Monday, July 22, 2024

Musical Interlude: Soothing Relaxation, "Beautiful Relaxing Music for Stress Relief"

Full screen recommended.
Soothing Relaxation,
 "Beautiful Relaxing Music for Stress Relief"
"Beautiful relaxing music for stress relief, composed by Peder B. Helland. This instrumental music ("The Hidden Valley") works well as sleep music, ambient study music, meditation music or relaxation music."
Magnificent...

"A Rousing Musical Interlude: Outlaws, “Green Grass And High Tides”

Outlaws, “Green Grass And High Tides”
Turn it up!

"A Look to the Heavens"

"A gorgeous spiral galaxy, M104 is famous for its nearly edge-on profile featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes. Seen in silhouette against an extensive central bulge of stars, the swath of cosmic dust lends a broad brimmed hat-like appearance to the galaxy suggesting a more popular moniker, the Sombrero Galaxy. This sharp optical view of the well-known galaxy made from ground-based image data was processed to preserve details often lost in overwhelming glare of M104's bright central bulge.
Also known as NGC 4594, the Sombrero galaxy can be seen across the spectrum, and is host to a central supermassive black hole. About 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light-years away, M104 is one of the largest galaxies at the southern edge of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster. Still the colorful spiky foreground stars in this field of view lie well within our own Milky Way galaxy. "

"The Wall Was Too High, As You Can See"


"The Wall Was Too High, As You Can See" *
By Jim Quinn

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ - this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” - Aldous Huxley, "Crome Yellow"

Excerpt: "As I have witnessed and lived through the last three dystopian years of mass hysteria, mass delusion, and mass mental illness, I find myself drawn to the same thinkers, social commentators, and musical artists over and over. The wisdom, wit, and clarity of Aldous HuxleyGeorge Orwell, and Roger Waters in describing a world gone mad makes me feel less alone in my observations about humanity, politicians, governments, bankers, billionaire funded NGOs, war mongering psychopaths, and entities intent on shredding the social fabric of this country and the world.

Their writings and lyrics perfectly capture the insanity, glorification of abnormality, psychological manipulation and torture of the masses, man’s inhumanity to man, and how powerful wealthy psychopaths use their wealth and power to control governments, the media, academia, corporations, the military, scientists, doctors, and religious institutions. The dystopian visions in Huxley and Orwell’s novels, and Waters’ lyrics have been far exceeded by the reality of what has transpired and continues to take place every day.

Huxley’s quote about mental illness and our profoundly abnormal society has always struck a chord with me and helped me realize, as an outcast who doesn’t believe what is spoon fed to us by the mass media propaganda outlets on behalf of their wealthy benefactors, I’m not the abnormal one. My refusal to adapt or adjust to a deviant society inhabited and controlled by the mental ill, while worshipping at the altar of abnormalcy, is a sign of my sanity in a sea of absurdity. I have to admit it is lonely always being on the opposite side of the approved narrative, believed by the masses. It would be so much easier to just go along with the crowd, but it is not how I’m wired. I question everything.

I never believe anything spewing out of a politician’s mouth. I believe all governments are evil and controlled by a wealthy powerful elite, who hide behind the mask of the Deep State to manipulate society to benefit themselves and their feckless cronies. I have this rare ability to think critically, rather than believe what I’m told by “experts”, think tanks, media talking heads, and “scientific studies” produced by easily bribed hack “experts”. I channel my inner George Carlin regarding everything I am told by the government or the propaganda media outlets."
Full, most highly recommended article is here:
o
Full screen recommended.
* Pink Floyd, " Hey You", "The Wall"

The Poet: John O’Donohue, “In These Times”

“In These Times”

“In these times when anger
Is turned into anxiety,
And someone has stolen
The horizons and mountains,
Our small emperors on parade
Never expect our indifference
To disturb their nakedness.
They keep their heads down,
And their eyes gleam with reflection
From aluminum economic ground,
The media wraps everything
In a cellophane of sound,
And the ghost surface of the virtual
Overlays the breathing earth.
The industry of distraction
Makes us forget
That we live in a universe.
We have become converts
To the religion of stress
And its deity of progress;
That we may have courage
To turn aside from it all
And come to kneel down before the poor,
To discover what we must do,
How to turn anxiety
Back into anger,
How to find our way home.”

