“The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it.
Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now.”
~ Leo Babauta
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Friday, August 29, 2025
“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…"
"Pericles On The Potomac"
The Acropolis in Athens, Greece
"Pericles On The Potomac"
by Bill Bonner
‘I can do whatever I wanna do.
Because I’m the president of the United States.’
- Donald Trump
Poitou, France - "We’ve been tracking what we see as a shift from more or less consensual democracy...to Big Man democracy. This trend is new to the US but familiar in other countries. And it was foretold by the ancients. Thucydides commented: “Athens, though still in name a democracy, was in fact ruled by her greatest citizen...”
The ‘greatest citizen’ Thucydides was talking about was Pericles...a prototypical Big Man leader. He ostracized his opponents. He gave out favors to the lower classes - much like Trump’s ‘no tax on tips’ program. He tightened restrictions on Athenian citizenship. He built great monuments, including the Parthenon. He spent too much money. And he promoted a long-running war with Sparta which ended badly; Sparta captured Athens and looted the city.
Sometimes people agree. Sometimes they can’t. And when they can’t agree, they may need more muscular leadership to put an end to the squabbling. A headline at Bloomberg suggests that some European countries may be headed that way too: "Much of Europe is Losing the Ability to Govern." Anatol Lieven adds: "France may be the latest domino to fall as debt crisis sparks an austerity backlash."
Typically, consensus collects around principles or rules, like iron filings around a magnet. We drive on the right (or left!) side of the road. We agree not to kill each other. We say please and thank you...even to people we don’t especially like. And whether we are a men’s choir or a sewing bee, we find common ground.
Even armies have sometimes relied on consensus rather than command. The anarchist militias in the Spanish Civil war elected their officers and debated their tactics. George Orwell reported that they were effective military units. In the business world...and even in church vestry meetings...ideas collide. The most attractive ones - or those put forward by the most forceful and persuasive proponents - survive. The rest are discarded or held for further discussion.
The recent, televised White House cabinet meeting was something different. Big Men do not like to be constrained, neither by rules...nor by consensus. They need lackeys to carry out their plans, not independent thinkers to challenge them. So, their meetings take on a character that is unlike anything we are used to.
Cabinet members are supposed to be some of the most able people in the country. And yet, if this was a battle of ideas, all the participants came unarmed. They did not offer new and better suggestions. They did not come to debate bold new plans. Instead, they seemed to be there only to praise POTUS.
Of course, the liberal media howled its calumnies and contempt. Jen Psaki: ‘Trump’s groveling, cult-like White House Cabinet meetings go from bad to worse.’
Washington Examiner: ‘Team of sycophants: Cabinet lines up to lavish praise on Trump.’
Rolling Stone: "TRUMP’S CABINET MEETING WAS STUFFED WITH FLATTERY FOR DEAR LEADER. ‘The televised groveling festival lasted over three hours.’
The most admirable aspect of this show was the endurance of the grovelers. These were middle-aged men and women. They must have had other things to do. Of course, some of the cabinet members are stuffed shirts and placeholders. But others are rich and powerful. All are adults. And yet, they all played their roles - with no apparent irony, residual dignity or need to go to the bathroom. They were the shameless suck-ups a Big Man needs.
We were reminded about meetings of the North Korean politburo...or of Stalin’s speeches in the Kremlin. After one of those speeches the clapping went on for eleven minutes. No one wanted to be the first to stop. Eventually, the manager of a paper factory dared to sit down. He was arrested that same night and sentenced to ten years of hard labor in the Gulag. Over a million people were killed by Stalin’s goons. Millions more were sent to the Gulag, most of whom died.
But Stalin was right. If you want to govern as a Big Man, you’ve got to weed out the unreliable little men. The first one to stop clapping was probably the most independent thinker in the group. Independent thinking is the last thing the Big Man wants. There was no independent thought on display in the Trump cabinet. Instead, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer was almost in rapture: “To see your big, beautiful face on a banner in front of the Department of Labor, because you are really the transformational president of the American worker.”
