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So, we rise from the rubble...
Monday, July 5, 2021
Sunday, July 4, 2021
"Sorry, America, You Lost Me"
"Sorry, America, You Lost Me"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"I happened to be in a Big Box Emporium, buying two bags of whole wheat flour, when a strange revelation struck me: almost nothing in this giant emporium was made in the USA. Apologists will quickly point out that the two bags of whole wheat flour were "made in the USA," and note the US-made items in the food, liquor and beverage aisles; but wander out of these aisles and tell me how many of the hundreds of items are made in the USA (not assembled of foreign components, but made entirely in the USA). The answer is very few.
I suppose this fact is unremarkable to the majority of Americans, but my reaction was, sorry, America, you lost me: how is this not insane to depend on sweatshops thousands of miles away to make virtually everything on the shelves and warehouses of the U.S.?
It's as if a war was declared on manufacturing in America and we lost - or simply surrendered.
If you want to buy a bulldozer or electric vehicle, you can Buy American, and if you buy an iPhone, the firmware is conjured in Cupertino (the phone is assembled in China of components sourced globally). But below a certain price point and outside the snacks, magazines and beer aisles, U.S.-made good are "special order" if they're available at all.
Is this because the foreign made stuff is so high quality? No, it's virtually all garbage quality. A war was declared on quality, and America lost. Virtually nothing on the shelves of America's Big Box Emporiums and fulfillment warehouses is durable; it's either designed to fail (planned obsolescence) or it's so poorly made that it breaks, fades, rips, tears, delaminates or fails, and is dutifully hauled to the landfill as part of the entire Landfill Economy. (Forget trying to repair it; it's been designed to be impossible to repair, and all the components are junk, too.)
If stuff breaks or fails in short order, it isn't cheap, no matter what the price says. It's expensive because it must be constantly replaced. A war was declared on value, and America lost. Sorry, America, you lost me. How is the transition from quality and value to junk not a complete disaster for the nation?
So what is the business of America? Marketing. Everything boils down to marketing in America. Everything is a channel to collect consumer data that can be monetized (no, you can't monetize your own data; that's not how it works) or a channel to upsell anyone ensnared in the value chain.
You may naively think an iPhone is a device for phone calls and texts. Silly you! It's nothing but a channel to upsell you Apple services. The "settings" on my old SE still have a nag notice because "setting up" your iPhone means signing up for Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Pay, Apple Skim and Apple Scam.
My Mom-in-law is in her 90s and like many in her age group, she enjoys watching TV. She lives with us and so we handle the cable TV subscription for her. She asked us to get the commercial-free English-language network from Japan, NHK, and of course this is only available in a package of rubbish channels.
Since I have a basketball hoop for my fitness amusement and have long been a roundball fan, I clicked to the NBA channel listed. It was nothing but a series of moronic adverts. I tried again later, nothing but moronic adverts. I gave up on the third try, because it dawned on me that apparently this channel doesn't actually televise any actual basketball, it only promises to do so at some later date; and in the meantime, here is an endless stream of moronic adverts.
Sorry, America, you lost me. Marketing and upselling is not prosperity or success, it's ruination.
The list of channels that are nothing but data mining, marketing and upselling is endless in America. Every subscription service is nothing more than a channel to upsell you on "Premium services."
Social media: nothing but data mining, marketing and upselling.
Internet Search: nothing but data mining, marketing and upselling.
Media, telecommunications, banking, etc.: nothing but data mining, marketing and upselling. Look at the most profitable and highest valuation corporations in America, and their sole business model and reason to exist is data mining, marketing and upselling.
The Healthcare Borg is also nothing but data mining, marketing and upselling. If you want to get a look indicating profound suspicion of your motives and beliefs, tell your healthcare provider, "I'm over 65 and don't take any meds." Within the Borg, such a statement can only mean 1) you haven't yet signed up for Medicare/Medicaid, and we need to get you in the gravy-train pronto; 2) you're some kind of nutcase who refuses medications, or 3) you're a dangerous subversive who should be reported to Facebook as a potential extremist.
The Healthcare Borg's marketing has reached extremes of absurdity. Practitioners are under extreme pressure from Corporate HQ to bill you for something on a regular basis, and so I received increasingly frantic phone calls and emails demanding I set up a telemarketing, oops, I mean telemedicine confab with my PCP (primary care physician--the Borg loves acronyms as much as the Pentagon).
I halfway expected to be accosted on the street by thugs informing me to make a telemedicine appointment or "we're gonna have to break something." Sorry, America, you lost me. When healthcare stopped being about nurturing health, especially via basic preventative measures, and became a profit center and marketing channel, the well-being of the nation spiraled into the sewer.
While I foolishly waited for a basketball game to appear on the NBA channel - how naive of me! - I clicked through a few movie channels. The offerings were the most recent batch of the super-hero genre. As a huge fan of action films, I had hopes these might reverse my disinterest in the genre. Nope. The movies were not bad, they were simply... uninteresting and derivative.
Sorry, America, you lost me. Everything that's a derivative of something that was creative and fresh decades ago is uninteresting, and virtually everything is a derivative. America is subjected to a remake of a remake of a remake, with a switch of media being the supposed creative magic.
Star Wars 24 plus the novelized version, amusement park ride, podcast, action figure and OnlyFans pages, anyone?
