S. Treasuries Just As The U.S. National Debt Reaches $40,000,000,000,000"
by Michael Snyder
"We all knew that this was coming. For ages, people like me have been ranting that we would be facing a financial nightmare if we didn’t get the national debt under control. Of course most of the population didn’t want to listen, and they just kept sending big spenders back to Washington. Now we are 40 trillion dollars in debt and we are spending well over a trillion dollars a year just in interest on that debt. Nobody can deny that we have reached a stage where our debt spiral is totally out of control. The federal budget deficit for the month of July was 432 billion dollars. Interest on the national debt for the month of July was 118 billion dollars. Now Treasury yields are spiking as investors become hesitant to buy more of our debt. Borrowing costs are rising to very alarming levels, and we are in far more trouble than most people realize.
The size of the national debt officially crossed the 40 trillion dollar threshold on Tuesday…The U.S. national debt has surpassed $40 trillion for the first time, marking a historic milestone in a borrowing buildup that has accumulated over generations, through wars, recessions, tax changes, and the expansion of major federal benefit programs under presidents of both parties. The Treasury Department reported that total public debt outstanding reached about $40.047 trillion Tuesday, according to The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
This is money that we have stolen from future generations of Americans. What we have done to our children and our grandchildren is beyond criminal. People should be going to prison over this.
Thanks to years of absolutely reckless spending, the size of the national debt has more than doubled in less than 10 years…The Treasury Department’s daily financial report shows that the nation’s debt reached $40.05 trillion on August 18, more than double its level in 2017. The federal debt has ballooned because government spending is outstripping revenue, forcing the U.S. to borrow more money to cover the shortfall.
Our politicians are literally destroying the future of this country. In 1980, the size of our national debt was just reaching 1 trillion dollars.When Barack Obama entered the White House, the size of the national debt was sitting at about 10 trillion dollars. Now we are 40 trillion dollars in debt with no end in sight…
We just hit 30 trillion dollars about 4 years ago. How long would it take us to hit 50 trillion dollars?
If Elon Musk donated his entire fortune to the government, it would barely even make a dent in the national debt… The sheer scale of America’s $40 trillion debt is hard to fathom. The amount is significantly greater than U.S. annual GDP. That means even if all U.S. income went toward paying down the debt for a full year - rather than to things like salaries, corporate profits and investment - the federal government would still owe trillions, by this measure.
If Elon Musk helped pay down the debt by sacrificing the entirety of his nearly $1 trillion net worth—itself a mind-boggling sum - it would barely make a dent. The gross debt owed by the federal government is also nearly equal to what is owed by all U.S. households and businesses combined (excluding banks). Even if you took every single penny from every single billionaire in this country, that would only get you about 8 trillion dollars.
We are drowning in debt with no way out. At this stage, we are spending more on interest on the national debt each year than we are on either the U.S. military or Medicare… As the government continues to borrow, interest payments are consuming a larger share of the nation’s spending, creating a compounding effect that further fuels the debt. The U.S. government now spends more on servicing its debt than on national defense or Medicare. We really are in the endgame.
At the same time that our national debt has hit 40 trillion dollars, a moment of reckoning has arrived for the Treasury market…The fiscal pressures are increasingly visible in the bond market. The yield on the 30-year Treasury recently reached roughly 5.3%, its highest level in nearly two decades, according to the Journal and Reuters. Higher Treasury yields increase the government’s cost of issuing and refinancing debt and can also influence borrowing costs for households and businesses. Government borrowing costs are starting to spike.
In a desperate attempt to calm investors, the U.S. Treasury Department conducted a dramatic intervention on Wednesday…In a move announced Wednesday morning, the Treasury Department, led by Secretary Scott Bessent, said it would at least double the size of its government debt buybacks, starting Sept. 9 and running through Nov. 4. Yields tumbled following the announcement, with the 30-year down about 10 basis points after previously hitting its highest in about 19 years, predating the global financial crisis in 2008. But it didn’t work.
On Thursday, yields on long-term Treasury bonds bounced right back…Bond yields climbed Thursday, erasing most of the pullback they saw the previous day after the Treasury Department announced an intervention aimed at easing pressure on longer-dated government debt. The yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond - the primary focus of the accelerated buyback - was up more than 6 basis points at 5.256%. Yields on 10-year U.S. Treasurys - the main benchmark for mortgages, auto loans and credit card debt - moved more than 5 basis points higher to 4.704%.
This is a really big deal. And there aren’t going to be any easy fixes, because as Wolf Richter has aptly pointed out, there is only so much that U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will be able to do moving forward…Going forward, yields will have to be high enough to entice bond buyers off the fence and buy an additional $1 trillion of new Treasury securities every three to five months or so; yields have to be high enough to overcome their fears about inflation, government profligacy, and the new supply pushing up yields even higher.