Trump’s former business partner, Steve Witkoff, now on the public payroll, said this: “Mr. President, working for this government, for you, is the greatest honor of my life...There’s only one thing I wish for: That that Nobel committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate since this Nobel award was ever talked about to receive that reward beyond your success is game-changing out in the world today...”
But Scott Bessent, Treasury secretary, probably gave the most endearing performance. He spoke like an amateur, which made it sound sincere: “Our country has never been so secure thanks to you...You brought us back from the edge.”
’With debt scheduled to increase to $60 trillion in 10 years,’ a braver cabinet member might have asked, ‘and since we haven’t cut a single penny of spending, net, aren’t we still headed to the edge?’ But the question never came up. It wasn’t one the Big Man wanted to hear.
Whatever else could be said about these performances, they are surely taking sycophancy in American politics to a new level. Mr. Trump is the proverbial bull in a china shop. He just rocked the Fed by ‘firing’ one of its governors. He disrupted trillions in commerce with his trade wars. He bombs foreign nations. He proposes to annex Greenland. He suggests he might need to send US troops into Mexico. He imposes federal troops on US cities. At home and abroad, people wonder and worry about what he will do next. And says Scott Bessent: “And you, sir, are restoring trust to government.”
The mainstream press harrumphed. But this is just how Big Man government works. It’s the Big Man himself who counts. He’s the star. The rest of the cast are stage hands...holding up the lights so we can see him in all his glory."
"Large Companies In The U.S. Are Going Bankrupt At The Fastest Pace That We Have Seen Since The Global Financial Crisis"
"Large Companies In The U.S. Are Going Bankrupt At The
Fastest Pace That We Have Seen Since The Global Financial Crisis"
by Michael Snyder
"Is the fact that large companies are filing for bankruptcy at the fastest pace in 15 years a good sign for the economy or a bad sign for the economy? I don’t even have to answer that question because all of you already know the answer. And as you will see below, other types of bankruptcies are soaring as well. We are a nation that is absolutely drowning in debt, and now bubbles are bursting all around us. I hope that you have positioned yourself for what is about to happen, because the months ahead are going to be rough.
According to Newsweek, 446 large companies filed for bankruptcy during the first seven months of this year. That is the highest total that we have seen since 2010…"The U.S. saw a sharp increase in corporate bankruptcy filings in July, according to a recent report, reaching a post-COVID peak and placing 2025 on track to surpass last year’s total. S&P Global Market Intelligence, the research and data arm of the credit-rating agency, found that filings by large public and private companies rose to 71 last month from 66 in June, marking the highest monthly tally since July 2020. So far in 2025, meanwhile, the total of 446 bankruptcy filings is the highest for this seven-month stretch since 2010."
In 2010, we were experiencing the tail end of the global financial crisis. So there was a very good reason for why so many large companies were going bankrupt at that time. What reason do we have for what we are witnessing right now?
Of course it isn’t just large companies that are going bankrupt in staggering numbers…"Personal and business bankruptcy filings rose 11.5 percent in the twelve-month period ending June 30, 2025, compared with the previous year. According to statistics released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, annual bankruptcy filings totaled 542,529 in the year ending June 2025, compared with 486,613 cases in the previous year. Business filings rose 4.5 percent, from 22,060 to 23,043 in the year ending June 30, 2025. Non-business bankruptcy filings rose 11.8 percent to 519,486, compared with 464,553 in the previous year."
Wow. I had no idea that the bankruptcy numbers were that bad. An 11.5 percent increase in bankruptcy filings in just one year is a really troubling sign. And it turns out that the number of farm bankruptcies in the United States has been spiking as well…"Hit with high interest rates and labor shortages, more American farmers are filing for bankruptcy, according to new data from the University of Arkansas. Researchers found that more than 250 farms filed for Chapter 12 bankruptcy between April 2024 and March of this year, marking a sharp increase in financial distress across the agricultural sector. “We’ve already beat last year in terms of Q1 national filings,” said Ryan Loy, an economist at the university. “Once you see this on a national level, it’s a clear sign that financial pressures that we saw before in the 2018 and ‘19 are kind of reemerging.”
