Friday, July 26, 2024

"Yes to Life, in Spite of Everything"

"Yes to Life, in Spite of Everything: Viktor Frankl’s 
Lost Lectures on Moving Beyond Optimism and 
Pessimism to Find the Deepest Source of Meaning"
by Maria Popova

“To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus wrote in his classic 119-page essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" in 1942. “Everything else… is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.” Sometimes, life asks this question not as a thought experiment but as a gauntlet hurled with the raw brutality of living.

That selfsame year, the young Viennese neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (March 26, 1905–September 2, 1997) was taken to Auschwitz along with more than a million human beings robbed of the basic right to answer this question for themselves, instead deemed unworthy of living. Some survived by readingSome through humor. Some by pure chance. Most did not. Frankl lost his mother, his father, and his brother to the mass murder in the concentration camps. His own life was spared by the tightly braided lifeline of chance, choice, and character.

A mere eleven months after surviving the unsurvivable, Frankl took up the elemental question at the heart of Camus’s philosophical parable in a set of lectures, which he himself edited into a slim, potent book published in Germany in 1946, just as he was completing "Man’s Search for Meaning."

As our collective memory always tends toward amnesia and erasure - especially of periods scarred by civilizational shame - these existential infusions of sanity and lucid buoyancy fell out of print and were soon forgotten. Eventually rediscovered - as is also the tendency of our collective memory when the present fails us and we must lean for succor on the life-tested wisdom of the past - they are now published in English for the first time as "Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything" (public library).

Frankl begins by considering the question of whether life is worth living through the central fact of human dignity. Noting how gravely the Holocaust disillusioned humanity with itself, he cautions against the defeatist “end-of-the-world” mindset with which many responded to this disillusionment, but cautions equally against the “blithe optimism” of previous, more naïve eras that had not yet faced this gruesome civilizational mirror reflecting what human beings are capable of doing to one another. Both dispositions, he argues, stem from nihilism. In consonance with his colleague and contemporary Erich Fromm’s insistence that we can only transcend the shared laziness of optimism and pessimism through rational faith in the human spirit, Frankl writes: "We cannot move toward any spiritual reconstruction with a sense of fatalism such as this."

Generations and myriad cultural upheavals before Zadie Smith observed that “progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive,” Frankl considers what “progress” even means, emphasizing the centrality of our individual choices in its constant revision: "Today every impulse for action is generated by the knowledge that there is no form of progress on which we can trustingly rely. If today we cannot sit idly by, it is precisely because each and every one of us determines what and how far something “progresses.” In this, we are aware that inner progress is only actually possible for each individual, while mass progress at most consists of technical progress, which only impresses us because we live in a technical age."

Insisting that it takes a measure of moral strength not to succumb to nihilism, be it that of the pessimist or of the optimist, he exclaims: "Give me a sober activism anytime, rather than that rose-tinted fatalism! How steadfast would a person’s belief in the meaningfulness of life have to be, so as not to be shattered by such skepticism. How unconditionally do we have to believe in the meaning and value of human existence, if this belief is able to take up and bear this skepticism and pessimism?
[…]
Through this nihilism, through the pessimism and skepticism, through the soberness of a “new objectivity” that is no longer that “new” but has grown old, we must strive toward a new humanity."

Sophie Scholl, upon whom chance did not smile as favorably as it did upon Frankl, affirmed this notion with her insistence that living with integrity and belief in human goodness is the wellspring of courage as she courageously faced her own untimely death in the hands of the Nazis. But while the Holocaust indisputably disenchanted humanity, Frankl argues, it also indisputably demonstrated “that what is human is still valid… that it is all a question of the individual human being.” Looking back on the brutality of the camps, he reflects:

"What remained was the individual person, the human being - and nothing else. Everything had fallen away from him during those years: money, power, fame; nothing was certain for him anymore: not life, not health, not happiness; all had been called into question for him: vanity, ambition, relationships. Everything was reduced to bare existence. Burnt through with pain, everything that was not essential was melted down - the human being reduced to what he was in the last analysis: either a member of the masses, therefore no one real, so really no one - the anonymous one, a nameless thing (!), that “he” had now become, just a prisoner number; or else he melted right down to his essential self."

In a sentiment that bellows from the hallways of history into the great vaulted temple of timeless truth, he adds: "Everything depends on the individual human being, regardless of how small a number of like-minded people there is, and everything depends on each person, through action and not mere words, creatively making the meaning of life a reality in his or her own being."

Frankl then turns to the question of finding a sense of meaning when the world gives us ample reasons to view life as meaningless - the question of “continuing to live despite persistent world-weariness.” Writing in the post-war pre-dawn of the golden age of consumerism, which has built a global economy by continually robbing us of the sense of meaning and selling it back to us at the price of the product, Frankl first dismantles the notion that meaning is to be found in the pursuit and acquisition of various pleasures:

"Let us imagine a man who has been sentenced to death and, a few hours before his execution, has been told he is free to decide on the menu for his last meal. The guard comes into his cell and asks him what he wants to eat, offers him all kinds of delicacies; but the man rejects all his suggestions. He thinks to himself that it is quite irrelevant whether he stuffs good food into the stomach of his organism or not, as in a few hours it will be a corpse. And even the feelings of pleasure that could still be felt in the organism’s cerebral ganglia seem pointless in view of the fact that in two hours they will be destroyed forever. But the whole of life stands in the face of death, and if this man had been right, then our whole lives would also be meaningless, were we only to strive for pleasure and nothing else — preferably the most pleasure and the highest degree of pleasure possible. Pleasure in itself cannot give our existence meaning; thus the lack of pleasure cannot take away meaning from life, which now seems obvious to us."

