Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 4/16/23
"Shots Fired in Korea; US Naval Alert;
US Simulates Nuke War"
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So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Sunday, April 16, 2023
"The Car Market Collapse Is Going To Unleash The Most Devastating Financial Crisis Since 2008"
Full screen recommended.
"The Car Market Collapse Is Going To Unleash
The Most Devastating Financial Crisis Since 2008"
by Epic Economist
"New signs of stress in the ballooning trillion-dollar U.S. auto market are pointing to an impending collapse as storm clouds continue to gather in the economic and financial landscape. Serious delinquencies in auto loans - defined as behind on payments by 90 days or more - jumped the most since the 2008-09 Global Financial Crisis, putting the entire automobile financing market at risk of facing a massive default wave in the coming months. Experts are raising big alarms about the current condition of the car loan sector. They say that millions of American motorists will have their vehicles taken away in the months ahead, and warn about a brewing financial crisis that could reach unprecedented proportions and completely crush the U.S. economy.
Newly “delinquent”, or overdue, U.S. auto loans reached $23 billion and new “seriously delinquent” loans exceeded $8 billion; both are absolute levels not seen since the depths of the global financial crisis, the report shows. Right now, more and more buyers are having difficulty keeping up with auto payments, and a record 7 million Americans are at risk of losing their vehicles for being 90 days or more behind on their loans.
In March, official agencies alerted about the strongest expectation of debt delinquency for people under 40 since the spring of 2020, when 14 million people lost their jobs during the first pandemic shutdowns. That has raised fears of a massive default wave this year because Americans are loaded up on auto loans like never before. At the end of 2022, the total value outstanding nationwide was $1.55 trillion, more than double the amount 10 years ago. Put another way, auto loan debt totaled $4,800 for every person in the country.
Every year, about 80 percent of defaults end in repossessions. But the truth is that the entire market is set up for failure. Some financial analysts even claim that many lenders are ignoring typical reg flags associated with loan applicants who are already struggling to pay their previous auto loan properly.
That is the argument Andrew Schmidt of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law makes in a recent article. He says state officials, lawmakers, and regulators aren’t doing anything to intervene in the car credit market to curb lenders’ ability to issue subprime loans. Frequently, lenders price cars as high as twice the Kelley Blue Book value, a practice that allows them to “profit from the down payment and origination fees alone.” The subprime loans they issue also carry exorbitant interest rates - sometimes exceeding 30 percent.
While lenders profit from defaults, some borrowers spend decades paying off a car they only drove for a few months. To recoup loan balances, lenders engage in aggressive collections tactics such as lawsuits and wage garnishment. Some subprime lenders have attorneys on staff to keep up with the rapid rates of default.
But the heightened potential for mass debt default of subprime auto loans can send shockwaves through the financial system just like mortgages did in 2008, and Schmidt worries that this can have “disastrous consequences” for the economy. That’s why the auto market crash is likely to hit the poorest households hardest. “Without meaningful intervention, the subprime auto loan bubble is primed to burst,” Schmidt warns. Just like the other financial meltdowns that were fueled by reckless lending and speculation, this crisis will reach proportions most people don't even imagine. The dominoes are already falling in the financial world, and the automobile market may be the next shoe to drop."
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Musical Interlude, Vangelis, "Space, Time Continuum"
Full screen recommended.
Vangelis, "Space, Time Continuum"
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Here in the Milky Way galaxy we have astronomical front row seats as M81 and M82 face-off, a mere 12 million light-years away. Locked in a gravitational struggle for the past billion years or so, the two bright galaxies are captured in this deep telescopic snapshot, constructed from 25 hours of image data.
Their most recent close encounter likely resulted in the enhanced spiral arms of M81 (left) and violent star forming regions in M82 so energetic the galaxy glows in X-rays. After repeated passes, in a few billion years only one galaxy will remain. From our perspective, this cosmic moment is seen through a foreground veil of the Milky Way's stars and clouds of dust. Faintly reflecting the foreground starlight, the pervasive dust clouds are relatively unexplored galactic cirrus, or integrated flux nebulae, only a few hundred light-years above the plane of the Milky Way.”
"What Keeps You Going..."
"What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in and out and love somebody or something and not run off screaming into the woods?'"
