"When We Can No Longer Tell the Truth "

"When We Can No Longer Tell the Truth"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"When we can no longer tell the truth because the truth will bring the whole rotten, fragile status quo down in a heap of broken promises and lies, we've reached the perfection of dysfunction. You know the one essential guideline to leadership in a doomed dysfunctional system: when it gets serious, you have to lie. In other words, the status quo's secular goddess is TINA - there is no alternative to lying, because the truth will bring the whole corrupt structure tumbling down.

This core dynamic of dysfunction is scale-invariant, meaning that hiding the truth is the core dynamic in dysfunctional relationships, households, communities, enterprises, cities, corporations, states, alliances, nations and empires: when the truth cannot be told because it threatens the power structure of the status quo, that status quo is doomed.

Lies, half-truths and cover-ups are all manifestations of fatal weakness. What lies, half-truths and cover-ups communicate is: we can no longer fix our real problems, and rather than let this truth out, we must mask it behind lies and phony reassurances.

Truth is power, lies are weakness. All we get now are lies, statistics designed to mislead and phony reassurances that the status quo is stable and permanent. The truth is powerful because it is the core dynamic of solving problems. Lies, gamed statistics and false reassurances are fatal because they doom any sincere efforts to fix what's broken before the system reaches the point of no return.

We are already past the point of no return. The expediency of lies has already doomed us.

Honest accounts of hugely successful corporations that implode share one key trait: in every case, managers were pressured to hide the truth from top management, which then hid the truth from investors and clients. is the key dynamic in failed oligarchies as well: if telling the truth gets you sent to Siberia (or worse), then nobody with any instinct for self-preservation will tell the truth. If obscuring the truth saves one's job, then that's what people do. That this dooms the organization is secondary to immediate self-preservation.

A distorted sense of loyalty to the family, community, company, institution, agency or nation furthers lying as the  solution to unsavory problems. Daddy a drunk? Hide the bottle. Church a hotbed of adultery and thieving? Maintain the facade of holiness at all costs. Company products are failing? Put some lipstick on the pig. The statistical truth doesn't support the party's happy story? Distort the stats until they do what's needed. The agency failed to fulfill its prime directive? Blame the managerial failure on a scapegoat.

Pathological liars and cheats rely on self-preservation and misplaced loyalty to mask their own failure and corruption. A hint here, a comment there, and voila, a culture of lying is created and incentivized.

Obscuring the truth is the ultimate short-term expediency. Now that it's serious, we have to lie. We'll start telling the truth later, we say, after everything's stabilized, we hope. But lying insures nothing can ever be truly stabilized, so there will never be a point at which the system is strong enough and stable enough to survive the truth.

We are now an empire of lies. The status quo,politically, socially and economically, depends on lies, half-truths, scapegoats and cover-ups for its very survival. Any truth that escapes the prison of lies endangers the entire rotten edifice.

In an empire of lies, leaders say what people want to hear. This wins the support of the masses, who would rather hear false reassurances that require no sacrifices, no difficult trade-offs, no hard choices, no discipline. The empire of lies is doomed. Lies are weakness, and they prohibit any real solutions. Truth is power, but we can no longer tolerate the truth because it frightens us. Our weakness is systemic and fatal."

- http://www.oftwominds.com

Read Online: Kahlil Gibran, “The Garden of the Prophet”

“The Garden of the Prophet” 

by Kahlil Gibran

“Oftentimes we call Life bitter names, but only when we ourselves are bitter and dark. And we deem her empty and unprofitable, but only when the soul goes wandering in desolate places, and the heart is drunken with over-mindfulness of self.

Life is deep and high and distant; and though only your vast vision can reach even her feet, yet she is near; and though only the breath of your breath reaches her heart, the shadow of your shadow crosses her face, and the echo of your faintest cry becomes a spring and an autumn in her breast.

And Life is veiled and hidden, even as your greater self is hidden and veiled. Yet when Life speaks, all the winds become words; and when she speaks again, the smiles upon your lips and the tears in your eyes turn also into words. When she sings, the deaf hear and are held; and when she comes walking, the sightless behold her and are amazed and follow her in wonder and astonishment.” 

Read “The Garden of The Prophet” online here:

- http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500581h.html

"Making Your Best Guess"

"Making Your Best Guess"

by Arthur Silber

"We are not gods, and we are not omniscient. We cannot foretell the future with certainty. Most often, cultural and political changes are terribly complex. It can be notoriously difficult to predict exactly where a trend will take us, and we can be mistaken. We do the best we can: if we wish to address certain issues seriously, we study history, and we read everything that might shed light on our concerns. We consult what the best thinkers of our time and of earlier times have said and written. We challenge everyone's assumptions, including most especially our own. That last is often very difficult. If we care enough, we do our best to disprove our own case. In that way, we find out how strong our case is, and where its weaknesses may lie.

Barring extraordinary circumstances, we cannot be certain that a particular development represents a critical turning point at the time it occurs. If we dare to say, "This is the moment the battle was lost," only future events will prove whether we were correct. We do the best we can, based on our understanding of how similar events have unfolded in the past, and in light of our understanding of the underlying principles in play. We can be wrong."

- http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/

"How It Really Is"

Yeah...