He quotes a short verse by the great Indian poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore - the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize, Einstein’s onetime conversation partner in contemplating science and spirituality, and a man who thought deeply about human nature:

"I slept and dreamt
that life was joy.
I awoke and saw
that life was duty.
I worked - and behold,
duty was joy."

In consonance with Camus’s view of happiness as a moral obligation - an outcome to be attained not through direct pursuit but as a byproduct of living with authenticity and integrity - Frankl reflects on Tagore’s poetic point: "So, life is somehow duty, a single, huge obligation. And there is certainly joy in life too, but it cannot be pursued, cannot be “willed into being” as joy; rather, it must arise spontaneously, and in fact, it does arise spontaneously, just as an outcome may arise: Happiness should not, must not, and can never be a goal, but only an outcome; the outcome of the fulfillment of that which in Tagore’s poem is called duty… All human striving for happiness, in this sense, is doomed to failure as luck can only fall into one’s lap but can never be hunted down."

In a sentiment James Baldwin would echo two decades later in his superb forgotten essay on the antidote to the hour of despair and life as a moral obligation to the universe, Frankl turns the question unto itself: "At this point it would be helpful [to perform] a conceptual turn through 180 degrees, after which the question can no longer be “What can I expect from life?” but can now only be “What does life expect of me?” What task in life is waiting for me?"

Now we also understand how, in the final analysis, the question of the meaning of life is not asked in the right way, if asked in the way it is generally asked: it is not we who are permitted to ask about the meaning of life - it is life that asks the questions, directs questions at us… We are the ones who must answer, must give answers to the constant, hourly question of life, to the essential “life questions.” Living itself means nothing other than being questioned; our whole act of being is nothing more than responding to - of being responsible toward - life. With this mental standpoint nothing can scare us anymore, no future, no apparent lack of a future. Because now the present is everything as it holds the eternally new question of life for us.

Frankl adds a caveat of tremendous importance - triply so in our present culture of self-appointed gurus, self-help demagogues, and endless podcast feeds of interviews with accomplished individuals attempting to distill a universal recipe for self-actualization: "The question life asks us, and in answering which we can realize the meaning of the present moment, does not only change from hour to hour but also changes from person to person: the question is entirely different in each moment for every individual.

We can, therefore, see how the question as to the meaning of life is posed too simply, unless it is posed with complete specificity, in the concreteness of the here and now. To ask about “the meaning of life” in this way seems just as naive to us as the question of a reporter interviewing a world chess champion and asking, “And now, Master, please tell me: which chess move do you think is the best?” Is there a move, a particular move, that could be good, or even the best, beyond a very specific, concrete game situation, a specific configuration of the pieces?"

What emerges from Frankl’s inversion of the question is the sense that, just as learning to die is learning to meet the universe on its own terms, learning to live is learning to meet the universe on its own terms - terms that change daily, hourly, by the moment:

"One way or another, there can only be one alternative at a time to give meaning to life, meaning to the moment — so at any time we only need to make one decision about how we must answer, but, each time, a very specific question is being asked of us by life. From all this follows that life always offers us a possibility for the fulfillment of meaning, therefore there is always the option that it has a meaning. One could also say that our human existence can be made meaningful “to the very last breath”; as long as we have breath, as long as we are still conscious, we are each responsible for answering life’s questions."

With this symphonic prelude, Frankl arrives at the essence of what he discovered about the meaning of life in his confrontation with death - a central fact of being at which a great many of humanity’s deepest seers have arrived via one path or another: from Rilke, who so passionately insisted that “death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love,” to physicist Brian Greene, who so poetically nested our search for meaning into our mortality into the most elemental fact of the universe. Frankl writes:

"The fact, and only the fact, that we are mortal, that our lives are finite, that our time is restricted and our possibilities are limited, this fact is what makes it meaningful to do something, to exploit a possibility and make it become a reality, to fulfill it, to use our time and occupy it. Death gives us a compulsion to do so. Therefore, death forms the background against which our act of being becomes a responsibility.
[…]
Death is a meaningful part of life, just like human suffering. Both do not rob the existence of human beings of meaning but make it meaningful in the first place. Thus, it is precisely the uniqueness of our existence in the world, the irretrievability of our lifetime, the irrevocability of everything with which we fill it - or leave unfulfilled - that gives our existence significance. But it is not only the uniqueness of an individual life as a whole that gives it importance, it is also the uniqueness of every day, every hour, every moment that represents something that loads our existence with the weight of a terrible and yet so beautiful responsibility! Any hour whose demands we do not fulfill, or fulfill halfheartedly, this hour is forfeited, forfeited “for all eternity.” Conversely, what we achieve by seizing the moment is, once and for all, rescued into reality, into a reality in which it is only apparently “canceled out” by becoming the past. In truth, it has actually been preserved, in the sense of being kept safe. Having been is in this sense perhaps even the safest form of being. The “being,” the reality that we have rescued into the past in this way, can no longer be harmed by transitoriness."

In the remainder of the slender and splendid "Yes to Life", Frankl goes on to explore how the imperfections of human nature add to, rather than subtract from, the meaningfulness of our lives and what it means for us to be responsible for our own existence. Complement it with Mary Shelley, writing two centuries ago about a pandemic-savaged world, on what makes life worth living, Walt Whitman contemplating this question after surviving a paralytic stroke, and a vitalizing cosmic antidote to the fear of death from astrophysicist and poet Rebecca Elson, then revisit Frankl on humor as lifeline to sanity and survival."

