Dialogue Works, 8/30/25
"Scott Ritter:
Russia’s Shocking Move to Collapse It All"
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So, we rise from the rubble...
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Saturday, August 30, 2025
"Prof. Richard D. Wolff: We’re in Deeper Trouble Than I Ever Imagined"
Politics Of Global, 8/30/25
"Prof. Richard D. Wolff:
We’re in Deeper Trouble Than I Ever Imagined"
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Full screen recommended.
Steven Van Metre, 8/30/25
"This Changes Everything -
The Economic Consequences Will Be Severe!"
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"A Wealth Wipeout Is About To Hit America; Where Did The Real Estate Agents Go?"
Jeremiah Babe, 8/30/25
"A Wealth Wipeout Is About To Hit America;
Where Did The Real Estate Agents Go?"
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Musical Interlude: Peter Gabriel (Feat. Kate Bush), "Don't Give Up"
Full screen recommended.
Peter Gabriel (Feat. Kate Bush), "Don't Give Up"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Point your telescope toward the high flying constellation Pegasus and you can find this expanse of Milky Way stars and distant galaxies. Centered on NGC 7814, the pretty field of view would almost be covered by a full moon. NGC 7814 is sometimes called the Little Sombrero for its resemblance to the brighter more famous M104, the Sombrero Galaxy.
Both Sombrero and Little Sombrero are spiral galaxies seen edge-on, and both have extensive central bulges cut by a thinner disk with dust lanes in silhouette. In fact, NGC 7814 is some 40 million light-years away and an estimated 60,000 light-years across. That actually makes the Little Sombrero about the same physical size as its better known namesake, appearing to be smaller and fainter only because it is farther away. A very faint dwarf galaxy, potentially a satellite of NGC 7814, is revealed in the deep exposure just below the Little Sombrero.”
The Poet: James Broughton, "Having Come This Far"
"Having Come This Far"
"I've been through what my through was to be,
I did what I could and couldn't.
I was never sure how I would get there.
I nourished an ardor for thresholds,
for stepping stones and for ladders,
I discovered detour and ditch.
I swam in the high tides of greed,
I built sandcastles to house my dreams.
I survived the sunburns of love.
No longer do I hunt for targets.
I've climbed all the summits I need to,
and I've eaten my share of lotus.
Now I give praise and thanks
for what could not be avoided,
and for every foolhardy choice.
I cherish my wounds and their cures,
and the sweet enervations of bliss.
My book is an open life.
I wave goodbye to the absolutes,
and send my regards to infinity.
I'd rather be blithe than correct.
Until something transcendent turns up,
I splash in my poetry puddle,
and try to keep God amused."
- James Broughton
"How Are Things Going, Joe?"
“You go up to a man, and you say, “How are things going, Joe?” and he says, “Oh fine, fine… couldn’t be better.” And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn’t be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody’s having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
“10 Things You Should Know About Life’s Most Important Questions”
“10 Things You Should Know
About Life’s Most Important Questions”
by Marc Chernoff
“It’s a harsh fact that every one of us is ignorant in some way. Although we tend to pretend otherwise, it’s impossible to know it all. Ignorance is our biggest collective secret. And it’s one of the scariest and most damaging realities of life, because those of us who are most ignorant – and thus most likely to spread ignorance – are also the ones who often don’t know it.
Here’s a quick test: If you have never changed your mind about one of your learned beliefs, if you have never questioned the fundamentals of your opinions, and if you have no inclination to do so, then you are likely ignorant about something you think you know.
What’s the quickest solution? Get outside and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, behaves, and handles certain aspects of life very differently from you, and just have a simple, honest conversation with them. I promise, some of life’s most important questions will become clearer by doing so. And it will do both of you lots of good. Once you’ve done that, here are some key things to remember:
1. Many of the biggest misunderstandings in life could be avoided if we would simply take the time to ask, “What else could this mean?”
2. An expert is not a person who gives all the right answers; she’s the one who asks the right questions.
3. Very few of us actively seek new knowledge in this world on a daily basis. We get comfortable with what we know, and we stop questioning things. On the contrary, we try to squeeze from the unknown the answers we have already shaped in our own minds – judgments, justifications, validations, forms of consolation without which we might feel incomplete or off-center. To really ask something new is to open the door to the storm. And the answer just may blow us away.
4. If someone can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about how they answer you.
5. Monsters do exist in the real world, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous in the long run. More dangerous are the common people with good intentions who are instantly ready to believe and act without asking questions.