"The Blow That Ended America 111 Years Ago"

"The Blow That Ended America 111 Years Ago"

by Paul Rosenberg

“There is a lot of ruin in a nation,” wrote Adam Smith. His point was that it takes a long time for nations to fall, even when they’re dead on their feet. And he was certainly right. America took its fatal blow in 1913, one hundred years ago; it just hasn’t hit the ground yet. This is a slow process, but it’s actually fast compared to the Romans. It took them several centuries to collapse.

The confusing thing about our current situation is that America – and by that I mean the noble America that so many of us grew up believing in – has long been poisoned. Its liver, kidneys, and spleen have stopped functioning. but it still stands on its feet and presents itself as immortal.

And I’m not without sympathy for those who want to believe. They find themselves in a world where politics is almighty, and where their comfort, prosperity, and perhaps their survival all hang in a delicate balance. They don’t want to upset anything, and questioning the bosses is a good way to get hurt. But just because someone wants to believe doesn’t make it so. We are not children and we are not powerless. We producers should never be intimidated by those who live at our expense. So let’s start looking at the facts.

1913: The Horrible Year: For all the problems America had prior to 1913 (including the unnecessary and horrifying Civil War), nothing spelled the death of the nation like the horrors of 1913. Here are the key dates:

February 3rd: The 16th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose income taxes on individuals. An amendment to a tariff act in 1894 had attempted to do this, but since it was clearly unconstitutional, the Supreme Court struck it down. As a result – and mostly under the banner of bleeding the rich – the 16th amendment was promoted and passed.

As a result, the Revenue Act of 1913 was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson in October. Income taxes began in 1914, with the government swearing (as in, “only a crazy person would say otherwise!”) that the rate would never, ever go higher than one or two percent. And, by the way, the amendment was introduced by Senator Aldrich of Rhode Island, to whom we’ll come again shortly.

April 8th: The 17th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, taking the powers of the states and transferring them to Washington, by mandating the popular election of senators. Previously, senators were appointed by state legislatures, which, by design, restrained the power of the national government. This change gave political parties immediate and massive power, nearly all of which was consolidated in the city of Washington.

The amendment was ratified in the name of making the national government a force for good, under the direct control of the people. It was true that state governments were often corrupt, but the implied idea that Washington was pristine… which was and remains a fantasy. A structure featuring small, separate pockets of corruption is far less dangerous than one featuring a single, large seat of corruption, to which oceans of money are gathered. As Thomas Jefferson wrote: "It is not by the consolidation or concentration of powers, but by their distribution that good government is effected."

December 23rd: Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Reserve Act, which had passed Congress just the previous day. This system – called the Aldrich Plan, and promoted by Senator Nelson Aldrich of Rhode Island – gave a monopoly on the creation of dollars to a consortium of large banks. The Act was passed, by the way, in the name of financial stability.

And Senator Aldrich? Wikipedia says this about him: "He… dominated all tariff and monetary policies in the first decade of the 20th century… Aldrich helped to create an extensive system of tariffs that protected American factories and farms from foreign competition, while driving the price of consumer goods artificially high… Aldrich became wealthy with insider investments in streets, railroads, sugar, rubber and banking… His daughter, Abby, married John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the only son of John D. Rockefeller.

The Combination: Here is why I say that these three changes of 1913 killed America:

They robbed every producer in America of their money and handed it to politicians. Until 1913, ordinary people kept their money. Carpenters, grocers, and repair men were able to make business loans and to retire on stock dividends. Once the income tax came in, however, politicians were empowered to skim off more and more of their money, which is precisely what happened. While the modern skim is multi-faceted, the average producer is now stripped of half his or her earnings every year, leaving politicians to spend it.

They consolidated all power in Washington DC. This is precisely what James Madison wished to avoid when writing the US Constitution. (Again, note the Jefferson quote above.) By depriving the states of their remaining power, the City of Washington had no opposition. Since then, the Washington government has taken over practically everything on the continent and is choking it to death… a lot like the city and empire of Rome before it.

They created a money empire that took over everything. When you start talking about central banking, and how it provides politicians with free money, people generally turn away from it, because it’s just too much to take. And so I’ll stop here. There’s more to say but my point is made. America, as we grew up thinking of it, is over. The old ideas live on in some of us, but they no longer live in the political arena. What remains to be seen is what Americans will do next."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

o

"JFK's Executive Order 11100 Abolishing the Federal Reserve"

Dan, I Allegedly, "The Recession is Here - We're Being Deceived!"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 8/3/24

"The Recession is Here - We're Being Deceived!"

"You cannot argue with the numbers anymore. The recession is here, and the impact is undeniable! Stocks are plummeting, layoffs are surging, and the economic landscape is shifting dramatically. In today's video, I dive deep into the harsh realities we're facing. From job numbers being revised downward to major stores like Home Depot overflowing with unsold merchandise, it's clear that consumer habits are changing. Intel and other tech giants are laying off thousands, signaling a grim outlook for the near future."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Related:

"New York Commercial Real Estate

 Plunges 97.5% at Great Depression Levels"

o

Full screen recommended.

The Atlantis Report. 8/2/24

"Millions Of Americans Have Stopped Paying Their Bills!"