A lot of people out there are in denial about what is really happening to the economy. We have been on an unprecedented debt binge for many years, and now we are beginning to experience the consequences. Millions upon millions of Americans are in way over their heads, and there is no easy way out.
At this point, approximately two-thirds of Americans that are carrying debt admit “to minimizing or hiding it from others”…"The study of 1,078 adults by Self Financial exposes a nation drowning not just in debt, but in the shame that comes with it. Of those carrying debt, 66.3% admitted to minimizing or hiding it from others. This breaks down to 28.1% outright lying about their situation, 20.8% downplaying how bad things really are, and 17.4% avoiding the topic entirely."
We may want to hide our financial distress from others, but there is no way to hide it from ourselves. Americans have become so obsessed with financial troubles that they are thinking about it constantly…Between bills to pay, tariff news and inflation worries, money is living rent-free in Americans’ minds. They’re spending nearly four hours a day on average thinking about it, according to new research from Empower, a financial services company. Needless to say, that isn’t healthy. Continually worrying about your finances can eat you alive.
But this is what daily life is like for so many people these days. One recent survey discovered that 53 percent of Americans are feeling financial stress “more acutely than ever”…"At 54%, a little more than half of the 2,206 adults surveyed said they’re thinking about it more than they did last year. In fact, the June survey found 53% of Americans said they’re feeling financial stress “more acutely than ever,” including 62% of Gen Xers and 41% of baby boomers."
One of the biggest reasons why Americans are feeling so much financial stress is because we are spending an average of 42 percent of our incomes on housing costs…More than half of Americans say they’re paying too much for housing, with the average person spending 42% of their income on housing costs.
Meanwhile, just about everything else that we regularly spend money on has been getting increasingly more expensive. For example, beef prices just keep hitting brand new record high after brand new record high…"Grocery prices have been climbing and one area where prices have hit a record high is beef, a staple for many households. Ground beef, usually the inexpensive choice for shoppers, has hit a record high. Shoppers can expect to pay $6.25 per pound, up from $5.49 a year ago and $4.26 five years ago, in July of 2020. The average price for beef steaks has hit $11.87 a pound as of July. That’s up from $10.85 in July of 2024 and $8.69 in July of 2020."
And coffee prices have jumped more than 30 percent over the past year…"A more than 30% year-over-year rise in retail prices for coffee is staggering — and consumers are not likely to see relief anytime soon, even as a merger between two beverage giants looks to create an entity that can better manage rising costs."
If we stick our heads in the sand and keep repeating “everything is going to be okay”, will that make things better? Of course not. We need to realize what is happening and adjust our plans accordingly if we are going to navigate through this very harsh economic environment.
For one thing, if you have a good job right now please do not give it up unless you absolutely must do so. Mass layoffs are being conducted all over the nation, and yet another example of this was just in the news…"Nearly 1,000 corporate Kroger employees are losing their jobs after the company previously announced its intentions not to lay off employees. The layoffs come after the grocer decided to shutter more than 60 underperforming stores by the end of 2026. Kroger initiated the closures as a way to cut costs following its failed $25 billion merger with Albertsons."
Sadly, I think that a lot more Americans will lose their jobs in the months ahead. And since most of the population is living paycheck to paycheck these days, those that lose their jobs are at risk of losing everything. There was no way that we were going to be able to pile up debt indefinitely. We have now reached the “bubbles are bursting” chapter of our story, and it certainly isn’t going to be pleasant."
Adventures With Danno, "Massive Grocery Shopping at Target!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 8/29/25
"Massive Grocery Shopping at Target!"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Different Russia, 8/29/25
"We Paid $200 for a Full Grocery Cart in Russia"
Comments here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "Death Panels Are Back! Are You in Danger?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 8/29/25
"Death Panels Are Back! Are You in Danger?"
"Hey everyone, it’s Dan from IAllegedly! Today, we’re diving into a topic that’s both shocking and urgent: death panels are making a comeback. Yes, you heard that right. Medicare and Medicaid are rolling out a new pilot program in six states that could expand nationwide. This program adds layers of pre-authorizations, delaying critical treatments and putting lives at risk. Imagine waiting for approval as your health deteriorates - this is a big deal, and it’s happening now. From the history of the controversial term “death panels” (thanks, Sarah Palin) to the impact on families like yours and mine, I’m breaking it all down. Plus, we’ll explore how this could reshape healthcare as we know it and why private insurance isn’t the safety net you think it is."
