"How do clusters of galaxies form and evolve? To help find out, astronomers continue to study the second closest cluster of galaxies to Earth: the Fornax cluster, named for the southern constellation toward which most of its galaxies can be found. Although almost 20 times more distant than our neighboring Andromeda galaxy, Fornax is only about 10 percent further that the better known and more populated Virgo cluster of galaxies.
Fornax has a well-defined central region that contains many galaxies, but is still evolving. It has other galaxy groupings that appear distinct and have yet to merge. Seen here, almost every yellowish splotch on the image is an elliptical galaxy in the Fornax cluster. The picturesque barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 visible on the lower right is also a prominent Fornax cluster member. "
"Former US Marine Corps Officer and UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter and former CIA Analyst Larry Johnson discuss their reactions to Israel's military incursion and how the crimes being committed by the IDF expose its weaknesses."
"Banks are starting to scrutinize your transactions, more and more. We are now hearing about people that have cash businesses that are not only being scrutinized, but the accounts are being closed because the banks don’t want to deal with cash."
"One of Seneca's (Dead Roman Philosopher Dude) most famous quotes is, "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it." What surprises me is that Seneca wrote this before Twitter® existed. But even back in the time of Rome, there were ways to waste time. I’m thinking Facebook® might be that old.
Regardless, his message is timeless: every moment that we’re breathing here on Earth is precious. We may not always get a choice as to how we spend our time (Ted Kaczynski seems to be booked every day) but the true crime is to waste time. Oh, and blowing people up.
I have been as guilty as anyone of wasting time. And one of the biggest wastes of time is to become consumed by negative thoughts and emotions. In reality, most of the time (most) the things that irritate me are small. How small? So small that if I pack up my emotions, and really assess as to why I’m mad, it just looks silly. When Hillary reflects on why she’s mad, well, she calls the Suicide Hotline and places an order.
But that reflection is crucial. It’s called self-control, and although it appears to be unfashionable in certain locations (Chicago, I’m looking at you) it is the only way to be successful. If I threw a temper tantrum when (spins wheel) I drop a sock on the floor, I think there’s a simple word for that in the English language: Leftist feminist the ATF unstable.
No, when I’m upset I stop. I take a deep breath. I ask myself, “Does it matter?” Most of the time, it doesn’t. At all. Very few of the things that have irritated me matter at all over any rational timeframe. The old two rules apply: 1. Don’t sweat the small stuff. 2. It’s all small stuff.
The second question is, can I control whatever the situation is or influence it? If the answer is no, then that’s like being mad that the Sun is coming up in the morning. Even if it’s my mistake, it’s sillier than being angry over the English coal minimum price subsidy in the 1800s or...anything that happened in 1619.
One concept I’ve come across recently is "amor fati," which is Latin for “put armor on fat people”. Oh, wait, my translator was wrong. It really means, "love your fate." I think I first heard a variation of this when I was a kid: “You get what you get, and you’ll like it, and grease up the fat people so we can put plate mail on them.”
The reality of amor fati is this, though: I am where I am, and I have a choice. I can get up every morning and be mad, or I can be happy where I am. Does that mean I’m content? No. Does that mean I’m not going to fight like hell? No. Does that mean I’m not going to try to change certain things with the fire of a thousand suns? No.
It does mean that if life sucks, I can still find meaning, still find purpose, and still try to create the change that I seek to create. It’s not complacency. Heck, Seneca himself was one of the richest dudes in all of Rome. That didn’t just happen. He didn’t just wake up one morning, and say, “Holy crap, I have an amazing amount of money. How did that happen?” Seneca embraced what he had, and tried to better himself, and change himself. He did okay.
Our choices are our choices, but even more than that, we always have the choice how we feel, even Ted Kaczynski. We may have lost everything else, but we always retain that. We should not be overcome by fear or despair. To be clear – those are just about the most negative things we can let into our lives, unless you know one of the women on 'The View.'
The only proper way to deal with tough times is to face into them. Our obstacles make us stronger. Each obstacle we face with virtue and excellence improves us. Except for bullets. Those sound like they really suck.
Regardless of all of that, the first point is still the most important: our lives aren’t too short – our lives are exactly as long as they are. Deal with it. Love it. Use your time – every minute. Every second you waste? It’s wasting your life. Now, go make something happen."
"Come on a tour of the famous Rizhsky Flower Market in Moscow, Russia. Ahead of International Womens Day around the world let's see how flower sales are going in Russia. Riga Market in Russia is the largest flower market in Russia."
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” - Frank Zappa
“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.” - George Orwell, "1984"
the lie became the truth.” – George Orwell, "1984"
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical
point of view, is silence about truth.”
- Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"
Excerpt: "I wish I could go through a day without having to reference Orwell and Huxley when observing how the ruling class is able to manipulate, subjugate, and propagandize the willfully ignorant masses through lies, deceptions, disinformation, and fear. But here we are, living through a dystopian nightmare blending the worst aspects of Orwell’s "1984" and Huxley’s "Brave New World."
It’s as if O’Brien and Mustapha Mond are running the show, using behavioral conditioning, restricting freedom of speech, adhering to a strict caste system, surveilling everything we say or do, using our fears to control us, utilizing propaganda to produce false narratives, and ultimately threatening to stomp a boot on our faces forever if we do not obey and conform. Virtually everything we are told by politicians, government bureaucrats, military brass, “esteemed” journalists, medical “experts”, bankers, and corporate executives is lies. They do not believe their lies, but they know it benefits themselves financially to lie, and as long as they work together, they know the ignorant masses will believe them.
George tells Jerry “It’s not a lie if you believe it” as he is going to take a lie detector test. I wonder how Fauci, Biden, Hillary, Obama, Comey, Wray, Pelosi, and the slew of other Deep State coup conspirators would fare on a lie detector test about Russiagate, Covidgate, J6 Insurrectiongate, and Vaccinegate. Based on the titanic volume of lies they have spewed over the last several years, I’m sure the machine would overheat and explode if hooked up to any of this traitorous vile scum.
The humorous phrase uttered by George Costanza on a sitcom twenty-seven years ago captures a significant kernel of truth about the mindset of the vast majority of non-critical thinking drones roaming the aisles of WalMarts and waiting in the drive-thru at McDonalds across our dystopian states of America. The lies run so deep you need hip-boots to wade through them on a daily basis. The reason our leaders lie is because we let them lie. The majority prefer comforting lies to unpleasant truths, because accepting unpleasant truths would require them to act and they prefer being distracted by trivialities like sports, reality TV, social media likes and otherwise being addicted to their technological gadgets."
"The noose is dangling gently around our necks. Every day, they cinch it tighter. By the time we realize it’s strangling us, it will be too late. Those who – gradually and gleefully – sacrifice their freedoms, their autonomy, their individuality, their livelihoods, and their relationships on the altar of the “common good” have forgotten this is the pattern followed by every totalitarian regime in history.
Everyone wonders how ordinary Germans could have been manipulated to participate or stand dumbstruck while their government was transformed into a genocidal juggernaut. This is how. Read Sebastian Haffner’s "Defying Hitler" memoir to see how this can happen anywhere - including here.
Everyone wonders how Russians could have permitted and even zealously reported fellow citizens for imprisonment and execution under "Article 58", the penal code invented to incarcerate anyone who dared express the slightest whisper of noncompliance under Stalin’s homicidal state. This is how. Read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s meticulously documented "The Gulag Archipelago" to witness this progression of authoritarian lunacy.
George Orwell wrote, "As far as the mass of the people go, the extraordinary swings of opinion which occur nowadays, the emotions which can be turned on and off like a tap, are the result of newspaper and radio hypnosis.”
Can you imagine what master propagandist Edward Bernays would have done with access to today’s mainstream media conglomerate combined with the global surveillance infrastructure of Big Tech? And you really think that’s not happening now - with another century of psychological, neurological, and technological research under their belts?
A textbook example of "Problem Reaction Solution", the current tsunami of worldwide hysteria is the latest and potentially most threatening example of mass control in history.
The recipe is simple. Take a naturally occurring phenomenon, say a seasonal virus, and exaggerate its threat far beyond every imagining - despite exhaustive evidence to the contrary. Suppress, silence, ostracize, and demonize every individual who dares present facts that expose the false mono-narrative.
Whip up a witches’ brew of anger, envy, and, most importantly, fear, escalating emotions to a boil so as to short-circuit our faculties of reason and logic.
Isolate us from one another, supplant real-world interactions with virtual feuds, label nonconformists as a threat to the group, and pump the public with a disinformation campaign designed to confuse and atomize. In essence, foster a cultlike mentality that shuts down thought to guarantee assent.
Cultivate and wield our cognitive biases - especially ingroup bias, conformity bias, and authority bias - against us in a comprehensive divide-and-conquer policy that keeps us too busy squabbling amongst each other to recognize and unite against those corralling us into a Matrix-like collective delusion that enables the powerful to extract our resources for their own gain.
This ideological mass psychosis is religion - not science. If this were about science, the Media–Pharmaceutical–Big-Tech complex would not be memory-holing every dissenting voice, vilifying every thought criminal, and censoring every legitimate inquiry in quest of the truth.
