"Something’s Coming, We Don’t Know What It Is But It Is Going To Be Bad"

"Something’s Coming, We Don’t Know

What It Is But It Is Going To Be Bad"

by Edward Curtin

“With a click, with a shock

Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock, open the latch

Something’s coming, don’t know when but it’s soon . . . “

– “Something’s Coming,” lyrics by S. Sondheim, 

music by L. Bernstein – "West Side Story"

Shock should not be the word, but when World War III breaks fully loose many who are now sleeping will be shocked. The war has already started, but it’s full fury and devastation are just around the corner. When it does, Tony’s singular fate in West Side Story will be the fate of untold millions. It is a Greek tragedy brought on by the terrible hubris of the United States, its NATO accomplices, and the genocidal state of Israel and the Zionist terrorists who run it.

Tony felt a miracle was due, but it didn’t come true for him except to briefly love Maria and then get killed as result of a false report, and only a miracle will now save the world from the cataclysm that is on the way, whether it is initiated by intent, a false report, an accident, or the game of nuclear chicken played once too often.

Let us hope but not be naïve. The signs all point in one direction. The gun on the wall in the first act of this tragic play is primed to go off in the final one. Every effort to avoid this terrible fate by seeking peace and not war has been rejected by the U.S. and its equally insane allies. Every so-called red line laid down by Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinians, and their allies has been violated with impunity and blatant arrogance. But impunity has its limits and the dark Furies of vengeance will have their day.

“It is the dead, not the living,” said Antigone, “who make the longest demands.” Their ghostly voices cry out to be avenged.

I wish I were not compelled by conscience to write this, but it seems clearly evident to me that we stand on the edge of an abyss. The fate of the world rests in the hands of leaders who are clearly psychotic and who harbor death wishes. It’s not terribly complex. Netanyahu and Biden are two of them. Yes, like other mass killers, I think they love their children and give their dogs biscuits to eat. But yes, they also are so corrupted in their souls that they relish war and the sense of false power and prestige it brings them. They gladly kill other people’s children. They can defend themselves many times over, offer all kinds of excuses, but the facts speak otherwise. This is hard for regular people to accept.

The great American writer who lived in exile in France for so many years and who was born 100 years ago this month, James Baldwin, wrote an essay – “The Creative Process” – in which he addressed the issue of how becoming a normal member of society dulls one to the shadow side of personal and social truths. He wrote: "And, in the same way that to become a social human being one modifies and suppresses and, ultimately, without great courage, lies to oneself about all one’s interior, uncharted chaos, so have we, as a nation, modified or suppressed and lied about all the darker forces in our history." And lie and suppress we still do today.

Imagine, if you will, that Mexico has invaded Texas with the full support of the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian governments. Their weapons are supplied by these countries and their drone and missile attacks on the U.S. are coordinated by Russian technology. The Seven Mile Bridge in Florida has been attacked. The U.S. Mexican border is dotted with Russian troops on bases with nuclear missiles aimed at U.S. cities.

It’s not hard to do. That is a small analogy to what the U.S./NATO is doing to Russia. Do you think the United States would not respond with great force? Do you think it would not feel threatened with nuclear annihilation? How do you think it would respond?

The U.S/NATO war against Russia via Ukraine is accelerating by the day. The current Ukrainian invasion of Russia’s Kursk region has upped the ante dramatically. After denying it knew in advance of this Ukrainian invasion of Russia, the demented U.S. President Joseph Biden said the other day when asked about the fighting in Kursk, “I’ve spoken with my staff on a regular basis probably every four or five hours for the last six or eight days. And it’s - it’s creating a real dilemma for Putin. And we’ve been in direct contact - constant contact with - with the Ukrainians.” Do you think Kamala Harris was kept in the dark?

Now how do you think the Russians are going to respond? How many red lines will they allow the U.S. to cross without massive retaliation? And what kind of retaliation?

Switch then to the Middle East where the Iranians and their allies are preparing to retaliate to Israel’s attacks on their soil. No one knows when but it seems soon. Something is coming and it won’t be pretty. Will it then ignite a massive war in the region with the U.S. and Israel pitted against the region? Will nuclear weapons be used? Will the wars in Ukraine/Russia and the Middle East join into what will be called WW III?

While the U.S. continues to massively arm Israel, Russia is arming its ally Iran and likely training them in the use of those weapons as the U.S. is doing in Ukraine. The stage is set. We enter the final act. Natanyahu wants and needs war to survive. So he thinks. Psychotic killers always do. The signs all point in one direction. No one should be shocked if the worst comes to pass. “Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock, open the latch.” If you have time."

- https://www.lewrockwell.com/

o

"There are a multitude of fuses affixed to dozens of powder-kegs and little kids with matches are on the loose. I don’t know which of the fuses will be lit and which powder-keg will blow, but someone is bound to do something stupid, and then all hell will break loose. It could happen at any time. One military miscue. One assassination. One violent act that stirs the world. And the dominoes will topple, setting off fireworks not seen on this planet since 1939 – 1945. I can see it all very clearly." - Jim Quinn

"What Milton Friedman Said 5 Decades Ago About Government Spending Still Holds True Today" (Excerpt)

"What Milton Friedman Said 5 Decades Ago 

About Government Spending Still Holds True Today"

By John Robson

Excerpt: "A friend’s mother was fond of saying there’s no good way to do a bad thing, and no bad time to do a good one. It’s true of public policy as of life generally, which is why both the public and politicians should talk more about principles and less about motives or tactics. And just as I was wrestling with applying this maxim to the current fiscal mess, someone Xed the classic Milton Friedman line to “Keep your eye on how much the Government is spending, because that is the true tax.” I’m not sure when Friedman said it. But he died in 2006 aged 94, and the clip shows him in middle age, so it was around half a century back. We should have listened, because it has applied consistently since and still does.

