"All Of The Elements Are In Place For An Economic Crisis Of Staggering Proportions"

"All Of The Elements Are In Place For 

An Economic Crisis Of Staggering Proportions"

by Michael Snyder

"They were able to delay the U.S. economy’s day of reckoning, but they were not able to put it off indefinitely. During the pandemic, the Federal Reserve pumped trillions of dollars into the financial system and our politicians borrowed and spent trillions of dollars that we did not have. All of that money caused quite a bit of inflation, but it also created a “sugar rush” for the economy. In other words, economic conditions were substantially better than they would have been otherwise. Unfortunately, there will be a great price to be paid for such short-term thinking. From the federal government on down, our entire society is absolutely drowning in debt, and now it appears that our economic problems are about to go to the next level.

In early 2024, there are all sorts of signs that economic activity in the U.S. is really starting to slow down. For example, we just learned that consumer spending “fell sharply” during the month of January…"Consumer spending fell sharply in January, presenting a potential early danger sign for the economy, the Commerce Department reported Thursday.

Advance retail sales declined 0.8% for the month following a downwardly revised 0.4% gain in December, according to the Census Bureau. A decrease had been expected: Economists surveyed by Dow Jones were looking for a drop of 0.3%, in part to make up for seasonal distortions that probably boosted December’s number."

However, the pullback was considerably more than anticipated. Even excluding autos, sales dropped 0.6%, well below the estimate for a 0.2% gain. Sadly, the truth is that U.S. consumers just don’t have as much money to spend these days. They are up to their eyeballs in debt, and delinquency rates have been spiking.

Many consumers are tightening up on their finances, and so it shouldn’t be a surprise that Disney+ lost more than a million subscribers during the fourth quarter of last year…"Disney+ Core subscribers (which include U.S. and Canada customers, as well as international users, excluding the India-based Disney+ Hotstar) dropped to 111.3 million from the 112.6 million reported in the previous quarter, according to Disney’s quarterly earnings results released Wednesday."

In early 2024, we have also seen large employers ruthlessly slash payrolls all over the nation. The following summary of some of the most shocking layoffs that we have seen recently comes from Zero Hedge…

1. Twitch: 35% of workforce

2. Roomba: 31% of workforce

3. Hasbro: 20% of workforce

4. LA Times: 20% of workforce

5. Spotify: 17% of workforce

6. Levi’s: 15% of workforce

7. Xerox: 15% of workforce

8. Qualtrics: 14% of workforce

9. Wayfair: 13% of workforce

10. Duolingo: 10% of workforce

11. Washington Post: 10% of workforce

12: Snap: 10% of workforce

13. eBay: 9% of workforce

14. Business Insider: 8% of workforce

15. Paypal: 7% of workforce

16. Okta: 7% of workforce

17. Charles Schwab: 6% of workforce

18. Docusign: 6% of workforce

19: CISCO: 5% of workforce

20. UPS: 2% of workforce

21. Blackrock: 3% of workforce

22. Paramount: 3% of workforce

23. Citigroup: 20,000 employees

24. Pixar: 1,300 employees

During the pandemic we witnessed a lot of temporary layoffs, but the last time we saw large corporations conducting permanent mass layoffs on such a widespread basis was in 2008 and 2009. And we all remember what happened back then.

Meanwhile, the cost of living continues to rise faster than paychecks. For example, it is being reported that the cost of auto insurance has been increasing at “the fastest annual rate on record”…"The cost of auto insurance jumped 1.4% in January, bringing the total annual gain to 20.6% – the fastest annual rate on record. When compared with early 2019, motor vehicle insurance is nearly 40% more expensive. Experts say the problem could soon get worse before it begins to improve."

Needless to say, most Americans have not seen their paychecks increase by 20.6 percent over the past year. Of course just about everything else has been rapidly getting more expensive too, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

On top of everything else, we are also facing an unprecedented commercial real estate crisis. Our financial institutions are sitting on mountains of bad commercial real estate loans, and Kevin O’Leary is warning that “thousands more” will fail within the next three to five years…"Regional banks are doomed. That’s not necessarily a bad thing… if you’re prepared for it. It’s been almost a year since Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed in March – the victim of idiotic management. But the sobering reality is the small banking crisis is far from over. In the next three to five years, thousands more regional institutions will fail. That’s why I don’t have a dime saved or invested in a single one.

Is Kevin O’Leary right about this? I don’t know. We will just have to wait and see what happens. But without a doubt, things certainly do not look good at this moment.

Needless to say, it isn’t just the U.S. that is experiencing economic turbulence these days. This week, we learned that the Japanese economy has officially entered a recession…"Japan has lost its spot as the world’s third-largest economy to Germany, as the Asian giant unexpectedly slipped into recession. Once the second-largest economy in the world, Japan reported two consecutive quarters of contraction on Thursday - falling 0.4% on an annualized basis in the fourth quarter after a revised 3.3% contraction in the third quarter. Fourth-quarter GDP sharply missed forecasts for 1.4% growth in a Reuters poll of economists."

The Germans are facing big problems too. In fact, Germany is being called the “sick man of Europe” right now.

Interestingly, it is at this time that Jeff Bezos has decided to sell off billions of dollars worth of Amazon stock…"Amazon’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos has sold another $2bn worth of the company’s stock, bringing the total value of shares he has offloaded in the past week to $4bn, according to regulatory filings. An Amazon filing on Tuesday showed that Bezos, who stepped down as the Seattle-based company’s chief executive in 2021 but remains executive chair, sold 12mn shares for about $2bn between Friday and Monday."

He certainly doesn’t need the cash. So why is he doing this? Does he know something that the rest of us do not? I don’t think so. Instead, I think that he can see what the rest of us can see. Stock prices have risen to record highs even as the overall economy is clearly heading into a major downturn. That makes this the perfect time to sell. Jeff Bezos didn’t get to where he is by being stupid. He can see what is coming and he is getting out while the getting is still good."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Can You Still Afford Your Home?"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 2/18/24

"Can You Still Afford Your Home?"

