“Alas, regardless of their doom, the little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come, nor care beyond today.”
- Thomas Gray,
“Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College”
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, August 16, 2024
The Poet: John Jefferson, “Wounded But Not Slain”
“Wounded But Not Slain”
“I am wounded but I am not slain.
I’m bruised and faint they say…
I shall lay me down and bleed a while,
then I shall rise and fight again.
Just let me lie and bleed awhile;
I’ll not be long this way.
My Spirit’s low and my eyes flow.
My heart is sad and sore;
But when my pen’ent tears are gone,
I’ll stand and fight some more.
I’ll bind these wounds; I’ll dry these tears;
I’ll close this bleeding vein;
I’ll not lie here and weep and die:
I’ll rise and fight again.
‘Twas yesterday I bowed so low,
Was weak from tears and pain;
Today I’m strong; my fears are gone;
Today I fight again.”
- John Jefferson
o
“You cannot kill me here. Bring your soldiers, your death, your disease, your collapsed economy because it doesn’t matter, I have nothing left to lose and you cannot kill me here. Bring the tears of orphans and the wails of a mother’s loss, bring your God damn air force and Jesus on a cross, bring your hate and bitterness and long working hours, bring your empty wallets and love long since gone but you cannot kill me here. Bring your sneers, your snide remarks and friendships never felt, your letters never sent, your kisses never kissed, cigarettes smoked to the bone and cancer killing fears but you cannot kill me here. For I may fall and I may fail but I will stand again each time and you will find no satisfaction. Because you cannot kill me here.”
- Iain S. Thomas
“7 Things Fear Has Stolen From You”
“7 Things Fear Has Stolen From You”
by Marc Chernoff
“There is no greater hell than to be a prisoner of fear.”
- Ben Johnson
“Courage doesn’t mean you don’t get afraid; courage means you don’t let fear stop you. Everything you want is on the other side of fear. Don’t ever hesitate to give yourself a chance to be everything you are capable of being. Although fear can feel overwhelming, and defeats more people than any other force in the world, it’s not as powerful as it seems. Fear is only as deep as your mind allows. You are still in control. The key is to acknowledge your fear and directly address it. You must step right up and confront it face to face. This tactic robs fear of its power, instead of fear robbing YOU of…
1. Your true path and purpose. Fear of being different… Don’t be fooled by what others say, especially when they try to tell you what is right for you. Listen and then draw your own conclusions. What is your intuition telling you? There is not a clear path that everyone should follow. Your greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding in life at all the wrong things. Choose a path that fits YOU. Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it. Challenge yourself to ask with each and every step, and each focus point that consumes your energy: “Does this thing I’m doing right now truly serve me and those I care about in the next few minutes, few months, and few years?” Whatever you settle on, just make sure you don’t gain the whole world by losing your soul and purpose in the process.
2. Self-respect. Fear of not being good enough… Don’t be too hard on yourself. There are plenty of people willing to do that for you. Do your best and surrender the rest. Tell yourself, “I am doing the best I can with what I have in this moment. That is all I can ever expect of anyone, including me.” Love yourself and be proud of everything you do, even your mistakes, because your mistakes mean you’re trying. If you feel like others are not treating you with love and respect, check your price tag. Perhaps you subconsciously marked yourself down. Because it’s YOU who tells others what you’re worth by showing them what you are willing to accept for your time and attention. So get off the clearance rack. If you don’t value and respect yourself, wholeheartedly, no one else will either.
3. Your ability to make concrete decisions. Fear of commitment… You cannot live your life at the mercy of chance. You cannot stumble along with a map marked only with the places you fear, or the places you know you don’t want to revisit. You cannot remain trapped, endlessly, in a state where you are unable to ask for directions, even though you’re terribly lost, because you don’t know your destination. You have to commit to goals that speak to you. You have to stand up, look at yourself in the mirror, and say, “It isn’t good enough for me to know only what I DON’T want in life. I need to decide what I DO want.”
4. Priceless opportunities and life experiences. Fear of change and discomfort… As Thich Nhat Hanh so perfectly said, “People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.” In many cases you stay stuck in your old routines for no other reason than that they are familiar to you. In other words, you’re afraid of change and the unknown. You continually put your dreams and goals off until tomorrow, and you pass on great opportunities simply because they have the potential to lead you out of your comfort zone.
You start using excuses to justify your lack of backbone: “Someday when I have more money,” or “when I’m older,” or the over-abused “I’ll get to it as soon as I have more time.” This is a vicious cycle that leads to a deeply unsatisfying life – a way of thinking that eventually sends you to your grave with immense regret. Regret that you didn’t follow your heart. Regret that you always put everyone else’s needs before your own. Regret that you didn’t do what you could have done when you had the chance.
5. General happiness and peace of mind. Fear of facing inner truths… If you keep looking for happiness outside yourself, you will never find it. Happiness is found from within. What you seek is not somewhere else at some other time; what you seek is here and now, within you. The more you look for it outside yourself, the more it hides from you. Relax, remember the source of your deepest desires, and allow yourself to know their fulfillment. A choice, not circumstances, determines happiness. Each morning when you open your eyes, say to yourself: “I, not external people or events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. It’s up to me. Yesterday is gone and tomorrow hasn’t come yet. I only have today and I’m going to be happy in it.”