Mark Twain said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” He also said: “In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”
The next time you’re watching the news, reading a social media post, listening to a friend repeat a scripted talking point, pay attention. Learn to identify the earmarks of propaganda, the clickbait used to trigger your emotions, the mechanisms employed to engineer your cognitive biases.
Don’t let your pride prevent you from seeing - and admitting - the Emperor is naked. We are losing our last sliver of opportunity to resist authoritarianism. This is not a partisan issue. Those who wish to control us have made it such because disunited lemmings are easier to steer than independent, critical thinkers.
This is a human issue. This is about crushing the middle class - the backbone of a democratic republic - and transferring trillions from the middle and lower classes to the ruling plutocracy. This is about demolishing the foundations of a free society and building it back - not better, but better-controlled.
I will close by recommending a series of illuminating videos on menticide (“the systematic effort to undermine and destroy a person’s values and beliefs … to induce radically different ideas”) throughout history by "Academy of Ideas." This analysis of mass psychosis is nonpartisan and of value to every thinking human being.
Won't Ever Be Satisfied Until It Is Completely Eradicated"
by Michael Snyder
"The freedom to say whatever we want is one of the most fundamental rights in a free society. If we are not free to speak up, it is is just a matter of time before all of our other rights are taken away as well. So it should deeply alarm all of us that free speech is under attack like never before. Much of the population has become convinced that “hate speech” is a special class of speech that does not deserve protection. Of course in practice “hate speech” ends up being whatever forms of expression that the leftist elite hate. That is why “hate speech” laws are always written so vaguely. That way they can be used to go after whoever the leftist elite feel like going after at the time.
It is not always easy to have a society where people are allowed to say whatever they want. People say things all the time that deeply, deeply offend me. And there are some that have said things about me that are tremendously hateful and untrue. But if we are going to have a free society, people have got to be free to say whatever they want. So we should never support freedom of speech being taken away from anyone, because once we start going down that slippery slope it is just a matter of time before they come after our freedom to say what we want.
That is why what is happening in the state of Washington is so alarming. A new law would allow private individuals to collect up to $2,000 every time they report someone to the new “hate crimes and bias incidents hotline”…"Senate Bill 5427, after it is signed into law, would allow private individuals (note: this is not limited to American citizens) to report “bias incidents*” (see definition below) to the State Attorney General’s Office, with the possibility of receiving up to $2,000 of taxpayers money for this noncriminal incident. The bill was very clear: this is a non-crime which they will then forward to local law enforcement to investigate. What’s to investigate? No crime, no investigation."
The Progressives & Marxists who sponsored this bill say it is intended to help “victims of hate crimes” before a crime even happens. Say what? In reality, SB 5427 would create a “tattletale hotline,” undermine legitimate criminal investigations, and freeze, not just chill, speech & the press in Washington State. People will stop talking to others and writing to others except very close friends & relatives, for fear a greedy “Karen” will report them to Washington’s version of the Gestapo. This is crazy. Do we live in East Germany now?
It has been pointed out that those that use social media could make a fortune reporting their fellow citizens to the new “tattletale hotline”… “Spend five minutes on Twitter on any given day and I assure someone would say something offensive under this law that we could call a ‘hate crime’ and collect $2,000 from the attorney general,” Conservative Ladies of Washington Founder and President Julie Barrett told the Senate Ways and Means Committee at a Feb. 20 public hearing. “It potentially target[s] people for actions they don’t like, but are not actually hate crimes. In collaboration with bills like HB 1333, this would create sort of a ‘tattletale hotline’ to report people one doesn’t agree with or doesn’t like.”
Of course we have seen similar efforts in other states. In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul intends to massively expand the hate crime laws in her state…"Governor Kathy Hochul today highlighted her groundbreaking State of the State proposal to expand the list of charges eligible to be prosecuted as hate crimes and announced grant funding to strengthen safety and security measures at nonprofit, community-based organizations at risk of hate crimes or attacks because of their ideology, beliefs, or mission.
“The rising tide of hate is abhorrent and unacceptable – and I’m committed to doing everything in my power to keep New Yorkers safe,” Governor Hochul said. “Since the despicable Hamas attacks of October 7, there has been a disturbing rise in hate crimes against Jewish and Muslim New Yorkers. In recent years we’ve seen hate-fueled violence targeting Black residents of Buffalo and disturbing harassment of AAPI and LGBTQ+ individuals on the streets of New York City. We will never rest until all New Yorkers feel safe, regardless of who they are, who they love, or how they worship.”
And in Michigan, last year a bill was introduced that would have made it a felony if someone felt “terrorized, frightened, or threatened” by your words…"Last month, the Michigan House passed Bill 4474—legislation that would expand the state’s existing Ethnic Intimidation Act beyond current protections for religion, ethnicity and race, to categories including sexual orientation and gender identity or expression. HB 4474 would make it a felony hate crime offense to cause someone to “feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened” with words—deliberately misgendering someone, for example—subject to a potential penalty of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine."