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, “The Return”

“The Return”

“Suddenly the window will open
and Mother will call,
it's time to come in.
The wall will part,
I will enter heaven in muddy shoes.
I will come to the table
and answer questions rudely.
I am all right, leave me
alone. Head in hand I
sit and sit. How can I tell them
about that long
and tangled way?
Here in heaven mothers
knit green scarves;
flies buzz.
Father dozes by the stove
after six days' labor.
No - surely I can't tell them
that people are at each
other's throats.”

- Theodore Roethke

"Acceptance..."

"Acceptance is a crucial step forward for those who prefer the idea of living this life over simply existing within it. Accept all that you've said and what you've done, because you cannot change your past. Accept the idea of the unknown, because the future is the unknown waiting patiently to reveal itself. Accept the person you have become thus far in your journey, because you are the only person who will be there with you when you finish it. Do all of this so that you may never find yourself having to accept regret that haunts you at two a.m., leaving you sweaty and broken hearted. All you have is this minute; not this hour, or this day, or this year. Live in this minute so that you won't get stuck simply existing with your guilty past, or with nothing but anxiety for the future."
- Margaret E. Rise

Dan, I Allegedly, "Here is Proof that Real Estate is Insane"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 7/26/24
"Here is Proof that Real Estate is Insane"
"Enjoy this tour. We talk about the fact that real estate prices are absolutely through the roof. Imagine a world where you can buy a house and the rents are $5000 less than your house payment would be."
Comments here:

"How It Really Is"

 

Bill Bonner, "In the National Interest"

"In the National Interest"
The elites all want ‘yes’ men. In the White House and in Congress. Almost all legislation transfers money and power from the people to them... their cronies...and their pet projects.
by Bill Bonner

"No man’s life, liberty or property is safe when the legislature is in session."
- Gideon J. Tucker

Poitou, France - "Widely reported yesterday was Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. Some people - mostly those who benefit from pro-Israeli campaign funds or are otherwise employed by the military/industrial/DeepState/surveillance/university/press complex - applauded wildly.

They rose to their feet 50 times…like the Supreme Soviet during an address by Josef Stalin. They seemed especially enthusiastic when the Israeli president suggested that those who objected to killing thousands of Gazans were aligned, and possibly supported, by Iran! Didn’t they know, the Iranian regime hangs gays from construction cranes?!

Other people - mostly Democrats, and notably including Kamala Harris - preferred to keep their distance. Netanyahu is widely and plausibly regarded as a war criminal, who leads an apartheid regime that steals land, tortures innocent people, destroys schools and hospitals and has killed nearly forty thousand Palestinians in the last nine months.

Just mentioning the mass murder brings charges of ‘antisemitism.’ On college campuses, professors who speak up may lose their jobs. Students lose job opportunities. And media reports of ‘rising antisemitism’ make it sound like every Jew on campus lives in fear for his life. So great is the danger of being labeled an ‘anti-semite’ that the goyim held back as Jews - who can’t reasonably be charged with opposing themselves - led Wednesday’s protests at the Capitol.

For politicians, the risk of getting on the wrong side of the Israeli lobby is even greater. They’ve all seen what AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) did to Jamaal Bowman. It can outspend almost any adversary. And according to Rep. Thomas Massie, AIPAC assigns a staffer to monitor each member of Congress to make sure he votes correctly. If not, a replacement is found to challenge him in the next election.

So, when Mr. Netanyahu himself appeared before a joint session of Congress only one Republican dared to sit on his hands, the aforementioned Thomas Massie. The premise of today’s comment is that Massie deserves more attention.

Third Rate Grandstander’: Massie first came to the nation’s notice during the Covid pandemic. “He tested positive for asshole,” said John Kerry. He’s a “third rate grandstander,” said Donald Trump. (Massie countered: “I take great offense at that; I’m at least second rate.”) “Thomas Massie is indeed a dumbass,” tweeted Rep. Maloney. A man with enemies like that can’t be all bad, we thought. So, we looked more closely. As always, context mattered.

In March, 2020, the Senate rushed to authorize an extraordinary spending spree - $2.2 trillion dollars’ worth - unanimously. Then, the House of Representatives was expected to rubber stamp it. After all, the nation faced a national emergency! Of course, the US government didn’t have that kind of money lying around. So, it would have to be ‘printed’ and borrowed... which would inevitably lead to sorrowful results downstream.

The Constitution requires that there be a quorum in order to pass important legislation. But members of Congress were ‘sheltering in place’. And when Massie got into the House he found only two members there. So, he wondered why it was that ‘essential workers’ - truck drivers, food store workers, nurses and many others - still had to go to the job site... but members of Congress did not? Apparently, they weren’t essential. Members of Congress had ‘the best healthcare in the world,’ Massie noted.

He demanded that members return to work. They grumbled. They groused... and they said mean things about Massie. But they came back to Washington. They voted. The bill was passed…almost unanimously. Massie voted ‘no.’

And he was right about everything. There was no reason for the peoples’ representatives to be cowering at home, while the people themselves were stocking shelves and moving freight. As it turned out, the Covid hysteria and the lockdown were unnecessary. And the trillions in excess spending - by Trump and then Biden - led to 9% inflation and a $35 trillion debt-bomb.
Click image for larger size.
The elites, Deep Staters, insiders, the Establishment - all want ‘yes’ men. In the White House and in Congress. Almost all legislation transfers money and power from the people to them... their cronies... and their pet projects. “It’s in the national interest,” they say. But it’s not the nation that gets the money... it’s specific groups for specific reasons.

