So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, February 25, 2022
"More Price Increases At Walmart! What Now?"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 2/25/22:
"More Price Increases At Walmart! What Now?"
"In today's vlog we visit Walmart and are noticing ridiculously high prices. Prices on groceries continue to rise, as we are also witnessing more empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores are struggling to get in products."
Gregory Mannarino, "Wells Fargo Warns Again (Ignore It); The Crisis To Crisis Mechanism Will Not Stop'
Gregory Mannarino, AM 2/25/22:
"Wells Fargo Warns Again (Ignore It);
The Crisis To Crisis Mechanism Will Not Stop'
Thursday, February 24, 2022
"Stock Market Saved From Massive Collapse Today; You Will Lose It All; Global Economy Crippled"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 2/24/22:
"Stock Market Saved From Massive Collapse Today;
You Will Lose It All; Global Economy Crippled"
"The Life Of Man..."
"The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instill faith in times of despair."
- Bertrand Russell
Tucker Carlson: "This Is What We Should Be Worried About"
Tucker Carlson:
"This Is What We Should Be Worried About"
"Stock Market Crash Spark Chaos As The Biggest World Conflict Has Begun"
Full screen recommended.
"Stock Market Crash Spark Chaos As The
Biggest World Conflict Has Begun"
by Epic Economist
"A Massive Stock Market Crash Has Begun! Stock markets are crashing all around the world as recente events threaten to spark catastrophic consequences for the lives of millions and hamper the global economy. In the United States, major indexes fell sharply today following an already tumultuous week on Wall Street. On the other hand, gold prices soared to $1970 an ounce, nearing a one-year high as traders rush towards safe-haven plays amid the news. And given that Russia is the world’s largest natural gas exporter, fears of other energy-linked sanctions fueled a major spike in oil prices. Crude oil and Brent crude hit a seven-year high and went above $100 per barrel.
Bubbly and risky assets continued to be slammed in U.S. markets throughout the day, as investors pondered the financial market implications of worsening global stress and greater sanctions. The escalation of the conflict is adding pressure on investors already grappling with a monetary policy shift as the central bank intervenes more aggressively in an attempt to alleviate inflation. The worsening tensions threaten to exacerbate already surging prices and spark other economic disruptions that could significantly complicate things on the financial markets.
In other words, the impact of the confrontation will likely unleash higher inflation all around the world by driving the price of food and energy to unprecedented levels, slowing down global manufacturing, causing further shortages, and grinding the global economy to a halt. Of course, the Russian stock market crash sent shockwaves all the way through the U.S. stock market, where conditions were already extremely volatile. As the spike in energy prices sent investors fleeing for the safety of fixed income assets, several corners of the market sank in a sea of red. But the real carnage was in the tech sector, where speculators got burned.
Many other big Wall Street banks and financial institutions are warning about more turbulence in the foreseeable future. “We’re going to see a lot of volatility in the weeks ahead because the situation is by no means clear,” said Aoifinn Devitt, chief investment officer at Moneta, referring to the geopolitical tensions.
Similarly, Goldman Sachs economists pointed out that “with some signs of problematic wage-price dynamics emerging and near-term inflation expectations already high, further increases in commodity prices might be more worrisome than usual” . However, that will not stop the Fed from hiking interest rates and adding more pressure on the markets, according to Goldman. A massive bubble burst seems inevitable in this scenario, and things continue to deteriorate by the day.
Deutsche Bank’s chief U.S. equity and global strategist Binky Chadha said that the invasion was “really worse than a baseline expectation that the bank had or the markets had,” he argues that if indexes drop another 4% to 5% in the coming days that would account for a 20% overall loss, which put the U.S. stock market effectively into bear market territory.
On the same note, strategists at Morgan Stanley led by Michael Wilson said that even though investors have been focused on rising global tensions over the past few weeks, signs of slowing economic growth are no less dangerous. The bank’s earnings model projects “a meaningful deceleration in economic growth in the coming months,” they wrote in a note, adding that earnings revisions breath trends have also been slowing. “All of that is a confluence of really negative factors that’s weighing on the markets here,” Anastasia Amoroso, chief investment strategist outlined in an interview with Bloomberg TV.
To make things worse, elite investors on Wall Street are saying that there’s no way to reverse such a deep downfall, and now the market is on track to “undergo a cataclysmic shift — and many won't survive the washout”. “This is not a drill. It's the beginning of a bear market,” they highlighted in an op-ed released to the public on the Insider website. And the outlook isn’t gloomy just for investors. This is just the beginning of a brutal crisis that will affect each and every one of us. And when everything starts to fall apart all at once, an avalanche of events will bring us right back into recession, and possibly spark a modern-day depression. At the end of the day, it’s the average person who will suffer the most."
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 is truly a majestic island universe some 200,000 light-years across. Located a mere 60 million light-years away toward the chemical constellation Fornax, NGC 1365 is a dominant member of the well-studied Fornax galaxy cluster.
This impressively sharp color image shows intense star forming regions at the ends of the bar and along the spiral arms, and details of dust lanes cutting across the galaxy's bright core. At the core lies a supermassive black hole. Astronomers think NGC 1365's prominent bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, drawing gas and dust into a star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into the central black hole.”
Chet Raymo, “The (Unattainable) Thing Itself”
“The (Unattainable) Thing Itself”
by Chet Raymo
“Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations. The light
In the room more like a snowy air,
Reflecting snow. A newly-fallen snow
At the end of winter when afternoons return.
Pink and white carnations- one desires
So much more than that. The day itself
Is simplified: a bowl of white,
Cold, a cold porcelain, low and round,
With nothing more than the carnations there.”
"Simplicity. Morning. Forty minutes till sunrise. Coffee. An English muffin. Sit on the terrace. The sky a deep violet. Then rose. Then gold. Simplicity. The senses fill to overbrimming, displacing thought. The moment is sweet and pure. Distilled. The shackles of conscience fall away. One simply is.
“Say even that this complete simplicity
Stripped one of all one's torments, concealed
The evilly compounded, vital I
And made it fresh in a world of white,
A world of clear water, brilliant-edged,
Still one would want more, one would need more,
More than a world of white and snowy scents.”
