Tuesday, March 12, 2024

"There Are Simply No Answers..."

“How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.”
- Barry Lopez

”The 5 Stages of Economic Collapse”

”The 5 Stages of Economic Collapse” 
by Dmitry Orlov

“Elizabeth Kübler-Ross defined the five stages of coming to terms with grief and tragedy as denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, and applied it quite successfully to various forms of catastrophic personal loss, such as death of a loved one, sudden end to one’s career, and so forth. Several thinkers, notably James Howard Kunstler and, more recently John Michael Greer, have pointed out that the Kübler-Ross model is also quite terrifyingly accurate in reflecting the process by which society as a whole (or at least the informed and thinking parts of it) is reconciling itself to the inevitability of a discontinuous future, with our institutions and life support systems undermined by a combination of resource depletion, catastrophic climate change, and political impotence.

But so far, little has been said specifically about the finer structure of these discontinuities. Instead, there is to be found continuum of subjective judgments, ranging from “a severe and prolonged recession” (the prediction we most often read in the financial press), to Kunstler’s evocative but unscientific-sounding “clusterf**k,” to the ever-popular “Collapse of Western Civilization,” painted with an ever-wider brush-stroke.

For those of us who have already gone through all of the emotional stages of reconciling ourselves to the prospect of social and economic upheaval, it might be helpful to have a more precise terminology that goes beyond such emotionally charged phrases. Defining a taxonomy of collapses might prove to be more than just an intellectual exercise: based on our abilities and circumstances, some of us may be able to specifically plan for a certain stage of collapse as a temporary, or even permanent, stopping point.

Even if society at the current stage of socioeconomic complexity will no longer be possible, and even if, as Tainter points in his “Collapse of Complex Societies,” there are circumstances in which collapse happens to be the correct adaptive response, it need not automatically cause a population crash, with the survivors disbanding into solitary, feral humans dispersed in the wilderness and subsisting miserably. Collapse can be conceived of as an orderly, organized retreat rather than a rout.

For instance, the collapse of the Soviet Union – our most recent and my personal favorite example of an imperial collapse – did not reach the point of political disintegration of the republics that made it up, although some of them (Georgia, Moldova) did lose some territory to separatist movements. And although most of the economy shut down for a time, many institutions, including the military, public utilities, and public transportation, continued to function throughout. And although there was much social dislocation and suffering, society as a whole did not collapse, because most of the population did not lose access to food, housing, medicine, or any of the other survival necessities. The command-and-control structure of the Soviet economy largely decoupled the necessities of daily life from any element of market psychology, associating them instead with physical flows of energy and physical access to resources. Thus situation, as I argue in my forthcoming book, Reinventing Collapse, allowed the Soviet population to inadvertently achieve a greater level of collapse-preparedness than is currently possible in the United States.

Having given a lot of thought to both the differences and the similarities between the two superpowers – the one that has collapsed already, and the one that is collapsing as I write this – I feel ready to attempt a bold conjecture, and define five stages of collapse, to serve as mental milestones as we gauge our own collapse-preparedness and see what can be done to improve it.

Rather than tying each phase to a particular emotion, as in the Kübler-Ross model, the proposed taxonomy ties each of the five collapse stages to the breaching of a specific level of trust, or faith, in the status quo. Although each stage causes physical, observable changes in the environment, these can be gradual, while the mental flip is generally quite swift. It is something of a cultural universal that nobody (but a real fool) wants to be the last fool to believe in a lie.

Stages of Collapse:

Stage 1: Financial collapse. Faith in “business as usual” is lost. The future is no longer assumed resemble the past in any way that allows risk to be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent; savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost.

Stage 2: Commercial collapse. Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost. Money is devalued and/or becomes scarce, commodities are hoarded, import and retail chains break down, and widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.

Stage 3: Political collapse. Faith that “the government will take care of you” is lost. As official attempts to mitigate widespread loss of access to commercial sources of survival necessities fail to make a difference, the political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.

Stage 4: Social collapse. Faith that “your people will take care of you” is lost. As local social institutions, be they charities, community leaders, or other groups that rush in to fill the power vacuum, run out of resources or fail through internal conflict.

Stage 5: Cultural collapse. Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for “kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity” (Turnbull, "The Mountain People"). Families disband and compete as individuals for scarce resources. The new motto becomes “May you die today so that I die tomorrow” (Solzhenitsyn, "The Gulag Archipelago"). There may even be some cannibalism.

Although many people imagine collapse to be a sort of elevator that goes to the sub-basement (our Stage 5) no matter which button you push, no such automatic mechanism can be discerned. Rather, driving us all to Stage 5 will require that a concerted effort be made at each of the intervening stages. That all the players seem poised to make just such an effort may give this collapse the form a classical tragedy – a conscious but inexorable march to perdition – rather than a farce (“Oops! Ah, here we are, Stage 5.” – “So, whom do we eat first?” – “Me! I am delicious!”) Let us sketch out this process.

Financial collapse, as we are are currently observing it, consists of two parts. One is that a part of the general population is forced to move, no longer able to afford the house they bought based on inflated assessments, forged income numbers, and foolish expectations of endless asset inflation. Since, technically, they should never have been allowed to buy these houses, and were only able to do so because of financial and political malfeasance, this is actually a healthy development. The second part consists of men in expensive suits tossing bundles of suddenly worthless paper up in the air, ripping out their remaining hair, and (some of us might uncharitably hope) setting themselves on fire on the steps of the Federal Reserve. They, to express it in their own vernacular, “f**ked up,” and so this is also just as it should be.

