Sunday, March 3, 2024

"The Politics of Obedience"

"The Politics of Obedience"
by Brian Maher

“The best slave is the one who thinks he is free.”
- Johann von Goethe

“A people enslaves itself, cuts its own throat, when, having a choice between being vassals and being free men, it deserts its liberties and takes on the yoke, gives consent to its own misery, or, rather, apparently welcomes it.” We believe the 16th-century French political theorist Étienne de La Boétie hooked onto a truth here. We plucked this passage from his masterly work "The Politics of Obedience by" title.

We believe it enjoys high relevance in this, the 21st century. More from which: "It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say, on beholding such a situation, that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement." Thus the frog goes into its pot of gradually heating water - and never jumps out.

Perfectly Imperfect: We've wondered why so many continue to accept the verdicts of Dr. Fauci... his understrappers within the field of public health… and the elected officials who boss us. In nearly every particular they have proven mistaken - intentionally or unintentionally... Mistaken on masks. Mistaken on lockups. Mistaken on medicines. Mistaken on vaccines. What they claim one day is proven false the following day. What they deny one day is proven true the following day. If not the following day, then the following week. If not the following week, then the following month.

It is not the erring that flusters us. Sincere men - men of good faith - can botch badly. We are merely confounded and discombobulated that so many continue heeding them… and submitting to their blemished authority. And why do so many have such blistering heat against those who point to holes in official theories, who announce that the emperor is well and truly nude? Would they prefer to be foxed, conned and tricked - to believe the emperor is garmented? These are the questions we tackle today...

No Judgment: We do not hector, we do not preach, we do not badger, we do not hold forth today. Nor do we judge. A man shoots an accusing finger outward and three shoot back at him… as is said. We are merely out to solve a puzzle, the way a detective is out to solve a crime, the way an autopsist is out to solve a death.

For light, we turn to Professor Mattias Desmet. This fellow professes psychology at Belgium’s Ghent University. A people acquire an acute anxiety, he explains. In the case before us, acute anxiety of the virus. Coney-catchers, sharpers and opportunists - that is, political leaders - emerge in response, holding out salvation. The people accept the outstretched hand. It soothes and comforts them. Anyone who slaps away this hand is a hellcat, a hobgoblin, a menace to the public happiness.

“Mass-Formation: Here the professor speaks of “Mass-Formation.” As summarized: "In Mass-Formations people become radically intolerant of dissident voices. This person threatens to wake the people up and they get angry when confronted by the initial anxiety and discontent they experience by challenges to the official doctrine. The crowd directs all their aggression at dissident voices.

At the same time they are radically tolerant of their leaders who pronounce the mainstream narrative. These people can lie and cheat and do everything they want and will always be forgiven by the crowd. All the lying, dishonesty and misbehavior is seen by the crowd as doing it for their own safety."
We suffer the acquaintance of certain individuals who fit this description to a fare-thee-well… as perfectly and precisely as the size 10 foot fits the size 10 shoe. They, like your editor, are reasonably sane. They are reasonably reasonable, they are reasonably tolerant. They are generally pleasant and agreeable.

Jekyll and Hyde: But tell them that Dr. Fauci has been less than fully truthful. Tell them that masks are minimally effective. Tell them that lockups fail to jail the virus. Above all… Tell them that these vaccines are not as safe or as formidable as the drummers claim. Now you have a demon on your hands. They will scourge you as a conspiracy theorist… a delusional… an imbecile… a witless dupe of the bedlamite fringe.

Here we speak with the invincible authority of personal experience. We know such gentlemen and ladies. We had best keep the names dark, lest our attorneys receive a sharp note claiming character defamation.

No matter what you hurl against them, it bounces off unbreachable armor… spitballs off a tank. They simply will not listen. They are sunk in a sort of intoxicating hypnosis. And woe to anyone out to shatter the spell…

Why Facts Don’t Work: More: Similar to hypnosis, people in this hyper-focused state are narrowly focused. In hypnosis, only the hypnotized are focused in this way… In Mass-Formation, leaders emerge which are even more narrowly focused than the followers. When people experience this mental intoxication it no longer matters if the narrative is wrong or even blatantly false. What matters is that it leads up to this mental intoxication. This is why they will continue to go along with the narrative.

The resistance to understanding the narrative is false or wrong is driven by the fear of returning to the state of Free-Floating Anxiety and wanting to continue to experience the mental intoxication. This explains why arguing based on facts will not work. Facts no longer matter to them. Given the facts, they are unable to come to sensible conclusions, even in their own best interests.