Now I wait with my eyes fixed on that place along the horizon where the Sun will rise. The sky itself holds its breath, anticipates the flash of green. I try, I try to empty myself, Zenlike, to become an empty vessel for nature to fill. A gathering vessel, brilliant edged. To exist entirely in the moment, outside of time, this moment, just now, now, as the disk of the Sun bubbles up on the sea horizon, that orb of of molten gold.
“There would still remain the never-resting mind,
So that one would want to escape, come back
To what had been so long composed.
The imperfect is our paradise.
Note that, in this bitterness, delight,
Since the imperfect is so hot in us,
Lies in flawed words and stubborn sounds.”
It's no use, of course. No way to obviate the conscious mind. Perhaps a Zen master might do it, a mystic in transport, a drunken sailor who walks into a lamppost. Even as the Sun's disk inflates, swells, unaccountably huge, the mind parses, frames, construes. I close my eyes to shut out thought and the words fill up the space behind my eyelids. The thing itself is out of reach, the moment adulterated by mind. The blessing of consciousness. And the curse."
(The three stanzas are Wallace Stevens' "The Poems of Our Climate.")
“There Are Meaningful Warnings..."
“There are meaningful warnings which history gives a threatened or perishing society. Such are, for instance, the decadence of art, or a lack of great statesmen. There are open and evident warnings, too. The center of your democracy and of your culture is left without electric power for a few hours only, and all of a sudden crowds of American citizens start looting and creating havoc. The smooth surface film must be very thin, then, the social system quite unstable and unhealthy. But the fight for our planet, physical and spiritual, a fight of cosmic proportions, is not a vague matter of the future; it has already started. The forces of Evil have begun their offensive; you can feel their pressure, and yet your screens and publications are full of prescribed smiles and raised glasses. What is the joy about?”
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Folly Is Perennial..."
“Folly is perennial, yet the human race has survived.”
- Bertrand Russell
Graphic: Auguste Barthelemy Glaize,
"The Spectacle of Human Folly," 1872
Gerald Celente, "World War III Has Begun...Unless We Unite For Peace"
Full screen recommended.
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente,
"World War III Has Begun...Unless We Unite For Peace"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
"Push Has Come to Shove"
"Push Has Come to Shove"
by Brian Maher
"Mr. Putin is misbehaving again... This morning he seized Ukraine by the throat. Today he is squeezing plenty hard. We hazard he will soon have Ukraine down upon the floor. The fellow says he is willing to take his hands off - if Ukraine yells uncle and accedes to his demands. These demands include the “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine… and Ukrainian neutrality. That is, Ukraine must not join the NATO alliance.
Ukraine remains defiantly deaf to these demands. Mr. Putin is waving off - vehemently - any who would leap to Ukraine’s help: "Whoever tries to impede us, let alone create threats for our country and its people, must know that the Russian response will be immediate and lead to the consequences you have never seen in history." What historical consequences might these be? We leave you to your speculation. Yet we remind you that Russia keeps nuclear muskets in its arms locker.
More Sanctions: This afternoon the United States president, Biden, reaffirmed he will not dispatch his men to Ukraine. Yet he shook his fists and yelled a lot. He also announced additional sanctions against the Russian strongman and his goons. But tellingly, these sanctions will not lock Russia out of SWIFT. That is of course the international payments system central to participation in the world economy.
Why not move more… SWIFT-ly… to punish Mr. Putin? Our agents inform us the Germans shook their heads and said no. Perhaps that is because the Germans receive some 50% of their energy from Russia. The Russian behavior is atrocious, the Germans seemingly say - yet we have our homes to heat.
How did the stock market take this morning’s news? Poorly at first… then less poorly… then rather well.
One Day, Two Stock Markets: The Dow Jones took an immediate 800-point plummet. But by midmorning it began clawing its way up… down 600… down 200… then up 92 by closing whistle. The S&P 500 followed in copycatting unison. Down heavily in early trading, it closed the day 63 points up. Meantime, the Nasdaq Composite appeared to celebrate world peace - up a gobsmacking 436 points on the day after initial gloom. Why?
Did investors “buy the dip”? Do they believe Mr. Putin’s buccaneering will keep the Federal Reserve sitting on its hands? What about oil and gold? Oil and gold - both of them - were up and away this morning, and not surprisingly. Yet as stocks began going up, oil and gold began going down. $1,972 at 9:30 EST, by 4:30 gold was trading at $1,903. $99 at 9:30 EST, by 4:30 oil was trading at $93.
Bitcoin took the opposite route, the stock market’s route. This morning Bitcoin went as low as $34,431. Yet by 4:30 it was trading at $38,319.
Is Putin Biting off More Than He Can Chew? We wonder if Mr. Putin is stretching himself beyond capacity. We have little doubt he will vanquish the Ukrainian forces. His own are too formidable. Yet as the United States learned in Iraq, taking a country and holding a country are not the same.
To bite a hunk of meat is not to chew a hunk of meat - much less to digest a hunk of meat. A man can gag if he takes in too much. The Russian leader may gag on Ukraine. It may even undo him. Protests in Russia are evidently forming. How will the Russian people take to the economic privations sanctions may impose upon them?
Is Putin Solely to Blame? It is true: Mr. Putin is the great bogey of this tale. He has gone, rudely, where he was not invited. But does he shoulder all blame for the present unpleasantness? In 2014, University of Chicago political scientist John Mearsheimer authored an article - “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault.”
Mearsheimer charts a sort of road map to the present crisis. This piece we now cite extensively: "The United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West…
Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics. They tend to believe that the logic of realism holds little relevance in the 21st century and that Europe can be kept whole and free on the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence and democracy.
