As usual, the official narrative, as put forth in the corporate media, about the West's beef with Putin bears no resemblance to the truth about why the West cannot accept a Putin-led Russia.
by Leo Hohmann
"World War III, like all 21st century wars, is not being fought over ideologies. It’s being fought over energy and natural resources. Because he who controls the world’s resources will be free to impose whatever ideology he wants.
Washington and London, the epicenter of the Western liberal world order that thinks its admirable and virtuous to redefine God-created genders and appropriate to unleash deviant transvestites on innocent school children, is seeking to neutralize the massive resources of Russia as it ramps up its “net zero” sustainable development model of economic progress. This economic model is really just a scam designed to pilfer what remains of the middle class and further subjugate them under AI-powered government-corporate control. Hence the need for more massive data centers, which Donald Trump is being used to build across the United States with $8 billion in foreign investment from a billionaire in the United Arab Emirates.
The surveillance state cannot be built out without these data centers scooping up, processing and storing highly personal information on every citizen. But Trump is either too dumb to know this or doesn’t care because he is blinded by a naive belief that without an expanded AI America will lose its global hegemony.
The modern technocratic state is going to be based on energy and carbon credits. Fiat currencies will become a thing of the past, if these global predators succeed in their plans for a one-world surveillance state, where freedom of movement becomes a distant memory. Our healthcare and even our diets will also be tightly controlled by the elitist globalist predator class, whose interests are exemplified by the World Economic Forum and other elitist organizations.
With an understanding of the ongoing war over who controls the global food and energy supplies, it becomes easy to see how the NATO-Russia war (with Ukraine as NATO’s proxy) will blow up into World War III.
Moscow accused Ukreaine Monday of conducting "energy terrorism" after what the Kremlin described as a failed drone attack against a Black Sea gas-compressor station that forms part of the major TurkStream gas pipeline linking Russia and Turkey.
This following report is from the France 24 media outlet: "The Kremlin accused Ukraine of conducting "energyterrorism" and posing a danger to Europe's energy security, after an attempted drone attack on part of a major gas pipeline that carries Russian supplies to Turkey. The allegation comes amid an escalating energy war between the two countries, almost three years after Russia launched its military offensive. Ukraine has not commented on the alleged attack."
Ukraine halted the transit of Russian gas to third countries via Ukraine on January 1, ending decades of energy cooperation that had brought billions of dollars to both countries, in a bid to cut off revenue for Moscow's army. The United States last week rolled out fresh sanctions on Russia's oil sector in another blow to Moscow's vital hydrocarbon industry.
The Russian defense ministry said on Monday that Ukraine had fired nine attack drones on Saturday at a gas-compressor station in the village of Gai-Kodzor, near Russia's southern coast on the Black Sea. The site is across from the Crimean peninsula - which was unilaterally annexed by Russia in 2014 and has been heavily targeted by Kyiv throughout the three-year war. Moscow said the facility was part of the TurkStream pipeline and accused Ukraine of trying to "cut off gas supplies to European countries.”
The Moscow Times further reported as follows: "The Defense Ministry said all the drones were shot down but some "minor damage" was recorded from falling debris. Gas deliveries were unaffected. According to Russian state news agencies, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the attack a "continuation of the line of energy terrorism that Kyiv has been pursuing, under the curation of its overseas friends, for a long time.” He called it "very dangerous for European consumers" and said Russia's foreign minister and the head of Gazprom had discussed it in a call with their Turkish counterparts on Sunday." Moscow's forces have bombarded Ukraine's energy sector with repeated aerial strikes since February 2022, causing major damage and power outages across the country.
The Western puppet politicians would have us believe the war is being fought over “democracy.” They say Putin is a dictator who wants to take over all of Europe. This is preposterous. The Soviet Empire collapsed because it could not handle the financial burden of keeping the Eastern European countries under its thumb, and Putin knows this. Russia is not capable of conquering and occupying Eastern Europe, let alone all of Western Europe, too. So these Western leaders are lying through their teeth, and unfortunately the Western press is all too happy to parrot thier fear-mongering narratives about Putin.