6. Your willingness to love, truly and purely. Fear of not being loved in return… Although it is nice when gestures of love are returned, true love is one-way traffic. It’s a pure flow of giving and expecting nothing in return. Anything else is a contract. Notice how whenever you allow love to flow you are always clear, calm and strong. It is only when the thought arises, “What have they given me in return?” that there is confusion and resentment. Ego transacts, love transforms. Life is too short for all these meticulous contracts and transactions.
Look out for yourself by focusing your love in a direction that feels right to you, but once you decide to love, remain clear, remain bright, and remain strong. Love without expectation. Don’t let fear get in your way. When the love you give is true, the people worthy of your love will gradually reveal themselves over time.
7. The right company. Fear of being alone… Sadly, no matter how much love you give, some relationships simply aren’t meant to be. You can try your hardest, you can do everything and say everything, but sometimes people just aren’t worth stressing over anymore, and they aren’t worth worrying about. It’s important to know when to distance yourself from someone who only hurts you and brings you down. When you give your love to someone, truly and purely without expectation, and it’s never good enough for them, there’s a good chance you’re giving your love to the wrong person.
The bottom line is that long-term relationships should help you, not hurt you. Spend time with nice people who are smart, driven and like-minded. And remember, good relationships are a sacred bond – a circle of trust. Both parties must be 100% on board. If and when the time comes to let a relationship go, don’t be hostile. Simply thank the relationships that don’t work out for you, because they just made room for the ones that will.
Next steps… Your biggest fears are completely dependent on you for their survival. Every new day is another chance to change your life, and it’s way too short to let fear interfere. Today, focus your conscious mind on things you desire, not things you fear. Doing so can bring your dreams to life.
Your turn… What has fear stolen from you? What has it stopped you from doing, being, or achieving? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts with the community.”
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"How Did It Get So Crazy, So Fast?"
"How Did It Get So Crazy, So Fast?"
by John Wilder
"One of the comments on a post a few weeks back asked a pretty good question: “How did we get so crazy, so fast?” The answer actually involves several intertwining threads, mice, Soviets, and gasoline engines, so let’s see of we can weave a web that covers at least a chunk of what has made us so crazy, so quickly. This is a distillation of the last seven years’ worth of study and writing, so some of it might be pretty familiar. Also, it’s not necessarily complete yet, but here are the major threads that I see that have led to what Heinlein called The Crazy Years.
First: Societal Malaise Due to Abundance: I’ve written several times about John Bumpass (that’s his real middle name according to the Internet) Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia experiment, see immediately below this paragraph for links to two previous posts. The short summary is Dr. Calhoun asked a crazy question: what would happen if you gave a population of mice everything they could want: food, water, freedom from predation, space to live, bedding material, and places to make nests.
The result? The mice died out. At a certain point they stopped mating, mother mice stopped taking care of infant mice, gangs formed, and some mice (the “beautiful ones”) just spent their time grooming themselves and not really interacting. If this sounds like Reddit® or TikTok™ or the Democratic National Convention, well, you’re right. For a certain subset of the population, abundance has ruined them.
I think it started in the 1960s. I’m just guessing. I like to blame the hippies, so they’re likely the early-version. It then continued into the wildest era of abundance the world has ever seen: the 1990s. If you look at any time lapse, that’s when the United States started leading the world (it has spread now, literally) in having obesity, not hunger, be the bigger (pun intended) health problem.
I think this started to manifest itself, big time, in the music of the 1990s. We went from Warrant singing about Cherry Pie to Kurt Cobain mumbling about how living in the suburbs with all the Pop Tarts™ his fat face could eat was killing him. Turns out that shotguns are even more deadly than Pop Tarts©. Who knew? We had a generation that was lost because they had everything. I think a candidate for the hallmark phrase of this Crazy Cause is: “Why are we even here, dude?”
Second: Societal Anxiety Due to No Challenges: I recently made the comment on X® that a lot of people would e better off if they had been bullied as kids. Was I serious? Yeah, I was. One response was, “Why do you want to make things worse?”
The truth is, for me, that bullies actually helped me build my character and my resolve. And, believe it or not, sometimes the bullies were right and the things that they bullied me about (second graders can be assholes) were things I needed to fix to be a better person. Did I lift harder to get stronger because of it? Yes. Did I develop the internal resilience so that the people who (rightfully) bullied the smarmy second grader that I was eventually earned the respect of the bullies?
Yes. Males, even young males, need to develop a hierarchy and understand their place in it and why they are inferior to Chuck Norris.
No child is born perfect, and it is the challenges in life that help define and develop character. Without challenge, development is stunted.
I think that today’s twentysomethings have the problem that they look into a future that certainly looks grim to them, yet they’ve never had a chance to develop their character and are told again and again how perfect they are and how their choices are important.
Newsflash: the choices of a second grader generally deserve about as much attention as the choices my dog wants to make. Both will eat all of the cake in the house if you let them and make messes everywhere. It’s our job as parents to not care what they think when it’s important to develop character and virtue.
As a society we face many of the same problems: what is it we stand for and what are we trying to accomplish? We don’t have Soviets to fight, we’re actively encouraging invaders into our country to replace us, and we don’t have any cool national purpose like the Apollo program. I think a candidate for the catchphrase of this crazy cause is: “Why am I so worthless?”
