Thursday, November 9, 2023

"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: 
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"I Can't Convince Myself..."

"I can't convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at."
- Kenneth Smith

"If you want to tell people the truth,
make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you."
- Oscar Wilde

"We All Know..."

“We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars… everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.”
- Thornton Wilder
“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge.
That myth is more potent than history.
I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts.
That hope always triumphs over experience.
That laughter is the only cure for grief.
And I believe that love is stronger than death.”
- Robert Fulghum
“For Those Who Have Died”
“Eleh Ezkerah” (“These We Remember”)

“Tis a fearful thing
To love
What death can touch.
To love, to hope, to dream,
And oh, to lose.
A thing for fools, this,
Love,
But a holy thing,
To love what death can touch.
For your life has lived in me;
Your laugh once lifted me;
Your word was a gift to me.
To remember this brings painful joy.
Tis a human thing, love,
A holy thing,
To love
What death can touch.”
- Chaim Stern
Graphic: “Into The Silent Land”, 
by Henry Pegram, 1905
“We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of Infinity. Life is Eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in Eternity.”
- Paulo Coelho

“Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.”

- Dr. Seuss


And we shall meet again…
Full screen recommended.
Moody Blues, “The Day We Meet Again”

The Daily "Near You?"

Rock Port, Missouri, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Level Of Intelligence..."

"If man were relieved of all superstition, and all prejudice, and had replaced these with a keen sensitivity to his real environment, and moreover had achieved a level of communication so simplified that one syllable could express his every thought, then he would have achieved the level of intelligence already achieved by his dog."
- Robert Brault

"US Debt Doom Cycle Tipping Point Shattered As Annual Interest Exceeds $1 Trillion"

"US Debt Doom Cycle Tipping Point
Shattered As Annual Interest Exceeds $1 Trillion"
by Mike Adams

"For the first time in history, US debt is so huge that the government must now spend a trillion dollars a year just to pay the interest on the debt (which is over 33 trillion and counting).Within just one year, the total US debt will be 41 trillion. And by the end of 2026, it will likely hit 50 trillion (if the country is even functioning by then). The currency collapse is accelerating towards us at unprecedented speed. We all need to be aware of what's actually happening and be fully prepared for supply chain disruptions, bank bail-ins and desperate times ahead."
View video on Brighteon here:
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"Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 11/9/23"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 11/9/23
"Prof. Jeffrey Sachs: The Dangers of Unbridled War"
Comments here:
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Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 11/9/23
"Alastair Crooke: 
Israel vs Gaza: The Elephant In The Room"
Comments here:
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Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 11/8/23
"Phil Giraldi (fmr CIA): 
Unpardonable and Unpunishable War Crimes"
Comments here:

"How It Really Is"

 

Bill Bonner, "The Next Surprise"

"The Next Surprise"
And the big question that keeps us up late at night...
by Bill Bonner

Paris, France - "Where will the next surprise come from? What will cause the next Big Loss? Here’s the latest, from MarketsInsider: "Wall Street thought 2023 would be "the year of the bond" – and while that's yet to come about, the past few weeks have finally brought some good news for fixed income after a nightmarish run since the start of the pandemic. US Treasury prices have staged a mini-comeback, and benchmark 10-year yields have started to cool off after spiking to a 16-year high of 5% in mid-October."

Everyone knows the Fed has finished its rate tightening. Everyone knows it will lower rates in the spring. Everyone knows you ‘can’t fight the Fed.’ And everyone knows that lower rates will bring higher bond prices. So…everyone knows bonds are safe again. And higher yields make them attractive.

Here’s more from Bloomberg: "Junk Bonds Yielding Over 10% Hit $325 Billion, Tempting Investors. Bonds yielding at least 10% grew by about $45 billion to $325 billion, or about 30% of the speculative-grade index, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Mike Holland. Almost $139 billion of that lot come from the communications sector, which includes the likes of Altice USA Inc. and Dish Network Corp. As the highest-yielding junk sector, it trades at a yield [over 12%]." Just last week, a private borrower offered us a 10% yield on a short-term loan. We took the money.