The Left has been pushing its “words are violence” premise for some time. But Michigan’s willingness to go the extra mile and criminalize gender-related speech has summoned a ghoul from some dystopian fever dream. I certainly do not like hate speech. Every day, people say things that are horribly offensive to me. But I support their right to say those things, because I don’t want my freedom of speech to be taken away. And the leftist elite will never be satisfied until they take things as far as they possibly can.
For example, a new law in Canada allows courts to put people in prison for the rest of their lives for “hate crime offenses”…"It also amends the Criminal Code to create a new standalone hate crime offence that would allow penalties up to life imprisonment to deter hateful conduct, as well as raise the maximum punishments for hate propaganda offences from five years to life imprisonment for advocating genocide. “I’m the father of two youngsters and, like parents and grandparents around Canada, I’m terrified by the dangers that lurk on the internet for our children,” said Justice Minister Arif Virani Monday, as the Liberals unveiled the bill. “I’m also a Muslim. The hatred that festers online is radicalizing people and that radicalization has real world impacts for my community, and for so many other communities,” added Virani."
So what constitutes a “hate crime” in Canada? Well, over the years the rules have been written so vaguely that they could be used to go after just about anything. As a result, many Canadians are now deeply afraid to say anything that is even remotely “offensive”.
Now this new law which is being pushed by Justin Trudeau will make things even worse. If you can believe it, this new law would actually allow authorities to take certain kinds of actions even before a hate crime has been committed…"Trudeau’s bill is called Bill C-63, and it’s a “hate crime bill” that primarily affects “social media” and essentially “criminalizes a human emotion.”
“If you have quote ‘fear of hate’ … you can get a judge to issue a kind of restraining order against your enemy before he does anything, before he says anything, and that restraining order can include house arrest, giving up any lawful firearms, limiting who he can talk to directly or indirectly, limiting the places he can go, and requiring him to to take urine and blood tests – just because you are quote ‘afraid’ he might in the future say some hate speech,” he explains, adding that the so-called perpetrator “doesn’t have to have done anything in the past” to be required to go through the process, making it “a pre-crime bill.”
What in the world has happened to Canada? Once upon a time, it was such a nice place to visit. The laws that seek to restrict how we express ourselves are never enforced uniformly. Instead, we have seen example after example where conservatives are specifically targeted.
Here in the United States, the left believes in being very soft on violent criminals, but they will go after pro-life activists with all the fury they can muster. Right now, a 59-year-old grandmother is probably going to spend the rest of her life in prison because she was attempting to convince women not to go into an abortion clinic…"In prison, every move an inmate makes is controlled. Ms. Idoni, 59, is getting used to that. She must, because she is facing more than 41 years in prison—the rest of her natural life.
Her sentence is expected to be the longest in the United States for someone charged with violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a 1994 law that prohibits interfering with anyone obtaining or providing “reproductive health services.” It was seldom used until the Supreme Court’s decision on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization reversed Roe v. Wade in June 2022, which returned abortion regulation to the states."
Her crime: sitting near or in front of the doors of abortion clinics to give sidewalk counselors a few moments to talk to women before their abortion appointments and potentially change their minds. Nine women out of 10 give them the middle finger and keep walking, Ms. Idoni said. But some women do change their minds, and sidewalk counselors say the life of every baby saved is worth the risk. More than 60 million babies have been killed in the United States since 1973, but those responsible for the killing are not being held accountable. Instead, those that are trying to do something about the relentless slaughter are being viciously targeted by authorities.
We really do live in an upside down society. Good is being called evil, and evil is being called good. And if you try to speak out about what is happening, you could find yourself in an enormous amount of trouble. They intend to completely crush all dissent, and they will never stop until they have achieved their goal."
Xi Jinping's Fiery Attack On Israel Amid War In Gaza"
"China condemned brutal Israeli offensive in Gaza as "a disgrace for civilization". Chinese foreign minister reiterated support for a ceasefire amid the raging Gaza war. Beijing, which is an ally of Iran, voiced its full support for Palestine's U.N. Membership. Wang Yi highlighted the need for need for peace, stability and international solidarity."
Iran Allows Hezbollah To Escalate Attacks On Israel"
"Iran has given Hezbollah the "green light" to escalate attacks on Israel and its northern border, according to Arab media, as the fighting continues between Israel and Hamas in Gaza."
"Restaurant owners and customers alike are furious at MF Foods, a company out of New York, who have recently recalled almost 100,000 pounds of raw beef due to a chemical like taste in the food."
