"Why The Other Side Won’t Listen to Reason"

"Why The Other Side Won’t Listen to Reason"

by David Cain

"At some point during your first year as a human being, the adults throw a real curveball at you. They expect you to start understanding what right and wrong mean. These lessons come in the form of mysterious reactions that follow certain things you do. After you pull all the books from the bottom shelf onto the floor, quite a feat for a one year-old, they scold you for some reason. When you pee in the correct place, they praise you. It’s completely baffling, but over time you get a sense that adults are extremely preoccupied with classifying actions into two broad categories: okay and not okay, or good and bad.

You quickly gather this is how the world works. And there is some logic behind what’s rewarded and what’s punished: “bad” actions are usually (but not always) ones that hurt, annoy or inconvenience other people, and “good” actions usually (not always) help in some way, or at least don’t hurt anyone.

This classification system is so strongly emphasized by the adults that you develop a keen sense of it yourself. You see rights and wrongs everywhere, particularly where you stand to gain or lose something personally: in the fair distribution of treats, in acknowledgement for chores done, in which cartoon characters deserve to be happy (or in a police wagon) at the end of the episode. 

Seemingly everything is morally relevant. There are right and wrong ways to speak, play, fidget, ask for things, touch people, and express your feelings. The rules are endlessly detailed and idiosyncratic. There are right and wrong places to sit or stand, things to wear, things to stare at, even expressions to have on your face. Some acts are okay in one place and very bad somewhere else. The adults insist that navigating this sprawling bureaucracy is simple: just be good.

You make use of this system. You argue your case to your parents when your sibling takes something of yours, or plays with a coveted toy too long—if you feel slighted, there must be wrongdoing, and you say so, perhaps listing reasons why you’re right. You petition teachers to take action against other kids who are being greedy, annoying, or mean, and you defend yourself when you’re the one being accused.

There’s Something Fishy About the Way We Judge: By adulthood, morality has become such an intuitive part of our thinking that we barely realize when we’re making a moral judgment.

Hundreds or thousands of times a day we assess the character of another person. We feel we know enough to commend or condemn (usually condemn) a person from the way they park, a word they chose to use in their comment, the state of their front lawn, how they stand in a queue, what they laugh at, where and when they look at their mobile phones, how long they take to get to the point of their anecdote, or any of ten thousand other morally salient micro-actions.

Our moral sense works with great speed and force. Every news article - even the headline alone -gives us a strong, immediate, and seemingly unmistakable sense of which are the good and bad parties involved. Virtually every time we feel annoyed, we reflexively assert some wrongdoing on the part of another human being, even if it’s someone we’ve never seen. If service is slow, some employee is being lazy or inconsiderate. If traffic is crawling it’s because the city always schedules construction work at such stupid times. If an item’s price is unexpectedly high, some greedy CEO is getting paid too much.

There’s something fishy about all this moralizing. We treat our moral feelings and judgments as though they’re truly all-important; seemingly, nothing deserves as much energy and attention as determining the right and wrong of everything done and said in the human world, and lamenting that world’s failure to meet our idea of what’s right. (For endless examples, just check Twitter.) Yet for all their importance, we’re extremely flippant with our moral judgments. We make them all day long, with ease and even a kind of pleasure, and very little second-guessing. Maddeningly, other people have almost perfectly opposite positions on the same moral issues - drug policy, immigration, pornography, whether mayo belongs in guacamole - and they cast their judgments with the all the same ease and certitude.

You’d think that if determining right and wrong were truly what’s important to us, we’d be far more careful about making judgments. We’d want to gather a lot of information before saying anything. We’d seek opposing viewpoints and try to understand them. We’d offer people the benefit of the doubt whenever possible. We’d be very wary of our initial emotions around the topic, and very interested in how our personal interests might be skewing our conclusions. We’d refrain from making conclusions at all if we didn’t need to.

In other words, we’d employ the same reserved, dispassionate, self-scrutinizing ethic we use to examine questions about anything else: physics, history, biology, engineering, business, or any other arena of understanding where premature conclusions can create a big problem. We’d have a keen, ongoing interest in learning how we might be wrong.

But we’re not like this at all. We make moral conclusions freely, immediately, and without self-scrutiny, recruiting as much emotional tilt as possible. We dismiss counterpoints reflexively, as though it’s dangerous to even consider changing our minds. We only rarely admit that an issue is too opaque or complex to be sure what to think.

Why are we so smart and careful when it comes to figuring things out in most areas of inquiry, and so dumb and impulsive when it comes to moral questions, which are supposedly the most important ones to get right?

Why We’re So Stubborn: Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt sheds a lot of light on our confused moral psychology in his book, "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion."  It’s a fascinating read, but the main punchline is that our moral sensitivity didn’t evolve in order to make us good at determining right and wrong. It evolved to help us survive and thrive in highly social environments.

Our moral feelings are quick and reactive because they developed to aid us in real-time social interactions, not in careful, solitary periods of reflection. These feelings are often conflicting and illogical because they adapted to meet a number of different social goals:

• Our desire to protect the vulnerable, and our hatred for cruelty and carelessness, adapted to motivate us to keep children safe at all costs, and keep potentially dangerous people away
• Our resentment for cheating and unfairness adapted to help us avoid getting exploited by the rest of our group
• Our respect for loyalty, and our fear of betrayal, evolved to help us form coalitions, and identify disloyal people before they make trouble
• Our attitudes towards authority, and those who subvert it, conferred an advantage at positioning ourselves within social hierarchies
• Our moralizing around cleanliness and the sanctity of bodies, sex, and bodily functions, adapted to help us avoid infection and disease 
• It’s no wonder our moral intuitions are so strong, quick and often thoughtless. They are essentially survival reflexes, conditioned by our upbringing and our instincts.