Here we believe the author lowers his hammer square upon the nailhead. We believe his thesis holds vast explanatory powers. It is immensely plausible. Again: We do not judge or condemn whom we consider the entranced. They consider us entranced. They are of course correct.

For example: This editor of yours believes he is the reincarnated soul of the Emperor Nero. He believes that he is a masterful lover. He believes that he is nice. He accepts them as fact… though in honest moments he concedes he lacks all confirming evidence. But let it go...

The Real Blame: Our grievance is not with the entranced, but rather with the spellbinders who entrance them. That is, with those who would wreck a society over a virus rate with a survival rate in excess of 99%...

With those who would decry the use of safe and effective drug treatments because they would harpoon the legal justification for experimental, emergency-use vaccines… With those who promised us we could discard our facial masks once we took aboard the vaccines… With those who would torture statistics to declare a false “pandemic of the unvaccinated”...

With those who deny that these vaccines have murdered many thousands of people and mangled hundreds of thousands more… With those who would inform mothers-to-be that these vaccines will not injure their child… With those who would vaccinate young children, young children who face infinitesimal risk of sickness or death and who are far more likely to perish from the vaccine itself… With those who believe they can and should dictate the medical choices of free men and women.

It is they who frost our nose. It is they who wring our gizzard. It is they who rile our customary serenity and our detached indifference to the world’s events.

Time for Inaction: We conclude today’s issue where we commenced - with Monsieur Étienne de La Boétie. Here is how to break the hypnotist’s spell… for those who care to break it. His counterspell requires not action - but inaction: "You can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free. Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break into pieces. The time for inaction is now…"
Freely download "The Politics of Obedience" by Étienne de La Boétie here:

Free Download: Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” is, as the title suggests, a simple story of one day in the life of Ivan Shukov Denisovich, a prisoner in a Soviet concentration camp. Shukov, a simple Russian peasant fighting for Stalin in WWII, is imprisoned for treason – a crime he did not commit – and has spent the last 8 years in concentration camps. Shukov’s day begins at 5.00 a.m. with the clang of the reveille – he is, along with the other prisoners, marched out into the bitter cold, stripped and searched for forbidden objects, and then sent to work until sundown, without rest, without a full stomach. In this slim 143 page-novella, we follow Shukov’s grueling routine and see how he struggles to maintain his dignity in small, subtle ways. On this day, he has scored some small triumphs for himself – he has swiped an extra bowl of mush at supper, found a piece of metal that can be used as a knife to mend things, replenished his precious tobacco supplies and also has had a share of a small piece of sausage before lights out. Thus, at the end of the day (and the novel), he thinks to himself that it has been “A day without a dark cloud. Almost a happy day.” He must survive only another 3653 days more.”
o
Freely download “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”,
by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, here:
o
"The Chain Of Obedience"
“The death squads and concentration camps of history were never staffed
by rebels and dissidents. They were run by those who followed the rules."

"How It Really Is"

 

Dan, I Allegedly, "No Interest Rate Cuts in 2024"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 3/3/24
"No Interest Rate Cuts in 2024"
"This just in. Jerome Powell has stepped forward and said that we have a booming economy and that there is no need right now to have rate cuts in 2024. Unemployment is low and inflation is subsiding. I don’t know where he lives."
Comments here:

Gregory Mannarino, Systemic Meltdown, And It's Not The Stock Market"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/3/24
"Markets, A Look Ahead: 
Systemic Meltdown, And It's Not The Stock Market"
Comments here:

"Why Are They Creating $1 Trillion Of Debt Every 100 Days?" (Excerpt)

"Why Are They Creating $1 Trillion Of Debt Every 100 Days?"
by Jim Quinn

“There has been abundant evidence of great evil at work 
in the world, throughout time and in our present time.
Do you really wish to be ignorant of its existence and operation?” 

Excerpt: "From 2000 through 2007, while waging two wars in the Middle East, the U.S. ANNUAL Federal deficit averaged $220 billion PER YEAR. And many fiscal conservatives thought that was outrageously out of control. Well, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, the despicable scum in Congress, and the rest of the Deep State calling the shots in this military empire of delusion and debt said, HOLD MY BEER.

