"Fear Is A Viral Monster"

"Fear Is A Viral Monster"

by Donald Boudreaux

“Reading the late Hans Rosling’s 2018 book, “Factfulness”, during the summer of 2020 creates a sensation of surrealness that would have been absent had I read this volume in 2018 or 2019. On nearly every page of “Factfulness” Rosling busts the popular myth that we denizens of modernity face imminent calamities that will destroy us and the earth. Widespread fears – such as of overpopulation, of terrorism, and of the rich getting richer while the poor stagnate – are methodically revealed to be either completely unjustified or exorbitantly exaggerated.

But today, in the midst of the ongoing lockdowns and with no end in sight to the hysteria over COVID, I’ve lost all of the natural optimism that has long resided within me and that would have otherwise been fortified by Rosling’s splendid work.

Sledgehammered: The image that keeps coming into my head is of a sledgehammer. With brute force, a blunt and heavy instrument was swung down on society by the state. Sledgehammers crush. They demolish. That’s their only function. They do not build. And for as long as the dreadful weight of this particular sledgehammer – the massive mallet that is the COVID-19 lockdown – continues to press down on the rubble that it caused, there is very little opportunity for the human creativity and work effort unleashed by markets to bring about the kind of improvements that Rosling documents.

Will humanity recover? Will we – when the sledgehammer is lifted – rise, dust ourselves off, and climb back on to the happy track that we were on before March 2020? Of course it’s possible. But there’s now a novel reality that makes a renewed continuation of pre-COVID progress much less likely: the sledgehammer itself.

When this sledgehammer is lifted off of us, it won’t be lifted for long. We now know that this awful hammer is there, looming overhead. We have good reason to worry that government officials are likely to smash it down upon us when another communicable pathogen emerges and makes news – as such a pathogen inevitably will, for viral pathogens have been part of human existence from the start. How will entrepreneurship and investment be changed by this ever-present threat of a smashing sledgehammer? The creation, funding, and operation of venues in which individuals come into close physical contact with each other – either for recreation or for work – will surely be much less attractive.

More generally, the newly demonstrated willingness of state officials to destroy, with just a few executive diktats, hundreds of billions of dollars of capital value cannot but push some entrepreneurs and investors into inactivity. Why build, or build grandly, when some pompous governor or mayor – someone whose only ‘skill’ and most intense itch is to exercise power over fellow human beings – can, with a mere signature, smash down a sledgehammer and turn to mush the fruits of years of hard work and sacrifice?

And how will those in power – and those who seek power – be affected by the display by so many people of a sheepish willingness to be ordered by the state into house arrest? Did prime ministers, governors, and mayors know in mid-March just how easy it would be for them to herd millions of the rest of us away from the activities that we human beings have for generations enjoyed? Were these officials aware of their power to convince so many people under their command that each individual poses a poisonous threat to every other individual?

To prosper, we human beings must cooperate in production – Adam Smith called it the division of labor – and trade extensively. Most of these activities require face-to-face contact among individuals who see each other as partners in cooperation and exchange rather than as threatening carriers of death. And to enjoy what we produce also requires face-to-face contact, for we are a social species.

In possession of dictatorial power unknown just a few months ago, government officials – a group undeserving of much trust even in the best of times – will not shy away from wielding their newly discovered powers. The results will be ugly.

Attentive to Fear: Ironically, in his upbeat book Hans Rosling himself unintentionally offers justification for my pessimism. He does so in a chapter titled “The Fear Instinct.” Here’s a key passage: “When we are afraid, we do not see clearly… Critical thinking is always difficult, but it’s almost impossible when we are scared. There’s no room for facts when our minds are occupied by fear.

This undeniable reality means that a people in fear are a people who are unlikely to assess with much rationality the pros and cons of government policies. And the greater the fear, the less able people are to detect and resist government overreach.

Who is so naïve as to deny that this reality gives to government officials strong incentives to stir up fear? People who seek positions of political power generally are people who, by this very seeking, reveal that they are especially keen on exercising power over fellow human beings. And so if more power for the state grows out of more fear in the people, state officials have every incentive to exaggerate real dangers and to concoct fake ones. The result is a vicious cycle. The possession of power includes a disproportionately great ability to stir up fear, and stirred-up fear creates more power.”

Further, Rosling’s insights about the media imply that they contribute to this vicious cycle. Here again is Rosling: “We have a shield, or attention filter, between the world and our brain. This attention filter protects us against the noise of the world: without it, we would constantly be bombarded with so much information we would be overloaded and paralyzed. Most information doesn’t get through, but the holes [in our attention filter] do allow through information that appeals to our dramatic instincts. So we end up paying attention to information that fits our dramatic instincts, and ignoring information that does not.

The media can’t waste time on stories that won’t pass our attention filters. Here are a couple of headlines that won’t get past a newspaper editor, because they are unlikely to get past our own filters: “MALARIA CONTINUES TO GRADUALLY DECLINE.” “METEOROLOGISTS CORRECTLY PREDICTED YESTERDAY THAT THERE WOULD BE MILD WEATHER IN LONDON TODAY.” Here are some topics that easily get through our filters: earthquakes, war, refugees, disease, fire, floods, shark attacks, terror attacks. The unusual events are more newsworthy than everyday ones.”

An invisible virus is the perfect troublemaker to portray as an existential monster. Like an evil spirit, it can live, usually silently, within the breast of each of us. And so if a large enough number of us can be convinced that an unseen, vile monster lurks in everyone else, the resulting widespread fear empowers government officials to do what government officials do best – and what they’ve done so horribly over the past year: destroy.”

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

"The Great Unvaxxed - A 'Fictional' Look At What Lies Ahead"

"The Great Unvaxxed -

A 'Fictional' Look At What Lies Ahead"

by TE Creus

"The vaccine was a resounding success. Yes, there had been a final death rate of 10% among the vaccinated, but this was mostly among the elderly or the already ill, so it was probably not the vaccine’s fault, and if it was, no one could prove it one way or another, and even if they could, well, the vaccine manufacturers were not liable to lawsuits due to the agreements they had made with the various governments. In any case, the pandemic had ended, that was for sure.