Our moral reasoning - our capacity to explain why something is right or wrong - comes only after our emotional intuitions, if at all, and is tuned for persuading others of our value to the tribe, not for helping us find the most sensible moral stances. Haidt describes our moral reasoning as working much like a press secretary or company spokesperson - its purpose is to justify positions and actions already taken, using any explanation that sounds passably good in the moment, true or not.

Note that none of the above social goals require our moral feelings to be fair or logically sound, and in fact, that can be disadvantageous - a tribe that viewed all outsiders as predators likely would have protected its children better than a tribe that was most concerned with never falsely accusing someone of being dangerous.

In other words, our moral intuitions are strongly tuned to make us groupish and tribal, not even-handed and insightful. And our moral reasoning is tuned more for soliciting approval from others than for actually discovering moral truths.

This explains why we’re so susceptible to rhetoric, prejudice, selective hearing, and fake news. It also explains why it’s strangely pleasurable to take hard moral stands, no matter how poor or nonexistent the reasoning behind them - hard stands, declared publicly, reliably generate a small flood of praise and approval from the tribe that shares those positions.

You can see what a powder keg this moral psychology is liable to create in an increasingly global, internet-connected society, composed of people from many different backgrounds, all of whom enjoy getting Retweeted, Liked, and Favorited.

It’s why, when it comes to politics, the other side simply doesn’t listen to reason. Of course, all of us are on someone’s other side."

- http://www.raptitude.com

"America Is Now A Zombie State"

"America Is Now A Zombie State"

by Jacob Howland

“Every nation gets the government it deserves,” wrote the philosopher Joseph de Maistre, and some are getting it good and hard right now. De Maistre’s moral interpretation of politics admits of exceptions, but the United States in 2023 is not one of them. A wasting tide of bad education and corruption is rotting the cultural and constitutional piers that, since the Civil War, have kept the US above the waters of chaos.

The American regime has become a tawdry theatrocracy in which political actors, hypokritai in Greek, play stock characters in a loathsome farce. In the run-up to the 2024 elections, Donald Trump stars as the persecuted saviour, and Joe Biden the righteous defender, of the American republic. Never mind that Trump is self-absorbed and impulsive to the point of criminal stupidity, that Biden is senile and evidently corrupt, and that both of these braying, boorish old men are fraudsters and fabulists. These vices do not matter to their furious followers, who love their man precisely because he is not the hated other. Trump and Biden cannot, and will not, be separated; each needs his opponent as the hammer needs the nail. And above the wretched spectacle sit a click-hungry media, feeding on riot and picking favorites like vulturous pagan gods.

This drama of political decadence defies easy categorization. Aristotle wrote that tragedy depicts people who are better, and comedy worse, than us spectators. Biden and Trump are certainly worse than those who voted them into office, but they are not remotely funny. Their antics are repellent and their goofiness unlovable. Observing them and the choral leaders that follow in their train - jerky puppets like Rudy Giuliani sweating hair-dye, or Anthony Fauci claiming to be science itself - Americans feel only shame and dread, without the cathartic release of laughter or tears.

These trapped emotions spring from the same source. They are visceral responses to the approaching death by senescence of the American experiment in ordered liberty. The problem goes well beyond presidential dementia. The US Senate (from the Latin senex, “old”) looks more like the waiting room of a geriatric neurologist than a council of wise elders. There’s Mitch McConnell, prone to falls and freeze-ups; wheelchair-bound and confused Dianne Feinstein; and John Fetterman, who at only 53 is less fit for public service than any other member of that formerly august body. It’s as if C-SPAN, a network that televises congressional hearings, decided instead to air absurdist, post-apocalyptic horror films.

The zombification of the Capitol - not to mention our city streets, which have become permanent encampments of the dazed and disturbed - is merely a symptom of the underlying disease. Like all institutions, politics falls apart without regular infusions of constructive energy. A modern democracy is healthy only if its major parties grow organically from their voters, representing their interests by habit and inclination even more than conscious effort.

But the grassroots politics Tocqueville admired when he visited the US in the 1830s gave way long ago to the top-down astroturfing of technocratic managerialism. Our governing elites represent no one but themselves and their cronies, and they don’t welcome shocks to the system. Insurgent candidates such as Robert Kennedy Jr. and Vivek Ramaswamy, whose public elevation of the concerns of many Americans aims to revitalise national politics, are censored and met with active resistance, even by their own parties.

It’s not just in politics that the wellsprings of individual and social vitality have dried up. Americans are marrying less and later, and having too few children, to reproduce themselves and the families that nurtured them. What is more, our public schools have largely ceased to transmit the accumulated knowledge and civilizational wisdom of the past to the children we do have. A taste for historical repudiation has taken hold across the culture, leading curators to “contextualise” art, city governments to take down statues, colleges to rename buildings, and publishers to censor or rewrite books. But creativity withers when it ceases to be nourished by the oxygenated blood of the tradition. Little wonder that Hollywood increasingly cannibalizes its legacy by pouring old films into new plastic scripts.

Technology has exacerbated our national enervation. We have become charging-stations for our smartphones, which drain psychic energy with insistent distractions and overloads of information-babble. Video calls and work-from-home limit in-person interactions with actual existing individuals, who would otherwise be together for most of their weekly waking hours. Targeted advertising, fine-tuned algorithms, and politically stratified social media sharply decrease our exposure to new ideas. We are immuring ourselves within our own private caves, watching flickering images in darkness.

AI language-learning models offer a cautionary parable of these larger cultural developments. Programs such as ChatGPT, whose writing remains formulaic and prone to errors, learn by sifting through a sea of digitalised text, a growing share of which consists of AI-generated content. The predictable result of this feedback loop is the kind of levelling we’ve seen across our institutions. Like newspapers that drink their own ink - and which ones don’t, these days? - their product can only get worse.