America's cultural obsession with super-heroes made me wonder, in a dangerously subversive fashion, what this means beneath the superficiality of reaping reliable profits. Does it now require super-human powers to survive the onslaught of exploitation, profiteering, overwork and exposure to fanatical marketing, data mining and upselling that is life in the USA?
Or does this cultural obsession reflect our fear that we're so far gone down the road of worshiping billionaires blowing billions on space tourism that only super-heroes can save us?
Sorry, America, you lost me. Many readers will write all this off as the sour rantings of some out-of-it geezer. But ask yourself: what if everything said here is correct, but nobody dares talk about it because that might make it real?"
"Happy Birthday America"
"Happy Birthday America"
by Eric Utter
"The U.S. Capitol building has been an iconic symbol of democracy for well over two hundred years, much like the U.S. itself. It remained so through the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and too many lesser crises to count, all while remaining largely accessible to the citizens whose interests those who work there are supposed to represent. However, this Independence Day finds the Capitol off-limits to all but a select few. Our elite overseers can't be expected to open themselves up to a possible "insurrection," can they? Sad.
The tragic events of the past year and a half, and our "representatives'" reaction to them, as well as our own response, have left me wondering what the Founders and other astute political observers might say to us now if they had the chance. Then I realized they would say pretty much what they said back then. Here are some of the most profound, universal - and yet timely - words of wisdom ever uttered with regard to societies, governments, and freedom:
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin. COVID-19?
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech." - Benjamin Franklin.
Sound familiar? I wonder what Franklin's preferred pronouns were.
"For true patriots to be silent, is dangerous." - Samuel Adams.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson.
"But a constitution of government once changed from freedom can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever." - John Adams.
We might want to take this one to heart.
"When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty." - John Basil Barnhill.
One of the great truisms of all time.
"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular." - Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson was a Democrat. He would've been summarily canceled today.
"Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms." - Hubert H. Humphrey. Trigger warning! Humphrey was a Democrat!
"When plunder has become a way of life for a group of people living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it, and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frédéric Bastiat. We are seeing this now with our elites on Wall Street, in Big Tech, and in government. So sad.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it." - H.L. Mencken. The most accurate description of leftists ever stated, in my humble opinion. No truer words have ever been spoken.
"I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as government expands, liberty contracts." - Ronald Reagan. Absolute and irrefutable.
"Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves." - Abraham Lincoln.
"We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth." - Abraham Lincoln. The last quote is from Lincoln's message to Congress on December 1, 1861. It is just as true today. We are once again at a tipping point, an existential moment.
And I leave you with another quote, this one from Toby Keith's new song, "Happy Birthday America": "Seems like everyone's pissin' on the red, white, and blue. Happy birthday America, whatever's left of you."
Full screen recommended.
"A Look to the Heavens"
"You can't walk along the Milky Way. Still, under a dark sky you can explore it. To the eye the pale luminous trail of light arcing through the sky on a dark, moonless night does appear to be a path through the heavens. The glowing celestial band is the faint, collective light of distant stars cut by swaths of obscuring interstellar dust clouds.
It lies along the plane of our home galaxy, so named because it looks like a milky way. Since Galileo's time, the Milky Way has been revealed to telescopic skygazers to be filled with congeries of innumerable stars and cosmic wonders."
Chet Raymo, “We Are Such Stuff…”
“We Are Such Stuff…”
by Chet Raymo
“Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again.”
“Caliban is talking to Stephano and Trinculo in Shakespeare’s “Tempest”, telling them not to be “afeard” of the mysterious place they find themselves, an island seemingly beset with magic, strangeness, ineffable presences. And you and I, and, yes, all of us, find ourselves inexplicably thrown up on this island that is the world, and we too, if we are attentive, hear the strange music, the sounds and sweet airs, that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere
No, I’m not talking about the usual ubiquitous clamor, the roar of internal combustion, the blare of the television, the beeping of mobile phones. I’m not talking about the Limbaughs and the Becks, the televangelists, the blathering politicians, the twitterers and bloggers (including this one). I’m not even talking about the exquisite music of Mozart, the poetry of Wordsworth, the theories of Einstein.
I’m talking about the sounds we hear in utter silence, in moments of repose, in the heart of darkness, when we are a little bit afraid, disoriented, off kilter. A strange music that comes from beyond our knowing, a felt meaning. You’ve heard it. I’ve heard it. You’d have to be deaf not to have heard it.
Where we differ is how we describe it. Mostly, we give its source a name. Angels. Fairies. Gods or demons. Yahweh. Allah. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Nixies, E.T.s, shades and shadows. Naiads, dryads, Ariel and Puck. A host of invisible creatures who are, in one way or another, images of ourselves. And, in naming, we are a little less afraid.
And some of us are just content to listen, to take delight. Having woken to the inexplicable mystery of the world - the sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not - we let the music lull us back into a sweet slumber, a kind of dreamless dream, a reverie. Does reverie share a deep root with reverence? I don’t know.”
“I Pity You, Too...”
“Said a philosopher to a street sweeper, “I pity you. Yours is a hard and dirty task.” And the street sweeper said, “Thank you, sir. But tell me, what is your task?” And the philosopher answered saying, “I study man’s mind, his deeds and his desires.” Then the street sweeper went on with his sweeping and said with a smile, “I pity you, too.”