"There has been a concerning trend in the American financial sector. Millions of Americans have stopped paying their bills, leading to a major increase in loan delinquencies across various sectors. This isn't just a minor economic issue; it's a growing crisis that's sending shockwaves through major financial institutions and causing concern among economic analysts. Big banks are reporting substantial losses due to bad debts and delinquencies. JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo, two of the largest financial institutions in the country, have reported combined losses of $3.5 billion. These losses represent debts that the banks don't expect to recover, even if some are sold to collection agencies at discounted rates."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Canadian Prepper, "Holy F!$% Alert! Iran To Launch 1000s Of Missiles"

Full screen recommended.

Canadian Prepper, 8/2/24

"Holy F!$% Alert! Iran To Launch 1000s Of Missiles; 

Markets Crashing; Israel's Nuclear Agenda"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "Multiple Shortages At Walmart & Aldi!"

Adventures With Danno, PM 8/2/24

"Multiple Shortages At Walmart & Aldi!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: 2002, "Greater Than The Sum"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "Greater Than The Sum"

In Ancient Greece, philosopher Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)

wrote “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“How many arches can you count in the below image? If you count both spans of the Double Arch in the Arches National Park in Utah, USA, then two. But since the below image was taken during a clear dark night, it caught a photogenic third arch far in the distance- that of the overreaching Milky Way Galaxy. Because we are situated in the midst of the spiral Milky Way Galaxy, the band of the central disk appears all around us.

The sandstone arches of the Double Arch were formed from the erosion of falling water. The larger arch rises over 30 meters above the surrounding salt bed and spans close to 50 meters across. The dark silhouettes across the image bottom are sandstone monoliths left over from silt-filled crevices in an evaporated 300 million year old salty sea. A dim flow created by light pollution from Moab, Utah can also be seen in the distance.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110524.html

"If I Am What I Have..."

The Poet: Henry Austin Dobson, “The Paradox Of Time”

“The  Paradox Of Time”

“Time goes, you say? Ah no! 

Alas, Time stays, we go; 

Or else, were this not so, 

What need to chain the hours, 

For Youth were always ours? 

Time goes, you say? – ah no! 

Ours is the eyes’ deceit 

Of men whose flying feet 

Lead through some landscape low; 

We pass, and think we see 

The earth’s fixed surface flee - 

Alas, Time stays, – we go! 

Once in the days of old, 

Your locks were curling gold, 

And mine had shamed the crow. 

Now, in the self-same stage, 

We’ve reached the silver age; 

Time goes, you say? – ah no! 

Once, when my voice was strong, 

I filled the woods with song 

To praise your ‘rose’ and ‘snow’; 

My bird, that sang, is dead; 

Where are your roses fled? 

Alas, Time stays, – we go! 

See, in what traversed ways, 

What backward Fate delays 

The hopes we used to know; 

Where are our old desires? 

Ah, where those vanished fires? 

Time goes, you say? – ah no! 

How far, how far, O Sweet, 

The past behind our feet 

Lies in the even-glow! 

Now, on the forward way, 

Let us fold hands, and pray; 

Alas, Time stays, – we go!”

- Henry Austin Dobson

○

“Time passes in moments. Moments which, rushing past, define the path of a life, just as surely as they lead towards its end. How rarely do we stop to examine that path, to see the reasons why all things happen? To consider whether the path we take in life is our own making, or simply one into which we drift with eyes closed? But what if we could stop, pause to take stock of each precious moment before it passes? Might we then see the endless forks in the road that have shaped a life? And, seeing those choices, choose another path?”

- Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully, “The X-Files”

○

Full screen recommended.

Hans Zimmer, "Time"

"In Ordinary Times..."

"In ordinary times we get along surprisingly well, on the whole, without ever discovering what our faith really is. If, now and again, this remote and academic problem is so unmannerly as to thrust its way into our minds, there are plenty of things we can do to drive the intruder away. We can get the car out or go to a party or to the cinema or read a detective story or have a row with a district council or write a letter to the papers about the habits of the nightjar or Shakespeare's use of nautical metaphor. Thus we build up a defense mechanism against self-questioning because, to tell the truth, we are very much afraid of ourselves."

- Dorothy L. Sayers

Jeremiah Babe, "This Is Bad, The Economic Crash Is Accelerating"

Jeremiah Babe, 8/2/24

"This Is Bad, The Economic Crash Is Accelerating; 

Markets Puke Today; Mass Layoffs Begin"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Wall Street Is Starting To Freak Out About The Horrendous State Of The U.S. Economy"

"Wall Street Is Starting To Freak Out About 

The Horrendous State Of The U.S. Economy"

by Michael Snyder

"It looks like investors are starting to figure it out. Bad economic numbers continue to come pouring in, but so far the Federal Reserve has refused to pull the trigger on a rate cut. We have seen this story before, and it never ends well. It is often said that “he who hesitates is lost”, and in this case the Fed’s hesitation could mean a tremendous amount of economic pain during the months ahead. On Thursday, Wall Street responded to the Fed’s inaction by throwing a bit of a temper tantrum. At one point the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 744 points, and it closed the session down 494 points…

"The Dow dropped 494.82 points, or 1.21%, to end at 40,347.97. At its session lows, the 30-stock index lost 744.22 points, or about 1.8%. The S&P 500 shed 1.37% to end at 5,446.68, while the Nasdaq Composite slipped 2.3% to 17,194.15. The Russell 2000 index, the small-cap benchmark that has rallied lately, dropped 3%." (8/2/24 down 610.)