But even if Putin was as bad of a dictator as they tell us, the U.S. and NATO have in the past had no problem with dictators as long as they trade in dollars and follow the rules of the post-World War II liberal world order.
Don’t buy the hypocritical and self-righteous lies so prevalent throughout the Western media, including much of the conservative media. The war in Ukraine has nothing to do with democracy. It’s being fought for the sole purpose of detaching Putin from his position in control of a vast store of natural gas, oil, gold, uranium, and other valuable natural resources that the West wants to control and profit from. They can’t profit from it as long as Putin is in charge of Russia. And the last thing Washington wants to see is Putin plowing those oil and gas profits into his military/defense/industrial sector at a time when the West is seeking to eliminate so-called “fossil fuels” and convert to unreliable, less efficient and more expensive wind and solar energy.
The Kremlin on Monday also accused the United States of "destabilizing" the world energy market through fresh sanctions on Russian oil producers. The United States and Britain on Friday announced sanctions against Russia's energy sector, including oil giant Gazprom Neft and 180 ships it says are part of Moscow's "shadow fleet." The move came just days before U.S. President Joe Biden leaves office."
"LA's hidden water crisis exposed! Empty reservoirs reveal major failures in water management. Join me as we dive into this shocking situation and its implications. Today we're uncovering the truth about LA's water crisis and the empty reservoirs that are causing major concern. We'll also touch on the ongoing fire situation, credit card payment issues during emergencies, and the latest economic news. "
"Greenland. All of this post started by thinking that pretty soon we might be handed the keys to Greenland, so we should get up there quickly to measure to see if our stuff fits.
I’ve written several times about the coming political/economic crisis that the United States is facing, and back in 2018 I said the earliest year would be 2025, and the latest would be 2040. I’m sticking by those figures. The most likely period for this crisis I’m still putting at 2030-2035 because things tend to go on a lot longer than we think they will – inertia is real in physics, and it’s just as real in political economic systems. Things go on a lot farther than they should, and in hindsight people say, “Well, how in the heck did that last so very long.”
History is filled with many such examples:
• The Ottoman Empire,
• the system under Czarist Russia,
• the Chinese Emperors, and
• my first marriage.
Watching history unfold right now with the dawn of the second Trump Administration, I wanted to give a quick glimpse in what might be an offramp to the collapse. I’m calling it, “The Caesar Offramp.”
It is very clear that the political situation more than rhymes with problems taking place in the very late Roman Republic. Cicero (the dead Roman, not Porky Pig’s® nephew) even gave a speech about groups called the Optimates and the Populares. The Optimates were the elite of the day – think the people who take jets from their Aspen house to their superyacht that they just had shipped in to Port Hercules in Monaco so they could be with all the other people who had their superyacht shipped to Port Hercules in Monaco. These are the princes of the world, the folks who fly to Davos to get together to tell you that you’re using too many hydrocarbons and probably shouldn’t be legally allowed to have air conditioning.
The Populares? Let’s be real – these were also the elite of the day, but they at least pretended that the rank-and-file people were important. They had superyachts, too, but pretended they didn’t like them and also ate cheeseburgers. Hmmm. All of this is sounding familiar.
Let’s skip forward, a bit. At the end of the Republic, Rome was on the verge of civil war, and Julius Caesar, certainly the most famous Roman identified as a Populare, broke the system, and became the prototype for what would become an Empire that would last for the next five hundred years in the West, and the next nearly 1,500 years in the East.
What really made me think about this is the very real possibility that the United States will become the controller of Greenland. Yup. Whereas the United States has had territorial expansions, the last really big one was over 150 years ago when Seward negotiated for Alaska, and the last significant territorial acquisition were some islands we got after World War II, but they’re tiny.
Regardless, it’s been nearly 80 years since we added territory to the United States, and it certainly wasn’t the largest island in the world, rather batches of small islands in the Pacific that were taken from the Japanese after, um, some nuclear persuasion. To me, this is a symbol of a world in flux, where nothing should be taken for granted. And, it provides the basis for an offramp – a Caesar.