Because Prices Will Hit Sky Highs In The Coming Weeks"
"Millions of American motorists are feeling pain at the pump again. Have you noticed how rapidly prices are rising lately? If you want to avoid having a major headache over the next few months, you should definitely start stocking up on fuel while prices are still relatively low because that won't last much longer, according to market analysts and the Energy Information Administration. A seasonal spike is about to hit the U.S. gas market, and prices are already climbing at the fastest pace since 2023, new data reveals.
Earlier this week, the AAA reported that the prospects of a $3 national average seem very distant now that oil prices and, consequently, gasoline prices have started to steadily rise. As of today, the national average gas price stands at $3.32 per gallon, up almost $0.17 cents from a week ago. After a bit of a relief in January, experts said that falling gasoline prices have bottomed out. New numbers released on the U.S. Energy Information Administration's latest fuel update showed that millions of drivers across the country are now paying some of the highest prices for gas in nearly three months.
The update outlined that the price of U.S. regular gasoline was $3.065 per gallon on January 29, marking an almost $0.30 increase over the past month alone. From now on, Americans will start noticing a major acceleration on pump costs, Gas Buddy head of petroleum analysis Patrick De Haan said during an interview on Tuesday. For four straight weeks, the nation's average has gone up, per GasBuddy data compiled from more than 12 million individual price reports covering 150,000 gas stations across the country.
In essence, less investment translates into less supply, which translates into higher prices. Lower productions levels can have the same effect. It’s just basic economics that when the government squeezes the supply in an industry, that will lead to higher prices both now and in the future. The White House was warned by many critics at the time that this would happen, but it proceeded anyway.
As a result, in 2024, we will all have to deal with the consequences of our government's actions. This means, paying more for fuels and all transported goods. So if I were you, I wouldn't miss this window of opportunity to stock up on gasoline while prices haven't spiked yet because this is as low as they will get for a while."
“Is our Milky Way Galaxy this thin? Magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4565 is viewed edge-on from planet Earth. Also known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile, bright NGC 4565 is a stop on many telescopic tours of the northern sky, in the faint but well-groomed constellation Coma Berenices. This sharp, colorful image reveals the spiral galaxy's boxy, bulging central core cut by obscuring dust lanes that lace NGC 4565's thin galactic plane.
An assortment of other background galaxies is included in the pretty field of view. Thought similar in shape to our own Milky Way Galaxy, NGC 4565 lies about 40 million light-years distant and spans some 100,000 light-years. Easily spotted with small telescopes, sky enthusiasts consider NGC 4565 to be a prominent celestial masterpiece Messier missed.”
“Nobody does. The crowd never thinks. People are only comfortable in a pack, and they’re most comfortable in one that’s racing off a cliff.” Deacon Bainbridge to Daniel Durand, "The Golden Pinnacle," Robert Gore, (2013)
"The pack is racing off a cliff. There is a vast complex telling them that they are not, and that they won’t be hurt when they smash on the rocks below. How does the human mind deal with the contradictory? One way is through discovering facts and rational analysis to resolve the contradiction. A vaccine is presented as safe and effective. However, its legal status shields its makers from legal liability for any vaccine-induced injuries. Why would legal immunity be necessary if the vaccine is safe and effective? The rational person questions the premise of safety and effectiveness, and either foregoes the vaccine until further data confirms the premise, or foregoes it permanently if it doesn’t.
The other way to deal with contradiction is to evade it. If the crowd - the government, the pharmaceutical companies, the media, the academics, the corporations, the celebrities, your employer, your friends, and your family - is telling you the vaccines are safe and effective, they must be so. Unfortunately, the rocks below hurt; they may even kill. And it’s no consolation that the comforting crowd shares your fate. Perhaps, if there’s an afterlife, you can commiserate with fellow unfortunates there.
The Institutional Insanity Complex (IIC) wants to separate you from your mind. Now it talks openly of doing just that, inserting microchips and wiring in your brain, so that you can be reprogrammed to run with the crowd and never question it. Destroy the mind and you destroy humanity, but the IIC is more insane than those it would reprogram. It, too, shall be destroyed.
Debt must be repaid in a medium of exchange creditors trust, even when the debtor is a government. When debt increases, interest payments increase and the debt service burden compounds. The interest rate necessary to secure credit often increases, adding to the burden. This is all happening in real time with Western governments and China. The global economy floats on an ocean of debt, but unlike a real ocean, debt can shrink into a puddle almost instantaneously. When it can either not be repaid or repaid in a debased medium that creditors no longer trust, debtors and creditors alike go bankrupt, and multiple and conflicting claims are made on income streams and real assets.