~ John O’Donohue,
from “To Bless the Space Between Us”
“Do not lose heart. We were made for these times.”
– Clarissa Pinkola Estes

"The Future..."

"The future ain't what It used to be."
- Yogi Berra

"Wars And Rumors Of War: The Middle East"

Scott Ritter, 7/22/24
"Hezbollah Crushes the IDF and 
Embarrasses Israel in Stunning Defeat!"
Comments here:
o
7/22/24: At least 39,006 people have been killed, including 16,000 CHILDREN, with at least 8,000 dead unrecovered under the bombed out ruins. 89,818 more wounded in Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 7, the enclave's Health Ministry says. And you, Americans, paid for it all...

"Israel is Evil personified.
Israel is Evil embodied."
- Scott Ritter

Dispute that...
o
Full screen recommended.
Hindustan Times. 7/22/24
"Houthis Vow To Attack Tel Aviv Again;
Yemeni Rebels Chief’s Chilling Threat Amid Tit-For-Tat Strikes"
Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, leader of the Yemeni Ansarullah resistance movement, issued a stark warning to Israel, asserting Yemen's increased capability to strike back against the occupying regime amid ongoing retaliatory operations supporting Palestinians in Gaza. His comments followed Israeli airstrikes on Yemen's Hudaydah province in response to a drone attack by Yemeni armed forces against Israel. Watch the full video to know more. 
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Times Of India, 7/22/24
"Al-Qassam Pushes Israeli Soldiers To The Brink;
 'Dramatic Rise In Distress Calls To IDF' | Report"
"Reports from Haaretz indicate a significant increase in Israeli soldiers seeking psychological support, with a six-fold rise in those seeking help. The Israeli Defence Ministry's helpline has experienced a sharp uptick in distress calls, including from reservists, active-duty soldiers, and their families, underscoring substantial psychological strain within military ranks. Recently, there were four inquiries with suicidal traits necessitating police intervention, highlighting the severity of mental health challenges."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Times Of India, 7/22/24
"Hamas ‘Traumatizes’ Israeli Soldiers In Gaza; 
'9,250 In Rehab, 14,000 Injured"
"Israel’s state rehabilitation centre has admitted 9,250 soldiers, with 21% diagnosed with PTSD since October 7. Approximately 70% of these soldiers are reservists, according to Israel's Defense Ministry. Amid the Gaza conflict, Israeli Ministry also released the staggering toll of casualties."
o
Real tough guys aren't you, you psychopathic IOF monsters, killing unarmed old people, women and children. I was a US Marine Corps infantry rifleman in 1969 and I know what tough looks like, and you Gay Pride IOF boys ain't it. "PTSD?" "Mental health challenges?" Poor babies! You ain't seen nuthin' yet, you cowardly punks, oh, but you will. You can't even beat Hamas, watch when Hezbollah crushes and obliterates your Israeli Occupation Force, and drops 30,000 missiles on Tel Aviv...and if Iran's dragged into it Israel will simply cease to exist.
Ihshallah! So be it...

But, nice guy that I am, here's a little tune for you 
IOF girly boys while you practice your distress calls...
That's my personal opinion and I don't give a damn who doesn't like it...
- CP

The Daily "Near You?"

Birmingham, United Kingdom. Thanks for stopping by!

"Doomsday..."

"Doomsday is quite within our reach, 
if we will only stretch for it.”
- Loudon Wainwright III

"Truth..."

"Truth: the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity.
Capable of destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities.
Outlawed by all governments everywhere.
Possession is normally punishable by death."
- John Gilmore

A comment: According to statistics compiled by the UN, by the time the sun rises tomorrow morning 30,000 children world wide will have died overnight from starvation and malnutrition, disease, lack of potable water, and lack of basic medical care. That's every night, all year long, 30,000 children dying because no one cared. Trillions of dollars wasted on insane wars, economies destroyed by psychopathic greed, the environment dying in front of our eyes, and no one cares. No wonder Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described humanity as, "Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts." The "instincts of beasts" is evident for all to see... sometimes all this wears us down, and we look around, hoping to see the "aspirations of angels," hoping desperately that we can somehow awaken from the madness crushing us all, that together we can still rise above the despair and hopelessness and make a better world, where no child dies from hunger, where wars are a distant memory, where everyone can live full, dignified and honorable lives in peace. An impossible, hopeless struggle? Perhaps, but how dare we call ourselves "Human" if we don't try to make that vision real, in any way we can, no matter the price? A dream, you say? Yes, that's all it is... but without those dreams, those aspirations, all that's left is the "instincts of beasts", and we all see very clearly what those have brought this world to...
- CP