Third: Societal Atomization Due To Tech: As humans, we have minds that are built around smaller social systems, mainly. The big move from rural to urban happened in the west only recently. Our legacy social structure is (mainly) to live in a town for a very long time, put down roots, make friends, make a reputation.
Most people aren’t leaders, they’re followers, and want to be led. Why else would sane people want zoning regulations? But now, put us in a constantly churning urban landscape where we don’t know the next-door-neighbor in the apartment building? Who do we turn to? Well, whatever latenightjokeman says or whatever TikTik™ says or whatever InstaFace© allows to be printed. People are defining themselves on how YouTube™ says Europeans feel about Donald Trump.
They are also allowed to pick whatever gender they are. How do I know tech is driving this? Back when COVID made everyone homeschooled, transgenderism dropped. Why? No one to identify to – which is why “transwomen” with no girl parts get offended when gynecologists won’t give them appointments. Yes. That’s a thing.
The iPhone™ is a big driver. It puts connections in the hands of kids. I talked with one Millennial, and he said that at the start of his high school career, kids “cruised main” looking for other kids. By the end of high school, it was all phones. Friendships dropped, and dating dropped. Mix that with the first two causes above, and it leads to fewer kids.
Dating sites magnify this, and make every girl “4” think that she deserves a Chad ranked 9 or higher because one time a drunk Chad had sex with her. This leads to Chads being happy, but girls being sad and hollow inside. I think a catchphrase for this Crazy Cause is “Who or what the heck am I?”
Result of these interacting strands of Crazy are a large number of people who:
• Stand for nothing.
• Have no examples of virtue other than seeking money in their lives.
• See no point in anything other than the present moment.
• Are distracted.
• Think they’re too good for PEZ™.
• Are filled with the combination of anxiety and narcissism.
• Do and feel whatever the media tells them to do.
• Haven’t built social circles of any particular strength – clubs and churches are on constant decline.
There’s good news. All of this is self-limiting. We’re not mice, and plenty of good humans haven’t fallen into Calhoun’s Behavioral Sink. Many of those same people have overcome challenges sufficient to shape their character for the better. Finally, there are enough of us that don’t follow. We lead. Or we choose our own path. And? We’re gonna win."
"Time..."
“Space I can recover. Time, never.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte
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“Lands can be reconquered, indeed in the course of a battle, a hill or a certain plain might trade hands several times. But missed opportunities? These can never be regained. Moments in time, in culture? They can never be re-made. One can never go back in time to prepare for what they should have prepared for, no one can ever get back critical seconds that were wasted out of fear or ego. Napoleon was brilliant at trading space for time: Sure, you can make these moves, provided you are giving me the time I need to drill my troops, or move them to where I want them to be. Yet in life, most of us are terrible at this. We trade an hour of our life here or afternoon there like it can be bought back with the few dollars we were paid for it. And it is only much, much later, as they are on their deathbeds or when they are looking back on what might have been, that many people realize the awful truth of this quote. Don’t do that. Embrace it now.”
- Ryan Holiday
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Full screen recommended.
Hans Zimmer, "Time"
"Thou Shalt Not Commit Genocide"
"Thou Shalt Not Commit Genocide"
Opposing genocide is a moral not a political choice.
by Mr. Fish
There is only one way to end the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It is not through bilateral negotiations. Israel has amply demonstrated, including with the assassination of the lead Hamas negotiator, Ismail Haniyeh, that it has no interest in a permanent ceasefire. The only way for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians to be halted is for the U.S. to end all weapons shipments to Israel. And the only way this will take place is if enough Americans make clear they have no intention of supporting any presidential ticket or any political party that fuels this genocide.
The arguments against a boycott of the two ruling parties are familiar: It will ensure the election of Donald Trump. Kamala Harris has rhetorically shown more compassion than Joe Biden. There are not enough of us to have an impact. We can work within the Democratic Party. The Israel lobby, especially the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which owns most members of Congress, is too powerful. Negotiations will eventually achieve a cessation of the slaughter.
In short, we are impotent and must surrender our agency to sustain a project of mass killing. We must accept as normal governance the shipment of billions of dollars in military aid to an apartheid state, the use of vetoes at the U.N. Security Council to protect Israel and the active obstruction of international efforts to end mass murder. We have no choice.
Genocide, the internationally recognized crime of crimes, is not a policy issue. It cannot be equated with trade deals, infrastructure bills, charter schools or immigration. It is a moral issue. It is about the eradication of a people. Any surrender to genocide condemns us as a nation and as a species. It plunges the global society one step closer to barbarity. It eviscerates the rule of law and mocks every fundamental value we claim to honor. It is in a category by itself. And to not, with every fiber of our being, combat genocide is to be complicit in what Hannah Arendt defines as “radical evil,” the evil where human beings, as human beings, are rendered superfluous.
The plethora of Holocaust studies should have made this indelible point. But Holocaust studies were hijacked by Zionists. They insist that the Holocaust is unique, that it is somehow set apart from human nature and human history. Jews are deified as eternal victims of anti-Semitism. Nazis are endowed with a special kind of inhumanity. Israel, as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington concludes, is the solution. The Holocaust was one of several genocides carried out in the 19th and 20th centuries. But historical context is ignored and with it our understanding of the dynamics of mass extermination.
The fundamental lesson of the Holocaust, which writers such as Primo Levi stress, is that we can all become willing executioners. It takes very little. We can all become complicit, if only through indifference and apathy, in evil.