Just as the wheels were starting to come off in late 2019, the convenient arrival of the Covid plandemic provided the cover for these purveyors of propaganda and panic to run $3 trillion deficits and establish a new baseline of $1 trillion per year. The house of cards, built upon a crumbling foundation of debt comes crashing down when deficits are allowed to drop below $1 trillion. Running in place gets more expensive by the day.
Now it requires $1 trillion of new debt every 100 days to achieve nothing but remaining static economically. The regime media pundits and the cabal on Wall Street tell us the economy is doing great. No recession in sight. All is well. The dumbed down and distracted ignorant masses don’t realize all the reported “economic growth” is “created” by the government, enabled by The Fed, spending billions on their wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, funneling the money into the Military Industrial Complex corporations; paying for the transportation, feeding, and housing of the illegal invading hordes; hiring more government drones to harass the citizenry, and desperately trying to prop up a corrupt tottering empire in its final death throes."
Full, most highly recommended article is here:

Freely download "The Great Taking", by David Rogers Webb, here:

Adventures With Danno, "Big Lots 2024!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 3/3/24
"Big Lots 2024!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Big Lots and are finding some great deals on many items. Grab your notepad as these are items everyone should be buying here in 2024!"
Comments here:
o
Meanwhile, in a saner place...
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell , 3/3/24
"Uzbekistan Typical Supermarket Tour: 
Magnum Tashkent"
"What does a typical supermarket in Tashkent, Uzbekistan look like? Take a walk with me inside a Uzbekistan typical supermarket. What are the differences, what unique items do they sell?"
Comments here:

Ya know, maybe, just maybe, if we didn't borrow and spend a $TRILLION dollars a 
year on "Defense" our country, our economy and our lives might be better? Maybe?

Saturday, March 2, 2024

"NATO Crosses Russia's Red Line, Scott Ritter On Putin's Warning"

Danny Haiphong. 3/2/24
"NATO Crosses Russia's Red Line, 
Scott Ritter On Putin's Warning"
Comments here:

Canadian Prepper, "Alert! Europe At DEFCON 2, Germany Preps Hospitals For Mass Casualties, Troops Deploy In Ukraine"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 3/2/24
"Alert! Europe At DEFCON 2, Germany Preps 
Hospitals For Mass Casualties, Troops Deploy In Ukraine"
Comments here:

Jeremiah Babe, "Massive Power Outages Hit California, 10 Feet Of Snow, 140 MPH Winds"

Jeremiah Babe, 3/2/24
"Massive Power Outages Hit California, 
10 Feet Of Snow, 140 MPH Winds"
Comments here:

"The Level Of Crazy In Our Society Has Reached Heights Never Seen Before"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 3/2/24
"The Level Of Crazy In Our Society 
Has Reached Heights Never Seen Before"
"American Patriots, things are moving faster than ever, and every day it seems like worse things are happening. Society is becoming crazy at a truly unprecedented rate, with a recent study showing that ninety percent of Americans believe we’re facing a mental health crisis right now. There were over 100,000 drug overdose deaths in 2022, a five-fold increase from 2002 and over double the amount of drug overdose-related deaths in 2015.

If this isn’t a good indication that American society is on the verge of collapse, what else is there? The fact that banks are closing, and there is a centralization effort by our central bank and government? Especially in the private mom-and-pop shop sector, businesses are finding that survival is nearly impossible."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: Liquid Mind, "Moment of Grace Part 1"

Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "Moment of Grace Part 1"

"A Look to the Heavens With Chet Raymo"

“Like Rubies Ringed With Gold”
by Chet Raymo

“Here’s a Hubble Space Telescope composite photograph of two colliding galaxies in the constellation Corvus.
Each of the three books of Dante’s “Divine Comedy” ends with the same words: “the stars.” The Inferno concludes with distant stars glimpsed through the narrow exit of hell. “We emerged,” says the poet, “and saw the stars.” The poet’s journey through Purgatory ends on Earth’s highest mountain, with the heavens seemingly not so far away. He is “ready to ascend to the stars.” Finally, Dante looks down upon the stars from above, from the luminous realm of Paradise. He has experienced “the Love that moves the sun and the other stars.” The beauty of that final destination, the Empyrean Sphere that encloses the created universe in divine brilliance, taxes the poet’s powers of description:

“I saw light in the shape of a river
Flashing golden between two banks
Tinted in colors of marvelous spring.
Out of the stream came living sparks
Which settled on the flowers on every side
Like rubies ringed with gold…”

Nothing in Dante’s experience could have prepared him for the splendors of the heavens as revealed by the Hubble. The photograph of colliding galaxies in Corvus is a work of genius in the tradition of the “Divine Comedy” – imagination in service to humankind’s loftiest aspirations and longings.