- Kahlil Gibran
Greg Hunter, "Using Disaster Capitalism to Control All Humans"
"Using Disaster Capitalism to Control All Humans"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Investment advisor and former Assistant Secretary of Housing Catherine Austin Fitts contends CV19 and vaccines to cure it are all part of the “Going Direct Reset.” Fitts explains, “This is so simple at the root. The central bankers are using the government to shut down the main street economy, and then they are going direct and injecting money into the private equity firms and Wall Street who are running around the country buying things. Think of this as a leverage buyout of the world. We are being purchased with our own money. Also, we are liable. If you look at all the debt the government is issuing, our assets are liable for that debt. This is a continuation and consolidation of the financial coup that we have been taking about.”
Fitts goes on to say, “We have had a small group of people who have gotten away with crime, and crime that pays is crime that stays. Now, they are in full blossom. We have been talking about this, and many people have tried to stay in the middle of the road. Now, the message in 2021 is there is no middle of the road. You’ve got to pick sides. This is freedom or tyranny, and tyranny is slavery. We are talking about very invasive slavery because they are planning on installing the smart grid into our bodies. There will be 24/7 surveillance and control of your money. If you don’t behave, they will turn off your money. If they don’t want you to go more than five miles, your money won’t work further than five miles.”
Fitts says the entire CV19 virus and vaccines to fix the problem is simply part of the cruel and brutal plan. Fitts says, “There is no legal basis for an ‘emergency authorization’ even though they have done that. More important, if you look at what we know about the vaccine injuries, the type of vaccine injuries and the extent of them, it is shocking that these have not been shut down. We are talking about serious physical harm coming to the people who are taking them. There is recent information that has come out of the Japanese health agency, and one of the indications is we are seeing toxicity in the female organs. If you look at the damage that is being done, I am told it’s impossible to not know this before they started giving these injections. We may be looking at a full blown sterilization program.”
Fitts has much more to say in this 36 min interview. Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with Catherine Austin Fitts, publisher of "The Solari Report".
Happy Birthday America! Ray Charles, "America the Beautiful"
Full screen recommended.
Ray Charles, "America the Beautiful"
Happy birthday America!
The Poet: Langston Hughes, "Let America Be America Again"
"Let America Be America Again"
"Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed -
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek -
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold!
Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean -
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today - O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home -
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me?
The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay -
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again -
The land that never has been yet -
And yet must be -
the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine -
the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME -
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry,
whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose -
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes, I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath -
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain -
All, all the stretch of these great green states -
And make America again!"
- Langston Hughes
Saturday, July 3, 2021
Happy Independence Day!
Have a safe and happy holiday folks!
Full screen recommended.
John Philip Sousa, "Stars and Stripes Forever"
National march of the United States of America.
"Ominous Times Ahead For Consumers; Is Your Money Safe From Cyberattacks; AI Will Replace You"
Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/3/21:
"Ominous Times Ahead For Consumers;
Is Your Money Safe From Cyberattacks; AI Will Replace You"
Musical Interlude: Ludovico Einaudi, "Una Mattina"
Full screen recommended.
Ludovico Einaudi, "Una Mattina"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“The Flame Nebula is a stand out in optical images of the dusty, crowded star forming regions toward Orion's belt and the easternmost belt star Alnitak, a mere 1,400 light-years away. Alnitak is the bright star at the right edge of this infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope. About 15 light-years across, the infrared view takes you inside the nebula's glowing gas and obscuring dust clouds though. It reveals many stars of the recently formed, embedded cluster NGC 2024 concentrated near the center.
The stars of NGC 2024 range in age from 200,000 years to 1.5 million years young. In fact, data indicate that the youngest stars are concentrated near the middle of the Flame Nebula cluster. That's the opposite of the simplest models of star formation for a stellar nursery that predict star formation begins in the denser center of a molecular cloud core. The result requires a more complex model for star formation inside the Flame Nebula.”
"Life is A Journey - Don't Be Afraid"
"Life is A Journey - Don't Be Afraid"
Author Unknown
"Life is a journey filled with lessons, hardships, heartaches, joys, celebrations and special moments that will ultimately lead us to our destination, our purpose in life. The road will not always be smooth; in fact, throughout our travels, we will encounter many challenges. Some of these challenges will test our courage, strengths, weaknesses, and faith. Along the way, we may stumble upon obstacles that will come between the paths that we are destined to take. In order to follow the right path, we must overcome these obstacles. Sometimes these obstacles are really blessings in disguise, only we don't realize that at the time.
Along our journey we will be confronted with many situations, some will be filled with joy, and some will be filled with heartache. How we react to what we are faced will determine what kind of outcome the rest of our journey through life will be like. When things don't always go our way, we have two choices in dealing with the situations. We can focus on the fact that things didn't go how we had hoped they would and let life pass us by, or two, we can make the best out of the situation and know that these are only temporary setbacks and find the lessons that are to be learned.
Time stops for no one, and if we allow ourselves to focus on the negative we might miss out on some really amazing things that life has to offer. We can't go back to the past, we can only take the lessons that we have learned and the experiences that we have gained from it and move on. It is because of the heartaches, as well as the hardships, that in the end help to make us a stronger person.