Judge Napolitano, "Larry Johnson: Secret Service Dir. Testifies on Trump Assassination Attempt"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 7/22/24
"Larry Johnson: Secret Service Dir.
Testifies on Trump Assassination Attempt"
Comments here:
o
Forbes Breaking News, 7/22/24
''You're Full Of S--- Today!':
 Nancy Mace Shows No Mercy To Secret Service Director"
"At today's House Oversight Committee hearing, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) questioned Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle about the assassination attempt on former President Trump."
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, "Biden Out! Trump Now Has A Double Lock On The Presidency"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/22/24
"Biden Out! Trump Now Has A 
Double Lock On The Presidency"
Comments here:

Dr, Chris Martenson, "Three Audio Files Align and Agree: There Were Two Shooters"

Full screen recommended.
Dr, Chris Martenson, 7/22/24
"Three Audio Files Align and Agree:
 There Were Two Shooters"
Comments here:

Dan, I Allegedly, "Massive IT Hack Exposed: Brokerages Still in Chaos!"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 7/22/24
"Massive IT Hack Exposed: Brokerages Still in Chaos!"
We're diving deep into the ongoing chaos caused by the massive IT hack that's affecting everything from banks to brokerage firms and even smart appliances. Insiders have finally stepped forward to spill the beans on the Crowd Strike debacle, and it's worse than we thought. Transactions are failing, people can't get their money, and even airlines and hospitals are feeling the pinch.
Comments here:

"How It Really Is"

 

"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"
"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
"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."

Bill Bonner, "The Core Flimflam"

"The Core Flimflam"
Both parties are run by elites. Both favor bigger government. And 
both are controlled by incompetents and liars. There’s a pattern to that too.
by Bill Bonner

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new 
cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear."
- Antonio Gramsci, while imprisoned by Mussolini

Poitou, France - "As expected, Biden has dropped out. Fox: "President Biden announced Sunday that he will suspend his 2024 re-election campaign amid mounting pressure from his Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill, top donors and Hollywood stars after a disastrous debate performance last month."

One geezer gone. Another still in the race. The real surprise was not that he dropped out. It was that they let him run at all. Of course, the insiders knew it didn’t matter. Biden wasn’t really ‘running the country.’ He wasn’t coming up with ideas, plans or programs. He was just a standup... a cut-out... a suit... whose job was to keep the elites’ grift going. No vetoes on budget bills. No qualms about supporting murderous regimes and lost cause wars overseas. And no resistance to loading the next generation with deadhead debt.

On none of those important matters did Joe Biden give the Establishment any cause for concern. He was a good politician. He was bought. He stayed bought. He was one of them. He was their man in the White House.

Kamala Harris? Just more proof that large-scale democracy is largely a fraud. Is she now the Democratic Party candidate for president because of her stellar record as a statesman... a scholar... a can-do politician... a captain of industry... a noted economist... a national healer... a Mandela... a Gandhi... a geo-strategist... a great general? Nah... her only real qualification is an accident of birth; she was available when the Democrats needed a Black/Asian/Indian/woman to show how progressive and inclusive they were.

Placeholder: The individual dots don’t matter. Democrats know they don’t need a real person…a real leader. They only need a placeholder... someone who will reliably champion their scams. It has nothing to do with the will of the people... nor with their well-being. Ms. Harris will do the job as well as anyone.

For the benefit of new readers, the real goal of the elites - in a late, degenerate Empire - is to shift wealth and power from ‘The People’ to themselves. This applies to Republicans as well as Democrats. Both parties are run by elites. Both favor bigger government. And both are controlled by incompetents and liars. There’s a pattern to that too. You begin with Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison and Monroe...and you end up with ‘Dubya,’ Obama, Trump, Biden... and now... maybe Harris.

And the only trouble with Donald Trump, in this regard, is that he is unreliable. In the four years he was President, he did nothing to interfere with the elites’ program. Au contraire! He actually increased government spending and debt at the fastest rate in Washington history. When he left town, Washington was more powerful than ever. And between him and Biden, the national debt increased an incredible $15 trillion since 2016.

The Donald glories in making enemies and occasionally threatens to undo one of the elites’ prize swindles - such as NATO or the World Trade Organization. But he never challenges the core flimflam... cheap credit, excess spending, and war.