A $10 Trillion Loss: But does this mean that the Primary Trend has turned? Is it an opportunity…or a trap? “Yep,” says Dan out in Laramie, “that’s the question that keeps us up at night.” It keeps us up because US bonds are where the big money is. There’s $33 trillion outstanding in US government bonds alone. If the next three years were like the last three, it would mean another 17% loss on the bonds themselves…along with an inflationary loss of 16% loss on the money they’re calibrated in (dollars). That would be a total loss of 33% – or more than $10 trillion. That’s a Big Loss.

These are not NFTs we’re talking about. Or cryptos. Or even ‘junk’ bonds. These are the safest credits in the world…the building blocks of the whole financial capital structure. They undergird values in insurance plans…pension programs…bank reserves and corporate treasuries. Even the Fed counts its assets in US bonds.

And maybe everyone is right: bonds are safe from here on out. But what a surprise it would be if they weren’t! As we discussed yesterday, there’s a time to be a lender and a time to be a borrower. There is also a time to neither borrower nor lender be; this might be one of those times. After such an impressive sell-off, it is probably a good bet that interest rates will dip and bond prices will rise. Inflation readings are generally going down. The Fed is ‘pausing.’ Everybody knows the tightening cycle is over. But there’s gotta be a big surprise coming from somewhere. What a pity if it came – again – to the US bond market. Is that possible? Maybe…

A Temporary Truce: First, inflation is not finished. It was never ‘transitory.’ And it was not just the result of the Fed’s 2020-21 printing spree. Prices are determined by balancing output against the quantity of money ready and willing to purchase it. While not predictable with any precision, it is still a good bet that when output goes down and spending goes up, prices will rise.

US trade policies, sanctions, work rules…regulations, taxes and intercessions – and the dead weight of debt itself – all restrict output. Real output – measured by the number of hours people actually work – is rising at less than half the rate of the 20th century. And though the feds may have declared a temporary truce on their monetary inflation, they’ve increased inflation pressures on the fiscal front. So while the quantity of lendable money is restrained, the world’s biggest borrower – the US government – spends more money than ever.

The latest jackassery from the Biden Team is that sending weapons to the Ukraine and Israel is ‘good for the economy.’ But unless you are in the market for a Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jet, the extra money to the firepower industry just reduces investment and output in the consumer economy. Prices go up, in other words.

And so do interest rates. Money wasted on bombs is not available to buy Treasury debt. In addition to the new, two-trillion-dollar deficits that must be financed out of savings, there is also the old debt that must be refinanced. There is $7.6 trillion in Treasury debt that will mature in the next 12 months. That will bring the total funding requirement to nearly $10 trillion. Whatever else might happen as a result, interest rates will probably go up. If that is so…could lenders be in for another Big Loss on their bonds? Maybe. Our advice, keep the loans short term."

Note from the Research Desk: The United States has a sovereign debt-to-GDP ratio of 123.3%. In the developed world, only Italy at 143.3% and Japan at 255.2% have more debt relative to GDP. Sudan has a ratio of 256%. In the last 120 years, research shows that countries with debt-to-GDP ratios of over 130% default on their debt 98% of the time.

Dan, I Allegedly, "The Debt Wall Crisis Will Hit Us All"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 11/9/23
"The Debt Wall Crisis Will Hit Us All"
"This video breaks down how the mounting debt crisis, especially in the realm of commercial real estate, is setting the stage for major consequences. The average commercial building value has fallen by 21% in the last year, and interest rates have doubled, making refinancing a nightmare. But don't be fooled into thinking this won't affect you if you don't own commercial real estate. This financial turmoil is set to ripple through banks, affecting everyone."
Comments here:

Adventures With Danno, "Stock Up Now At Kroger! "

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 11/9/23
"Stock Up Now At Kroger!
Massive Holiday Sale, Don't Miss This!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and urging everyone to stock up on these items. They are having a massive holiday sale on groceries. We take you with us showing every great deal they have to offer. Stock up now as we may never see these kinds of sales again!"
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "Expect More War And More Death"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 11/9/23
"Expect More War And More Death,
Also Expect The Stock Market Will Go Higher As A Result"
Comments here:

"U.S. Banks Are Sitting On $650 Billion In Unrealized Losses, And That Means Disaster Is Just A Bank Run Away"

"U.S. Banks Are Sitting On $650 Billion In Unrealized Losses,
 And That Means Disaster Is Just A Bank Run Away"
by Michael Snyder

"Our economy runs on credit, and our banks are the beating heart of that system. Without healthy banks, how would Americans buy homes, purchase vehicles or get credit cards? The way that our system is currently constructed, it is absolutely imperative for our banks to function properly. Unfortunately, the truth is that our banks have gotten into deep financial trouble. They are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in unrealized losses, and the primary reason why those losses have become so large is because we have witnessed a historic bond market crash over the past several years…

"Treasury bonds - debt instruments the government issues to fund its spending - have been on a nightmarish run since the onset of the pandemic, with investors fretting about rising interest rates and the long-term viability of the US’s massive deficit. BlackRock’s iShares 20+ Year Treasury fund, which tracks longer-duration debt prices, has plunged 48% since April 2020."

Thanks to that historic bond market crash, our financial institutions were sitting on 650 billion dollars in unrealized losses as of September 30th…"As a result of that sell-off, some of the US’s biggest banks are now sitting on unrealized, or “paper,” losses worth hundreds of billions of dollars. That means the value of their bond holdings has plunged, but they’ve chosen to hold on rather than offload their investments.

Moody’s estimated last month that US financial institutions had racked up $650 billion worth of paper losses on their portfolios by September 30 - up 15% from June 30. The ratings agency’s data still doesn’t account for a hellish October where the longer-term collapse in bond prices spiraled into one of the worst routs in market history."

Go back and read that last sentence again. After what we witnessed during the month of October, what is the real number now? Has it surpassed 700 billion dollars? Has it surpassed 800 billion dollars? Nobody really knows. However, what we do know is that we have never seen anything like this before.

The good news is that there won’t be a major problem in the short-term unless there is a run on the banks. But if there is a run on the banks, the banks that are affected will need to start selling off their bonds at a huge loss, and that would be a nightmare…"While they are generally purchased and intended to be held until they mature, if banks experience a surge of withdrawals – a run on the bank – they may need to sell them. That is what happened to Silicon Valley Bank earlier this year. The bank was forced to sell those bonds as its depositors sought to withdraw funds."

So as long as everyone has faith in the banks, things won’t get too crazy. Hopefully that will remain the case for quite a while, because right now our largest banks are a ticking time bomb…"Bank of America is the big lender worst affected by the crash in bond prices, having disclosed a potential $130 billion hole in its balance sheet last month. The other “Big Four” banks - Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo - have also racked up unrealized losses in the tens of billions, according to their second- and third-quarter earnings reports.

Just a few days ago, we witnessed the sixth bank failure this year. The combined assets of those six banks actually exceed the combined assets of the 25 banks that failed in 2008. And as James Rickards has aptly noted, more bank failures are coming…"I warned in March that the failure of Silicon Valley Bank would be just the start. Now we’ve had five additional bank failures. And this latest failure won’t be the last. Veterans of such crises (and I include myself in that category) know that once the dominoes start falling, they keep falling until some government intervention of a particularly draconian kind is imposed."

Meanwhile, the overall economy continues to steadily deteriorate. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of retail layoffs has jumped 258 percent compared to the same time period last year…"Amid the early holiday shopping season, retailers have cut 72,182 jobs through October, a 258% increase from the 20,191 jobs eliminated in 2022, according to a new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. This marks the most significant number of job cuts since retailers cut 179,520 jobs in October 2020.

Over the past few years, economic conditions have just gotten harsher and harsher. It has been a slow, steady slide that now threatens to turn into an avalanche. According to a new poll that was just conducted by Bankrate, the American people don’t feel too good about the economic changes that we have witnessed since Joe Biden entered the White House. "A new survey published by Bankrate on Wednesday shows that 50% of Americans say their financial situation has gotten worse since the 2020 presidential election. By comparison, just 21% think their financial situation has improved, while 26% believe it is unchanged."