"New York city is busy at all hours of the day. We found out that there are more companies raising prices on insurance. We found out that there will be more layoffs. We found out that wholesale prices went up more than expected and we are supposed to be shocked by all of this."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

Oh, how I wish we could, many times, but...

"Middle America Is Dying, And D.C. Doesn't Care"

"Middle America Is Dying, And D.C. Doesn't Care"

by Salena Zito

WEIRTON, West Virginia - "Most people in this town will tell you they’d rather have taken a physical punch to the gut than get the news they received yesterday when Cleveland-Cliffs Steel announced it was idling its tinplate production plant, a move that directly cost 900 people their jobs.

It isn’t just those workers who face catastrophic uncertainty; this closure also jeopardizes the jobs of thousands more people whose businesses supported the plant: the barber shops, gas stations, mom-and-pop grocery stores, the machine shops that make the widgets for the steel industry. And there’s also the demise of the tax base, which affects the school district and the quality of the roads.

Thirty years ago, more than 10,000 people worked here at Weirton Steel. Now, the last 900 workers left have just lost their jobs. “It’s just another scar to add on what people in power have done to our lives and our community over the past 40 years,” said one employee who declined to give his name, adding, “Honestly, how many times does this story have to be told before someone in power cares about our lives.” He points to different buildings downtown, and all of them for him were “used to be this” and “used to be that.”

Ryan Weld of Wellsburg, 43, grew up in downtown Weirton right behind the local funeral home. “When I was growing up in the ’80s, the mill was still going at full tilt with Weirton Steel employing 10,000 people, including my grandfathers,” he said. The Republican state senator said things started to slow down here in the mid to late ’90s after the North American Free Trade Agreement was enacted: “That dramatically changed the landscape of downtown, went from a bustling the last age group that remembers the shops and stores and restaurants of downtown.”

He believes NAFTA, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, essentially made it hard for companies like Weirton Steel, which had to follow strict and expensive Environmental Protection Agency guidelines compete with places like Mexico. The towns all up and down the Steel Valley died hard. “The legacy of the federal government and its refusal to properly enforce trade laws is nothing but empty mills and unemployed workers,” Weld said. “That was true in the ’80s and ’90s, and that is true today.”

Forty years ago, the Democratic Party started to slowly shed its working-class base, but not quickly: Democratic officials would still show up for decades at union rallies, putting their arms around workers’ shoulders and telling them they have their back while at the same time enacting regulations and trade agreements that stripped them of their livelihoods and dignity and made ghettos of their once beloved communities.

By the 2012 Obama reelection, they traded their New Deal Democrat legacy voters for ascendant groups: minorities, young people, college-educated elites, and single women, all done without so much as a Dear John letter. The Republicans inherited them, but most of their strategists running messaging and campaigns had no idea what to do with them, at least on the national level.

And then there is the press covering the voter who will decide the next president: Few if any of them come from places like Weirton or Youngstown, Ohio, so they have little understanding of their worldview. Things that give people from here purpose, such as living close to extended family, are not as valuable to someone who has been transient for most of a career.

In short, we are heading once again into an election where very few people in Washington truly understand how remarkably devastating this mill closure is. Instead, it is a wire story at best, soon forgotten if measured at all. They truly do not understand how much the loss of the dignity of work has changed American politics.

That this tone-deafness is still happening 14 years after Barack Obama was given notice in the 2010 midterm elections and eight years after Donald Trump won the presidency is pretty staggering. The Democrats once attracted these voters, but they’ve moved on to the social justice crowd and don’t appear to want to anymore. I’m not sure if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) does, the press does not, and the new “very online right” is certainly not the reflection of a center-right voter in middle America. The online right just seems hell-bent on making them seem like Taylor Swift conspiracy theorists. (P.S. They’re not.)

Jeff Brauer, a political science professor at Keystone College, said Washington elites on both sides of the aisle, media elites, and now online conspiracy elites just don’t get Middle America even after this recent economically and politically difficult decade.

“Few things bond people/citizens together like trying to make a living in the real world, the dignity of work, and raising a family,” he explained, adding these bonds that cut across all divides - geographic, racial/ethnic, religious, gender, ideological/party, and even at times socioeconomic. If there is one thing we have learned over the past decade, it is that this bond over the difficulties of making an honest living can and does create unlikely coalitions of voters,” he said. “Even disparate voters from the likes of Bernie Sanders supporters to Trump supporters can agree on this.”

Indeed, economic dignity and survival make strange bedfellows. Brad Todd, founding partner of OnMessage and co-author with me of "The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics", said one thing is for certain about 2024: “We are about to read a million new stories that quote zero people who are actually going to decide the election.”

Brauer said the dignity of work is at the very core of the American experience, “Yet the elites of this country still just don’t understand, while average Americans just keep getting financially squeezed more and more.”

Weld said it is incumbent on local elected officials such as himself to be the advocates of Middle America. “I do what I do because of that. The empty buildings were already there when I was in college and high school, and it pisses me off,” he said. “I don’t think anyone fought hard enough for that from happening. We shouldn’t keep having to read again, again, another story about a town dying hard and a vacancy of no one caring.”

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

o

Bruce Springsteen, "My Hometown"

Adventures With Danno, "Food Shortage Updates, Grocery Price Increases & What Our Plans Are"

Adventures With Danno, 2/18/24

"Food Shortage Updates, 

Grocery Price Increases & What Our Plans Are"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Greg Hunter, "2024: The Year from Political Hell"

"2024: The Year from Political Hell"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong is predicting political turmoil, civilian unrest, war and a big economic downturn in 2024 in a new report called “The Year from Political Hell.” It’s not just a US election year, but it is an election year for more than half of the world. This is a global phenomenon which no one can be sure of the outcome. Armstrong explains, “This is not just the United States election. This is what you hear on the news locally. However, step outside this country, and, for example, Indonesia just voted in a leftist government. You have the EU going for elections. You have on May 2nd all the local elections in Britian. You have Russian elections on May 7th. 60% of the world is going to the polls in 2024 to vote for a new government. You might as well throw them into a tumbler, shake well and see what comes out. I mean it’s all over the place.”