Anyone who insists that present debt trends will lead to disaster is derided as reactionary, enslaved to outmoded ways of thinking. At least it’s thinking; obliviousness is not, Consequences have begun their inevitable cascade as interest rates rise and debt implodes.
Interest-rate sensitive industries like commercial real estate and banking have been the first to register the tremors from what will be an unprecedented financial earthquake. Individuals, businesses, governments, and financial and derivative markets will tumble into an expanding fissure of global insolvency, illiquidity, and bankruptcy. Derivatives, the sum of which (measured in the quadrillions), is a double-digit multiple of global GDP, will live up to Warren Buffett’s appellation as “financial weapons of mass destruction.”
Obliviousness is one thing; taking actions that make the threats you’re ignoring even worse is insanity. Yet the IIC is spending money it doesn’t have on two wars - both of which could expand - and lobbying for a third (Iran) and fourth (Taiwan). There are no plans for negotiations for what would, among other salutary outcomes, staunch the financial bleed from the first two.
At home, the IIC ups the ante on the welfare state, inviting the whole world to partake in its already unaffordable benefits. Parts of the U.S., particularly in Democratic and gang-controlled (a redundancy) cities, are third-world enclaves that will continue to expand as third-world invitees flood in. The U.S. is fast becoming a third-world nation. Much of Europe is confronted with the same insanity, as its rulers have also put out the welcome mat for unaffordable migrants.
Personal morality is regarded as a quaint anachronism, a liability that hinders one’s pursuit of power and payola. By now, many realize that there’s a sub rosa explanation for much of what transpires in the political realm. The shorthand phrase: bribes, blackmail, and bullets.
Look again at the U.S.’s two wars. Ukraine is a cesspool of corruption, and the Clintons and the Bidens have rancid ties to its oligarchic power structure. These ties are so sensitive that President Trump was impeached for asking Ukrainian president Zelensky about Hunter and Joe Biden, and Ukrainian energy company Burisma. There are also Ukraine’s under-reported and under-investigated bioweapons research facilities.
It’s certainly not a stretch to hypothesize that Ukraine has lined a lot of powerful Americans’ pockets; that many of them, particularly the Bidens, are vulnerable to blackmail, and that nobody involved in these sordid affairs would be too squeamish about bullets, if necessary. That accounts for the desperate efforts to obtain huge funding packages for Ukraine to prolong the war. The money that hasn’t disappeared has been squandered on ineffectual military strategies that haven’t prevented Russian victory; yet, Biden has pulled out all the stops to secure another big appropriation. Throwing good money after bad on a lost cause is almost the definition of insanity.
You have to be hopelessly naïve to believe that the political class’s unshakeable fealty to Israel doesn’t stem from the three Bs. Bribery? Nobody spreads more money around Washington than the Jewish lobby. Blackmail? We have the late Jeffrey Epstein’s honey-trap operation and his and Ghislaine Maxwell’s well-documented ties to Israeli intelligence. If the investigative reporting of Whitney Webb is to be believed, Epstein is just the tip of a massive iceberg of corruption and criminality that’s operated for decades. Bullets? There’s no shortage of Mossad-linked disappearances and murders.
Whatever keeps Washington’s Corruptocracy in line, it’s leading to disaster as the U.S. IIC supports Israel’s campaign to expel the Palestinians from what was once their homeland (then known as Palestine). The Israelis don’t have any justification for their slaughter, just a few recitations endlessly repeated and amplified in the Western mainstream media, and epithets of “anti-Semitism” thrown at those who question, criticize, or protest against the government’s barbaric campaign. Nobody in the Biden administration will do anything about it, even if means the death or displacement of two million Gaza Palestinians. The campaign may well extend to Israel’s five million Palestinians living outside Gaza, and that, too, will receive IIC acquiescence.
Even if moral considerations never enter into their bloodthirsty calculations, aiding and abetting this Nakba is not just a crime, but an epic mistake. The danger that it leads to a conflagration that engulfs the entire Middle East and perhaps the world is clear. Hamas has received the support of Yemen’s Houthis, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, various Syrian and Iraqi insurgent groups, and Iran. That support has been calibrated - the only sanity on display in the region so far - but they will match Israeli escalation with their own.
U.S. neocons have been promoting a war against Iran for over two decades. In a world with even a smidgeon of justice they would, best case, be straitjacketed and involuntarily committed, worst case, spend the rest of their lives in the kind of super secure solitary to which they want to confine Julian Assange.
Whatever respect the U.S. government once received as “leader of the free world” is gone, replaced by contempt and antipathy from the 7 billion outside the West’s golden billion. First Ukraine and now Gaza have coalesced the multipolarity movement led by Russia and China. Strengthening one’s adversaries and needlessly creating new ones are the opposite of rational.