Trump is certainly not that man. Trump is about, as he told us plainly, The Art of the Deal. Trump didn’t seize power, he talked himself into it. His Populare sentiment contrasts with the Optimate culture of the RINOS and GloboLeftElite, and he used exactly that to springboard himself into power. Twice.
The sentiment is there, and given the relative polarity and unpopularity of the various members of the Optimate class, there exists a big opening, right now, for a Populare leader to rise up, seize power, and completely overhaul our systems. Just the fact that we’re talking about absorbing Greenland to better surround Northern India (formerly known as Canada), the idea that our institutions, both financial and political can be remade is also on the table.
I think that this isn’t the most likely scenario, a Caesar without a civil war – I still think that Civil War 2.0 is the mostly likely outcome. Here are the variations that immediately spring to mind:
• Civil War 2.0 followed by regional Balkanization
• Civil War 2.0 followed by Ceasar 2.0 (and likely a North American Unification)
• Civil War 2.0 followed by a Revitalized Republic
• World War 4.0 (counting Cold War as 3.0) followed by some version of regionalized Balkanization, Caesar 2.0, or a Revitalized Republic
I find the regional Balkanization the most likely, still, since people are already self-segregating away from the Red/Blue state they don’t like, and that the polarization has essentially already created two countries within a single border.
Caesar 2.0 after Civil War 2.0 would require an extraordinary man with a military background, but also one of public service to step up at the right time with a message of unification. Think Napoleon, but taller and with a better public speaking voice. I’m betting Napoleon sounded like a mouse squeaking when he talked.
The Revitalized Republic, while most personally desirable to me, seems the least likely since we don’t like each other very much, any more and the residual community that created the space for the Republic seems missing. I’m not sure that the resolve exists for the mountains of skulls that would need to be stacked in order for the Republic to be reconstituted. So, an off ramp may exist. There’s a vanishingly short time for that to occur, so if it doesn’t happen by 2030, I’m betting that it’s not in the cards. But, we’ll always have Greenland."
They argue over the details and often duck real differences.
But it didn’t matter what song they played in the bar.
When the icy water rushed through the corridors, the Titanic was doomed.
By Bill Bonner
Baltimore, Maryland - "We came back from snowy Ireland to snow covered Maryland. And this morning, we sit in front of the fire, and take a break from our customary rigorous analysis and air-tight logic to make some guesses.
As reported last week, the Musk/Ramaswamy DOGE group has already admitted that it can’t really eliminate the deficit. Not even half of it. But it only took just a little math to see that coming, not a lot of guesswork. They would have to cut into the muscle of the Pentagon and into the guts of the transfer payments (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) to really make much of a difference. They aren’t going to do that because the politicians are in control, not the ‘efficiency’ guys. Politicos get power for themselves by spending money, not saving it. So, it was inevitable that Musk would fall out with the MAGA crowd.
Steve Bannon was on the case over the weekend. New York Post: "Days after fawning over what tech magnate Elon Musk’s deep pockets could do for the MAGA movement, Steve Bannon went berserk on the world’s richest man and vowed to limit his White House influence. Bannon, 71, who hosts the “War Room” podcast and has a penchant for plotting all-out brass-knuckled political warfare, suggested Musk “should go back to South Africa” and decried his stance on H1-B visas."
A bit more guessy is our hypothesis that the Trump phenomenon doesn’t mark a real break with the past... but merely an acceleration in the rate of degeneration. More spending. More debt. More blatant corruption. More foreign adventures. More inflation... and so forth.
The press confuses the issue. It says Trump represents the ‘extreme right’ as opposed to the mainstream ‘enlightened liberals.’ In the minds of many, the Trump win represents a whole new thing... a new era in US politics. And in some ways it does. But not the important ones.