Comments here:
Jim Kunstler, "The War On Reality Is Over"
"The War On Reality Is Over"
by Jim Kunstler
“...this time the story has escaped the narrative
guardrails and some real reckoning looms.”
- Jeff Childers
"Unwittingly, that New York Times headline is a wondrous case of the self-solving mystery. You come here to understand the many social and political mysteries of the day. I will attempt to unravel this hairball.
Most obviously, the suspect, now dead, in Wednesday’s Minneapolis school shooting was not a “her.” He was a him, a 23-year-old male, Robert Westman, who had been pretending to be a female for some years since undergoing puberty, with the encouragement of his parents and the cultural leaders of his city, including Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey, backed by the expressed principles of the national Democratic Party.
The essence of all that was a gigantic game of pretend, a broad and deliberate dissociation from reality for the purpose of maintaining a political racketeering operation, which is what the Democratic Party had become. Pretend that men can become women. Pretend that Covid vaccinations are safe and effective. Pretend that national borders don’t matter. Pretend that crime is not a social problem. Pretend that riots are mostly peaceful. Pretend that our elections are free and fair. Pretend that “Joe Biden” is president. Pretend that Ukraine is fighting for democracy. And so on. All pretend.
Since the Democratic Party has zero useful ideas for improving the lives of this country’s citizens, all it has is pretend theater, which is public performative psychopathology, otherwise known as acting-out. Mass murders of school-children by so-called trans people are the most garish and horrific actings-out, the most offensive to society, a slaughter of innocents. Such an act grabs everybody’s attention. The New York Times pretends that all this is “a mystery” because to tell the truth would inculpate them in the ongoing criminal racketeering operation of their patron, the Democratic Party.
They all know what the truth is in this matter: that Robert Westman became insane, at least in his time of puberty, possibly earlier, and that his parents resorted to persuading their child that he was born in the wrong body - as the trendy theory goes - to remedy his psychological distress. He was thereafter influenced to play-act as a female. Possibly, he was induced to go through some stage of medical “treatment” to supposedly advance his transition to the opposite sex - for instance, a hormone regimen. This has not yet been reported. (Has it even been investigated by police or the news media?)
Of course, “gender-affirming medical care” is a vicious fraud, as is the preposterous idea of “sexual assignment at birth” (as if it is some kind of error-ridden clerical function). Males cannot be changed into females no matter how much their hormones are altered or how much surgery they endure. It is all just costuming and makeup, to an extreme degree, to enhance the game of pretend. It is also bound to be nightmarishly disappointing to the person undergoing such malign rigors.
As in the case of psycho-killer Robert Westman, he discovered his tragic mistake in exactly the period of life - emerging into adulthood - when emotions tend to be most labile. If he also happened to be on psychotropic drugs such as SSRIs (Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, etc.), known to produce suicidal and homicidal thinking, combined with his emotional instability, there you have an obvious recipe for disaster. None of that is mysterious.
Nor was the record he left behind in his “manifesto” or in the videos and social media postings he put up. Westman evinced stark rage and despair over the poor choice he was induced to make at a time in his life before the judgment region of his brain had fully developed. “I’m tired of being trans,” he wrote. “I wish I had never brainwashed myself.” It was hardly his own fault, though. He was pushed to do it by his own family and strongly supported by the culture that surrounded him in Tim Walz’s “trans refuge state” of Minnesota - the state that also gave us George Floyd, the fake martyr to black victimhood, whose death provoked a years’ long national race-hustle. And, of course, Tim Walz was a recent standard-bearer for the Democratic Party, a signature figure for all their insanity.
Wednesday’s shooting in Minneapolis looks like a hinge event in American politics. We’re done pretending. Trans is done as a political fashion-statement. Doctors will have to give up their pretenses about “gender-affirming care” if they don’t want to be bankrupted by lawsuits or prosecuted for criminal malpractice. Politicians like Walz and Frey will eventually shut-up about trans. But you can sense something else beyond that.