Many still believe that the Fed will give us a rate cut in September. But there are others that are concerned that “the Fed may not be acting quickly enough to keep America’s job market in good shape”…The narrative on Wall Street is shifting. Traders have long placed their bets on the Federal Reserve cutting rates in September, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell basically confirmed as much Wednesday.

That rate cut, expected in six weeks, was priced in to stocks, which have been rising over the past few months in hopes of a cut. Rate cuts tend to juice stocks, because they lower borrowing costs for businesses and can help boost profits. But now, fear is starting to take hold, as concerns mount that the Fed may not be acting quickly enough to keep America’s job market in good shape.

Economist Claudia Sahm is one prominent expert that is deeply alarmed by the Fed’s lack of action. Considering all of the troubling numbers that we have seen in recent days, she is wondering what they are waiting for…"If the Federal Reserve is starting to set the table for interest rate reductions, some parts of the market are getting impatient for dinner to be served.

“What is it they’re looking for?” Claudia Sahm, chief economist at New Century Advisors, said on CNBC just after the Fed concluded its meeting Wednesday. “The bar is getting set pretty high and that really doesn’t make a lot of sense. The Fed needs to start that process back gradually to normal, which means gradually reducing interest rates.”

DoubleLine CEO Jeffrey Gundlach is using even stronger language. He says that the Fed is risking a recession by not making a move now…"DoubleLine CEO Jeffrey Gundlach also thinks the Fed is risking recession by holding a hard line on rates. “That’s exactly what I think because I’ve been at this game for over 40 years, and it seems to happen every single time,” Gundlach said, speaking to CNBC’s Scott Wapner on “Closing Bell” on Wednesday. “All the other underlying aspects of employment data are not improving. They’re deteriorating. And so once it starts to get to that upper level, where they have to start cutting rates, it is going to be more than they think.”

Of course there are many numbers that seem to indicate that we may already be in the early stages of a new recession. For example, earlier today we learned that the ISM manufacturing index was in contraction territory once again last month…"The ISM (Institute for Supply Management) Manufacturing PMI registered 46.8% last month, indicating industry economic activity contracted at a faster rate when compared to June’s figure of 48.5%. “After breaking a 16-month streak of contraction by expanding in March, the manufacturing sector has contracted the last four months,” says Timothy Fiore, chair of the ISM’s manufacturing business survey committee."

In addition, initial applications for unemployment benefits jumped to the highest level in about a year last week…"New economic data revealed that first-time applications for jobless benefits rose last week to an estimated 249,000 filings. That’s the highest tally since last August, according to the Labor Department. Meanwhile, continuing claims, filed by people who have received unemployment benefits for at least a week, jumped to 1.877 million. That’s the highest level since November 2021."

Sadly, a lot more layoffs are coming as thousands upon thousands of businesses get into very serious trouble all over the nation. This week, we learned that a furniture retailer that had survived the Great Depression, the Great Recession and the COVID pandemic is closing all 380 of their stores and filing for bankruptcy…"A 120-year-old furniture chain will shutter all 380 stores after its parent company filed for bankruptcy — the latest brick-and-mortar business to buckle from high overhead costs and massive debt. Badcock Home Furniture & More, which has stores throughout the South, announced a “going out of business” sale Tuesday. The company was purchased last year by Conn’s, a Texas-based furniture retailer, which filed for bankruptcy last week." After 120 years, this is how it ends.

Of course there are lots of other retailers that have also been going belly up this year…Other furniture chains, including Bob’s Stores, Z Gallerie and Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, filed for bankruptcy this year. Overall, US retailers had announced the closure of almost 2,600 stores in 2024. If the U.S. economy really is in “good shape” like the mainstream media is insisting, then why is this happening?

In my opinion, we are experiencing the leading edge of an economic storm which will greatly intensify during the second half of 2024. And the outlook for 2025 is absolutely dismal. So what should you do about all of this? In the short-term, protect your assets and build up a sizable emergency fund. No matter what happens, you are going to need to have enough money to pay your bills. In the long-term, I am entirely convinced that we are going to experience the most painful period in our entire history.

Our leaders have been making incredibly bad decisions for decades, and now we have entered a time when the consequences of those decisions will become obvious to all of us."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

o

"Jim Rogers Warning: 'We've Never Seen 

Anything Like This In Recorded History.'" 

Comments here:

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"It's a good time to be old in America 

because I won't have to pay for all this."

- Jim Rogers

Dan, I Allegedly, "I Am Calling The Crash!"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, PM 8/2/24

"I Am Calling The Crash!"

"We’re diving deep into the impending real estate crash set to kick off this month, August 2024. Mark your calendars for August 17th, because that’s the day everything changes. From incompetent real estate agents to drastic new agreements, the landscape is shifting in a huge way."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Thanks for stopping by!

"Hell And Heaven..."

"Many people don't fear a hell after this life and that's because hell is on this earth, in this life. In this life there are many forms of hell that people walk through, sometimes for a day, sometimes for years, sometimes it doesn't end. The kind of hell that doesn't burn your skin; but burns your soul. The kind of hell that people can't see; but the flames lap at your spirit. Heaven is a place on earth, too! It's where you feel freedom, where you're not afraid. No more chains. And you hear your soul laughing."