Perhaps less in practice than in theory, traditional party politics pitted the ‘progressives’ against the ‘conservatives.’ The improvers - a role played by the democrats - wanted to use the strong arm of the feds to build a better world. Spend, spend, spend... for better schools, welfare for the poor, make the world safe for democracy, save the planet - you name it.
The role played by conservative republicans was avuncular... dragging their feet to slow them down... and using the Constitution to impose restraints. But over time, the wily old Republican uncles realized that they could use the government’s ‘free’ money to buy votes and gain power too. And now, is there a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties?
Both spend trillions they don’t have, knowing that it will lead to higher prices for their own voters... Both approved the invasion of Iraq... and the attack on Libya... and the bombs and cash that get sent to the Ukraine and Israel (much of which comes back to the US firepower industry... where a portion of it is then spent to guarantee more spending).
Where they disagree is not on the direction of the ship, but the color of carpet and the wine served at the captain’s table. Like married couples, they argue over the details...and often duck real differences. But it didn’t matter what song they played in the bar...when the icy water rushed through the corridors, the Titanic was doomed.
Bush, Obama, Trump I, Biden - none departed from the Big Empire course. And now Trump II is promising even more glorious expansion - to Greenland, Mexico, Canada... and perhaps teaming up with Mr. Musk... to the stars! We’re all passengers on this ship, whether we like it or not. Where will we end up? East, West, South or North? The best guess is that it will go down. More to come..."
"State Farm, my insurer for decades, canceled my insurance and everyone
in our immediate neighborhood just before the fire. State Farm WASN’T there..."
- James Woods
“So-called progressives finally achieved what they supposedly warned of but in truth wished for: the eviction of the affluent descendants of colonizers, the incineration of their homes, and the destruction of a city that, more than any other, represents our bloody history of white supremacy and conquest.” - Michael Shellenberger
For those in the USA with an interest in collapsing the USA, the Los Angeles fire is the gift that will keep on giving, and George Soros hardly had to cough up a dime to make it happen. From the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion angle, the fire got‘er done, cleansing nearly the entire PacPal population of snooty, rich, white “allies” of the oppressed and marginalized - who will now have LA to themselves. Chez Whitey is “closed for renovations,” and it might be twenty years before it can re-open, if ever.
Probably never, if the California Coastal Commission has anything to say about it. And why wouldn’t they? They do not generally approve of stuff getting built right up on the beach. They were probably all down on their knees Sunday in the Church of Luxury Belief thanking Climate Jeezus for sweeping Malibu and the hills above it clean.
Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Patti Davis, rent her garments in The New York Times Sunday op-ed page, wailing: “My anger over what we have done to this fragile, exquisite Earth was muffled by grief until the other evening when I was watching a news program that had a panel of commentators. The subject was Los Angeles on fire, and one person mentioned climate change as a cause. Another commentator smirked and said he didn’t believe it was the cause. I felt rage surge up past my grief."
My first thought was: “You think you know more than scientists?” Of course, my first thought reading that was: Who is paying those scientists? The same question you might ask of the scientists at the CDC, NIH, FDA, and NIAID who declared that Covid-19 was definitely not created in a Wuhan lab, and the mRNA vaccines were “safe and effective.” My second thought was: could you possibly find a better example of elite Utopian-Woke performative acting-out? My third thought was: since when are “experts” infallible? My fourth thought was: doesn’t science advance on the basis of continuous argument? My fifth thought was: if Patti Davis is watching the news, she must be in some comfortable and probably luxurious place that did not burn down. So much for my thoughts, entertained without the rending of garments.
More to the point of the fire itself, you must wonder what is happening to those tens of thousands of displaced persons and families right now? How many of them are sleeping out on their smoldering properties, or in their cars, or just shivering on a sidewalk somewhere. It does not seem possible that they all found a place to go, certainly not at their neighbors’ houses, who were all burnt-out, too...and there are just so many hotel rooms not occupied by “the undocumented.” Anyway, how many families can stay in hotel rooms that go for $1,000-a-night, and for how many nights? How many of them lost absolutely everything, including the possibility of a future?