“Monsters exist,” Levi, who survived Auschwitz, writes, “but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.”
To confront evil - even if there is no chance of success - keeps alive our humanity and dignity. It allows us, as Vaclav Havel writes in “The Power of the Powerless,” to live in truth, a truth the powerful do not want spoken and seek to suppress. It provides a guiding light to those who come after us. It tells the victims they are not alone. It is “humanity’s revolt against an enforced position” and an “attempt to regain control over one’s sense of responsibility.”
What does it say about us if we accept a world where we arm and fund a nation that kills and wounds hundreds of innocents a day?
What does it say about us if we support an orchestrated famine and the poisoning of the water supply where the polio virus has been detected, meaning tens of thousands will get sick and many will die?
What does it say about us if we permit for 10 months the bombing of refugee camps, hospitals, villages and cities to wipe out families and force survivors to camp out in the open or find shelter in crude tents?
What does it say about us when we accept the murder of 16,456 children, although this is surely an undercount?
What does it say about us when we watch Israel escalate attacks on United Nations facilities, schools - including the Al-Tabaeen school in Gaza City, where over 100 Palestinians were killed while performing the Fajr, or dawn prayers - and other emergency shelters?
What does it say about us when we permit Israel to use Palestinians as human shields by forcing handcuffed civilians, including children and the elderly, to enter potentially booby-trapped tunnels and buildings in advance of Israeli troops, at times dressed in Israeli military uniforms?
What does it say about us when we support politicians and soldiers who defend the rape and torture of prisoners?
Are these the kinds of allies we want to empower? Is this behavior we want to embrace? What message does this send to the rest of the world?
If we do not hold fast to moral imperatives, we are doomed. Evil will triumph. It means there is no right and wrong. It means anything, including mass murder, is permissible. Protestors outside the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago demand an end to the genocide and U.S. aid to Israel, but inside we are fed a sickening conformity. Hope lies in the streets.
A moral stance always has a cost. If there is no cost, it is not moral. It is merely conventional belief.
“But what of the price of peace?” the radical Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan, who was sent to federal prison for burning draft records during the war in Vietnam, asks in his book “No Bars to Manhood:” "I think of the good, decent, peace-loving people I have known by the thousands, and I wonder. How many of them are so afflicted with the wasting disease of normalcy that, even as they declare for the peace, their hands reach out with an instinctive spasm in the direction of their comforts, their home, their security, their income, their future, their plans - that five-year plan of studies, that ten-year plan of professional status, that twenty-year plan of family growth and unity, that fifty-year plan of decent life and honorable natural demise. “Of course, let us have the peace,” we cry, “but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties.”
And because we must encompass this and protect that, and because at all costs - at all costs - our hopes must march on schedule, and because it is unheard of that in the name of peace a sword should fall, disjoining that fine and cunning web that our lives have woven, because it is unheard of that good men should suffer injustice or families be sundered or good repute be lost - because of this we cry peace and cry peace, and there is no peace. There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison and death in its wake.
The question is not whether resistance is practical. It is whether resistance is right. We are enjoined to love our neighbor, not our tribe. We must have faith that the good draws to it the good, even if the empirical evidence around us is bleak. The good is always embodied in action. It must be seen. It does not matter if the wider society is censorious. We are called to defy - through acts of civil disobedience and noncompliance - the laws of the state, when these laws, as they often do, conflict with moral law. We must stand, no matter the cost, with the crucified of the earth. If we fail to take this stand, whether against the abuses of militarized police, the inhumanity of our vast prison system or the genocide in Gaza, we become the crucifiers."
Dan, I Allegedly, "This is Bad News For All of Us - We've All Been Robbed"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 8/16/24
"This is Bad News For All of Us - We've All Been Robbed"
"All Your Data Stolen: The Shocking Truth is here to wake you up! With billions of personal data files stolen across the US, Canada, and England, it's time to take action. This isn't just a tech scare—our identities are at risk. Hackers are peddling our most private details on the dark web for millions. It's insane how vulnerable we are! Join me as I unravel the gravity of this breach and expose the dark side of digital theft."
Comments here:
"Kamala To Announce Government Price Controls On Food - Famine Incoming"
by Mike Adams
"Full-blown communism is now upon us. Communist Kamala is set to announce government price controls on groceries. This will lead to widespread food scarcity, empty shelves, long lines and food rationing. The rationing will be enforced at gunpoint by armed government soldiers at grocery stores. Those who criticize the government will see their rations cut in half."
View full video here:
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"H.L. Mencken Explains American Idiocracy 100 Years Ago"
"H.L. Mencken Explains
American Idiocracy 100 Years Ago"
by Joey Clark
"I am happy to report one of my favorite H.L. Mencken quotes has been making the rounds again on social media: “As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
Though I am happy to see people exposed to Mencken’s political invective in any dosage no matter how small, I worry many are not quite getting the point. I fear they may only be wading into the shallow end of the pool. So, allow me to now baptize you in the dangerous depths of Mencken’s political cynicism.
Forgive me if you are reading this and have already been christened in these rarified waters. If so, I say bravo! Encore! I suppose it won’t hurt to be christened again. I try to do so weekly. One can never be too certain about one’s political soul.
The modern use of Mencken’s “moron” quote almost always seems to focus on the hilarious punchline – the “downright moron” label applying to a particular president or presidential candidate – without paying enough attention to the setup. Not only is a president being called idiotic; so too is the whole democratic ideal itself.