6. At the end of the day, the questions you ask of yourself determine the type of person you will become.
7. Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life.
8. When it comes to your relationships: Does he/she treat you with respect at all times? That’s the first question. The second question is: If he/she remains the exact same person ten years from now, would you still want to be in a relationship with him/her? And finally, does he/she inspire to be a better human being? When you find someone that you can answer yes to all three questions, you know you’ve found yourself a relationship worth having.
9. Regardless of how much you know, or how many incredible questions you ask, you can never know it all. To believe that you do, is proof of the contrary. The wilderness around us always holds answers to more questions than we have yet learned to ask. And that’s a beautiful thing.
10. Although life will always be filled with unanswered questions, it’s the courage to seek the answers that counts – this journey is what gives life meaning. Ultimately, you can spend your life wallowing in frustration and misery, wondering why you were the one who was chosen to deal with your problems, or you can be grateful that you are strong enough and smart enough to grow from them.
Your turn: Be present and have patience with everything that remains unexplained in your heart and mind. Try to love life’s questions. Like locked doors or like good books written in foreign languages, respect their nature. Don’t expect all the answers to come easy. They cannot be given to you right now because your present understanding isn’t ready yet. It’s a question of experiencing everything first. Right now you need to hold on to the questions – explore, learn, and live your life. Perhaps, as you do, you will gradually find yourself experiencing the answers you always wanted. So with that said, which of the reminders above hit home the most? Why? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts and insights with us.”
"What Does The Quote "Every snowflake pleads not guilty in an avalanche" Mean?"
"What Does The Quote
"Every snowflake pleads not guilty in an avalanche" Mean?"
by Tom Robinson
"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."
- Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
"I have never actually heard this quote but I think it's brilliant and can easily infer the intended meaning. When a problem is the result of many people individually doing something only slightly wrong it is easy for each individual person to see themselves as having no part in it.
For example, everyone is against slavery. We all know that the conditions in the sweatshops that make so much of the clothing in stores are deplorable, and many westerners are aware that some of the clothing we wear may have been made by people who are effectively enslaved.
But we tend to be okay with it at the same time. After all, we don’t run sweatshops, we only buy some of the clothing that comes out of them. Even if you stop purchasing clothing made unethically, other people will continue to buy it and nothing will change. We are just going along with a system that exists independent of ourselves for our own benefit.
The same logic goes for electronics. Even if we are aware (most aren’t) that the tantalum in the transistors in a device was taken from a system that promotes violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, all we did was buy the thing. We didn't pay any rebels. We didn't force anyone to mine coltan for a few cents a day.
When I was in kindergarten, I was in a play called “Nobody Stole the Pie.” The premise was that the people of a town made a huge pie. Without telling each other, everyone in town takes a little piece. After all, the pie is so big no one would miss one piece. When the time comes to cut and serve the pie, lo and behold, it's gone and everyone tries to figure out who stole it. But even though nobody stole the pie, it has disappeared just the same. Oddly, I feel that my kindergarten play encapsulates this quote quite effectively.
Each snowflake is only a piece of the avalanche and cannot be held responsible for the destruction it causes. One snowflake can't tear down a tree or bury a skier, but a bunch of them can. This quote calls upon each piece of the behemoth to recognize that the part it plays, though minor, is still what leads to the result."
"Making Your Best Guess"
"Making Your Best Guess"
by Arthur Silber
"We are not gods, and we are not omniscient. We cannot foretell the future with certainty. Most often, cultural and political changes are terribly complex. It can be notoriously difficult to predict exactly where a trend will take us, and we can be mistaken. We do the best we can: if we wish to address certain issues seriously, we study history, and we read everything that might shed light on our concerns. We consult what the best thinkers of our time and of earlier times have said and written. We challenge everyone's assumptions, including most especially our own. That last is often very difficult. If we care enough, we do our best to disprove our own case. In that way, we find out how strong our case is, and where its weaknesses may lie.
Barring extraordinary circumstances, we cannot be certain that a particular development represents a critical turning point at the time it occurs. If we dare to say, "This is the moment the battle was lost," only future events will prove whether we were correct. We do the best we can, based on our understanding of how similar events have unfolded in the past, and in light of our understanding of the underlying principles in play. We can be wrong. "
"It's What You Know For Sure..."
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“Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race ‘looking out for its best interests,’ as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.“
- Nouriel Roubini
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.
