Saturday, November 5, 2022

"The Most Dangerous Man to Any Government"

"The Most Dangerous Man to Any Government"
by Brian Maher

“The most dangerous man to any government,” argued Henry Louis Mencken, “is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos.” “Almost inevitably,” continued Baltimore’s sage…“He comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable… Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”

It appears these United States are rolling out increasing numbers of dangerous and decent men. That is, of men able to think things out, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos… Men who have come to the conclusion that the government they live under is dishonest, insane, intolerable… men ashamed of the government they live under.

They are not ashamed of their country, mind you - though some may be. They are merely ashamed of the government that crowns it. For instance:

They are ashamed of the government that wrecked their lives and livelihoods and jailed them in over a manageable virus.

They are ashamed of the government that would mandate them to take aboard an experimental vaccine without adequate testing - a vaccine that has proven destructive to many - and fatal to some.

They are ashamed of the government that spawned a horrific inflation and branded it “transitory.”

They are ashamed of the government that cynically labels a $700 billion spending bill the “Inflation Reduction Act.”

They are ashamed of the government that trumpets social values often alien to their own.

They are ashamed of the government that censors them and tapes their mouths shut when they dissent.

They are ashamed of the government that tells them their national borders are “secure,” while millions jump them illegally.

They are ashamed of the government that elevates foreign and corporate interests above their own.

Here we name but some sources of ashamement. Many others exist - be assured. Are these torts accurate in every detail? Perhaps not always and in every case.

A man convinced of government treachery anywhere will tend to see it everywhere. Yet the fact is: Millions of Americans believe they are being bossed and gooned by an overbearing, abusive and rampaging government. They further believe they are languishing at the base of the economic pyramid… while the pyramid’s tip lives grandly - nearly royally - at their expense. And they are hot to change it.

The “people” give the orders in democracy, say the civics books. Yet millions and millions of Americans have come to believe that unelected and unaccountable judges, bureaucrats, pettifoggers, understrappers and jacks-in-office do the primary bossing. Thus they are prepared to heave their civics book into the hellbox.

“This is a representative republic,” some may shout, “not a democracy. We elect officials to whom we entrust these decisions. If we disagree with them, we get to vote the bums out next time. That’s how it works.” Just so. Yet when one bum goes out, another generally comes in. Not always - not always - but often enough.

And if a good man somehow makes it in? He must acquire an extravagant taste for boot polish. He must go along… else he will not get along. He will find himself in a sort of political no-man’s land, obscure and futureless. In most instances he succumbs.

Meantime, elites sob about this or that threat to “our democracy.” Yet deeper examination reveals their commitment to democracy is highly… conditional. They do not trust “the people” to do the “right thing.” The Bible-thumpers will ban abortion if you let them vote on it, say the pro-choicers. The isolationists will pull up the overseas stakes, cry the American exceptionalists… and withdraw from the world.

The gold bugs and the cryptocurrency kooks will topple the monetary system, lament our monetary mandarins. Anti-democratic hellcats will fan misinformation and disinformation among the red-necked and stump-toothed, yell the censors.

Yet the entire lot of them sing hosannas to “democracy.” In reality, they believe no more in democracy than they believe in honesty. They believe merely in their own higher vision - and the power to enforce it.

Are we too harsh? Your editor is a man of remarkable equanimity and serenity - if he can say it for himself. Yet here he is insufficiently harsh in all likelihood. Somehow the business seems beyond all human agency, beyond all control. ‘What can I do?’ a fellow wonders, defeated. He may cluck-cluck his opposition to it all - but he is largely a man resigned. His only resort is the vote booth, to which he will take this Tuesday. Will it yield the change he seeks?

It is unlikely. It will instead represent the supreme triumph of hope over experience…Below, we show you why anyone seeking high office should be feared - but also pitied. Read on to learn about the strange, sad life of a politician.

"The Sad and Strange Life of a Politician"
By Brian Maher

"A man hunting high office is a man to be watched. And the higher the office he seeks, the closer he must be watched. For this is an ambitious man. And as one fellow who raged with ambition - Napoleon Bonaparte - stated: "Those endowed with (great ambition) may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them."

We generally place our money on “very bad acts.” That is because we have canvassed the history books. Yet a man after high office - in a democracy specifically —- is also a man to be pitied. Why pitied?

All dignity, all honor, all pride, he must sacrifice in exchange for power. That is because he must face election. Consider the roles that must combine in him: He must be a magician pulling rabbits from top hats. He must be a seller of pre-owned - that is, of used automobiles. He must likewise be a street beggar. He must beg for the franchise of those whom he considers his lessers. After all… if they were not his lessers they would not require his leadership.