- Barbara Kingsolver
Greg Hunter, "Ukraine War Causes Inflation & Higher Rates"
"Ukraine War Causes Inflation & Higher Rates"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong was forecasting “chaos” in 2023. The Ukraine war is ramping up. China looks like it’s getting ready to invade Taiwan. President Trump was indicted by radical Deep State Democrats. The FDIC had to rescue some big banks and stop an economic implosion, and it’s just the first few weeks of spring. Don’t look for things to get better. Armstrong explains, “Bidens approval rating is collapsing. “Socrates” (Armstrong’s predictive computer program) has it now at 9.5%. What they are going to do is try to start war before the election, and that’s what this is all about. Their theory is no president that has ever been engaged in a war has ever lost an election. You don’t change horses in midstream. So, they intend to actually start war.”
What does Armstrong see for interest rates? Armstrong says, “Nobody wants to talk about the elephant in the room, and that is the Ukraine war. You have to understand how central banks really work. Powell (Fed Head) started raising rates as soon as the Ukrainian war started. He knows the number one factor in creating inflation is war. The amount of money that is being completely dumped down the drain with Ukraine is insane. Besides the guns and weapons and everything else, Biden is funding the entire Ukrainian government. He’s funding all their salaries and their pensions. Rates are going higher into 2024. The Fed is not going to tell the truth. It’s just not. They are not talking about the elephant in the room, and that is all the money going to Ukraine, and now you are talking about waging war to defend Taiwan.” So, more war means more inflation and much higher interest rates.
Armstrong also talks about Trump and his chance of getting back into the White House, the implosion of the legal system, rigged elections coming in 2024 and the real inflation rate that could top 30% soon. There is much more in the nearly 59-minute interview."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with Martin Armstrong, cycle expert and author of the upcoming new book “The Plot to Seize Russia, Manufacturing World War III”
"Always The Hope..."
“What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time. Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse. This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one’s ribs get re-broken again.”
- Inga Muscio
It won't be...
The Poet: Robinson Jeffers, “Be Angry at the Sun”
“Be Angry at the Sun”
“That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you.
Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people,
Those warriors,
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies,
the passionate Man plays his part;
the cold passion for truth hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar.
You are far from Dante’s feet,
but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and dupes
to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.”
- Robinson Jeffers, 1941
"Night..."
“The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and smiles; and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone. Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night’s heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but angels of God.”
- Jerome K. Jerome
Musical Interlude: Disturbed, "The Sound Of Silence"
Full screen recommended.
Disturbed, "The Sound Of Silence", Studio version.
896 million views.
Full screen recommended.
Disturbed, "The Sound Of Silence", Live version.
136 million views.
"Col. Douglas MacGregor: Ukraine Spells Doom for Western Hegemony"
Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 4/16/23
"Col. Douglas MacGregor:
Ukraine Spells Doom for Western Hegemony"
"Colonel Douglas MacGregor sits down with Redacted Host Clayton Morris to talk about the impending collapse of western hegemony. The west continues to push for a direct confrontation with the Russia and China while U.S. can't even produce ammunition."
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o
Full screen recommended.
Col. Douglas Macgregor, Straight Calls, 4/16/23
"Fall Back Or Be Destroyed By The Russians"
"Analysis of breaking news and in-depth discussion of current
geopolitical events in the United States of America and the world."
Comments here:
"Massive Price Increases At Kroger! This Is Getting Out Of Control!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 4/16/23
"Massive Price Increases At Kroger!
This Is Getting Out Of Control!"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases on groceries! This is not good as we are also seeing some empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products, and also charging extremely high prices!"
Comments here:
"Has the Collapse Begun?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly 4/16/23
"Has the Collapse Begun?"
"It is crazy that we are seeing massive price increases for retailers. Costco has some items that are up as much as 50%. We are seeing retail sales Collabs and prices skyrocket."
Comments here:
"The Laughing Face Of Madness..."
"We work in the dark. We do what we can to battle the evil that would otherwise destroy us. But if a man's character is his fate, it's not a choice but a calling. Sometimes the weight of this burden causes us to falter from the fragile fortress of our mind, allowing the monster without to turn within. We are left alone staring into the abyss, into the laughing face of madness."
- Fox Mulder, "X-Files"
"They Must Have A Good Reason"
"They Must Have A Good Reason"
by Todd Hayen
"There is a strange idea hovering about that if you don’t know something then it doesn’t exist. Kind of like the image of the proverbial ostrich with his head in the sand. But it goes beyond denial. Ignorance is when you don’t know something at all, denial is when you know it, but you ignore it.