- C. JoyBell C.

"I Am Done"

"I Am Done"

by OHMama

"I was born at the end of Gen X and the beginning of the Millennial Generation, and grew up in a middle class town. Life was good. Our home was modest but birthdays and Christmas were always generous, we went on yearly vacations, had 2 cars, and there was enough money for me to take dance classes and art lessons and be in Girl Scouts.

My 1940s born Dad raised me to be patriotic and proud, to love the war bird airplanes of his era as much as he does, and to respect our flag and our country as a sacred thing. I grew up thinking that being an American was the greatest gift a person could have. I grew up thinking that our country was as strong, and honest and true as my Dad. I grew up thinking I was free.

As an adult, I have witnessed the world I grew up in fall to ruin. I have watched as our currency and our economy have been shamelessly corrupted beyond redemption. Since we’ve been married, my husband and I TWICE had our meager investment savings gutted by the market that we were told to invest in, now that pensions no longer exist and we working stiffs are on our own. We will be working until we die, because the Social Security we’ve been forced to pay into has also been robbed from under us.

I have watched as our elected officials enter Congress as ordinary folks and leaves as multi millionaires. I have watched my blue collar husband get up at an ungodly hour every day and come home with an aching back that we pray will hold out long enough to get him to old age in one piece. Outside of shoes, socks and underwear, almost everything my family wears was bought used. We’ve been on one vacation in 12 years.

We don’t have cell phones, or cable, or any sort of streaming services, just a landline and internet. We hardly ever eat out. Our house is 1400 square feet, no air conditioning. I cook from scratch and I can and I garden and I raise chickens for eggs and meat and I moonlight selling things on Etsy. Still it is barely enough to pay the bills that go up every year while service quality and the longevity of goods goes down. What I just described is the life you can live on 60K a year without going into debt.

At last calculation, when you consider all of the federal, state and local taxes plus registration and user fees, Medicare and SS payroll taxes, almost a third of what my family earns is stolen by the govt each year. What’s left doesn’t go far, just enough to cover the basics and save a little for when the wolf howls at the door.

I watched as my family’s health insurance was gutted and destroyed. Our private market insurance, which we had to have because my husband’s employer is too small to have a group plan, was made illegal. We were left with the option of either buying an Obamacare plan with unaffordable deductibles and insanely ridiculous out of pocket maxes, or paying the very gov’t that destroyed our healthcare a fine for not buying the gov’t mandated plan that we cannot afford. We now have short term insurance that isn’t really insurance at all, and I live in fear of one of us getting injured or sick with anything I can’t fix from the medicine cabinet.

I have watched as education, which was already sketchy when I was a kid, became an all out joke of wholly unmathematical math, gold stars for all, and self-loathing anti-Americanism. My family has taken an enormous financial hit as I stay home to home school our child. At least she’ll be able to do old-fashioned math well enough to see how much they are screwing her. A silver lining to every cloud, I guess.

I’ve sat by and held my tongue as I was called deplorable and a bitter clinger and told that I didn’t build that. I’ve been called a racist and a xenophobe and a chump and even an “ugly folk.” I’ve been told that I have privilege, and that I have inherent bias because of my skin color, and that my beloved husband and father are part of a horrible patriarchy. Not one goddamn bit of that is true, but if I dare say anything about it, it will be used as evidence of my racism and white fragility.

Raised to be a Republican, I held my nose and voted for Bush, the Texas-talking blue blood from Connecticut who lied us into 2 wars and gave us the unpatriotic Patriot Act. I voted for McCain, the sociopathic neocon songbird “hero” that torpedoed the attempt to kill the Obamacare that’s killing my family financially. I held it again and voted for Romney, the vulture capitalist skunk that masquerades as a Republican while slithering over to the Democrat camp as often as they’ll tolerate his oily, loathsome presence.

And I voted for Trump, who, if he did nothing else, at least gave a resounding Bronx cheer to the richly deserving smug hypocrites of DC. Thank you for that Mr. President, on behalf of all of us nobodies. God bless you for it.

And now I have watched as people who hate me and mine and call for our destruction blatantly and openly stole the election and then gaslighted us and told us that it was honest and fair. I am watching as the GOP does NOTHING about it. They were probably relieved that upstart Trump was gone so they could get back to their real jobs of lining their pockets and running interference for their corporate masters. I am watching as the media, in a manner that would make Stalin blush, is silencing anyone who dares question the legitimacy of this farce they call democracy. I know, it’s a republic, but I am so tired of explaining that to people I might as well give in and join them in ignorance.

I will not vote again; they’ve made it abundantly clear that my voice doesn’t matter. Whatever irrational, suicidal lunacy the nanny states thinks is best is what I’ll get. What it decided I need is a geriatric pedophile who shouldn’t be charged with anything more rigorous than choosing between tapioca and rice pudding at the old folks home, and a casting couch skank who rails against racism while being a descendant of slave owners.