And so you have the aspirant of high office - by turns showman, confidence man and beggar. Thus this man is a preposterous formula - a man to be both feared and pitied at once. Is this the description of a respectable man? Of a normal man? It is not. Yet it is the description of a man seeking high office. It is the description of a man who believes he is a big deal in this world. It is the description of a man who believes he should lead you. And that you should follow him. But who respects a follower? Not his leader.

What Politicians and Salesmen Really Think of You: A political candidate and a salesman are brothers. The one solicits your trade, the other your vote. Each pitches his whim-whim at you until he fetches his game. Assume you end up in the bag. He is thrilled to have your sale, to have your vote. But he merely regards you as a means to a rewarding end. He disesteems you inwardly. Behind his flashlight smile he disdains you. You have been duped by his razmataz.

He regards you as an all-day sucker. Who then does he respect? He respects the man who refuses the sale, the man who yawned in his face or who voted against him. That is, he respects the man who sizes him accurately. This man he will look straight in the eye... and extend a firm handshake of respect.

An Intoxicating yet Horrifying Power: Picture our office-seeker in his natural habitat. He stands upon a podium gazing out upon a rustling crowd. What does he see? He does not see individuals. He sees rather a vast, undifferentiated mass. That is, he sees a forest - but no trees. Or to switch metaphors: He is addressing a wheat field. His whoops and shouts raise a mighty breeze. The entire field sways in the wind, this way then that way, back then forth... on his command. He is at once intoxicated by the power he wields over the great human mass, yet horrified that it can be so easily throttled up. It is fearsome to behold.

Pressing the Flesh: Our candidate must also appear directly among smaller chunks of this human mass. He considers them his inferiors, yet pretends to be their equals. Their equals? No - their servant! He must visit factories and feign interest in their goings-on. Though he despises others’ children he must plant kisses on infant foreheads. He must attend local eateries, munch bad food and battle bellyaches while shaking countless hands and jabbering with idiots. Invariably, a man takes him by the ear and will not let go. He babbles about his family, his job, his bowling trophy. All the while he longs to be loafing on his sofa in his underwear, looking at the television.

The sufferings he must endure in pursuit of power! Enduring his terrific breakfast, he is tortured further by the realization that he must repeat the act at lunch in Columbus and dinner in Wilkes-Barre. Then there is tomorrow in Ocala, Macon and Raleigh. It is dreadful business.

The Price to Pay for Power: In his private moments, in the silent watches of the night, he wonders if it is all worth it. He decides - begrudgingly - that it is. Such is his lust for office. It simply overwhelms and envelops him. He assures himself it will all be a distant memory once he is secure in office. He will then be free to renege on all the promises he had made to those half-wits and quarter-wits on the campaign trail...

“Don’t these people realize that they’re being used as political pawns? Do they think that eating pancakes with me and telling me about their mother is going to somehow influence me?” Let us assume our seeker of high office has pulled enough wool over enough eyes… and wins the election.

The Money Is Great: He is relieved that he can proceed straight to the business of governing. That is, to the business of picking pockets, trading horses, scratching backs, greasing palms, cracking skulls... and breaking promises. But his reprise is brief. In two years or four years or six years, he will seek reelection. And the entire process must begin anew. Only next time his cynicism has doubled - no, tripled. The political process has worn the very soul out of him.

Yet he is consoled and soothed by this one central fact: He has grown extremely wealthy being a humble servant of the American people. As we indict this morally bankrupt fellow, we must nonetheless turn and face a mirror. “Every nation gets the government it deserves,” said 18th-century French philosopher Joseph de Maistre. We must conclude that we deserve the scoundrel above described - and others like him. The admission brings pain, yet truth often does.

Is there a way out? Inaction! Another long-deceased Frenchman - Monsieur Étienne de La Boétie - holds out one potential escape, for those in search of one: Inaction. Inaction breaks the politician’s spell. That is, action is not required - merely inaction: "You can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces."

Perhaps the time has come to abandon the ramparts, lay down the muskets… and twiddle the thumbs…To reclaim our power, perhaps it is time for inaction."

Friday, November 4, 2022

"About 61,000 More Millennials Died in 2021 vs. 2015-2019 Baseline"

"About 61,000 More Millennials Died 
in 2021 vs. 2015-2019 Baseline"
by bookofours

"When did we stop asking what people died of? The curiosity, or at least the information about a death just seemed to go away. Is it because people don’t want to know or are they afraid to find out? Or has the medical industry just taken another thing away from us - without us really thinking about it? Aren’t you curious?"
Video here:
There was a slight error in The Reason: Redux. The statement "About Sixty One Hundred Lives Perished" is incorrect. This video gives the correct amount of deaths "About Sixty One Thousand Lives Perished"
View this YouTube search:

MUST READ! "The War on Humanity Continues"

"The War on Humanity Continues"
by Michael Lesher

"A year ago, after a melancholy Halloween that more resembled a funeral than a holiday, I published an article I called “A War against Humanity.” I wanted to explore not so much the dramatic statistics that can readily claim readers’ attention but the more insidious ways in which the COVID coup has infected our inner lives.