But this grand scheme went awry in Ukraine. The crisis there shows that realpolitik remains relevant - and states that ignore it do so at their own peril. U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. Now that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater mistake to continue this misbegotten policy…"
Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly… "Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in it. Logic aside, Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into… Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn [it] against Russia…"
In essence, the two sides have been operating with different playbooks: Putin and his compatriots have been thinking and acting according to realist dictates, whereas their Western counterparts have been adhering to liberal ideas about international politics… "The United States and its European allies now face a choice on Ukraine. They can continue their current policy, which will exacerbate hostilities with Russia and devastate Ukraine in the process — a scenario in which everyone would come out a loser. Or they can switch gears and work to create a prosperous but neutral Ukraine, one that does not threaten Russia and allows the West to repair its relations with Moscow. With that approach, all sides would win."
The West took the opposite fork in the roadway. It dead-ended in war. Yet today we take some measure of solace… The hounds of war are running loose. If military conscription looms, we shall be exempt - for reasons beyond our disqualifying age, our dilapidated knees and dysfunctioning kidneys. We are not fully or partially vaccinated. And the United States military insists upon full vaccination. And as a certain Heidi Briones chuckles: “Only the vaccinated will be drafted. Joke’s on you.”
Gregory Mannarino, "Russia/Putin Just Bailed Out All The Worlds Central Banks; All Of Ukraine Will Fall"
Gregory Mannarino, PM 2/24/22:
"Russia/Putin Just Bailed Out All The Worlds
Central Banks; All Of Ukraine Will Fall"
"Before We Go To War, Let’s Take A Look At The Current State Of The U.S. Military"
"Before We Go To War, Let’s Take A Look
At The Current State Of The U.S. Military"
by Michael Snyder
"If we are going to have a war with Russia, perhaps we should determine if our military is actually prepared to fight such a war first. Unfortunately, as I will detail below, the answer is very clear. At one time, the U.S. possessed the greatest fighting machine ever assembled, but decades of neglect, incompetence and cultural deterioration have taken a devastating toll. Just look at what happened in Afghanistan. After nearly two decades of fighting, we couldn’t even defeat a ragged bunch of drug dealers and goat herders known as the Taliban. In fact, the Taliban appears to be even stronger today than when we first invaded. And now we think that we can take on the Russian military?
Sadly, the truth is that we aren’t ready for any sort of a major conflict at this stage. Earlier this week, I came across an article that explained that only about 7 out of every 10 Air Force planes is even capable of flying right now…"The latest numbers show that the Air Force has made no progress in improving the readiness of its planes with a rate of 71.5% or 7 out of 10 planes in 2021.
The United States Air Force is supposed to have mission capable rates of 75% to 80%, but about the only aircraft that meet that criteria are the unmanned drones. The high ratings of the drones disguise the fact that the actual numbers, when broken down by aircraft, are worse. The F-35As, the fifth generation fighters that would be crucial in countering any sizable aerial engagement with Communist China, dropped catastrophically from 76% to 68.8%."
We are supposed to be the most technologically advanced military on the planet. That is terrible. And when members of the U.S. Army were asked if their units were ready to fight, the survey results were depressingly low…"In a survey of more than 5,400 soldiers and civilians of different ranks conducted by the U.S. Army in July and August 2020, 14 percent of respondents said their unit would be ready to deploy, fight, and win anywhere in the world immediately. Some 13 percent of those surveyed said they would need more time, while 3 percent said they would be ready to go in a week, and 4 percent in a month."
How can things possibly be this bad? Our military has one job. They are supposed to be ready to fight when we call on them. So precisely how are they spending their time if they have not been using it to do that one job?
The U.S. Navy is not in great shape either. Right now, our Navy consists of only 296 vessels…"In FY 2022, fleet size stays about the same, at 296 ships. Previously ordered ships arrive in large numbers, but the Navy retires 15 ships, 10 early. Navy active-duty personnel decrease by 1,600 to 346,200."
296 ships may sound like a lot, but for a superpower like the United States it is actually a pathetically low number. In fact, the number of ships in our fleet has almost been cut in half since Ronald Reagan’s second term in office..."The 600-ship Navy was a strategic plan of the United States Navy during the 1980s to rebuild its fleet after cutbacks that followed the end of the Vietnam War. The plan, which originated with Republican leaders, was an important campaign plank of Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election, who advocated a larger military and strategic confrontation with the Soviet Union. The actual number of ships peaked at 594 in 1987, before declining sharply after the end of the Cold War in 1989–1991."
Looking forward to the future, things look even more grim. At this point, over 70 percent of young Americans are automatically disqualified from military service for one reason or another…"More than 70% of young Americans remain unable to join the military due to obesity, education problems, or crime and drug records. Turning that around should be an issue of national importance, said Rear Adm. Dennis Velez, the head of Navy Recruiting Command. “It is something that, as a nation, we should continue to work though … to make sure our children are healthier,” he said."
If that doesn’t alarm you, it should. And thanks to the soft and comfortable lifestyles that our young people enjoy today, those that make it through the recruitment process are more physically fragile than ever before…"According to a U.S. Army major, America’s youth are living a sedentary life that makes them fragile, prone to injury, and harder to successfully and easily transition from civilian life to the military. The news comes from an official press release posted on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, a hub of official pictures, videos, and news published by the Pentagon
When one military official was asked about this, he stated that this generation actually has weak skeletons which “break more easily”… When asked about the youth of today, Maj. Thibodeau was straightforward. “The ‘Nintendo Generation’ soldier skeleton is not toughened by activity prior to arrival, so some of them break more easily,” he said.
Capt. Lydia Blondin, assistant chief of physical therapy at Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital, detailed the kind of injuries she’s seen in the so-called Nintendo Generation. “We see injuries ranging from acute fractures and falls, to tears in the ACL, to muscle strains and stress fractures, with the overwhelming majority of injuries related to overuse,” she said.
Wow. But at least our military is extremely good at making diversity videos…
Full screen recommended.
After seeing how “inclusive” we are, I am sure that the Russians must be shaking in their boots.
Sending our sons and daughters off to die in a war on the other side of the globe is not something that should ever be done lightly. And a war with another superpower is something that we should try very hard to avoid even if our military was in top shape. Unfortunately, our military is nowhere near ready for such a conflict at this point, and our leaders should be honest with the American people about this. But of course most of the population is going to continue to assume that the U.S. military is still the mighty fighting force that it once was, but that hasn’t been true for a very long time."
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War with Russia?