What I am talking about here is when you know something and do not deny it, but simply rationalize it away with a statement like “they must have a good reason for doing that,” or similarly, “maybe we don’t know all that there is to know about that.” Which is often followed with, “and I don’t have the time, (inclination, care, interest, curiosity, ability, intelligence, etc.) to look into it further.”
This has always bugged me to some extent, but I must admit I have been marginally guilty of this sort of thinking myself. I mean, do we really have the time to check everything? Well, now I think we have to make the time, and, of course, not everything is important enough to require vetting it for truth. That is an awful thing to say, but I am afraid it is the truth.
Part of this “gullibility” that causes many people to just brush things off assuming that all is ok comes from indoctrination from an early age. I grew up in a culture that seemed to be really obsessed with people’s safety - particularly the safety of children. Think of all the recalls of toys and such. If some toy comes out that has the slightest bit of uncertainty about how it might harm your child, it is pulled.
I should not say I “grew up” with this because most of the crap I played with as a kid would be considered a lethal weapon today - Lawn Darts, BB and pellet guns, Vac-U-Forms, chemistry sets, Easy Bake ovens (this was my sister’s toy, she was a little girl, I was a little boy - I tell you this for clarity). The “safety craze” didn’t really start until a decade or so later. I even remember some kid I knew got an “Atomic Energy Lab” toy that had actual uranium ore in the kit. I would have died (literally) to get my hands on one of these. Those were the days.
So over the decades, due to these recalls and safety concerns, we have developed a false sense of security. What regulation agency would bother to recall Lawn Darts but at the same time allow an unsafe vaccine to reach the unwilling arms of children? Well, toys are toys, vaccines are medicine. There ‘ya go. The government, and other regulatory agencies, know what’s right, right?
Being born into a culture (US) that was known for its integrity, truthfulness, righteousness, and a penchant for character and goodness (ha, ha), no one would ever think that the CIA would have been actively trying to assassinate Fidel Castro, among others, for decades. I remember first hearing a rumor about this when I was about 15. “No way,” I thought to myself. “Assassinations are illegal! My country would never be involved in such a thing!” Especially attempting to murder a leader of a country that really was just minding their own business. At least so it seemed. (Today, when we hear of such things, we shrug our shoulders and say, “They must know what they are doing.”)
And what about Iran’s Mosaddegh? He was minding his own business overseeing the affairs of Iran as Prime Minister from 1951 to 1953. The US wasn’t happy with him for a number of reasons (primarily economic, like, for example, Mosaddegh wanted Iran to get a bigger share of oil profits that the US and UK were sucking out of his nation’s oil fields, imagine that! What audacity!). The CIA bopped him off as well—indirectly with a CIA created insurrection, which led to Mosaddegh’s imprisonment and more than likely contributed to his health issues, then he died). Sure there is detail here I am not presenting, but you get the picture. The US Government must have had a good reason.
How about Obama’s drone war? Killing a whole whack of people, including children (I would say “women and children” but I might get in trouble for that). He must have had a good reason. Personally, I don’t think there is any “good” reason to kill children - even if as collateral damage or unintentionally.
I am presenting here only a few examples among thousands…more than we even know of course. And this is just government actions, what about pharmaceutical actions, or other medical actions? They all must have good reasons.
As a whole most people seem to think that atrocities cannot happen in the US (or Canada, or the UK, or other countries in the “civilized” West). We are just too sophisticated for that. The irony here is the official spokespeople for the US, for example, actually present themselves as do-gooders. They either keep their actions covert and Top Secret, or they present them as “good things.” We only have to look to people like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden to see how the US treats whistleblowers who seek to expose the fact the US really doesn’t have a good reason to do much that it does - at least no reason that benefits us.
If you ever corner a sheep and throw this sort of stuff at them, they will first hit you with the statement, “Why do you have to be so negative? Why can’t you just trust your government to take care of business in our best interests as a nation?” They will say that the government has to have secrets in order to keep us safe, and those people who break the law (Assange and Snowden, among many others. Since we are counting, let’s include the truckers of Canada as well) are criminals, and it doesn’t matter if your intention is good, if you break the law you are a criminal and should be punished.
If you try to argue with these sheep about anything more complex, like the CIA’s intervention into Middle Eastern affairs, they will just blow it off and say something like, “All that overseas stuff is just too complicated to sort out. And those Middle Eastern countries (except Israel) are all bad guys, I don’t really care what the US does to them, they know what they are doing.”