“The plight of the economy over the next 12 months may help to dictate whether it was wise, or not, for President Biden to trumpet the branding of ‘Bidenomics,’” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate. Among Americans who are feeling pessimistic about their financial outlook, about half - 45% - blame Biden and his economic policies. Another 35% think that Congress is responsible, while 27% identified the Federal Reserve as the culprit.

But as bad as things are right now, the truth is that what we are experiencing at this moment will be considered rip-roaring prosperity compared to what is coming. As I discuss in my brand new book entitled “Chaos”, we are on the brink of an economic shaking that will be unlike anything that our nation has ever seen before. America is literally drowning in debt, the value of our currency is being destroyed, and now our financial system stands of the brink of an unprecedented crisis. So I hope that you are prepared for what is coming next. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the population is not."

Wednesday, November 8, 2023

"Credit Crisis Is Now Causing A Tsunami Of Bankruptcies, Banks Send Warning"

Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 11/8/23
"Credit Crisis Is Now Causing A Tsunami 
Of Bankruptcies, Banks Send Warning"
"U.S. banks are taking defensive measures to secure their financial stability. The collapse of three regional banks and a series of rate hikes by the Federal Reserve have added to the uncertainty. As a result, more lenders have tightened their lending standards, as revealed by the Federal Reserve's Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey. The tightening of lending standards, even before the full impact of the regional banking crisis, is likely to slow down the flow of credit to small businesses and households. Small businesses and marginal households, in particular, are sensitive to changes in the cost and availability of credit, given their limited financial resources and borrowing options."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, “Shadows of White”

Liquid Mind, “Shadows of White”

"A Look to the Heavens"

"The dream was to capture both the waterfall and the Milky Way together. Difficulties included finding a good camera location, artificially illuminating the waterfall and the surrounding valley effectively, capturing the entire scene with numerous foreground and background shots, worrying that fireflies would be too distracting, keeping the camera dry, and avoiding stepping on a poisonous snake. Behold the result - captured after midnight in mid-July and digitally stitched into a wide-angle panorama. 
Click image for larger size.
The waterfall is the picturesque Zhulian waterfall in the Luoxiao Mountains in eastern Hunan Province, China. The central band of our Milky Way Galaxy crosses the sky and shows numerous dark dust filaments and colorful nebulas. Bright stars dot the sky - all residing in the nearby Milky Way - including the Summer Triangle with bright Vega visible above the Milky Way's arch. After capturing all 78 component exposures for you to enjoy, the photographer and friends enjoyed the view themselves for the rest of the night."

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “The Journey”

“The Journey”

“One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice -
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.

It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do -
determined to save
the only life you could save.”

- Mary Oliver

"A Cherokee Proverb"

"An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.” The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
"A Cherokee Proverb"

"The Bank Outages Nobody Thinks Possible Are Here And People Will Freak Out This Winter"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist 11/8/23
"The Bank Outages Nobody Thinks Possible 
Are Here And People Will Freak Out This Winter"

"The biggest banks in the United States are reporting widespread bank outages for a sixth consecutive day. At the same time, another bank just collapsed, marking the fifth bank failure of 2023. Since last Friday, systemwide processing errors have been leaving millions of customers without access to their money. And while companies insist this is just a temporary glitch, Bloomberg reports that several institutions are still under threat, and experts say more failures would be unsurprising at this point.

Americans are outraged with the situation. The outages are keeping many people from paying their bills in time and making them accrue interest debt while they wait for their deposits. Now, six days after the systemwide disruptions began, clients have been reporting not only deposit delays but other distressing issues with transfers, duplicated withdrawals, and more. Some say they haven’t been able to log in to their online accounts for days.

It seems that Bank of America and Wells Fargo clients are being particularly hard hit by the outages. DownDetector reported that the banks’ customers were still experiencing issues with funds transfers, online banking, and retrieving account balances today. "@BankofAmerica Day 4 & still no direct deposit, no update on potential resolution or at the very least what's being done to resolve the issue, no transparency, no assistance, no communication from you all at all. Nothing. Wow. This is so bizarre," one person wrote on X on Monday morning.