Of course the masks and the lockdown mandates continued to be enforced; the reason was that while the pandemic had most certainly been defeated, the virus still existed in its natural form somewhere out there, and so it was vital to continue with the safety procedures to avoid any possible resurgence of the disease.

So what? People got used to it, as they had gotten used to so many other things before that. And was wearing a mask in the end much worse than wearing a helmet or a safety belt? Was being forced to stay at home for a few months every year much different than being forced to be at the office working for five days out of the seven in the week? Rules are rules, and those were not as bad as others that had been instituted in the past.

But there was something that worried the authorities. While most people had predictably complied with the mandatory vaccination campaign, there were a few groups that had refused them, alleging religious or health reasons, and found refuge in rural communities living off the grid. They had abandoned the use of mobile and network technology and so could not be traced so easily, and, since non-digital cash had been abolished, they appeared to have returned to a form of commerce based in the exchange of physical goods.

At first, the authorities ignored them; most people saw them as a minority of loser hicks, “anti-vaxxers” as they had been called in earlier pre-scientific times, and since it was unlikely that too many among the masses would opt for such a harsh lifestyle away from the comforts of modern urban life, they were not seen as a menace.

But what happened, in the end, was that rumors started to appear, even in the cities, about small communities where no one needed to wear masks, and people were dancing and smiling, and food was delicious and natural and people were even – gasp! – falling in love and procreating in natural ways.

Of course this was an obvious and mendacious falsity, but the authorities could not permit such fairy tales to gain acceptance among the people at large. So they started to persecute “the great unvaxxed”, as they called them, or the “free renegades” as they preferred to call themselves.

Their communities were dispersed. Their leaders were arrested. Planting organic, unmodified seeds became illegal. It was dangerous, the authorities alleged. Non-genetically modified crops were unsafe and could lead to sickness or birth defects. Many of the people who lived in the previously free rural communities were arrested and forcibly vaccinated, or were killed in shootings with the police.

But in the end it was not possible to arrest or forcibly vaccinate them all. Now, hidden among the normal population, using fake certificates, there lived an undisclosed number of unvaccinated people, whom the authorities had been unable to locate or identify.

A young woman named Miranda, who was born in a barn in the literal sense, and never vaccinated, was one of them. When organic farming was prohibited and most of the land was taken over by large companies using mechanized agriculture, she was forced to move to a small village where she subsisted doing odd jobs and occasionally teaching art classes. She had learned drawing and painting sill as a child, and was quite talented; she could sing very well too.

She had a fake vaccine certificate that looked for all purposes almost identical to the real ones, and while a bio-test could determine that she had not really taken the shot, or the “jab” as it was popularly called, she was careful never to be in any position that could require any kind of test.

For a few years she and hundreds of others like her had subsisted in this manner, but it was not ideal and never easy. Because before at least the renegades could live freely in their own communities, under their own rules, but now they had to hide and wear masks and follow dictates like everyone else, so what was the point? If they could not be free in any case, why not do like all the others and just take the jab and be done with it?

Miranda thought about it sometimes. But she had promised her parents – who had died in a shootout with the police – that she would always remain faithful to their ideals. And so she refused to compromise. She knew, or hoped, that the current tyranny could not be maintained forever. She wanted to believe that it would be possible, one day, to be free again.

Finally, they got her. It was her own stupid mistake; she was outside, a routine patrol was approaching and she had left her fake certificate at home. This would not normally happen, but she had recently bought a new jacket and had forgotten the certificate in the pocket of the old one. Walking around without a certificate was illegal, so they had to scan her arm, finding no signs of vaccination, and later a second test found no trace of antibodies in her system. Unable to explain the reason, or to produce a valid vaccine certificate – she knew now that the fake one she had at home would now be microscopically analyzed and would not be useful any longer – she was taken to the local jail, and later to a federal prison.

“There is an easy way out of this”, said Captain Antoine Huxley-Ehrlich, chief of the Vaccine Resistance Unit. “Just take the jab, and you’ll be free.” “Never”, replied Miranda. “You’ll have to do it by force.”

That was an option, of course, and legally possible with the recent change in the constitution. But it was not what Antoine wanted. No, she had to freely choose the vaccine. Not only because otherwise she could have become a martyr and inspire other rebels, or because people could start to think that there really was something bad or sinister about the vaccine; but because he firmly believed that winning by persuasion was better than winning by force, and he was convinced of his own righteousness.

He could not understand her stubborn refusal – hadn’t he, like all others, voluntarily taken the vaccine? As a member of the upper classes, he reminded her, he was not required to do it at the time; and yet he had volunteered. Why? Because he believed in law and order, but, most of all, because he believed in the vaccine.

He was sure that sooner or later he would be able to convince her that her uneasiness with the medication had only been caused by the trauma of her childhood experiences, living in a harsh rural area and watching her parents die as criminals fighting the law. But Miranda was indeed very stubborn. She refused all the options she was given. She preferred jail to vaccination and denial to compromise. She even refused to see a psychiatrist. So she lingered in prison for months and months.

One day, the warden brought to her cell a new book that she had requested from the prison library – "Civil Disobedience," by Thoreau. As she began to read, she found a handwritten note stuck between the first pages. “When you get your dinner tonight, ask for salt”, it said. “A friend”, it was signed.

Who could that be? She was puzzled, as it was years since she last had any contact with anyone else from her former community. But later that evening, as the warden brought her dinner, she meekly asked if she could have an extra amount of salt. The warden didn’t betray any sign of recognition or suspicion; she just brought her a small white salt-shaker. There was nothing unusual about it, but when Miranda opened it, from the bottom, she found a small magnetic key and another note inside.

The note explained that the key would open her cell door, and that all the security guards had either been bribed or put out to sleep. She could safely escape. Further instructions indicated how to reach a cabin in the woods nearby where she would be able to join her colleagues from the resistance movement.