Massie is a ‘no’ man. He voted against sanctions. He voted against naming Israel a ‘strategic partner,’ whatever that is. He voted against the Paycheck Protection and Health Enhancement Act. He is often the only member of Congress to oppose more spending. In one session he voted ‘no’ 324 times. Massie introduced a bill to abolish the Department of Education, for example... and co-sponsored another that would have abolished the Environmental Protection Agency. Alas, those initiatives went nowhere.

It must be lonely, being a ‘no’ man in today’s Washington. And if it means being an ‘a-hole’…or a ‘third rate grandstander,’ it’s too bad there aren’t more of them. Tune in again next week... "

"Empire of Lies"

"Empire of Lies"
by Brian Maher

"Why does government lie so repeatedly - and so atrociously? Why does it fear truth as the vampire fears garlic? The answer, we hazard, reduces to its desperate quest for prestige. Government equals authority. And an authority is an authority. Its word must be the final word. Its word must be the ultimate word. A supreme authority cannot withstand rivals - else its authority falls into question. It cannot endure mockery, ridicule or derision. And if its undeniable incompetence is exposed, its back goes up… and its dukes go up. Consider for example Monday’s congressional testimony of a certain Kimberly Cheatle…

The Greatest Sin Against Government: Ms. Cheatle directed the United States Secret Service when an aspiring assassin made a mockery of the lady’s organization. How can a murderous fellow scale a low rooftop with a rifle - some 140 yards from a former and potentially future United States president - and let eight projectiles loose - before being scotched? Here he was… placing his thumbs in his ears… wiggling his fingers… and putting out his tongue at Ms. Cheatle and the organization she bosses. And in the private opinion of Ms. Cheatle, that is the highest sin. It is not act itself. Is greater professional incompetence scarcely conceivable? We do not believe it is.

“It’s an Ongoing Investigation”: Yet the lady donned her armor, barricaded herself within fortress walls and deflected all questions concerning her agency’s abominations. She could not answer this question or that question because it is an “ongoing investigation.”

“Was July 13 a Saturday, madam?”
“It’s an ongoing investigation.”
“What time did the attempted assassination take place? What was the local temperature?”
“It’s an ongoing investigation.”
“What color blazer was the former president Trump sporting?”
“It’s an ongoing investigation.”
“In which hemisphere of Earth did the incident occur?”
“It’s an ongoing investigation.”
“What color is the sky?”
“It’s an ongoing investigation.”

Governing Means Never Saying You’re Sorry: Could the lady openly and candidly concede her organization’s botchwork? What government functionary ever does? Imagine her arguing, for example, that her sniper may have failed to shoot first because his scope was trained not on the rooftop - but on the fetching young lady in the third row with the cropped top and the shortest shorts.

Imagine her arguing that the 5’4” female agent lacked the height to cover adequately her 6’3” protectee. Furthermore, that the identical female agent was admitted to the United States Secret Service on a sliding scale - that she did not satisfy the physical standards required of men.

Imagine her conceding that her personnel were snoozing on the job. Have you imagined these potentialities? Then you have imagined impossibilities. Ms. Cheatle would never concede any of them even if true. That is because she fears for her (former) agency’s prestige.

The Bigger the Organization, the Bigger the Lies: “Why are you stating the obvious?” comes your retort. “Every organization, from the smallest business concern to the largest business concern, from any local government to the federal government, fears for its prestige. No organization wants to be publicly embarrassed.” You are of course correct. Yet the larger the organization, the larger its scope. Thus the greater number of lies - and scale of lies - it must tell to cling to its prestige.

Imagine you are the proprietor of a local business concern. You quake in fear of the competition. And you are hot to scotch it. Imagine the lengths to which you proceed… the fibs you tell… to defend and expand your localized little empire. What misdemeanor - indeed, what felony - wouldn’t you execute if it advantaged you? Yet your enterprise maintains a very constricted reach. It represents a nearly absolute insignificance to the world beyond. Who cares if you claim to be the most superior plumber in Springfield when you manifestly are not?

A Local Government Can Manage Its Lies: Next imagine that you are not a business concern. You are instead a local government concern. You are its mayor. You must tell your lies to glitter before your captives, your residents. The business may be difficult at times - yet it is manageable. You must lie about the efficiency of the Motor Vehicle Department or the Highway Department, for example. You must lie about the bribes you have accepted. You may therefore maintain your prestige. Yet the scope of your lies is contained with your narrow borders.

A nation - a normal nation - must likewise tell its lies to hold up its prestige. It may be difficult at times. Yet if the nation is reasonably sized and has little ambition, it is, again, possible. In highest contrast stands the government of the United States…

The Burden of Maintaining Global Prestige: This is an empire that exerts dominion over each individual, over each local municipality, over each state municipality within these shores - from oceans Atlantic and Pacific, from the border with Mexico to the border with Canada. Imagine the impossibility of managing such a vast space. The United States government manages the job very poorly. Yet by its nature it must maintain its prestige among the American people. It must therefore inform you that it performs the job very well. It will stare you in the eyes… and lie to you… even if it knows that you know it is lying to you.

Yet the United States is the world’s reigning kingpin, its dominant power. Its wingspan therefore covers the entirety of planet Earth. Does a single sparrow fall outside its awareness? Imagine - then - the lies it must tell to maintain its prestige among all the nations of Earth…

Lies of Commission and Omission: Who detonated the Nord Stream pipeline transmitting natural gas from the Russian Federation to the German republic? The answers reduce to the United States itself, one of its European allies or the nation of Ukraine. Do you believe the United States government is unaware of the answer? Yet imagine the catastrophic damage to its reputation if it revealed the answer.