Folks, we do not want to do this...
Full screen recommended.
"Battle for Beret: Joining Russia’s Special Forces"
○
We, meanwhile, do this...
"Male Soldiers Undergo Military Pregnancy Stimulation Training"
"Fitness programs for pregnant soldiers are mandatory because the
Army says it cuts down on illness, injuries and gets them back to work faster."
Video here, vomit bag optional:
○
"Latest Development on Russia's Attack
on Ukraine And Reports From Kiev"
"Tanks roll in from Belarus, airports and sea ports seized
by Russian troops, military targets obliterated with precision missile strikes."
by Mike Adams
(Natural News) "We are getting word directly from sources in Kiev that the Russian assault on Ukraine was carried out with “surprising” scale and coordination. Most Ukrainian citizens were taken completely by surprise, which is why many were not prepared with sufficient fuel to flee Kiev. Putin’s forces invaded from 3 directions, with tanks rolling into Ukraine from Belarus on the North, followed by paratroopers and amphibious assaults on Odessa and Mariupol. Ground forces moved in from Crimea to the south, and into the Donbass region on the southeast tip of Ukraine, bordering Russia.
US Sen. Marco Rubio describes the developments as follows:
● establishing air superiority via targeted surgical strikes.
● a pincer movement to trap Ukrainian forces in the east & cut them off from #Kyiv.
● finally attempt to decapitate Ukrainian govt by targeting govt buildings,leaders & command & control systems.
Map of Russian missile strikes against Ukrainian targets. All military airports are apparently destroyed pic.twitter.com/Q0wY7diVst
— Dmitri Alperovitch (@DAlperovitch) February 24, 2022
Putin’s plan appears to be the full decapitation of the Ukrainian government in Kiev: "It now appears likely that Putin is planning on occupying Kiev and toppling the current Ukrainian government, which Putin describes as a “Nazi” regime. It is noteworthy that the political leadership of Ukraine has been heavily “in bed” with the Clintons and the Bidens over the years, fully engaged in money laundering, bribery and corruption. Then again, that seems to be present in every nation, since nearly all governments of the world are evil and destructive. There is no innocent government, though there are many innocent civilians who want nothing to do with all this violence."
Please view this complete article, with videos, here:
"Putin Does Not Mess Around… Damage Video From Ukraine"
"Putin Does Not Mess Around… Damage Video From Ukraine"
by IWB
🇺🇦⚡️Nikolayev airport in Kherson after Russian strikes. pic.twitter.com/AVmPJE41y5
- OSINT UKRAINE (@OSINT_Ukraine) February 24, 2022
WATCH: Missile hits airport in Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine pic.twitter.com/EnskxXhpnq
- BNO News (@BNONews) February 24, 2022
Aftermath of Russian strike on air defence installations near Mariupol pic.twitter.com/JqFNr1lH0A
- Russians With Attitude (@RWApodcast) February 24, 2022
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Related:
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"Latest Development on Russia's Attack
on Ukraine And Reports From Kiev"
"Tanks roll in from Belarus, airports and sea ports seized
by Russian troops, military targets obliterated with precision missile strikes."
by Mike Adams
(Natural News) "We are getting word directly from sources in Kiev that the Russian assault on Ukraine was carried out with “surprising” scale and coordination. Most Ukrainian citizens were taken completely by surprise, which is why many were not prepared with sufficient fuel to flee Kiev. Putin’s forces invaded from 3 directions, with tanks rolling into Ukraine from Belarus on the North, followed by paratroopers and amphibious assaults on Odessa and Mariupol. Ground forces moved in from Crimea to the south, and into the Donbass region on the southeast tip of Ukraine, bordering Russia.
US Sen. Marco Rubio describes the developments as follows:
● establishing air superiority via targeted surgical strikes.
● a pincer movement to trap Ukrainian forces in the east & cut them off from #Kyiv.
● finally attempt to decapitate Ukrainian govt by targeting govt buildings,leaders & command & control systems.
Map of Russian missile strikes against Ukrainian targets. All military airports are apparently destroyed pic.twitter.com/Q0wY7diVst
— Dmitri Alperovitch (@DAlperovitch) February 24, 2022
Putin’s plan appears to be the full decapitation of the Ukrainian government in Kiev: "It now appears likely that Putin is planning on occupying Kiev and toppling the current Ukrainian government, which Putin describes as a “Nazi” regime. It is noteworthy that the political leadership of Ukraine has been heavily “in bed” with the Clintons and the Bidens over the years, fully engaged in money laundering, bribery and corruption. Then again, that seems to be present in every nation, since nearly all governments of the world are evil and destructive. There is no innocent government, though there are many innocent civilians who want nothing to do with all this violence."
Please view this complete article, with videos, here:
"Stupefied by War"
Scenes from the Franco-Prussian War. Source: Getty Images
"Stupefied by War"
by Bill Bonner
Youghal, Ireland - "We’ve been very, very clear that we will not allow inflation to rise above two percent or less." ~ Ben Bernanke
"We should probably be interested in what happens in the Ukraine. In the last 30 days, the country has drawn more worldwide interest than it did in the last 2,000 years. And now everybody who is anybody in the halls of power knows that the capital of the country is Kyiv… not Kiev... and it includes an article ‘the’ as part of its name.
Every major headline implores us to pay attention. Practically every talking head tells us why we should know the difference between the devilish Russian separatists in the Donetsk Basin… and the god-fearing, democracy-lovers in the Dneiper valley. Beyond that, we know very little… and more than we wanted to know.
Here at BPR we have no opinion about foreign policy… except that we are against it. We don’t understand it. But were we to take more of interest, we would understand it even less. Science, logic and poetry all agree: you can’t be a thing… and watch it at the same time. Strictly as a watcher, we observe that public policy – particularly foreign policy – is almost always best avoided. Whether the authorities claim to be fighting inflation… or sanctioning the Russians… the results will be disappointing.
“Stupefied by the war and the scale of the catastrophe,” writes Jean-Francois Lecaillon in his handy little book, “The French and the War of 1870,” “contemporaries were so shocked that they couldn’t keep their heads clear enough to learn from it.” They were in it. They were part of it. They were appalled by it. They mistook everything about it. They were victims of their own foreign policy.