Which gets you to the realization that we have barely begun to see the knock-on effects of this catastrophe. Those tens of thousands of the burnt-out will not be reporting to work anytime soon. They will have all they can do to find a roof over their heads while they hassle with FEMA officials, State of California bureaucrats, insurance company claims agents, and other “helpers.” The rebuilding quandaries have already been rehearsed in the news. Even if politicians suspended all the building and zoning codes, and the tax issues, where will so many contractors come from in any reasonable time-frame? And where do you put all that melted plastic goop and toxic ash that remains on-the-ground where peoples’ lives used to be?
If you lost a house valued at $5-million, it will cost you at least $10-million to replace it. Good luck, even if you were a mid-level movie star. Of course, if your insurance got cancelled lately - or you just didn’t have any because it cost too much - then there is zero chance you will get to even fantasize about living in the hills above Malibu ever again. And that job you’re not able to go to right now due to the pressing needs of sheer survival on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs... you might never go to that job again. The business you worked for might not be there anymore, either.
If there was ever a proverbial last-grain-of-sand-in-a-landslide, the Great 2025 Los Angeles Fire must be a sure thing vis-a-vis the US economy, especially the financial side of it. An awful lot of homeowners will not be paying their mortgages on a smoldering empty lot. The banks are not in super-fabulous condition these days. How many loans-gone-bad will it take to wreck already unstable banks? And, by the way, the collateral isn’t even there anymore. The re-po man is out of the picture.
What happens to the insurance companies? And the re-insurance companies who theoretically stand behind the insurers? I’ll tell you what happens: they will be backstopped by the government, which doesn’t have the money to backstop them... but will create it out of pixels on screens... which means expect a considerable uptick in inflation (i.e., a downtick in the purchasing power of the dollar), which will be a black eye for the new Trump administration. How does all this thunder through the US economy as a whole?
Nobody really knows just yet, but the signs are not reassuring. You can infer countless chains-of-consequence. Friday’s action in the financial markets felt like a tremor of things to come. The Bubble-of All-Bubbles abides... or how long?"
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI)is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding,safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
"How do clusters of galaxies form and evolve? To help find out, astronomers continue to study the second closest cluster of galaxies to Earth: the Fornax cluster, named for the southern constellation toward which most of its galaxies can be found. Although almost 20 times more distant than our neighboring Andromeda galaxy, Fornax is only about 10 percent further that the better known and more populated Virgo cluster of galaxies.
Fornax has a well-defined central region that contains many galaxies, but is still evolving. It has other galaxy groupings that appear distinct and have yet to merge. Seen here, almost every yellowish splotch on the image is an elliptical galaxy in the Fornax cluster. The picturesque barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 visible on the lower right is also a prominent Fornax cluster member. "
"On September 1, 1939, the German army under Adolf Hitler launched an invasion of Poland that triggered the start of World War II (though by 1939 Japan and China were already at war). The battle for Poland only lasted about a month before a Nazi victory. But the invasion plunged the world into a war that would continue for almost six years and claim the lives of tens of millions of people."
“So don’t ask yourself what people want. Ask instead, What is true? What really inspires me, excites me? What will really help people and take away their confusion and suffering? It’s sort of a funny, crazy way to go, but I think it’s the only way to bring water to the wasteland Joseph Campbell described. When I read something truthful, something real, I breathe a deep sigh and say, “Fantastic – I wasn’t mad or alone in thinking that, after all!” So often we are left to our own devices, struggling in the dark with this external and internal propaganda system. At that point, for someone to tell us the truth is a gift. In a world where people all around us are lying and confusing us, to be honest is a great kindness.”
"I had a conversation with a friend today. Oh, sure, I hear you say, what would an iconoclastic iron-jawed individualist with a body odor redolent of medium rare ribeye (with just a hint of pepper) like John Wilder need with a friend? I guess we all have our little weaknesses. And dogs follow me. Because I smell like steak.