I wrote: “I cannot get used to the subtle encroachment of fear into every aspect of our collective existence. I cannot accept the slow poisoning of all the interactions between one human being and another by the relentless tide of COVID19 propaganda.” Alas, very little has changed since then. In fact, the subtle markers of the propaganda-inflicted damage remain so much in place that I cannot do better than to republish what I wrote last year. And so the original “A War against Humanity” appears below, with the kind support of the Brownstone editors.

Here, I will only mention a few things that have actually deepened my worries since the piece was originally published.

Remember all the obstructions suddenly thrown up between human beings in early 2020 – plastic barriers, masks and “social distancing” measures – to erode the communal solidarity that is the presupposition of democracy? I noted in the article that those barriers seemed to be here to stay. And it looks as though I was right. Anthony Fauci’s yelping about the “profound risk” allegedly posed by monkeypox, a “rare” disease that even the usual suspects admit is “difficult to spread,” is depressing evidence that social atomization is still a high priority for the folks who brought us illegal mass quarantines and muzzling mandates.

The same is true of those mysterious shortages the press still blames on an unspecified “supply-chain crisis.” Recently, authorities in several states started a deluge of strongly-worded warnings about an insect called the Spotted Lanternfly, which, we were told, “is a threat to many fruit crops.” The official literature has been conspicuously silent about any damage to crops actually caused or even threatened by the colorful bugs – and just as silent about any plan to control them – but the fear porn is clearly having an impact on my neighbors. “Our food supply is going to be decimated” by the insects, I heard one say recently. I take this to mean that food shortages are likely to get worse in the immediate future – and the fact that the ruling class is throwing itself a cover story for this is an ominous sign.

A year ago, I lamented in particular the damage COVID policy was inflicting on the world’s children. That damage is now officially conceded in mainstream media, though still without a hint of apology for its reckless support of the measures that did the most harm. Even the staid Economist admits that the school shutdowns demanded by the COVID fanatics were responsible for a “global disaster” in children’s education, including rocketing illiteracy rates. And things are no better closer to home: the New York Times reported in September that school closures and lockdown policies “erased two decades of progress in math and reading” for 9-year-old schoolchildren, according to a testing program known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

“The setbacks could have powerful consequences for a generation of children who must move beyond basics in elementary school to thrive later on,” the Times confessed. If only the editors had been willing to say it when speaking up might have made a difference…

And what about those experimental COVID drugs? Well, with the news media firmly in tow, political bosses don’t seem to be worried about trampling on the Nuremberg Code. The public school system of the District of Columbia now requires that “all students 12 and up be vaccinated against COVID-19” – with the result that as many as 40 percent of the city’s black teens will be barred from attending school. And the city’s mayor has made it clear that if these kids decline to be injected with drugs whose safety the government specifically refuses to ensure, the city may take punitive action against both the children and their parents.

Nor have things improved for adults. According to September’s Census Bureau figures, “3.8 million…renters say they’re somewhat or very likely to be evicted in the next two months.” Meanwhile, workers in healthcare facilities that receive federal funds are being forced to choose between their livelihoods and submitting to untested drugs.

And if you were hoping for some relief in that quarter from the “conservative” Supreme Court, recent developments have been equally ominous: earlier this month, the High Court “turned away an appeal…after a lower court declined to immediately consider…claims that the vaccine rule violates federal administrative law and tramples over powers reserved for the states under the U.S. Constitution.” As I wrote a year ago, totalitarianism has gone mainstream. So the war against humanity continues. And will continue – until we stop it."
Please view complete article here, very highest recommendation:
Hat tip to The Burning Platform for this material.

"15 Signs Amazon Is Killing Walmart"

Full screen recommended.
"15 Signs Amazon Is Killing Walmart"
by Epic Economist

"This crazy economy isn’t sparing anyone. Even the world’s largest retailer is feeling the heat, and this suggests that soon Walmart may lose its coveted position as an industry leader to the online retail giant Amazon. Despite being the largest brick-and-mortar retailer and the largest employer in the U.S., Walmart’s business model is getting obsolete and causing some severe profit losses for the superstore chain that operates on paper-thin margins. Whereas Amazon’s online operations allow the e-commerce retailer to spend significantly less on real estate and also provide a clearer picture of changing consumer habits, which results in faster market adaptation, fewer expenses, and higher profit margins – all that without compromising pricing and providing great deals for their customers. That’s probably why Amazon’s sales are rising almost three times faster than Walmart’s.