Sheep are funny that way. “La, la, la, la, la, la” with fingers plugging their ears. It is easy to push them to this point. Sheep poking. Try it some time for fun and pleasure.
One good way to get them there really quickly is to bring up some false flag issue that has been in the big time news within the last few decades. The 9-11 fiasco is my favorite. You’ll get the sheep fingers into the ears really quickly with the “la la la’s” going full blast. Don’t try something too far out there though, like the moon landing, or the hot ticket now, germ vs. terrain theory. You’ll only just get eye rolls for those whacko topics.
I am curious though…speaking of 9-11… what will happen when that incident is exposed for what it was?* (Assuming that will ever occur.) I will bet you money, no matter how ludicrous it would be, their first response to the realization that their own government was responsible for the destruction of those buildings at the World Trade Center, will be, “They must have had a good reason.” Actually they did, but it wasn’t a good reason for us."
o
Saturday, April 15, 2023
"The Pain Has Just Begun, This Ends In A Bloodbath; The Fake Economy Will Be Exposed"
Jeremiah Babe, 4/15/23
"The Pain Has Just Begun, This Ends In A Bloodbath;
The Fake Economy Will Be Exposed"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Some spiral galaxies are seen nearly sideways. Most bright stars in spiral galaxies swirl around the center in a disk, and seen from the side, this disk can appear quite thin. Some spiral galaxies appear even thinner than NGC 3717, which is actually seen tilted just a bit. Spiral galaxies form disks because the original gas collided with itself and cooled as it fell inward. Planets may orbit in disks for similar reasons.
The featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a light-colored central bulge composed of older stars beyond filaments of orbiting dark brown dust. NGC 3717 spans about 100,000 light years and lies about 60 million light years away toward the constellation of the Water Snake (Hydra)."
Chet Raymo, “Half Sick Of Shadows”
“Half Sick Of Shadows”
by Chet Raymo
“Who is this woman? Her name is on the prow of her boat: The Lady of Shalott. Yes, it’s Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott,” from the poem of 1842, here illustrated by John William Waterhouse in 1888. By some unspecified curse this lovely maiden was confined to a tower…
“Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river”
…near Camelot, where, forbidden to look out the window, she observed the world in a mirror and wove what she saw into a tapestry. So what is she doing in the boat, with her hand-stitched creation? One day, Sir Lancelot rode by her tower alone. She saw him in the mirror and – “half sick of shadows” – couldn’t resist turning to see him unreflected.
“His broad clear brow in sunlight glow’d;
On burnish’d hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow’d
His coal-black curls as on he rode…”
The mirror cracked. She left her loom, descended from the tower, found a boat, inscribed her name on the prow, and…
“Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right -
The leaves upon her falling light -
Thro’ the noises of the night”
…cast off to drift downstream to Camelot – and to Lancelot. But curses are not to be foiled.
“For ere she reach’d upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shalott.”
We are all of us in a way the Lady of Shalott, all of us who seek to create an image of the world, artists, poets, scientists. We perceive the world through the filter of our limited senses, our biologically evolved brains, our nurtured preconceptions. We weave our tapestries, knowing that our creations are a reflection removed from reality. Our “curse” is to be in love with the real, yet never able to embrace it except in the cold glass of conceptualization. Our legacy? To be found in a boat lodged among the reeds, our tapestry draped across the thwart, with Camelot yet somewhere further down the stream, glistening, beckoning, inescapably out of reach. But, ah, there’s that gorgeous tapestry.
There is another curse, self made, and that is to mistake the mirrorworld for the world outside the window, to fail to recognize the contingency of our conceptualizations, to forego an honest seeking for the falsely found, and – most ominously – to want to impose our own mirrorworld on others.”
The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "I Want A Lot"
"I Want A Lot"
"You see, I want a lot.
Perhaps I want everything:
the darkness that comes with every infinite fall
and the shivering blaze of every step up.
So many live on and want nothing
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.
But what you love to see are faces
that so work and feel thirst...
You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret."
- Rainer Maria Rilke
"The Last Time Always Happens Now"
"The Last Time Always Happens Now"
by David Cain
"William Irvine, an author and philosophy professor I’m a big fan of, often tries to point people towards a little-discussed fact of human life: "You always know when you’re doing something for the first time, and you almost never know when you’re doing something for the last time."