In this particular case as with most of my friends, I’ve known this friend for years. I’ve known most of my close friends longer than The Boy has been alive, and he’s in college now. It’s nice. If a day, a week, a month or a year goes by, so what? We can still restart the conversation where we left off. It’s as comfortable as watching a movie you’ve seen a dozen times.
I’ll make the observation that the only place where the character of people change is in a movie – almost all of my close friends have the same sense of humor and the same sense of values that they had when our friendships were forming. Absent a significant emotional event, people are a constant. And I like that.
There is a corresponding trust that comes with being a close friend – honesty. That’s why when talking with my friend, I really enjoyed the chance to be honest. Honesty is difficult because it requires that trust, because really honest criticism is hard to take, even when it comes from a friend. Or a co-worker. Or a relative. Or someone you just met. Or your UPS® delivery guy. Oh, wait. Most people don’t like honest. But my friends do.
This particular friend is really in a good position in life, which seems to be a common pattern with my friends. He has a spouse that makes more money than he does, and, in general, the household probably brings in enough cash each month so that Nigerian princes send emails to them asking for money. They’re wealthy enough that they donate to the homeless. This appears to be a more socially acceptable donation strategy than my “donation to the topless,” scheme.
But lest ye want to class my friend as the evil, selfish, wealthy type, he’s not. The family has a huge number of kids, and it’s a close family. My friend is constantly taking time off to go to athletic events, and when we catch up, I can sense that the relationship he has with his kids isn’t a surface relationship – it’s genuine and deep. I can tell, because I know people who understand genuine relationships, who listen to both sides of a family argument – my neighbors.
And yet... despite the wealth, despite the great family, my friend feels that there’s something missing. He is as high as he wants to go in the company he works at – any higher and the travel demands would pull him away from family. He’s long since mastered his job – there is little that can be thrown at him that he hasn’t seen in the last fifteen or so years. So, his condition is one of high pay, mastery of work, and, improbably, discontent.
John Wilder: “You realize you have an advantage that 99% of people would die for. You’re financially secure. You can quit your job anytime. Literally, you could walk in to your boss this afternoon and quit. Your lifestyle wouldn’t change a bit.”
Not Elon Musk: “Yes.”
Unlikely Voice of Wisdom John Wilder: “So, what is it you want to do?”
Really, I Promise It Isn’t Elon Musk: “I need to think about it.”
Channeling Tyler Durden From Fight Club® John Wilder: “No. If you think about it, you’ll end up doing nothing but thinking about it. You have to do something. Physically start it. This weekend. I’ll check back on Monday to see how you did.”
There is a scene in the movie Fight Club™ where Tyler Durden holds a gun to the head of a liquor store clerk. If you haven’t seen the movie, I strongly suggest it. I probably watch it once a month while I write – I think there are few movies that communicate the human condition in modern life so well.
Full screen recommended.
And it’s true. I tend to think that everyone’s life would be a little better if they had Tyler Durden to be a life coach, to ever so gently coax them to be the best they can be while holding a .357 magnum Colt® Python™ to their head. That seems to be a bit frowned upon, so that leaves my friends with me. See how lucky you are?
In my role as Dr. Durden, I’ve noticed that there’s a problem some people have. It’s being too clever. It’s thinking. How do I know? It’s my problem that I try to compensate for by writing and doing. If I think about doing something, it will never get done. I keep thinking about fixing the banister that broke when we moved into the house a decade ago. It’s never been high on my list, since people falling down stairs is funny, with extra points if they are really old. But thinking about doing something never accomplishes anything.
If I plan to do it, it will get done. Half of my time driving to and from work on a day I’m going to write a post, I’m writing it in my head, selecting jokes, thinking of themes. It’s also spent thinking of how I’m going to connect the idea I want to share with students who might be forced to read this post when Mrs. Grundy tells them to compare and contrast my work with that poseur, Mark Twain, in high school in the year 2248 (that’s when Kirk will be a sophomore).
It may look like I’m driving to work, but I’m really plotting out what I’m going to write about. To be honest, it sometimes takes both lanes to do that. I wish the State Patrol® would be a little more understanding to artists like me.