While Walmart has hardened its lock on brick-and-mortar stores and groceries, shopping online is growing significantly faster, and Amazon captures 41 cents of every dollar spent online in the United States, according to eMarketer. The e-commerce retailer is rising exponentially because it lets marketplace sellers list their products alongside items it buys and resells itself. That greatly expands the selection of items and Amazon’s market presence. Wall Street analysts estimated how much customers spend on Amazon, regardless of whether it comes from Amazon’s inventory or a seller’s, and they found that people spent more than $610 billion on Amazon over the 12 months ending in June. While Walmart on posted sales of $566 billion for the 12 months ending in July.

And even though the latest stock market downturn led Amazon’s stocks to plummet, the losses faced by Walmart this year were far greater. To make things worse, as the brick-and-mortar retailer continues to struggle to boost its revenue back up, investors are still seeing its shares as a no-buy right now. Many pieces of evidence show that the tables are turning, and the end of Walmart’s retail supremacy may be closer than we think.

The competition between the two retail titans will only intensify as they attempt to keep up with each other. It's clear that Amazon is already outpacing Walmart in many areas, including profit margins, customer satisfaction ratings, and overall sales growth. In fact, one market research study found that Amazon is on track to overtake its competitor in terms of gross merchandise value within less than three years. A study from Edge by Ascential estimated that Amazon's gross merchandise value will reach $631.6 billion by 2025, a compound annual growth rate of 14% between 2020 and 2025. That means that the digitally native powerhouse is set to eclipse Walmart as the largest retailer in the United States. Walmart's gross merchandise value is slated to rise to $523.3 billion by 2025, which means its annual growth rate will be of mere 3.9%. The report also found that 29% of total chain retail sales will come from e-commerce by 2025 and that online sales in the US alone will increase by over $1 trillion by then.

With its commitment to providing affordable goods for its customers, it looks like the e-commerce giant is setting itself up to become the one to beat in the retail industry. Today, we compiled some major signs that prove that Amazon is quietly overthrowing Walmart."

"Problem-Reaction-Solution: Coming Soon To A Country Near You"

"Problem-Reaction-Solution:
Coming Soon To A Country Near You"
by John Wilder

"Problem-Reaction-Solution has been the playbook of the Left for a long time. What’s that? First, there’s a problem. It may be a real problem, or it may be entirely invented, like my résumé.

Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Israel Emanuel, was famous for saying “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” In his own words, Rahm explained, “What I said was, never allow a good crisis to go to waste when it’s an opportunity to do things that you had never considered, or that you didn’t think were possible.” Yes. He said that. It is probably not true that he stood next to a South American quadruped and a doorbell for his senior picture, because that would leave us with Rahm, a llama, ding-dong.

Rahm’s crisis is really just a way to restate the Problem-Reaction-Solution paradigm. It’s a way to make people do things that were otherwise unthinkable. Why? Because some leaders want their people to accept what would otherwise be unthinkable. This has long been the playbook of the Left.

It has been used by the Left since, well, forever. The problem-reaction-solution is often called a Hegelian Dialectic, but that has too many syllables for 1:43AM. And Hegel died in 1831, so I’ll just leave it that this sort of crisis-seeking isn’t a new thing.

The Left turns out to be pretty good at this stuff. Examples? Well, in Australia, all it took was one mass shooting and the politicians convinced the Aussies to turn in their guns. The problem was that single shooting. The reaction? A well-formed media manufactured panic. The solution was to turn in all the guns. The Australian Leftists certainly didn’t let that problem go to waste.

The end result? Australia had some of the most oppressive COVID-19 restrictions on the planet including concentration camps. Which is just what government wanted – to turn citizens into subjects. Taking guns away is a good way to do just that. The joke is that everything in Australia can kill you easily. Now that includes the police.

The same attempts were made in the 1990s with the assault weapons ban in the United States. It went into effect. Without the Internet, I imagine it would still be in place. But, luckily, there was a way to bypass the media, and people got together to push back. I’m not sure that George W. Bush was in favor of rolling it back, but every Republican that had a job and wanted to keep it knew that making it go away in the next election was in their best interest.

So the problem wasn’t big enough, and (at least so far) hasn’t been big enough because events like Uvalde proved one thing: waiting for the police to come and save you isn’t a good strategy. In a way, using the Australia example just isn’t going to work in America.

But what about other things, like money? It has worked before. One of the first things that Franklin Roosevelt did after becoming president was to confiscate almost all the gold of American citizens and then make the dollar worth less. It was the same formula. The problem was the economy had cratered. The reaction was that people were panicking. The solution? Almost anything Roosevelt wanted to try, he could try, up to and including taking the country (eventually) into a World War.

Whereas Americans seem to have a strong distrust of government taking their guns, the distrust with politicians destroying our money doesn’t seem nearly so strong. Which brings us right back to today.