The people that we meet on our journey, are people that we are destined to meet. Everybody comes into our lives for some reason or another and we don't always know their purpose until it is too late. They all play some kind of role. Some may stay for a lifetime; others may only stay for a short while. It is often the people who stay for only a short time that end up making a lasting impression not only in our lives, but in our hearts as well. Although we may not realize it at the time, they will make a difference and change our lives in a way we never could imagine. To think that one person can have such a profound effect on your life forever is truly a blessing. It is because of these encounters that we learn some of life's best lessons and sometimes we even learn a little bit about ourselves.
People will come and go into our lives quickly, but sometimes we are lucky to meet that one special person that will stay in our hearts forever no matter what. Even though we may not always end up being with that person and they may not always stay in our life for as long as we like, the lessons that we have learned from them and the experiences that we have gained from meeting that person, will stay with us forever.
It's these things that will give us strength to continue with our journey. We know that we can always look back on those times of our past and know that because of that one individual, we are who we are and we can remember the wonderful moments that we have shared with that person. Memories are priceless treasures that we can cherish forever in our hearts. They also enable us to go on with our journey for whatever life has in store for us. Sometimes all it takes is one special person to help us look inside ourselves and find a whole different person that we never knew existed. Our eyes are suddenly opened to a world we never knew existed- a world where time is so precious and moments never seem to last long enough.
Throughout this adventure, people will give you advice and insights on how to live your life but when it all comes down to it, you must always do what you feel is right. Always follow your heart, and most importantly never have any regrets. Don't hold anything back. Say what you want to say, and do what you want to do, because sometimes we don't get a second chance to say or do what we should have the first time around.
It is often said that what doesn't kill you will make you stronger. It all depends on how one defines the word "strong". It can have different meanings to different people. In this sense, "stronger" means looking back at the person you were and comparing it to the person you have become today. It also means looking deep into your soul and realizing that the person you are today couldn't exist if it weren't for the things that have happened in the past or for the people that you have met. Everything that happens in our life happens for a reason and sometimes that means we must face heartaches in order to experience joy."
- Author Unknown,
found here: http://journey.20fr.com/about.html
Paulo Coelho, "Be Like a River"
"Be Like a River"
by Paulo Coelho
“A river never passes the same place twice,” says a philosopher. “Life is like a river,” says another philosopher, and we draw the conclusion that this is the metaphor that comes closest to the meaning of life. Consequently, it is always good to remember during all the year to come:
A] We are always doing things for the first time. While we move between our source (birth) to our destination (death), the landscape will always be new. We should face these novelties with joy, not with fear – because it is useless to fear what cannot be avoided. A river never stops running.
B] In a valley we walk slower. When everything around us becomes easier, the waters grow calm, we become more open, fuller and more generous.
C] Our banks are always fertile. Vegetation only grows where there is water. Whoever comes into contact with us needs to understand that we are there to give the thirsty something to drink.
D] Stones should be avoided. It is obvious that water is stronger than granite, but it takes time for this to happen. It is no good letting yourself be overcome by stronger obstacles, or trying to fight against them – that is a useless waste of energy. It is best to understand where the way out is, and then move forward.
E] Hollows call for patience. All of a sudden the river enters a sort of hole and stops running as joyfully as before. At such moments the only way out is to count on the help of time. When the right moment comes the hollow fills up and the water can flow ahead. In the place of the ugly, lifeless hole there now stands a lake that others can contemplate with joy.
F] We are one. We were born in a place that was meant for us, which will always keep us supplied with enough water so that when confronted with obstacles or depression we have the necessary patience or strength to move forward. We begin our course in a soft and fragile manner, where even a simple leaf can stop us. Nevertheless, as we respect the mystery of the source that gave us life, and trust in eternal wisdom, little by little we gain all that we need to pursue our path.
G] Although we are one, soon we shall be many. As we travel on, the waters of other springs come closer, because that is the best path to follow. Then we are no longer just one, but many – and there comes a moment when we feel lost. However, “all rivers flow to the sea.” It is impossible to remain in our solitude, no matter how romantic that may seem. When we accept the inevitable encounter with other springs, we eventually understand that this makes us much stronger, we get around obstacles or fill in the hollows in far less time and with greater ease.
H] We are a means of transportation. Of leaves, boats, ideas. May our waters always be generous, may be always be able to carry ahead everything or everyone that needs our help.
I] We are a source of inspiration. And so, let us leave the final words to the Brazilian poet, Manuel Bandeira:
A] We are always doing things for the first time. While we move between our source (birth) to our destination (death), the landscape will always be new. We should face these novelties with joy, not with fear – because it is useless to fear what cannot be avoided. A river never stops running.
B] In a valley we walk slower. When everything around us becomes easier, the waters grow calm, we become more open, fuller and more generous.
C] Our banks are always fertile. Vegetation only grows where there is water. Whoever comes into contact with us needs to understand that we are there to give the thirsty something to drink.
D] Stones should be avoided. It is obvious that water is stronger than granite, but it takes time for this to happen. It is no good letting yourself be overcome by stronger obstacles, or trying to fight against them – that is a useless waste of energy. It is best to understand where the way out is, and then move forward.