It would concede that the United States itself executed the largest act of environmental sabotage in all of history - and heavily wrecked the economy of its central NATO ally - or that another NATO ally did the deed. Or that the nation it stands impassionedly behind, Ukraine, did the deed. It must therefore shrug its shoulders in befuddlement or inform you that Russia blew holes in its own pipeline. It is a lie of omission or a lie of commission.

We’re the Good Guys Here: Imagine if the United States government conceded that Russia’s unprovoked aggression was very much provoked? And that it was the saboteur of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine that would have ceased the bloodletting one month after it commenced. Public support for the Ukrainian cause - in the United States and abroad - would collapse in a heap. United States government prestige would absorb a fatal blow.

It must therefore babble lies. It must tell you that Mr. Putin’s aggression was not provoked. It must inform you that he will be at the English Channel within no time if he is not heaved out of Ukraine. It must inform you that it is battling on behalf of democracy. From the Middle East to East Asia, from South America to Africa, the identical dynamic obtains. If the Antarctic continent were sufficiently populated, it would extend there too.

Empire of Lies: Our co-founders Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin once labeled the United States an empire of debt. It is an empire of debt, yes. It is certainly an empire in debt. Yet in the more fundamental sense it is an empire of lies. The emperor in charge of it is presently being exposed - he is well and truly nude before a gaping world. Yet this emperor will never concede his nudity…"

Gregory Mannarino, "Understanding The Game: Market Continues To Price In Trump Selection"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 7/26/24
"Understanding The Game: 
Market Continues To Price In Trump Selection"
Comments here:
o
Gregory Mannarino, PM 7/26/24
"Inflating Our Way Into Disaster; 
People Have No Idea of What Is Happening"
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Jim Kunstler, "Saving Our Democracy"

"Saving Our Democracy"
by Jim Kunstler

“Being insane is the new normal.”
- Aimee Terese on “X”

"However it happened this week, “Joe Biden” passed the blowtorch to a new generation and got himself gone from the political battlefield. Delegates to the coming Democratic National Convention (August 19) were duly notified of the selected replacement, Veep Kamala Harris, and ordered to line up behind her. Not a peep of disagreement was heard among them. Amazing that no one had a different idea. Thus, is democracy saved.

The curious details around this event remain shrouded in mystery. Reporters for The New York Times and the WashPo could not be bothered to inquire, and their readers are not inclined to ask how all this came to be. It just is. In a culture with no sense of consequence, things just happen or un-happen. It is your duty to recognize that the wind now blows from another direction and bend with it.

One thing was obvious: the long-running prank of pretending that President “Joe Biden” is sound-of-mind fell apart after his mortifying appearance on the debate stage June 27th. Apparently, every last captain and foot-soldier in the Democratic Party ranks was taken completely by surprise to see their champion flicker out in real time, like a forty-watt bulb that has done years of duty on the front porch and suddenly leaves you in the dark. Three weeks followed with “Joe Biden” boldly campaigning as if nothing had happened. (Perhaps his mind did not register that things had changed.)

And then there was the weird tweet on “X” Sunday afternoon when the whole country was outside waterskiing, grilling weiners, carjacking, and yelling at ballparks, and the deed was done. Someone, possibly even “Joe Biden” himself, wrote a letter pasted into the tweet that declared he was bowing out of the race. The White House staff didn’t even know until it was up-and-posted. Rumor had it that Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama read the riot act to “JB”, who was refusing to follow the script. There were plenty of carrots-and-sticks to finally lever his obdurate ass into motion: not least must have involved any pending legal outcome of the family’s influence-peddling operations, whispers of new whistleblower accusations about offshore bank accounts, perhaps with sweeteners in the deal as to how much schwag the clan could still hold onto in the end.

Then, the valedictory speech on Wednesday, sort of a proof-of-life exhibition, to verify that Sunday’s janky tweet to the nation was for real. You heard a Homeric recitation of “JB’s” signal achievements in office, every one of them demonstrably false. He did not keep our country out of war, or grow the economy, or keep inflation down, or beat Big Pharma, or build anything, or defend personal freedoms, or “make it clear there is no place, no place in America for political violence or any violence ever.” (In fact, the very next day, Thursday, pro-Hamas mobs attacked US Park police and vandalized federal property at Washington’s Union Station, and on Friday all charges were dropped against them - while scores of J6 Capitol trespassers rotted for years in the DC jail.)

What “Joe Biden” actually accomplished in office was the near-total wrecking of the USA. He torpedoed the authority and legitimacy of just about every federal agency, turned the Department of Justice into a Gestapo, seeded the federal court benches with Woke lunatics, allowed an invasion of perhaps 20-million border-jumpers (including many thousands of professional terrorists), coerced injections of an ineffective and injurious vaccine into millions of citizens afraid of losing their livelihoods, promoted gross medical experiments on sexually troubled children, invited drag queens and mentally-ill degenerates to cavort in the White House, spent borrowed money at a rate that propelled the national debt past the event horizon into a black hole, made the seeking of incompetence the number one priority of the Pentagon, provoked a war in Ukraine that now teeters on the hazard of a nuclear exchange, and allowed the CIA to complete its takeover of the US government. “Joe Biden” will go down in history as the worst of all 46 US presidents.