The government response to this could be to offer some helpful homilies about “the wages of sin” and to open a few soup kitchens and flop houses in a variety of locations including Wall Street. The message would be: “You former debt addicts and gamblers, as you say, ‘f****d up,’ and so this will really hurt for a long time. We will never let you anywhere near big money again. Get yourselves over to the soup kitchen, and bring your own bowl, because we don’t do dishes.” This would result in a stable Stage 1 collapse – the Second Great Depression.

However, this is unlikely, because in the US the government happens to be debt addict and gambler number one. As individuals, we may have been as virtuous as we wished, but the government will have still run up exorbitant debts on our behalf. Every level of government, from local municipalities and authorities, which need the financial markets to finance their public works and public services, to the federal government, which relies on foreign investment to finance its endless wars, is addicted to public debt. They know they cannot stop borrowing, and so they will do anything they can to keep the game going for as long as possible.

About the only thing the government currently seems it fit to do is extend further credit to those in trouble, by setting interest rates at far below inflation, by accepting worthless bits of paper as collateral and by pumping money into insolvent financial institutions. This has the effect of diluting the dollar, further undermining its value, and will, in due course, lead to hyperinflation, which is bad enough in any economy, but is especially serious for one dominated by imports. As imports dry up and the associated parts of the economy shut down, we pass Stage 2: Commercial Collapse.

As businesses shut down, storefronts are boarded up and the population is left largely penniless and dependent on FEMA and charity for survival, the government may consider what to do next. It could, for example, repatriate all foreign troops and set them to work on public works projects designed to directly help the population. It could promote local economic self-sufficiency, by establishing community-supported agriculture programs, erecting renewable energy systems, and organizing and training local self-defense forces to maintain law and order. The Army Corps of Engineers could be ordered to bulldoze buildings erected on former farmland around city centers, return the land to cultivation, and to construct high-density solar-heated housing in urban centers to resettle those who are displaced. In the interim, it could reduce homelessness by imposing a steep tax on vacant residential properties and funneling the proceeds into rent subsidies for the indigent. With plenty of luck, such measures may be able to reverse the trend, eventually providing for a restoration of pre-Stage 2 conditions.

This may or may not be a good plan, but in any case it is rather unrealistic, because the United States, being so deeply in debt, will be forced to accede to the wishes of its foreign creditors, who own a lot of national assets (land, buildings, and businesses) and who would rather see a dependent American population slaving away working off their debt than a self-sufficient one, conveniently forgetting that they have mortgaged their children’s futures to pay for military fiascos, big houses, big cars, and flat-screen television sets. Thus, a much more likely scenario is that the federal government (knowing who butters their bread) will remain subservient to foreign financial interests. It will impose austerity conditions, maintain law and order through draconian means, and aid in the construction of foreign-owned factory towns and plantations. As people start to think that having a government may not be such a good idea, conditions become ripe for Stage 3.

If Stage 1 collapse can be observed by watching television, observing Stage 2 might require a hike or a bicycle ride to the nearest population center, while Stage 3 collapse is more than likely to be visible directly through one’s own living-room window, which may or may not still have glass in it. After a significant amount of bloodletting, much of the country becomes a no-go zone for the remaining authorities. Foreign creditors decide that their debts might not be repaid after all, cut their losses and depart in haste. The rest of the world decides to act as if there is no such place as The United States – because “nobody goes there any more.” So as not to lose out on the entertainment value, the foreign press still prints sporadic fables about Americans who eat their young, much as they did about Russia following the Soviet collapse. A few brave American expatriates who still come back to visit bring back amazing stories of a different kind, but everyone considers them eccentric and perhaps a little bit crazy.

Stage 3 collapse can sometimes be avoided by the timely introduction of international peacekeepers and through the efforts of international humanitarian NGOs. In the aftermath of a Stage 2 collapse, domestic authorities are highly unlikely to have either the resources or the legitimacy, or even the will, to arrest the collapse the dynamic and reconstitute themselves in a way that the population would accept.

As stage 3 collapse runs its course, the power vacuum left by the now defunct federal, state and local government is filled by a variety of new power structures. Remnants of former law enforcement and military, urban gangs, ethnic mafias, religious cults and wealthy property owners all attempt to build their little empires on the ruins of the big one, fighting each other over territory and access to resources. This is the age of Big Men: charismatic leaders, rabble-rousers, ruthless Macchiavelian princes and war lords. In the luckier places, they find it to their common advantage to pool their resources and amalgamate into some sort of legitimate local government, while in the rest their jostling for power leads to a spiral of conflict and open war.

Stage 4 collapse occurs when society becomes so disordered and impoverished that it can no longer support the Big Men, who become smaller and smaller, and eventually fade from view. Society fragments into extended families and small tribes of a dozen or so families, who find it advantageous to band together for mutual support and defense. This is the form of society that has existed over some 98.5% of humanity’s existence as a biological species, and can be said to be the bedrock of human existence. Humans can exist at this level of organization for thousands, perhaps millions of years. Most mammalian species go extinct after just a few million years, but, for all we know, Homo Sapiens still have a million or two left.