Don’t know much about the War of 1870 – between France and Prussia? Well, neither did the French. Especially not when they were in the middle of it. Its relevance to us is just that our mission is to connect the dots. And in the War of 1870, we see some dots that look familiar.
Glorious Stupidity: The war began with a diplomatic incident of no particular importance. But one side took offense. And then so did the other. And then ‘credibility’ was at stake. Before the French knew the what-for or why, they were marching to the sound of bugles. “To Berlin,” they yelled. Bands played. People cheered. Soon-to-be widows waved goodbye at the train stations.
It was all very glorious. And remarkably stupid. The French had no more reason to attack the Germans than Americans have getting tangled up in the politics of the Eastern Ukraine. At first, the average Frenchman was puzzled. The newspapers too. What? How come? They couldn’t recall any beef with Wilhelm I. But after only a few days, all doubts were banished. Fervent patriotism took command. Young Frenchmen mobbed the recruiting stations, eager to get into the war before it was over.
Thus did they march off to the Rhine… almost gleeful at the thought of the sparkling medals that awaited them. After all, at their head was a Bonaparte, a great nephew of Napoleon himself. And hadn’t his uncle taught them all a lesson – the Prussians… the Hanoverians… the Bavarians… the Lombards… the Spanish… the Italians. And the Russians? Well… never mind. The problem was, the French army was woefully unprepared for war in 1870. Its generals were schooled in the tactics of Napoleonic warfare, from a half century ago. They believed it was ‘fighting spirit’ that determined the outcome of wars… not precision artillery fire.
The Prussians, on the other hand, had sent observers to watch closely as Yankees and Rebels killed each other in America, 1860-1864. They had their men at The Wilderness, Antietam…. and Gettysburg. One became so attached to the Confederate cause that he flew the Stars and Bars over his castle in Prussia for the rest of his life. “Remember the stone wall,” said Stonewall Jackson, reminding his officers that advances in riflery and artillery had tilted the advantage away from the attacker; he was now the one most likely to die. The stone wall protected the defenders.
A Zoological Smorgasbord: After the Franco-Prussian war was over… and memories faded… the contest was commemorated in art and literature. A nation needs its myths. The old soldiers told their stories. Top officers defended themselves from charges of ineptitude. Common foot-soldiers recalled how they had done their duty. Battles were painted on huge tableaux, showing the French in their superb uniforms, charging the fearful Hun. We’ve seen the paintings hanging in the Musee d’Orsay or in the Hall of Battles at Versailles. Bayonets gleaming the sun, the French appear almost invincible.
But it didn’t happen that way. There were almost no Napoleonic bayonet charges. Instead, the French were cut to pieces by German artillery and machine guns before even getting close to the enemy. It was a butchery that almost none were prepared for.
The Prussians had better tactics, better weapons, better training and better organization. Within weeks they had captured hundreds of thousands of French troops – including the Emperor, Napoleon III himself. The Army of the Rhine was surrounded and surrendered soon after. Then, the Prussians marched on Paris and laid siege. And once again, the French deluded themselves. The president of the new republic (the Empire was a lost cause at this point), Leon Gambetta, escaped the city in a balloon. He quickly organized another army with which to break the siege. Between French soldiers inside the city and those approaching it from the south, the Prussians were heavily outnumbered.
But you can’t put together a modern army in a few days. The ‘Army of the Loire’ was largely untrained. When the shells began to fall upon it, the young recruits ran away. The ‘relief column’ was quickly repulsed and Paris began to starve. Rats became prime dinner fare. Fancy restaurants served up animals from the zoo, in “consommé d’elephant,” or “civet de kangaroo.” Day after day, new hope came – a new ‘breakout’ rumor! And day after day came the disappointment; the ‘breakout’ had failed… or never even tried.
Finally, the city surrendered and the war was over. But the fantasies continued. The war had not been lost because of a failure of the army. No, the French told themselves, it was treachery… not incompetence. The army would have been victorious, the revisionist history continued, if they hadn’t been ‘stabbed in the back’ by traitors. (No real evidence of treachery was ever produced.)
This failure to stand back and learn anything proved even more disastrous a few decades later. By 1914, German machine guns and artillery were even better than they had been in 1870. But the French army still believed in its pre-Industrial Revolution doctrines. The army looked good, both on paper and on the field. But it was soon in tatters. Stay tuned…"
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"One source claims that 14,500 wars have taken place between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, costing 3.5 billion lives, leaving only 300 years of peace. An unfavorable review of this estimate mentions the following regarding one of the proponents of this estimate: "In addition, perhaps feeling that the war casualties figure was improbably high, he changed 'approximately 3,640,000,000 human beings have been killed by war or the diseases produced by war' to 'approximately 1,240,000,000 human beings.' The lower figure is more plausible, but could still be on the high side considering that the 100 deadliest acts of mass violence between 480 BC and 2002 AD (wars and other man-made disasters with at least 300,000 and up to 66 million victims) claimed about 455 million human lives in total. Primitive warfare is estimated to have accounted for 15.1% of deaths and claimed 400 million victims. Added to the aforementioned figure of 1,240 million between 3500 BC and the late 20th century, this would mean a total of 1,640,000,000 people killed by war (including deaths from famine and disease caused by war) throughout the history and pre-history of mankind. For comparison, an estimated 1,680,000,000 people died from infectious diseases in the 20th century."
"The Energy Crisis Has Begun - We Are Living Through History"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly AM 2/24/22:
"The Energy Crisis Has Begun - We Are Living Through History"
"We are living through history and the energy crisis has begun. Fuel, oil, electricity and natural gas are up through the roof. Some areas are seeing 150% price increases. Do not tolerate getting over charged for anything. Be your own financial auditor."
Meet Kevin, "The Russian Invasion Begins; Ukraine Crisis"
Full screen recommended.