E] Hollows call for patience. All of a sudden the river enters a sort of hole and stops running as joyfully as before. At such moments the only way out is to count on the help of time. When the right moment comes the hollow fills up and the water can flow ahead. In the place of the ugly, lifeless hole there now stands a lake that others can contemplate with joy.
F] We are one. We were born in a place that was meant for us, which will always keep us supplied with enough water so that when confronted with obstacles or depression we have the necessary patience or strength to move forward. We begin our course in a soft and fragile manner, where even a simple leaf can stop us. Nevertheless, as we respect the mystery of the source that gave us life, and trust in eternal wisdom, little by little we gain all that we need to pursue our path.
G] Although we are one, soon we shall be many. As we travel on, the waters of other springs come closer, because that is the best path to follow. Then we are no longer just one, but many – and there comes a moment when we feel lost. However, “all rivers flow to the sea.” It is impossible to remain in our solitude, no matter how romantic that may seem. When we accept the inevitable encounter with other springs, we eventually understand that this makes us much stronger, we get around obstacles or fill in the hollows in far less time and with greater ease.
H] We are a means of transportation. Of leaves, boats, ideas. May our waters always be generous, may be always be able to carry ahead everything or everyone that needs our help.
I] We are a source of inspiration. And so, let us leave the final words to the Brazilian poet, Manuel Bandeira:
“To be like a river that flows
silent through the night,
not fearing the darkness and
reflecting any stars high in the sky.
And if the sky is filled with clouds,
the clouds are water like the river, so
without remorse reflect them too.”
- http://paulocoelhoblog.com/
silent through the night,
not fearing the darkness and
reflecting any stars high in the sky.
And if the sky is filled with clouds,
the clouds are water like the river, so
without remorse reflect them too.”
- http://paulocoelhoblog.com/
"The Problem Is That We Are All Stupid"
"The Problem Is That We Are All Stupid"
by David Cain
"The question “What’s wrong with the world?!” is usually more of a statement of exasperation than a question. But it can be treated like a question, and it is a good question. Clearly something is wrong, at least with the human world. Even if you don’t trust the news to tell you how the world really is, we all witness too much pettiness, unfairness, and dishonesty to say with a straight face that nothing’s wrong.
However, I’m not sure you could rewind us to a point in the last 10,000 years when we wouldn’t feel the same way. Our complaints today are about corrupt leaders, unfair systems, unscrupulous merchants, religious demagoguery, and everything else that has happened perpetually since we freed ourselves from picking berries all day.
In a recent article about the “What’s wrong” question, Masha Gessen got me thinking that the answer is quite straightforward: we’re all stupid. Contrary to popular belief, stupidity isn’t only present in some of us, it’s a universal human trait. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t also smart—we simply exhibit both qualities. As intelligent as we are in certain ways, each of us is also very stupid in other certain ways, and the powers conferred by the intelligent, inventive part can increase the amount of damage the stupid part can cause.
Among other signs of the times, she mentioned the comedy of Sacha Baron Cohen, who seems able to draw the pettiness and stupidity out of virtually anyone, on camera. His approach is very simple: get people talking about their strongest beliefs, while pretending to agree, and watch the ridiculous pronouncements pour out. Most recently he was able to get several congressmen to apparently state their support for issuing firearms to “highly trained” kindergarten students to keep classrooms safe.
I have always found his comedy difficult to watch, and I think Gessen might have articulated the main reason: "Every segment of every episode is designed to leave the viewer feeling not so much appalled - something a sentient being in today’s America experiences many times a day - as finally enlightened: the ultimate explanation for what’s happened to us is that everyone is a moron."
The idea that everyone is stupid seems a little stupid itself. Clearly only some people are stupid. Otherwise how did we figure out DNA sequencing and particle physics, or design the Rubik’s Cube (let alone solve one)? Well, because stupidity can co-exist with smarts in the same person. The human world is so often portrayed as a noble battle between the stupid and the rest of us, each of us drawing our own smart-stupid line in some way or another between individuals, often corresponding to political, religious, or sports team fanship boundaries, as we see them.
This is the classical way to think about the distribution of human intelligence and human idiocy - each person is mostly a concentration of one or the other. But maybe that simplistic view is a good example of our stupid-aspect at work. Perhaps every single one of us is stupid, just not completely. Clearly there are variations in what we can call “personal style,” but nobody is so smart that they are not also frequently stupid, and vice versa.
The same person can design an award-winning public building and still be defeated by a parking meter with perfectly clear instructions on the side. A hobby chess player can visualize a tree of possible moves five or six deep, but cannot anticipate running out of toilet paper until the moment he does. I somehow created my own dream job, but I’ve had winter tires on my vehicle for at least 48 consecutive months, and I cannot seem to make a doctor’s appointment.
Solzhenitsyn famously wrote - or so the smart people tell me - that the line between good and evil runs “not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either but right through every human heart.” This seems true with the line between smart and stupid, and each human mind. We are complex apes, with innate abilities to be both profoundly clever and powerfully stupid. This isn’t a contradiction, just two complementary talents.
Of course, stupidity can’t comprehend itself—that’s one of its most interesting properties—which is why we overlook our own so easily. When it comes to my stupidest beliefs, I’m likely to think they’re my smartest ones. I easily fall in love with strongly-worded arguments that make me feel good but which I didn’t examine very well. (Am I writing stupid things at this very moment? How would I know?)