It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
- Mark Twain
"How It Really Horribly Is"
And how about you, Good Citizen? How's that job going? Current with all the bills? Health insurance affordable, keeping you well? If you're in Appalachia I hope you're wisely spending that $750 they gave you to replace losing your home and everything you owned, if you could even apply... But of course your own food stamp balance and available cash balances look like this, right?
10 MILLION illegals in 2024 alone automatically got $5,000 pre-paid debit cards and free transportation wherever they liked? Free health care and housing? While 700,000 Americans are homeless, including 60,000 veterans, 22 of whom commit suicide EVERY day?! Hungry children, elderly can't afford life-saving medicines,150,000 drug overdoses in the last year! $350 BILLION for Ukraine, God knows how many BILLIONS to Israel, and you, Good Citizen, what do they do for YOU?!
WTF, and I repeat WTF is wrong with this country?!
"Why Grocery Shopping in America Feels Like a Luxury in 2025"
Full screen recommended.
A Homestead Journey, 8/30/25
"Why Grocery Shopping in America
Feels Like a Luxury in 2025"
"Why does grocery shopping in America feel like a luxury in 2025? Families across the U.S. are struggling with the rising cost of living, skyrocketing grocery prices, and inflation that just won’t slow down. What used to be a simple trip to the store now feels like a financial burden. In this video, we’ll uncover why food prices are out of control, how Americans are adapting, and what this means for everyday survival in the United States. If you’ve noticed your grocery bill doubling, shrinking package sizes, and less food on the shelves, you’re not alone. Millions of Americans are facing third world conditions when it comes to affording basic food. From inflation to supply chain breakdowns, America’s food crisis is hitting harder than ever before. Watch to the end to understand why grocery shopping feels like a luxury in 2025 - and what it means for the future of life in America."
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Full screen recommended.
A Homestead Journey, 8/30/25
"Americans Are Broke, Exhausted,
and Done Pretending Everything's Fine"
"Americans are broke, exhausted, and done pretending everything’s fine. Across the country, families are struggling under the weight of the cost of living crisis, rising inflation, skyrocketing bills, and constant financial stress. People are maxing out credit cards, skipping meals, and admitting they can’t keep up anymore. In this video, I dive into the harsh reality of what everyday Americans are facing - layoffs, financial collapse, and the vanishing middle class. The truth is, millions are realizing that the “normal” they were promised doesn’t exist anymore, and the system is crumbling around us. It’s time to stop pretending everything is okay and start preparing for what’s coming. From food shortages to the housing crisis, from debt traps to an uncertain economy, this is the wake-up call no one can afford to ignore."
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Full screen recommended.
Talk Rant, 8/30/25
"Americans Can’t Even Afford Basic Food Anymore"
"Can you believe it? In 2025, many Americans can’t even afford basic food anymore. Grocery prices are out of control, and families are spending $80–$200 for just a few items. Inflation 2025 is making life harder every single day, and the cost of living crisis is forcing people to skip meals just to survive. This video shows how ordinary American people are struggling with grocery prices 2025, food inflation crisis, and the cost of living crisis. From Walmart trips that cost hundreds of dollars to parents worrying about how to feed their kids, this is the reality in the richest country in the world."
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But we have a $1 TRILLION "Defense" budget, $350 BILLION for Ukraine, God knows how many secret BILLIONS for the psychopathically degenerate Israeli genocidal monsters, and for YOU? Nothing... WTF, and I repeat WTF is wrong with this country?
Dan, I Allegedly, "The Economy Is Crumbling! The Shocking Decline"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 8/30/25
"The Economy Is Crumbling! The Shocking Decline"
"The economy is crumbling, and no one's telling you the full story! From plummeting travel numbers in Las Vegas to skyrocketing inflation and massive layoffs at major corporations like Kroger, the signs of an economic slowdown are everywhere. In this video, I break down the shocking stats and real-life examples that show industries - travel, real estate, retail, and more - are struggling like never before. Whether it's the 22% drop in Canadian travelers, the ongoing Tesla sales slump, or the closures of iconic amusement parks, it all points to one thing: tough times ahead. This isn't all bad news, though. If you know where to look, this economic slowdown is your opportunity to save big. From negotiating deals on homes and cars to snagging unbeatable cruise packages, I’ll show you how to make the most of this downturn. Plus, I share insider tips on protecting yourself from identity theft after data breaches like the recent TransUnion fiasco."