America is done being bullied and guilt-tripped into the matrix of untruth altogether, and the racketeering that thrives in it. And we are going after the racketeers. This week, President Trump suggested a RICO investigation and potential prosecution of George and Alex Soros, for using their vast philanthropic Open Society empire as a colossal money-laundering operation to fund Democratic Party activities, including all their efforts to disorder the legal system, sponsor riots, pay illegal migrants, promote trans activism, rig elections, and underwrite sedition. Without that money-flow - much of it used to winkle taxpayer dollars out of Congress - the party can’t keep paying its Antifa foot-soldiers in the streets, or the lavish salaries of its middle managers in a world of corrupt non-profit orgs.
Between that and the coming prosecution of its many stars from the Clintons to Adam Schiff to New York Attorney General Letitia James and many other names you are familiar with, the Democratic Party - and its war against reality - may be truly done."
Thursday, August 28, 2025
George Galloway, "Colonel Douglas Macgregor: A War Is Inevitable"
George Galloway, 8/28/25
"Colonel Douglas Macgregor: A War Is Inevitable"
Comments here:
Jeremiah Babe, "I Don't Believe The Fake Economic Data"
Jeremiah Babe, 8/28/25
"I Don't Believe The Fake Economic Data
As Mass Layoffs Accelerate And Debt Skyrockets"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Why is the sky near Antares and Rho Ophiuchi so colorful? The colors result from a mixture of objects and processes. Fine dust illuminated from the front by starlight produces blue reflection nebulae. Gaseous clouds whose atoms are excited by ultraviolet starlight produce reddish emission nebulae. Backlit dust clouds block starlight and so appear dark.
Antares, a red supergiant and one of the brighter stars in the night sky, lights up the yellow-red clouds on the lower center. Rho Ophiuchi lies at the center of the blue nebula near the top. The distant globular cluster M4 is visible just to the right of Antares, and to the lower left of the red cloud engulfing Sigma Scorpii. These star clouds are even more colorful than humans can see, emitting light across the electromagnetic spectrum.”
- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120828.html
"Traoré Rejects U.S. Military Deal: The Secret Behind Why U.S. Is Furious!"
Full screen recommended.
History & Legacy Africa, 8/28/25
"Traoré Rejects U.S. Military Deal:
The Secret Behind Why U.S. Is Furious!"
"The U.S. has made an official proposal to Burkina Faso and the Sahel nations: “Give us access to your mineral resources for the next 30 years, and in return, we will give you every weapon, military support, and intelligence to fight terrorism.”
Comments here:
"In A Nation Ruled By Swine..."
“In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile - and the rest of us are f****d until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep.”
- Hunter S. Thompson, “The Great Shark Hunt”
“Get Up Off Your Knees!”
“Get Up Off Your Knees!”
On your knees you may live to see another day,
but you’ll never live to see better days.
by Robert Gore
“Zoos are among the saddest places on earth: magnificent but confined creatures on display for gawking crowds, prevented from living out their biological destinies, fed their daily rations, and domesticated beyond where they could ever return to the wild. You have to feel pity and sorrow for these innocent prisoners; they’d flee in a heartbeat if they could.
Humans have made themselves inmates – whether of a zoo, prison, or asylum is hard to say, likely a combination of all three. Animals earn our admiration because they resist losing their freedom. Humans occasionally do too, but usually surrender theirs for promises and trifles. The promises are broken and the trifles grow more trifling as humanity for the most part gives up. Keep people amused and make sure the rations don’t stop and no outrage rousts them to try to reclaim their birthright. When they visit the zoo, the animals stare back at them with contempt.
In this country, we sing, “Sweet land of liberty,” and, “The land of the free, and the home of the brave.” We incant “freedom” and “liberty” during election seasons, but anything beyond that is considered embarrassing, bad form. A legislator denouncing a proposed law as an infringement of freedom would be regarded as a lunatic. Millions of pages of federal, state, and local laws and regulations already infringe freedom. The denouncer might be irrefutably right, but his denunciation would be irrelevant.