If pre-collapse society is too atomized, alienated and individualistic to form cohesive extended families and tribes, or if its physical environment becomes so disordered and impoverished that hunger and starvation become widespread, then Stage 5 collapse becomes likely. At this stage, a simpler biological imperative takes over, to preserve the life of the breeding couples. Families disband, the old are abandoned to their own devices, and children are only cared for up to age 3. All social unity is destroyed, and even the couples may disband for a time, preferring to forage on their own and refusing to share food. This is the state of society described by the anthropologist Colin Turnbull in his book “The Mountain People.” If society prior to Stage 5 collapse can be said to be the historical norm for humans, Stage 5 collapse brings humanity to the verge of physical extinction.

As we can easily imagine, the default is cascaded failure: each stage of collapse can easily lead to the next, perhaps even overlapping it. In Russia, the process was arrested just past Stage 3: there was considerable trouble with ethnic mafias and even some warlordism, but government authority won out in the end. In my other writings, I go into a lot of detail in describing the exact conditions that inadvertently made Russian society relatively collapse-proof. Here, I will simply say that these ingredients are not currently present in the United States.

While attempting to arrest collapse at Stage 1 and Stage 2 would probably be a dangerous waste of energy, it is probably worth everyone’s while to dig in their heels at Stage 3, definitely at Stage 4, and it is quite simply a matter of physical survival to avoid Stage 5. In certain localities – those with high population densities, as well as those that contain dangerous nuclear and industrial installations – avoiding Stage 3 collapse is rather important, to the point of inviting foreign troops and governments in to maintain order and avoid disasters. Other localities may be able to prosper indefinitely at Stage 3, and even the most impoverished environments may be able to support a sparse population subsisting indefinitely at Stage 4.

Although it is possible to prepare directly for surviving Stage 5, this seems like an altogether demoralizing thing to attempt. Preparing to survive Stages 3 and 4 may seem somewhat more reasonable, while explicitly aiming for Stage 3 may be reasonable if you plan to become one of the Big Men. Be that as it may, I must leave such preparations as an exercise for the reader. My hope is that these definitions of specific stages of collapse will enable a more specific and fruitful discussion than the one currently dominated by such vague and ultimately nonsensical terms as “the collapse of Western civilization.”
o
Download "The Collapse of Complex Societies", 
by Joseph A. Tainter, here:

"How It Really Is"

 

"Nearly 107 Million Americans Do Not Have A Job Right Now"

"Nearly 107 Million Americans Do Not Have A Job Right Now"
by Michael Snyder

"A lot of people are really confused about the state of the U.S. economy right now. Large employers are conducting mass layoffs all over the country, and those that are searching for work are having a very difficult time. But meanwhile, the Biden administration and the mainstream media continue to insist that the unemployment rate is low and everything is just fine. So what can account for such incongruity? Hopefully by the time you are done reading this article you will have a much clearer view of what is really going on out there.

On Friday, the BLS released the employment numbers for the month of February. Zero Hedge is calling it “the most ridiculous jobs report in history”…"Last month we though that the January jobs report was the “most ridiculous in recent history” but, boy, were we wrong because this morning the Biden department of goalseeked propaganda (aka BLS) published the February jobs report, and holy crap was that something else. Even Goebbels would blush.

We were told that the U.S. economy added 275,000 jobs last month. But if you dig deeper into the report, you will find that the number of native-born workers actually fell by 560,000 last month. And over the past 3 months, the number of native-born workers has fallen by a whopping 2.4 million

But wait there’s even more, because now that the primary season is over and we enter the heart of election season and political talking points will be thrown around left and right, especially in the context of the immigration crisis created intentionally by the Biden administration which is hoping to import millions of new Democratic voters (maybe the US can hold the presidential election in Honduras or Guatemala, after all it is their citizens that will be illegally casting the key votes in November), what we find is that in February, the number of native-born workers tumbled again, sliding by a massive 560K to just 129.807 million. Add to this the December data, and we get a near-record 2.4 million plunge in native-born workers in just the past 3 months (only the covid crash was worse)!"

So where is the “job growth” coming from? If you can believe it, the BLS is claiming that 1.2 million foreign-born workers were added during the month of February alone…"The offset? A record 1.2 million foreign-born (read immigrants, both legal and illegal but mostly illegal) workers added in February!"

Are we actually supposed to believe such nonsense? I find it hard to believe that more than a million foreign-born workers were added to the system in a single month when layoffs are at such extremely high levels. According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas we just witnessed the highest number of layoffs during the month of February since the Great Recession…"Layoff announcements in February hit their highest level for the month since the global financial crisis, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The total of 84,638 planned cuts showed an increase of 3% from January and 9% from the same month a year ago, with technology and finance companies at the forefront. From a historical perspective, this was the worst February since 2009, which saw 186,350 announcements as the worst of the financial crisis was seemingly coming to an end."

We really do have an employment crisis in this country, but those in positions of power are trying to convince us that what we can see with our own two eyes isn’t actually real. In other words, they are gaslighting us really hard. One of the ways they do this is by how they classify those that are not working.