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"I Visited GUM And TsUM, 2 Of Moscow's Most Expensive Stores"
Full screen recommended.
The Sheekoz Family, 8/30/25
"I Visited GUM And TsUM,
2 Of Moscow's Most Expensive Stores"
"My name is Dan, I am simple Russian man. My dream were to speak English, I learned English from old American films and now I speak English as I can. In this video I will show you 2 of the most luxurious and expensive stores in Russia."
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"A Gorilla or A God?"
"A Gorilla or A God?"
by Paul Rosenberg
"Humanity stands about halfway between gorillas and gods. The great question that looms over us, is this: “Which will we incorporate into our lives? Primate things or God things?”
Yes, choices are thrust upon us all our lives, accompanied with various levels of intimidation and threat, but at some point, all of us find ourselves able to choose freely. And it is then that we go in one direction or the other. We are able to change directions of course, but every time we choose, we move a step in one direction or the other.
What We Are: Please understand that I am not endorsing any specific theories here – religious, scientific, or otherwise. I’m merely describing the situation in which humanity finds itself. We are halfway between gorillas (or chimps, if you prefer) and gods: The worst things we do are primate things, and the best things we do are god-like things. Either direction is open to us.
Strange as it may seem, we are a lot like the lesser primates. Our bodies are built in the same ways, our body chemistry is nearly identical, and the worst aspects of human nature are essentially the same as the worst aspects of primate behavior.
We are also a lot like gods. We transcend entropy; we create. We can touch the soul in others, and the best aspects of human nature are essentially the same as the best characteristics attributed to gods. This is not what we can be; this is what we are. What we become in the future depends on whether we choose gorilla things or god things, here and now.
What Are Gorilla and God Things? Gorilla things are those which operate on a dominant/submissive model. Hierarchy (high-level individuals controlling lower-level individuals) is the blueprint of the primate world. Dominant primates seek status and the power to control others. The submissive ones seek to pass along their pain to the animals below them (females, juveniles, etc.) and to avoid punishment. They are servile toward the dominants and cruel toward those they are able to dominate. Females trade sex for favors.
God things operate on a creative model. Blessing is the blueprint of the god world: distributing love, honesty, courage, kindness, blessing, awe, gratitude, and respect into the world and to other humans.
Gorilla things are these:
• The desire to rule.
• The desire to show superiority and status.
• Servility.
• Avoidance of responsibility.
• Reflexive criticism of anything new.
•Abuse of the weak or the outsider (women, children, Gypsies, Jews, immigrants, homosexuals, etc.).
God things are these:
• Producing things that preserve or enhance life.
• Invention and creativity.
• Expressing gratitude and appreciation.
• Experiencing awe and transcendence.
• Adaptability and openness.
• Improving yourself and others.
The Two Wolves: You’ve probably heard the old story of the two wolves: A young boy becomes angry and violent, and then feels guilty about his violence. He goes to his grandfather for advice. The old man says, “You have two wolves inside you: one of them is nice, the other is dangerous, and they’re fighting inside of you.” The boy then asks his grandfather, “Which one will win?” The old man replies, wisely, “Whichever one you feed.”
In the same way, humanity becomes like gorillas or gods depending on whether we build gorilla things or god things into our lives. I’m not going to tell you this is always easy, but the difficulty hardly matters: Somehow, we’ve been given a choice between becoming like gorillas or becoming like gods. No other creatures in this world have been given such a choice. Bring god things into your life, and reject primate things. You are defining your own nature between two wildly different options, every day."
Friday, August 29, 2025
Kahlil Gibran, “The Farewell”
“The Farewell”
“Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness,
and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over,
and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day,
and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,
we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream
we shall build another tower in the sky.”
- Kahlil Gibran, “The Prophet”
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“The Prophet: On Good and Evil”
by Kahlil Gibran
“Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil.
For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves,
and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters.
You are good when you are one with yourself.
Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil.
For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house.
And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among
perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom.
You are good when you strive to give of yourself.
Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself.
For when you strive for gain you are but a root
that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast.
Surely the fruit cannot say to the root,
“Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance.”
For to the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root.
You are good when you are fully awake in your speech,
Yet you are not evil when you sleep
while your tongue staggers without purpose.
And even stumbling speech may strengthen a weak tongue.
You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps.
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping.
Even those who limp go not backward.
But you who are strong and swift,
see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.