There was, or will be, a last time for everything you do, from climbing a tree to changing a diaper, and living with a practiced awareness of that fact can make even the most routine day feel like it’s bursting with blessings. Of all the lasting takeaways from my periodic dives into Stoicism, this is the one that has enhanced my life the most. I’ve touched on it before in my Stoicism experiment log and in a Patreon post, and I intend to write about it many more times in the future (but who can say?)
To explain why someone might want to start thinking seriously about last times, Bill Irvine asks us to imagine a rare but relatable event: going to your favorite restaurant one last time, knowing it’s about to close up for good.
Predictably, dining on this last-ever night makes for a much richer experience than almost all the other times you’ve eaten at that restaurant, but it’s not because the food, decor, or service is any different than usual. It’s better because you know it’s the last time, so you’re apt to savor everything you can about it, right down to the worn menus and tacky napkin rings. You’re unlikely to let any mistakes or imperfections bother you, and in fact you might find them endearing.
It becomes clearer than ever, in other words, how great it was while it lasted, and how little the petty stuff mattered. On that last dinner, you can set aside minor issues with ease, and appreciate even the most mundane details. Anything else would seem foolish, because you’re here now, and this is it. It might even occur to you that there’s no reason you couldn’t have enjoyed it this much every time you dined here – except that all the other times, you knew there would be more times, so you didn’t have to be so intentional about appreciating it.
That’s an exceptionally rare situation though. Almost always, we do things for the last time without knowing it’s the last time. There was a last time – on an actual calendar date – when you drew a picture with crayons purely for your own pleasure. A last time you excitedly popped a Blockbuster rental into your VCR. A last time you played fetch with a certain dog. Whenever the last time happened, it was “now” at the time.
You’ve certainly heard the heart-wrenching insight that there’s always a last time a parent picks up their child. By a certain age the child is too big, which means there’s always an ordinary day when the parent picks up and puts down their child as they have a thousand times before, with no awareness that it was the last time they would do it.
Ultimately there will be as many last times as there were first times. There will be last time you do laundry. A last time you eat pie. A last time you visit a favorite neighborhood, city, or country. For every single friend you’ve ever had, there will be a last time you talk, or maybe there already has been.
For ninety-nine percent of these last times, you will have no idea that that’s what it is. It will seem like another of the many middle times, with a lot more to come. If you knew it was the last-ever time you spoke to a certain person or did a certain activity, you’d probably make a point of appreciating it, like a planned last visit to Salvatore’s Pizzeria. You wouldn’t spend it thinking about something else, or let minor annoyances spoil it.
Many last times are still a long way in the future, of course. The trouble is you don’t know which ones. The solution, Irvine suggests, is to frequently imagine that this is the last time, even when it’s probably not. A few times a day, whatever you’re doing, you assume you’re doing that thing for the last time. There will be a last time you sip coffee, like you’re doing now. What if this sip was it? There will be a last time you walk into the office and say hi to Sally. If this was it, you might be a little more genuine, a little more present.
The point isn’t to make life into a series of desperate goodbyes. You can go ahead and do the thing more or less normally. You might find, though, that when you frame it as a potential last time, you pay more attention to it, and you appreciate it for what it is in a way you normally don’t. It turns out that ordinary days are full of experiences you expect will keep happening forever, and of course none of them will.
It doesn’t matter if the activity is something you particularly love doing. Walking into a 7-11 or weeding the garden is just as worthy of last-time practice as hugging a loved one. Even stapling the corner of some pages together can generate a sense of appreciation, if you saw it as your final act of stapling in a life that’s contained a surprising amount of stapling.
Irvine uses mowing the lawn as an example, a task he doesn’t love doing. If you imagine that this is the last time you’ll mow the lawn, rather than consider it a good riddance, you might realize that there will be a time when you’ve mown your last lawn, and that there were a lot of great things about living in your lawn-mowing, bungalow-maintaining heyday. A few seconds later, it dawns on you that you still are.
You can get very specific with the experiences you do this with. The last time you roll cookie dough between your palms. The last time you get rained on. The last time you sidestep down a crowded cinema aisle. The last time your jeans smell like campfire smoke. The last time your daughter says “swannich” instead of “sandwich.” Virtually everything is a worthy candidate for this reflection.