This may be why we often feel wholly smart when we witness some apparent evidence of our own intelligence (good grades, completed crosswords) and wholly stupid when that second quality becomes more obvious (such as when it’s your turn to tell the group a little about yourself). We evaluate others even more readily, with even less evidence, probably because we tend to assess a person’s smart and/or stupid qualities moments after they’ve just impressed us with one or the other.
Meanwhile, privately, we all know that much of life consists of trying to hide the extent of our own stupid-aspect, while accentuating the smart stuff so that others might think we’re made of it through and through.
Despite our varying personal styles of intelligence and stupidity, there are species-wide patterns. Humans are generally good at untangling contained problems with definite parts, but bad at doing things we’re emotionally averse to doing. We’re good at separating things into lists, labels, patterns, blacks and whites, and not so good at interpreting grey areas and patternless data.
Research suggests we’re atrocious at weighing moral questions objectively, an important skill for any meaningful “What’s wrong with the world” discussion. We make our moral judgments very reflexively and emotionally, and we seldom re-examine them. (Related: "Why The Other Side Won’t Listen To Reason") Above all, we’re notoriously susceptible to confirmation bias: scanning for evidence that we’re smart and already informed, and ignoring evidence that we’re dumb and/or wrong.
It’s not hard to see that whether we deem someone smart or stupid has a lot to do with whether or not we identify with that person in some way—whether they sit in our own political or social wheelhouses, or seem to be an outsider to them. We’re quick to point out this sort of bad faith in others, even though we’d see, if we looked for it, the same motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, and selective hearing in ourselves. No matter how smart we are in some ways, humans are universally susceptible to those types of stupidity at least.
Probably. That’s my hypothesis anyway. It seems like a smarter bet than the traditional view: stupidity is a defining quality of certain people and not others. And I think that’s my smart side talking. I’m pretty sure."
Free Download: Charles Mackay, "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"
"Extraordinary Popular Delusions
and the Madness of Crowds"
"Every age has its peculiar folly: Some scheme, project, or fantasy into which it plunges, spurred on by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the force of imitation. Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
- Charles Mackay
"'Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" is an early study of crowd psychology by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, first published in 1841. The book chronicles its subjects in three parts: "National Delusions", "Peculiar Follies", and "Philosophical Delusions". MacKay was an accomplished teller of stories, though he wrote in a journalistic and somewhat sensational style.
The subjects of Mackay's debunking include alchemy, crusades, duels, economic bubbles, fortune-telling, haunted houses, the Drummer of Tedworth, the influence of politics and religion on the shapes of beards and hair, magnetizers (influence of imagination in curing disease), murder through poisoning, prophecies, popular admiration of great thieves, popular follies of great cities, and relics. Present-day writers on economics, such as Michael Lewis and Andrew Tobias, laud the three chapters on economic bubbles. Scientist and astronomer Carl Sagan mentioned the book in his own discussion about pseudoscience, popular delusions, and hoaxes.
In later editions, Mackay added a footnote referencing the Railway Mania of the 1840s as another "popular delusion" which was at least as important as the South Sea Bubble. Mathematician Andrew Odlyzko has pointed out, in a published lecture, that Mackay himself played a role in this economic bubble; as leader writer in the Glasgow Argus, Mackay wrote on 2 October 1845: "There is no reason whatever to fear a crash."
Freely download "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds"
by Charles Mackay, here:
"It Is This..."
“The fact that the foolish person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings. “
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Letters and Papers From Prison”
Full text of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Letters and Papers From Prison”:
"Was the American Revolution a Mistake?"
"Was the American Revolution a Mistake?"
by Gary North
"Editor’s note: Tomorrow is Independence Day. So today, we republish a controversial article by former Daily Reckoning hand Gary North that is sure to ruffle many a feather. He argues the American Colonies were the freest society on Earth in 1775, and that the American Revolution was economically disastrous. Was the American Revolution a mistake? Here’s the minority view."
"I will not be celebrating the Fourth of July tomorrow. This goes back to a term paper I wrote in graduate school. It was on Colonial taxation in the British North American Colonies in 1775. Not counting local taxation, I discovered that the total burden of British imperial taxation was about 1% of national income. It may have been as high as 2.5% in the southern Colonies.
In 2008, Alvin Rabushka's book of almost 1,000 pages appeared: "Taxation in Colonial America" (Princeton University Press). A review published in the Business History Review summarizes the book's findings.
"Rabushka's most original and impressive contribution is his measurement of tax rates and tax burdens. However, his estimate of comparative transatlantic tax burdens may be a bit of moving target. At one point, he concludes that in the period from 1764–1775 "the nearly 2 million white Colonists in America paid on the order of about 1% of the annual taxes levied on the roughly 8.5 million residents of Britain, or 1/25th in per capita terms, not taking into account the higher average income and consumption in the Colonies" (p. 729). Later he writes that on the eve of the Revolution, "British tax burdens were 10 or more times heavier than those in the Colonies" (p. 867). Other scholars may want to refine his estimates, based on other archival sources, different treatment of technical issues such as the adjustment of inter-Colonial and transatlantic comparisons for exchange rates or new estimates of comparative income and wealth. Nonetheless, no one is likely to challenge his most important finding: the huge tax gap between the American periphery and the core of the British Empire."