What else can be expected from people who believe in a double-digit number of genders, all interchangeable? The federal government, academia, corporate America, and Hollywood are ruthlessly promoting doctrines whose essence is that people’s gender, sexual proclivities, race, and ethnicity are their most important attributes, not their ability, competence, ingenuity, productivity, judgment, or character.
Nasty old capitalism that rewarded the latter has been replaced by crony socialism that rewards the former. Hierarchies are filled with people who can’t even be said to have reached their level of incompetence. They were incompetent to begin with, but secured their positions because they ticked the right DEI boxes, mouthed the prevailing platitudes, and slithered their way up the ladder. Anyone who points this out is smeared and cancelled. Truth must be discarded if it hurts the wrong feelings and exposes the wrong agendas.
Pretend is the order of the day. So, Washington pretends: that it can have an empire when its military hasn’t won a war since 1945; that it can jump into two major wars and potentially two more and it will win them all; that the unrelenting immigrant flow and crumbling, dangerous cities aren’t hallmarks of the U.S.’s regression into the third world; that the death-trap medical system promotes health; that the debts it cannot pay and commitments it cannot meet can just keep piling up, and that the corrupt ruling class, riddled with incompetents with no real world experience or useful skills, heads stuffed with nonsense, is entitled to rule by virtue of its hypocritical preening and ineptitude. Meanwhile, the mainstream media peddles the official propaganda and pretends all is well.
How does one preserve one’s sanity amidst this pervasive lunacy?
You can act like a man (or woman, the only other gender), cherish what you are, and take responsibility for your own life. You can refuse to turn away from an insane world, seeing it for what it is, but holding to your own sanity with all your strength. You can refuse to pretend. To preserve your mind is to preserve your immortal soul; abandon either one and you abandon the other.
In "The Gray Radiance", the main character, Nick Wozniak, contemplates soul, mind, God, and the insanity in which he finds himself. He’s in Saigon in 1968. He felt a savage satisfaction in what he’d said. Franklins did their best to insulate themselves from such encounters. They lived in bubbles, and how often did you get a chance to pop one? God, how could you live like Franklin?
God. A concept that might be more than a concept. He was a twice-a-year - at most - Catholic and had never considered himself devout or faithful. God was an abstraction before whom you genuflected, prayed, sang, took communion, and put an offering on the plate. He got as much out of church as he would watching Indian tribal dances or voodoo rituals, and he put them all in the same category.
Yet, he couldn’t account for that strange feeling as he carried Quang in My Tho, the certainty that the boy would make it. Nor could he account for the conviction that he would find the truth about his father, that he had to do so. Both were the kind of things that God presumably would want to encourage. You’d think with God that actions spoke louder than genuflecting and the other folderol. You worshipped God by doing the right things, not just showing up at church. He couldn’t conceive of an insecure God, one who needed the folderol.
And you think he’d help you do the right things, if you asked him. Truth and wisdom - distilled truth - came to those who sought them. That was reasonable, and God would be reasonable. Humans had logic and reason and were created in God’s image. That would make God logical and reasonable, although not in ways that people would always understand. He had heard someone say—someone smart, but he couldn’t remember who—that man created God in his own image. A quick and easy dismissal for those who wanted it. Man had undoubtedly created a conception of God, as Nick was doing that morning. It didn’t logically follow that God didn’t exist, or that he hadn’t created man.
If God was logic, he was also justice. That the two went together seemed beyond argument; the books would balance. Even if there was no God, there was at least some justice because actions have consequences. Drink yourself stupid, and you throw up in the middle of the night. Your head aches the next morning. You could have been beaten, robbed, or worse after you passed out on the street. You were saved by a guardian angel, who would kill you if you didn’t play the devil’s game with Hendricks.
A collision with consequences was coming for the cohort running the United States government. They were drunk with power and corruption. Like all drunks, they kept drinking. You don’t murder the natives, destroy their country, prop up your gang of thieves, spew endless hypocrisy, then walk out of the bar to your cozy bed scot-free. You weaved down uncertain streets and dark alleys and were a sitting duck for all the enemies you had made. Sooner or later, they would get you.
There would come a time when Franklin and his ilk couldn’t just move on to a new set of lies. When retribution came, it would be Old Testament merciless. Nothing created hate like arrogance asserting its control but exempting itself from its own rules. Throw in pious crap about moral superiority, and you’ve got hate that’s passed down generation to generation, that neither forgets nor forgives. God knows crap when he sees it, and he doesn’t forget or forgive. He wouldn’t bless his children subjugating his children. This love of power was the root of evil. He’d bless the Golden Rule: his children treating his children as they themselves wanted to be treated.