Thankfully, The Mrs. is. The Mrs. and I had a conversation the other night. It may or may not have involved wine – I’m not telling unless I’ve been subpoenaed and am under oath to a House subcommittee. Actually, it wasn’t so much a conversation as The Mrs. describing to me how she felt about this little project I publish three times a week.
I don’t make any money on this blog, though I’ve made clear since day one that can change at any time. I have plans for several (eventual) ways to do that including adding subliminal messages causing you to want to pay for my health insurance. It looks like it’s already worked for Bernie Sanders.
No, at this point, writing is a hobby. But it’s a hobby that takes over 20 hours a week, sometimes closer to 30 hours. I still have a job, and I won’t stop interacting my family, so most nights I won’t even start writing before 9pm. A lot of that time comes from time I’d normally be selfishly engaged in what you mortals call “sleep”, but a chunk of that time comes directly from time I’d be spending with The Mrs. When I’m writing, I’m simply not available. I’m writing.
The Mrs.: “You know, I would certainly have an issue with the time that you spend writing, if it weren’t important.” There was more to this, where she detailed the number of hours I spend. But I keyed in on the word “Important.”
I was a little surprised by that. “Important?”
The Mrs.: “Yes. I can see that what you’re writing about is important. People need to hear it. So keep doing it.”
Okay, that proves she never reads this stuff. But as I talked more with my friend, the concept of “meaning” came up.
My Friend Who is Really Most Certainly Not Elon Musk: “So, it’s about meaning?”
Suddenly as Wise as the Roman Philosopher Seneca John Wilder: “That’s silly. You don’t go off chasing ‘meaning’ in your life. Pick out something you like to do, and do it. But figure out how to make it important to other people. You like to woodwork, right? You say you never have time to do it. Do it this weekend. Film it. Put it up on YouTube®. I’ll be checking up with you on Monday.”
I asked myself, why is my friend working at all? I think because he feels he’s supposed to work. That having a job is a rule, it’s what he’s always done. The problem that many of us have is that we tend to create rules where there aren’t any rules. I’m not sure why. Perhaps we need to justify what we do. Perhaps it’s like my two important rules for life:
Don’t tell everything you know.
Success? My friend is already successful in most ways a person can be successful. Their life is really good. I told them, directly, “You’ve been given so many gifts. If you don’t make something special of your life, you’re wasting it.”
Interestingly, this applies to you, too. And me. How will your breakfast taste tomorrow?"
"Evil men will burn their nation to rule over its ashes."
- SunTzu
"It's something like a DEI Green New Deal hydrogen bomb - the alarming symptoms of a society gone mad. It was a total systems collapse from the idea of not spending money on irrigation, storage, water, fire prevention and forest management, a viable insurance industry, a DEI hierarchy, you put it all together and it's something like a DEI Green New Deal hydrogen bomb.
Gavin Newsom was fiddling, he's almost Nero Newsom. And this has been something that is just unimaginable. The systems breakdown. And to finish, what we're seeing in California is a state with 40 million people. And yet the people who run it feel that it should return to a 19th century pastoral condition. They are de-civilizing the state and de-industrializing the state and de-farming the state. But they're not telling the 40 million people that their lifestyles will have to revert back to the 19th century, when you had no protection from fire." "You didn't have enough water in California.
You didn't have enough power. You didn't pump oil. So we are deliberately making these decisions not to develop energy, not to develop a timber industry, not to protect the insurance industry, not to protect houses and property. And we're doing it in almost a purely nihilistic fashion.
And L.A. Mayor Karen Bass should resign. She came to the airport back from Africa. She had nothing to say. She was confronted at the airport. Why were you in Africa? Why did you cut the fire department? They cut the fire department by almost $18 million. They gave fire protective equipment to Ukraine's first responders. And she had nothing to say. She had nothing to say because she couldn't say anything.
I don't want to be too pessimistic or bleak tonight, but this is one of the most alarming symptoms of a society gone mad. And if this continues, and if this were to spread to other states, we would become a third world country if we're not in parts already."
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