Cultural exhaustion, social withdrawal, and the general enfeeblement of life forces are the practical expression of a will to nothing. There is a name for this spiritual and intellectual condition, and it is nihilism. Nihilism is demonic to the extent that the will to nothing is still a will, a life force. That it is only a negative one is by no means reassuring, because it is easier and more economical to tear down than to build up. Destruction is dramatic and accomplishes the illusion of vitality with relatively little energy. And who in this apocalyptic time, including the nihilist, doesn’t want to feel even a little alive?"

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

Hat tip to The Burning Platform for this material.

"How It Really Is"

 

"Bidenomics to the Rescue"

"Bidenomics to the Rescue"

And other insipid theories, bone-headed theses and crackpot solutions...

by Bill Bonner and Joel Bowman

Poitou, France - "We marvel…we wonder…What is wrong with these people? We refer to the staff at Newsweek …who came out with this insipid headline story: "Biden Saved the Economy and Launched a New Age of Prosperity. Why Isn't He Getting Any Credit?" "The current economy is in terrific shape - especially compared to what most economists expected. Every day, confidence in a soft landing increases, and even the Fed seems convinced, despite an unprecedented rapid rise in interest rates.

Current GDP growth of 2.4 percent, well ahead of expectations. Inflation is at 3 percent, down from 10 percent just last year. Unemployment is at a 54-year low, at 3.7 percent, despite predictions that unemployment would substantially increase. Wage growth has been particularly strong at around 4 percent, and most commodity prices are down some 50 percent, with some down considerably more."

Saved the economy? New ages of prosperity? Why doesn’t he get credit? Why not give Harry Truman credit for the urban renewal program in Nagasaki after 1945? Why not give Chief Sitting Bull credit for reducing payroll costs in the 7th Cavalry?

Plague of the Black Debt: Wage growth is not ‘particularly strong’ at all. Because there is none. Adjust the 4% growth to inflation, using the ‘core’ measure, and you get real wage growth at MINUS 0.8%. And how about that 2.4% GDP growth? Strip out the feds’ transfer payments and boondoggles, and growth flattens out. Because what Biden did was nothing more than continue the bonehead policies of his predecessor: stimmies to the voters, subsidies to crony industries, gifts to Zelensky et al…and enough weapons to keep the killing machine in gear.

This is ‘fiscal inflation.’ It helps delay a correction…for a while. But it gives us a Banana Republic deficit at 8% of GDP…national debt accumulating at $5 billion per day…rising bond yields…and an upcoming headache that is going to be one for the record books. All of this debt will eventually have to be rolled over at higher rates…and inflated away.

Thirty years ago, we published a small booklet, written by our friend, James Dale Davidson, entitled ‘Plague of Black Debt.’ We warned that US debt was getting out of control. Back then, 1993, US federal debt was just over $4 trillion. There was still time to bring it down. And for a while, in the late ‘90s, it actually did go down as the Clinton Administration ran a few serendipitous surpluses. But then, along came George W. Bush with his ‘War on Terror’…and the debt pile grew quickly.

Empire of Debt: In 2005, with Addison Wiggin, we wrote a book, ‘Empire of Debt.’ Our theme was that the attempt to bring the whole world under the US thumb – funded by borrowing money – would lead to big trouble. The accumulated debt would end up making us weaker, not stronger. By then, US debt had doubled to $8 trillion.

And now, empire spending – including money for soldiers, spooks, the World Bank and embassies, et al – has risen to $1.5 trillion PER YEAR. Total US government debt is nearly $33 trillion. And you can forget about stopping this runaway train…there is no plausible way to put on the brakes. It’s ‘inflate or die.’ And nobody wants to die.

Looking back, maybe there never was a way to stop it. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly…and empires gotta rise and fall. Unseen, unheard, unhinged…deep, megapolitical currents drag us all along. Stuff happens, in other words…but not always what you want or expect.

In US history, 1971 seems to have been some sort of fulcrum. Before then, life in the USA improved for most people. After then, it only improved, significantly, for the people on top. Wage gains ceased. Debt rose. GDP growth slowed. Inequality increased. Everything seemed to get worse…young people even began moving back in with their parents, stopped getting married and had fewer children.

“The American economy is rigged,” writes Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. He’s right about that, but dead wrong about how it works. He shows the usual evidence. In the period running up to the 70s, the top 1% got about 8% of national income. Today, it gets 20%. Incomes for the top 1% have roughly quadrupled since 1970. For the 90% of the middle class, they have been stagnant. And for those with only a high school diploma or less, real incomes have fallen.

Generational Dividing Lines: If you were born in the 1940s, you were almost certain to earn more than your parents. But as the years went by, the Industrial Revolution became much less potent and the feds gummed up the economy. If you were born after 1970, you had barely even odds of earning more than your parents. What caused these things is a matter of much debate and speculation. So far, we’ve presented two hypotheses.

The phony dollar. The new, post-1971 dollar was basically fraudulent. It was a dollar that you no longer had to get by providing goods and services. Economic power shifted from people who created real wealth in the Main Street economy to the financialized, fake wealth of Wall Street. Asset prices soared. Output lagged. The rich used free money from the Fed to get richer. But most people got nothing.

The fading Industrial Revolution. By 1971, the immense power in fossil fuels was reaching its point of declining marginal utility. The big gains – the ‘life-altering innovations’ – were in the past. GDP growth slowed. Incomes stagnated.

Stiglitz ignores both of them. He’s got another idea…and another crackpot ‘solution.’ Tune in tomorrow…"

o

Joel’s Note: As readers can plainly see, through their rose garden-colored glasses, Bidenomics has arrived to save us all…from sanity, rationality and the consequences of our actions. Yippee!

Sure, the economy is humming… or at least, so claim the Pollyanna press. But wait… Here’s Dan Denning, BPR’s macro-analyst, noticing some inconvenient facts from his bolthole up in Wyoming. “If things were so good,” reasons Dan, “credit card balances wouldn't have finally gone over $1 trillion in the second quarter.”