Though the situation has just gotten some media attention, the truth is that since mid-October, financial institutions have been silently facing operational issues. On October 20, international bank Barclays reported an outage that hit more than 2.5 million people globally. The institutions’ online banking platform locked customers out of their accounts, and given that the bank only offers online services in many countries, clients pointed out that in-branch banking wasn’t an option, highlighting the importance of having cash holdings on hand.

For smaller banks, rising interest rates have only aggravated their woes. That’s the case with Iowa-based Citizens Bank, the fifth financial institution that collapsed this year. In a news release, regulators with the Iowa Division of Banking said Citizens was declared insolvent earlier this week when bank examiners “identified significant loan losses that had not previously been identified by the bank. The failure was triggered by bankruptcies in the trucking sector amid a nationwide freight recession.

Higher interest rates are also endangering banks that have higher exposure to consumer debt, mortgage, and commercial real estate loans. At the moment, thousands of office blocks purchased with debt remain half-empty as remote work becomes more popular. These buildings will have to be torn down. In other words, their value is about to sharply drop, leaving hundreds of regional banks sitting on crippling losses.

With businesses facing tighter credit conditions, it’s only a matter of time before mass bankruptcies start to occur. That will create a self-fulfilling prophecy as borrowers default on their loans, causing struggling banks to take on huge losses and also go under. We’re definitely in the middle of a banking crisis that will be unlike anything we have ever seen before, and we should strategize now because things are starting to look very ugly."
Comments here:

Dan, I Allegedly, "A Bank Committed A Big Crime'

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, PM 11/8/23
"A Bank Committed A Big Crime'
"The hits just don’t stop coming. First, the insurance companies are leaving different states in droves. Now we find out that Citibank has committed a major crime. Were you a victim?"
Comments here:

“Of Time, Turnings, Stars & Wars”

“Of Time, Turnings, Stars & Wars”
by Doug "Uncola" Lynn

"Like nature, history is full of processes that cannot happen in reverse. Just as the laws of entropy do not allow a bird to fly backward, or droplets to regroup at the top of a waterfall, history has no rewind button. Like the seasons of nature, it moves only forward."
- Strauss and Howe: “The Fourth Turning”

"Contemplating the concept of time can be quite confounding, to say the least. In the extreme, considering the paradoxical nature of time’s passage will stretch the mind causing thoughts to invert like taffy in a rolling machine or light yielding to the gravity of an Event Horizon before the edge of a Black Hole in deep space.

Knowing Einstein was right means time stops at the speed of light. Surely then, waves of thought must generate their own specific gravity to capture both light and sound, together. Our eyes and ears record each moment and translate events into high definition digital memories which we can recall upon demand and view as celluloid film stock in a dark room.

However, in this dimension, there is another aspect at play that comes attached to time. Space: The final frontier. These conflagrate together and then separate at any given moment never to coalesce again in quite the same way. Time can be recalled like a ghost, or a spectral hologram, on the mind’s screen, but the space will have changed and dissipated entropically like dust digested in the amorphous bellies of Stephen King’s Langoliers.

To put it another way, time changes everything. A couple of years ago one of my offspring had a milestone birthday so we went to a morning movie matinee followed by an expensive late lunch at a fine dining venue. It was there where I chewed my food and contemplated the confounding conceptual continuations of space and time.

The movie was the Star Wars flick, "Rogue One" and the state-of-the-art theater featured stadium seating and a massive UltraScreen Deluxe® with Dolby® Atmospheric Surround-sound which, according to the advertisements, offered the “ultimate moviegoing experience”. As I watched the story unfold in REAL D 3D® with my 3D glasses in place while eating my popcorn and nestled comfortably in the red leather DreamLoungerTM recliner, I thought to myself how I really am in the future. In the lobby after the movie, I checked Drudge on my smartphone and learned Carrie Fisher had died in Los Angeles.