It always brings perspective to your life as it is now, and it never gets old. It’s an immensely rewarding exercise, but it not a laborious one. It takes only two or three seconds - allowing yourself “a flickering thought,” as Irvine put it - to notice what you’re doing right now, and consider the possibility that this is indeed the last escalator ride at Fairfield Mall, the last time you put on a Beatles record, the last time you encounter a squirrel, or the last time you parallel park in front of Aunt Rita’s building."
○
Full screen recommended.
"The Blind Indifference..."
“Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance, and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well, certainly, there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terror, disease. They were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic, you turned to the now high chancellor, Adam Sutler. He promised you order, he promised you peace, and all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.” – "V" speech to London
"Doug Casey On Why The US Is Headed Into Its 'Fourth Turning'"
"Doug Casey On Why The US Is
Headed Into Its 'Fourth Turning'"
By Tyler Durden
"International Man: "The economic, political, social, and cultural situation seems to have become increasingly volatile in the United States and more broadly in the West. Is this a unique situation or part of a recurring historical cycle? Authors William Strauss and Neil Howe introduced a popular theory in their book, "The Fourth Turning," outlining the recurring generational cycles that have occurred throughout American history. What are your thoughts?
Doug Casey: I read Strauss and Howe’s first book, "Generations," when it came out back in 1992. I thought it was brilliant. Let me start off by recommending both "Generations" and "The Fourth Turning" to everybody. Both books offer quite a scholarly, readable, and prescient view of the cyclicality of history. And offer a very plausible forecast for the 2020s.
History’s best seen as cyclical, rather than a straight-line progress to some preordained end the way both the Marxists and the Abrahamic religions see it. But then, Ecclesiastes has its famous quote that there’s nothing new under the sun. Plato in the Republic talks about how the younger generation - and we’re talking fourth century BC - can’t stand up to the moral values of their forefathers.
Older people have always thought that the younger generation wouldn’t quite measure up. In recent American history, you’ll recall, the younger generation were the beatniks in the ’50s, the hippies in the ’60s, and the yuppies in the ’80s - so it’s a passing parade. Older people have a tendency to think the world is going downhill. Nothing new there. But there’s always a rebirth.
Niccolò Machiavelli, in his "Florentine Histories", said: "Virtue gives birth to tranquility, tranquility to leisure, leisure to disorder, disorder to ruin… and similarly from ruin, order is born, from order virtue, from virtue, glory and good fortune."
The bottom line is that societies arise from poverty through moral strength - and that brings them prosperity. But that prosperity brings on arrogance, and the arrogance brings on laziness, which brings on weakness and moral decline. Then they’re reduced to a condition of slavery and poverty again. Change is the only constant - except in human nature.
As I look at the United States, it seems to me the peak of American culture was the time just before Teddy Roosevelt came into office. Teddy is certainly among the top five worst presidents. And there’s plenty of competition for that title. He was the first real “progressive” president; he wanted the government actively involved in all areas of life. Now, that’s not to say that Teddy Roosevelt wouldn’t have been a really great drinking pal, a wonderful guy to go camping with, a fun guy to have an intellectual conversation with. He had a lot of admirable personal values. But he was a nationalist, a statist, and a warmonger. That’s why I say he was a horrible president.
The long-term trend of US overseas imperialism started with the Spanish–American War and the building of an overseas American empire in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Hawaii - followed by World War I. The US has gone from being noninterventionist to now having many hundreds of bases around the world and trying to give orders to every other country in the world. That kind of arrogance always ends badly.
As a civilization - a culture - the US has been on an accelerating path downhill for about 120 years now. That’s true even while science and technology have greatly increased the general standard of living. It’s a mistake to conflate a higher standard of living with higher moral values - that’s what Machiavelli was talking about.
I question whether that trend will change - at least until we have a genuine crisis. Why not? Because a lot of the way a society acts comes from the way kids are brought up - the values that are inculcated in them when they’re young. And increasingly, kids are taught what I would call the wrong values.
Saint Ignatius said this in the 17th century, and Lenin repeated it in the 20th century. They both said that if you indoctrinate someone in his youth, chances are you’ve directed his worldview for the rest of his life. Cultural Marxists are now totally in control of the US educational system, and have been for a couple of generations. That’s absolutely the case in the colleges and universities but also in the high schools and even in the grade schools. Kids are being taught to be socialists, ecowarriors, social justice warriors, and “woke” from an early age. It’s really serious.