And, of course, in the rush of cascading events the past several weeks came the attempted assassination of the Democratic Party’s nemesis, Mr. Trump, an operation festooned with loose threads, suspicious agency failures, and intimations of Deep State blob engineering. You’ll have to stand by on any of that resolving soon. But many Democrats expressed disappointment that Mr. Trump was not killed, since that would be saving our democracy.

Also not quite resolved is the case of who the Democratic Party truly intends to run for president this year as the days dwindle down to Nov. 5. The current delirium over Kamala Harris is like a relief rally in the financial markets when a crisis has been averted - or, at least, stalled. You have reason to doubt that the Democratic Party’s leadership crisis has actually been averted. Despite sedulous efforts to wipe her record, too many Americans know Kamala Harris as a hee-hawing ninny with a predilection for hapless Marxist fantasies. I’m not persuaded that she is at all comfortable in her sudden role as the party’s avatar. She is rumored to hit the bottle in moments of stress.

The Party of Chaos will supposedly run a “virtual roll call” of delegates August 1st in order to meet the requirements to get on the ballot in several states. But then comes the actual convention with live bodies in murmuration on the floor of the arena, and in the back rooms and hallways, and there are more than three weeks between now and then for Kamala Harris to remind the world what a cackling lightweight she is. A lot can happen between now and then."

Adventures With Danno, "Aldi Saver Deals You Should Be Buying!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 7/26/24
"Aldi Saver Deals You Should Be Buying!"
In today's vlog, we are at Aldi and are finding all kinds of their Aldi Saver Deals! As grocery prices continue to rise in most of our main supermarkets, Aldi has put together some pretty amazing sales that we should definitely take advantage of! We show you all of the savings, so get your notepad ready!
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Meanwhile, elsewhere...
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 7/26/24
"Russian Typical Supermarket After 800 Days of Sanctions"
What does a Typical Russian supermarket look like in Russia? Join me on a tour of a Russian typical supermarket in Moscow, Russia. What items are they selling, what products are no longer available after 800 days of Sanctions?
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Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 7/23/24
"I Went to a Russian Tea Party in the Center of Moscow"
What does a Russian Tea Party look like in Moscow, Russia? Join me as I discover what it's like to attend a traditional Moscow Tea Party. Together I will show you some of the features and special events during a Russian Tea Party." 
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Thursday, July 25, 2024

Canadian Prepper, "Alert! Moscow Preps Hospitals For WW3; Romania Down Drone; Mass Evac Drill"

Canadian Prepper, 7/25/24
"Alert! Moscow Preps Hospitals For WW3;
 Romania Down Drone; Mass Evac Drill"
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Gerald Celente, "Office Building Bust, AL Bust, More War And Less Freedom"

Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 7/25/24
"Office Building Bust, AL Bust,
 More War And Less Freedom"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times"
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Musical Interlude: Afshin, "Prayer of Change"

Full screen recommended.
Afshin, "Prayer of Change"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“The southern Milky Way appears spectacular in this composite image taken from Mangaia, the most southerly of the Cook Islands. Few sources of light pollution exist here, home to only 500 people.
The two bright stars at the Milky Way’s center are Alpha (left) and Beta Centauri. They point to Crux the Southern Cross. Near the horizon, two of the satellite galaxies of our Milky Way, the Small (left) and Large Magellanic Clouds are easy to spot.”

"Just Remember..."

“I know the world seems terrifying right now and the future seems bleak. Just remember human beings have always managed to find the greatest strength within themselves during the darkest hours. When faced with the worst horrors the world has to offer, a person either cracks and succumbs to ugliness, or they salvage the inner core of who they are and fight to right wrongs. Never Let hatred, fear, and ignorance get the best of you. Keep bettering yourself so you can make the world around you better, for nothing can improve without the brightest, bravest, kindest, and most imaginative individuals rising above the chaos.”
- Cat Winters

“5 Painfully Obvious Truths We Tend to Forget in Hard Times”

“5 Painfully Obvious Truths
We Tend to Forget in Hard Times”
by Angel Chernoff

“This is going to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
We are going to get through this, I promise,
and we’re going to get through it together. “
- Dr. Jon LaPook

“You know how you can read or hear something dozens of times in dozens of different ways before it finally sinks in? The little truths listed below fall firmly into that category – timeless life lessons that many of us likely learned years ago, and have been reminded of ever since, yet for whatever reason we tend to forget in the heat of the moment. This, my friends, is my attempt at helping all of us, myself included, “get it” and “remember it” once and for all, especially as we collectively cope with the evolving reality of economic collapse and the drastic social and life circumstances caused by COVID-19…

1. Life is short, and nothing is guaranteed. We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it happens to someone we know. It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted mind, and misjudging the final step. You expected there to be one more stair than there is, and so you find yourself off balance for a moment, before your mind shifts back to the present moment and how the world really is.

LIVE your life TODAY! Don’t ignore death – or the imminent dangers now becoming obvious – but don’t be afraid of life either. Be afraid of a life you never lived because you were too afraid to take positive action today. Death is not the greatest loss in life, neither is illness. The greatest loss is what dies inside you while you’re still alive and well. Even in these difficult times, be bold, be courageous, be a scared to death, and then take the next step anyway. Just change the way you do it.

Invest your heart and soul into whatever you have right in front of you. Bring passion into otherwise ordinary moments. You don’t have to be surrounded by lots of people. You don’t have to be going anyplace new. You can distance yourself and still passionately engage in each moment.

2. Everything will change again soon. Embrace change and realize in many ways it’s necessary. It won’t always be obvious at first, but in the end most forms of change are worthwhile because they force us to grow. So keep yourself in check right now.