Meet Kevin,
"The Russian Invasion Begins; Ukraine Crisis"
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Market Data Center
Gregory Mannarino, "Hyper-Alert! War! Stock Futures Crater, Energy Prices Skyrocket; Be Ready For ANYTHING"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 2/24/22:
"Hyper-Alert! War! Stock Futures Crater,
Energy Prices Skyrocket; Be Ready For ANYTHING"
"Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum"
"Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"Contrary to first impressions, I am not a doom-and-gloomer; I'm a systems-cycles-er, meaning I'm interested in where systems and cycles are heading. Cycles work because we're still running Wetware 1.0 which entered beta testing around 200,000 years ago and was released, bugs and all, around 50,000 years ago. Since the processes and inputs haven't changed, neither do the outputs.
Nature is a mix of dynamic, semi-chaotic systems (fractals, etc.) and cyclical patterns which tend to operate within predictable parameters. Why should human nature and human constructs (societies, economies and political realms) be any different?
So longterm success breeds complacency, hubris, economic and intellectual sclerosis, draining political infighting and the overproduction of parasitic elites, to use Peter Turchin's apt description. Consumption of resources expands to soak up every last bit of what's available and then the supply of goodies plummets for a multitude of completely natural and predictable reasons (sunspot/solar activity, El Nino, etc.) and a host of unpredictable but equally natural semi-chaotic extremes (100-year droughts, floods, etc.).
Wetware 1.0's go-to solutions to all such difficulties are rather limited:
1. Ramp up magical thinking. If a couple of human sacrifices ensured good harvests in the good old days, let's slaughter a couple hundred now - and if that doesn't work, then...
2. Do more of what's failed spectacularly and slaughter a couple thousand fellow humans, because darn it, maybe everything will turn around if we just kill another couple dozen. This requires ignoring the novelty of the current challenges and clinging to what worked so well in the past even as whatever worked in the past can't possibly work now because circumstances are fundamentally different.
3. Seek scapegoats. It's those darn witches. Burn a bunch of them and our troubles will magically disappear.
4. Go take what we need from some other tribe. What's our oil doing under their sand?
5. Consolidate power and wealth in the hands of elites whose failures exacerbated the crisis. Because the obvious solution (to the elites with cushy offices around the palaces and temples) to repeated failures of a leadership that only excels in one thing, squandering rapidly depleting resources on infighting and self-aggrandizement, is to give us all the remaining wealth and power. Hey, this makes perfect sense once you understand #2 above.
6. Demand sacrifices of the many to protect the privileges of the few. The Empire needs some warm bodies to fend off the Barbarians, because it would be a real shame if the Barbarians reached our palatial estates and disrupted the flow of wine and festivities. No worries when you come back on your shield; the bureaucracy will give you a decent burial and your spouse and kids can join the multitude of half-starved beggars waiting for the dwindling distributions of bread and circuses. But never mind that, did you hear about the upcoming games in the Coliseum? Good seats are going fast.
7. Eat your seed corn to keep the party going awhile longer. Not every human group had the luxury of borrowing "money" to keep the fast-unraveling party going awhile longer, so they consumed their seed corn and drained the last of their reserves - which is the same thing as borrowing "money" from a future with diminishing resources and productivity.
8. Maintain supreme confidence that "it will all work out fine because it's always worked out fine" without any sacrifice required of "those who count." What's forgotten is that the luxe greatness that is now teetering on the precipice of ruin was won by the sacrifices of the elites far exceeding the sacrifices of the many.
Back in the day, joining the elite and maintaining one's position required constant sacrifices on behalf of the common good, and strict adherence to public virtue. Now that's all forgotten, and all that remains are elites possessed by the demons of shameless greed and self-interest.
The idea that debt, leverage, speculation, greed, exploitation and parasitic elites can expand exponentially forever is magical thinking. Yet that is precisely what America and the rest of the global economic order insists is true and will always be true, forever and ever.
By all means, reject those horrid, awful doom-and-gloomers who look at systems and cycles. Everything will be fine as long as you secure seats for the next games at the Coliseum - they should be spectacular - but not in the way you expect."
"Russia Declares War On Ukraine: What We Know So Far"
Full screen recommended.
"Russia Declares War On Ukraine: What We Know So Far"
"Russian forces have started an invasion of Ukraine on the orders of Vladimir Putin, who announced a “special military operation” at dawn, amid warnings from world leaders that it could spark the biggest war in Europe since 1945."
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Full screen recommended.
"Russian Missiles, Air Strikes Hit Ukrainian Targets"
"Russian missiles and air strikes targeted Ukrainian military positions and infrastructure across the country. Videos posted to social media on February 24 showed explosions in several cities as Russia launched its military invasion of Ukraine."
"Our Financial System Is Optimized For Sociopaths And Exploitation"
"Our Financial System Is Optimized
For Sociopaths And Exploitation"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"We live in a peculiar juncture of history in which truth has been banished as a threat to the maximization of private gain, i.e. the hyper-pursuit of self-interest. Evidence that supports a causal chain has been replaced by cherry-picked data that supports a self-serving narrative: both the evidence and narrative are manufactured to serve the interests of the few at the expense of the many.
In this juncture of history, evidence is easily disputed because the process of manufacturing self-serving evidence has been perfected. Indeed, self-serving evidence is now a commodity which can be purchased wholesale: rig the sample size, massage the data statistically, conjure up a context that serves to frame the evidence in a slippery self-interested fashion, omit disinterested evidence and contexts, top with arcane math and voila, evidence and narrative are presented as "facts" rather than what they really are, an elaborate, well-staged con designed to maximize the private gains of the few by exploiting the many.
Organizing the entire system to serve the pathological greed of the few is best served by devaluing truth to mere opinion and causal chains to mere narratives. In this juncture of history, truth has been revealed as a chimera; there is only opinion, and all opinions are equal. Opinions are beliefs, and all beliefs are equal. All narratives are equal. All questions boil down to values: values are all equally detached, free-floating and of the same value: zero.
This con has reached perfection in our financial system, which is now optimized for exploitation and sociopaths. As Nassim Taleb has explained (referencing Adam Smith), markets only function if there are rules which are imposed equally on all participants. In our financial system, there are two sets of rules: one which we can summarize as anything goes for the super-wealthy and the well-connected, and another set for everyone else.