In fact, I’d just read a column by my former colleague Randall Denley about an administration of ostensibly conservative inclinations touting its “prudent, responsible” fiscal management while “tracking a clear path” back to a balanced budget from its current massive scary deficit. As Denley added tartly, “As it turns out, tracking a balanced budget is like tracking a unicorn. The tracking is easy, but finding one is hard.”

Indeed. Or at least indeed re: the finding. The tracking isn’t as easy as it ought to be, because government budgets are infamously tangled forests of accounting conventions, focus-grouped prose, economic projections, and jiggery-pokery regarding long-term liabilities. And because neither the authors nor most of the audience adhere to Friedman’s wise words about what exactly we should be keeping an eye on as we navigate these deep dark woods.

As was his wont, Friedman compressed much potentially complex truth into short, clear, vivid words, immediately adding, “There is no such thing as an unbalanced budget.” Which is not addled but Chestertonian in its paradoxical brilliance because, Friedman went on, “You pay for it either in the form of taxes, or indirectly in the form of inflation or debt.”

Full article is here:

- https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion

"Harris' Unrealized Gains Tax Would Obliterate The U.S. Economy"

"Harris' Unrealized Gains Tax Would Obliterate The U.S. Economy"

The reasoning is so simple, a fifth grader could understand it -

which is probably why Kamala Harris doesn't...

by Quoth The Raven

"On Tuesday, it was announced that Presidential candidate Kamala Harris would be supporting President Joe Biden’s tax proposals for 2025, which include a 44.6% capital gains rate and a 25% tax on unrealized gains. Having used up all of the rest of the batshit, insane, counterintuitive economic dirty tricks left in the "we'll literally do anything but cut spending" bag, the Biden administration began pushing this tax idea in April 2024 when I first wrote about it. Unrealized gains taxation could be the most destructive idea for our country since prohibition, I joked at the time.

As part of its budget proposal for the 2025 fiscal year, the Biden administration was trying to raise an addition $4.3 trillion over 10 years in the worst way possible: imposing a minimum tax equal to 25 percent of a taxpayer’s taxable income and unrealized capital gains less the sum of their regular tax, for taxpayers with wealth over $100 million.

Putting aside the fact that this high-risk idea only amounts to a pittance, $430 billion per year, the introduction of taxing unrealized gains could be one of the worst slippery slopes we ever dare to roll our country’s economy down.

I mean, shit, we could save $1 trillion just by not sending $100 billion a year to other nations for starters. But I digress. For an outline of exactly what an unrealized gains tax is, here's the American Institute on Economic Research: "A tax on unrealized capital gains means that individuals are penalized for owning appreciating assets, regardless of whether they have realized any actual income from selling them.

If you purchased a stock for $100 this year, for example, and it increased to $110 next year, you would pay the assigned tax rate on the $10 capital gain. You didn’t sell the asset, so you don’t realize the $10 appreciation, but must pay the tax regardless.

Taxing unrealized capital gains contradicts the basic principles of fairness and property rights essential for a free and prosperous society. Taxation, if we’re going to have it on income, should be based on actual income earned, not on paper gains that may never materialize."

AIER notes that implementing such a tax not only deeply infringes upon personal liberty and private property rights - but I can’t help but think about how it also sets a destructive wrecking ball rolling down a slippery slope for the first time in our nation's history. And, given the precarious state of our nation's finances, it doesn't seem like the best time to start spitballing about new risky ideas that may or may not catch on only because they sound like they are addressing the problem of a widening wealth gap that Federal Reserve policies created and continue to exacerbate to begin with.

If the administration really wanted to address the problem of wealth inequality, it would be setting its sights on the central bank that sacrificed price stability so it could spray trillions of dollars in "stimulus" toward financial assets, while cutting American families paltry checks of just $600, during COVID. When I did the math during COVID, the total amount spent to bail out the country when we decided to shut down the economy and have the Federal Reserve replace it with a fiat house of cards amounted to something like $17,500 per every citizen in the United States.

Except, again, only $600 of that went to each individual. The rest went to the financial sector, in turn widening the inequality gap further as billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos saw tens of billions of dollars added to their net worth in a matter of months. And so now, rather than take tangible, decisive action to actually address the problem, the Harris administration is putting forth a plan that won’t just be negative for the country, it could very well be the hill that our country’s economy dies on. And to be honest, I’m not being hyperbolic.

Over the last few years, we have seen an extraordinary exodus from places like New York and California, to places like Florida and Texas, because the former states were essentially taxing far too much relative to the benefits of what they were providing for citizens.

Ergo, places like California have seen people like Joe Rogan and Elon Musk move to Texas, while states like New York have seen businesses like Ken Griffin's Citadel move to Florida. There’s nothing to read between the lines about when it comes to this capital flight out of one state and into another. It is simple cause and effect: at some point, people simply don’t think it is worth living in these states due to the taxes being too high.