Here’s the story, from the New York Fed’s Report on Household Debt and Credit: "Household Debt Rises to $17.06 Trillion Led by Credit Card Balances." "Total household debt rose by $16 billion to reach $17.06 trillion in the second quarter of 2023, according to the latest Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. Credit card balances saw brisk growth, rising by $45 billion to a series high of $1.03 trillion. Other balances, which include retail credit cards and other consumer loans, and auto loans increased by $15 billion and $20 billion, respectively. Student loan balances fell by $35 billion to reach $1.57 trillion, while mortgage balances were largely unchanged at $12.01 trillion."

Click image for larger size.

Where does that fit into The Message™ as delivered by our toady press/elite mouthpieces? In short, it doesn’t… which is why this message will self-destruct in 5… 4… 3…"

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"Everyone Is Wrong About The Global Debt Crisis"

Full screen recommended.

The Atlantis Report, 8/9/23

"Everyone Is Wrong About The Global Debt Crisis"

"Is the global debt of over $300 trillion really a problem? And does debt for the global economy work in a different way from debt on an individual level? In this video we'll explain who holds all the debt that countries and businesses owe, and whether this will be a big problem in the near future."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Devastating Retail Crisis: 10 U.S. Chains Collapsing Before Our Eyes"

Full screen recommended.

The Atlantis Report 8/9/23

"Devastating Retail Crisis: 

10 U.S. Chains Collapsing Before Our Eyes"

"More than a dozen prominent retailers have announced they will close 2,373 stores in the United States in 2023. Amazon, Walmart, Big Lots, and Foot Locker are among just some of the retailers closing locations. Some businesses are in the midst of bankruptcy proceedings, while others claim they are looking to reduce expenses. Several retailers are modifying their store layouts to accommodate shifting purchasing preferences. But the lives of Americans will be affected in some fashion by all of these closures. Today we'll look at 10 Big Chain Stores closing in 2023."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com

Dan, I Allegedly, "You’ve Been Put On Notice"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly 8/9/23

"You’ve Been Put On Notice"

"Not only did we get 10 banks that were put on a downgraded list by Moodys, we also got six more lenders that were downgraded. This is getting serious."

Comments here:

https://www.youtube.com/

"Stocking Up At Costco! Getting Prepared! It's Getting Crazy!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 8/9/23

"Stocking Up At Costco! 

Getting Prepared! It's Getting Crazy!"

"In today's vlog, we are at Costco and are noticing some major price increases on meat and produce. We are stocking up on what we can afford as prices continue to rise everywhere! Costco still has great prices on most items, but meat and produce continue to skyrocket!"

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- https://www.youtube.com/

"Ukraine's Worst Nightmare Has Been Exposed"

Col. Macgregor, 8/8/23

"Ukraine's Worst Nightmare Has Been Exposed"

"Colonel Douglas Macgregor tells Stephen Gardner how Ukraine's worst nightmare has been exposed. Hundreds of thousands of freshly dug graves are showing up on satellite images, proving to the west that Ukraine is being wiped out by Putin and Russia. This is now a humanitarian crisis that needs to be stopped. Ukraine will run out of bullets and bodies to throw at Putin. Meanwhile, Putin has over 300,000 men and women in training just waiting to be released on the battlefield. Scott Ritter agrees with Macgregor that close to 400,000 have been killed and over 50,000 have lost a limb."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Russia's Nuclear Button Gets Primed; Martial Law 'Declared' to UN; African War Begins"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 8/8/23

"Russia's Nuclear Button Gets Primed; 

Martial Law 'Declared' to UN; African War Begins"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Get Your Money Out Of The Bank, Wells Fargo Commits More Crimes; Credit Card Debt Out Of Control"

Jeremiah Babe, 8/8/23

"Get Your Money Out Of The Bank, Wells Fargo

 Commits More Crimes; Credit Card Debt Out Of Control"

Comments here;

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Return To Freedom"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Return To Freedom"

Beautiful...

"A Look to the Heavens"

“NGC 253 is not only one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, it is also one of the dustiest. Discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel in the constellation of Sculptor, NGC 253 lies only about ten million light-years distant.

NGC 253 is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest group to our own Local Group of Galaxies. The dense dark dust accompanies a high star formation rate, giving NGC 253 the designation of starburst galaxy. Visible in the above photograph is the active central nucleus, also known to be a bright source of X-rays and gamma rays.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111220.html

Chet Raymo, “Into The Night”

“Into The Night”

by Chet Raymo

“I first became intimate with the night sky on the sleeping porch of my grandmother’s house on Ninth Street in Chattanooga, Tennessee, during the early 1940s. A screened sleeping porch might be found attached to any southern home of a certain vintage and substance, usually on the second story at the back. On sultry summer nights you could move a cot or daybed onto the porch and take advantage of whatever breezes stirred the air. I slept there when I visited because it was the only place to find a spare bed. I was usually alone in that big spooky space, with only a thin wire mesh separating me from the many mysteries of the night.

Far off in the house I could hear the muffled voice of the big Stromberg-Carlson radio in the parlor, where grown-ups listened to news of the war or the boogie-woogie tunes of the Hit Parade. Outside was another kind of music, nearer, louder, pressing against the screen, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, a million scratchy fiddles, out-of-key woodwinds, discordant timpani. These were the cicadas, crickets and tree frogs of the southern summer night, but to me at that time they were the sounds of the night itself, as if darkness had an audible element.

Some nights the distant horizon would be lit with a silent, winking illumination called “heat lightnin’.” And closer, against the dark grass of the badminton court, the scintillations of fireflies- “lightnin’ bugs”- splashed into brightness.

The constellations of fireflies were answered in the sky by stars, which on those evenings when the city’s lights were blacked out for air-raid drills, multiplied alarmingly. I would lie in my cot, eyes glued to the spangled darkness, waiting to hear the drone of enemy aircraft or see the flash of ack-ack. No aircraft appeared, no ack-ack tracers pierced the night, but soon the stars took on their own fierce reality, like vast squadrons of alien rocket ships moving against the inky dark of Flash Gordon space.