Shear the sheep of billions, pay a modest fine - and if all your bets go bad, get bailed out because you're too important to fail. Sneak a few thousand out of the credit union, go to prison. Sell a financial product that's designed to go bust as low-risk, oh well, buyer beware, haha, that's just the free market at work. Sell a nickel bag of drugs, get a tenner in the Gulag.
Two sets of rules: one simulacrum of rules for the rich - just another con, really - and punitive rules for everyone else. Since evidence, causal chains and values have all been devalued, there is no longer any recognition that the desire for gain - greed - can be either exploitive or beneficial to the many. If your greed drives you to make a product that is faster, better, cheaper, more durable and efficient than what's currently available, your gain is the result of an advance that serves the interests of the many.
If your desire for gain leads you to misrepresent a shoddy product designed to fail (subprime mortgages, Landfill Economy products) or you raise the price because you can, your greed serves your interests at the expense of the many. This is the acme of exploitation. Kleptocrats and sociopaths, rejoice!
This system is optimized for exploitation, as the exploiters can exploit the many without the many even recognizing they've been stripmined. We no longer have the means to differentiate fraud from fact or exploitation from rules-based markets.
This landscape of wide-open exploitation and debauchery is Heaven on Earth for sociopaths who not only do not see any difference between gains skimmed at others' expense and gains earned by providing a superior product / service, they revel in exploiting the system and every participant: employees, partners, suppliers, depositors, borrowers and customers.
But in this desert of exploitation and the supremacy of self-interest, some things remain true and others remain false. Some truths remain self-evident. As I have shown here many times, we can look at the hourly wages and cost of essentials in 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010 and the present and calculate how many hours of labor it took to pay for essentials such as rent, property taxes, healthcare, childcare, taxes, education, etc. These calculations reveal that the purchasing power of wages has declined for decades. This evidence cannot be made to vanish by declaring it opinion, belief or a "different set of values" - it is fact.
If we measure prosperity by how much labor can buy, all but the top few wage earners are less prosperous today. The evidence and causal chain are self-evident. The self-interested few who have reaped the vast majority of the economy's gains can hire shills to argue that since TVs now require fewer hours of labor to buy, we're all better off, but these obfuscations are nothing more than distractions designed to divert our attention from the mechanisms of exploitation that are operating 24/7 beneath the ceaseless churn of "news" and "market action."
Let's call this financial system what it really is: the MetaPerverse, a conjured world of self-serving cons that is optimized for exploitation, the perversion of justice, infinite inequality and the stripmining of the many to the benefit of the few, all securely protected by a cloud of confusion in which everything is equally valueless and truth no longer exists. All that remains is a babble of competing cons."
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"The Sociopath Next Door" (Excerpt)
by Martha Stout, Ph.D.
"Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken. And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools. Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition.
In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world. You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences, will most likely remain undiscovered.
How will you live your life? What will you do with your huge and secret advantage, and with the corresponding handicap of other people (conscience)? The answer will depend largely on just what your desires happen to be, because people are not all the same. Even the profoundly unscrupulous are not all the same. Some people - whether they have a conscience or not - favor the ease of inertia, while others are filled with dreams and wild ambitions. Some human beings are brilliant and talented, some are dull-witted, and most, conscience or not, are somewhere in between. There are violent people and nonviolent ones, individuals who are motivated by bloodlust and those who have no such appetites.
Maybe you are someone who craves money and power, and though you have no vestige of conscience, you do have a magnificent IQ. You have the driving nature and the intellectual capacity to pursue tremendous wealth and influence, and you are in no way moved by the nagging voice of conscience that prevents other people from doing everything and anything they have to do to succeed. You choose business, politics, the law, banking, international development, or any of a broad array of other power professions, and you pursue your career with a cold passion that tolerates none of the usual moral or legal incumbrances. When it is expedient, you doctor the accounting and shred the evidence, you stab your employees and your clients (or your constituency) in the back, marry for money, tell lethal premeditated lies to people who trust you, attempt to ruin colleagues who are powerful or eloquent, and simply steam-roll over groups who are dependent and voiceless. And all of this you do with the exquisite freedom that results from having no conscience whatsoever. You become unimaginably, unassailably, and maybe even globally successful. Why not? With your big brain, and no conscience to rein in your schemes, you can do anything at all.
Or no - let us say you are not quite such a person. You are ambitious, yes, and in the name of success you are willing to do all manner of things that people with conscience would never consider, but you are not an intellectually gifted individual. Your intelligence is above average perhaps, and people think of you as smart, maybe even very smart. But you know in your heart of hearts that you do not have the cognitive wherewithal, or the creativity, to reach the careening heights of power you secretly dream about, and this makes you resentful of the world at large, and envious of the people around you.
As this sort of person, you ensconce yourself in a niche, or maybe a series of niches, in which you can have some amount of control over small numbers of people. These situations satisfy a little of your desire for power, although you are chronically aggravated at not having more. It chafes to be so free of the ridiculous inner voice that inhibits others from achieving great power, without having enough talent to pursue the ultimate successes yourself. Sometimes you fall into sulky, rageful moods caused by a frustration that no one but you understands.
But you do enjoy jobs that afford you a certain undersupervised control over a few individuals or small groups, preferably people and groups who are relatively helpless or in some way vulnerable. You are a teacher or a psychotherapist, a divorce lawyer or a high school coach. Or maybe you are a consultant of some kind, a broker or a gallery owner or a human services director. Or maybe you do not have a paid position, and are instead the president of your condominium association, or a volunteer hospital worker, or a parent. Whatever your job, you manipulate and bully the people who are under your thumb, as often and as outrageously as you can without getting fired or held accountable. You do this for its own sake, even when it serves no purpose except to give you a thrill. Making people jump means you have power - or this is the way you see it - and bullying provides you with an adrenaline rush. It is fun.