The economy has been a mess, for quite a long time. I could delve back into history even more than I’ve done so far, but I don’t want to write a 20,000 word post. But where we are today is precarious. It is certainly the problem unfolding. In 2008, when inflation was “tolerably” low, the Federal Reserve® could print money at will. This allowed bankers to keep the profits that they had made, while the financial system used the Bounty™ Currency Quicker Printer Upper® to socialize the losses.

This wasn’t without creating ripple issues, but it kicked the can down the road for more than a decade. Then, COVID. Same playbook: print all the cash!!! This time, however, the cash didn’t just go to cover paper losses at banks. People got the cash, and did what people do: they spent it. Another part of the idea was to inject as much money as is possible into infrastructure projects.

Now, I like roads and bridges as much as the next guy, but when all that money chases concrete, it pushes the price of concrete up – that’s supply and demand. And whatever the government was buying went up in price. Now, decent cigars haven’t gone up much in price, but eggs, bacon, and gasoline certainly have. So the Fed© can’t print itself out of this one. Heck, every time the Fed® tries to stop, the economy lurches like a Pelosi getting out of a Porsche™.

So, the problem is here. The reaction is going to be significant as the economy continues to wobble and waver, and I believe is headed for even darker days. Forget Netflix™ and avocado toast: people get grumpy when they can’t afford to eat or buy gas. The normal solution (printing cash and making it rain) can’t be used. That leaves us with a crisis that would make Rahm Emanuel drool. The idea from the government will be to create a solution that, right now, we’d consider unthinkable.

Just like our pushback on the unthinkable banning of guns, it’s our job to push back on whatever nonsense is coming, because I can assure you that it will leave most of us poorer and with less freedom. Why most of us? Remember, there’s a reason why people like Rahm Emanuel look forward to things like this. And it’s not because they lose power or money."

"Markets Ignore The FED; 30 Year Mortgage Rates Are Going Over 10%; Real Estate Agents Jump Ship"

Jeremiah Babe, 11/4/22:
"Markets Ignore The FED; 30 Year Mortgage Rates 
Are Going Over 10%; Real Estate Agents Jump Ship"
Comments here:

"All Of The Available Data..."

"All of the available data show that the typical American citizen has about
as much interest in the life of the mind as does your average armadillo."
- Morris Berman

Apologies to armadillos for the comparison...

Musical Interlude: Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feels So Bad (Ben-E.dit)"

Full screen recommended.
Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feels So Bad (Ben-E.dit)"

"A Look to the Heavens"

A now famous picture from the Hubble Space Telescope featured Pillars of Creation, star forming columns of cold gas and dust light-years long inside M16, the Eagle Nebula. This false-color composite image views the nearby stellar nursery using data from the Herschel Space Observatory's panoramic exploration of interstellar clouds along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. Herschel's far infrared detectors record the emission from the region's cold dust directly. 
The famous pillars are included near the center of the scene. While the central group of hot young stars is not apparent at these infrared wavelengths, the stars' radiation and winds carve the shapes within the interstellar clouds. Scattered white spots are denser knots of gas and dust, clumps of material collapsing to form new stars. The Eagle Nebula is some 6,500 light-years distant, an easy target for binoculars or small telescopes in a nebula rich part of the sky toward the split constellation Serpens Cauda (the tail of the snake).”

"Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum"

"Cycles, Systems and Seats in the Coliseum"
by Charles Hugh Smith

"Contrary to first impressions, I am not a doom-and-gloomer; I'm a systems-cycles-er, meaning I'm interested in where systems and cycles are heading. Cycles work because we're still running Wetware 1.0 which entered beta testing around 200,000 years ago and was released, bugs and all, around 50,000 years ago. Since the processes and inputs haven't changed, neither do the outputs.

Nature is a mix of dynamic, semi-chaotic systems (fractals, etc.) and cyclical patterns which tend to operate within predictable parameters. Why should human nature and human constructs (societies, economies and political realms) be any different?

So longterm success breeds complacency, hubris, economic and intellectual sclerosis, draining political infighting and the overproduction of parasitic elites, to use Peter Turchin's apt description. Consumption of resources expands to soak up every last bit of what's available and then the supply of goodies plummets for a multitude of completely natural and predictable reasons (sunspot/solar activity, El Nino, etc.) and a host of unpredictable but equally natural semi-chaotic extremes (100-year droughts, floods, etc.).

Wetware 1.0's go-to solutions to all such difficulties are rather limited:

1. Ramp up magical thinking. If a couple of human sacrifices ensured good harvests in the good old days, let's slaughter a couple hundred now - and if that doesn't work, then...

2. Do more of what's failed spectacularly and slaughter a couple thousand fellow humans, because darn it, maybe everything will turn around if we just kill another couple dozen. This requires ignoring the novelty of the current challenges and clinging to what worked so well in the past even as whatever worked in the past can't possibly work now because circumstances are fundamentally different.