When an adult is not working, they are classified as either “unemployed” or “not in the labor force”. In February, 6,458,000 Americans were considered to be officially “unemployed”. If that number was accurate, that would be good news. But another 100,285,000 Americans were considered to be “not in the labor force” in February. When you add those two numbers together, you get a grand total of 106,743,000 Americans that are not working. In other words, nearly 107 million Americans do not have a job right now.

Let me try to put that number into proper perspective. During the Great Recession, that number never even reached 90 million. So right now, the number of Americans not working is far higher than it was at any point during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Meanwhile, conditions continue to get even rougher for those that are actually working. The cost of living has been rising much faster than our paychecks have, and that is putting enormous stress on households from coast to coast. Recently, I was stunned to learn that a 160 square foot home in Las Vegas is renting for 950 dollars a month…"A tiny home in the Las Vegas Valley is creating a big stir. Nestled between two apartment blocks, the 160 sq ft tiny home, listed for $950 a month, has received more than 113 inquiries from eager renters."

That is absurd. But this is what years of reckless money printing have done to us. Housing has become more unaffordable than ever before, and this isn’t just happening in our heavily populated metropolitan areas. If you can believe it, an average home in Bozeman, Montana now sells for more than a million dollars…"Bozeman, Montana, a small city of about 56,000 people, has seen home prices soar on the back of increased migration to the area, catapulting demand for properties. A single-family home in the area rose by nearly 40 percent to more than $1.16 million as of February, according to the Bozeman Real Estate Group."

At the same time, paychecks are stagnating or even falling in some cases. In fact, it is being reported that “48% of 2,000 US companies surveyed lowered pay for certain roles” in 2023… But some are finding an unwelcome surprise as they scan listings for open roles. A salary bump is all but impossible; in many cases, wages seem lower than their previous pay – even for the same jobs. They aren’t imagining things. A 2023 report on pay trends from ZipRecruiter showed 48% of 2,000 US companies surveyed lowered pay for certain roles.

The middle class is being systematically ripped to shreds. With each passing day, more Americans are joining the ranks of the poor, and homelessness and hunger are absolutely exploding all over the nation. What we are experiencing is the direct result of years of very foolish policies. Unfortunately, much worse is on the horizon. The remainder of 2024 will be excruciating, and 2025 will be even more painful."

Gregory Mannarino, "Seeing Is Believing! 100% Proof That The FED Is Deliberately Destroying The System"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/12/24
"Seeing Is Believing! 100% Proof That 
The FED Is Deliberately Destroying The System"
Comments here:

"World War III Prelude, 3/12/24"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/12/24
"Alert! Russia Being Invaded! Shots Fired!
 High Alert/Lockdown; National Guard Nuclear Dry Run!"
Comments here:
o
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 3/12/24
"Col. Douglas Macgregor: 
Europe Crumbling, Middle East Exploding"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Times Of India, 3/12/24
"Hezbollah's Biggest Rocket Attack On Israel: 
100 Katyusha Rockets Assault Iron Dome In Bekaa"
Comments here:

Adventures With Danno, "Food Shortage Updates March 2024! Prepare For The Worst!"

Adventures With Danno, 3/12/24
"Food Shortage Updates March 2024! 
Prepare For The Worst!"
"Food shortages that are affecting grocery stores around the U.S. and around the world. It's getting rough out here as many products continue to disappear from store shelves!"
Comments here:
o
Meanwhile, elsewhere...
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell , 3/12/24
"I Went to a Russian Farmers Fair in Provincial Russia"
"I had the chance to attend a Farmers Fair in Provinical Russia. Held annually the conference “A big shelf for small businesses!” was held in Kaluga, Russia. The farmers fair and conference was attended by small business entrepreneurs, representatives of government authorities, business associations and me."
Comments here:

Monday, March 11, 2024

“'Hundreds More Banks To Fail' As Chase Bank Employees Lose BIG"

Full screen recommended.
The Atlantis Report, 3/11/24
“'Hundreds More Banks To Fail' 
As Chase Bank Employees Lose BIG"
Comments here:

Canadian Prepper, "It's About to Get Real Wild. Prepping for Social Chaos."

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/11/24
"It's About to Get Real Wild. Prepping for Social Chaos."
Comments here:

Part 1 here:

Jeremiah Babe, "America is Producing Dead Beats; China Is Producing The World's Goods"

Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 3/11/24
"America is Producing Dead Beats; 
China Is Producing The World's Goods"
"Parents are supporting their adult children teaching them to be dependent not independent while China continues to produce a majority of world goods. We are in big trouble."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Michael Bolton, "When I'm Back On My Feet Again"

Full screen recommended.
Michael Bolton, "When I'm Back On My Feet Again"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Can the night sky appear both serene and surreal? Perhaps classifiable as serene in the below panoramic image are the faint lights of small towns glowing across a dark foreground landscape of Doi Inthanon National Park in Thailand, as well as the numerous stars glowing across a dark background starscape. Also visible are the planet Venus and a band of zodiacal light on the image left.

Unusual events are also captured, however. First, the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy, while usually a common site, appears here to hover surreally above the ground. Next, a fortuitous streak of a meteor was captured on the image right. Perhaps the most unusual component is the bright spot just to the left of the meteor. That spot is the plume of a rising Ariane 5 rocket, launched a few minutes before from Kourou, French Guiana. How lucky was the astrophotographer to capture the rocket launch in his image? Not lucky at all - the image was timed to capture the rocket. What was lucky was how photogenic - and perhaps surreal - the rest of the sky turned out to be.”