On the war front, get ready for more mass killing, and don’t be surprised if it goes nuclear. Armstrong predicts, “There will be nuclear weapons. The neocons keep telling people on Capitol Hill that Russia would never use a nuke because they know we would use them back. That is nonsense! If you are about ready to conquer somebody, and this is all they’ve got left, they are pushing the button. These people, all they want is war. They don’t care. They really do not care. They don’t care about the economy. They don’t care about anything.”

Armstrong says the coming war will make the economy “crash in 2024” as people get scared, spend a lot less and save a lot more. Armstrong says, “What we are looking at is a contraction in spending because of uncertainty. This is what these neocons are creating, and they don’t want to listen to anybody, and it is just their agenda, and they don’t care what happens to the country. We are looking for a contraction of 12% to 18%. GDP is not going to be rising, but you are going to find inflation still rising.”

Armstrong also says to look for “a rebellion in government debt” as people lose faith in governments around the world. This rebellion in government issued debt will include US Treasuries, according to Armstrong. This means interest rates will continue to trend upward and not downward.

On volatility in the markets, Armstrong predicts, “Look for volatility to start around July, and there may be some false flags too.”

Armstrong continues to say Trump is still looking like he can “win in a landslide in 2024,” but expect the Deep State to pull every dirty trick in the book to keep him out of office. Armstrong points out, “If Trump gets back in power, they are all fired. They know they are losing power. Instead of reforming and doing the right thing, they clamp down and they think they can retain power by pressing us even more. Sorry, but that’s what creates revolution.”

In closing, Armstrong says, “Pretty much everything is going wrong for the Deep State, confidence in government has collapsed everywhere.” This is what makes the Deep State Dems, RINOs and Neocons very dangerous." There is much more in the 1-hour and 4-minute interview.

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with Martin Armstrong, who gives a preview of his new report called “The 2024 Outlook: The Year from Political Hell?”

- https://rumble.com/

"Every Normal Man..."

"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands,

hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."

 - H. L. Mencken

Read the article below this one.

If you are not absolutely horrified and enraged beyond words at the massacre in Gaza, and don't feel disgraced and ashamed about America supporting and allowing this horror to happen, and don't want to slit throats about this Gaza genocide to stop it, you're not even a normal human being, just one of the inhuman, psychopathically degenerate, genocidal sub-species like the monsters doing it, who so richly deserve what's coming... - CP

And paraphrasing Hunter S. Thompson, who was so right about who and what America has become... “We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world - a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you.

 

Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us - they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. F*ck them.” - Hunter S. Thompson

Shame, shame and eternal disgrace on us...

"Get Out, You Animals, Get Out: We Are Humans, Starved"

"Get Out, You Animals, Get Out: We Are Humans, Starved"

by Abby Zimet

"The grotesque madness of history's first live-streamed genocide persists as Israel daily commits acts once unimaginable. They are bombing hospitals, shooting doctors, forcing Palestinian prisoners to issue evacuation orders before murdering them, starving women and children before targeting them as they scavenge for grass, leaves, animal feed, terrorizing civilians desperately fleeing first south, then north when in truth "there is no sanctuary." And still - what the ever-loving-fuck - America keeps sending arms!

The numbers stun. The total of Palestinians killed nears 30,000, including at least 13,000 children; almost 70,000 wounded; at least 8,000 more unaccounted for and presumed dead, now decomposing, under rubble. Hundreds more have been shot in random violence in the West Bank. Every day sees "an undetermined number" of more dead or wounded. And a heedless Netanyahu repeats his savage, hollow, phantasmagoric edict, "We will continue to fight until total victory" even in the face of furious global condemnation, a Hague ruling confirming genocidal acts, and more reports from both Israeli and U.S intelligence that Israel is "not close to eliminating" Hamas, which regardless will survive as "a terror group and a guerrilla group.” At this weekend's Munich Security Conference in Germany, Israeli's coordinator for the so-called effort to return captives declared Israel and Hamas remain far apart on ceasefire negotiations because "Hamas' demands are disconnected from reality - delusional." Mournful pot/kettle.

This week, after days of shelling, Israeli ground forces attacked Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the largest of Gaza's few hospitals still functioning, where conditions were already "catastrophic." Word that hundreds of exhausted staff, critically wounded patients and about 10,000 Palestinians sheltering there would be forced to flee posed what Doctors Without Borders called "an impossible choice" - stay and become potential targets or leave "into an apocalyptic landscape" of bombings, snipers and dead bodies. The IDF promised a "precise and limited mission" and "secure passage." But surviving staff described panicked, pushing, screaming people who, once they left, were often shot at within the gates; many of those who reached checkpoints beyond were arrested, and the hospital was quickly stormed by soldiers shooting and police dogs. Video inside shows a chaotic hellscape of smoke and noise, with staff frantically trying to roll bedridden patients to safety and shouting, "Gunfire, gunfire! Heads down, everyone!"

Palestinian officials reported the deaths of at least six patients in intensive care and three in the children's nursery; most died of lack of oxygen after an Israeli-imposed power shortage. Video shows staff scrambling to treat a bloodied doctor shot in the chest by a sniper through a window of the operating room, and two women were said to have given birth in "abhorrent conditions, without electricity, water, food, or heat." Amidst the sound of gunfire, staff reported bodies lying outside in the courtyard where over a dozen people have been shot, or left in the street after trying to get to shelter. "We can see from the hospital a lot of dead bodies...and cats and dogs around these bodies." The Israeli military, who refused WHO entry, said they captured "dozens of terror suspects" in the assault, claims Hamas refuted as "lies to justify war crimes." Before they entered, video from Palestinian journalist Mohammed El Helou shows, IDF soldiers manning bulldozers outside yelled through loudspeakers, "Get out, you animals! Get out!"