There are nuances, of course. Donald Trump seems to want to turn China into the Great Bugaboo, rather than Russia. He’s proposing even stiffer tariffs than the Biden Team. And he has urged the Fed to avoid cutting rates until after the November election. He doesn’t want the economy to get a boost until he is in the White House. Then, it will be off to the races again... with lower rates, higher prices... and more debt. And none of them can be controlled. The ‘morbid symptoms’ will become more apparent."

Jim Kunstler, "Only Half Gone"

"Only Half Gone"
by Jim Kunstler

“The Democrats are self-immolating on the altar of 
their own tenuous relationship with common decency.” 
- Tom Luongo

“Life imitates art,” Oscar Wilde was fond of saying. And so, all of a sudden on Sunday, the USA became an episode of Veep, after President “Joe Biden” had that fateful sit-down with God he’d hinted at a week or so ago:

God: Yeah, it’s me again. What I told you ‘bout dis ‘lection bidness?
“JB”: (cough cough) I gotta finish the job. (cough cough.)
God: Job, my ass. You ain’t done nuttin’ but eat ice cream cones, spend money dat don’t exist, and sniff up every chile come near you.
“JB”: No, you don’t understand! I’m defending democracy.
God: Oh yeah? Since when my will subject to some pissant caucus? In my mansion dey’s many doors, and this one is da exit, son. What I say, go. And when I say, ‘go,’ dat mean you git yo’self gone! I done wrote the letter and you signin’ on da dotted line right now.
“JB”: What if I won’t?
God: I’ma have to smite yo’ ass.
“JB”: Well, since you put it that way...but, say, do you happen to also have that pardon document we talked about?

And so it went in the study at Rehoboth Beach Sunday afternoon. And all of a sudden, Veep Kamala Harris is elevated to be the putative nominee of the Party of Chaos going into the August convention. Most of the other talked-about replacements instantly endorsed her - Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Pete Buttigieg, et al. - as a convocation of mullahs might bless a goat about to be sacrificed. Kamala issued a stirring war cry: “Together, we will fight. And together, we will win.” Yawn...

It was all pretend, of course, or, shall we say, a continuation of the pretend that is the core operating principle of the party. Everything it does is fake. Case in point, the marvelous statement by HRC (a.k.a. She-Whose-Turn-it-Ever-Is or Rodan the Flying Reptile), who put out this smarmy gem: "President Biden has capped his extraordinary career of service with a Presidency that has lifted America out of an unprecedented pandemic, created millions of new jobs, rebuilt a battered economy, strengthened our democracy, and restored our standing in the world. By any measure, he has advanced our founders’ charge to build a more perfect union and his own stated goal of restoring the soul of our nation.”

“Joe Biden” did all that? Hillary, you see, is buttering up the cloacal vent of the party so that she can wriggle up there and eat its brain, like one of those parasitical wasp larvae that get into a caterpillar. She’s supporting Kamala until it becomes opportune not too, which is to say when the Deep State blob gets the heebie-jeebies about failing to steal the election, losing its positions of power and perqs, and very possibly facing prosecution for serious crimes. Of course, the weekend developments suggest that “Joe Biden” will have to vacate his position as Commander-in-Chief altogether. It’s too self-evident to even rehearse the particulars. It’s only a matter of when, and that probably hinges on his negotiated severance package - basically something that keeps his various family members out of prison. Kamala will then rise to the Oval, ha ha ha.

In this moment of maximum uncertainty, then, the Party of Chaos will pretend to go along with Ms. Harris for a week or two, allowing the first woman president of-color many chances to utter world-scaring inanities and fall into cackling fits so as to demonstrate she can’t possibly be taken seriously. Suddenly you will see the long knives come out slicing and dicing Kamala like a daikon radish on the hibachi table, and anyone else besides HRC who dares to step up will get the same treatment. Notice that Mr. Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Hakim, and Chuck (Nine-Ways-From-Sunday) Schumer haven’t chimed in for Kamala. They will, by God, get their convention free-for-all, though every bit of it will be scrupulously managed by the Big Dawgs. And out of that pandemonium will fly the indomitable Hillary, screeching, “Caw caw, abortion! Caw caw, Russia!” Could it work? No way. In a truly fair election, Hillary would be run over by the Trump-Vance convoy and left a bit of smoldering roadkill, drawing flies, a sad end to all that coruscating ambition.