"Consider It..."

 

Dan, I Allegedly, "People Are Financing Food"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 3/11/24
"People Are Financing Food"
"By now, pay later has been a big thing. Now people are doing this to eat. They were paying their utility bills earlier with it and now it’s gotten worse. They are using it to eat."
Comments here:

Adventures With Danno, "Items That Are Disappearing From The Grocery Stores Right Now!"

Adventures With Danno, 3/11/24
"Items That Are Disappearing From 
The Grocery Stores Right Now!"
Comments here:

The Daily "Near You?"

Wimberley, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Poet: Wendell Berry, "Leavings"

"Leavings"

“In time a man disappears
from his lifelong fields, from
the streams he has walked beside,
from the woods where he sat and waited.
Thinking of this, he seems to
miss himself in those places
as if always he has been there.
But first he must disappear,
and this he foresees with hope,
with thanks. Let others come.”

- Wendell Berry
“Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have passed before him – his early hopeful struggles, his manly successes and prosperity, his downfall in his declining years, and his present helpless condition – no chance of revenge against Fortune, which had had the better of him - neither name nor money to bequeath – a spent-out, bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the end here! Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, “Tomorrow, success or failure won’t matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.”
- William Makepeace Thackeray, “Vanity Fair”

"What Is The Point Of You?"

“What is the point of you? What is your worth? And by worth I am not talking about your financial value, I am talking about something much more significant than that. So, I ask again - what is your worth? And you won't find the answer in any scripture or church - you won't find it even in this book. Because no external power can give you the answer to something so incredibly existential in nature.

If you want to know your worth, ask yourself, what are you without your bank account? The worth of a person lies in character. The same goes for a nation and the same goes for a world. Therefore, a nation's worth lies not in the value of its currency, but in the character of its people. And it all begins with the individual - it all begins with you. Your character holds not just the worth of your own life, but that of the lives of your people as well. So, feel like it's the feeling of your society and act like it's the action of your society.

But mark you, here I do not mean, feeling and acting like the society, rather, I am asking you to feel, think and act as an original, brave and conscientious human being, so that you become the very emblem of humanhood in front of others, for them to draw their life’s inspiration from. Doing what the society wants, makes you a second hand human - wanting the society to do what you want, makes you a narcissistic bigot - but being an embodiment of humanhood without any expectation from others, is what makes you a sentient human.”
-  Abhijit Naskar

“Yet now, as he roared across the night sky toward an unknown destiny, he found himself facing that bleak and ultimate question which so few men can answer to their satisfaction. What have I done with my life, he asked himself, that the world will be poorer if I leave it?”
- Arthur C. Clarke, “Glide Path”

"I Am Done"

"I Am Done"
by OHMama

"I was born at the end of Gen X and the beginning of the Millennial Generation, and grew up in a middle class town. Life was good. Our home was modest but birthdays and Christmas were always generous, we went on yearly vacations, had 2 cars, and there was enough money for me to take dance classes and art lessons and be in Girl Scouts.

My 1940s born Dad raised me to be patriotic and proud, to love the war bird airplanes of his era as much as he does, and to respect our flag and our country as a sacred thing. I grew up thinking that being an American was the greatest gift a person could have. I grew up thinking that our country was as strong, and honest and true as my Dad. I grew up thinking I was free.

As an adult, I have witnessed the world I grew up in fall to ruin. I have watched as our currency and our economy have been shamelessly corrupted beyond redemption. Since we’ve been married, my husband and I TWICE had our meager investment savings gutted by the market that we were told to invest in, now that pensions no longer exist and we working stiffs are on our own. We will be working until we die, because the Social Security we’ve been forced to pay into has also been robbed from under us.

I have watched as our elected officials enter Congress as ordinary folks and leaves as multi millionaires. I have watched my blue collar husband get up at an ungodly hour every day and come home with an aching back that we pray will hold out long enough to get him to old age in one piece. Outside of shoes, socks and underwear, almost everything my family wears was bought used. We’ve been on one vacation in 12 years.

We don’t have cell phones, or cable, or any sort of streaming services, just a landline and internet. We hardly ever eat out. Our house is 1400 square feet, no air conditioning. I cook from scratch and I can and I garden and I raise chickens for eggs and meat and I moonlight selling things on Etsy. Still it is barely enough to pay the bills that go up every year while service quality and the longevity of goods goes down. What I just described is the life you can live on 60K a year without going into debt.

At last calculation, when you consider all of the federal, state and local taxes plus registration and user fees, Medicare and SS payroll taxes, almost a third of what my family earns is stolen by the govt each year. What’s left doesn’t go far, just enough to cover the basics and save a little for when the wolf howls at the door.

I watched as my family’s health insurance was gutted and destroyed. Our private market insurance, which we had to have because my husband’s employer is too small to have a group plan, was made illegal. We were left with the option of either buying an Obamacare plan with unaffordable deductibles and insanely ridiculous out of pocket maxes, or paying the very gov’t that destroyed our healthcare a fine for not buying the gov’t mandated plan that we cannot afford. We now have short term insurance that isn’t really insurance at all, and I live in fear of one of us getting injured or sick with anything I can’t fix from the medicine cabinet.