She waited until midnight; when all was silent, she tried the key. It worked. She slowly walked out of her cell, then out of the prison, undisturbed. She followed the instructions to cover her face with a mask and her hair with a veil to avoid recognition. She was afraid a patrol would stop her as she left the city, as police presence was constant and sometimes there were curfews, but all the time she saw only a small group of policemen that she had no trouble evading.

She walked for several hours; the note had been clear that she should avoid any form of public transportation. It was already morning when she reached the destination informed, a few miles outside town. She knocked. No one answered. But she turned the handle and realized that the door was unlocked. She entered, very quietly, as if afraid to disturb the eerie silence. Finally, she saw a man sitting in an armchair, his back turned to her. He was wearing a dark jacket and a black fedora hat.

“So you’re finally here”, he said. She seemed to recognize the voice, although she couldn’t quite locate it. Was it perhaps someone from her old community? Then he turned towards her. It was Antoine Huxley-Ehrlich. It had been a trap, of course. The idea was to raise her hopes only to crush them, as an additional form of torture, an elaborate cat-and-mouse game. Also, now that she had tried to escape and join a rebel movement, she could be accused of sedition and other charges. She could easily be tried by a military court and condemned to death. And that was exactly what happened.

She was offered a full pardon in exchange for vaccination, but still she refused. If she had to die, then she might as well die on her own terms. Like Saint Joan or the early Christian martyrs, she’d rather burn at the stake or be thrown to the lions than renege. They could not convince her to get the “jab”, but they also did not want to turn her into some sort of hero for a cause, even if a crazy and hopeless one. So they decided that the execution would be done in secret, and the official story would be that, since she had refused several times the vaccination, she was never immune to the virus and had finally contracted the disease.

Today Miranda will be shot. She refused all offers for public announcements of regret and even a last meal. She also refused the blindfold; she did not want anything to cover a single part of her face.

As the executioners raise their rifles, Miranda is not afraid. Her golden hair flutters in the wind, and she looks up at the soldiers with a confident smile. She knows that they can kill her body, but they cannot touch her soul. And as she waits for the bullets to slowly arrive, Miranda sings a song that she remembers from her childhood, a song that her mother taught her and perhaps she also sang before she died:

'And when you come and all the flowers are dying

If I am dead, as dead I well may be

You’ll come and find the place where I am lying

And kneel and say an Ave there for me.'"

- https://www.zerohedge.com/covid-19/

- https://off-guardian.org/

○

"UK Now Considering Digital Face-Scanning To Enter Pubs"

"The ‘vaccine passport’ is a digital ID card..."

"UK Government Minister Says People Should 

"Call Out" Others For Hugging Their Loved Ones"

"...urged Brits to 'call out' others if they were seen 

engaging 'in an odd way,' such as hugging..."

"Don't You Dare..."

 

The Poet: John O'Donohue, "For The Time Of Necessary Decision"

"For The Time Of Necessary Decision"

 "The mind of time is hard to read.

We can never predict what it will bring,

Nor even from all that is already gone

Can we say what form it finally takes;

For time gathers its moments secretly.

Often we only know it's time to change

When a force has built inside the heart

That leaves us uneasy as we are.

Perhaps the work we do has lost its soul

Or the love where we once belonged

Calls nothing alive in us anymore.

We drift through this gray, increasing nowhere

Until we stand before a threshold we know

We have to cross to come alive once more.

May we have the courage to take the step

Into the unknown that beckons us;

Trust that a richer life awaits us there,

That we will lose nothing

But what has already died;

Feel the deeper knowing in us sure

Of all that is about to be born beyond

The pale frames where we stayed confined,

Not realizing how such vacant endurance

Was bleaching our soul's desire."

- John O'Donohue, 

"To Bless the Space Between Us"

Free Download: Nevil Shute, “On the Beach”,

“On The Beach”

by Nevil Shute

“Nevil Shute’s 1959 novel “On the Beach” is set in what was then the near future (1963, approximately a year following World War III). The conflict has devastated the northern hemisphere, polluting the atmosphere with nuclear fallout and killing all animal life. While the nuclear bombs were confined to the northern hemisphere, global air currents are slowly carrying the fallout to the southern hemisphere. The only part of the planet still habitable is the far south of the globe, specifically Australia and New Zealand, South Africa, and the southern parts of South America.

From Australia, survivors detect a mysterious and incomprehensible Morse code radio signal originating from the United States. With hope that some life has remained in the contaminated regions, one of the last American nuclear submarines, the USS Scorpion, placed by its captain under Australian naval command, is ordered to sail north from its port of refuge in Melbourne (Australia’s southernmost major mainland city) to try to contact whoever is sending the signal. In preparation for this long journey the submarine first makes a shorter trip to some port cities in northern Australia including Cairns, Queensland and Darwin, Northern Territory, finding no survivors.

The Australian government makes arrangements to provide its citizens with free suicide pills and injections, so that they will be able to avoid prolonged suffering from radiation sickness. One of the novel’s poignant dilemmas is that of Australian naval officer Peter Holmes, who has a baby daughter and a naive and childish wife, Mary, who is in denial about the impending disaster. Because he has been assigned to travel north with the Americans, Peter must try to explain to Mary how to euthanize their baby and kill herself with the pill should he be killed on the ocean voyage.

The characters make their best efforts to enjoy what time and pleasures remain to them before dying from radiation poisoning, speaking of small pleasures and continuing their customary activities, allowing their awareness of the coming end to impinge on their minds only long enough to plan ahead for their final hours. The Holmeses plant a garden that they will never see; Moira takes classes in typing and shorthand; scientist John Osborne and others organize a dangerous motor race that results in the violent deaths of several participants. In the end, Captain Towers chooses not to remain with Moira but rather to lead his crew on a final mission to scuttle their submarine beyond the twelve-mile (22 km) limit, so that she will not rattle about, unsecured, in a foreign port, refusing to allow his coming demise to turn him aside from his duty and acting as a pillar of strength to his crew.

Typically for a Shute novel, the characters avoid the expression of intense emotions and do not mope or indulge in self-pity. They do not, for the most part, flee southward as refugees but rather accept their fate once the lethal radiation levels reach the latitudes at which they live. Finally, most of the Australians do opt for the government-promoted alternative of suicide when the symptoms of radiation-sickness appear.”