One of just two remaining journalists at Nasser, El Helou reported having seen Jamal Abu Al-Ola, a young wide-eyed Palestinian, arrive at the entrance dressed n white PPE, his hands bound in front of him. Abu Al-Ola had evidently tried to leave the hospital earlier when Israeli soldiers seized him, beat him, and sent him back in to tell those remaining they had to leave the hospital "because they are going to blow it up." After he relayed the evacuation order, El Helou said, Abu Al-Ola'a mother, also sheltering there, begged him not to go back out, but he said soldiers had told him he must or the civilians would be in danger. Video by Mohammad Salama, the other journalist there, shows Abu Al-Ola walking out with several people who then trail away; when he is still inside the gates, he is shot three times in the chest by an Israeli soldier. (An IDF spokesman later said "the incident in question (is) being reviewed.") El Helou ended his video quietly noting people were leaving "in search of safety that does not exist in Gaza."

Shortly after, two Israelis were killed and four wounded at a bus stop when a Palestinian attacker arrived in a car and opened fire; he was shot and killed by an IDF soldier. An almost gleeful Netanyahu used the incident to again reject the nation of a ceasefire - "Now is not the time to be speaking about gifts for the Palestinian people" - and argue, "The entire country is a front and the murderers, who come not only from Gaza, want to kill us all." His rabid rhetoric was echoed by former Mossad official Rami Igra, who both repeated and wildly inflated the genocidal claim of President Herzog that there are “no uninvolved (civilians) in Gaza." "Every house in Gaza is a Hamas HQ, weapons, Al Aqsa, everything, all the signs are there," Igra said in an interview. "In Gaza, everyone is involved. Everyone voted Hamas. Anyone over the age of four is a Hamas supporter." When the not-quite-yet-Nazi interviewer clarified that perhaps kids under four could be deemed innocent, a big-hearted Igra agreed, albeit reluctantly.

Still, America is obscenely, reportedly preparing to send Israel more genocidal weaponry, including a thousand each of MK-82 500-pound bombs and KMU-572 Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs), without which Israel might have to curtail its slaughter in 19 weeks. The Intercept's Jeremy Scahill excoriates Biden for refusing to "use his leverage as Israel’s arms dealer," evidently because, "There is no Israeli war crime too extreme for (him) to consider pausing," never mind ending, the flow of weapons. Besides timid ceasefire requests to his "great, great friend" Netanyahu, Biden and his spin doctors merely issue "occasional public platitudes" about Gaza's suffering, and gently denounce Israeli attacks as not quite "surgical" enough. It didn't help that on Super Bowl night, as Israel launched its "next stage of genocide" with air strikes on Rafah, a "night full of horror" that killed over 70 - "there were a lot of body parts," said one hospital - Biden released one of his jokey Dark Brandon memes ripped as "tone-deaf to the cries of humanity."

Meanwhile, the mournful, bloody evidence of Israel's less-than-precise campaign of annihilation is everywhere in Gaza. Along with its murder of journalists, doctors, aid workers, grandmothers "older than Israel" and academics in a place with one of the world's highest literacy rates to "inflict maximum damage on the Palestinian community," there are, of course, the children. Perhaps 20,000 children, many wounded, who've been orphaned; up to ten a day losing limbs to massive injuries from air strikes; an entire young population of over a million, already emotionally battered by years of violence, facing more trauma "beyond their age and endurance," needing support scarce at best. And, now, children homeless, hungry, thirsty, sick, so famished they go scouring for food under skies full of Israeli planes. Hit by bombs, they lie at one hospital wounded, bandaged, spectrally skinny, faces blurred. "Our children are dying," says one father. "No one is helping us...But they are children just like any other child in the world."

In Rafah, a "25-square-mile death cage" where 1.5 million Palestinians have fled and are trapped, people are "desperate, hungry and terrified." Having been told by Israel to "evacuate" to the south, "Rafah is as far south as anyone can go - they have nowhere else to evacuate to." A reported Israeli ground assault looms; so does starvation. With Israel using hunger as a weapon and blocking most aid, rights groups say “every single person in the Territory is now experiencing extreme levels of hunger." Hungry children fight over stale bread, walk and scavenge for hours, cry dazed in the rain until, given a can, they retreat to their tent.People often block the rare aid truck - twice a week, UNRWA tries to bring each 2 water bottles, three biscuits, an occasional can of food - and devour what they find. Children suffer from diarrhea, turn yellow from malnutrition, wake up screaming for food; in the north, some go without food for days. One elderly man: "We live in complete hunger." One mother: "We are dying slowly." Another: "We are humans, starved."

People have resorted to grinding animal feed into flour, but supplies are dwindling. They are combing fields to eat grass, weeds, leaves. A daughter angrily notes, "We are eating leaves from the trees"; her mother mournfully adds there isn't even water to cook them. Some families have sought shelter if not food at empty farms outside Rafah, turning chicken cages into children's beds; from the cages - "they are very cold and dark at night" - kids can see the border where Egypt is ominously building an enclosed refugee camp. Others who've moved "from one place to another like chess pieces" are leaving Rafah - "We eat grass and drink polluted water" - to return north to bombed-out homes. Months ago, Abu Ahmed Jaber pulled his pregnant daughter and her one-year-old from the rubble; they fled south to a packed U.N. school with no food, water, toilets; now they're back in the ruins of the house "I built with my hands, stone by stone." At night, unable to sleep, he cries, asking, "What have I and my family done?" Nothing, just like the 66 Palestinians most recently killed by Israel in "a very bloody day." How many, we wonder, were children."

- https://www.commondreams.org/

Jeremiah Babe, "Restaurants Are Closing Down Forever"

Jeremiah Babe, 2/17/24

"Restaurants Are Closing Down Forever,

 A Sad Reality; Zombies Shopping online"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: The Moody Blues, “Blue World”

Full screen recommended.

The Moody Blues, “Blue World”

"Perhaps..."

"Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in 

heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through

 and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy."

~ An Eskimo saying.

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 3521 is a mere 35 million light-years away, toward the constellation Leo. Relatively bright in planet Earth's sky, NGC 3521 is easily visible in small telescopes but often overlooked by amateur imagers in favor of other Leo spiral galaxies, like M66 and M65. It's hard to overlook in this colorful cosmic portrait, though.

Spanning some 50,000 light-years the galaxy sports characteristic patchy, irregular spiral arms laced with dust, pink star forming regions, and clusters of young, blue stars. Remarkably, this deep image also finds NGC 3521 embedded in gigantic bubble-like shells. The shells are likely tidal debris, streams of stars torn from satellite galaxies that have undergone mergers with NGC 3521 in the distant past."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210402.html

"The Worst Part..."