I’m free to dismember a baby in my womb and kill it because “my body my choice”, but God help me if I won’t cover my face with a germ laden Linus-worthy security blanket or refuse let them inject genetically altering chemicals into my body or my child’s. I can be doxed, fired, shunned and destroyed for daring to venture that there are only 2 genders as proven by DNA, but a disease with a 99+% survival rate for most humans is a deadly pandemic worth murdering an economy over. Because science. Idiocracy is real, and we are living it. Dr. Lexus would be an improvement over Fauci.

I am done. Don’t ask me to pledge to the flag, or salute the troops, or shoot fireworks on the 4th. It’s a sick, twisted, heartbreaking joke, this bloated, unrecognizable corpse of a republic that once was ours.

I am not alone. Not sure how things continue to function when millions of citizens no longer feel any loyalty to or from the society they live in.

I was raised to be a lady, and ladies don’t curse, but f**k these motherf**kers to hell and back for what they’ve done to me, and mine, and my country. All we Joe Blow Americans ever wanted was a little patch of land to raise a family, a job to pay the bills, and at least some illusion of freedom, and even that was too much for these human parasites. They want it all,  mind, body and soul. Damn them. Damn them all."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

"Larry C. Johnson: Israel's Imminent Destruction in All-Out War with Hezbollah and Iran!"

Dialogue Works, 8/2/24

"Larry C. Johnson: Israel's Imminent Destruction

 in All-Out War with Hezbollah and Iran!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern: Weekly Wrap"

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 8/2/24

"INTEL Roundtable w/ Johnson & McGovern: Weekly Wrap"

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"The Indispensable Nation Meme"

"The Indispensable Nation Meme"

by David Stockman

"The Indispensable Nation meme originates not in the universal condition of mankind and the nation-states into which it has been partitioned. Instead, it stems from an erroneous take on the one-time, flukish and historically aberrant circumstances of the 20th century that gave rise to giant totalitarian states in Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, and the resulting mass murder and oppressions which resulted there from. What we mean is that Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany were not coded into the DNA of humanity; they were not an incipient horror always waiting to happen the moment more righteous nations let down their guard.

To the contrary, they were effectively born and bred in April 1917 when the US entered what was then called the Great War. And though it did so for absolutely no reason of homeland security or any principle consistent with the legitimate foreign policy of the American Republic, its entry tilted the outcome to the social chaos and Carthaginian peace from which Stalin and Hitler sprung.

So you can put the blame for the monumental evil of 20th century totalitarianism squarely on Thomas Woodrow Wilson. This megalomaniacal madman, who was the very worst President in American history, took America into war for the worst possible reason: Namely, a vainglorious desire to have a big seat at the post-war peace table in order to remake the world as God had inspired him to redeem it.

The truth, however, was that the European war posed not an iota of threat to the safety and security of the citizens of Lincoln NE, or Worcester MA or Sacramento CA. In that respect, Wilson’s putative defense of "freedom of the seas" and the rights of neutrals was an empty shibboleth; his call to make the world safe for democracy, a risible pipe dream.

Indeed, the shattered world extant after the bloodiest war in human history was a world about which Wilson was blatantly ignorant. And remaking it was a task for which he was temperamentally unsuited - even as his infamous 14 points were a chimera so abstractly devoid of substance as to constitute mental play dough.

The monumentally ugly reason for America’s entry into the Great War, in fact, was revealed - if inadvertently - by his alter-ego and sycophant, Colonel House. As the latter put it: Intervention in Europe’s war positioned Wilson to play, "The noblest part that has ever come to the son of man".

America thus plunged into Europe’s carnage, and forevermore shed its century-long Republican tradition of anti-militarism and non-intervention in the quarrels of the Old World. From Wilson’s historically erroneous turn - there arose at length the Indispensable Nation folly, which we shall catalog in depth below.

For now, suffice it to say that there was absolutely nothing noble that came of Wilson’s intervention. It led to a peace of vengeful victors, triumphant nationalists and avaricious imperialists - when the war would have otherwise ended in a bedraggled peace of mutually exhausted bankrupts and discredited war parties on both sides.

By so altering the course of history, Wilson’s war bankrupted Europe and midwifed 20th century totalitarianism in Russia and Germany. These developments, in turn, eventually led to the Great Depression, the Welfare State and Keynesian economics, World War II, the holocaust, the Cold War, the permanent Warfare State and its military-industrial-surveillance complex. They also spawned Nixon’s 1971 destruction of sound money, Reagan’s failure to tame Big Government and Greenspan’s destructive cult of monetary central planning.

So, too, flowed the Bush dynasty’s wars of intervention and occupation, and from them a fatal blow to the failed states in the lands of Islam foolishly created by the imperialist map-makers at Versailles. The legacy: the waves of blow-back and terrorism which has afflicted the world during the last several decades.

In this context, the rise of the murderous Nazi and Stalinist totalitarian regimes during the 1930s and the resulting conflagration of World War II is held to be, correctly, the defining event of the 20th century. But that truism only begs the real question. To wit, were these nightmarish scourges always latent just below the surface of global civilization - waiting to erupt whenever good people and nations fell asleep at the switch, as per the standard critique of the British pacifism and US isolationism that flourished during the late 1930s?

Or were they the equivalent of the 1000 year flood? That is, a development so unlikely, aberrant and unrepeatable as to merely define a horrid but one-off chapter of history, not the ordinary and probable unfolding of affairs among the nations.