In Dante’s time, astronomy was one of the seven liberal arts – with grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, and music – required of every student who aspired to a university degree. Of all the secular sciences, astronomy was deemed most likely to lead one to the contemplation of things divine. Yesterday’s Hubble pic made the hair stand up on the back of my neck, which is about as close to the divine as I ever get. Dante’s “Divine Comedy” is based on the medieval astronomical conception of the world – a system of concentric spheres centered on the Earth and bounded just up there by the Empyrean.

In the Hubble photograph of colliding galaxies we see something akin to Dante’s paradisal vision, but it is not a cosmos centered on the Earth. Here are other Suns and other Earths being born, in prodigious numbers, massive stars destined to die soon as supernovas, and other less massive stars that will live long lives, perhaps evolving life or consciousness on their planets. We see in the Hubble photograph a universe of a fullness and dimension that makes Dante’s human-centered cosmos of concentric spheres seem like a dust mote in an immense cathedral.

Astronomy is no longer a required course of study in our universities, and it’s something of a shame. Who can look at the photograph of colliding galaxies and not be moved to rapture? An understanding of the size, age, and prodigality of the universe should be part of every liberal arts graduate’s intellectual furniture.”

The Poet: Fernando Pessoa, “I Don’t Know If The Stars Rule The World”

“I Don’t Know If The Stars Rule The World”

“I don’t know if the stars rule the world,
Or if Tarot or playing cards
Can reveal anything.
I don’t know if the rolling of dice
Can lead to any conclusion.
But I also don’t know
If anything is attained
By living the way most people do.

Yes, I don’t know
If I should believe in this daily rising sun
Whose authenticity no one can guarantee me,
Or if it would be better (because better or more convenient)
To believe in some other sun,
One that shines even at night,
Some profound incandescence of things,
Surpassing my understanding.

For now...
(Let’s take it slow)
For now
I have an absolutely secure grip on the stair-rail,
I secure it with my hand –
This rail that doesn’t belong to me
And that I lean on as I ascend...
Yes... I ascend...
I ascend to this:
I don’t know if the stars rule the world.”

- Fernando Pessoa

"The More I Learn..."

"The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog."
- Mark Twain

The Poet: Anne Sexton, "Courage"

"Courage"

"It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out."

~ Anne Sexton

"This Very Moment..."

“Hope is always about the future. And it isn’t always good news. Sometimes, hope can imprison us with belief or expectation that something will happen in the future to change our lives. Similarly hopelessness isn’t always about despair. Hopelessness can bring us right into this very moment and answer all of life’s most difficult questions. Who am I? Where am I? What does this mean? And what now?”
- Daniel Gottlieb

The Daily "Near You?"

Vestal, New York, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Decline of Empire: Parallels Between the U.S. and Rome, Part I"

"Decline of Empire:
 Parallels Between the U.S. and Rome, Part I"
By Doug Casey

"As some of you know, I’m an aficionado of ancient history. I thought it might be worthwhile to discuss what happened to Rome and based on that, what’s likely to happen to the U.S. Spoiler alert: There are some similarities between the U.S. and Rome. But before continuing, please seat yourself comfortably. This article will necessarily cover exactly those things you’re never supposed to talk about - religion and politics - and do what you’re never supposed to do, namely, bad-mouth the military.

There are good reasons for looking to Rome rather than any other civilization when trying to see where the U.S. is headed. Everyone knows Rome declined, but few people understand why. And, I think, even fewer realize that the U.S. is now well along the same path for pretty much the same reasons, which I’ll explore shortly.

Rome reached its peak of military power around the year 107, when Trajan completed the conquest of Dacia (the territory of modern Romania). With Dacia, the empire peaked in size, but I’d argue it was already past its peak by almost every other measure.

The U.S. reached its peak relative to the world, and in some ways its absolute peak, as early as the 1950s. In 1950 this country produced 50% of the world’s GNP and 80% of its vehicles. Now it’s about 21% of world GNP and 5% of its vehicles. It owned two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves; now it holds one-fourth. It was, by a huge margin, the world’s biggest creditor, whereas now it’s the biggest debtor by a huge margin. The income of the average American was by far the highest in the world; today it ranks about eighth, and it’s slipping.

But it’s not just the U.S. - it’s Western civilization that’s in decline. In 1910 Europe controlled almost the whole world - politically, financially, and militarily. Now it’s becoming a Disneyland with real buildings and a petting zoo for the Chinese. It’s even further down the slippery slope than the U.S.

Like America, Rome was founded by refugees - from Troy, at least in myth. Like America, it was ruled by kings in its early history. Later, Romans became self-governing, with several Assemblies and a Senate. Later still, power devolved to the executive, which was likely not an accident.