This didn’t happen by accident. Decades of incredibly foolish decisions have brought us to this point. Meanwhile, bond markets in Europe are also starting to go nuts… A sharp increase in borrowing costs also took place across Europe. France’s 10-year bond yield hit its highest level since 2009 on Tuesday, while the yield on German bunds climbed to 3.25pc, a 15-year high. And the yield on 5 year Japanese bonds recently hit the highest level in 31 years.
Government bonds sit at the very foundation of the global financial system. Now that foundation is really starting to be shaken, and that is an extremely troubling sign. The stage has been set for a meltdown of epic proportions, and it won’t take very much at all to push us over the edge."
"Massive Price Increases, This Is Really Happening"
Adventures With Danno, 8/20/26
"Massive Price Increases, This Is Really Happening"
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"Walmart Investors Panic, The Consumer Is Broke; 8 Days Without Power"
Jeremiah Babe, 8/20/26
"Walmart Investors Panic, The Consumer Is Broke;
8 Days Without Power"
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"In Human Society..."
"When a bull is being lead to the slaughter, it still hopes to break loose and trample its butchers. Other bulls have not been able to pass on the knowledge that this never happens and that from the slaughterhouse there is no way back to the herd. But in human society there is a continuous exchange of experience. I have never heard of a man who broke away and fled while being led to his execution. It is even thought to be a special form of courage if a man about to be executed refuses to be blindfolded and dies with his eyes open. But I would rather have the bull with his blind rage, the stubborn beast who doesn't weigh his chances of survival with the prudent dull-wittedness of man, and doesn't know the despicable feeling of despair."
- Nadezhda Mandelstam
"Credit Crisis Coming: Banks Just Exposed What's Happening To Your Money"
Snyder Reports, 8/20/26
"Credit Crisis Coming: Banks Just
Exposed What's Happening To Your Money"
"Banks just issued their second warning - and this time it's not about inflation. Credit card debt has hit $1.26 trillion, student loans are entering massive delinquency, and lending standards are tightening fast. Here's what concerns them most: Americans are financially vulnerable. Most people earning $4,000-$5,000/month have $3,600 in FIXED costs alone (mortgage $2,100 + car $700 + student loans $500 + credit minimums $300). One crisis - a layoff, a garnishment, a rate hike - and they're underwater.
We break down the real numbers: 2.6 million student loan borrowers now 120+ days delinquent. Credit utilization soaring. Banks cutting credit limits. Housing market frozen. This isn't speculation - it's the playbook that precedes economic collapse. What it means for you: Credit limits may drop from $10,000 to $2,000-$5,000 without warning; student loan garnishments could eliminate 10% of income instantly; housing trapped inventory signals mortgage stress ahead; Over 50% of Americans have NO emergency savings - they're one crisis away."
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o
Farron Balanced, 8/20/26
"Potentially Huge Market Crash
Could Be Right Around The Corner"
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"The West's Financial System on the Brink of Collapse"
Michael Hudson, 8/20/26
"The West's Financial System on the Brink of Collapse"
Prof. Michael Hudson, a world-renowned classical economist, discusses
the history of finance and why the West's financial system is on the brink of collapse.
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Follow the work of Michael Hudson:
"Nobody Gives a Damn About Your Status"
Full screen recommended.
Delta Blues Brother,
"Nobody Gives a Damn About Your Status"
"Novelty vs. Routine: The One Line Every Man Must Guard Or Watch His Life Slip Away"
"Novelty vs. Routine: The One Line Every Man
Must Guard Or Watch His Life Slip Away"
by John Wilder
"Routine is where life goes to die. On reflection the other day I was a bit amused to note how much of my life is on autopilot. I have three pairs of pants that are all the same that I wear for work that are identical in cut, color, and comfort, so I never have to stand in front of the closet wondering what matches what. I have six shirts that rotate on my torso for daily wear, each one as unremarkable as the last. I get up, generally, within one minute of the same time each day, and the Wildermobile™ hits the pavement within the same thirty seconds each workday.
I have cigars three times a week, on the same days and at the same approximate time, rain or shine, good mood or bad. Why three times a week? Well, because insurance says that means I’m a non-smoker. It’s a loophole I’m happy to exploit, and it keeps the premiums from getting as high as Johnny Depp jumping on Mount Everest.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I set those things up on purpose. I figure I have only so much energy to make decisions each day, so why not save it up and also pre-make decisions for the time I’m stupidest each day? For me, that’s in the morning when I get up. Brush teeth first, pants second, and if I’m lucky they’re on my legs and not as a unique set of chestless arm chaps. No debate, no drama, just forward motion.
It’s like giving my brain a head start on the real work that comes later. This makes sense to me. Efficient. Practical. The kind of system a man builds when he realizes life is long on demands and short on spare mental horsepower.