It’s a quintessential example of the Laffer Curve. Tax too much, people are disincentivized to generate productivity, or in this case, live in your state.

Harris’ proposal to raise regular capital gains taxes is one thing, albeit still egregious; it is far lesser noxious of the two proposals. Taxing unrealized gains is an exponentially worse type of taxation that introduces not just a higher tax rate and a 3rd type of income tax, but a completely new system for taxation – one that taxes people's assets as they appreciate, not just when they realize the gains of said appreciation.

“But it will only be against people worth more than $100 million,” proponents of the idea will exclaim. Hell, I’m not worth 1% of that, so why should I even care?

First off, it can’t be understated how earth-shattering it is to put this terrible idea into motion, regardless of who it is going to affect. You can’t justify a stunning overreach on people's constitutional rights and civil liberties just because they sit in a certain tax bracket. And it is a line that, once crossed, the government won’t backtrack on. Once taxing unrealized gains makes its way into the zeitgeist, it sticks around for good. And, if it sticks around, it’ll only be another meaningful step moving the U.S. economy closer to an anemic corpse of a state-planned economy.

A tax of this nature creates a vacuum that does nothing but suck the vibrancy out of an economy. In addition to setting a new moral hazard standard, the tax directly targets the people with the most capital at work in our country. By specifically targeting the people that have the means to create new enterprises and invest using this capital, and then driving them out of the country, the tax is a surefire way to suck the lifeblood out of what’s left of the United States economy.

Make no mistake: it will be a clarion call for billionaires to simply move out of the United States and into tax havens. And think about it - these are the people that have the means to up and simply leave the country and relocate anytime they want. For them, if it makes financial sense, they will do it. Implementing this unrealized gains tax will set the ball in motion, you can mark my words. The rich will be as good as gone.

And when billionaires decide to up and leave the United States, all of the tax revenue they were generating otherwise - not just the unrealized gains tax - leaves with them. In other words, an unrealized gains tax will push them past their limit and result in catastrophic consequences for the country's tax revenue as a whole. It’ll literally do far more harm than good. If I can understand why, a fifth grader can. That means the ultra-rich, who are much smarter than I am, definitely understand it. They’re not going to be interested in hanging around and forking over this much more cash “for the good of the cause”. They already likely have a plan in such case this tax is passed, and - as a hint - it isn’t to happily hand over a check to the Harris administration and say “thanks for being such great stewards of my capital, keep up the good work”.

In reality, it likely involves yachts, dual passports, “investments” in places like Bermuda and Mauritius, attending F1 races and tennis matches, expensive champagne and Eastern European escorts (hereinafter referred to as: “The Hunter Biden Experience”).

But seriously, setting aside the billionaires for a moment, the tax is going to dampen everybody’s incentive to try and earn and invest to begin with. Who wants to invest in the market if they’re going to be taxed on their gains the very next day?

Possibly the worst part of this idea is its timing. The country is running a massive deficit now that looks to continue to widen because of our government's refusal to cut spending on both sides of the aisle. As a reminder, you can only push the tax base so far before they turn tail and run. I know I’ve made jokes in the past (read: yesterday) about our government going through all of the solutions mandatory before arriving at any solution that works in the slightest, but this would be the granddaddy of all examples if implemented.

The timing of this proposed solution couldn’t be worse. We are at a point in our country's fiscal history where we need balance more than ever. We have the largest deficit and the most debt relative to GDP we have had in recent history.

The BRICS nations, including Russia, China, and India, are actively pursuing ways to break off of the Western banking system and challenge the U.S. dollar.

Inflation is running rampant and high interest rates are more than likely to cause our economy to slow down in marked fashion.

We’re running deficits, but we need the tax revenue we are currently bringing in if we have any hope of cutting spending to balance our budget and right the country's ship economically. The loss of tax revenue as a result of capital flight from the United States responding to this proposed unrealized gains tax would be catastrophic and would accelerate the country's financial and monetary demise, not help it."

- https://quoththeraven.substack.com

"So Hundreds Of Thousands Of Those 'Jobs' Were Completely Fake?"

"So Hundreds Of Thousands Of Those

'Jobs' Were Completely Fake?"

by Michael Snyder

"Every month, it is almost always the same story. The government releases a number that indicates that the U.S. economy has been creating plenty of “jobs”, and then later on that number is dramatically revised lower. But by the time it is revised lower, nobody really cares anymore. The fake numbers that are initially released month after month have given the American people the impression that the economy is performing far better than it actually is. Now we are about to get another major revision to the employment numbers which only happens once per year…

"Once a year, the BLS benchmarks the March payrolls level to a more accurate but less timely data source called the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, which is based on state unemployment insurance tax records and covers nearly all US jobs. The release of the latest QCEW report in June already hinted at weaker payroll gains last year.

On Wednesday, everyone is expecting that we will be told that hundreds of thousands of fake “jobs” that were originally reported never actually existed at all…"Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. economists expect the government’s preliminary benchmark revisions on Wednesday to show payrolls growth in the year through March was at least 600,000 weaker than currently estimated - about 50,000 a month. While JPMorgan Chase & Co. forecasters see a decline of about 360,000, Goldman Sachs indicates it could be as large as a million."