While wildlife should be free in the wild, coping with the risks to the best of their capabilities, humans are supposedly unsuited for freedom. Free humans might develop their own talents and capabilities, produce, exchange, exercise their rights, and engage in voluntary association and social intercourse, all unsupervised. You can argue that such activities are generally beneficial. However, there is a special class who are permitted to supervise and coerce the rest of us, to curtail our freedom. This special class ensures fairness or equality or some such thing. Who knows what might happen without them. Think of the dangers!
Just consider the concept of people deciding what’s in their own best interest. A hyphenated word lurks: self-interest. The special people are motivated by everything but self-interest, or so they say. Indeed, nobility of motive justifies their power and the destruction of your liberty. The desire to better your life is selfish, unlike the impulses supposedly animating those holding the guns to your head. After widespread surrender, few champion their right to their own lives, which is selfish after all, or challenge the special people’s moral superiority, which confers their right to hold the guns.
It might mitigate moral condemnation for liberty’s surrender if it had produced some benefit for those waving the white flag. An old bromide has it that liberty is irrelevant when people are starving. Nothing is further from the truth; it’s freedom that feeds people, creates wealth, and advances humanity. The historical record offers ample proof. It’s the absence of liberty that produces starvation, poverty, decay, destruction, genocide, and war. Here too the historical record is clear, one need go no farther back than the last century. During this ascendancy of the special people, humanity fought its two deadliest wars and over a hundred million were murdered, victims of special plans for a better world.
But somehow it’s liberty that’s dangerous. Fortunately the special people still rule, to make sure it doesn’t break out somewhere. Their reign assures that this century will challenge the last for the title: Century of Slaughter. They see their subjects are domesticated draft animals, just smart enough to keep economies running, not smart enough to challenge domestication. However, it’s been free minds and free markets, not draft animals, that have produced the wonders that make modern life modern. Welfare states are halfway houses to totalitarianism. As they grow, liberty shrinks and progress slows, stops, and reverses, the deterioration culminating in either anarchy or tyranny.
Judging from the prevalence of terms like “secular stagnation” and the “end of growth,” we are in the stop phase and reversal is nigh. People have seen their freedom shrink and have borne the consequences, although most don’t make the connection between the two. Incomes have stagnated, opportunities have diminished, life grows ever coarser, and fear of a looming apocalypse pervades the popular consciousness. Many are preparing for a future in which modernity is no longer modern, where access to necessities and conveniences cannot be taken for granted. Guns and gold are at the top of checklists, for a day when the inevitable failure of the special people leads to the inevitable tyranny or anarchy.
The discontent sweeping the planet is recognition that things are wrong on multiple fronts, although recognition of the root cause is rare. The idea that changing the hands on the levers offers solutions is magical thinking. The problems stem from granting the special people the levers in the first place. They may be replaced, but once the replacements have their hands on the levers, they’ll feel special, too. Power assuredly corrupts.
We’re closer to the real solution in the lament: “Why can’t they just leave us alone?” They – the special people – must leave us alone, it’s our moral right. Those who think the collapse will never come, or that freedom can be reclaimed without a fight, delude themselves. The craven adage: It’s better to live on one’s knees than die on one’s feet, offers a false choice. On your knees you may live to see another day, but you’ll never live to see better days. You may die on your feet, but liberty offers the only hope for better days. It’s worth fighting for. It’s worth dying for.”
“Why Albert Einstein Thought We Were All Insane”
“Why Albert Einstein Thought We Were All Insane”
by Simon Black
“In the early summer of 1914, Albert Einstein was about to start a prestigious new job as Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics. The position was a big deal for the 35-year old Einstein – confirmation that he was one of the leading scientific minds in the world. And he was excited about what he would be able to achieve there. But within weeks of Einstein’s arrival, the German government canceled plans for the Institute; World War I had broken out, and all of Europe was gearing up for one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history.