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

○

Freely download “On the Beach”, by Nevil Shute, here:

- https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20131214

○

- https://www.fadedpage.com/index.php

○

"On The Beach", full movie.

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HusewgIe_1k

Full screen recommended.

"Denzel Washington's Life Advice Will Leave You Speechless"

"Denzel Washington's Life Advice

 Will Leave You Speechless"

○

Hat tip to Stucky at The Burning Platform for this.

"Remember That..."

"Your country ain't your blood. Remember that."

- Santino "Sonny" Corleone

Must Watch! “California Going Bankrupt; Stock Market Record High; Eviction Ban Extended; Obesity Crisis”

Jeremiah Babe,

“California Going Bankrupt; Stock Market Record High;

 Eviction Ban Extended; Obesity Crisis”

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/29/21: "New Record High For Stocks; Two New 'Events' Will Occur Soon- Wait For It"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/29/21:

"New Record High For Stocks; 

Two New 'Events' Will Occur Soon- Wait For It"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"An Old Man in a Hurry"

"An Old Man in a Hurry"

by Brian Maher

"Mr. Biden is an old man in a hurry... There he is… atop his galloping steed, whip in his hand, glory in his eyes - and history on his mind. Axios: "President Biden recently held an undisclosed East Room session with historians that included discussion of how big is too big - and how fast is too fast - to jam through once-in-a-lifetime historic changes to America." All assembled agreed. Too big is inadequately big. Too fast is insufficiently fast: "The historians’ views were very much in sync with his own: It is time to go even bigger and faster than anyone expected." Here is what he would jam through: Bigger, faster legislation on climate. On firearms. On elections... to name some.

The Next FDR or LBJ? Here then is a potential Roosevelt, a potential Johnson: "Presidential historian Michael Beschloss told Axios FDR and LBJ may turn out to be the past century's closest analogues for the Biden era, "in terms of transforming the country in important ways in a short time." Beschloss said the parallels include the New Deal economic relief that Franklin Roosevelt brought in 1933, which saved the country from the Depression and chaos. And Biden is on track to leave the country in a different place, as Lyndon Johnson did with his Great Society programs."

A vast literature contests the theory that the New Deal “saved the country from the Depression and chaos.” The New Deal likely extended the Depression. It likely deepened the chaos. The Great Society, meantime, unquestionably left the country “in a different place.” But a better place? American society presently groans beneath a great pile of debt… in large part… because of it. And the poverty it would eradicate remains - in many respects - uneradicated. Have you looked in on Baltimore? Detroit? The Appalachian hills?

What “Getting Things Done” Really Means: A politician on the move sends us on the run. He menaces our happiness. It was our sincere wish that the Republican Party would retain its Senate majority in November’s election. Not because we blow a whistle for the Republican Party - but because we blow a whistle for gridlock.Mr. Biden and his party are out to “get things done.” Yet, we do not want things getting done.

Getting things done generally involves fantastic raids upon our liberties… and our wallets. If anything is to get done… we argue... it is the undoing of previous things. That is, the undoing of previous raids upon our liberties and our wallets. Democrats have a clear field to get things done - for now.

A Race Against the Calendar: But Mr. Biden’s race to get things done - to “jam through once-in-a-lifetime historic changes to America” - is a race against the calendar. Midterm elections are under two years distant. Republicans can drag Mr. Biden from his horse if they gain one Senate seat - or 10 House seats. One or the other is likely. Both are possible.

If Mr. Biden must flout the racing rules to beat the calendar… and to race into the history books… then flout the racing rules he will. Again, Axios: "He has full party control of Congress, and a short window to go big… If that means chucking the filibuster and bipartisanship, so be it… People close to Biden tell us he’s feeling bullish on what he can accomplish, and is fully prepared to support the dashing of the Senate’s filibuster rule to allow Democrats to pass voting rights and other trophy legislation for his party… He loves the growing narrative that he’s bolder and bigger-thinking than President Obama."

Mr. Biden must therefore apply a ruthless whip… and seize his spot in presidential history. He is - again - an old man in a hurry. But let us return to Mr. Biden and his pursuit of history…

Biden in 2005: We might call to your attention: Mr. Biden had previously mounted thundering defenses of the filibuster. But we will not call his flim-fambling to your attention. Our respect for the man and the high dignity of the office he holds is too vast. We will, therefore, not remind you that: "In 2005 Senator Biden delivered - in his very words - "one of the most important speeches for historical purposes that I will have given in the 32 years since I have been in the Senate."

Ending the filibuster, Delaware’s senior senator said: "Is not only a bad idea, it upsets the constitutional design and it disservices the country. No longer would the Senate be that “different kind of legislative body” that the Founders intended. No longer would the Senate be the “saucer” to cool the passions of the immediate majority… [Ending the filibuster] would eviscerate the Senate and turn it into the House of Representatives."

But that was before Senator Biden was President Biden... Before he sensed the opportunity to jam through “once-in-a-lifetime historic changes to America”...Before the historians wooed and flattered him…In brief, before he seized the whip.

A Moderate? A question springs to mind: Would a man of moderate politics - as the advertising has Mr. Biden - scheme to “jam through once-in-a-lifetime historic changes to America?” We are far from convinced that he would. Jamming through implies a resistance. A resistance - that is - to be routed, overcome and conquered.

A man jams a quarter-inch rivet through an eighth-inch hole, for example. He jams a bayonet through an enemy’s ribs. He jams spinach through his shrieking child’s gullet. Are the American people hot for the rivet, for the bayonet, for the spinach? Do they want the country left “in a different place?” We must conclude they do not... Else why the jamming through? Why the secret huddling of conspirators to plot it?

Historians Love Action: We should not be surprised that the history-writers tickled the president’s ear. History smiles upon presidents of action - even of the wrong action. Presidential inaction makes dull history - and idle historians. It is not the Clevelands, the Pierces, the Buchanans or the Tafts that glitter in history. It is rather the Lincolns. It is the Roosevelts - I and II. It is the Johnsons - Lyndon Baines, not Andrew. It is the Obamas. That is, the presidents who seize the most power glitter brightest in history. President Biden wishes to glitter alongside them. He is after history. And he is in a hurry..."