Why don’t they just try to give us an accurate number in the first place? By now, everybody pretty much realizes that the initial monthly employment numbers are usually grossly overstated. So why not just tell us the truth? Of course telling us the truth would destroy the carefully crafted illusions that they have worked so hard to create.

Even though large corporations are conducting mass layoffs all over the nation, we are supposed to believe that everything is just fine. Unfortunately, we have reached a point where even the official government numbers are starting to show signs of trouble. It takes about 150,000 new jobs each month just to keep up with population growth, and the initial number that we were given for last month was well below that level…"Employers added 114,000 jobs last month, which was far below the Dow Jones estimate of 185,000. The unemployment rate also edged higher to 4.3 percent – the highest level since October 2021."

It should be obvious to everyone that more Americans are unemployed these days. In fact, most of you probably know someone personally that is looking for a new job right now. According to a survey that was recently conducted by the New York Federal Reserve, an all-time record high 28.4 percent of all U.S. adults are currently looking for work…"The New York Federal Reserve’s latest poll of consumers found 28.4% of respondents were looking for a job — the highest reading since March 2014 and up from 19.4% a year ago. That includes both individuals already out of a job and ones currently employed but seeking new roles.

The readings, from the New York Fed’s thrice-annual Survey of Consumer Expectations Labor Market Survey, add to evidence that the U.S. economic outlook is worsening, even as some economists dial back their odds of a recession."

A 9 percent increase in one year is absolutely terrible. Why aren’t more people talking about this? We are definitely moving in the wrong direction very rapidly, and many are concerned that this could have troubling implications for the financial markets. If the employment revision that we get on Wednesday is large enough, it could potentially spark another round of selling on Wall Street…"While the stock market has now recovered, a data revision showing a large decline could reignite fears that the economy is headed for a downturn.

‘Markets, having recently experienced a growth scare that led to concerns that the Fed is behind the curve, will be monitoring Wednesday’s release of the benchmark revision to see if the market’s initial reaction was, in fact, correct,’ Quincy Krosby, chief global strategist at LPL Financial, told Bloomberg."

It is getting very difficult for even the most blind optimists to deny where things are heading. The Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has been falling for 29 months in a row. You would think that just about everyone would be getting the message by now.

At the same time that economic activity is slowing down, most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet due to our seemingly endless cost of living crisis. According to a brand new survey that was just released, 82 percent of Americans believe that “their money does not go as far as it used to”…"A growing number of Americans are pumping the brakes on spending as they continue to face elevated prices for everyday necessities like food, rent and auto insurance.

New findings published by Empower show that 62% of Americans feel their purchasing power and income in relation to prices is decreasing due to persistent inflation. Another 82% said their money does not go as far as it used to. Additionally, 79% of respondents noted that many household goods like cereal and chips are dwindling in terms of serving sizes."

Our standard of living has been going down. Everyone can see that. When our leaders started creating, borrowing and spending money like crazy during the pandemic, I relentlessly warned my readers that this would create tremendous inflation, and that is precisely what happened.

Now I am warning that a truly terrifying economic horror show is in front of us. The people that are running the system literally do not know what they are doing, and now all of us will get to suffer the very bitter consequences of their very foolish decisions."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "The Economy Is Coming Unglued, People Will Lose Everything"

Jeremiah Babe, 8/20/24

"The Economy Is Coming Unglued,

 People Will Lose Everything"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Runrig, "Running to the Light"

Full screen recommended.

Runrig, "Running to the Light"

"Contact"

"You're an interesting species, an interesting mix. You are capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone. Only you're not. See, in all our searching, the only thing that we've found that makes the emptiness bearable... is each other."  - "Contact"

Full screen recommended.

"Contact"

Ellie meets her long dead father after travel across space 

via an intricate transportation system of wormholes.

"Contact"

"We are not alone..." Two-time Academy Award-winner Jodie Foster and Hollywood's brightest new star, Matthew McConaughey, shine in this spellbinding drama of a dedicated astronomer's quest to make first Contact. Despite scorn from her colleagues, "Ellie" Arroway devoutly eavesdrops on the universe. And then, one fateful morning, she hears a cryptic signal. As the world's scientists scramble to decode "the message," Ellie must struggle to become Earth's single emissary on a journey beyond theory or experience. Seeking support, she turns to top-level government advisor, Palmer Joss . Separated by very different beliefs, they reunite in their passion for knowledge and truth. From Academy Award-winning director Robert Zemeckis and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Carl Sagan's best-seller comes the story of a visionary scientist's unshakable conviction that somewhere in this boundless universe an intelligence yearns for Contact."

Watch on YouTube, Full screen recommended. 

Full movie free with ads:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"A Look to the Heavens"

"In silhouette against a crowded star field along the tail of the arachnalogical constellation Scorpius, this dusty cosmic cloud evokes for some the image of an ominous dark tower.

In fact, clumps of dust and molecular gas collapsing to form stars may well lurk within the dark nebula, a structure that spans almost 40 light-years across this gorgeous telescopic portrait. Known as a cometary globule, the swept-back cloud, is shaped by intense ultraviolet radiation from the OB association of very hot stars in NGC 6231, off the upper edge of the scene. That energetic ultraviolet light also powers the globule's bordering reddish glow of hydrogen gas. Hot stars embedded in the dust can be seen as bluish reflection nebulae. This dark tower, NGC 6231, and associated nebulae are about 5,000 light-years away."