According to Mencken, mass democracy and the culture it produces marches us towards conformity, folly, and stupidity. So, the question remains – why, as “democracy is perfected,” does the inner soul of the people reflect morondom? Well, Mencken provides a full answer in his 1920 essay (the source of his “moron” quote) on the presidential election of that year, “Bayard and Lionheart.”
Given the way Mencken speaks of the candidates – Warren Harding and James Cox – he might as well be describing Harris or Trump. “Neither candidate reveals the slightest dignity of conviction,” writes Mencken. “Neither cares a hoot for any discernible principle. Neither, in any intelligible sense, is a man (now "person") of honor.”
However, Mencken then takes a turn. He shifts his focus away from the gladiators in the arena and onto the blood-thirsty spectators. He reminds us that democracy is not about the propagation of diverse and sound ideas, but winning votes at all costs. And how does one win votes?
“Of the two candidates, that one wins who least arouses the suspicions and distrusts of the great masses of simple men,” writes Mencken. “Well, what are more likely to arouse those suspicions and distrusts than ideas, convictions, principles? The plain people are not hostile to shysterism, save it be gross and unsuccessful… But they shy instantly and inevitably from the man who comes before them with notions that they cannot immediately translate into terms of their everyday delusions; they fear the novel idea, and particularly the revolutionary idea, as they fear the devil.”
Mencken goes on to venture that this fear of ideas is a “peculiarly democratic phenomenon” which has been perfected in America, a country that has developed the doctrine of “right-thinking” with a “singular passion for conformity” and “dread of novelty and originality in almost every aspect of life.”
If one is not in agreement with the right thinking of the time, then one is immediately suspect, “...any novel idea, in any field of human relations, carries with it a burden of obnoxiousness, and is instantly challenged as mysteriously immoral by the great masses of right-thinking men.”
Mencken continues: “Such tests arise inevitably out of democracy – the domination of unreflective and timorous men, moved in vast herds by mob emotions. In private life no man of sense would think of applying them. We do not estimate the integrity and ability of an acquaintance by his flabby willingness to accept our ideas; we estimate him by the honesty and effectiveness with which he maintains his own. All of us, if we are of reflective habit, like and admire men whose fundamental beliefs differ radically from our own. But when a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental – men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack, or count himself lost.”
That said, we can now craft a simple formulation for why, according to Mencken, the White House will one day “be adorned by a downright moron.”
• Democracy offers power to the masses.
• With power on offer, the masses come to care more about winning power than the free expression of ideas.
• With winning as the goal, all novel ideas take a back seat to conformity, virtue signaling, and emotional appeals.
• With the rules of the mob now set as such, only the most empty-headed or hucksterish politicians rise to the top.
• And finally, as this process is perfected and the democratic populace expanded, fewer and fewer ideas will matter until we have reached the land of Morondom with the president as our idiot idol.
So, the next time you wish to quote Henry Louis Mencken to call some president a moron, feel free, but I hope you understand it is the American people’s common love of mass democracy that has brought us to this “great and glorious day.”
If you would like to know more about Mencken, read this definitive essay by Murray Rothbard, called “H.L. Mencken: The Joyous Libertarian.”
Jim Kunstler, "The No Prisoners, End of the Road Election"
"The No Prisoners, End of the Road Election"
by Jim Kunstler
“It’s all projection of their own bad desires, bad actions, personal afflictions to the point
where the best way to tell what they plan to do is to see what they accuse others of.”
- El Gato Malo on Democrats
“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” - H.L. Mencken
"It’s fun to muse on the torrent of panicked, deranged texting between Democratic Convention delegates as a runaway train of malignant fates, bad choices, insane policies, delusional ideas, and feral emotion drives them to nominate a moron for president. The confusion and self-doubt must be epic. Are we really gonna do this? Is this really happening? You must imagine this is the same state of mind as, say, a car-full of drunken bridesmaids fishtailing down the highway at 70mph toward a telephone pole.
The mis-plays and subterfuges that brought them to this pass cannot be undone: the insult of letting “Joe Biden” front for a criminal blob government, the many hoaxes and the exorbitant lawfare lawlessness, the gross mismanagement of public affairs, wreckage of institutions, ruined economy, devalued dollar, destruction of households and communities, sexual lunacy and programmed mental illness - this is the party’s legacy. Are none among them even a little bit ashamed of the damage they’ve done to this nation? And maybe wondering about it between one another? Perhaps even anxious to make it stop?
And so, the delegates head to Chicago, a city in civic freefall, to either pretend to celebrate the capricious selection of utterly dubious leaders imposed on them by unseen hands, or, just maybe, to revolt against the evil cabal affecting to “defend our democracy” by squashing it. Of course that’s inside the convention. Lord knows what hijinks are being concocted for outside the United Center arena by the various tribes that run on hot yellow bile these dog days of summer — the Hamas mob, the sex freaks, Antifas, BLMs, assorted Bolsheviks, anarchists, utopians, climate change sob-sisters, Gramscian culture stompers, Spartacists, Trotskyites, Jacobins, Fabians, and plain old riffraff out for fun and loot. The gigantic parking wasteland surrounding the United Center on West Madison Street has the look of a perfect battlefield.