- dailyreckoning.com

Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "Flying" (Full Album)

Peder B. Helland, "Flying" (Full Album)

"A Look to the Heavens"

“This shock wave plows through space at over 500,000 kilometers per hour. Moving toward to bottom of this beautifully detailed color composite, the thin, braided filaments are actually long ripples in a sheet of glowing gas seen almost edge on. Cataloged as NGC 2736, its narrow appearance suggests its popular name, the Pencil Nebula. 

About 5 light-years long and a mere 800 light-years away, the Pencil Nebula is only a small part of the Vela supernova remnant. The Vela remnant itself is around 100 light-years in diameter and is the expanding debris cloud of a star that was seen to explode about 11,000 years ago. Initially, the shock wave was moving at millions of kilometers per hour but has slowed considerably, sweeping up surrounding interstellar gas.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120924.html

"Perhaps..."

Perhaps we are looking at this from a wrong perspective; this search for the truth, the meaning of life, the reason of God. We all have this mindset that the answers are so complex and so vast that it is almost impossible to comprehend. I think, on the contrary, that the answers are so simple; so simple that it is staring us straight in the face, screaming its lungs out, and yet we fail to notice it. We're looking through a telescope, searching the stars for the answer, when the answer is actually a speck of dirt on the telescope lens. 

~ Jason Q.

Chet Raymo, “What Not to Believe”

“What Not to Believe”

by Chet Raymo

“In Stacy Schiff's biography of Cleopatra, I came across this epigraph from Euripides: "Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." I have no idea which of Euripides' plays the quote is from, but it strikes me as a suitable source for reflection. Credulity is the default state of a human life. Children are born to believe, to accept as true what they are told by adults. An innate credulity has survival value in a dangerous world. If a grown-up says "There are crocodiles in the river," it is probably best to stay out of the water.

Skepticism, on the other hand, must be learned. I was late in realizing that I didn't have to believe the received "truth." My best teacher was a somewhat older Panamanian secular Jew I went to graduate school with at UCLA. We took our brown-bag lunches together in the university's botanical garden, and spent the hour talking about physics, religion, and the "meaning of life."

Moises was the first person I had encountered after sixteen years of Catholic education who mentioned the word "skepticism." "Why do you believe that?" he would ask, and often I had no answer except that it was what my family and teachers told me was true. The idea that I might actually examine the basis for my beliefs was a rather new concept. In matters of religion, like almost everyone else in the world, I had embraced uncritically the faith story into which I was born.

And thus began my search for "a judicious sense of what not to believe." When later, as a teacher, I wrote a little column for each issue of the college newspaper, I called it "Under a Skeptical Star," from a line of the Scots poet/scholar William MacNeile Dixon: "If there be a skeptical star I was born under it, yet I have lived all my days in complete astonishment." A liberating sense of what not to believe opened the door to a vastly more interesting world whose diverse and astonishing riches I continue to explore to this day."

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"If You Have Come..."

"If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time.

But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine,

then let us work together."

- 1970s Aboriginal activists group, Queensland

"The Hazardous Detour in the Road to "Recovery" Few Foresee"

"The Hazardous Detour in the Road to "Recovery" Few Foresee"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Without exception, every single board member I ever came

 into contact with was a sociopath that would murder their own 

grandmother with an ice-pick if they thought it would make them a penny.

These are some heartless, terrifying individuals."

- Nicklethrower

"You know the plot point in the horror film where the highway is blocked and a detour sign directs the car full of naive teens off onto a rutted track into the wilderness? We're right there in the narrative of "the road to recovery": the highway that everyone expected would be smooth and wide open is about to be detoured into a rutted track that peters out in a wilderness without any lights or signage.

Oops - no cell coverage out here either. Is that the road over there? Guess not - we just careened into a canyon alive with the roar of a raging river. Our vehicle keeps sliding downhill, even with the brakes locked... this trip to "recovery" was supposed to be so quick and easy, and now there's no way out... what's that noise?

You know the rest: the naive, trusting teens are picked off one by one in the most horrific fashion. Substitute naive punters in the stock market and you have the script for what lies ahead. The "recovery" has an unfortunate but all-too accurate connotation: recovery from addiction. The "recovery" we've been told is already accelerating at a wondrous pace does not include any treatment of the market's addiction to Federal Reserve free money for financiers; rather, the "recovery" is entirely dependent on a never-ending speedball of Fed smack and crack and a booster of Fed financial meth.

The addiction to Fed speedballs had already turned the entire financial sector into a casino of lunatic junkies who delusionally believe they're all geniuses. Beneath the illusory stability of the god-like Fed has our back, the addiction to free money has completely destabilized America's social, political and economic orders by boosting wealth and income inequality to unprecedented extremes.

While it's convenient to blame the carnage on the response to the Covid pandemic, the damage to the speedball-addicted financial system had already reached extremes before the pandemic: the addiction began decades ago, but like all addictions, the amount of stimulus needed to maintain the high keeps expanding, and eventually the need can't be met without toxic doses: then the junkie/addicted system collapses.

The ever-greater doses of Fed speedballs have unleashed both deflation (smack) and inflation (crack): real returns on ordinary savings have been crushed to zero (deflation of ordinary income), and as the cost of capital/credit have been dropped to near-zero, then the purchasing power of wages has deflated while the speculative gains of those who own assets have soared (asset inflation).

By lowering the cost of capital to zero, the Fed has generated fatally perverse incentives. With the cost of capital at zero, it makes sense to buy labor-saving technologies to replace costly labor - labor that is costly to employers because of America's perverse sickcare system, which burdens employers with ever-higher costs.

Not only have the Fed's free-money speedballs made it essentially free for financiers to speculate in the stock market casino, the Fed has rigged the game and bailed out its cronies whenever their bets soured. This has fueled infinite moral hazard: Go ahead and gamble with free money from the Fed, and go ahead and leverage it up 10-to-1 because the Fed will bail you out if you lose, but if you win, the stupendous gains are yours to keep.