What you have today may become what you had by tomorrow. You never know. Things change, often spontaneously. People and circumstances come and go. Life doesn’t stop for anybody. It moves rapidly and rushes from calm to chaos in a matter of seconds, and happens like this to people every day. It’s likely happening to someone nearby right now.

Sometimes the shortest split second in time changes the direction of our lives. A seemingly innocuous decision rattles our whole world like a meteorite striking Earth. Entire lives have been swiveled and flipped upside down, for better or worse, on the strength of an unpredictable event. And these events are always happening – as they are right now.

So just remember, however good or bad a situation is now, it will change. That’s the one thing you can count on. Accept it. Breathe. Be where you are. You’re where you need to be right now. There’s a time and place for everything, and every hard step is necessary. Just keep doing your best, and don’t force what’s not yet supposed to fit into your life. When it’s meant to be, it will be.

3. Changing your response is what puts you back in control. Have patience with everything that remains unresolved in your head and heart. And realize that patience is not about waiting, but the ability to keep a good attitude while working hard to stay true to your intuition and values. This is your life, and it is governed by your choices. May your actions speak louder than your words. May your daily choices preach louder than your lips. May your inner sense of satisfaction be your noise in the end.

And if your present life only teaches you one thing, let it be that taking a passionate leap is always worth it. Even if you have no idea where you’re going to land – even when there are so many unknowns – be brave enough to stand up and listen to your heart. Remember that the most powerful moments in life happen when you find the courage to let go of what can’t be changed. Because when you are no longer able to change a situation, you are challenged to change yourself – to grow beyond the unchangeable. And that changes everything! (Marc and I discuss this in more detail in the “Passion and Growth” chapter of 1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.“)

4. Life’s storms can be a great source of strength. Hard times are like strong storms that blow against you. And it’s not just that these storms hold you back from places you might otherwise go. They also tear away from you all but the essential parts of your ego that cannot be torn, so that afterward you see yourself as you really are, and not merely as you might like to be.

Ultimately, you realize you are here to endure these storms, to sacrifice your time and risk your heart. You are here to be bruised by life. And when it happens that you are hurt, or betrayed, or rejected, let yourself sit quietly with your eyes closed and remember all the good times you had, and all the sweetness you tasted, and everything you learned. Tell yourself how amazing it was to live, and then open your eyes and live some more.

Because to never struggle would be to never grow. You must let go of who you were so you can become who you are. Again, it is within the depths of the strongest and darkest storms that you discover within you an inextinguishable light, and it is this light that illuminates the path forward.

5. You don’t need all the answers right now. Accept the feeling of not knowing exactly where you are going, and train yourself to love and appreciate this sensation of freedom. Because it is only when you are suspended in the air, with no destination in sight, that you force your wings to open fully so you can fly. And as you soar around you still may not know where you’re traveling to. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is the opening of your wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as your wings are spread, the winds will carry you forward.

Truth be told, some of the greatest outcomes that transpire in your life will be the ones you never even knew you wanted. As long as you keep your mind open to new perspectives and yourself moving forward, there really are no wrong turns in life, only paths you didn’t know you were meant to travel. And you never can be certain what’s around the corner. It could be everything, or it could be nothing. You keep gliding steadily forward, and then one day you realize you’ve come a long way from where you started.

All details aside, someday all the pieces will come together. Unimaginably good outcomes will likely transpire in your life, even if everything doesn’t turn out exactly the way you had anticipated. And you will look back at the hard times that have passed, smile, and ask yourself… “How in the world did I get through all of that?”

"What Matter..."

"What matter if this base, unjust life
Cast you naked and disarmed?
If the ground breaks beneath your step,
Have you not your soul?
Your soul! You fly away,
Escape to realms refined,
Beyond all sadness and whimpering.
Be like the bird which on frail branches balanced
A moment sits and sings;
He feels them tremble, but he sings unshaken,
Knowing he has wings."

– Victor Hugo

Free Download: Carl Bernstein, "The Idiot Culture"

"The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished. The name of Poet was almost forgotten; that of Orator was usurped by the sophists. A cloud of critics, of compilers, of commentators, darkened the face of learning, and the decline of genius was soon followed by the corruption of taste. This diminutive stature of mankind was daily sinking below the old standard."
- Edward Gibbon,
"The Decline And Fall of The Roman Empire"

"We are in the process of creating, in sum, what deserves to be called tbe idiot culture. Not an idiot subculture, which every society has bubbling beneath the surface and which can provide harmless fun; but the culture itself For the first time in our history the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal."
Freely download "The Idiot Culture", by Carl Bernstein, here:

"The Daily "Near You?"

Maxwell, California, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"And Sometimes..."

 

Gregory Mannarino, "There Is No Way To Stop It! An Extreme Decline Is Dead Ahead!"