Not to change the subject too abrubtly, but here goes...have you caught that little convo on YouTube between George Gammon and Robert Barnes on the Trump assassination attempt? Woo-wee, this one will rock your weltanschauung. Here it is in a nutshell: "The attempted rub-out at Butler, PA, (Mr. Barnes theorizes) was a NeverTrumper/blob/neo-con joint operation that was supposed to work as follows: Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo, Deep Staters both, are on the outs with a GOP solidifying around Mr. Trump. Before the Milwaukee GOP Convention opens, they are chatting-up delegates in preparation for a kind of coup. The Butler, PA, op is timed before any nomination can occur. It’s (obviously) intended to eliminate the former president for once and for all and make sure there’s no veep candidate to step into his shoes. The blob then blames the Trump assassination on Iran, instantly conjuring up a fresh new war to distract the nation. The GOP Convention nominates war goddess Nikki for president and Pompeo for veep. The DC war party carries on in triumph. Fait accompli.

Notice, Mr. Barnes says, that CNN and other news networks that usually avoid broadcasting Trump rallies, are actually covering the Butler, PA, event live. They want all of America to see Donald Trump’s head explode like a Crenshaw melon on TV - sending the message: this is what happens to anyone who challenges the blob. Many other observers and investigators unconnected with the government are busy looking into the site forensics, lines of fire, shot acoustics, the strange facts around the alleged “shooter” (possibly patsy) Thomas Matthew Crooks, the stupendous failures of the Secret Service. A picture is resolving.

The old Sicilian adage goes, revenge is a dish best served cold. Surely, Mr. Trump knows a thing or two about what really went down July 17. His adversaries know he knows, and he knows they know he knows. Notice Mr. Trump is not jumping up and down going woo-woo-woo over all this. Rather, he’s sitting tight and calmly and holding his cards close to his chest. He will eventually be coming to settle accounts. So, you must suppose they’ll try again. Or figure out a way to postpone the election indefinitely. Nothing is beneath these fiends. Strangely - a lot of people have noticed - it seems that God is on our side. Stand by and keep your hats on."

Sunday, July 21, 2024

Jeremiah Babe, "No Surprise: Biden Out, Harris In"

Jeremiah Babe, 7/21/24
"No Surprise: Biden Out, Harris In"
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Neil H, "To the Gateway of Eternity"

 

Neil H, "To the Gateway of Eternity"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Globular star cluster Omega Centauri, also known as NGC 5139, is some 15,000 light-years away. The cluster is packed with about 10 million stars much older than the Sun within a volume about 150 light-years in diameter. It's the largest and brightest of 200 or so known globular clusters that roam the halo of our Milky Way galaxy.
Though most star clusters consist of stars with the same age and composition, the enigmatic Omega Cen exhibits the presence of different stellar populations with a spread of ages and chemical abundances. In fact, Omega Cen may be the remnant core of a small galaxy merging with the Milky Way. Omega Centauri's red giant stars (with a yellowish hue) are easy to pick out in this sharp, color telescopic view."

The Poet: Margaret Atwood, "The Moment"

"The Moment"

"The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the center of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round."

- Margaret Atwood
"Morning in the Burned House"

“The Farewell”

“The Farewell”

“Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness,
and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over,
and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day,
and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,
we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream
we shall build another tower in the sky.”

- Kahlil Gibran, “The Prophet”

The Daily "Near You?"

Mesa, Arizona, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Truth...:

I've always believed you can handle the truth, given the chance...It may not be what you want to hear, but it is the truth to the best of my ability to determine. What if anything you do with it is of course up to you... - CP

"Lessons From The Unraveling Of The Roman Empire: Simplification, Localization"

"Lessons From The Unraveling Of The Roman Empire:
 Simplification, Localization"
The fragmentation, simplification and localization of the 
post-Imperial era offers us lessons we ignore at our peril.
by Charles Hugh Smith

"There is an entire industry devoted to "why the Roman Empire collapsed," but the post-collapse era may offer us higher value lessons. The post-collapse era, long written off as The Dark Ages, is better understood as a period of adaptation to changing conditions, specifically, the relocalization and simplification of the economy and governance.

As historian Chris Wickham has explained in his books "Medieval Europe" and "The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000," the medieval era is best understood as a complex process of social, political and economic natural selection: while the Western Roman Empire unraveled, the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) continued on for almost 1,000 years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the social and political structures of the Western Roman Empire influenced Europe for hundreds of years.