Maybe you cannot be the CEO of a multinational corporation, but you can frighten a few people, or cause them to scurry around like chickens, or steal from them, or - maybe best of all - create situations that cause them to feel bad about themselves. And this is power, especially when the people you manipulate are superior to you in some way. Most invigorating of all is to bring down people who are smarter or more accomplished than you, or perhaps classier, more attractive or popular or morally admirable. This is not only good fun - it is existential vengeance. And without a conscience, it is amazingly easy to do. You quietly lie to the boss or to the boss’s boss, cry some crocodile tears, or sabotage a coworker’s project, or gaslight a patient (or a child), bait people with promises, or provide a little misinformation that will never be traced back to you.
Or now let us say you are a person who has a proclivity for violence or for seeing violence done. You can simply murder your coworker, or have her murdered - or your boss, or your ex-spouse, or your wealthy lover’s spouse, or anyone else who bothers you. You have to be careful, because if you slip up you may be caught and punished by the system. But you will never be confronted by your conscience, because you have no conscience. If you decide to kill, the only difficulties will be the external ones. Nothing inside of you will ever protest.
Provided you are not forcibly stopped, you can do anything at all. If you are born at the right time, with some access to family fortune, and you have a special talent for whipping up other people’s hatred and sense of deprivation, you can arrange to kill large numbers of unsuspecting people. With enough money, you can accomplish this from far away, and you can sit back safely and watch in satisfaction. In fact, terrorism (done from a distance) is the ideal occupation for a person who is possessed of bloodlust and no conscience, because if you do it just right, you may be able to make a whole nation jump. And if that is not power, what is?
Or let us imagine the opposite extreme - you have no interest in power. To the contrary, you are the sort of person who really does not want much of anything. Your only real ambition is not to have to exert yourself to get by. You do not want to work like everyone else does. Without a conscience, you can nap or pursue your hobbies or watch television or just hang out somewhere all day long. Living a bit on the fringes, and with some handouts from relatives and friends, you can do this indefinitely. People may whisper to each other that you are an underachiever, or that you are depressed, a sad case, or in contrast, if they get angry, they may grumble that you are lazy. When they get to know you better, and get really angry, they may scream at you and call you a loser, a bum. But it will never occur to them that you literally do not have a conscience, that in such a fundamental way, your very mind is not the same as theirs.
The panicked feeling of a guilty conscience never squeezes at your heart or wakes you in the middle of the night. Despite your lifestyle, you never feel irresponsible, neglectful, or so much as embarrassed, although for the sake of appearances, sometimes you pretend that you do. For example, if you are a decent observer of people and what they react to, you may adopt a lifeless facial expression, say how ashamed of your life you are, and talk about how rotten you feel. This you do only because it is more convenient to have people think you are depressed than it is to have them shouting at you all the time, or insisting that you get a job.
You notice that people who do have a conscience feel guilty when they harangue someone they believe to be “depressed” or “troubled.” As a matter of fact, to your further advantage, they often feel obliged to take care of such a person. If, despite your relative poverty, you can manage to get yourself into a sexual relationship with someone, this person--who does not suspect what you are really like--may feel particularly obligated. And since all you want is not to have to work, your financier does not have to be especially rich, just reliably conscience-bound.
I trust that imagining yourself as any of these people feels insane to you, because such people are insane, dangerously so. Insane but real - they even have a label. Many mental health professionals refer to the condition of little or no conscience as “antisocial personality disorder,” a noncorrectable disfigurement of character that is now thought to be present in about four percent of the population - that is to say, one in twenty-five people. This condition of missing conscience is called by other names too, most often “sociopathy,” or the somewhat more familiar term, “psychopathy.” Guiltlessness was in fact the first personality disorder to be recognized by psychiatry, and terms that have been used at times over the past century include “manie sans délire,” “psychopathic inferiority,” “moral insanity,” and “moral imbecility.”
According to the current bible of psychiatric labels, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV of the American Psychiatric Association, the clinical diagnosis of “antisocial personality disorder” should be considered when an individual possesses at least three of the following seven characteristics: (1) failure to conform to social norms; (2) deceitfulness, manipulativeness; (3) impulsivity, failure to plan ahead; (4) irritability, aggressiveness; (5) reckless disregard for the safety of self or others; (6) consistent irresponsibility; (7) lack of remorse after having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another person. The presence in an individual of any three of these “symptoms,” taken together, is enough to make many psychiatrists suspect the disorder.
Other researchers and clinicians, many of whom think the APA’s definition describes simple “criminality” better than true “psychopathy” or “sociopathy,” point to additional documented characteristics of sociopaths as a group. One of the more frequently observed of these traits is a glib and superficial charm that allows the true sociopath to seduce other people, figuratively or literally - a kind of glow or charisma that, initially, can make the sociopath seem more charming or more interesting than most of the normal people around him. He or she is more spontaneous, or more intense, or somehow more “complex,” or sexier, or more entertaining than everyone else. Sometimes this “sociopathic charisma” is accompanied by a grandiose sense of self-worth that may be compelling at first, but upon closer inspection may seem odd or perhaps laughable. (“Someday the world will realize how special I am,” or “You know that after me, no other lover will do.”)
In addition, sociopaths have a greater than normal need for stimulation, which results in their taking frequent social, physical, financial, or legal risks. Characteristically, they can charm others into attempting dangerous ventures with them, and as a group they are known for their pathological lying and conning, and their parasitic relationships with “friends.” Regardless of how educated or highly placed as adults, they may have a history of early behavior problems, sometimes including drug use or recorded juvenile delinquency, and always including a failure to acknowledge responsibility for any problems that occurred.
And sociopaths are noted especially for their shallowness of emotion, the hollow and transient nature of any affectionate feelings they may claim to have, a certain breathtaking callousness. They have no trace of empathy and no genuine interest in bonding emotionally with a mate. Once the surface charm is scraped off, their marriages are loveless, one-sided, and almost always short-term. If a marriage partner has any value to the sociopath, it is because the partner is viewed as a possession, one that the sociopath may feel angry to lose, but never sad or accountable.
All of these characteristics, along with the “symptoms” listed by the American Psychiatric Association, are the behavioral manifestations of what is for most of us an unfathomable psychological condition, the absence of our essential seventh sense - conscience. Crazy, and frightening - and real, in about four percent of the population."
- Excerpt From "The Sociopath Next Door"
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