U.S. founders modeled the country on Rome, all the way down to the architecture of government buildings, the use of the eagle as the national bird, the use of Latin mottos, and the unfortunate use of the fasces - the axe surrounded by rods - as a symbol of state power. Publius, the pseudonymous author of "The Federalist Papers," took his name from one of Rome’s first consuls. As it was in Rome, military prowess is at the center of the national identity of the U.S. When you adopt a model in earnest, you grow to resemble it.

A considerable cottage industry has developed comparing ancient and modern times since Edward Gibbon published "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" in 1776 - the same year as Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and the U.S. Declaration of Independence were written. I’m a big fan of all three, but D&F is not only a great history, it’s very elegant and readable literature. And it’s actually a laugh riot; Gibbon had a subtle wit.

There have been huge advances in our understanding of Rome since Gibbon’s time, driven by archeological discoveries. There were many things he just didn’t know, because he was as much a philologist as an historian, and he based his writing on what the ancients said about themselves.

There was no real science of archeology when Gibbon wrote; little had been done even to correlate the surviving ancient texts with what was on the surviving monuments - even the well-known monuments - and on the coins. Not to mention scientists digging around in the provinces for what was left of Roman villas, battle sites, and that sort of thing. So Gibbon, like most historians, was to a degree a collector of hearsay.

And how could he know whom to believe among the ancient sources? It’s as though William F. Buckley, Gore Vidal, H. L. Mencken, Norman Mailer, and George Carlin all wrote about the same event, and you were left to figure out whose story was true. That would make it tough to tell what really happened just a few years ago… forget about ancient history. That’s why the study of history is so tendentious; so much of it is “he said/she said.” In any event, perhaps you don’t want a lecture on ancient history. You’d probably be more entertained by some guesses about what’s likely to happen to the U.S. I’ve got some.

Let me start by saying that I’m not sure the collapse of Rome wasn’t a good thing. There were many positive aspects to Rome - as there are to most civilizations. But there was much else to Rome of which I disapprove, such as its anti-commercialism, its militarism and, post-Caesar, its centralized and increasingly totalitarian government. In that light, it’s worth considering whether the collapse of the U.S. might not be a good thing.

So why did Rome fall? In 1985, a German named Demandt assembled 210 reasons. I find some of them silly - like racial degeneration, homosexuality, and excessive freedom. Most are redundant. Some are just common sense - like bankruptcy, loss of moral fiber, and corruption.

Gibbon’s list is much shorter. Although it’s pretty hard to summarize his six fat volumes in a single sentence, he attributed the fall of Rome to just two causes, one internal and one external: Christianity and barbarian invasions, respectively. I think Gibbon was essentially right about both. Because of the sensibilities of his era, however, he probed at early Christianity (i.e., from its founding to the mid-4th century) very gently; I’ve decided to deal with it less delicately. Hopefully neither my analysis of religion nor of barbarian invasions (then and now) will disturb too many readers.

In any event, while accepting Gibbon’s basic ideas on Christians and barbarians, I decided to break down the reasons for Rome’s decline further, into 10 categories: political, legal, social, demographic, ecological, military, psychological, intellectual, religious, and economic—all of which I’ll touch on. And, as a bonus, toward the end of this article, I’ll give you another, completely unrelated, and extremely important reason for the collapse of both Rome and the U.S.

You don’t have to agree with my interpretation, but let’s see what lessons are on offer from the history of Rome, from its semi-mythical founding by Romulus and Remus in 753 BCE (a story that conflicts with Virgil’s tale of Aeneas and the refugee Trojans) to what’s conventionally designated as the end of the Western empire in 476 AD, when the child-emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed by Odoacer (a Germanic general who was in charge of what passed for the Roman army—which by then was staffed almost entirely with Germanic mercenaries who had no loyalty to the idea of Rome). It looks a lot like the American experience over the last couple of hundred years. First conquest and expansion, then global dominance, and then slippage into decline.
Political

It’s somewhat misleading, however, to talk about a simple fall of Rome, and much more accurate to talk about its gradual transformation, with episodes of what paleontologists describe as “punctuated disequilibrium.” There were many falls.

Republican Rome fell in 31 BCE with the accession of Augustus and the start of what’s called the Principate. It almost disintegrated in the 50 years of the mid-3rd century, a time of constant civil war, the start of serious barbarian incursions, and the destruction of Rome’s silver currency, the denarius.