In broad-brush, the Roman Empire was a highly centralized, tightly bound system that was remarkably adaptive despite its enormous size and the slow pace of transport and communication. Roman society was both highly hierarchical--the elites claimed superiority and worked hard to master the necessary tools of authority-- slaves were integral to the building and maintenance of Rome's vast infrastructure--and open to meritocracy, as the Roman Army and other classes were open to advancement by anyone in the sprawling empire: every free person became a Roman Citizen once their territory was absorbed into the Empire.

When the Empire fell apart, the model of centralized control/power continued on in the reigns of the so-called Barbarian kingdoms (Goths, Vandals, etc.) and Charlemagne (768-814), over 300 years after the fall of Rome. (When the Ottomans finally conquered Constantinople in 1453, they also adopted many of the bureaucratic structures of the Byzantine Empire.)

Over time, however, the feudal model of localized fiefdoms nominally loyal to a weak central monarchy replaced the centralized model of governance. This adaptation fit the highly fragmented nature of European societies in this era.

But centralized influence never went away. The Christian churches based in Rome and Constantinople continued to exert centralized influence in politically fragmented regions, and monarchies continued to exist, in various states of strength and weakness. The Holy Roman Empire--as Voltaire is reputed to have observed, "neither Holy, Roman or an Empire"--had an enormously complex history in Germany and the rest of Europe. The monarchies in England and France remained in place, and the city-states of northern Italy wielded influence via trade and shifting alliances.

In other words, the Medieval era was ultimately a complex competition between overlapping models of governance and sharing resources, a competition between centralized and localized (what Wickham calls "cellular") nodes of power and the various ways that rulers and those they ruled dealt with each other.

Throughout the era, the legitimacy of rulers ultimately flowed from public assemblies, a tradition inherited from Rome that manifested in aristocratic courts and the church's leadership (bishops, etc.) and eventually, in parliaments. This tension played out in the sharing of costs and resources and the general direction of the state.

As a general rule, when monarchs consolidated too much power, they engaged in catastrophically costly and doomed wars (The Hundred Years War) because they were able to override or ignore the cautious counsel of elite assemblies. Understood as a selective process of adapting to changing circumstances, this history offers us valuable lessons and templates for our future.

Once the centralized power of Rome fragmented, economic, social and political power simplified and relocalized. Trade volume shrank and trade routes vanished. Once the bureaucratic and military structures dictated by Rome collapsed, regions and localities were on their own.

Elites naturally sought out the best means to consolidate and expand their power, and residents (as a general rule, the peasantry and town-dwellers) sought to improve their own lives by reducing costs and securing access to resources.

The immense geographic, cultural, social and economic diversity of Europe was in effect freed to play out. This diversity is still evident; the European Union may have unified the European financial system, but cultural and social divisions have not dissolved.

Wickham distinguishes between two primary sources of income and wealth accessible to elites and governments: land and taxes. Collecting taxes requires an immense bureaucracy to identify and assess property owners, tenant farmers, merchants, collect duties on trade flows, etc. Taxes are the only reliable way to fund professional armies and the stupendous bureaucracy required to manage a complex centralized empire. The Byzantine Empire survived multiple rivals, invasions, etc. largely due to its competent tax collection bureaucracy, and European monarchies could only fund long, costly wars once they established tax collection bureaucracies.

Wealth from land--surplus skimmed from the labor of peasants--was adequate to fund highly localized nobility (many of which had one or two castles and a small fiefdom), but it wasn't reliable enough or large enough to support professional armies or vast centralized states.

How does this history offer a template for the next 20 years? I have long held that the dominant global forces binding the global economy are globalization and financialization. Both have greatly increased the income and wealth that nation-states can tax to fund their vast structures: military, social welfare, and bureaucracies of management, regulation and control.

I have also held that globalization and financialization became hyper-structures prone to over-extension and the diminishing returns of the S-Curve. (see chart below) Both have reversed and are now in decline, a decline that I anticipate will accelerate unpredictably and rapidly as each dynamic is centralized and tightly bound, meaning each subsystem is highly interconnected with other subsystems. Should one break, the entire system unravels.


Globalization may appear to be decentralized, but the vast majority of global trade and capital flows through a few centralized nodes, and many aspects of trade depend on a very small number of routes and suppliers. This makes global trade exquisitely sensitive to disruption should any critical supplier or node fail.