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210715.html

"These 14 Small Mindset Shifts Will Change Your Life"

"These 14 Small Mindset Shifts Will Change Your Life"

"For the most part, we can’t change the world. We can’t change the fundamental facts of existence - like the fact that we’re going to die. We can’t change other people. Does that mean that everything is hopeless and permanently broken? No, because although we have that extreme powerlessness in one sense, we have an incredible superpower in another: We can change how we think about things. We can change how we view them, how we orient ourselves to them.

That’s the essence of Stoicism, by the way. The idea that we don’t control what happens, but we do control ourselves. When we respond to what happens, the main thing we control is our mind and the story we tell ourselves.

So one way to think about Stoicism itself then is as a collection of mindset shifts for the many situations that life seems to thrust us in. Indeed, Seneca’s "Letters," Marcus Aurelius’ "Meditations," and Epictetus’ "Discourses" are filled with passages, anecdotes, and quotes which force a shift in perspective. Here are 14 that I have taken from the Stoics over the years that have changed my life. I think they’ll do the same for you.

Everything is an opportunity for excellence. The now famous passage from Marcus Aurelius is that the impediment to action advances action, that what stands in the way becomes the way. But do you know what he was talking about specifically? He was talking about difficult people! He was saying that difficult people are an opportunity to practice excellence and virtue - be it forgiveness or patience or cheerfulness. And so it goes for all the things that are not in our control in life. So when I find myself in situations big and small, positive or negative, I try to see each of them as an opportunity for me to be the best I’m capable of being in that moment. It doesn’t matter who we are, where we are, we can always do this.

Every event has two handles, Epictetus said: “one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can’t. If your brother does you wrong, don’t grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other - that he is your brother, that you were raised together, and then you will have hold of the handle that carries.” Another way to say that is that there are multiple ways to look at every situation, multiple ways to determine how you’re going to react. Some of them are sturdy and some of them are not. Some are kind and resilient, some are not. Which will you choose? Which handle will you grab?

The world is dyed by the color of your thoughts. Marcus said, “The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes the color of your thoughts.” He also said, “Our life is what our thoughts make it.” If you see the world as a negative, horrible place, you’re right. If you look for shittiness, you will see shittiness. If you believe that you were screwed, you’re right. But if you look for beauty in the mundane, you’ll see it. If you look for evidence of goodness in people, you’ll find it. If you decide to see the agency and power you do have over your life (which as we’ve said is largely in how we think), well, you’ll find you have quite a bit.

There is a tax on everything. Taxes aren’t just from the government. Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius, “All the things which cause complaint or dread are like the taxes of life—things from which, my dear Lucilius, you should never hope for exemption or seek escape.” Annoying people are a tax on being outside your house. Delays are a tax on travel. Haters are a tax on having a YouTube channel. There’s a tax on money too–and the more successful you are, the more you pay. Seneca said he tried to pay the taxes gladly. I love that. After all, it’s usually a sign of a good problem. It means you had a killer year financially. It means you’re alive and breathing. You can whine about the cost. Or you can pay and move on.

Poverty isn’t only having too little. Of course, not having what you need to survive is insufficient. But what about people who have a lot…but are insatiable? Who are plagued by envy and comparison? Both Marcus Aurelius and Seneca talk about rich people who are not content with what they have and are thus quite poor. But feeling like you have ‘enough’–that’s rich no matter what your income is.

Alive time or Dead time? This isn’t from the Stoics exactly, but close enough. Robert Greene once told me there were two types of time in life: Alive time and Dead time. One is when you sit around, when you wait until things happen to you. The other is when you are using that time productively, actively. You’re stuck at the airport - you don’t control that. You decide whether it’s alive time or dead time (you read a book, you take a walk, you call your grandmother). I had a year left on a job when Robert gave me that advice. I could have just sat on my hands. Instead, it was an incredibly productive period of reading and researching and filling boxes of notecards that helped me write "The Obstacle is the Way" and "Ego is the Enemy."

Anxiety isn’t escaped. It’s discarded. This was a breakthrough I had during the pandemic. Suddenly, I had a lot less to worry about. I wasn’t doing the things that, in the past, I told myself were the causes of my anxiety. I wasn’t having to get to a plane. I wasn’t battling traffic to get somewhere on time. I wasn’t having to prepare for this talk or that one. So you’d think that my anxiety would have gone way down. But it didn’t. And what I realized is that anxiety has nothing to do with any of these things. The airport isn’t the one to blame. I am! Marcus Aurelius actually talks about this in Meditations. “Today I escaped from anxiety,” he says. “Or no, I discarded it, because it was within me, in my own perceptions—not outside.” It’s not your parents that are frustrating you. They’re just doing what they do. You are the source of the frustration. That’s a little frustrating, but it’s also freeing. Because it means you can stop it! You can choose to discard it.

It’s the surprise that kills you. Stuff is going to happen, but what makes it harder is when it catches us off guard. The unexpected blow lands heaviest, Seneca said. That’s why we should practice the art of premeditatio malorum–essentially, a pre-mortem of the things that could happen in a day or a life. This takes the sting out of them in advance…it also lets us prepare and prevent. And for no one is this more important than parents and leaders. Seneca said that the one thing a leader is not allowed to say is, “Wow, I didn’t think that was going to happen.”