Was the Declaration of Independence Built Upon a Lie? The Colonists had a sweet deal in 1775. Great Britain was the second-freest nation on Earth. Switzerland was probably the most free nation, but I would be hard-pressed to identify any other nation in 1775 that was ahead of Great Britain. And in Great Britain's Empire, the Colonists were by far the freest.
I will say it, loud and clear: The freest society on Earth in 1775 was British North America, with the obvious exception of the slave system. Anyone who was not a slave had incomparable freedom.
Jefferson wrote these words in the Declaration of Independence: "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States." I can think of no more misleading political assessment uttered by any leader in the history of the United States. No words having such great impact historically in this nation were less true. No political bogeymen invoked by any political sect as "the liar of the century" ever said anything as verifiably false as these words.
The Continental Congress declared independence on July 2, 1776. Some members signed the Declaration on July 4. The public in general believed the leaders at the Continental Congress. They did not understand what they were about to give up. They could not see what price in blood and treasure and debt they would soon pay. And they did not foresee the tax burden in the new nation after 1783.
In his book, Rabushka gets to the point: "Historians have written that taxes in the new American nation rose and remained considerably higher, perhaps three times as much, than they were under British rule. More money was required for national defense than previously needed to defend the frontier from Indians and the French, and the new nation faced other expenses." So as a result of the American Revolution, the tax burden tripled.
The debt burden soared as soon as the Revolution began. Monetary inflation wiped out the currency system. Price controls in 1777 produced the debacle of Valley Forge. Percy Greaves, a disciple of Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises and for 17 years an attendee at his seminar, wrote this in 1972: "Our Continental Congress first authorized the printing of Continental notes in 1775. The Congress was warned against printing more and more of them. In a 1776 pamphlet, Pelatiah Webster, America's first economist, told his fellow men that Continental currency might soon become worthless unless something was done to curb the further printing and issuance of this paper money.
The people and the Congress refused to listen to his wise advice. With more and more paper money in circulation, consumers kept bidding up prices. Pork rose from 4 cents to 8 cents a pound. Beef soared from about 4 cents to 100 a pound. As one historian tells us, "By November 1777, commodity prices were 480% above the prewar average."
The situation became so bad in Pennsylvania that the people and legislature of this state decided to try "a period of price control, limited to domestic commodities essential for the use of the Army." It was thought that this would reduce the cost of feeding and supplying our Continental Army. It was expected to reduce the burden of war.
The prices of uncontrolled imported goods then went sky-high, and it was almost impossible to buy any of the domestic commodities needed for the Army. The controls were quite arbitrary. Many farmers refused to sell their goods at the prescribed prices. Few would take the paper Continentals. Some, with large families to feed and clothe, sold their farm products stealthily to the British in return for gold. For it was only with gold that they could buy the necessities of life which they could not produce for themselves.
On Dec. 5, 1777, the Army's quartermaster-general, refusing to pay more than the government-set prices, issued a statement from his Reading, Pennsylvania, headquarters saying, "If the farmers do not like the prices allowed them for this produce, let them choose men of more learning and understanding the next election."
This was the winter of Valley Forge, the very nadir of American history. On Dec. 23, 1777, George Washington wrote to the president of the Congress "that, notwithstanding it is a standing order, and often repeated, that the troops shall always have two days' provisions by them, that they might be ready at any sudden call; yet an opportunity has scarcely ever offered, of taking an advantage of the enemy that has not been either totally obstructed, or greatly impeded, on this account... We have no less than 2,898 men now in camp unfit for duty, because they are barefoot and otherwise naked… I am now convinced beyond a doubt, that, unless some great and capital change suddenly takes place, this Army must inevitably be reduced to one or other of these three things: starve, dissolve or disperse in order to obtain subsistence in the best manner they can."
“There Was No British Tyranny, and Surely Not in North America”: Only after the price control laws were repealed in 1778 could the Army buy food again. But the hyperinflation of the Continentals and state-issued currencies replaced the pre-Revolution system of silver currency: Spanish pieces of eight.
The proponents of independence invoked British tyranny in North America. But there was no British tyranny in North America. In 1872, Frederick Engels wrote an article, "On Authority." He criticized anarchists, whom he called anti-authoritarians. His description of the authoritarian character of all armed revolutions should remind us of the costs of revolution. "A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon - authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists."
After the American Revolution, 46,000 British Loyalists fled to Canada and other places controlled by the crown. They were not willing to swear allegiance to the new Colonial governments. They retained their loyalty to the nation that had delivered to them the greatest liberty on Earth. They had not committed treason. The revolutionaries are not remembered as treasonous. The victors write the history books.
The Boston Tea Party: A Protest Against Lower Tea Prices: What would libertarians - even conservatives - give today in order to return to an era in which the central government extracted 1% of the nation's wealth? Where there was no income tax? Would they describe such a society as tyrannical?