3. Seek scapegoats. It's those darn witches. Burn a bunch of them and our troubles will magically disappear.

4. Go take what we need from some other tribe. What's our oil doing under their sand?

5. Consolidate power and wealth in the hands of elites whose failures exacerbated the crisis. Because the obvious solution (to the elites with cushy offices around the palaces and temples) to repeated failures of a leadership that only excels in one thing, squandering rapidly depleting resources on infighting and self-aggrandizement, is to give us all the remaining wealth and power. Hey, this makes perfect sense once you understand #2 above.

6. Demand sacrifices of the many to protect the privileges of the few. The Empire needs some warm bodies to fend off the Barbarians, because it would be a real shame if the Barbarians reached our palatial estates and disrupted the flow of wine and festivities. No worries when you come back on your shield; the bureaucracy will give you a decent burial and your spouse and kids can join the multitude of half-starved beggars waiting for the dwindling distributions of bread and circuses. But never mind that, did you hear about the upcoming games in the Coliseum? Good seats are going fast.

7. Eat your seed corn to keep the party going awhile longer. Not every human group had the luxury of borrowing "money" to keep the fast-unraveling party going awhile longer, so they consumed their seed corn and drained the last of their reserves--which is the same thing as borrowing "money" from a future with diminishing resources and productivity.

8. Maintain supreme confidence that "it will all work out fine because it's always worked out fine" without any sacrifice required of "those who count." What's forgotten is that the luxe greatness that is now teetering on the precipice of ruin was won by the sacrifices of the elites far exceeding the sacrifices of the many.

Back in the day, joining the elite and maintaining one's position required constant sacrifices on behalf of the common good, and strict adherence to public virtue. Now that's all forgotten, and all that remains are elites possessed by the demons of shameless greed and self-interest.

The idea that debt, leverage, speculation, greed, exploitation and parasitic elites can expand exponentially forever is magical thinking. Yet that is precisely what America and the rest of the global economic order insists is true and will always be true, forever and ever.

By all means, reject those horrid, awful doom-and-gloomers who look at systems and cycles. Everything will be fine as long as you secure seats for the next games at the Coliseum - they should be spectacular - but not in the way you expect."

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "And Yet"

"And Yet"

"And yet, though we strain
against the deadening grip
of daily necessity,
I sense there is this mystery:
All life is being lived.
Who is living it then?
Is it the things themselves,
or something waiting inside them,
like an unplayed melody in a flute?
Is it the winds blowing over the waters?
Is it the branches that signal to each other?
Is it flowers
interweaving their fragrances
or streets, as they wind through time?"

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Paulo Coelho, "Grave Faults..."

“Only the following items should be considered to be grave faults: not respecting another's rights; allowing oneself to be paralyzed by fear; feeling guilty; believing that one does not deserve the good or ill that happens in one's life; being a coward. We will love our enemies, but not make alliances with them. They were placed in our path in order to test our sword, and we should, out of respect for them, struggle against them. We will choose our enemies.”
- Paulo Coelho
“Never hate your enemies. It clouds your judgment.”
- "Michael Corleone"

"Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names."
- John F. Kennedy

"16 Harsh Truths That Make Us Stronger "

"16 Harsh Truths That Make Us Stronger "
by Marc Chernoff

"1. Life is not easy. Hard work makes people lucky, it's the stuff that brings dreams to reality. So start every morning ready to run farther than you did yesterday and fight harder than you ever have before.

2. You will fail sometimes. The faster you accept this, the faster you can get on with being brilliant. You'll never be 100% sure it will work, but you can always be 100% sure doing nothing won't work. So get out there and do something! Either you succeed or you learn a vital lesson. Win, Win.

3. Right now, there's a lot you don't know. The day you stop learning is the day you stop living. Embrace new information, think about it and use it to advance yourself.

4. There may not be a tomorrow. Not for everyone. Right now, someone on Earth is planning something for tomorrow without realizing they're going to die today. This is sad but true. So spend your time wisely today and pause long enough to appreciate it.

5. There's a lot you can't control. Wasting your time, talent and emotional energy on things that are beyond your control is a recipe for frustration, misery and stagnation. Invest your energy in the things you can control.

6. Information is not true knowledge. Knowledge comes from experience. You can discuss a task a hundred times, but these discussions will only give you a philosophical understanding. You must experience a task firsthand to truly know it.

7. You can't be successful without providing value. Don't waste your time trying to be successful, spend your time creating value. When you're valuable to the world around you, you will be successful.

8. Someone else will always have more than you. Whether it's money, friends or magic beans that you're collecting, there will always be someone who has more than you. But remember, it's not how many you have, it's how passionate you are about collecting them. It's all about the journey.

9. You can't change the past. As Maria Robinson once said, "Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending."  You can't change what happened, but you can change how you react to it.

10. The only person who can make you happy is you. The root of your happiness comes from your relationship with yourself. Sure external entities can have fleeting effects on your mood, but in the long run nothing matters more than how you feel about who you are on the inside.