"Our world is not safe. It is a toxic swamp populated by predators and parasites. The odds are stacked against us from the moment of conception. We survive only because we fight the elements, hunger, disease, each other. And, although civilization promises us safe harbor, that promise is a fairy tale. Only the storm is real. It comes for each of us. And we cannot win. We can only choose how we will suffer our defeat. We can meekly take our beatings, and die like lemmings, finding solace in the belief that we shall one day inherit the earth. Or, we can plunge into the chaos with eyes wide open, taking comfort instead from the bruises, scars, and broken bones which prove that we fought to live and die as gods."

 - J.K. Franko, "Life for Life"

o

"The worst part is wondering how you'll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where you'll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it's treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself."

- Louis-Ferdinand Celineo

o

"In the movie 'The Lion in Winter', when the sons, in the dungeon, think they hear Henry coming down the stairs to kill them:

Richard: "He's here! He'll get no satisfaction out of us! Don't let him see you beg! Take it like a man!"

Geoffrey: "You chivalric fool! As if the way one falls down matters!"

Richard:  "Well, when the fall is all that's left, it matters a great deal."

"15 Retailers Facing Imminent Bankruptcy In 2024"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 2/17/24

"15 Retailers Facing Imminent Bankruptcy In 2024"

"In 2024, many retailers are facing tough times, possibly even bankruptcy. Some big names like Ascena Retail, known for Ann Taylor and others, are struggling with high debt and stock prices dropping. Joann, the craft store, had ups and downs during the pandemic but now faces high bankruptcy risks. Even popular brands like Peloton and Beyond Meat are feeling the squeeze. With challenges like declining sales and layoffs, companies like Rent the Runway and Marley Spoon are also on shaky ground. Even well-known names like The Container Store and Fossil Watches are facing uncertain futures."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Wag The Dog, 2020s Edition"

"Wag The Dog, 2020s Edition"

by Addison Wiggin

“What difference does it make if it’s true?”

– Quote

"What a treat! This week availed us to a whole array of “wag the dog” scenarios in the news. "Wag the Dog," if you remember, was a satirical black comedy produced and directed by Baltimore’s own Barry Levinson. It was written by the playwright David Mamet, and stars Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro among a cast of up and comers. The film fictitiously relates the story of a “spin doctor” and a Hollywood producer who fabricate a war in Albania to distract voters from a presidential sex scandal. Ultimately, "Wag The Dog" is a satire about the “office behind the Oval office.”

Un-serendipitously, the film was released on Christmas Day in 1997 – one month before then-president Bill Clinton was caught trying to launder Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress. “There’s always been a relationship between Hollywood and politics and we wanted to have some fun with it,” Jane Rosenthal, who produced the film with star Robert De Niro, told Vanity Fair on the 25th anniversary of the film’s release. “But as proud as I am of the movie, it makes me very sad that you couldn’t even make up some of the shit that’s going on right now.”

The Biden administration was all too happy, yesterday, to pounce on news about the death of Putin’s political adversary Alexy Nevaly. The President declared it was “yet more proof of Putin’s brutality.” Navalny’s death “underscores the weakness and rot” of Putin’s system, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. Vice President Kamala Harris expressed her “sorrow and outrage” in a private meeting with Navalny’s widow, the White House released.

What are the spin doctors worried about now? Where to start, eh?

The obvious “scandal” the White House would want to distract from voters’ view from today is the Commander-in-Chief’s pitched battle with his own party… and his grasp of reality. Take, for example, the special counsel’s report heard round the world. Robert Hur taking pity on president Biden, forgoing criminal charges for steali… er, storing classified documents in his garage, because he’s “a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” Even the Economist took notice and deigned to write “the man supposed to stop Donald Trump is an unpopular 81-year old. In failing to look past Joe Biden, Democrats have shown ‘cowardice and complacency’.”

Tucker Carlson didn’t help. He added insult to injury by allowing Putin to declare he didn’t think Biden was in charge at the White House anyway. Putin:

PUTIN: “We’re convinced Biden is not running the country. Let’s say we have good sources that confirm that but it’s plain for anyone to see for themselves. The U.S. has now entered into a dark period. It has unaccountable leadership.”

And:

PUTIN: “Joe Biden may not even be aware of what’s going on. He may not understand the level of sanctions thrown at Russia. Who put those sanctions together? Those are our adversaries…. The elites have deserted you.” Carlson’s interview, in fact, combined both questions – Biden’s senility and the “shadow state” puppet show – and put them front and center for your attention.

As if that wasn’t enough, the apparatchiks convened at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. also had to contend with an exposé of new evidence regarding their own skulduggery leading up to Trump’s successful 2016 bid: Russia-gate. “It was all a lie,” independent journalists Michael Shellenberger, Alex Gutentag, and Matt Taibbi wrote in the online publication Public, exhibiting exhaustive research they’ve been doing for 8 years.

“The Trump-Russia scandal made its formal launch on January 6th, 2017, when the office of the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper published what’s called an “Intelligence Community Assessment,” or “ICA,” as it’s universally known in Washington. “Release of the ICA dominated headlines, fixed Donald Trump in the minds of millions of Americans as a Manchurian candidate controlled by Vladamir Putin, and upended his in-coming administration. “The report declared that Russia and Putin interfered in the 2016 presidential election to ‘denigrate’ Hillary Clinton and ‘harm her electability,’ thanks to their ‘clear’ preference for President-elect [Donald] Trump.”

“It was powerful stuff. And it was dead wrong…” The Russiagate “conspiracy” was meant to show that Russians wanted Trump to get elected to the presidency because Trump and Putin were buddies. The opposite is, in fact, true.

First, the Russians weren’t spying on Trump at all. It was the CIA and other members of the “Five Eyes” – the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand – the countries with which the intelligence community shared intel openly.

Second, the Russians actually preferred that Hillary Clinton win the election in 2016, because she was a known entity and represented continuity with the prior Obama group of White House occupants.