In time I came to recognize patterns, although I did not yet know their names: the Scorpion creeping westward, dragging its stinger along the horizon; the teapot of Sagittarius afloat in the white river of the Milky Way; Vega at the zenith; the kite of Cygnus. As the hours passed, the Big Dipper clocked around the Pole. And sometimes, in late summer, I would wake in the predawn hour to find Orion sneaking into the eastern sky, pursuing the teacup of the Pleiades.

One memorable Christmas of my childhood, my father received a star book as a gift: “A Primer for Star-Gazers” by Henry Neely. As he used the book to learn the stars and constellations, he included me in his activities. The book was Santa’s gift to him. The night sky was his gift to me.

That book, now long out of print, is still in my possession. A glance takes me back half a century to evenings on the badminton court in the back yard of our own new home in the Chattanooga suburbs, gazing upwards with my father to a drapery of brilliant stars flung across the gap between tall dark pines. He told me stories of the constellations as he learned them. Of Orion and the Scorpion. Of the lovers Andromeda and Perseus, and the monster Cetus. Of the wood nymph Callisto and her son Arcas, placed by Zeus in the heavens as the Big and Little Bears. No child ever had a better storybook than the ever-changing page of night above our badminton court. My father also taught me the names of stars: Sirius, Arcturus, Polaris, Betelgeuse, and other, stranger names, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, the claws of the Scorpion. The words on his tongue were like incantations that opened the enchanted cave of night.

He was a man of insatiable curiosity. His stories of the stars were more than “connect the dots.” He wove into his lessons what he knew of history, science, poetry and myth. And, of course, religion. For my father, the stars were infused with unfathomable mystery, their contemplation a sort of prayer.

That Christmas book of long ago was a satisfactory guide to star lore, but as I look at it today I see that it conveyed little of the intimacy I felt as I stood with my father under the bright canopy of stars. Nor do any of the other more recent star guides that I have seen quite capture the feeling I had as a child of standing at the door of an enchanted universe, speaking incantations. What made the childhood experience so memorable was a total immersion in the mystery of the night- the singing of cicadas, the whisper of the wind in the pines, and, of course, my father’s storehouse of knowledge with which he embellished the stars. He taught me what to see; he also taught me what to imagine.”

- http://www.sciencemusings.com/

The Poet: David Whyte, "Sweet Darkness"

"Sweet Darkness"

"When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes

to recognize its own.

There you can be sure you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb tonight.

The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.

You must learn one thing: the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness

to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you."

- David Whyte,

"House of Belonging"

"We Do Choose..."

"All men and women are born, live suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live."

- Joseph Epstein

○

"George Harrison knew something most of us didn't and still don't: there is a reality beyond the material world and what we do here and how we treat others affects us eternally. As he sings in "Rising Sun":

"But in the rising sun you can feel your life begin,

Universe at play inside your DNA.

You're a billion years old today.

Oh the rising sun and the place it's coming from

Is inside of you and now your payment's overdue."

Lyrics here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

○

"Death twitches my ear. 'Live," he says, 'I am coming.'"

~Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)

The Daily "Near You?"

Pearland, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"The Idiot Culture..."

"We are in the process of creating, in sum, what deserves to be called the 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."

- Carl Bernstein

Gerald Celente , "Trends Journal 8/8/23"

VERY strong language alert!

Gerald Celente , "Trends Journal" 8/8/23

"As Forecast: Banking Crisis, Prepare"

"Your new Trends Journal is out "Covid Alert: Presstitutes Selling More Fear And Hysteria." Gerald Celente goes into detail on the recent throwback to COVID cited in this weeks New York Times. Also, Ukraine's latest developments in a volatile region and Victoria Nuland's recent deployment to Niger. 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."

- https://trendsresearch.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"A Car Market Crash Like No Other Is Coming In August As Price Collapse Intensify"

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"A Car Market Crash Like No Other Is Coming 

In August As Price Collapse Intensify"ed.

by Epic Economist

"The biggest car price bubble we’ve ever seen has already burst, and now we’re being warned that the auto market crash will accelerate even further during the final stretch of 2023. With production going up, and dealership lots starting to fill, the conditions that allowed new and used vehicle prices to shoot up are no longer in place as rising supplies finally meet consumer demand. Even some of the biggest Wall Street banks are sounding the alarm about the coming wave of price cuts and how this will impact struggling auto dealers. Recently, they have been coping with a series of financial challenges, including a historical surge in the number of repossessed vehicles due to record loan default rates. Many factors are combining to create a perfect storm for the U.S. car market, and that will likely result in severe financial losses for both auto lenders and buyers this quarter and the next.

During the first half of the year, the average price of a new vehicle fell by $865, according to a new report from Kelly Blue Book. That number is forecasted to have reached $927 in July, and researchers predict it will hit $978 by the end of August. Price cuts are expected to accelerate in the third and fourth quarters, meaning that new car prices may see a double-digit decline by December.

At the same time, used car prices are already facing double-digit losses. Used vehicle prices are down on average by 16.5% since the start of the year, with monthly declines getting bigger in the second half of 2023. In the past 30 days, used car prices fell 6% after dropping 4.2% in June. That represented the largest monthly drop since the early days of the pandemic when demand collapsed and forced auto dealers to slash prices.

Right now, the market is moving away from the volatility of that era, when a convergence of factors caused prices to surge dramatically, including a shortage of semiconductors, slower manufacturing, near-zero loan rates, and stimulus checks boosting consumer demand, explains Cox Automotive Chief Economist Jonathan Smoke. “The unique conditions that led to unprecedented appreciation in vehicle values in 2020 and 2021 have been replaced by more normal conditions where demand and supply are more balanced,” Smoke added.

There are two main developments happening at the same time that are helping buyers: Automakers are increasing their incentive spending and dealerships are agreeing to sell cars with larger discounts off sticker prices. Kelley Blue Book reports that the average incentive spend from manufacturers was $1,928, or 6.2.% of the purchase price, in July. Incentives can take the form of special financing deals or cash rebates.