You can’t learn what you think you already know. Conceit, Zeno said, was the enemy of wisdom and learning. This was the essential worldview of Socrates, the hero of the Stoics. Think of Socrates’ method. He didn’t go around telling people anything. He went around asking questions. That’s how he learned so much and ended up becoming so smart. If you want to get smarter, stop thinking you’re so smart. If you want to learn, focus on all the things you don’t know. Humility, admission of ignorance–these are the starting points. This is the attitude that gets you further in life.

What good is posthumous fame? Marcus Aurelius knew he was famous. He knew they were building statues of him. He knew he would have a legacy. He also knew this was basically worthless. What good is posthumous fame, he asks in Meditations, when you’re not around to enjoy it?! He reminded himself too that you know, it’s not like the people in the future were going to be way better than the people alive right now - there will be idiots in the future too. What do I care about how many people read my books in 100 years? What matters is if I am doing my best right now, if I am taking pleasure and pride from doing my best right now. So stop trying to live forever by achieving all this greatness, stop trying to get more than you need, stop trying to perform for history. Do the good you can do now. Stop chasing something you will never touch. Legacy is not for you. You’ll be dead. Leave it to others.

People are just doing their job. I don’t just mean at work. After bumping into a particularly frustrating person, Marcus Aurelius asks himself, “Is a world without shamelessness possible?” No, he answers. “There have to be shameless people in the world. This is one of them.” This is just someone fulfilling their role. Seeing things this way not only prevents me from being surprised, but it makes me sympathetic. This person has a crappy job.It’s not fun to be them–they have to be one of the jerks that exist in the world. And then I remind myself that I am lucky that my job is to try to be a good person.

They don’t want you to be miserable. It’s strange that Stoics have the reputation for being unfeeling when Seneca wrote three very beautiful essays on loss and grief called Consolations. I read these essays whenever I lose someone or miss someone who I loved. Anyway, one of the lessons that hit me the most is when he is writing to the daughter of a now-deceased friend. He brings up a great point, basically saying, look, your dad loved you so much. Of course, he would be honored that you miss him, but do you think he would want his death to make you miserable? Would he want the mere mention of his name to bring you pain? No, that would be his worst nightmare. He would want you to be happy. He would want you to go on with your life. He wouldn’t want his memory to haunt you like a ghost–he would want the thought of him to bring you joy and happiness. Of course, we’re always going to feel sad when we lose someone, but then we can remind ourselves of this and try to smile too.

Opinions are optional. “Remember, you always have the power to have no opinion,” Marcus says. Do you need to have an opinion about the weather today - is it changing anything? Do you need to have an opinion about the way your kid does their hair? So what if this person likes music that sounds weird to you? So what if that person is a vegetarian? “These things are not asking to be judged by you,” Marcus writes. “Leave them alone.” Especially because these opinions often make us miserable! “It’s not things that upset us,” Epictetus says, “it’s our opinions about things.” The less opinions you have, especially about other people and things outside your control, the happier you will be. The nicer you’ll be to be around too.

The last one is the most powerful one, I think. And it’s about the thing we have the least amount of power and control over: the fact that we’re all going to die. But the Stoics want us to think about it differently…

Death isn’t in the future. It’s happening now. It’s easy to see death as this thing that lies off in the distant future. It’s a fixed event that happens to us once…at the end. This is literally true but it’s also incorrect. “This is our big mistake,” as Seneca points out, “to think we look forward toward death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death.”

It’s better to think of death as a process - something that is always happening. We are dying every day, he said. Even as you read this email, time is passing that you will never get back. That time, he said, belongs to death. Powerful, right? Death doesn’t lie off in the distance. It’s with us right now. It’s the second hand on the clock. It’s the setting sun. As the arrow of time moves, death follows, claiming every moment that has passed. What ought we do about it? The answer is live. Live while you can. Put nothing off. Leave nothing unfinished. Seize it while it still belongs to us."

- https://ryanholiday.net/

"As Americans..."

''As Americans, we must ask ourselves: Are we really so different? Must we stereotype those who disagree with us? Do we truly believe that ALL red-state residents are ignorant racist fascist knuckle-dragging NASCAR-obsessed cousin-marrying roadkill-eating tobacco juice-dribbling gun-fondling religious fanatic rednecks; or that ALL blue-state residents are godless unpatriotic pierced-nose Volvo-driving France-loving left-wing communist latte-sucking tofu-chomping holistic-wacko neurotic vegan weenie perverts?''

- Dave Barry

"Be Careful..."

 

"Are People Really Stupid?"

“All of the available data show that the typical American citizen has about

as much interest in the life of the mind as does your average armadillo.”

- Morris Berman

“Think of how stupid the average person is,

and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

- George Carlin

"Are People Really Stupid?"

by Fred Russell

"On the face of things, judging from the general level of knowledge and understanding, not to mention the intellectual pursuits, of most of the human race one is tempted to say that the overwhelming majority of mankind lacks the intellectual capacity, the intelligence, to contribute to human progress. And it is in fact a very small elite that has carried us beyond Neanderthal Man, without whom, if the truth be told, we might still be living in caves. It is, in a word, appalling to contemplate the level at which ordinary people use their minds, what they read, if at all, what they watch on TV, the movies they go out and see, and the ease with which they are seduced and manipulated by the technicians of the psyche, namely, politicians and advertisers.