Gregory Mannarino, 7/25/24
"There Is No Way To Stop It! 
An Extreme Decline Is Dead Ahead!"
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Related:
Full screen recommended.
Jim Rickards, 7/25/24
"Central Bank Is About To Collapse 
The Economy and Here's How."
"Jim Rickards talks about the U.S national debt that is going up and up forever and how the Central Bank will blow up the economy with it, and then talks about MMT or Modern Monetary Theory which doesn't make any sense to him."
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"The Percentage Of Americans That Worry They Won’t Be Able To Pay Their Bills Is Higher Than It Was During The Great Recession"

"The Percentage Of Americans That Worry They Won’t Be Able
To Pay Their Bills Is Higher Than It Was During The Great Recession"
by Michael Snyder

"Do you remember how painful the Great Recession was? 2008 and the years immediately following were definitely a very dark chapter in our history, but a new study has actually found that the percentage of Americans that worry they won’t be able to pay their bills is actually higher today than it was back then. Slowly but surely, our economic strength has been fading and our standard of living has been falling. Unfortunately, now we have reached a point where a very large portion of the U.S. population is really struggling. According to a CNN poll that was just released, almost 40 percent of all U.S. adults “say they worry most or all of the time that their family’s income won’t be enough to meet expenses”…

"Many Americans regularly worry they won’t be able to make ends meet. Nearly four in ten (39%) of US adults say they worry most or all of the time that their family’s income won’t be enough to meet expenses, according to a new CNN poll. That’s up from 28% who expressed those concerns in December 2021, and it’s similar to the numbers seen during the Great Recession (37%). To cope, significant shares of Americans said they are adding side jobs, cutting down on driving and putting more expenses on credit cards."

If you would have asked me before I saw the results, I would have been quite confident that the number during the Great Recession would have been higher than the number in 2024. Just like everyone else, I remember the Great Recession as such a painful time. Sadly, the economic pain that we are experiencing now is just beginning.

Ordinary Americans from coast to coast are being absolutely crushed by rising prices, and that isn’t going to change any time soon. In an article that CNN posted about this new survey, one woman that works for the CDC admitted that she was recently forced to move because costs have risen so aggressively…“The grocery store is just outrageous right now. But it’s not just that. Everything has gone up. Clothing. My insurance,” said Angela Russell, an Ohio resident who works as a program analyst at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Russell, who has two adult children and three grandkids, said she recently moved out of her rental home in Cincinnati in favor of one in a rural area where the rent is cheaper."

Other recent surveys have come up with results that are even more alarming. For example, one discovered that a whopping 71 percent of Americans are stressed out about their “ability to afford everyday expenses”…"71% of Americans say they’re stressed by their ability to afford everyday expenses. Americans most regularly spend money on groceries, phone bills, utilities, gasoline and rent/mortgage payments. Grocery bills frustrate Americans more than any other regular expense. Utilities, rent/mortgage payments, gasoline and insurance payments round out the top five most annoying expenses.

That is most of the country. Unsurprisingly, younger generations are being hit particularly hard by the pain of inflation…"Financial stress levels are highest among millennials (77%), followed by Generation Z (75%) and Generation X (74%). Baby boomers reported experiencing the least financial stress, although at 59% it was still more than half of those surveyed."

Those that follow my work regularly know that I tend to rant about rising prices at the grocery store. Sometimes it is hard for me to believe that prices have gotten so high, and it appears that a lot of people out there agree with me.

Another recent survey found that 80 percent of Americans have observed a “notable increase” in grocery store prices…"According to a study by Qualtrics on behalf of Intuit Credit Karma, 80% of Americans say they have felt a “notable increase” in grocery costs in recent years. More than a quarter of respondents said the increased cost has led them to occasionally skip meals, while about one-third said they spend more than 60% of their monthly income on mandatory expenses such as food, utilities and rent."

Food has certainly become ridiculously expensive, but we actually spend far more money on housing. Today, the typical household spends about 12 percent of total income on food and about 33 percent of total income on housing…"According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the top three annual expenses for the average American household in 2022 (the most recent data available) were housing (33.3%), transportation (16.8%) and food (12.8%)."

For most Americans, spending money in these areas is unavoidable. Housing costs have been rising much faster than the overall rate of inflation, and we just learned that home prices reached yet another new all-time record high last month…"Home prices hit a new high in June for the second straight month, the latest sign that the housing market is unaffordable to millions of Americans. The spring home-buying season, usually the busiest time of year for the housing market, was a dud this year. Home sales declined in June for the fourth straight time on a monthly basis. The combination of high prices and elevated mortgage rates has made homeownership less attractive to renters and deterred current homeowners from moving."

Meanwhile, homelessness in the United States is at the highest level ever recorded and it has been growing at the fastest pace ever recorded. We just can’t keep going on like this. Something has to give.

It appears to be inevitable that all of this economic pain will have a dramatic impact on the upcoming election. At this point, approximately three out of every five Americans believe that we are already in a recession right now…"You don’t need to be a financial genius to know that times are tough for plenty of Americans. With that in mind, a majority of people actually think the economy is doing even worse than the “experts” say it is. Three in five people believe that the U.S. is currently in a recession, even though we’re not officially in one according to the financial definition.

The survey of 2,000 Americans explored what’s driving this lack of consumer confidence in the economy. Inflation and the rising cost of living (68%) top the list of reasons why respondents believe the U.S. is in a recession, followed by friends and family members complaining about money (50%)."

It is not an accident that this has happened. For more than a decade, people like me have been relentlessly warning that the decisions that our leaders were making would have disastrous consequences, and that is exactly what has happened. And if we stay on the path that we are on, it won’t be too long before we witness a meltdown of absolutely epic proportions."

"How It Really Is"

Oh no we haven't, not even close. 
This is just beginning, and you ain't seen nuthin' yet, but you will...

Jeremiah Babe, "When They Pull The Plug Bad Things Will Happen"

Jeremiah Babe, AM 7/25/24
"When They Pull The Plug Bad Things Will Happen"
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Dan, I Allegedly,

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 7/25/24
"Financial Peril Is Here - People are Broke"
In this video, I discuss alarming stories like a woman who hit 60 with zero retirement savings and others just scraping by paycheck to paycheck. It's a wake-up call for all of us to trim our expenses, live within our means, and prepare for an uncertain future.
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