Rome as anything resembling a free society fell in the 290s and then changed radically again, with Diocletian and the Dominate period (more on this shortly). Maybe the end came in 378, when the Goths destroyed a Roman army at Adrianople and wholesale invasions began. Maybe we should call 410 the end, when Alaric - a Goth who was actually a Roman general -conducted the first sacking of Rome.

It might be said the civilization didn’t really collapse until the late 600s, when Islam conquered the Middle East and North Africa and cut off Mediterranean commerce. Maybe we should use 1453, when Constantinople and the Eastern Empire fell. Maybe the Empire is still alive today in the form of the Catholic Church—the Pope is the Pontifex Maximus wearing red slippers, as did Julius Caesar when he held that position.

One certain reflection in the distant mirror is that beginning with the Principate period, Rome underwent an accelerating trend toward absolutism, centralization, totalitarianism, and bureaucracy. I think we can argue America entered its Principate with the accession of Roosevelt in 1933; since then, the president has reigned supreme over the Congress, as Augustus did over the Senate. Pretenses fell off increasingly over time in Rome, just as they have in the U.S.

After the third century, with constant civil war and the destruction of the currency, the Principate (when the emperor, at least in theory, was just the first among equals) gave way to the Dominate period (from the word “dominus,” or lord, referring to a master of slaves), when the emperor became an absolute monarch. This happened with the ascension of Diocletian in 284 and then, after another civil war, Constantine in 306. From that point forward, the emperor no longer even pretended to be the first among equals and was treated as an oriental potentate. The same trend is in motion in the U.S, but we’re still a ways from reaching its endpoint - although it has to be noted that the president is now protected by hundreds, even thousands, of bodyguards. Harry Truman was the last president who actually dared to go out and informally stroll about DC, like a common citizen, while in office.

In any event, just as the Senate, the consuls, and the tribunes with their vetoes became impotent anachronisms, so have U.S. institutions. Early on, starting with the fourth emperor, Claudius, in 41 AD, the Praetorians (who had been set up by Augustus) showed they could designate the emperor. And today in the U.S., that’s probably true of its praetorians - the NSA, CIA, and FBI, among others - and of course the military. We’ll see how the next hanging-chad presidential election dispute gets settled.

My guess is that the booboisie (the Romans called them the capite censi, or head count) will demand a strong leader as the Greater Depression evolves, the dollar is destroyed, and a serious war gets underway. You have to remember that war has always been the health of the state. The Roman emperors were expected, not least by their soldiers, to always be engaged in war. And it’s no accident that the so-called greatest U.S. presidents were war presidents -Lincoln, Wilson, and FDR. We can humorously add the self-proclaimed war president Baby Bush. Military heroes - like Washington, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, and Eisenhower - are always easy to elect. 

It’s wise to keep Gibbon’s words about the military in mind: “Any order of men accustomed to violence and slavery make for very poor guardians of a civil constitution.”

One additional political parallel with the U.S.: up to Trajan in 100 AD, all the emperors were culturally Roman from old, noble families. After that, few were. The U.S. now has already had its first Kenyan president -  just kidding, of course."

"The Plain Truth..."

“The plain truth is we are going to die. Here I am, a teeny spec surrounded by boundless space and time, arguing with the whole of creation, shaking my fist, sputtering, growing even eloquent at times, and then - poof! I am gone. Swept off once and for all. I think that is very, very funny.” 
                                                             - Charles Simic

"Reality Avoidance"

"Reality Avoidance"
by Morris Berman

"It’s quite amazing how the news is endlessly about nonsense. Filler, is what I call it. Very little of this has anything to do with reality, which the Mainstream Media and the American people avoid like the plague. What then is real?

1. The empire is in decline; every day, life here gets a little bit worse; all our institutions are corrupt to varying degrees; and there is no turning this situation around.

2. A crucial factor in this decline and irreversibility is the low level of intelligence of the American people. Americans are not only dumb; they are positively antagonistic toward the life of the mind.

3. Relations of power and money determine practically everything. The 3 wealthiest Americans own as much as the bottom 50% of the population, and this tendency will get worse over time.

4. The value system of the country, and its citizens, is fundamentally wrong-headed. It amounts to little more than hustling, selfishness, narcissism, and a blatant disregard for anyone but oneself. There is a kind of cruelty, or violence, deep in the American soul; many foreign observers and writers have commented on this. Americans are bitter, depressed, and angry, and the country offers very little by way of community or empathy.

5. Along with this is the support of meaningless wars and imperial adventures on the part of most of the population. That we drone-murder unarmed civilians on a weekly basis is barely on the radar screen of the American mind. In essence, the nation has evolved into a genocidal war machine run by a plutocracy and cheered on by mindless millions.