On top of that, new vehicle inventory was at 2.2 million at the end of last month, which is an increase from 1.75 million in January. But even though buyers are having a greater ability to score a discount at the dealership, that doesn’t mean things will get easier for them in the short term. Soaring auto loan rates will continue to suppress demand for the time being. 80% of Americans who finance or lease their vehicle may not experience any relief, given that a 100 bp rise in interest rates translates into an approximately $20 increase in monthly cost for the average $45,000, 72-month loan. This potentially offsets the impact of lower vehicle prices. All of this indicates that the U.S. car market crash will intensify from this point on. And conditions will get a whole lot worse before they get better."

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- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

"The Shocking 3 Trillion Dollar Black Swan Unleashed"

Full screen recommended.

Lynette Zang, 8/8/23

"The Shocking 3 Trillion Dollar Black Swan Unleashed"

"Lynette Zang articulates her expert insights, we explore the staggering implications that the 3 Trillion Dollar Black Swan holds for the global economy."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gerald Celente, "Debt Downgrades - Brace Yourself, the Worst is Yet to Come"

Full screen recommended.

Gerald Celente, 8/8/23

"Debt Downgrades -  

Brace Yourself, the Worst is Yet to Come"

"In this video, renowned economic analyst Gerald Celente delves into the concerning phenomenon of debt downgrades and delivers an alarming warning that will make you rethink the state of our global economy. As the global financial landscape grows increasingly tumultuous, Celente sheds light on the alarming consequences that loom on the horizon. This eye-opening discussion unveils the severity of debt downgrades and their potential to wreak havoc on economies worldwide."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Insider Talks About Mass Layoffs"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly 8/8/23

"Insider Talks About Mass Layoffs"

"I am so grateful for the professional community that I have in my audience. We are learning so much about the shipping industry and how it is completely upside down. Business globally is not the same."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"7 Trends Which Indicate That Economic Disaster Is Approaching Very Rapidly"

"7 Trends Which Indicate That Economic 

Disaster Is Approaching Very Rapidly"

by Michael Snyder

"The economic meltdown that is coming should not be a surprise to anyone. Throughout U.S. history, there have always been signs that a major downturn was coming, and that is precisely what we are witnessing right now. Tax revenues are way down, demand for trucking services is way down, demand for cardboard boxes is way down, the money supply is shrinking at the fastest pace in modern history, and the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has already declined for 15 months in a row. At this point, anyone that cannot see what is coming has got to be willingly blind.The following are 7 trends which indicate that economic disaster is approaching very rapidly…

#1 When economic activity slows down, less tax revenue comes in. Right now, federal government and state government tax revenues are declining precipitously…US state and local governments just experienced the worst decline in income tax revenues ever recorded. This was the second steepest year-over-year percentage decline in history, with only the GFC having a worse outcome. Note that Federal tax receipts are also dropped again, now at recessionary levels and approaching -10% on a YoY basis.

#2 When the economy slows down, trucking companies see less demand for their services. So it is deeply alarming that truck freight volume and spending absolutely plummeted during the second quarter…Truck freight volume and spending in the second quarter of 2023 declined by the highest levels since the early days of the pandemic, the latest U.S. Bank Freight Payment Index revealed. Spending by shippers dropped 10.9% compared to the second quarter of 2022 while shipment volume dropped 9%, according to a statement from the Minneapolis-based bank.

#3 Employment is supposed to be the “bright spot” for the economy, but the latest employment report shows that the U.S. actually lost 585,000 full-time jobs last month…Well, one look at this month’s adjustment and it’s literally a shocker: you will not hear anyone from the Biden admin or associated economist cheerleaders mention this, but the BLS reported that in July the number of full-time jobs plunged by 585,000 to 134.274 million, the biggest monthly drop since record covid crash of 14.7 million jobs!

#4 U.S. employers have already announced more job cuts this year than they did in all of 2022, and the hits just keep on coming…CVS Health said Monday it is cutting approximately 5,000 jobs to focus more on healthcare services for its customers. The move, which is supposed to help the company save money, will affect workers primarily in corporate jobs, the Wall Street Journal reported.

#5 Thanks to rapidly rising interest rates, monthly costs for new homebuyers are almost 20 percent higher than they were a year ago. This is absolutely crushing the housing market…The monthly cost for a potential homebuyer has surged nearly 20% compared with a year ago as prices remain elevated, according to new data. During the four-week period ending July 30, the monthly mortgage payment for the typical U.S. homebuyer sat at $2,605, 19% higher than the same period a year earlier, according to Redfin.

#6 The fact that delinquency rates for commercial real estate mortgages are skyrocketing is yet another sign that we are in the early stages of the worst commercial real estate crisis in all of U.S. history…The delinquency rate of commercial real estate mortgages on office properties that had been securitized into Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) spiked to 5.0% by loan balance in July, up from a delinquency rate of 2.8% in April, having now spiked by 2.2 percentage points in three months, by far the biggest three-month spike in the data going back to 2000, and by 3.4 percentage points so far this year, by far the biggest seven-month spike, according to Trepp, which tracks and analyzes CMBS.

#7 The share of the U.S. population that cannot even afford “a $400 emergency expense” just continues to go up…“The share of U.S. adults who said they would cover a $400 emergency expense with cash or equivalents dropped by 2 percentage points from the previous quarter to 46%, highlighting how cash-strapped many Americans are despite the recent decrease in headline inflation,” according to the survey developed by Bloomberg and conducted by intelligence company Morning Consult.

But Joe Biden and his defenders continue to insist that everything is just fine. In fact, Joy Behar is quite certain that “the economy is booming” right now…Leftist Joy Behar — who reportedly earns $7 million annually as a co-host on “The View” — said on Friday’s program that “the economy is booming” and “people are having an easier time putting bread on the table” in a passionate defense of President Joe Biden. For those that are making millions of dollars a year, I am sure that everything must seem great. But for the rest of us, things are tough.