All that commences on Monday. In the meantime, much misdirection zings around the Trumpian opposition and the outlier Robert F Kennedy, Jr., as the intel blob that runs mainstream media attempts to seed dissension and confusion amongst them. It includes rumors that Mr. Trump made “a deal” with the blob to go all flabby in exchange for getting let off the hook on his many blob-contrived lawfare problems. The chance of that being true must be zero, even though New York Judge Juan Merchan has an opportunity to send the former president to jail on September 18. I would like to see him try that. It will surely prompt the most momentous and memorable tableau of symbolic resistance in US history since John Paul Jones yelled to the British ship Serapis requesting his surrender, “I have not yet begun to fight.”
As for RFK, Jr., stories circulate that Mr. Trump tried (and failed) to make a deal that would have got Bobby on-board as veep, or some other juicy assignment, if he would drop out of the race. But it’s hard to see exactly how that discredits either of them, since just about everybody expects Mr. Trump, if elected, to employ Bobby for, at least, cleaning up the public health and pharma sectors of the blob - an epic task he’s ideally suited for.
Then, there was malicious chatter late this week that Bobby had approached Kamala Harris with a proffered endorsement in exchange for a key position in her government - assuming that massive ballot fraud ensures her victory November fifth. Mr. Kennedy denied the rumor and went on to denounce the current incarnation of the Democratic Party as utterly inimical to everything it used to represent when his father and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, were in office, especially on matters of free speech and censorship.
As that quarrel rolled out, Judge Christina Ryba kicked Bobby off the New York ballot for supposedly mis-stating that he was a New York resident on his own voter registration. He intends to appeal. New York has become a judicial sewer under Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul.
So, stand by now to see whether Kamala Harris and Tim Walz come out of next week’s convention Mixmaster the same way they went in: as bona fide candidates. At some point Ms. Harris will have to demonstrate some fitness for high office besides being a go-go dancer and a laugh riot. Tim Walz acts so unhinged in front of every audience that I expect the campaign to stuff him in a broom closet when the convention is over - should he actually still be on the ticket when all is said and done.
It seems at this point that the brooding Matron of Chappaqua will never get her “turn” in the White House after all. It must gall Hillary to see history change her out for an equity hire with half a brain. Politics is a cruel business. You’ll see just how cruel the next time they try to whack Mr. Trump in this No Prisoners, End of the Road election campaign. It will almost certainly get crazier from here."
Canadian Prepper,"Alert! Here's What They're Not Telling You"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 8/15/24
"Alert! Here's What They're Not Telling You"
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Thursday, August 15, 2024
Gerald Celente, "Markets Up, Gold Up, Trump Down, Harris Up"
Very strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 8/15/24
"Markets Up, Gold Up, Trump Down, Harris Up"
"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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"Scott Ritter: Israel is LOSING the War Now as Iran & Hezbollah's Crushing Blow to IDF Looms"
Danny Haiphong, 8/15/24
"Scott Ritter: Israel is LOSING the War Now as
Iran & Hezbollah's Crushing Blow to IDF Looms"
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Jeremiah Babe, "There Is No Going Back, The Damage Is Done; Subway Sandwich Emergency Meeting"
Jeremiah Babe, 8/15/24
"There Is No Going Back, The Damage Is Done;
Subway Sandwich Emergency Meeting"
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"The Fed Is Powerless"
"The Fed Is Powerless"
by Brian Maher
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
- Henry Ford
"We are told the time has come for the Federal Reserve to wield its ax… and cut its target rate. We are further told that prevailing conditions may demand multiple axings. And that these adjustments to the overnight lending rate will work healthful impacts. They will invigorate the guttering economy with fresh gusts. They will soothe the nerve-wracked stock market. They will, in brief, pour down oil upon disturbed waters.
We are not half so convinced it is true. We do not believe the Federal Reserve commands the power most believe it commands. You must first realize the Federal Reserve cannot even define the thing it supposedly kings - the dollar itself. The dollar was once defined by standards of measure. That is, as 416 grains of a silver coin. Or as 1/20th of one gold ounce. Perhaps the dollar can be defined as 100 cents. Well then, what is a cent? The answer is 1/100th of a dollar.
Yet what - again - is a dollar? Thus you embark upon a merry and infinite chasing of your tail. Imagine a butcher who cannot measure a pound. Imagine a mapmaker who cannot measure a mile. It is as if 2.54 centimeters no longer define an inch but a foot. As if 12 inches no longer defined a foot - but an inch. Or that three feet no longer defined a yard… but a mile.
We must conclude that today’s dollar is largely an abstraction. It is as wispy as gossamer, as slippery as eels, as elusive as quicksilver. Thus the Federal Reserve steers by the swaying and erratic lights of varying money supplies. These include M0, M1, M2, MZM, etc. Here we have money, near money, money at second and third remove, money somewhere in the ghostly ether. And so the monetary authority stumbles along in pitch darkness.
But do not rely upon our slanted and cynical word. Rely instead upon the authority of the “maestro” himself - Mr. Alan Greenspan - who conceded long ago that: "The problem is that we cannot extract from our statistical database what is true money conceptually…One of the reasons [is] that the true underlying mix of money in our money and near money data is continuously changing. A decision to base policy on measures of money presupposes that we can locate money. And that has become an increasingly dubious proposition."