Yes, indeed, Old Testament merciless. There were different conceptions of God, but they all had one thing in common: God the creator. Humanity destroyed but it had also created every step of its own progress - life depended on it. To see something where there was nothing, to discover that which had been hidden, to plan and to build, to make your conception a reality; that was the spark of the divine, communion with God.
He finished his coffee, got up from the couch, went into the kitchen, and rinsed his cup. There was a bottle of Jack, almost full, by the sink. He poured it down the drain. He threw a bag of marijuana in the garbage. His headache was gone. It was time to write - to create - his story of My Tho, Minh, and Quang. He’d write for a few hours and then go to the hospital to see Quang. He wasn’t sure how, but his path with Quang led to creation - to God - as well." - "The Gray Radiance" Robert Gore, 2023
The battle against insanity is moral and spiritual. A snippet here and a snippet there of what you know to be true are lifelines; the mountains of lies are death. Two plus two will always equal four. The unremitting search for truth leads to its distilled essence: wisdom.
A collision with consequences is no longer coming for the cohort running the United States government; it’s arrived. Their frantic efforts to censor and suppress, their vicious cancellations, and their high-tech totalitarianism are to keep that reality - not so much from the populace they claim to rule - but from themselves. They cannot escape the misery and death they are imposing on everyone else.
The ultimate insanity is pretending that ignoring reality will change it. The ultimate wisdom is dealing with it. If you plod along the straight line path of facts and logic, holding to your sanity and what you know to be true, you won’t win the race, but that’s a race over the cliff. You will preserve your mind...and your soul. And you may be around to help start things fresh after the insanity extinguishes itself."
"There's a definite end of days feeling the world. It's as if everyone knows there is no returning to the good old days of a well-oiled Imperial machine chewing through any and all obstacles, and this realization is so frightening that the need to pretend everything is fine, just fine, overwhelms the last remaining ties to reality.
Let's play the historical analogy game: which collapse will America track most closely? Rome circa 475 AD, the USSR circa 1989, or Revolutionary France circa 1789? I'm tempted to include China's Song Dynasty circa 1276 AD, but the analog of the Mongol invasion isn't a likely fit. The Khmer Empire circa 1350-1430 AD and the Mayan Civilization in the 9th century might be excellent analogies but not enough is known about these complex declines to make an analogy more than guesswork.
Rome, the USSR and Revolutionary France are all compelling analogies due to the hubristic cluelessness of their fractured elites as the pretensions of stability collapsed around them. Even though Nero didn't actually fiddle while Rome burned and Marie Antoinette didn't gush "Let them eat brioche" when notified that the peasants had no bread (or more accurately, could no longer afford it), these myths are handy encapsulations of the disconnect from reality that infested the elites in the last years before the deluge of non-linear chaos overwhelmed the regimes.
While historians gather evidence of tipping points such as pandemics, ecological damage, invasions, droughts, inflation, etc., the core dynamic is ultimately the loss of social cohesion within the ruling elites and in the social order at large. As a generality, the permanence of the status quo is taken for granted by elites, who then feel free to squabble amongst themselves over the spoils of wealth and power. Distracted by their own infighting, the elites are blind to the erosion of the foundations of their power. As coherence in the elites unravels, the ties uniting the elites with the masses unravel as well. One camp within the elites recognizes the danger and seeks reforms, but the reforms are too little, too late, and in any event, the elites who cling most ardently to the past stability fight the reform movement to a standstill.
As social cohesion unravels, systems that once seemed immutable (i.e. linear) suddenly display non-linear dynamics in which modest changes that would have made little difference in the past now unleash regime-shattering disorder.
So take your pick, America: what's the closest analogy? A sclerotic Politburo of elders living in the past, an elite fiddling while the nation disintegrates, or an elite so out of touch with reality that it claims inflation is zero while the populace can no longer afford bread? They all lead to the same destination:
"At my age: I have been in many places, but I've never been in Cahoots. Apparently, you can't go alone. You have to be in Cahoots with someone.
I've also never been in Cognito. I hear no one recognizes you there.
I have, however, been in Sane. They don't have an airport; you have to be driven there. I have made several trips there, thanks to my friends, family and work.
I would like to go to Conclusions, but you have to jump, and I'm not too much on physical activity anymore.
I have also been in Doubt. That is a sad place to go, and I try not to visit there too often.
I've been in Flexible, but only when it was very important to stand firm.
Sometimes I'm in Capable, and I go there more often as I'm getting older.
One of my favorite places to be is in Suspense! It really gets the adrenalin flowing and pumps up the old heart! At my age I need all the stimuli I can get!
And, sometimes I think I am in Vincible but life shows me I am not."