I have watched as education, which was already sketchy when I was a kid, became an all out joke of wholly unmathematical math, gold stars for all, and self-loathing anti-Americanism. My family has taken an enormous financial hit as I stay home to home school our child. At least she’ll be able to do old-fashioned math well enough to see how much they are screwing her. A silver lining to every cloud, I guess.

I’ve sat by and held my tongue as I was called deplorable and a bitter clinger and told that I didn’t build that. I’ve been called a racist and a xenophobe and a chump and even an “ugly folk.” I’ve been told that I have privilege, and that I have inherent bias because of my skin color, and that my beloved husband and father are part of a horrible patriarchy. Not one goddamn bit of that is true, but if I dare say anything about it, it will be used as evidence of my racism and white fragility.

Raised to be a Republican, I held my nose and voted for Bush, the Texas-talking blue blood from Connecticut who lied us into 2 wars and gave us the unpatriotic Patriot Act. I voted for McCain, the sociopathic neocon songbird “hero” that torpedoed the attempt to kill the Obamacare that’s killing my family financially. I held it again and voted for Romney, the vulture capitalist skunk that masquerades as a Republican while slithering over to the Democrat camp as often as they’ll tolerate his oily, loathsome presence.

And I voted for Trump, who, if he did nothing else, at least gave a resounding Bronx cheer to the richly deserving smug hypocrites of DC. Thank you for that Mr. President, on behalf of all of us nobodies. God bless you for it.

And now I have watched as people who hate me and mine and call for our destruction blatantly and openly stole the election and then gaslighted us and told us that it was honest and fair. I am watching as the GOP does NOTHING about it. They’re probably relieved that upstart Trump is gone so they can get back to their real jobs of lining their pockets and running interference for their corporate masters. I am watching as the media, in a manner that would make Stalin blush, is silencing anyone who dares question the legitimacy of this farce they call democracy. I know, it’s a republic, but I am so tired of explaining that to people I might as well give in and join them in ignorance.

I will not vote again; they’ve made it abundantly clear that my voice doesn’t matter. Whatever irrational, suicidal lunacy the nanny states thinks is best is what I’ll get. What it decided I need is a geriatric pedophile who shouldn’t be charged with anything more rigorous than choosing between tapioca and rice pudding at the old folks home, and a casting couch skank who rails against racism while being a descendant of slave owners.

I’m free to dismember a baby in my womb and kill it because “my body my choice”, but God help me if I won’t cover my face with a germ laden Linus-worthy security blanket or refuse let them inject genetically altering chemicals into my body or my child’s. I can be doxed, fired, shunned and destroyed for daring to venture that there are only 2 genders as proven by DNA, but a disease with a 99+% survival rate for most humans is a deadly pandemic worth murdering an economy over. Because science. Idiocracy is real, and we are living it. Dr. Hannibal Lecter would be an improvement over Fauci.

I am done. Don’t ask me to pledge to the flag, or salute the troops, or shoot fireworks on the 4th. It’s a sick, twisted, heartbreaking joke, this bloated, unrecognizable corpse of a republic that once was ours.

I am not alone. Not sure how things continue to function when millions of citizens no longer feel any loyalty to or from the society they live in.

I was raised to be a lady, and ladies don’t curse, but f**k these motherf**kers to hell and back for what they’ve done to me, and mine, and my country. All we Joe Blow Americans ever wanted was a little patch of land to raise a family, a job to pay the bills, and at least some illusion of freedom, and even that was too much for these human parasites. They want it all,  mind, body and soul. Damn them. Damn them all."

Soon, OHMama, soon...

"When We Have Time..."

“How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy. In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age, we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day, when we have time.” - Charles Caleb Colton, “Lacon”
o
"The problem is, you think you have time."
- Buddha
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“There Is No Reality Anymore…”
by Thad Beversdorf

“I‘d love to change the world, but I don‘t know what to do,
so I’ll leave it up to you…” 

“What a great lyric that is from the late 60′s, early 70′s English band “10 Years After.” I believe this describes that uneasy feeling of discontent that sits deep in the stomach, beneath the day to day exteriors, of so many people today. The world is like a black hole in that it seems to be getting smaller and smaller as the years go by but also heavier and heavier with each passing day.

When I was a teenager and my friends and I were taking reality obscuring substances, one of my buddies (this means you Nichol) would stop us at certain points throughout the night for a reality check. This was just a few moments where we ‘d all gather our senses to make sure the world was still right and then we’d venture back into obscurity. I feel that reality is an old world term. There is no reality anymore. With advances in technology came unending possibilities of if you can dream it they can make it so. The ubiquitous flow of information ensures that the truth is always available but never known with certainty. It means there is no such thing as a reality check. It’s like that dream inside a dream inside a dream. Which reality is real anymore? How deep does the rabbit hole go?

We are raised with pretty standard ideals of what the world is meant to be but these ideals seem to take place only in the movies. It must be incredibly difficult for our young people to reconcile the two worlds, I know it is for me. That which they learn as a child and that which they find has replaced it as a young adult. Our leaders are despicable, arrogant and egotistical fools who pretend we elect them because we don’t see them for what they are. But we elect them because we feel we have no choice. We know what we want the world to be. We know what it should look and feel like. And we know it is not the world in which we live today. I know I’d love to change the world but I don’t know how and so I’ll leave it up to you. And so we continue to move forward down this path, each step uneasy as though something ungood is lurking just around the next corner.