They cannot even locate money! It is as absent as caviar from a Donald Trump campaign rally… or sagacity from Kamala Harris’ skull. Thus we arrive at this arresting conclusion, the Federal Reserve’s deepest secret: The Federal Reserve exerts little actual control upon the monetary system. No money stands beneath it, behind it, beside it. Who then actually controls monetary policy today? As we have argued before: The answer lies hidden in the “shadows.”
Here moneyman par excellence Jeffrey Snider - he of Alhambra Investments - rams a very sharp stake through the heart of the monetary myth: "Monetary policy has been quite intentionally stripped of money. Banks evolved and there was really no easy way to define money beyond a certain point (in the ’60s), so economists just gave up trying…
When the Federal Reserve… acts on monetary measures, they seek not to increase the supply of money to the economy but rather the supply of credit… Monetary policy in the modern sense of the word actually has little to do with money. Instead, it is always and everywhere about credit and debt."
All money is credit in today’s lunatic and preposterous world. That is, all money is disguised debt. The dollar in your wallet you consider an asset. But only someone else’s previous debt conjured it into existence. Technically it is a Federal Reserve note. A note is a debt instrument.
Here this Snider commits perhaps the grandest heresy in the universes of economics and finance: That the Federal Reserve and all central banks are largely impotencies…
The Central Bank Is Not Central: "They are merely men behind curtains… irrelevancies. The emperor in fact dons no garments." Here Snider strips the fraud bare: "The Fed is, largely outside of temporary sentiment, irrelevant. The central bank is not central. The thing people have the most trouble with is the idea that central banks are not central. It flies in the face of everything you have been taught and told your whole life. The media still give these guys every benefit of every doubt, and central bankers abuse that privileged platform to perpetuate their myth."
Central banks are not central? The Federal Reserve is irrelevant? As well argue that gravity is a hellacious fiction, that 2 and 2 is 11, that Washington could not tell a lie.
Snider further argues that the federal funds rate - the subject of so many babblings today - is likewise an irrelevancy: "There is absolutely no legitimate reason why anyone should notice federal funds.]The federal funds market is a nonentity… pocket change… It is the sparest of spare liquidity. Today, federal funds are nothing, an extraneous anachronism."
The Fed’s Target Audience: You: Why then does the Federal Reserve target the fed funds rates? Because it wants you to believe that it bosses the markets, that its false fireworks are real: What was decided, essentially, was to keep federal funds as the primary monetary policy focus. The reason? You.
Monetary policy contains no money; it runs entirely on expectations. Therefore, according to this view, what ultimately matters is how you perceive monetary policy… So the FOMC decided that for the public they would still use federal funds to signal to you their intentions. There is no money in monetary policy; it is entirely psychology.
What about quantitative easing, Mr. Snider? Was it not about “printing money”? "QE accomplished next to nothing. QE’s real purpose was in trying to manage expectations which central bankers were more than happy to let you believe this was all money printing. Then you might act in anticipating all that “money printing” was going to have stimulative and even sharp inflationary effects. You might then pull forward purchasing activity, or, if a business, hiring and production, before the expected higher costs arrived."
Blasphemy mounts upon blasphemy! But if not the central banks running monetary policy… who… or what… is central?
The Shadow Banking System: You will find the answer in the shadows, says Snider - the shadow banking system. The shadow banking system? That is the deeply interconnected network of banking institutions that operate outside direct control of central banks. They include the large banks and their offshore units. This shadow banking system extends through Europe, the Caribbean and Asia, the world over. In 2017, the Bank for International Settlements - the central bank of central banks - estimated $13–14 trillion dwell within the shadow system.
But this shadow banking system is invisible. It hides in shadow, leaving only traces of its activity… as a thief leaves traces of his crime.Only a properly trained sleuth can sniff them out:
No one can directly observe this global shadow banking system, what is actually the world’s reserve currency. First of all, it is primarily based offshore from everywhere, therefore outside of official recognition. There are no direct statistics. The term “shadow” is, in this case, perfectly appropriate.
The United States dollar is the coin of this realm. The shadow system first took shape in the 1950s and ’60s after Bretton Woods placed the dollar at the center of the international monetary system. It expanded through the 1980s, ’90s… into the early aughts. And beneath notice, the shadow banking system shouldered the central banks out of the international monetary system. Snider: "The global money system moved on without central banks bothering to notice."
Did the Shadow Banking System Cause the Great Financial Crisis? These shadow banks traded heavily in derivatives and other risky instruments. All without oversight. Where do asset bubbles come from, asks Snider? “They came from the shadows” is his answer - including the U.S. housing bubble: "Especially from the 1960s forward, and particularly in the 1990s forward, was that as the [shadow banking system] replaced other forms of mediation in global trade what actually happened was it became a parallel banking system unto itself… not so much that a company in Japan could import goods from Sweden.
But so that the banks in Japan or Sweden or Switzerland or anywhere around the world could participate in this [shadow banking] system that at the time was stoking a U.S. housing bubble, while at the same time creating vast bubbles in emerging market[s]…
So what we’re describing here is almost an entire massive complete system… that existed offshore and wholesale, in the shadows, because there was no regulatory authority… no government authority over the conduct of this system. It was essentially a self-contained system that operated beyond the reach of everybody."
Can you expect the Federal Reserve to patch the system, to wrest some order from this lawless jungle? The Federal Reserve has no idea what it takes to fix the broken monetary system (they can’t even get the simplest part right). All these central bankers did was prove they had, and have, no answers.