In a livestream webcast aired at 4:00 p.m. yesterday, Taibbi exhibited exactly how Lesley Stahl and the CBS flagship news show "60 Minutes" still hasn't corrected its infamous “eye-roll” over surveillance of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign. In preparation for the webcast, Taibbi wrote on his own page on Substack:

"The tale of improper CIA and FBI surveillance mixed with manufactured intelligence has been in the ether since late 2017 and early 2018. Then he listed “just a few of the names who reported stories in this direction over the years, in some cases day after day on broadcast shows. An attentive reader will notice nearly everyone on the list has been denounced at some point by the mainstream commentators who got this story horribly wrong.” The list included 11 high-profile journalists who were branded as “conspiracy theorists” and “whack-jobs,” many of whom lost their jobs. Some notable names who got smeared for writing or talking about the truth: the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo and realclearinvestigations.com’s Aaron Mate.

Taibbi also produced facsimiles of the documents that show how the intelligence community of the West was, in fact, spying on the Trump campaign in 2016. As well as recording conversations with members of Trump’s campaign without their knowledge.“On their YouTube page, 60 Minutes,” Taibbi writes, “still hasn’t corrected its headline: ‘President Trump repeats unsupported claim about spying.’ The ‘money’ exchange between Donald Trump and host Lesley Stahl:

TRUMP: They spied on my campaign, Leslie.
STAHL: There’s no real evidence of that.
TRUMP: Of course there is.
STAHL: No.
TRUMP: It’s all over the place.
STAHL: Sir…
TRUMP: Leslie, they spied on my campaign and they got caught.
STAHL: Can I say something? This is 60 Minutes and we can’t put on things we can't verify.

“This is 60 Minutes and we can’t put on things that we can’t verify!” continues Taibbi, “Stahl said this a year after the publication of Barack Obama appointee and Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the Trump-Russia investigation that described how the FBI used ‘intrusive techniques,’ like having informants “interact and consensually record multiple conversations” with Trump aides “both during and after the time they were working for the Trump campaign.” That Horowitz report used the term CHS, or “confidential human source” - also known as an informant, also known as a spy - 1,122 times!”

Shellenberger, Gutenberg, and Taibbi are all well known for defending free speech during the crackdown and tech collusion during the pandemic. Taibbi’s project The Twitter Files blew the lid of the White House’s attempts to censor ‘tweet’s that spoke out against the mRNA vaccines and mask mandates.

Ultimately, the White House’s attempts to censor social media landed them in court. The lawsuit Missouri v. Biden, which prohibits members of Biden’s staff from contacting the major social media companies directly, is making its way to the Supreme Court. The furor also enticed Elon Musk to spend $44 Billion dollars of his “own money” to acquire Twitter and rename America’s Town Square “X.”

No doubt, during this election year, 2024, the White House would much prefer a media war against Albania (or Iran) trumped up by Hollywood than have to deal with the fallout of organized collusion between the intelligence community and the Democratic Party coming to light now. So it goes..."

- https://thewigginsessions.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

The Dave Cullen Show, 2/17/26

"Wag The Dog" (1997) Review

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Fernley, Nevada, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Dan, I Allegedly, "She Got Scammed Out of $50,000"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly 2/17/24

"She Got Scammed Out of $50,000"

"The finance reporter from a prominent magazine, got a phone call telling her that she was the victim of identity theft and that they represented the CIA. She needed to give them $50,000 and they could protect her and her family and make sure that the troubles would go away. She complied like an imbecile."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Being Crazy..."

“When the whole world is running headlong towards the precipice, 

one who walks in the opposite direction is looked at as being crazy.”

~ T. S. Eliot

“Are You Sane?”

“Are You Sane?”

by Charles Hugh Smith

“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.”

– Kurt Vonnegut, “Welcome to the Monkey House”

“Madness has engulfed the entire world, with a concentration of power in the hands of a few psychopathic financial elite wielding an inordinate and dangerous expanse of power over the lives of the common man. They are a modern day version of Al Capone, except their weapons of choice aren’t machine guns, but a printing press, peddling debt, creating derivatives of mass destruction, and peddling heaping doses of disinformation. The contemporary criminal class wears Hermes suits, Rolex watches and diamond studded pinky rings, drops $500 to dine at Masa in NYC, travels by chauffeured limo, lives in $10 million NYC penthouse suites, occupies luxurious corner offices in hundred story glass towers, and spends weekends hobnobbing with the other financial elite at their villas in the Hamptons. They have nothing but utter contempt for the lowly peasants who depend upon a weekly paycheck to make ends meet. Why work when you can steal $1 or $2 billion from farmers with no consequences?

The willfully ignorant masses are kept at bay by the selling them a false dichotomy of Republicans versus Democrats, conservatives versus liberals, and capitalism versus socialism. The ruling class distracts the public with fake wars on poverty, drugs and terror, while using these storylines to further enrich themselves and keep the public alarmed and frightened. We’ve been “fighting” the wars on poverty and drugs for over four decades and poverty is at record levels, while drugs are easier to obtain than candy in a candy store. The war on terror is nothing more than a corporate arms dealer welfare plan. The end of the Cold War put a real crimp in the bottom lines of Lockheed Martin and the rest of the peddlers of death. 9/11 and the subsequent undeclared wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, with Iran on the horizon, have been a godsend to the bottom lines of the corporations Eisenhower warned about in 1961.

In reality, the politicians are interchangeable and bought off by corporate and special interests. The people are sold a fable, and controlled opposition is the fairy tale. They perpetuate the welfare/warfare state that enriches Wall Street, the military industrial complex, the healthcare service complex, politically connected mega-corporations and the corporate media propaganda complex. The American people are given the illusion of choice by their keepers. The system is rigged. The real decisions are made by unelected secretive men who operate in the shadows and use their wealth to direct the decision making of the politicians, government bureaucrats, and corporate entities that benefit from those decisions. Edward Bernays described a society that existed in the 19th Century, 20th Century, and has now grown to immense proportions in the 21st Century:

“Political campaigns today are all sideshows. A presidential candidate may be ‘drafted’ in response to ‘overwhelming popular demand,’ but it is well known that his name may be decided upon by half a dozen men sitting around a table in a hotel room. The conscious manipulation of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.” – Edward Bernays

The manipulation of the masses has been perfected by the ruling class through decades of corporate mass media messaging the purposeful dumbing down of the populace through government public school education that teaches children how to feel rather than how to think. The conscious manipulation of the masses has been designed to produce obedient non-thinking consumers of corporate products, educated to believe the accumulation of material goods with debt constitutes wealth, to fear whatever the government tells them to fear, and never look up from their iGadgets long enough to actually think for themselves. We are bombarded with Orwellian memes designed to keep us sedated and pliant, as the ruling class pillages the national wealth and expands their power and control over our lives.