We contend that the answer depends upon whether your start with April 2, 1917, when America discarded its historic republican policy of non-intervention and joined the bloody fray on the old continent’s Western Front, or December 7, 1941, when Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor allegedly awoke America from its isolationist slumber and called it to global leadership of the so-called American Century.

Needless to say, the Deep State’s ideology of the Indispensable Nation and its projects of Empire are rooted in the Pearl Harbor narrative. That is, the claim that global affairs go to hell in a handbasket when virtuous nations let down their guard or acquiesce to even modest acts of regional aggression. Thus, allow even a local dispute over revanchist claims on a small territory like the Sudetenland, it is claimed, and the next thing you know the whole planet will be aflame in war.

The now faded varieties of republican non-intervention, by contrast, hold that to be self-serving nonsense. The German speaking population of the Sudetenland overwhelmingly wished to rejoin the Fatherland not owing to Hitler’s agitation, but because they had been stuck in the artificial state of Czechoslovakia at the conference of WWI victors in Versailles. In turn, it had been Woodrow Wilson’s perfidious declaration of War on Germany that changed the enabled the Allies to win the stalemated war in the trenches of northern France, thereby paving the way for the once in a 1ooo years aberration of Hitler and Stalin which ultimately ensued.

Not surprisingly, the official historical narratives of the Empire glorify America’s rising to duty in World War II and after, but merely describe the events of 1917-1919 as some sort of preliminary coming of age. As a consequence, the rich, history-defining essence of what happened during those eventful years during the 20th century’s second decade has been lost in the fog of battles, the miserable casualty statistics of war, the tales of prolonged diplomatic wrangling at Versailles and the blame-game for the failed Senate ratification of Wilson’s League of Nations thereafter.

In this connection, the defeat of the League of Nations is treated as a colossal error in the mainstream narrative. It is held to constitute a crucial default by the Indispensable Nation that hurried the rise of the totalitarian nightmares, and only compounded America’s task of righting the world in the 1940s and after."

- https://internationalman.com/

"How It Really Is"

 

Bill Bonner, "Intentional Inflation and Perpetual War"

"Intentional Inflation and Perpetual War"

Large scale democracy is a scam. People never know what

 is going on... and, in effect, leave the governing to the elites - 

who can’t seem to resist ripping them off.

by Bill Bonner

Poitou, France - "What was it that made ‘The West’ triumphant? Rivers (making commerce easy). A fighting spirit (ready to go to war with others). Diversity (plenty of different peoples to go to war with.) The longbow? The long rifle? Artillery? Energy? The Industrial Revolution? The rule of law? Democracy?

All of these ‘reasons’ - and more - have been proposed. And who knows? Maybe it was a confluence of factors. But for whatever reasons, Europeans conquered Africa, the Americas, India, Australia and much of the rest of the world... not the other way around. But of course, the long sweep of history has its own patterns. We do not design them or control them. We just play our roles. We think what we need to think and do what we need to do. And like a big, lazy ol’ river... the currents of time just keep rollin’ along. However robust the empire of The West may have been in its early days, in its modern form it has some obvious infirmities.

The Business of Empire: While the early European imperialists - especially the Spanish conquistadors - made it pay, the US never really got the hang of the empire business. It conquered, but got nothing much from it. It brought back no treasure... nor, after 1807, even any slaves to sell on the open market.

America’s ‘empire budget’ was always almost 100% debit and no credit. Most empire schemes are ways to steal wealth from victim nations for the benefit of the victors. But America’s model was different, more swindle than outright theft. With no net gain coming from the enterprise itself, it was just a way to take wealth from America’s middle classes and redistribute it to the military/industrial/surveillance/thinktank/WallStreet/university elites. The rich got richer, thanks... at least in part... to the empire.

Rather than raise taxes, however, the feds borrowed. And as the costs rose, so did the debt. This week, it passed the $35 trillion mark. Like a ball and chain, the heavy weight of debt now reduces America’s freedom of movement. It can cut its interest rates to fight recession... but it cannot raise them to fight inflation.

And it gets worse. Currently, US debt grows at about 7% of GDP, or more than 3 times faster than GDP itself. It’s not hard to see where this leads. Marketwise: "‘America is going bankrupt’ Elon Musk issues a warning as interest on US debt was equal to 76% of income tax collected in June - and is expected to exceed $1.14 trillion this year Add the cost of interest to the ‘empire budget’ itself and the toll for 2024 is over $3 trillion — or more than 10% of the nation’s entire GDP.

Ultimately, the scale of the debt will force a policy of intentional inflation, in which the feds try to reduce the value of the debt by lowering the value of the currency in which it is calibrated - the dollar. At the current conditions, they will need inflation at about 7% per year just to keep even.

The other thing that doomed the Western Empire was its political system. Democracy is all well and good, but not when it is fake. And it is only real when ordinary citizens know what is going on and have some control over it. That is, effectively, what Aristotle said 2,300 years ago. When you get ‘beyond the herald’s cry,’ he said - that is, beyond the size of a small city - democracy turns into some form or tyranny.