You are good in countless ways,
and you are not evil when you are not good,
You are only loitering and sluggard.
Pity that the stags cannot teach swiftness to the turtles.
In your longing for your giant self lies your goodness:
and that longing is in all of you.
But in some of you that longing is a torrent rushing with might to the sea,
carrying the secrets of the hillsides and the songs of the forest.
And in others it is a flat stream that loses itself in angles and
bends and lingers before it reaches the shore.
But let not him who longs much say to him who longs little,
“Wherefore are you slow and halting?”
For the truly good ask not the naked,
“Where is your garment?”
nor the houseless, “What has befallen your house?”
Freely download “The Prophet” here:
"Telling Uncomfortable Truths About The Collapse of America"
Gregory Mannarino, 8/29/25
"Telling Uncomfortable Truths About The Collapse of America"
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"The People Who Wait Are The People Who Lose - Desperate Americans Forced To Tap Into 401(K)S
Jeremiah Babe, 8/29/25
"The People Who Wait Are The People Who Lose -
Desperate Americans Forced To Tap Into 401(K)S
Comments here:
"Our 101 Trillion Dollar Problem: This Is The Number One Tool The Elite Use To Enslave Us"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 8/299/25
"Our 101 Trillion Dollar Problem:
This Is The Number One Tool The Elite Use To Enslave Us"
"People have spent far too much time in the dark. But finally, an awakening has begun. We're starting to learn about the tools used by the elite to enslave our population, and the number one tool they use to control us and keep us dependent on their system is debt. The financial powers of America and the world manipulate debt to enslave not only individuals, but corporations and governments.
You probably heard the proverb “the borrower is the servant of the lender” before. And that is an universal truth. Yet, billions of people are deep into debt, inevitably becoming servants of the money powers. Each time you borrow money from a financial institution, you're not only legally obligated to pay that money back, but you also signed up to pay a significant amount of interest on your loan. Oftentimes, that interest ends up being bigger than the loan itself. So the borrower has to devote a great deal of their labor to earn money for the lender. Of course, there are situations when it is necessary to take out a loan.
But what the United States has been doing for the last few decades goes far beyond “necessary” borrowing. Today, the U.S. federal government is over $37 trillion dollars in debt. State and local governments, as well as corporations and households, have also piled up huge amounts of debt. In this chart from the Federal Reserve, we can see how the total amount of debt in the U.S. system has skyrocketed from $20 trillion during the mid-90s to $101 trillion last year."
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An Incredibly Beautiful Musical Interlude: Mario Frangoulis and Justin Hayward, "Nights in White Satin"
"Nights in White Satin", Mario Frangoulis and Justin Hayward
"Nights in White Satin" in an Italian version "Notte di luce", from a special
performance in 2002 at Thessaloniki with Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues.
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Close to the Great Bear (Ursa Major) and surrounded by the stars of the Hunting Dogs (Canes Venatici), this celestial wonder was discovered in 1781 by the metric French astronomer Pierre Mechain. Later, it was added to the catalog of his friend and colleague Charles Messier as M106. Modern deep telescopic views reveal it to be an island universe - a spiral galaxy around 30 thousand light-years across located only about 21 million light-years beyond the stars of the Milky Way.
Along with a bright central core, this stunning galaxy portrait, a composite of image data from amateur and professional telescopes, highlights youthful blue star clusters and reddish stellar nurseries tracing the galaxy's spiral arms. It also shows off remarkable reddish jets of glowing hydrogen gas. In addition to small companion galaxy NGC 4248 at bottom right, background galaxies can be found scattered throughout the frame. M106, also known as NGC 4258, is a nearby example of the Seyfert class of active galaxies, seen across the spectrum from radio to X-rays. Active galaxies are powered by matter falling into a massive central black hole.”
"Col. Douglas Macgregor: This Is How World War 3 Starts - No Way Back Now!"
Info Report Daily, 8/29/25
"Col. Douglas Macgregor:
This Is How World War 3 Starts - No Way Back Now!"
Comments here:
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Full screen recommended.
Glenn Diesen, 8/29/25
"Alastair Crooke:
Russia's Patience Is Over, Escalation Begins"
"Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat and the Founder of Conflicts Forum based in Beirut. He was formerly advisor on Middle East issues to Javier Solana, the EU Foreign Policy Chief. He also was a staff member of Senator George Mitchell’s Fact Finding Committee that inquired into the causes of the Intifada (2000-2001) and was adviser to the International Quartet. He facilitated various ceasefires in the Occupied Territories and the withdrawal of occupying forces on 2 occasions. Alastair has had 20 years’ experience working with Islamist movements, and has extensive experience working with movements such as Hamas, Hezbollah and other Islamist movements in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Middle East. He is a member of the UN’s Alliance of Civilization’s Global Experts."