The problem with addiction is you're dependent on the high, no matter what the eventual consequences may be. Long-term consequences are ignored because all that matters to the addict is to get the next Fed speedball and throw it on the gambling table to keep the high going.

Our entire economy is now dependent on ever-expanding speculative gains. Should the casino winnings falter, our economy will crash, and given the primacy of money and consumption in our society and political system, the financial collapse of the Fed's casino lunacy will sweep those systems over the falls.

As the level of Fed smack and crack needed to maintain the high increases, system fragility increases geometrically. The irony of addiction is that when the crack/meth kicks in, the addict feels god-like, in control, invulnerable. This artificial confidence is entirely illusory, a deadly combination of delusion and hubris.

In this delusional state of supreme confidence, the addict loses touch with reality, i.e. the fatal consequences of the addiction. That's the detour we've taken in becoming addicted to the Fed's free-money speedballs. Now the rutted road has ended in a trackless wilderness. There is no way back and no way forward. The addict's addled confidence will push them into the ice-cold river, and as they're swept over the falls, the realization that it was all a drug-induced delusion will come too late to make a difference."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

"No Special Hurry..."

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry."

- Ernest Hemingway, "A Farewell To Arms"

"Here Comes the Bretton Woods Choo-Choo"

"Here Comes the Bretton Woods Choo-Choo"

by Jeff Thomas

"Since the announcement of Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset, many people have become increasing aware of and/or increasingly concerned over the prospect of a New World Order. Although it’s been in the works for over a century, in recent decades, preparations for the actual implementation have become increasingly apparent, and now that the rollout has begun, the reality of its tyrannical intent is coming home more than ever before.

Interestingly, most all people who comment on the coming of a New World Order seem to treat it as a foregone conclusion. Not only that, they tend to assume that it’s certain to live up to its title: a dominant oligarchy that will blanket the globe. But is that dark prediction a certainty? Let’s back up a bit here and look at this from above the treeline of all the hoopla and see it as it really is.

First, where did the concept come from? Certainly, sociopaths have always existed, and they tend to wish to be omnipotent. And we know from history that there are no lengths that they will not go to, to achieve their power.

Possibly the first such individual who was clever enough to attempt it on an economic basis was Mayer Rothschild in the eighteenth century. He succeeded in dominating Germany monetarily, then sent out his five sons to similarly dominate the most powerful countries in Europe. The Rothschild family also had boots on the ground in the early decades of the US, forming the central bank, and although the success of that venture was not fully realized until 1913, they and their co-conspirators have never let up in their quest for world economic dominance. But the effort really hit its stride in 1944.

In the early years of World War II, the US had supplied the allies with most everything: helmets, cannons, planes, even toothbrushes. They charged high prices for it all and insisted on being paid in gold. Not surprisingly, then, that toward the end of the war, when factories all over Europe had been bombed, the US had large, new factories – all paid for by Europe – plus millions of returning servicemen, ready to create all the goods needed by the entire Western World after the war. But they also, at that point, held more than 60% of the world’s gold.

A total of forty-four countries attended the Bretton Woods Conference, which was ostensibly held to discuss the best way forward to create the post-war economy, but truth be told, it was really a politely veiled announcement that the US would now be the undisputed economic boss and the other nations would be allowed to hitch onto the coattails of the US boom if they behaved themselves.

It was clear that the US had a fait accompli and quite a few nations decided to hitch their coaches onto the US post-war prosperity train. Those countries that were most closely hitched profited most during the next decades, whilst those who made a lesser connection tended to become less prosperous. Part of the deal was that the dollar would be the world’s default currency, and along the way, the petrodollar became the currency for most all settlements for oil purchases.

The US was riding high, and the other nations – most notably Canada, the UK, much of Western Europe, Japan and Australia – were along for the ride. But in 1971, the US surprised the world by decoupling the dollar from gold. Essentially, the message was, "We’re reneging on our part of the deal – payment in gold – but we’ll still expect you to keep up your end of the agreement and defer to us as the leader."

The US then increasingly turned to debt creation as its new currency, and although it would – long term – be extremely unwise, the other countries remained hitched to the Bretton Woods Choo-Choo. Like all parties, this one couldn’t last forever, and today the train is no longer running on real prosperity (the provision of goods and services). It now runs almost entirely on debt, and to keep the train going, trillions of dollars are now being created to shovel into the firebox to keep the engine going.

We’re now at the tipping point: The train is headed into the terminal at breakneck speed. And just like a speeding train, the greatest damage will be to the engine itself, at the moment of the crash. After that, the coaches that are hitched to it will be damaged in keeping with how close to the engine they are. That is, the nations that are most closely tied to the US economically will be those most affected. They will also go off the rails. But for those further to the rear (those less linked through trade), the damage will be less.

Most readers will be located either in the US or another First World country. That means that they will be aware that the crash is going to impact their lives dramatically. But interestingly, the great majority of them assume that the entire world will be equally affected by the train wreck. This is not so.

Those that, back in the post-war years, were not so tied to the US, were considered Second- and Third-World countries – "lesser" countries by First-Worlders. But soon, we shall witness a reversal of fortunes. Those same countries will be far less impacted and will be more capable of recovering than the First World countries.

And what of those countries that, until now, had almost no connection to the train – those countries that imported and exported little or nothing to the First World? Well, we may find that the crash will hardly impact their economies at all. Those who live in such countries may well watch the crash from afar, shake their heads and continue to live their lives just as they had before. And if we picture the First World countries, apart from all other countries, we gain a visual understanding of just how few will be crashing into the terminal. Many of the other countries will be minimally impacted. And some will thrive.

Now that the Great Unravelling is underway, we shall increasingly see a divergence between the Second and Third World countries and the First World countries that have been connected to the Bretton Woods Choo-Choo since 1944.

Today, the United States is still the dominant power in the world. But, US dominance and the dollar hegemony isn't guaranteed in the months and years ahead. In fact, the US government has quietly launched the most dangerous economic experiment since communism, and it's taking place right before our eyes.