11. There will always be people who don't like you. You can't be everything to everyone. No matter what you do, there will always be someone who thinks differently. So concentrate on doing what you know in your heart is right. What others think and say about you isn't all that important. What is important is how you feel about yourself.

12. You won't always get what you want. As Mick Jagger once said, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need."  Look around. Appreciate the things you have right now. Many people aren't so lucky.

13. In life, you get what you put in. If you want love, give love. If you want friends, be friendly. If you want money, provide value. It really is this simple.

14. Good friends will come and go. Most of your high school friends won't be a part of your college life. Most of your college friends won't be a part of your 20-something professional life. Most of your 20-something friends won't be there when your spouse and you bring your second child into the world. But some friends will stick. And it's these friends, the ones who transcend time with you, who matter.

15. Doing the same exact thing every day hinders self growth. If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you're getting. Growth happens when you change things, when you try new things, when you stretch beyond your comfort zone.

16. You will never feel 100% ready for something new. Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means you won't feel totally comfortable or ready for it. 
And remember, trying to be someone else is a waste of the person you are. Strength comes from being comfortable in your own skin."

"The Only Time..."

"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call
 you could make, who would you call and what would you say? 
And why are you waiting?"
- Stephen Levine

"We All Got Problems..."

"We all got problems. But there's a great book out called "Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart." Did you see that? That book says the statute of limitations has expired on all childhood traumas. Get your stuff together and get on with your life, man. Stop whinin' about what's wrong, because everybody's had a rough time, in one way or another."
- Quincy Jones

The Daily "Near You?"

Bucklin, Missouri, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

“The 11 Nations Of The United States” (Excerpt)

“The 11 Nations Of The United States”
by Andy Kiersz and Marguerite Ward 

Excerpt: “The map above shows how the US really has 11 separate ‘nations’ with entirely different cultures. Author and journalist Colin Woodard identified 11 distinct cultures that have historically divided the US. His book American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America” breaks down those cultures and the regions they each dominate. From the utopian “Yankeedom” to the conservative “Greater Appalachia” and liberal “Left Coast,” looking at these cultures sheds an interesting light on America’s political and cultural divides. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, some governors are acting among these factions – like California, Oregon, and Washington, of all which have parts comprising of “The Left Coast” group.”
Please view this complete and fascinating article here:

"Words..."

"Words ought to be a little wild, for they
are the assaults of thoughts on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes

"Reality Avoidance"

"Reality Avoidance"
by Morris Berman

"It’s quite amazing how the news is endlessly about race, or gender, or very little that has anything to do with reality, which the Mainstream Media and the American people avoid like the plague. What then is real?

1. The empire is in decline; every day, life here gets a little bit worse; all our institutions are corrupt to varying degrees; and there is no turning this situation around.

2. A crucial factor in this decline and irreversibility is the low level of intelligence of the American people. Americans are not only dumb; they are positively antagonistic toward the life of the mind.

3. Relations of power and money determine practically everything. The 3 wealthiest Americans own as much as the bottom 50% of the population, and this tendency will get worse over time.

4. The value system of the country, and its citizens, is fundamentally wrong-headed. It amounts to little more than hustling, selfishness, narcissism, and a blatant disregard for anyone but oneself. There is a kind of cruelty, or violence, deep in the American soul; many foreign observers and writers have commented on this. Americans are bitter, depressed, and angry, and the country offers very little by way of community or empathy.

5. Along with this is the support of meaningless wars and imperial adventures on the part of most of the population. That we drone-murder unarmed civilians on a weekly basis is barely on the radar screen of the American mind. In essence, the nation has evolved into a genocidal war machine run by a plutocracy and cheered on by mindless millions.

Most Americans hide from these depressing, even horrific, realities by what passes for ‘the news’, but also by means of alcohol, opioids, TV, cellphones, suicide, prescription drugs, workaholism, and spectator sports, to name but a few. This stuffing of the Void is probably our primary activity. In a word, we are eating ourselves alive, and only a tiny fraction of the population recognizes this."

Judge Napolitano, "Scott Ritter: Ukraine - Russia War What's Happening?"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 11/4/22:
"Scott Ritter: Ukraine - Russia War What's Happening?"
Comments here:

"How It Really Is"

 

"From Boom to Bust"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 11/4/22:
"From Boom to Bust"
"It is unbelievable just two years ago people had an abundance of savings and economy looks great. It is completely gone in the opposite direction. We went from boom to bust."
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "Liquidity Crisis/Currency Crisis Worsens As The World Economy Crashes"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 11/4/22:
"Liquidity Crisis/Currency Crisis Worsens
 As The World Economy Crashes"
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/4/22:
“Con  Job: Federal Debt, Public Debt, Personal Debt, 
Household Debt, To Explode Higher"
Comments here:

"Stock Up Now At Aldi! Massive Holiday Sale! Don't Miss This!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 11/4/22:
"Stock Up Now At Aldi! Massive Holiday Sale! Don't Miss This!"
"In today's vlog we are at Aldi, and are noticing that they are having a huge sale on holiday baking items this month! We are stocking up, and showing the best deals as we take you shopping with us. It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:

Jim Kunstler, "Emily Oster’s Plea Bargain"

"Emily Oster’s Plea Bargain"
by Jim Kunstler

"By now, everybody and his uncle has seen Emily Oster’s plea for “pandemic amnesty” in The Atlantic magazine, a house organ of the people in America who know better than you do about… really… everything. Emily’s wazoo is so stuffed with gold-plated credentials (BA, PhD, Harvard; economics prof at Brown U) it’s a wonder that she could sit down long enough to peck out her lame argument that “we need to forgive one another for what we did and said when we were in the dark about COVID.”

Emily wasn’t “in the dark.” She had access to the same information as the Americans who recognized that everything the public health authorities, the medical establishment, and many elected officials shoveled out about Covid and its putative remedies and preventatives was untrue, with a patina of bad faith and malice - especially when it was used to persecute their political adversaries.

These were the people who turned out to be “right for the wrong reasons,” she declared, the main reason being that they were not aligned in good-think with the Woke-Jacobinism of her fellow “progressives” at Brown U, and academics all across the land, who were righteously busy destroying the intellectual life of the nation, making it impossible for the thinking class to think.

Let’s face it: every society actually needs a thinking class, a cohort able to frame important issues-of-the-moment that require argument in the public arena to align our collective thoughts and deeds with reality. America used to have a pretty good thinking class, with a pretty good free press and many other platforms for opinion - all animated by respect for the first amendment to the Constitution.

The thinking class destroyed that by vigorously promoting a new censorship regime in every American institution, shutting down free speech and, more crucially, the necessary debate for aligning our politics with reality. Hence, America’s thinking class became the torchbearers of unreality, in step with the Party of Chaos which held the levers of power. This included the powers of life and death in the matter of Covid-19.

These were the people who militated against effective early treatment protocols (to cynically preserve the drug companies’ emergency use authorization (EUA) and thus their liability shields); the people who enforced the deadly remdesivir-and-ventilator combo in hospital treatment; the people who rolled out the harmful and ineffective “vaccines”; who fired and vilified doctors who disagreed with all that; and who engineered a long list of abusive policies that destroyed businesses, livelihoods, households, reputations, and futures.

How did it happen that the thinking class destroyed thinking and betrayed itself? Because the status competition for moral righteousness in the sick milieu of the campus became more important to them than the truth. In places like Brown U, what you saw was an escalating contest for status brownie-points, which is what virtue-signaling is all about. And the highest virtue was going along with whatever experts and people-in-authority said - the pathetic virtue of submission. Anything that got in the way of going along - such as differences of opinion - had to be crushed, stamped out, and with a vicious edge to teach the dissenters a lesson: dissent will not be tolerated!

Some thinking class. The case of Emily Oster should be particularly and painfully disturbing, since she affects to specialize, as an economist, on “pregnancy and parenting” (her own website declares), while the Covid regime of public health officialdom she supported instigated a horrendous pediatric health crisis that is ongoing - it was only days ago that the CDC added the harmful mRNA “vaccines” to its childhood immunization schedule for the purpose of conferring permanent immunity for the drug companies after the EUA ends, a dastardly act. Where’s Ms. Oster’s plea to the CDC to cease and desist trying to vaccinate kids with mRNA products?

The CDC is still running TV commercials (during World Series ballgames!) touting its “booster” shots when only weeks ago a top Pfizer executive, Janine Small (“Regional President for vaccines of international developed markets”), revealed to the European Union Parliament that her company never tested its “vaccine” for preventing transmission of SARS CoV-2. The CDC under Director Rochelle Walensky is still extra-super-busy concealing or fudging its statistical data to obfuscate the emerging picture that MRNA “vaccines” are responsible for the shocking rise of “all-causes deaths” in the most heavily-vaxxed nations. In short, the authorities are to this minute still running their whole malign operation.

Notably, Ms. Oster’s plea for amnesty and forgiveness, showcased in The Atlantic, omits any discussion of accountability for what amounts to serious crimes against the public. A whole lot of people deserve to be indicted for killing and injuring millions of people. At the heart of her plea is the excuse that “we didn’t know” that official Covid policy was so misguided. That’s just not true, of course, and is simply evidence of the thinking class’s recently acquired allergy to truth. The part that she left out of her petition for pandemic amnesty is: we were only following orders."
As I commented in an earlier post...
"Pandemic amnesty?" "Mass forgiveness?" Really?
Here it is...
Stipendium peccati mors est...