Comments here:
Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 8/29/25
"INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern -
Weekly Wrap, 29-August"
Comments here:
"I Insist On The Right..."
"I love America more than any other country in the world and,
exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually."
- James Baldwin
"The Time You Have Left..."
“The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it.
Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now.”
~ Leo Babauta
“The Loss Of Dignity”
by The Zman
“If you step back and think about it, the normal man can probably list a dozen things he cannot say in public that he grew up hearing on television, usually as jokes. Then the jokes were no longer welcome in polite company and soon they were deemed “not funny” by the sorts of people who worry about such things. The same was true of simple observations about the world. Somehow noticing the obvious became impolite, then it became taboo and finally prohibited.
The reverse is true as well. Middle-aged men can probably think of a dozen things that were unimaginable or unheard of, which are now fully normal. Of course, normal is one of those things that is now prohibited. It implies that something can be abnormal or weird and that itself is forbidden. The proliferation of novel identities and activities that demand to be treated with dignity and respect is a function of the old restraints having been eliminated. When everything is possible you get everything.
The strange thing about all of this is there is seemingly no point to it. The proliferation of new taboos was not in response to some harm being done. In most cases, the taboos are about observable reality. The people turning up in the public square with novel identities or activities demanding respect did not exist very long ago. If they did, not one was curious enough to look into it. The public was happy to ignore people into unusual activities, as long as they kept it to themselves.
Of course, none of what we generally call political correctness is intended to be uplifting or inspirational. The commissars of public morality like to pretend it is inspiring, but that’s just a way to entertain themselves. These new identity groups are not demanding the rest of us seek some higher plane of existence or challenge our limitations. In fact, it is always in the opposite directions. It’s a demand to lower standards and give up on our quaint notions of self-respect and human dignity.
In the "Demon In Democracy", Polish academic Ryszard Legutko observed that liberal democracy had abandoned the concept of dignity. This is the obligation to behave in a certain way, as determined by your position in society. Dignity was earned by acting in accordance with the high standards of the community. In turn, this behavior was rewarded with greater privilege and responsibility. Failure to live up to one’s duties would result in the loss of dignity, along with the status it conferred.
Instead, modern liberal democracy awards dignity by default. We are supposed to respect all choices and all behaviors as being equal. There are no standards against which to measure human behavior, other than the standard of absolute, unconditional acceptance. As a result, the most inventively degenerate and base activities spring from the culture, almost like a test of the community’s tolerance. Instead of looking up to the heavens for inspiration, liberal democracies look down in the gutter.
Dignity comes from maintaining one’s obligations to his position in the social order, but that requires a fidelity to a social order. It also requires a connection to the rest of the people in the society. In a world of deracinated individuals focused solely on getting as much as they can in order to maximize pleasure, a sense of commitment to the community is not possible. Democracy assumes we are all equal, therefore we have no duty to one another as duty requires a hierarchical relationship.
In the absence of a vertical set of reciprocal relationships, we get this weird lattice work of horizontal relationships, elevating the profane and vulgar, while pulling down the noble and honorable. The public culture is about minimizing and degrading those who participate in the public culture. In turn, the public culture attracts only those who cannot be shamed or embarrassed. The great joy of public culture is to see those who aspire to more get torn down as the crowd roars at their demise.
The puzzle is why this is a feature of liberal democracy. Ryszard Legutko places the blame on Protestantism. Their emphasis on original sin and man’s natural limitations minimized man’s role in the world. This focus on man’s wretchedness was useful in channeling our urge to labor and create into useful activities, thus generating great prosperity, but it left us with a minimalist view of human accomplishment. We are not worthy to aspire to anything more than the base and degraded.
It is certainly true that the restraints of Christianity limited the sorts of behavior that are common today, but he may be putting the cart before the horse. The emergence of Protestantism in northern Europe was as much a result of the people and their nature as anything else. Put more simply, the Protestant work ethic existed before there was such a thing as a Protestant. The desire to work and delay gratification evolved over many generations out of environmental necessity.