What then is the answer? We’re kind of stuck in this disinflationary depression condition. Unless the monetary system is substantially reformed, I don’t think this will change. The present system is in fact heading in the wrong direction and the political and social order is slowly being taken down with it…
There has to be a breaking point where either the political system realizes the dangers inherent in that condition and actually responds favorably by taking hold of the [shadow banking] system or actually reforming it…Will the shadow monetary system be substantially reformed? Hell will first become an ice sheet…"
Musical Interlude, Spirit Tribe Awakening, "Raise Positive Vibration"
Full screen recommended.
Spirit Tribe Awakening, "Raise Positive Vibration"
"Peaceful, empowering and soothing music and nature to nurture your mind, body, and soul. Supporting and empowering you on your life journey. 528Hz positive energy healing music with 417Hz Solfeggio frequency. These frequencies have a specific healing effect on your subconscious mind." Be kind to yourself, savor this extraordinarily beautiful video. Headphones recommended, not required.
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Massive stars, abrasive winds, mountains of dust, and energetic light sculpt one of the largest and most picturesque regions of star formation in the Local Group of Galaxies. Known as N11, the region is visible on the upper right of many images of its home galaxy, the Milky Way neighbor known as the Large Magellanic Clouds (LMC).
The above image was taken for scientific purposes by the Hubble Space Telescope and reprocessed for artistry by an amateur to win the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures competition. Although the section imaged above is known as NGC 1763, the entire N11 emission nebula is second in LMC size only to 30 Doradus. Studying the stars in N11 has shown that it actually houses three successive generations of star formation. Compact globules of dark dust housing emerging young stars are also visible around the image.”
Chet Raymo, “Very, Very, Very, Very, Very...”
“Very, Very, Very, Very, Very...”
by Chet Raymo
"In a short story that was published posthumously in the New Yorker, the inestimable Primo Levi meditated on the limits of language. The story was called “The Tranquil Star.” He writes "The star was very big and very hot, and its weight was enormous," and realizes immediately that the adjectives have failed him: “For a discussion of stars our language is inadequate and seems laughable, as if someone were trying to plow with a feather. It's a language that was born with us, suitable for describing objects more or less as large and long-lasting as we are; it has our dimensions, it's human. It doesn't go beyond what our senses tell us.
Until fairly recently in human history, there was nothing smaller than a scabies mite, writes Levi, and therefore no adjective to describe it. Nothing bigger than the sea or sky. Nothing hotter than fire. We can add modifiers: very big, very small, very hot. Or use adjectives of dubious superlativeness: enormous, colossal, extraordinary. But, really, these feeble stretchings of language don't take us very far in grasping the very, very, very extraordinarily diminutive or spectacularly colossal dimensions of atomic matter or cosmic space and time. We can overcome the limitations of language, Levi say, "only with a violent effort of the imagination."
I spent more than forty years trying to find ways to violently stretch the imaginations of my students (and myself) to accommodate the dimensions of the universe revealed by science. I would project onto a huge screen a photograph of a firestorm on the Sun, then superimpose a scale-sized Earth, which fit comfortably inside a loop of solar fire. I would take the class into the College Quad here near Boston, where I had set up a basketball to represent the Sun, then gathered 100 feet away with a pinhead Earth; we walked together with our pin in the great annual journey of the Earth, and looked through a telescope at the marble-sized Jupiter than I had previously installed at the other end of the long Quad (the next closest star system would have been a couple of basketballs in Hawaii). We walked geologic timelines that took us from one end of the campus to the other.
In one of my Globe essays I used this analogy: “Imagine the human DNA as a strand of sewing thread. On this scale, the DNA in the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a typical human cell would be about 150 miles long, with about 600 nucleotide pairs per inch. That is, the DNA in a single cell is equivalent to 1000 spools of sewing thread, representing two copies of the genetic code. Take all that thread - the 1000 spools worth - and crumple it into 46 wads (the chromosomes). Stuff the wads into a shoe box (the cell nucleus) along with - oh, say enough chicken soup to fill the box. Toss the shoe box into a steamer trunk (the cell), and fill the rest of the trunk with more soup. Take the steamer trunk with its contents and shrink it down to an invisibly small object, smaller than the point of a pin. Multiply that tiny object by a trillion and you have the trillion cells of the human body, each with its full complement of DNA.”
Or this description from 'Waking Zero': “The track of the Prime Meridian across England from Peace Haven in the south to the mouth of the River Humber in the north is nearly 200 miles. If that distance is taken to represent the 13.7 billion year history of the universe, as we understand it today, then all of recorded human history is less than a single step. The entire story I have told in this book, from the Alexandrian astronomers and geographers to the present-day astronomers who launch telescopes into space, would fit neatly into a single footprint. If the 200 miles of the meridian track is taken to represent the distance to the most distant objects we observe with our telescopes, then a couple of steps would take us across the Milky Way Galaxy. A mote of dust from my shoe is large enough to contain not only our own solar system but many neighboring stars.”
But as hard as one tries, the scale of these things escape us. If one could truly comprehend what we are seeing when we look, say, at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Photo above, which I have done my best to convey to myself and others in a dozen ways, it would surely shake to the core some of our most cherished beliefs. Just as our language is contrived on a human scale, so too are our gods.”
"Chastity In A Whorehouse..."
"People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?"
- H. L. Mencken
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