We are able to put that feeling out of our minds for the most part but our subconscious is always aware that things are off. We have all kinds of self help books and new age theories that attempt to make sense of it all and explain why we just aren t happy the way we envision happy should be. Perhaps the only reality is the reality that the world isn’t what we had hoped it would be and we don’t know how to make that right. I’d love to say that if we just stand up and do the right thing, act from our hearts and have good intentions that it could change the world. But quite honestly there are ill-intentioned people that are constructing this new world in which we sub-exist.It is them and us, but they’d never say it that way. Certainly though their intention is not for us to co-exist along side them.

But so we carry on and we, move forward, to the best of our abilities. We accept the good with the bad and acknowledge that everything is a trade off. We believe that if we go to college we stand a better chance in life and so we borrow our first 10 years of post college wages to get an edge over the next guy who is doing the same. When we get out of school we know that it is time to buckle down and get serious. We put our lives on hold in order to focus on the future with the idea that one day we will be sitting on the porch with the person we love, the one we put on hold for all those years, and we will then enjoy our life’s work then.

But then we get further in debt because we need a sleeker car and we need a bigger house but it’s ok because we can just work a little more. And then the kids come and as far as we got to know them they are great, I think. But it’s ok because they just finished college and now they’ve moved back in as the job market is tough out there and so we’re paying off their student loans. Eventually they get away and begin their life’s journey and they take their debt with them. And then we realize, god I’m almost 60. But it feels great because that means soon I’ll be there on the porch getting to know the one I love again and life will be grand at that point.

But then we turn 65 and we realize all those policies that were implemented by all those well-intentioned decision makers have actually left us with very little. And we say it’s ok because we’d be bored anyway just sitting on the porch. And so we take a job waving at people in Walmart but feel like OMG how did I get here. But the shift ends and we go home anxious to spend time with the one we love because, although it’s a terrible thought, we are aware we’re both getting long in the tooth. And so we arrive home only to realize the one we love is now sick and that it’s too late for our days sitting on the porch getting to know each other again. We do everything we can but we cannot afford to help that person who stood quietly behind us all those years as healthcare costs are unrealistically out of touch with reality. And then it hits us that despite taking all the right steps to ensure we have a great life we failed to ever really be happy, to really love and to really accept love. And then it really hits us, this world provides but one shot.

Well, then that feeling of uneasy discontent that shadowed us when we were young is now an intense pain in our heart. And we look out at the world and we ask ourselves how could this have happened? I did everything they told me I was supposed to do, I did everything right! And it becomes clear that life was a chance to change the world, but we didn’t know what to do, and so we left it up to…”
Ten Years After, "I'd Love to Change the World" (1971)

"How It Really Is"

 
And everywhere you look their faces are buried in the phone...

"Wars And Rumors Of War..."

Full screen recommended.
Reporterfy Media & Travel, 3/11/24
Scott Ritter, "America's Next Conflicts"
"Friend of the show and former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter returns, joins us for a thought-provoking and informative live stream as we delve into the complexities of the the world geopolitical conflicts. Our expert guest, Scott Ritter, will provide a comprehensive geopolitical overview and share his insights into the possible outcomes of these enduring conflicts."
Comments here:
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Scott Ritter, 3/11/24
"The U.S. Military Is Not Prepared for War with
Yemen and Lebanon, And Israel Is In Trouble"
"Former US Marine Corps Intelligence Officer and UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter gives his BOMBSHELL take on why the US cannot defeat Yemen and how Lebanon's possible entrance into a wider Middle East war is big trouble for Israel."
Comments here:
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Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 3/11/24
"Scott Ritter: How Close Is US To War?"
Comments Here:
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“How vast those Orbs must be, and how inconsiderable this Earth, the theatre upon which all our mighty designs, all our navigations, and all our wars are transacted, is when compared to them. A very fit consideration, and matter of reflection, for those Kings and Princes who sacrifice the lives of so many people, only to flatter their ambition in being masters of some pitiful corner of this small Spot.”
- Christiaan Huygens, (1629-1695)

And we've learned nothing, nothing at all, since he wrote that...

"The Buoyancy of Psychopaths and the Genesis of the Great Asian War"

"The Buoyancy of Psychopaths 
and the Genesis of the Great Asian War"
by Fred Reed

"On the eve of the Great Asian War against China, In a rousing speech Biden assured the American people that the war was necessary because China was the most dangerous country in Latin America and didn’t have American values. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that the US had the most advanced, lethal, best trained, hypergalactic and indomitable military the world had ever seen and the fact that it could not defeat annoyed goat herders with rifles had no bearing on the matter since the Chinese didn’t have goats.

Washington was astonished when the Russian fleet showed up in support of China. It hadn’t thought of this. Nor had it occurred to anyone in the Federal Bubble that if America fired on a Russian ship, America would be in a war with Russia. Not a proxy war. Not a regional war. Not a limited war. A war. Everywhere.

This didn’t worry anyone because Washington knew that America had the best trained, best armed, most advanced and hyper-galactic military in the universe. All recent military history supported this understanding, unless you had read it, which nobody had. Further, the New York Times demonstrated that the Russians, then occupying Kiev, were badly trained, poorly equipped, suffered from poor morale, and wanted to overthrow their government and divide Russia into five countries under Washington’s control. The Times was famously independent of government, so no further investigation was thought necessary.