The impact of the Great War was immeasurable. It cost the lives of 10 million people. It bankrupted entire nations. The war ripped two major European powers off the map – the Austro Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire – and deposited them in the garbage can of history. Austria-Hungary in particular boasted the second largest land mass in Europe, the third highest population, and one of the biggest economies. Plus it was a leading manufacturer of high-tech machinery. Yet by the end of the war it would no longer exist.
World War I also played a major role in the emergence of communism in Russia through the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. Plus it was also a critical factor in the astonishing rise of the Nazi party in Germany. Without the Great War, Adolf Hitler would have been an obscure Austrian vagabond, and our world would be an entirely different place.
One of the most bizarre things about World War I was how predictable it was. Tensions had been building in Europe for years, and the threat of war was deemed so likely that most major governments invested heavily in detailed war plans. The most famous was Germany’s “Schlieffen Plan”, a military offensive strategy named after its architect, Count Alfred von Schlieffen. To describe the Schlieffen Plan as “comprehensive” is a massive understatement.
As AJP describes in his book "War by Timetable", the Schlieffen Plan called for rapidly moving hundreds of thousands of soldiers to the front lines, plus food, equipment, horses, munitions, and other critical supplies, all in a matter of DAYS. Tens of thousands of trains were criss-crossing Europe during the mobilization, and as you can imagine, all the trains had to run precisely on time. A train that was even a minute early or a minute late would cause a chain reaction to the rest of the plan, affecting the time tables of other trains and other troop movements. In short, there was no room for error.
In many respects the Schlieffen Plan is still with us to this day – not with regards to war, but for monetary policy. Like the German General Staff more than a century ago, modern central bankers concoct the most complicated, elaborate plans to engineer economic victory. Their success depends on being able to precisely control the [sometimes irrational] behavior of hundreds of millions of consumers, millions of businesses, dozens of foreign nations, and trillions of dollars of capital. And just like the obtusely complex war plans from 1914, central bank policy requires that all the trains run on time. There is no room for error.
This is nuts. Economies are comprised of billions of moving pieces that are beyond anyone’s control and often have competing interests. A government that’s $37 trillion in debt requires cheap money (i.e. low interest rates) to stay afloat. Yet low interest rates are severely punishing for savers, retirees, and pension funds (including Social Security) because they’re unable to generate a sufficient rate of return to meet their needs.
Low interest rates are great for capital intensive businesses that need to borrow money. But they also create dangerous asset bubbles and can eventually cause a painful rise in inflation. Raise interest rates too high, however, and it could bankrupt debtors and throw the economy into a tailspin. Like I said, there’s no room for error – they have to find the perfect balance between growth and inflation.
Several years ago hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio summed it up perfectly when he said, “It becomes more and more difficult to balance those things as time goes on. It may not be a problem in the next year or two, but the risk of not getting it right increases with time.” The risk of them getting it wrong is clearly growing. I truly hope they don’t get it wrong. But if they ever do, people may finally look back and wonder how we could have been so foolish to hand total control of our economy over to an unelected committee of bureaucrats with a mediocre track record… and then expect them to get it right forever. It’s pretty insane when you think about it.
As Einstein quipped at the height of World War I in 1917, “What a pity we don’t live on Mars so that we could observe the futile activities of human beings only through a telescope…”
"Reflect On What Happens..."
“Reflect on what happens when a terrible winter blizzard strikes. You hear the weather warning but probably fail to act on it. The sky darkens. Then the storm hits with full fury, and the air is a howling whiteness. One by one, your links to the machine age breakdown. Electricity flickers out, cutting off the TV. Batteries fade, cutting off the radio. Phones go dead. Roads become impassible, and cars get stuck. Food supplies dwindle. Day to day vestiges of modern civilization – bank machines, mutual funds, mass retailers, computers, satellites, airplanes, governments – all recede into irrelevance. Picture yourself and your loved ones in the midst of a howling blizzard that lasts several years. Think about what you would need, who could help you, and why your fate might matter to anybody other than yourself. That is how to plan for a secular winter. Don’t think you can escape the Fourth Turning. History warns that a Crisis will reshape the basic social and economic environment that you now take for granted.”
– Strauss and Howe, “The Fourth Turning”
"The Trick..."
“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable,
or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”
- Carlos Castaneda
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)