Members of a family may vote, for example, on where to go for their vacation. They will have their own preferences... and some idea of what they might have to give up to finance it. But almost nobody - including members of Congress themselves - knows what is actually hidden in the laws they pass. Nor do they have any idea of the real costs. Instead, they imagine (correctly) that the obligation will be shoved along somewhere into the future... onto the shoulders of some unknown people... who don’t vote now and will never actually understand why their prices are rising.

Sooner or later, ‘The People’ realize that the elites despise them... and are taking advantage of them. They turn to anti-Establishment politicians... ’populists’ and tyrants. They want a ‘strongman’ who promises to save them from the know-it-alls.

European governments try to placate the mobs by delivering education, medical care, and pension benefits; they operate almost like vast compulsory social insurance programs. The US, meanwhile, the leader of The West, tries to rally its people behind a program of perpetual war. Around every corner and behind every tree, Americans see their great empire being challenged by evil spirits. They must meet the challenge with ever more sanctions, bombs, guns... Homeland Security, the NSA, FBI, CIA, Seals, snipers... a $2 trillion F-35 fighter plane, and most important, more money.

Of course, they don’t have any money, so the extra spending must be done on credit... and added to the national debt... speeding up the rate of decline. Stay tuned."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Warning! The Most Destructive Banking Crisis Ever Is Not Far Off"

Gregory Mannarino, 8/2/24

"Warning! The Most Destructive Banking

Crisis Ever Is Not Far Off"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it.

You and I are not in the Big Club."

- George Carlin

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Jim Kunstler, "Into the Weird!"

"Into the Weird!"

“What we are witnessing is nothing less than the failure

 of the greatest propaganda apparatus in history.”

 - Mattias Desmet

by Jim Kunstler

"Have you noticed yet? - the weird thing about Veep Kamala Harris is how weirdly brisk her transfiguration was from a sit-com character to Wonder Woman, overnight in the reality-optional news media. In a party burdened with complex ideology, she was known only for tautology: “The significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time,” she repeated solemnly on a tour of a Louisiana library in 2022. “So, when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time.” Yes, ma’am. You nailed that ol’ coonskin to the wall, all righty!

Suddenly her time has come! Everything is Kamala Kamala Kamala. Lights! Camera! Action! But, as you have already been informed, time does not stand still. If it did, then everything would happen at once, which would be a great inconvenience to all. In what seems like a magically extended moment since someone told “Joe Biden” to go dangle, Kamala acquired a lance and halo and rode forth to save our democracy.

Yet, it’s a long way to the grand meet-up of Democratic Party delegates in Chicago, August 19, and that journey is cluttered up with long moments like the one we’re in now, moments when delegates are liable to stew, and maybe even think about more moments to come when the magic of the current moment has passed - because that, after all, is the significance of the passage of time! Here today, gone tomorrow! Hope and change! Go through enough passages of time and things can happen, or even un-happen, such as, perhaps, the rise and fall of the Veep as the champion of this figment known as our democracy. It’s kind of like what they used to say sixty years ago in Vietnam about having to destroy the village in order to save it. Only this time around, it’s democracy in America.

At the convention in Chicago, apropos of whoever selected Kamala Harris, someone might blurt out: “Say, who elected you boss of this outfit?” The answer, of course: nobody. Delegates may share their gnawing doubts in the hallways and state caucus breakout rooms. Metaphysical conundrums will arise. All that sub rosa chatter might even coalesce into...a movement! In the name of democracy, someone screeches, a public roll-call vote must be taken! Say, what? We thought that was settled two weeks ago when the virtual roll call happened. Nuh-uh, nah, no way, more delegates chime in. Here is your teachable moment: the virtual is not an adequate substitute for the authentic.

Meanwhile, riots in the streets outside the convention center. Antifa! Black Lives Matter! From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! The police, successfully defunded, stand aside and let youth go apeshit. Inside the hall, pandemonium! And so, the momentous roll-call is induced to happen right there on the convention floor with all those colorful hats bobbing amongst the standards of the fifty states - plus a bunch of territories - swaying to rhythm of Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop (Thinkin’ About Tomorrow)”.

Things grow complicated. There is the matter of the superdelegates, bought and paid for ages ago by...the Clinton Foundation! The passage of time goes from elongated to compressed. As good ol’ V. Lenin used to say: There are years when nothing happens and moments when decades happen - or something like that. Also, somebody recalls, it takes a village to what ? Why, to nominate a candidate.

And thus, ever so democratically, does Hillary seize the moment and the convention, and swoop to the podium on her great leathery wings crying “caw caw caw abortion!” The news media will go into super-overdrive shaping the narrative about the Democratic Party rank-and-file marshaling democracy to save democracy. The story will make the marginalized weep and the lame leap for joy. She-Whose-Turn-It-Is will not be denied! The pussy-hats come out again. The patriarchy runs for its life...

At least that’s the dream. In the passage of time from August through September and October, something else happens. Reality creeps back onto the scene after a long sojourn in the nether regions of human vicissitude. The economy goes to shit, the markets tank, and war breaks out. A new consensus congeals through what’s left of the nation: thank you Democrats for wrecking America. Now, go dangle! Mr. Trump, having survived three more attempts on his life, gets elected and inaugurated. A great sorting of the mentally ill and the just plain criminal happens. Weirdly, we move forward into the weird. Wait for it. (Things take time.) That is the significance of the passage of time, after all."

- https://kunstler.com/