Conform; Stay Asleep; Do Not Question Authority; Obey; Consume; Reproduce; Submit; Watch TV; Buy; Follow; Doubt Humanity; No New Ideas; Feel, Don’t Think; Fear; Accumulate; Honor Apathy; Believe Experts; Surrender; Spend; No Independent Thought; Win; Want More; Hate; Succumb To Desire; Yield To Power; Choose Safety Over Liberty; Choose Security Over Freedom

This insane world was created through decades of bad decisions, believing in false prophets, choosing current consumption over sustainable long-term savings based growth, electing corruptible men who promised voters entitlements that were mathematically impossible to deliver, the disintegration of a sense of civic and community obligation and a gradual degradation of the national intelligence and character.

Vonnegut and Huxley’s social commentary reveals a basic truth that societies and human beings have been prone to bouts of madness over the course of decades and centuries. Humans are a weak species, susceptible to the vagaries of greed, lust, gluttony, wrath, sloth, envy and pride. The seven deadly sins are in full bloom today, as the American empire descends through Dante’s inferno of reality TV, celebrity worship, religious zealotry, adulation of wealthy titans, military conquest and worship of false idols.

This is where the interests of those in power and those being ruled have coincided, as a fiat based monetary system allowed unlimited spending to keep the welfare/warfare state growing, enriching the crony capitalists, deepening the power of the state, and providing the masses with foreign made trinkets, baubles, corporate logoed clothing, techno-gadgets, and pimped out financed wheels. The concepts of self-restraint, discipline, saving for a rainy day, prudence, discretion, and deferred gratification are rarely displayed in modern day America. In a case of mass delusion, Americans have convinced themselves to live for today, recklessly ignore their futures, irresponsibly spend money they don’t have on things they don’t need, neglect their civic duty towards future generations, choose ignorance over knowledge, and vote for spineless politicians who promise them entitlements that are mathematically impossible to honor. The public’s foolish attitude towards debt accumulation matches the arrogance of our gutless intellectually dishonest leaders.”

- http://www.theburningplatform.com/

"Shall We Play A Game?"

“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

- "War Games"

"This is the "lesson" scene from the movie "War Games" where we learn that the only way to win in Nuclear War is not to play.

The story behind the quote: The quote comes from the 1983 science fiction thriller, "WarGames." In the film, all of the United States nuclear launch capabilities is given to a computer called “Joshua” or WOPR, which stands for War Operation Plan Response. It is programmed to consistently run military simulations to concoct the best plan of an attack if nuclear retaliation is needed. David Lightman (played by Matthew Broderick) unwittingly hacks into Joshua and causes the computer to think that the Soviet Union has launched missiles at the United States.

The quote comes from the very end of the film. David forces Joshua to play tic-tac-toe against itself in the attempt to make it understand the concept of mutually assured destruction. As Joshua obtains the final launch code, it runs through all the possible scenarios in an attempt to find a winning plan. After cycling through all of them and not finding one where anyone survives, the machine delivers the quote."

○

"It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump." 

- David Ormsby-Gore

Canadian Prepper, "Alert! Diplomats Flee Russia; CNN Confirms Nuclear EMP In Space! Israel Attacks Iran"

Canadian Prepper, 2/17/24

"Alert! Diplomats Flee Russia; 

CNN Confirms Nuclear EMP In Space! Israel Attacks Iran"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Does Anyone Know..."

"All sins, of course, deserve to be treated with mercy: we all do what we can, and life is too hard and too cruel for us to condemn anyone for failing in this area. Does anyone know what he himself would do if faced with the worst, and how much truth could he bear under such circumstances?" 

- Andre Comte-Sponville

○

Joe South, "Walk A Mile In My Shoes"

"You Must Be..."

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the cat.

 "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, 

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

I know, I know lol...

Thanks for stopping by!

"Government Issuing Fraudulent Statistics To Cover Up How Bad It Really Is"

"Government Issuing Fraudulent Statistics 

To Cover Up How Bad It Really Is"

by Jim Quinn

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

- Mark Twain

“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” – Ludwig von Mises

"Today is so reminiscent of the 2007/2008 time frame when it was clear to those of us analyzing the real data and observing what was happening in the real world that it was all about to come crashing down. The powers that be and their media mouthpieces kept assuring everyone that it was under control and not to worry. And then it all collapsed suddenly, like a covid vax recipient on a soccer field.

Politicians, bankers, and their media mouthpieces are going through the same exercise today. All is well. The stock market is at all-time highs. That proves everything is fine. It’s not. The next collapse is in motion, but the ruling class won’t let you know until they have positioned themselves to profit from your pain and suffering. Don’t believe a word they say.

Prepare for another 2008/2009 scenario, or worse. The last crisis was caused by too much debt. Global debt was $195 trillion in 2008. Today it is $310 trillion. The actions taken in the last 15 years by those running this shitshow were to increase debt by 60% in order to “solve” our debt problem. This collapse is going to be epic. There will be a huge chapter in history books about the delusional debt collapse of the American empire. I was right in August 2008 and I expect I’ll be right now.

• https://seekingalpha.com/article/88725-is-the-u-s-banking-system-safe

•https://seekingalpha.com/article/92303-looming-financial-catastrophe-a-real-inconvenient-truth

•https://seekingalpha.com/article/90892-the-great-consumer-crash-of-2009

"Every Federal Reserve bubble ends in a large fraud being exposed. Rather than only corporations or banks cooking their books we now have governments cooking their books." 