But. I get concerned sometimes that I’ve pre-programmed life a bit too much, and created too much of a routine. The reason I’m concerned is that all of those minutes faced with nothing novel or consequential happening slip away like the replicant played by Rutger Hauer says in Blade Runner: “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”
And the mostest lostest will be those moments where I was living life on routine, putting one foot in front of the other with hours of my life slipping by on autopilot. The coffee is hot, the drive is the exact same stretch of highway, the cigar smoke curls up exactly as it did last Tuesday. Comfortable, yes. But is comfort the same as living?
Time is really one of the biggest fascinations of my life. Even as a kid, I was obsessed with the idea that something new is only bright and shiny when it’s brand new, and after a certain amount of damage it simply can’t be made to look new again. It wears. It gets scratched and dinged, and none of that is, short of melting it down and remaking it new again, reversible.
Time does that to everything, including us. I can go back to the home I left this morning, but I can’t go back to this morning. It’s a lost country, a place where I can only go in my memory. Gone. Irretrievable. And what if every morning is the same for a thousand days? Haven’t I just compressed all of my life into one single Groundhog Day, with the only exception that I’m getting older, less shiny and new? Less naïve? Less innocent?
The calendar pages flip, but the days bleed together into one long, grey blur. I wake up, I do the things, I go to bed, and suddenly a decade has vanished while I was busy being responsible. The flip side of routine is novelty.
I remember the first night I met The Mrs., the way the room felt electric and the conversation refused to end. I remember my first car. I remember my first touchdown. I remember my last day of college.
I remember building the first Pinewood Derby® car with The Boy and the last one with Pugsley. Those moments and milestones that make up the peaks and valleys of life. Those, certainly, have made my life longer. Not in years, but in the way that life stretches when something real happens. I remember those moments intensely.
There’s a fine line, though. If my life is nothing but novelty, then what chance do I have of creating something useful, of establishing meaning with my life? There is none. Chaos is where life goes to lose meaning. One wild distraction after another, no anchor, no progress, just a pinball existence bouncing from shiny object to shiny object until nothing sticks and nothing matters.
If my life is always routine, I’m pushing every bit of meaning away, becoming a grey man in a gray room on a grey house on a gray hill. Everything blends. Nothing stands out. The days stack up like identical bricks in a wall you can’t see over, and one day I realize the wall is my life and I built it yourself.
I have this thought, mainly because Pugsley is mostly on his own now. I figure the time when I’ve spent half of the hours I’ll ever spend with him was sometime in 2015 or 2016. He’s now out in the world. That realization sneaks up on a father like a quiet thief. No warning bell when the halfway mark passes. I just look up one day and notice the house is quieter, the schedule has gaps, and the kid you taught to ride a bike is suddenly navigating highways I’ll never drive.
It forces the question: so what now? Again, routine is where life goes to die, and chaos is where life goes to lose its meaning. Routine is Scylla; Chaos, Charybdis. I love it when I work a semicolon into a sentence! We paddle between the two monsters, trying not to get devoured by either. Too much of one and we drown in sameness. Too much of the other and we drown in noise.
I think we as a culture are caught between these two monsters right now. We have chaos in the never-ending rise of technological advancement, which at the same time turns faces toward the black mirrors in their hands, where they take the cold comfort of doomscrolling their life away in an endless sea of other people’s outrage and other people’s highlights. Every notification promises novelty with a new opinion that will surely change everything.
But it doesn’t. It just scrolls. The phone lights up, the brain lights up, and another slice of irreplaceable time disappears into the glow. We’ve engineered a world that offers infinite novelty at the cost of any real depth, and we wonder why so many feel hollow.
Reality, I think, is part of the antidote. Writing is, for me. Sure, I do it on a routine: same time, same chair, same keyboard, but each post is something different. Each one starts from a fresh thought, a fresh observation, a fresh wrestle with whatever corner of life is nagging at me that week.
It’s routine that (mostly) invites novelty instead of smothering it. And getting out and accomplishing something in the physical world is also important, too. Building something with my hands. Moving my body until it complains and then keeps going anyway. These things don’t just fill time; they mark it. They leave evidence that I was here, that I did something that outlasts the doomscroll.
The balance isn’t perfect and it never will be. Some days the routine wins because the world demands it. Other days novelty crashes in whether I wanted it or not. The trick, I’m learning, is to guard the line between them like it’s the most important border in your life. Protect enough routine to keep the engine running and enough novelty to keep the engine pointed somewhere worth going.
Because time doesn’t wait for us to figure it out. It keeps moving, wearing us down, turning shiny new mornings into well-worn afternoons. And if I’m going to lose moments like tears in rain, I’d rather a few of them be the kind worth remembering: sharp, vivid, and undeniably mine, than a thousand identical ones that blur together into nothing at all."
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