Still, culture is an important part of man’s environment and environmental factors shape our evolution. It is not unreasonable to say that the evolution of Protestant ethics magnified and structured naturally occurring instincts among the people. With the collapse of Christianity as a social force in the West, the natural defense to degeneracy and vulgarity has collapsed with it. As a result, great plenty is the fuel for a small cohort of deviants to overrun the culture of liberal democracies.
Even so, there does seem to be something else. Liberal democracy has not produced great art or great architecture. The Greeks and Romans left us great things that still inspire the imagination of the man who happens to gaze upon them. The castles and cathedrals of the medieval period still awe us. The great flourishing of liberal democracy in the 20th century gave us Brutalism and dribbles of pain on canvas. The new century promises us primitives exposing themselves on the internet.
There is something about the liberal democratic order that seeks to strip us of our dignity and self-respect. Look at what happened in the former Eastern Bloc countries after communism. Exposed to the narcotic of liberalism they immediately acquired the same cultural patterns. Fertility collapsed. Religion collapsed. Marriage and family formation collapsed. These suddenly free societies got the Western disease as soon as they were exposed to western liberal democracy.
The reaction we see today is not due to these societies being behind the times, but due to seeing the ugly face of liberal democracy. It is much like the reaction to the proliferation of recreational drugs in the 1970’s. At first, it seemed harmless, but then people realized the horror of unrestrained self-indulgence. That’s what we see in the former Eastern Bloc. Their leaders still retain some of the old sense of things and are trying to save their people from the dungeon of modernity.
That still leaves us with the unanswered question. What is it about liberal democracy that seems to lead to this loss of dignity? It is possible that such a fabulously efficient system for producing wealth is a tool mankind is not yet equipped to handle without killing ourselves. Maybe we are just not built for anything but scarcity. Want gives us purpose and without it, we lose our reason to exist. Either way, without dignity, we cannot defend ourselves and the results are inevitable.”
"The Idea Of America… Or What’s Left of It"
"The Idea of America… Or What’s Left of It"
The importance of art and literature in an age of decline...
A Book Review by Doug Casey
"As many of you know, I’ve recently returned to my sometimes home here in the Backwater Socialist Republic of Uruguay, after having spent the summer season in the USSA. For all Uruguay’s drawbacks, it’s a pleasant enough country, more or less at the end of the road, where people mostly leave you alone to do whatever you want.
It’s been a long time since I could say that about the United States, where snitching has become something of a national pastime, both for members of the increasingly ubiquitous surveillance state and, much to my dismay, private citizens, too. Time was, one could get by without paying much attention to politics but, as the 5th century BCE Greek politician Pericles is said to have said, “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.”
It pays to be aware of the Leviathan’s movements and motivations. Even though the enlightened mind would rather invest its time in more productive and rewarding pursuits the State may have other ideas. In other words, while the pursuit of happiness is theoretically guaranteed by the long-forgotten document on which America was founded, that’s just theory. The reality is often very different.
Which brings me to a novel I just finished, "Morris, Alive." The book offers a cameo of the US today. And there are some things better captured in fiction than non-fiction. It acts as a sign along the road to perdition.
There are always signs along the road as a degenerate empire staggers toward collapse. Military misadventures abroad and economic ruin at home. Rising prices for basic goods and services along with generally lower standards of living. Growing political authoritarianism. Social antagonism and class warfare. Increasing nihilism, collectivism, and general moral decay. Add to those usual suspects a lack of appreciation for cultural and aesthetic values, and a nasty disrespect of tradition.
The cultural landscape of today’s America also marks a decline in appreciation for quality literature. The population, thanks in no small part to the scourge of anti-social media, is blighted by a shrinking attention span. It seems incapable of digesting anything beyond the 140 characters it takes to compose a snide “tweet.”
Gone are the days when people read real physical books in cafes or on train rides. Unless a novel is written by someone in a politically correct group - a Person of Color, a radical feminist, a communist, a person suffering from serious psychological and sexual aberrations, or all of the above - it won’t be reviewed by upmarket media or discussed in fashionable company. A working knowledge of the classics was once considered the mark of an educated man. Now it’s considered a badge of the white patriarchy. I’m not sure most people read anything that requires thought. Staring at one’s phone during a dinner “conversation,” or catching up on Buzzfeed Top 10 lists doesn’t count.