This made me remember way back to my past when I was a preteen and first saw the original Star Wars. I watched it with several friends in an ornately vintage, and solitary, theater in my small town. Through the patina of time and the opaque looking glass of my mind’s eye, I remember hoping no one would tell my parents, or my orthodontist, that I was eating popcorn and lemon drops with new braces on my teeth. Although I was an avid reader back then with a keen appreciation for science fiction, I had not seen a film before that captivated me like the first Star Wars. The excellent storyline, superior special effects, and the characters in the film really made an impression on me.

If my current self could go back to that day, I would meet the geeky, metal-mouthed kid after the movie and tell him some things. I would also mention how, in 43 years, he will celebrate his progeny’s birthday who, at that time, will be several years older than he is now and how he will be seeing another Star Wars movie on the very same day that Princess Leia died in real life.

The ironic confluence of time and space, indeed.

I am sure the mini-me at that time would have pegged me as a brain-damaged old fool and, in turn, would have attempted to persuade me into buying him and his friends a six-pack of beer, a fifth of peppermint Schnapps, a Playboy and a can of chew. After all, according to "The Fourth Turning," by Strauss and Howe, the year 1977 was two and a half “Turnings” ago. Back then, the future wasn’t set. Or was it?

“We perceive our civic challenge as some vast, insoluble Rubik’s Cube. Behind each problem lies another problem that must be solved first, and behind that lies yet another, and another, ad infinitum. To fix crime we have to fix the family, but before we do that we have to fix welfare, and that means fixing our budget, and that means fixing our civic spirit, but we can’t do that without fixing moral standards, and that means fixing schools and churches, and that means fixing the inner cities, and that’s impossible unless we fix crime. There’s no fulcrum on which to rest a policy lever. People of all ages sense that something huge will have to sweep across America before the gloom can be lifted – but that’s an awareness we suppress. As a nation, we’re in deep denial.”
- Strauss and Howe, “The Fourth Turning”

Written by the historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, “The Fourth Turning” was published in 1997 and was, at that time, boldly proclaimed by the authors to be an “American Prophecy”. The book is fascinating in that it very thoroughly documents recorded cycles of history across multiple cultures and eras in order to predict the timing of “America’s next rendezvous with destiny”.

Processing almost like a Cliff’s Notes summary, the book identifies the timelines of historical events and matches them to specific life cycles of people in the form of generational archetypes. What is also interesting is how Strauss and Howe quantify and compare the recordings of history of multiple authors throughout the millennia to find uncanny comparisons in both historical and generational cycles.  Ironically, the comparisons stand up not only to the test of time regarding recorded events in history, but the generational turnings and archetypes also translate to ancient literature and other writings as well, ranging from Homer’s Iliad to the Holy Bible.

The concept of time is discussed in the context of both circular and linear perspectives as Strauss and Howe describe what is called the “saeculum”. The saeculum represents a “long human life”, or approximately 80 to 90 years comprising of four turnings each lasting about 20 to 22 years.

Just as there are four seasons consisting of spring, summer, fall and winter, there are also four phases of a human life represented in childhood, young adulthood, middle age and old age, or elderhood. As each phase of human life represents approximately 20 years, so is each generational archetype identified within historical cycles, or turnings, as follows:
Click image for larger size.
The generational archetypes experience the historical turnings according their life stage, or age. Amazingly, history shows a consistent pattern in how the generations both cause and affect historical events.  The patterns develop based upon how each generation interacts with the other and this also has documented consistencies that are delineated by the authors.

At any given “turning” during the saeculum, the set order of the generations on the age ladder is called a “constellation”. For example, during the Fourth Turning Crisis of 1929 through 1945, America experienced a financial crash, a great depression and a world war. During this period, the Prophet generation was entering Elderhood, the Nomad generation were middle-aged and the Hero generation fought WW II as young adults while the Artist generation were children during that time.

When the Crisis (Winter) era of financial hardship and war was over, the Spring of another First Turning began as the Hero generation led America into a season of unparalleled prosperity from 1946 through President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. It was then the baby boomer, Prophet, generation began. As young adults, the boomers began to rock the nation with new age flower-power, feminism, guitars and free love. Thus began the Awakening that lasted through Ronald Reagan’s first term that ended in 1984. It was then the Third Turning of the Unraveling began.