The impression one gets when contemplating these tens and hundreds of millions of people glued to their TV screens for the reality shows and sitcoms or fiddling with their smartphones from morning till night is of complete empty-headedness. This is not to say that such people cannot be shrewd, resourceful, or, for that matter, simply decent. It is to say that at the average level of intelligence displayed by the human race, the great intellectual achievements of mankind seem to be beyond the scope of the vast majority of men and women. But are people really stupid? And if they aren't, who or what has held them back?

Now one may be inclined to place all the blame for our ignorance on the television producers and gadget makers, but the truth is that by the time they get to us the damage has already been done. All they really succeed in doing is dragging us down a little further. The problem starts in childhood. It starts in the schools with all those empty cells waiting to be filled and no one, not entire educational systems, really knowing how to fill them. In fact, the opposite result is achieved. By the time the child finishes elementary school, unless he is destined to join the intellectual or scientific or economic or political elite and is self-motivated, as the saying goes, he will have developed an aversion to the learning process that will persist for the rest of his life.

It is not hard to understand why. School bores him, and oppresses him. Its premise, fostered in the West by the Church the virtually exclusive supplier of teachers until fairly recent times, historically speaking is that as a consequence of Original Sin all men are born evil and must therefore be coerced into doing what is good. The result has been rigidly structured frameworks where teachers hammer away at the captive child until his head is ready to explode. Within just a few years, the public school system thus destroys the natural curiosity of the child and dooms him to a life of total ignorance, dependent, for whatever sense of the world he does have, on second rate journalists, who themselves lack the knowledge, understanding, discipline and integrity to be historians or even novelists and therefore shape his perception like the ignorant clerics of the Middle Ages, raining down on his head a disjointed and superficial body of information presented largely to produce effects, and even this is beyond his capacity to retain.

The man in the street may thus be said to have a great many opinions but very little knowledge, mindlessly repeating the half-truths of experts and analysts who reflect his own biases and constructing out of them a credo of dogmatic views that remain embedded in his mind for an entire lifetime like bricks in a brick wall.

Does it matter? After all, we have all the scholars and scientists we need, and besides, a world where everyone became one would be a dull place indeed. It can even be argued that it is better for the race if progress is opposed, since, judging from its products, it mostly expresses itself materially and economically in an unholy alliance of greed and technology. However, progress of this kind cannot be fought if all that people have on their minds is to wire themselves into this technology, and that is what they will be doing until their minds are engaged in less frivolous pursuits. They are thus doubly victimized, first by the schools, whose methods are not attuned to the temperament and capacity of the average child, and then by the economic elites who control the technologies and consequently the flow of information and whose only interest in the man in the street is as a consumer of their products.

Unfortunately, there is very little hope that any of this will change. The wrong people control human society and will continue to do so, because they created the model and are the only ones who know how to operate it. The sad truth is that today's man in the street is neither wiser nor more knowledgeable than a medieval peasant. Calling ourselves Homo sapiens, or even Homo sapiens sapiens, seemed like a good idea once but very few of us have lived up to the billing."

- https://www.counterpunch.org/

Apologies to armadillos for the comparison! lol

 

That time is now...

Gerald Celente, "Disney World White House: Minnie Mouse VS Donald Duck Presidential Reality Show"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 8/20/24

"Disney World White House: 

Minnie Mouse VS Donald Duck Presidential Reality Show"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present facts and truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for what’s next in these increasingly turbulent times."

- https://trendsjournal.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Gerald's in fine form today! lol

Gregory Mannarino, "Something Big Is About To Happen, And It's Effects Are Going To Be Extreme"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 8/20/24

"Something Big Is About To Happen, 

And It's Effects Are Going To Be Extreme"

- https://traderschoice.net/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Related:

ThisisJohnWilliams, 8/20/24

"Corporate Bankruptcies Increase By 200%, 

Millions of Americans Fight to Hold On"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Snyder Reports, 8/20/24

"1,000’s Of Grocery Stores Will Close"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"It Was The Essence Of Life..."

"It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane."

- Philip José Farmer

The Daily "Near You?"

Monroe, Wisconsin, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Bertrand Russell, "Three Passions"

"Three Passions" 

 "Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of humankind.

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of people.
I have wished to know why the stars shine.
Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,

But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart,
Of children in famine, of victims tortured,
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.
This has been my life; I found it worth living."

- Bertrand Russell

“The Individual vs. The Illusion Of Consensus Reality”

“The Individual vs. The Illusion Of Consensus Reality”

by Jon Rappoport

“This is such a supercharged subject, I could start from a dozen places. But let’s begin here: the individual is unique, because he is he. He is unique because he has his own ideas, because he has his own desires, because he has his own power. That power belongs to no one else. In particular, it doesn’t belong to the State. The State will try, will always try to suggest that it is granting power to the individual, but this is a lie. It’s an illusion broadcast with ill-intent. While everyone else is trying to manufacture connections to the group, under the banner of a false sense of community, the individual is going in the opposite direction.

Philip K Dick: “Insanity - to have to construct a picture of one’s life, by making inquiries of others.”

Consensus reality is the reality of sacrifice. It is coagulating energy, form, content, substance that takes on amorphous shapes studded with slots into which people can fit themselves.

The independent individual thinks what he wants to think. Over time, he keeps graduating into new, more nearly unique levels of what he wants to think. He rises above the group. He rises to his own thoughts.