Meanwhile, our banks continue to experience really weird “technical glitches”. For example, in recent days many Wells Fargo customers have been greatly upset about money disappearing from their accounts…On X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, users complained about their disappearing funds. One bank customer said they saw the news about the problem right as they noticed their deposits weren’t in their account. “Right before this popped up in the news I saw that my deposits weren’t in my account,” their tweet read. “I was trying to pay bills and none would go through. This is so unacceptable.”

The company responded in a statement to CNN that a “limited amount” of their customers are experiencing the disappearing deposits. They said most of them were “resolved” and that they would fix the problem soon.

This is another example which shows why it is wise to never keep all of your eggs in one basket. Our financial institutions are far more vulnerable than most people realize, and the cyberattacks that we have seen so far are just a small preview of what is coming.

Unfortunately, most Americans don’t understand any of the things that I have discussed in this article. Most Americans are simply trusting that our leaders have everything under control, and so they will be bitterly, bitterly disappointed when they finally realize the truth."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

Bill Bonner, Joel Bowman, "Relative Wealth"

"Relative Wealth"

Moody's downgrades the banks, the rise and fall of American growth, global elites raise the energy drawbridge, the Aussie canary in the coal mine and plenty more...

by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - "Over the Reuters wire comes this news: "Moody's downgrades 10 US banks, warns of possible cuts to others." "Moody's cut the ratings of 10 U.S. banks by one notch and placed some banking giants on review for potential downgrades. The agency also changed its outlook to negative for several major lenders. Overall, it changed the assessments for 27 banks in the sector. The downgraded banks include M&T Bank, Pinnacle Financial Partners, Prosperity Bank and BOK Financial Corp."

The banks are being squeezed. They have to pay higher rates of interest to depositors. And their reserve assets, US Treasury bonds – which the feds insisted they buy to shore up their balance sheets – have gone down in value. Fortunately, the Fed is there to bail them out – with more fake money.

The Other Green Agenda: Yes, it is all coming together – alas – credit downgrades…Justice Department takedowns…and political shakedowns…along with the decline of the US Empire…the corruption of its elites…the fall of US asset values…the rise of inflation, jackassery, numbskullery, criminality, rascality, chaos and confusion…the Green Agenda…LBQT? Rights…wokism…racism…bankruptcy…defaults…

What to make of it? All senseless, random noise? Not completely. We have shown, over and over again, how the switcheroo in 1971 – replacing a real dollar, backed by gold, with a fake dollar, backed by nothing – ruined the US economy. ‘When the money goes, everything goes,’ we keep saying. But what else happened around 1971? That’s what we will look at today.

Recall from last week that there is a hidden logic – a megapolitical meaning – behind the Green Agenda. The poor want and need fossil fuels in order to reach the standards of living that the rich have enjoyed for more than 50 years. Since there are billions of these people…and since they depend on cheap energy to fully participate in the Industrial Revolution…they are probably not going to sign onto a program that will slow their ‘catch up’ growth. So, whatever cutbacks are achieved in the US and other rich countries are likely to be offset by greater use of fossil fuels in the BRICS and other expanding economies. On balance, the planet may see more CO2 emissions, not fewer.

Relatively Wealthy: Even in the ‘rich’ countries, most people are not as fat and sassy as we may think. Most people in the US, for example, have little margin for error. They live ‘paycheck to paycheck.’ Any significant increase in energy costs will lower their standards of living. Will they go along with it? Not likely.

Only the rich…the elites…fully support the Great Transition to “alternative” forms of energy. For them, higher energy costs (along with higher food costs…) will have relatively small consequences. They can afford electric automobiles…and they won’t ask too many questions about where the electricity comes from.

But what do they gain from it? If they can’t really reset the world’s thermostat, why bother? Here’s a thought…Wealth is relative. If you can’t get more of it through honest, win-win deals, you turn to win-lose. That is, if you can’t expand the pie…you just grab all you can and try to keep others away.

Around 1970, the pie stopped growing as fast as it used to. GDP growth rates fell. For 90% of the population, real wage increases came to an end. Advanced economies, even with no prodding from the government, began using less energy. Why? The Industrial Revolution seems to have played itself out.

Rise and Fall:  This is not only our view. It is shared by professor Robert J. Gordon, whose 2016 book, ‘The Rise and Fall of American Growth,’ cast a long shadow over hopes for a MAGA economy. Here’s the description from Amazon: "In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end? Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of American Growth challenges the view that economic growth will continue unabated, and demonstrates that the life-altering scale of innovations between 1870 and 1970 cannot be repeated.

Gordon argued that there was no way to Make America Great Again. What made it great was the Industrial Revolution. And by 1970, it had already reached the point of declining marginal utility. We already had plenty of motors, machines, and energy-sucking devices. Adding more produced only incremental gains…not revolutionary gains."

And if that is true, the US economy was on its way to becoming…not necessarily a ‘zero sum’ game…but a game with little payoff for the elites. They were rich and powerful. And the only way they could hold onto their advantage was to deny the benefits of cheap energy to everybody else. No factories, slaughter houses or power plants in their neighborhoods!

We pause to note that no one woke up in the morning and said: ‘Gee, the Industrial Revolution is not paying off the way it used to. I guess what I should do is to try to cut people off from cheap energy…so they won’t get what I’ve got.’ “Megapolitics” does not require awareness. People do not generally understand where they are going…or why. They just go where the currents take them.

Today, the elites enjoy avocados from the tropics, autos from Munich factories and vacations in Mallorca. This makes them ‘privileged.’ But the privilege would disappear if these things were available to the masses. How to prevent the rest of the world from getting what the elites alone now enjoy? Raise the price of energy? More to come…"

Joel’s Note: "And here we look to liberal, developed, energy-rich Australia for a shocking glimpse of the near-future…Reliably generous when it comes to ominous portents (see the draconian, “full retard” response to The Covid… the zombie march toward a cashless society… the mad rush to “Net Zero”, etc.) the Australian canary is once again swooning in the proverbial coal mine.