Most Americans hide from these depressing, even horrific, realities by what passes for ‘the news’, but also by means of alcohol, opioids, TV, cellphones, suicide, prescription drugs, workaholism, and spectator sports, to name but a few. This stuffing of the Void is probably our primary activity. In a word, we are eating ourselves alive, and only a tiny fraction of the population recognizes this."
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Read it and weep...
"Morris Berman On A Dumbed-down America"
by RoryLitwin

Excerpt: "I am sharing a passage from Morris Berman’s book from a few years ago, "The Twilight of American Culture." Berman has generously agreed to let me share this passage, which is about the deplorable state of ignorance of the American people. The facts and data in this passage are a bit old, but all signs suggest that things have gotten worse since then, not better. "The Twilight of American Culture," pp. 33-40.

Turning to Item (c),The collapse of American intelligence, we find a picture that is unambiguously bleak. The following data are going to seem invented; please be assured, they are not.

 Forty-two percent of American adults cannot locate Japan on a world map, and according to Garrison Keillor (National Public Radio, 22 March 1997,) another survey revealed that nearly 15 percent couldn’t locate the United States (!). Keillor remarked that this was like not being able to “grab your rear end with both hands,” and he suggested that we stop being so assiduous, on the eve of elections, about trying to get out the vote.

• A survey taken in October 1996 revealed that one in ten voters did not know who the Republican or Democratic nominees for president were. This is particularly sobering when one remembers that one of the questions traditionally asked in psychiatric wards as part of the test for sanity is “Who is the president of the United States?”

• Very few Americans understand the degree to which corporations have taken over their lives. But according to a poll taken by Time magazine, nearly 70 percent of them believe in the existence of angels; and another study turned up the fact that 50 percent believe in the presence of UFOs and space aliens on earth, while a Gallup poll (reported on CNN, 19 August 1997) revealed that 71 percent believe that the U.S. government is engaged in a cover-up about the subject. More than 30 percent believe they have made contact with the dead.

• A 1995 article in the New York Times reported the results of a survey that revealed that 40 percent of American adults (this could be upward of 70 million people) did not know that Germany was our enemy in World War II. A Roper survey conducted in 1996 revealed that 84 percent of American college seniors cannot understand a newspaper editorial in any newspaper, and a U.S. Department of Education survey of 22,000 students in 1995 revealed that 50 percent were unaware of the Cold War, and that 60 percent had no idea of how the United States came into existence.

• At one point in 1996, Jay Leno invited a number of high school students to be on his television program and asked them to complete famous quotations from major American documents, such as the Gettysburg address and the Declaration of Independence. Their response in each case was to stare at him blankly. As a kind of follow-up, on his show of 3 June 1999, Leno screened a video of interviews he had conducted a few days before at a university graduation ceremony. He did not identify the institution in question; he told his TV audience only that the students he had interviewed included graduate students as well as undergraduates. The group included men, women, and people of color. Leno posed eight questions, as follows:

1. Who designed the first American flag? Answers included Susan B. Anthony (born in 1820,) and “Betsy Ford.”
2. What were the Thirteen Colonies free from, after the American Revolution? One student said, “The East Coast.”
3. What was the Gettysburg Address? One student replied, “An address to Getty;” another said, “I don’t know the exact address.”
4. Who invented the lightbulb? Answers included Thomas Jefferson
5. What is three squared? One student said, “Twenty-seven;” another said, “Six.”
6. What is the boiling point of water? Answers included 115 degrees?
7. How long does it take the earth to rotate once on its axis? The two answers Leno received here were “Light years” (which is a measure of distance, not time,) and “Twenty-four axises [sic].”
8. How many moons does the earth have? The student questioned said she had taken astronomy a few years back and had gotten an A in the course but that she couldn’t remember the correct answer.

It is important to note that not a single student interviewed had the correct answer to any of these questions. Leno’s comment on this pathetic debacle says it all: “And the Chinese are stealing secrets from us?”

• A 1998 survey by the National Constitution Center revealed that only 41 percent of American teenagers can name the three branches of government, but 59 percent can name the Three Stooges. Only 2 percent can name the chief justice of the Supreme Court; 26 percent were unable to identify the vice president. In the early 1990s, the National Assessment of Education Progress reported that 50 percent of seventeen year olds could not express 9/100 as a percentage, and nearly 50 percent couldn’t place the Civil War in the correct half century–data that the San Antonio Express News characterized as evidence of the “steady lobotomizing” of American culture. In another study of seventeen year olds, only 4 percent could read a bus schedule, and only 12% could arrange six common fractions in order of size.