The so-called “reading public” is largely a misnomer; they mostly read scrolling FaceBook posts. I doubt one in a hundred college graduates today could cite more than a handful of works from the classics section of the fast-disappearing western canon. Having squandered four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars (of either their parent’s savings or government/taxpayer loans) attending various “studies” of debatable merit, tomorrow’s alleged “leaders” are as ill-versed in quality American and European literary works as medieval field peasants. But I suppose that’s to be expected as an empire slides into a new dark age.
Against this lamentable trend, my friend Joel Bowman published his excellent novel: "Morris, Alive." A classic bildungsroman in style, the story follows our young protagonist, Morris, as he journeys across the USA in search of the “Idea of America”… or what’s left of it.
The novel is full of witty dialogue, sound philosophical meditations and memorable scenes as Morris sets out from sea to shining sea on a journey of self-discovery. His great American road trip reminds me of Jack Kerouac, Robert Pirsig, or Hunter Thompson. Joel’s writing harks back to simpler times, before postmodernism and the age of grievances cast a shameful pall over the arts. Maybe it’s just me, but I prefer classical heroic narratives.
I hope I’m wrong when I say I don’t think the book will sell well. That’s nothing against the novel itself. On the contrary. Joel’s prose style, characters and plot development simply belong to a more graceful era. Back when readers weren’t “triggered” and writers “canceled” for broaching subjects like race relations and economic inequality. Personally, I like Joel’s mentioning “uncomfortable” historical facts. But worse, the novel features - wait for it - a straight, white male as the protagonist. That’s something akin to being a modern-day slave owner according to the woke minds infesting college faculty lounges today.
There are loads literary references in the book - Edgar Allen Poe, Lysander Spooner, H.L. Mencken - which I liked. Sometimes - not too often - Joel goes off on a literary riff. Slice of life stuff. Take this passage, from Chapter III:
“Winter dug itself into long, deep trenches that first year, the smog of America’s rust belt cities captured in the falling snow and packed tightly against the hard, frozen earth. Asphalt streets and windswept parking lots in places like Wilmington and Trenton and Philadelphia cracked and split along creeping hairlines, their subsequent depressions sinking into unseen potholes lurking beneath the ashen slush. A motorcar accident on one such road, a forlorn stretch between Pittsburgh and Titusville, left a young mother of three widowed and her husband, a drunkard and a philanderer on his last chance, ejected from this world through the shattering windscreen of her Oldsmobile clunker. Notification of the incident dissolved over the phone, left to hang lifelessly at the end of its hallway cord, as the woman shuffled to the fridge and, removing the unpaid registration bill from the straining magnet, let it fall into the trash can with the rest of the day’s news. She would tell the children after dinner, she supposed, when their favorite television show would be on to distract their attention.” ~ From "Morris, Alive" by Joel Bowman
Judging by the contemporary best-seller lists on Amazon and Oprah-style book clubs, Joel’s novel stands about zero chance at mainstream success. For that he would need to write a series about hunky teenage vampires or chart the “lived experience” of a gender fluid Congolese hermaphrodite seeking justice in a world that just doesn’t understand what it means to be a They/Them.
Morris, in contrast, pursues much-derided traditional values, compelling storytelling, and characters a sane human can actually identify with. It’s almost as if he’s suggesting there was something worth saving in the long and storied history of writers from Homer to Hemingway. That said, I doubt Joel minds whether the mainstream enjoys his latest literary foray or not. Like most libertarian thinkers and writers, Joel is somewhat of a “genetic mutant” in that he still cares about things like truth and beauty, even if most of the so-called cultural elites have forgotten all about them. Or actively despise them.
So, if you’re the rare reader who still values fluent prose, cares about real heroes and traditional values, and is looking to get a first edition from someone who may become famous as a talented writer, I suggest you pick up a copy of my friend’s debut novel: "Morris, Alive." If you’re anything like me, you might just find yourself recommending it to other, similarly-minded individuals."
o
“Five percent of the people think;
ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”
- Thomas A. Edison
Joel’s (very grateful) Post Script: "Thanks to Doug for the kind and insightful words… and to you, dear reader, for supporting independent literary fiction. As mentioned above, Notes Members can download a copy of our debut novel, Morris, Alive (along with a second work, Night Drew Her Sable Cloak) and start reading today. If you’re not already a member and would like to access these works, feel free to join us right here:
If you’re the Old School type who prefers physical copies, consider joining our Founding Members subscription level. Then, just drop us a line with your preferred mailing address (home, office or post office box), and we’ll personally send you both copies directly. And as always, stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…"
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