Financialization is equally centralized and tightly bound, to the absurd degree that obscure financial structures (reverse repos, etc.) can trigger cascading crises in the real-world economy.

I anticipate a global simplification of trade and finance as fragile hyper-structures collapse as the failure of subsystems cascade through the entire system. These systems have greatly accelerated extremes of wealth-income inequality by their very nature, and these vast distortions and imbalances are unsustainable. Also unsustainable is the immense expansion of the plundering of the planet's remaining resources via globalization and financialization. These dynamics will collapse under their own weight.

What will be left? Once the income and wealth that supported enormously costly nation-state governments contracts, central governments will no longer be able to fund their gargantuan systems. (States that attempt to fund their activities by printing money will only speed the collapse of their finances and thus their coherence.)

As in the post-Roman era, central authority may well continue, but its actual power and influence will be greatly reduced. Without expanding income and wealth to tax, the central state may attempt to extract most of the nation's surplus, but this stripmining of elites and commoners alike will trigger pushback and revolt.

A more sustainable response would be to offload most of the central government's financial burdens onto states, provinces, counties, etc., in effect pushing the impossible task of maintaining entitlements and promised spending on local entities.

Given the diversity of cultures, social values and economic dynamics in large nations and regions, we can anticipate a flowering of adaptations to these greatly reduced means. Some localities will favor increasing authoritarian controls, others will favor reducing authoritarian controls and ceding authority to the smallest units of public assembly.

Locales (shall we call them fiefdoms?) will divide naturally along geographic boundaries, just as fiefdoms in medieval Europe fell into natural boundaries shaped by rivers, valleys, mountain ranges, etc., and along economic and cultural borders.

This relocalization may manifest in the well-known forecasts of the US breaking into multiple regional states, or it might manifest as I suggest in a much-weakened but still influential central government ceding power to local political structures which may themselves fragment or form alliances with nearby entities with whom they share cultural and economic ties.

In other words, a churn of evolutionary adaptations can be expected. Just as there was no one post-Roman adaptation that worked equally well everywhere, we can expect there to be some adaptations of roughly equal success and many that are unsuccessful.

As individuals and households, we want to be located in successful adaptations that share our values and offer us agency, i.e. a say in public assemblies and the freedom to move and work as we see fit.

As I have outlined many times in the blog and in my books, locales that are highly dependent on long global supply chains and distant capital for their essentials will fare very poorly once those supply chains break and the capital dries up. Regions and locales that generate their own essentials (food, energy, metals, concrete, electronics, etc.), talent and capital are much more likely to generate enough resources to satisfy both local elites and the public.

As I explain in my book "Self-Reliance," we who have lived in the past 75 years of expanding production and consumption of Everything have lost touch with both the natural world that sustains us and the social and practical skills needed to endure and prosper in an era in which the engines of centralized power and wealth (globalization and financialization) decay and collapse.

Some locales will choose to foster relocalization and individual agency. Others will cling on to failing models of authoritarian control and globalization/financialization. Ironically, perhaps, the most successful regions will be prone to indulging in hubris and denial, just as the Roman elites, basking in their centuries of dominance, dismissed the "Barbarians" and clung to their delusions of grandeur even as their world fragmented around them. Those locales left behind by globalization and financialization may well offer much better opportunities for successful adaptation, relocalization and individual/household agency.

It is human nature to find reasons to dismiss the storm clouds on the horizon. We look around and find solace in the apparent strength of our institutions and economy, while ignoring their sobering dependence on unsustainable hyper-globalization and hyper-financialization.

The fragmentation, simplification and localization of the post-Imperial era offers us lessons we ignore at our peril. It's important to view these lessons not just as an academic abstraction but as a guide to your own decisions about what places are most conducive to your security and well-being. Not every locale will do equally well, and the culture of many places may not be a great match for your own values and goals. If you decide to move, sooner is better than later."

"They Are Saying..."

"When people pile up debts they will find difficult and perhaps even impossible to repay, they are saying several things at once. They are obviously saying that they want more than they can immediately afford. They are saying, less obviously, that their present wants are so important that, to satisfy them, it is worth some future difficulty. But in making that bargain they are implying that when the future difficulty arrives, they'll figure it out. They don't always do that." 
- Michael Lewis, "Boomerang"