• Ignorance of the most elementary scientific facts on the part of American adults is nothing less than breathtaking. In a survey conducted for the National Science Foundation in October 1995, 56 percent of those polled said that electrons were larger than atoms; 63 percent stated that the earliest human beings lived at the same time as the dinosaurs (a chronological error of more than 60 million years;) 53 percent said that the earth revolved around the sun in either a day or a month (that is to say, only 47 percent understood that the correct answer is one year;) and 91 percent were unable to state what a molecule was. A random telephone survey of more than two thousand adults, conducted by Northern Illinois University, revealed that 21 percent believed that the sun revolved around the earth, with an additional 7 percent saying 

 Of the 158 countries in the United Nations, the United States ranks forty-ninth in literacy. Roughly 60 percent of the adult population reads as much as one book a year, where book is defined to include Harlequin romances and self-help manuals. Something like 120 million adults are illiterate or read at no better than a fifth-grade level. Among readers age twenty-one to thirty-five, 67 percent regularly read a daily newspaper in 1965, as compared with 31 percent in 1998.

• In a telephone survey conducted in 1998, 12 percent of Americans, asked who the wife of the biblical Noah was, said “Joan of Arc” (reported on National Public Radio, 13 June 1998.)

• In 1997, as a hoax, the attorney general of the state of Missouri submitted a proposal to an international academic accrediting agency (not identified) to establish an institution he named Eastern Missouri Business College, which would grant Ph.D’s in marine biology and genetic engineering, as well as in business. The faculty would include, inter alia, Moe Howard, Jerome Howard, and Larry Fine – that is, The Three Stooges; and the proposed motto on the college seal, roughly translated from the Latin, was Education Is for the Birds. The response? Academic accreditation was granted."
Complete article is here. Read it and weep...
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As the great Mogombo Guru said, "We're so freakin' doomed!"
And that's why...

"How It Really Is"

Quite intentionally...

"If they can get you asking the wrong questions,
they don't have to worry about answers."
- Thomas Pynchon

Dan, I Allegedly, "Insurance Exodus - Why Your Policy Might Vanish Overnight!"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 3/2/24
"Insurance Exodus - 
Why Your Policy Might Vanish Overnight!"
"Here we go again. Another insurance company admits that they have massive losses and are going to cancel policies for homeowners in seven states. First off is California with 36,475 people losing their homeowners insurance. Who is next?"
Comments here:

"A Speechless, Incredible Diversion"

Full screen a must!
Legendary Productions, 3/24
"A Speechless, Incredible Diversion"
OMG, peasant that I am, this absolutely astonishes me, 
I don't know the words to describe it.  Magnificent isn't even close...
Comments here:
o
Playa Vista Isle, formerly Le Palais Royal, is in Hillsboro Beach, Florida, on the 
ritzy "Millionaire's Mile" between the Atlantic Ocean and the Intracoastal Waterway.

Adventures With Danno, "Massive Deals At Kroger!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 3/2/24"
"Massive Deals At Kroger!"
"In today's vlog, we are at Kroger and are noticing they are having a massive sale on many different items. I take you shopping with me as we check out some of these great bargains. I am also finding lots of early Easter deals here, so get your notepad ready, as you will definitely want to take advantage of some of these great deals!"
Comments here:
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Meanwhile, elsewhere...
Full screen recommended.
Travelling with Russell, 3/2/24
"Russian Typical (Regional) Supermarket: 
Would You Shop Here?'
"What does a Russian typical Supermarket look like inside? Join me on a tour of a Provincial Supermarket 200km from Moscow, Russia. Pyaterochka Supermarket is Russia's most famous store, with more than 20,000 locations."
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Friday, March 1, 2024

Jeremiah Babe, "Banks Will Crash The System, Hunker Down For An Economic Collapse"

Jeremiah Babe, 3/1/24
"Banks Will Crash The System, 
Hunker Down For An Economic Collapse"
Comments here:

"Collapse Is Looming! Bank Of America Is Not Safe, Get Your Money Out"

Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 3/1/24
"Collapse Is Looming! Bank Of America
 Is Not Safe, Get Your Money Out"
"The safety of banks from collapse has always been a concern for customers, investors, and regulators. So, in these videos, we delve into the troubles brewing on the Bank of America. With a massive 50% plunge in their earnings year-over-year, a concerning sign for the state of the US banking sector has triggered discussion within experts. As problems continued to crop up across the US economy in 2024, Bank of America's profits have continued to decline."
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