Washington had also forgotten Iran. Unfortunately for those in the Potomac Bubbylon, the Iranians, no fools, knew that Washington lacked the manpower, training, munitions, public support, and industrial base, to fight two major wars at once, and probably even one. The mullahs of course had huge stockpiles of missiles and an army not rotted by lgbt, affirmative action, lack of readiness, and impossibly inadequate logistics. So when the IRGC, Syria, Iraq, and all the militias that wanted the US out of the middle east attacked American bases in the region, Washington was sore amazed.

Congress as it turned out had forgotten that Russia had a large, combat hardened, experienced, well-trained and well-supplied army in, who would have thought it, Europe, along with a functioning military industrial base, massive artillery and air support. This Russia was also aware of the inadequacies of the American hypergalactic indomitable social-engineering aquarium that the military had become. Russia also had actual combat experience with hypersonics which America didn’t have, either the missiles or the experience, and Europe didn’t have tanks or ammunition because it had sent them all to the Ukraine where the Russians had blown them up.

Another revelation was that China wasn’t a backward sort of enlarged Guatemala where people manufactured pencils and maybe washing machines under European supervision. Nobody had thought of this. Part of the reason was that the House committee on China had no member who read, wrote, or spoke Chinese but this was not thought important, or thought of, because America was a democracy and thinking had nothing to do with it. It seemed China had a great many engineers of high quality who had spent decades readying China specifically to defeat America in its home waters. Simple arithmetic, apparently beyond Congress, none of whose members could calculate a binomial square, suggested that China could build, say, a thousand advanced satellite guided, maneuvering hypersonic antiship missiles, while Washington had at most ten aircraft carriers. A hundred swarm-launched missiles per carrier weren’t important, though. Why not wasn’t clear.

The Navy responded, saying that it was hypergalactic and would defend itself with high-powered lasers that it didn’t have but might get sometime in a few decades but Lockheed-Martin needed more money to fund this existential etc.

A few in Washington were unsettled when North Korea, seeing a chance to unify the peninsula while Washington was occupied with several major wars, none of which it could win, launched a massive attack southward. Washington didn’t care if a couple of millions of Koreans died, but the South was home to advanced semiconductor labs, Samsung and SK Hynix. To thwart this threat Washington had to send troops it didn’t have and who in any event weren’t combat-ready by means of logistics that didn’t exist. And of course the North could nuke Seoul and the 28,000 American troops if what’s-his-lunacy had a brain spasm, and could probably nuke Japan.

By this time Washington had begun bombing the Chinese mainland in the assumption that the usual rules held: America could bomb anybody but nobody could bomb America, which just wouldn’t be fair. and all. When a half-dozen sub-launched, satellite-guided cruse missiles, the kind Russia and China have, hit the Pentagon and killed eighty percent of those within, the assumption of invincibility underwent revision. A committee was appointed. Other missiles hitting the New World Trade Center and coastal cities in California seemed worrisome, as both states voted Democrat. It was noted that the Capitol and white House were a short bicycle ride from the Pentagon.

When American forces operating out of Japan began attacking China, this put the Japanese at war with Beijing. Chinese and perhaps Russian submarines began burning tankers moving oil from the Gulf to Japan, which didn’t have any. At all. Washington didn’t worry about this because it knew that China would collapse in a few weeks, like the Russians in Ukraine, because of American technology and hypergalactic training and the hissy-fits of its gender-fluid forces. When this didn’t happen, Japan used up its strategic reserves and came to a complete stop.

At first it was thought that the Navy could send destroyers to convoy tankers to Japan, Then it discovered that it didn’t have any to spare because China had a bigger navy and Washington needed all it could find around Taiwan. Fortunately this turned out not to be necessary because the Yemenis and Iranians had destroyed the oil facilities around the Gulf, making protecting tankers unnecessary.

When China failed to collapse Washington didn’t know what to do because it hadn’t thought of this and didn’t have a plan B or exit strategy because it was ruled by, if not always doddering dotards, at least those who thought the year was still 1955 and an aircraft carrier could frighten everybody.

Washington decided to block the Strait of Malacca because China would have to surrender. In desperation the Chinese, for whom the war was a matter of national survival, nuked a carrier, or maybe three, I don’t remember.  All the hobby hawks and dingalings, as many called them, were greatly amazed because they been told since birth that use of nuclear weapons would mean catastrophic atomic war and the end of civilization, thought to be a bad thing.

This didn’t make sense, but we are talking about foreign policy. The President was still in the White House. Obviously, those who knew the city reasoned that if the rats weren’t leaving the ship, it wasn’t sinking. if Washington launched nuclear missiles against China, Chinese nuclear missiles would arrive forty-five minutes later and all the hawks in Washington would become clots of feathers in bubbling pools of fat. This appealed to the populace but not those in power.

Further, did it make sense to commit national suicide over one silly aircraft carrier? The arms industry could build another one. The upshot was that both countries were willing to use nuclear weapons against the other’s forces but not against their homelands. It turned out that Washington had more extra-homelandical, or maybe homelandish, forces than did China.

The rest is well known. There is no reason to recount the deaths of hundreds of millions because of the collapse of world manufacturing and shipping. No one had thought of that."