In a country that has enough fossil fuel wealth to power the planet for approximately a gazillion lifetimes, paycheck-to-paycheck Australian workers are finding their electricity bills skyrocketing 20…40…as much as 80% in some cases. Here’s VOA News with the latest from just a few days ago…"New Australian Bureau of Statistics data reveals a record number of people are working multiple jobs as households try to keep up with the surge in the cost of living. Inflation has been at record highs, and Australians are paying some of the world’s highest power prices.

Sharp increases in power prices are making a cost-of-living crisis even worse. In some parts of the country, prices have risen by up to 25%. The figures translate to an annual energy cost increase (for the average family) of over $350 in Victoria… $400 in Queensland… $500 in South Australia… and almost $600 in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state."

Voters Down Under will recall the Albanese government’s promise to cut (read: lower, lessen, slash, etc.) power bills for households by $275 a year during their 2022 election campaign, largely due to proposed infrastructure upgrades and… here it comes… a nationwide transition to cheap, green energy***

Asked last week how hard-working families can best protect themselves against the rising cost of living in Australia, the government’s energy minister, Chris Bowen, suggested struggling families get on board with the solar project, digging deeper into empty pockets to further an energy policy that has only increased their power bills so far.

Even after the government’s (read: taxpayer-funded) “rebates,” solar panels cost between $4,000 and $16,000 to install for the average household. As one commenter noted…'I looked at going solar in my new house. The payback period is 15 years… Cheaper to stick to my regular supply and use wood fire and gas to heat the home.' Renewable energy: So cheap, even the working poor can’t afford it."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/p/

*** May refer to energy that is neither cheap nor green.

"Situation Critical: US Banks Get Downgraded, Rattles Markets! Be Ready For More"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 8/8/23

"Situation Critical: US Banks Get Downgraded, 

Rattles Markets! Be Ready For More"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Finding Great Buys At Meijer! Stock Up On These Items!"

Full screen recommended.

Adventures With Danno, 8/823

"Finding Great Buys At Meijer! 

Stock Up On These Items!"

"In today's vlog, we are at Meijer and are finding some great buys on groceries! We encourage everyone to take advantage of some of these deals before the next round of price increases!"

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- https://www.youtube.com/

"Loaning Money To Family And Friends, Friends Keep Asking For Money; The FED Has Created A Disaster"

Jeremiah Babe, 8/7/23

"Loaning Money To Family And Friends, Friends Keep 

Asking For Money; The FED Has Created A Disaster"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Tyson Foods Closing 4 Plants In Indiana, Arkansas and Missouri! Thousands Of Jobs Lost!"

Adventures With Danno, PM 8/7/23

"Tyson Foods Closing 4 Plants In Indiana, Arkansas

 and Missouri! Thousands Of Jobs Lost!"

"Tyson Foods is closing four of their plants that will affect over 3000 employees in Indiana, Arkansas, and Missouri! This is not good as many families continue to struggle to put food on the table because of inflation and rising costs in the grocery stores! This event may also trigger more food shortages on top of what we are already expecting this year!"

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Musical Interlude: 2002, "Inner Light"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Inner Light"

"This song is from our album, "The Emerald Way". The Emerald Way refers to that moment in life when a pivotal choice must be made – to choose the way that is customary and expected of us – or to head down the overgrown hidden path leading to the unknown." 

"A Look to the Heavens"

“About 70 million light-years distant, gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 289 is larger than our own Milky Way. Seen nearly face-on, its bright core and colorful central disk give way to remarkably faint, bluish spiral arms. The extensive arms sweep well over 100 thousand light-years from the galaxy's center.

At the lower right in this sharp, telescopic galaxy portrait the main spiral arm seems to encounter a small, fuzzy elliptical companion galaxy interacting with enormous NGC 289. Of course spiky stars are in the foreground of the scene. They lie within the Milky Way toward the southern constellation Sculptor.”

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

Chet Raymo, "In the Cave"

"In the Cave"

by Chet Raymo

"I have mentioned here before the ospreys that patrol our beach - or "fish hawks," as they call them here - generally in the afternoon at about the time I take my long walk to the palm point. Magnificent birds with broad wings that glide seemingly effortlessly on the wind. And here's the thing: As often as not I am startled by a bird's shadow before I see the bird itself. That wide-winged shadow, sweeping across the white sand, sometimes across me. That flicker of chill as the osprey blocks the sun.

And generally when it happens I think of Plato's allegory of the cave. Prisoners in a cave are constrained to look only at a blank wall. Somewhere behind them there is a fire, and people come and go in front of the fire, casting shadows on the wall. The shadows are the only reality the prisoners know. They have no idea of the flesh-and-blood people behind them or the blazing fire. The prisoners know only what presents itself to their senses.

Forget for the moment Plato's point, which has to do with the duty of the philosopher to enlighten the benighted. There is a humbling moral to the story for all of us: We can only know what our senses - directly or indirectly - can perceive.

Who, a century ago, could have imagined the universe of the galaxies, or the marvelous dance of the DNA in every cell of our bodies? By cleverly extending our senses - limited as they are - with technological enhancements a whole new universe has opened up to us. Who can imagine what we might know a century from now? Plato's "real" world is like a shadow compared to the universe we inhabit today. Our own universe may be a shadow of a reality vastly more wonderful than anything we have so far dreamed.

Never mind. We live in the world we have. Even the osprey's shadow is magnificent in its own way. I am privileged to lift my eyes and see the feathered bird. And I have an intuition that there is more - much more - yet to see.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Everybody Is A Genius..."

 

"I Can't Convince Myself..."

“I can’t convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at.”

- Kenneth Smith