- Edward Dowd (@DowdEdward) February 16, 2024

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

Hat tip to Jim Quinn for this material.

Fred Reed, "Because We Say So"

“'Because We Say So': 

The Case for Cultural Authority"

By Fred Reed

"Parents of bright children learn the futility of argument over ill-advised desires of their offspring. A daughter of fourteen who wants to go to what predictably will be a drunken fraternity party will argue that they are really nice boys and daddy, you are prejudging, It isn’t fair, you don’t even know them and she will come home early and…The correct answer, promoting her wellbeing, is “No. You are not going to a frat party. Why? Because I said so. We have finished talking about it”

While anything can be argued, certain things are known to provide better outcomes than others. This is as true of societies as of raising children. The answer equally should be “Because we said so.” A healthy society enjoys a dominant culture that sets limits on behavior, especially regarding sexual expression, manners, crime, and societal obligation - and enforces them. By what authority? “Because we say so.” Everyone then knows the rules and plays by them.

Imposed authority - because we said so - is essential. It can be remarkably hard to argue against, say, pedophilia. Children are sexual beings. They play doctor, don’t they? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. The only reason being fondled by a caring adult upsets a girl of six is the inculcation of out-moded Victorian, etc. Or: Why should I not ride a city bus stark naked? We have all seen naked people. What is the problem? It is a form of political expression against prudish norms…

The correct response to pedophilia is not legal theorizing but: Twenty years, no parole. We all know viscerally that sexual relations between adults and little girls are wrong. We know that public nudity would be unpleasant for most people. So it doesn’t happen.

“Because we say so.”

Healthy societies enforce many such prohibitions. For example, when I was a stripling many moons ago, foul language was not tolerated in mixed company. Period. There was no argument. It certainly wasn’t allowed on television. In high school boys never said, “F*ck” or “sh*t” around girls. There was no prissiness in this. The girls knew the words and body parts as well as the boys and used the Anglo-Saxon terms among themselves. But such speech was regarded as being like picking one’s nose or farting loudly. They were not done, or tolerated, in mixed company.

Saying “F**king this” and “f**king that” and “Sally’s f**king Bobby” can be defended on First Amendment grounds. It is, after all, speech. The correct response should be, and for many decades was, “No. Because we said so.” And, remember, the First Amendment was intended to protect political speech, not vulgarity.)

Over the centuries, sexual curiosities, once called perversions, have characterized decaying cultures. The Weimar Republic comes to mind. Read Juvenal’s "Satires" on ancient Rome. There is something ridiculous and, often, revolting about men in lipstick swiveling and lisping, or priests regarding the private parts of little boys as popsicles, or people of one sex pretending to be of the other, or hobbyist S&M groups piercing the body parts of others with hypodermic needles, or wife swapping.

All of these have been around forever and so can be regarded as “natural.” (So can hemorrhagic tuberculosis. Is this a recommendation?) A healthy culture may regard the libidinal curiosities practiced behind closed doors as nobody’s business if not involving children, behind closed doors is where they belong. Because we say so.

Because we say so.

There is such a thing as the tone of a society. It matters. Violeta watches international series on TV, chiefly from Korea, Japan, and China (though, she says, the last have been pulled from YouTube now that China is a designated enemy). These, she says, deal without scatology or lubricity with people who find moral solutions to life’s problems. In the America series every third word is “f**k,” and the series deal heavily with homosexual and “trans” matters, often treated as comedy. Widely ventilated on the ever-present screen, this gives society the tone of a costume party in Caligula’s basement.

All of this can be defended. Why not show explicit copulation on television? It’s natch-ur-al. Everybody knows about it. Most have done it. Our parents certainly did. Why should children not learn about this central activity of existence? Why the unnatural repression? Why not show people on the toilet? Think of the comic value. It’s artistic freedom. Why not?

Because we say so. Except we don’t.

In my pre-Cambrian youth, having on-line porn, available to children of nine, of a tied-up young woman being whipped bloody or screwed by a German shepherd would not have been tolerated. Today it is allowed because the Supreme Court mistakenly thinks it is expression protected by the Constitution. (The Constitution says “speech,” not “expression.”)

Degraded culture drives out healthy. Part of the culture of my youth were respect for girls and teachers, reasonably grammatical English, avoiding violence, obedience to the law (though not always involving obsessive regard for liquor laws or speed limits) and matters of dress. For example, boys didn’t wear their pants halfway down their butts. There was no rule against butt-hangers. None was necessary. If it wasn’t in the culture, it didn’t happen.

Because we said so.

Civilized behavior must be defended without discussion, since, after all, any of it can be questioned. If one group are allowed such lyrical expression as, “Dat muhfuh be dumbsh*t,” it becomes impossible to require English of anyone. Teachers cannot protect themselves against the muscularly animalic. In a healthy culture they don’t have to.

In particular, a culture that won’t defend itself will not last. The dominant culture needs to enforce its rules on others impinging on it. In the US, many of these are close enough in civilizational values as to cause only minor friction. Many of the Asian cultures, for example, and Latinos. But when incoming Afghans want to beat, grope, and rape women, they need to be slapped down, hard, or shipped back where they came from. When Moslems engage in female genital mutilation, the answer is twenty years, no parole. Because we say so. You are not going to do that to women in our country. Get used to it. Or get out.

Because we say so.

Now, every aspect of American culture as it was can be attacked as a restriction on freedom. But that is why culture exists. What have we created by eviscerating the authority of the culture? Miserable young without aim or purpose. A nation awash in drugs to alleviate the malaise. Hundreds of thousands dying of overdose. High indices of suicide. Growing semiliteracy among whites. Unwillingness to control a degree of crime unheard of in the advanced countries. Profound disunity.

Add mass shootings, metal detectors and police in schools, active-shooter drills, sharply declining academic standards, hundreds of thousands of opioid deaths, ambushes of policemen, massive nation-wide riots, high illegitimacy, fascination with sexual confusion among the young, rapidly tightening censorship, and what appears to be widespread misery.

None of this happened in, say, 1960, when a healthy culture could say, “No. Because we say so. Deal with it.”

- https://fredoneverything.org/