Just as, historically, a dying empire gives way to the emergence of those countries that had previously been in its shadow, the productivity, technical advances and freedoms that will be their by-product will be seen in those countries that were once regarded as "lesser" players. It will be up to us as individuals whether we choose to remain within the First World as it slides away or choose to hitch our star to the emerging world."

-internationalman.com

The Daily "Near You?"

Wasilla, Alaska, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Thomas Centolella, "Splendor"

"Splendor"

"One day it's the clouds,

one day the mountains.

One day the latest bloom of roses-

the pure monochromes, the dazzling hybrids-

inspiration for the cathedral's round windows.

Every now and then there's the splendor of thought:

the singular idea and its brilliant retinue-

words, cadence, point of view,

little gold arrows flitting between the lines.

And too the splendor of no thought at all:

hands lying calmly in the lap,

or swinging a six iron with effortless tempo.

More often than not splendor is the star we orbit

without a second thought,

especially as it arrives and departs.

One day it's the blue glassy bay,

one day the night and its array of jewels,

visible and invisible.

Sometimes it's the warm clarity

of a face that finds your face

and doesn't turn away.

Sometimes a kindness, unexpected,

that will radiate farther than you might imagine.

One day it's the entire day itself,

each hour foregoing its number and name,

its cumbersome clothes,

a day that says come as you are,

large enough for fear and doubt,

with room to spare: the most secret

wish, the deepest, the darkest,

turned inside out."

- Thomas Centolella

"Civilization Walks Backward"

"Civilization Walks Backward"

By Bill Bonner

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – "At our ranch in Argentina, we explore on horseback. Here in Ireland, we explore on foot. And what we explored this weekend was the collapse of civilization. The Suez Canal is unstuck this morning. So trade can return to normal. The exchange of goods and services – along with increasing specialization and sophistication – is what makes a modern economy possible. But sometimes, trade goes into reverse… and a “dark age” results. When? Why? How? Let us attack the subject this week in our usual way – that is, by taking a rambling, circuitous route. Then, we will sneak up from behind and catch it unawares.

White Supremacist Math: We begin by tossing out a bread crumb. A dear reader recently wrote to tell us that even arithmetic has become a subject for “woke” complainers. And now, WND News has the latest: "In New York City, math education Professor Laurie Rubel claims the whole notion that “2+2=4” is one that “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.” How is that remotely possible? As the Brooklyn College prof explained in a tweet: “The idea that math (or data) is culturally neutral or in any way objective is a MYTH. … Along with the ‘Of course math is neutral because 2+2=4’ trope are the related (and creepy) ‘Math is pure’ and ‘Protect math.’ Reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.”

Perhaps it is a joke? But let’s come back to that tomorrow…

Irish Originarios: We have been in Ireland now for a month. It was cold and rainy when we arrived. It is still cold and rainy. This weekend was especially windy and wet, with the west wind blowing a fine rain almost horizontally… punctuated by a few snowflakes. But occasionally, the sun came out, for a few minutes, before clouds came over again.

Ireland is a beautiful place, but the opposite of our ranch in Argentina in many ways. Here, there is water – plenty of it. And grass. There are no brutal droughts. No cattle lying dead on the ground. No bitter cold. No dust storms. The government, too, appears to be stable… along with the local currency – the euro. The economy is orderly. There are no originarios… and no land grabs.

Of course, Ireland had its own originarios – organized as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) – whose goals were similar to those of the “indigenous peoples” of the Andes. Irish Catholics felt the country had been stolen from them by the English. In the early 20th century, they aimed to get it back – by forcing the English Protestants out. To this end, they burnt many of the “big houses” of the Anglo-Irish gentry. And made life uncomfortable for others.

New Ireland: But now, the old wounds have largely healed. The Irish have their own country – the Republic – which is more prosperous than British-controlled Northern Ireland. The old privileges have been abolished. In certain areas, including one near our house, the old Irish Gaelic is still spoken. In these “gaeltacht” areas, you have to agree to learn the language if you move in. We made an attempt to learn “Irish” when we were last here. We’d still like to speak the language, but life may not be long enough to learn it.

The Irish “originarios” got much of what they wanted. And today, Ireland seems very safe and peaceful, a European country… but with deep Celtic roots and grievances that still stir people up from time to time. The Anglo-Irish – descendants of the conquerors – are still here. But some are moving away. “There’s nothing left for us here,” says one of our acquaintances.

But most – along with thousands of new immigrants from Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East… and a smattering of Americans who have come back to their homeland – are merely part of the new Ireland.

The Irish Project: We bought this property because we’d always wanted to live in Ireland. And now, one of our sons lives in Dublin. He and his wife are expecting a baby. We are here, only a couple hours away, waiting to be called to action. “Any day now,” says our daughter-in-law. Our property was attractive because it had an old house that could be restored and modernized, in a charming, rural setting.

The numerous stone walls… many of them tumbled down… would provide us with plenty to do on the weekends. And an old lodge, at the abandoned entrance to the property, could be made into a fine office – a project that is now underway.

Into the Woods: Between the lodge and the house was a deep, forested area, flanked by open pastures rented to a local dairy farmer. We had no idea what was in the woods. From the lodge itself, an overgrown path led up the hill. But after a hundred meters or so, the underbrush was so thick, we couldn’t continue.

Peter Sell and Gina Murrell, in their opus Flora of Great Britain and Ireland, list hundreds of brambles, from the curved-tooth bramble (R. curvidens) to retrorse-toothed bramble (R. dasyphyllus). Every one of them must have found a home on this abandoned lane.

Briars… wild blackberries… and nettles fill the open spaces. Moss-covered laurels, oak, ash, “maple-sycamores,” and holly trees – many of them so overgrown with vines, that it was hard to tell what they are – line both sides.

Iron rail embedded in tree.