And it’s not a cyclical phenomenon. This is one of the few areas in which I take some issue with "The Fourth Turning." The trend towards collectivism and statism seems to be a secular long-term trend that’s still accelerating.
There are a few bright spots. Libertarians, for instance, are somewhat more prominent than in the past. But the fact that libertarians believe in personal freedom, in the face of a societal trend in the opposite direction, makes me tend to believe they’re actually genetic mutants. They’re just a small percentage of the population, whose nature has resisted the prevailing nurture.
I say that, only partially because of my own experience. I grew up in what could - jokingly - be called a cannibalistic death cult and was imbued with all kinds of strange notions by nuns and priests at the schools that I went to. I rejected them intuitively and intellectually, but they still stick to you like tar. It can take years to wash off the effects of early indoctrination.
I’m more of a maverick than most people are, however. Most just continue to believe what they’re taught as kids, reflexively and automatically - right or wrong. So I don’t think there’s really much hope of a serious change in the direction of American culture. At least until a major crisis - and the outcome of that is in doubt.
International Man: OK. That’s the long-term trend. Where are we in the generational cycle now? Are we moving into the fourth turning and headed for a crisis?
Doug Casey: Strauss and Howe take a cyclical point of view over the course of roughly 80 years, four generations. To very briefly summarize their theory, there are four “turnings”: a “high,” an “awakening,” an “unraveling,” and a “crisis.”
Over the last couple of decades, we’ve been undergoing the unraveling, where old values fall apart. Next, Strauss and Howe predicted a crisis, starting about 2015, which tests the very existence of the society. Or at least the way it’s run. They go beyond seeing generations as being simply “liberal” or “conservative.” According to Strauss and Howe, there are four generational archetypes that last over a cycle of 80 years - 20 years per generation - corresponding to the “turnings.”
Without going into all the details, they see the baby boomers as being a “Prophet” Generation. The authors are ideologically oriented - fire and brimstone types - very much like Bernie Sanders on the left and Donald Trump on the right. Kind of biblically apocalyptic by nature.
They were quite correct in defining the Generation X types as the so-called “Nomad” Generation. These are kids who learned to take care of themselves - and are not so ideological in the way they think.
The Millennials are who are relevant at the moment. They correspond, in Strauss and Howe’s view, to the World War II generation. They’d be the frontline soldiers in the coming crisis and conflicts.
International Man: What happens after a crisis? Is there a positive way forward?
Doug Casey: Historically, the answer is, “Almost never” - in the short run. The best recent example is the French Revolution. It got worse with Robespierre - a Bernie Sanders of the era - followed by Napoleon. Or take the case of the Russian revolution. As necessary as it was to get rid of Nicholas II, it got worse with Lenin, and then it got even worse with Stalin. But even in those cases, France and Russia recovered.
If it all comes unglued in the US over the next decade, those two revolutions could be templates. Look at the way leading Democrats think, and listen to what they’re saying. They’re echoing Robespierre and Lenin. The Republicans aren’t much better, because although they sometimes talk the talk of peace and personal freedom, they almost never walk the walk. The two major US parties - and people in the Red counties and the Blue counties - seem to really hate each other. It’s quite ugly sociologically. There are irreconcilable differences. They’re exacerbated by the fact we’re headed for a financial blow up. There’s no doubt about that.
Some years ago, there was a poll taken among Generation X types. It turned out that more of them believed that space aliens were going to invade than that they were ever going to collect Social Security. People have very little faith in “the system” anymore, the society, or the government.
If we go back to the beginning of the 20th century, the country really wasn’t very political at all. People worried about their own lives, their own families, and their own local communities. Americans shared a common culture, beliefs, and values - that’s no longer true. Now the country has become very politicized - everybody has a loud voice and they use votes as weapons against their neighbors. It’s become a nation of nasty busybodies.
That makes me think the next upset will be something like a revolution. It’s likely to be really ugly, because we’re looking, simultaneously, at an economic catastrophe, political chaos, and a social and demographic upset - and probably a military situation as well. Government often sees war as a way to unite the country.
So, what’s going to happen? I’ll hazard a guess that 50 years from now, the United States and, for that matter, most countries are not going to exist in anything like their present form. The best solution is a peaceful break up into smaller political subdivisions. As opposed to a civil war - which is a contest between one or more groups for the control of a central government."
o
Hat tip to ZeroHedge for this material.
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