There is no subject and no substance which is not infiltrated by consensus reality. Wherever you look, you will encounter it. The group is the basis of consensus reality, and the group pact extends everywhere. The group fears a sector where only individual thought can tread. That would be dangerous to the illusion. “Well, we’ve got things well in hand in most places, but over there and over here we’re not in charge. A different kind of reality pervades.” No, that doesn’t work for the group. The exceptions would blow a hole in the rule.

“Stay away from the corner of Lexington Avenue and 34th Street. Something too weird is going on there. We come in and try to inject consensus on that spot and it doesn’t work. Our “sharing” energy bounces off that corner. We may have to call in the troops to surround the place and cordon it off.” Alert! Alert! Consensus reality is breaking down in Sector 328-A! Locate the problem! This is an emergency! Bring in the news team to shore up the illusion! Turn on the hypnosis machines! Group consensus is fraying and fragmenting in Area 768-B! Call the professors and pundits! Discredit the individual! Call him a monster! Do something fast!

Consensus reality is an illusion in the sense that you can see it and I can see it, but we didn’t sign up for it. That’s the catch. Take any area of life, and I mean any, and that’s the case. Wherever there is tight consensus, perception ensues. That’s the whole point. “We, the group, aren’t fooling around. When we sign a pact among ourselves, we intend everybody to see what we decide is there to see.”

So you, the individual, can opt out. That doesn’t necessarily mean the consensus disappears; you can still see it, but you see it without accepting it. You can see the oasis in the desert, which is a mirage, but because you have your own bottle of water, you don’t have to run toward the mirage and fall down on your knees and try to drink from the pool.

Philip K. Dick: “Because today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups… increasingly, we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated electronic mechanisms… And this is an astounding power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.”

The strong and free individual evolves. He doesn’t stay the same. He doesn’t know everything worth knowing today. He knows enough, but not everything. He continues to emerge with new ideas, new energy, new invention. He becomes larger. He gains more power.

When the illusion of consensus reality attains a level beyond mere slogan, it enters the realm of systems. This is its most convincing format. A system appears to be watertight. Each one of its parts has relations with the whole. This is interesting, because that mirrors what a group is. Each member is a part that connects to the whole. Consensus as a system is like a game of chess that plays the same moves over and over. Game one is the same as game two, three, four… That’s where its illusion of power comes from.

The individual, though, doesn’t proceed according to systems. He isn’t moving from one closed context to another. That’s the group. The individual may retain the same general principles over time, but what he does and thinks strikes out into new territories. Because he creates. There is no individual without creating.

Consensus is the coin of the realm. It is forced from the top, and it is signed up for at the bottom. One hand washes the other. Societies may begin through consensus, but if they have any courage, they shift focus to the job of pulling away coercive restraints on the individual. Regardless, the individual asserts his freedom. It is his to begin with, not the group’s. No one gives it to him.

American society is moving rapidly to an inverse, an upside down structure, in which freedom is looked upon as a privilege grudgingly accorded in the absence of a reason to take it away. The prevalent official attitude is: consensus must be strengthened. It must dominate the landscape.

Through vast experience, the free individual knows that consensus has no theoretical limits. Group-perceptions about the way things are can give birth to the most universally “proven objective truths.” In his explorations, the individual may even find that a demonstrated law of nature is nothing more than a consensus. And, therefore, an illusion.

The group has conception of Normal. Normal is like a message passed around, from hand to hand, and when you look at it closely, for content, it dissolves. There was really nothing there. This is similar to what happens when physicists probe further and further into matter, looking for smaller and smaller particles, and come up with an enormous amount of empty space.

The group consensus is the illusion. Finally, there is mindless hive-action covering a vacuum. This is also what occasionally happens to people who have hidebound political ideologies. The people on the Left move further and further to the Left, and the people on the Right move further and further to the Right. Finally, they are both so distant from government they meet and stare at each other in shock. At that point, they are just individuals.

From my unfinished manuscript, "The Magician Awakes": “You keep saying it doesn’t matter. Sometimes you say it out loud and sometimes it’s just a very strong thought that could cut through a melon. You repeat it over and over—”it doesn’t matter.” You’re sitting there with the most powerful thing in the universe, your imagination, and yet it doesn’t matter. New worlds are waiting for you. But you don’t pull the trigger.

“You go to meetings. What are these meetings? Who’s there? What do you talk about, the end of the world? Your problems? The conversations seem to be endless…”

“But society runs on groups! It must have groups!” And what? The individual must give in and join and belong? That’s the conclusion? I’m afraid not. Consensus reality is a cartoon that is trying to become as real as steel. What deconstructs the steel and exposes the cartoon? There is only one thing that can do that. Nothing and no one else is going to do that. The individual does it."

- www.nomorefakenews.com

"Be Like The Bird..."

"What matter if this base, unjust life

Cast you naked and disarmed?

If the ground breaks beneath your step,

Have you not your soul?

Your soul! You fly away,

Escape to realms refined,

Beyond all sadness and whimpering.

Be like the bird which on frail branches balanced

A moment sits and sings;

He feels them tremble, but he sings unshaken,

Knowing he has wings."

– Victor Hugo

"Compassion..."

“Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what

it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge

 that there can never really be any peace and joy for me

until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”
- Frederick Buechner