In 1997, when the Fourth Turning was published, Strauss and Howe used their generational model to predict with remarkable accuracy, the start of the next Crisis in 2005: “By the middle Oh-Ohs, institutions will reach a point of maximum weakness, individualism of maximum strength, and even the simplest public task will feel beyond the ability of government. As niche walls rise ever higher, people will complain endlessly how bad all of the niches are. Wide chasms will separate rich from poor, whites from blacks, immigrants from native borns, seculars from born agains, technophiles from technophobes. America will feel more tribal. Indeed, many will be asking whether fifty states and so many dozens of ethic cultures make sense any more as a nation – and, if they do, whether that nation has a future.”
- Strauss and Howe:  “The Fourth Turning”

In 1997 there was no way to foresee the sequencing of 911, the Patriot Act, Edward Snowden, government incompetence after Hurricane Katrina, the financial crisis of 2007 – 2008, the subsequent TARP bailouts or the election of a mysterious, biracial pied piper to the presidency of the United States.

There is no way anyone could have predicted the ensuing eight years of Obama, the nationalization of healthcare, the orgy of greed hosted by Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, endless wars, unchecked immigration, the TSA, NSA, Homeland Security, the CIA versus the FBI, smart phones, drones, religious discriminations, Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, the Alt-right, Black Lives Matter and fake news.

Given the accuracy and timing of Strauss and Howe’s predictions, perhaps there is real validity behind their generational theory after all. And, given this, then we are now within the Winter of a Fourth Turning Crisis.

Can you feel it in the air? High powers in dark places are gathering and sides are being chosen as potential treachery and intrigue lurk around every corner. A global empire stands prepared to battle with populist movements and sovereign nations across the globe while rumors of a neo American civil war abound here at home.

Captured corporate media propaganda outlets and deep state government agencies relentlessly shill for a global empire and stoke the fires of war against a free alternative media while simultaneously provoking a nuclear armed Russia.

Half of the nation’s electorate, on the brink of a financial abyss, would rather kneel before an evil empire than to support the outcome of a free election. Of course, there is no unity in America today. Those days are long gone.

“People young and old will puzzle over what it felt like for their parents and grandparents, in a distantly remembered era, to have lived in a society that felt like one national community. They will yearn to recreate this, to put America back together again. But no one will know how.”
- Strauss and Howe, “The Fourth Turning”

Winter is here.  War is coming. Battles will be waged and conflicts will rage. There will be no escape for what is coming and no guarantee as to any outcome, save one: After this Fourth Turning, there will remain only liberty or tyranny. One, but not the other. For this will be a fight unto the death.

Even so, do many Nomads now entering middle-age, and their Hero generation progeniture, actually understand what is about to befall them? Do they even care? And, for those who do understand and do care; do they know how to fight?

Truly, there are many variables to this historical cycle that were absent in the all of the previous Fourth Turnings throughout history. A few examples would include pervasive and devastating technology with the capabilities of either enslaving, or killing, entire generations of people; a global corporatocracy in control of government agencies, mass flows of information, food and resources; entirely misinformed and apathetic populations with no moral bearing, belief system, or willingness to accept truth in order to stand strong against the dark powers now encroaching; and, finally, there are so many who have been trained to embrace the utopian lie of one world under tyranny. Sadly, many of these may be the new Stormtroopers in waiting.

In the end, we must choose. And not choosing, by default, is a choice. Can a rag tag federation of freedom fighters with truth, liberty and history on their side under a flag of 13 stripes and 50 stars, with idea-fueled keyboards, a compromised internet, and semi-automatic weapons prevail against a galactic empire in control of a technocracy more powerful than any fictional Death Star?

We’re about to find out. Everything that has ever happened before has delivered us to where we are now. Hold on to that. Even more importantly, don’t forget to fasten your seatbelts and place your trays in the upright and locked position.The warp drive is about to be engaged. A new journey has begun."
"May the Force be with you."

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