There are four different varieties of Laurus Nobilis. We don’t know which one we have here. But it is very hardy and invasive. The plant once covered much of the Mediterranean Basin. But either because the area dried out… or humans cut down the laurels… the species retreated to cooler, moister climates. Ireland – along with Scotland – seems like the perfect place for it, as well as rhododendrons and azaleas. The path led to an ancient stone bridge, crossing a small stream… And then, the path disappeared altogether, lost in a maze of brambles, bushes, and laurels.

Old stone bridge.

Signs of Life: Stumbling through the thicket, we found further signs of antique life. Up from the bridge, a stone wall curved around the side of the hill. It was a retaining wall, holding the dirt against the hillside to form what must have been a roadway.

And it’s on the map. Back in the 19th century, Britain – which ruled Ireland at the time – sent forth teams of surveyors to map the entire country. The 1837 Ordnance Survey map is still available. It shows a different country. The basic layout of the property – the main house… two cottages… stone walls… stout oaks… the barn and farmyard complex – is the same. There is a walled garden, too – whose walls are still mostly intact.

But then, it was much more orderly and developed than it is now. Today, you can barely find many of the features so clearly marked on the map. The walls are overgrown. The cottage roofs have caved in. The roadways – which must have been trod for centuries – have disappeared. Where is the carefully structured, apparently well-maintained, farm from 1837? We see only traces of it. But surely, it was more elegant… and more refined.

Back then, people must have thought it was permanent – those sturdy stone walls… the stone pillars, with their gates of oak and iron… cottages… stables… piggeries… an ice house. Roads laid out, firm and true. And then, local society must have seemed well organized, too. The Anglo-Irish owners in their country mansions, with their farm managers and gamekeepers… the clergy in their churches and glebes… the peasants in their cabins…

People must have thought that that was the way it ought to be… and the way it always would be.But it is no more. What happened to it?"

Where civilization ends.

Stay tuned…"

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"We Like To Think..."

"We like to think that we are rational beings; humane, conscientious, civilized, thoughtful. But when things fall apart, even just a little, it becomes clear we are not better than animals. We have opposable thumbs, we think, we walk erect, we speak, we dream, but deep down we are still routing around in the primordial ooze; biting, clawing, scratching out an existence in the cold, dark world like the rest of the tree-toads and sloths."

- "Grey's Anatomy"

"Do You Believe in Magic?"

"Do You Believe in Magic?"

by Jim Kunstler

"The people pretending to run the world’s financial affairs do. The more layers of abstract game-playing they add to the existing armatures of unreality they’ve already constructed, the more certain it becomes that they will blow up all the support systems of a sunsetting hyper-tech economy that now has no safe lane to continue running in.

Virtually all the big nations are doing this now in desperation because they don’t understand that the hyper-tech economy is hostage to the deteriorating economics of energy, basically fossil fuels, and oil especially. The macro mega-system can’t grow anymore. We’re now in the de-growth phase of a dynamic that pulsates through history, as everything in the universe pulsates. We attempted to compensate for de-growth with debt, borrowing from the future.

But debt only works in the youthful growth phases of economic pulsation, when the prospect of being paid back is statistically favorable. Now in the elder de-growth phase, the prospect of paying back debts, or even servicing the interest, is statistically dismal. The amount of racked-up debt worldwide has entered the realm of the laughable. So, the roughly twenty-year experiment in Central Bank credit magic, as a replacement for true capital formation, has come to its grievous end.

Hence, America under the pretend leadership of Joe Biden ventures into the final act of this melodrama, which will end badly and probably pretty quickly. They are about to call in the financial four horsemen of apocalypse: 1) Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), 2) a command economy, 3) Universal Basic Income (UBI, “helicopter” money for the people), and 4) the “Build Back Better” infrastructure scheme.

MMT is the idea that a nation which claims a monopoly on issuing money can “create” new money ad infinitum with no negative consequences. That is, we can “lend” ourselves money (borrow it into existence) without having to worry about paying it back. The theory caught on only because that’s what we’ve done for two decades and, so far, it hasn’t destroyed the banking system - though debt turned exponential, which is to say ruinous, only recently - so we won’t have to stand by long to see how this experiment works out. Note this too: MMT completes the divorce between productive activity and capital formation, that is, prosperity without wealth.

A command economy means that government increasingly attempts to takes over economic enterprise, to replace x-million individual economic choices of freely-acting people in a society with bureaucratic central planning. (Have you already said ha-ha-ha, knowing how that has worked out through history?)

UBI is the primary feature of that because, in a command economy, production is mostly pretend, so you just have to give people money (for nothing). Remember the old basic operating system of the Soviet Union, stated succinctly as: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. Got that?

The idea behind “Build Back Better” is to renovate the infrastructure of a hyper-tech economy that actually no longer exists because we are in the contraction phase of an historic pulsation or cycle, leaving us with lots of tech and less production, tending toward zero. Nobody flogging this slogan actually knows what it ought to mean under the circumstances, which is to go with the flow of the reality of this contraction: to downsize, downscale, and re-localize all our activities to bring them back into sync with actual productivity - that is, raising food, making real stuff, and trading it. Again, it’s the energy dynamic, stupid.

To get to that point, we’re going to shed the massive over-burden of financial game-playing that has pretended to represent our economy. That means stock valuations and bond prices will vaporize along with the derivative activities concocted for trading gainfully in these now-phantom representations of capital. If that happens sooner rather than later, we won’t even be able to pretend to Build Back Better the interstate highways, the electric grid, airports, and all the other stuff in the “infrastructure” folder.

Indeed, a lot of that would be malinvestment folly now because we’re nearing the end of mass motoring and commercial aviation as we’ve known them. If we even have electricity twenty-five years from now, it will come from much-reduced grids on a much more regional basis. The bottom line for all this is that pretty soon every corner of the country will be on its own amid quite a bit of social disorder and financial wreckage. So, whatever energy you actually can marshal to Build Back Better, save it for your town or your local community. And remember, all of the attempts by a national government to control these events, and coerce its citizens in the service of that, will only lead to a more ineffectual and impotent national government that nobody has faith in, confirming the fact that you are on your own."

- https://kunstler.com/

Musical Interlude: Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Footprints On The Sea"

Gnomusy (David Caballero), "Footprints On The Sea"