That the largest signature on the Declaration of Independence was signed by the richest smuggler in North America was no coincidence. He was hopping mad. Parliament in 1773 had cut the tax on tea imported by the British East India Co., so the cost of British tea went lower than the smugglers' cost on non-British tea. This had cost Hancock a pretty penny. The Tea Party had stopped the unloading of the tea by throwing privately owned tea off a privately owned ship - a ship in competition with Hancock's ships. The Boston Tea Party was, in fact, a well-organized protest against lower prices stemming from lower taxes.
So once again, I will not be celebrating the Fourth of July tomorrow."
○
Gary Kilgore North is an American economic historian and author who writes from an “Austrian” perspective. North is a prolific writer who has authored or coauthored over fifty books, including "Mises on Money", and has written a prodigious amount of articles.
Friday, July 2, 2021
"People are Ignoring Reality as our Economy is Decimated"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, IAllegedly, PM 7/2/21:
"People are Ignoring Reality as our Economy is Decimated"
"Sometimes you need a walk in the park to clear your head. I feel
that people are ignoring reality as they walk through this decimated economy."
“Waiter/Bartender Jobs Will Save The Economy; Christmas Sales Will Be Tragic; Job Numbers Are A Joke”
Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/2/21:
“Waiter/Bartender Jobs Will Save The Economy;
Christmas Sales Will Be Tragic; Job Numbers Are A Joke”
"20 Must-Have Items for the Coming Chaos"
Full screen recommended.
"20 Must-Have Items for the Coming Chaos"
by Epic Economist
"Let's be honest: we are living in extremely dark times and every day it goes by, more threatening events rise on the horizon. The United States already went through the first stage of the economic collapse last year, after the health crisis turned our lives upside down. And believe it or not, things will never be the same. Even though during some short periods of time the situation may seem relatively stable, don't be mistaken by thinking everything will be just fine because these moments are essentially the calm before the storm. One thing that we learned the hard way during the last 12 months was that our supply chains are incredibly vulnerable to disruptions, and by now, we all can surely tell that those vulnerabilities considerably increase the likelihood of shortages and skyrocketing prices. To make matters worse, our in-home production has slowed down and never returned to previous levels.
Today, we consume more supplies that come from overseas than supplies entirely produced in our country, and the fact that our geopolitical tensions with other global superpowers are getting more intense, doesn't help us at all. Oh, and let's not forget about cyberattacks. After the first one has shut down the largest gasoline pipeline of the country and sparked severe gasoline shortages, hackers realized that entering our key systems isn't that difficult and they have been attacking several other companies in recent days. This means that our internal systems are exposed and also vulnerable to suddenly face major interruptions, and those interruptions will undoubtedly trigger chaos all over the nation. That's why, now more than ever, we should get ready for the coming chaos and the next stages of the economic collapse. What we've experienced so far is nothing like what we're going to experience in the near future, but if you're prepared in advance you might be able to stay safe and survive during the end of the world as we know it.
Realistically speaking, when we consider all the factors at play, we should brace for some painful years of hyperinflation and extensive shortages, so getting ready for the next stages of the economic collapse is the most responsible thing you can do in order to protect yourself and your family from the coming chaos. The first thing you need to ensure your survival during an emergency is a well-stocked pantry. Food is an absolute necessity and you don't want to wait until things start to become turbulent to start stockpiling it. At the end of the day, adding staple foods to your pantry is the best investment you can make for an economic collapse. We can already see how inflation is pushing prices to sky-highs. But when hyperinflation is here, it's going to be a very different story, so be prepared. Make sure you take the word of experienced preppers into consideration, such as those with Urban Survival Website, Ask A Prepper, American Preppers Network, Offgrid Survival, and many others. And keep tuned to our channel, because if things start to rapidly spiral out of control, you'll be the first ones to know. For that reason, today, we selected 20 must-have items for you to stockpile before widespread panic takes over. So let's check this list!"
Musical Interlude: Kevin Kern, “Above The Clouds”
Full screen recommended.
Kevin Kern, “Above The Clouds”
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Why does this galaxy have such a long tail? In this stunning vista, based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic tadpole is a mere 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Dragon (Draco). Its eye-catching tail is about 280 thousand light-years long and features massive, bright blue star clusters.
One story goes that a more compact intruder galaxy crossed in front of Arp 188 - from right to left in this view - and was slung around behind the Tadpole by their gravitational attraction. During the close encounter, tidal forces drew out the spiral galaxy's stars, gas, and dust forming the spectacular tail. The intruder galaxy itself, estimated to lie about 300 thousand light-years behind the Tadpole, can be seen through foreground spiral arms at the upper right. Following its terrestrial namesake, the Tadpole Galaxy will likely lose its tail as it grows older, the tail's star clusters forming smaller satellites of the large spiral galaxy."
"Knowing..."
“Knowing can be a curse on a person’s life. I’d traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn’t know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can’t ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.”
- Sue Monk Kidd
The Poet: Mary Oliver, “Some Questions You Might Ask”
“Some Questions You Might Ask”
“Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?
Who has it, and who doesn’t?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?’
What about the grass?”
- Mary Oliver
"Anyway..."
“Bad things don’t happen to people because they deserve for them to happen. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s just… life. And no matter who we are, we have to take the hand we’re dealt, crappy though it may be, and try our very best to move forward anyway, to love anyway, to have hope anyway… to have faith that there’s a purpose to the journey we’re on.”
- Mia Sheridan
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