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Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Chet Raymo, "In the Cave"

"In the Cave"
by Chet Raymo

"I have mentioned here before the ospreys that patrol our beach - or "fish hawks," as they call them here - generally in the afternoon at about the time I take my long walk to the palm point. Magnificent birds with broad wings that glide seemingly effortlessly on the wind. And here's the thing: As often as not I am startled by a bird's shadow before I see the bird itself. That wide-winged shadow, sweeping across the white sand, sometimes across me. That flicker of chill as the osprey blocks the sun.

And generally when it happens I think of Plato's allegory of the cave. Prisoners in a cave are constrained to look only at a blank wall. Somewhere behind them there is a fire, and people come and go in front of the fire, casting shadows on the wall. The shadows are the only reality the prisoners know. They have no idea of the flesh-and-blood people behind them or the blazing fire. The prisoners know only what presents itself to their senses.

Forget for the moment Plato's point, which has to do with the duty of the philosopher to enlighten the benighted. There is a humbling moral to the story for all of us: We can only know what our senses - directly or indirectly - can perceive.

Who, a century ago, could have imagined the universe of the galaxies, or the marvelous dance of the DNA in every cell of our bodies? By cleverly extending our senses - limited as they are - with technological enhancements a whole new universe has opened up to us. Who can imagine what we might know a century from now? Plato's "real" world is like a shadow compared to the universe we inhabit today. Our own universe may be a shadow of a reality vastly more wonderful than anything we have so far dreamed.

Never mind. We live in the world we have. Even the osprey's shadow is magnificent in its own way. I am privileged to lift my eyes and see the feathered bird. And I have an intuition that there is more - much more - yet to see.”

The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, "Book of Hours II, 16"

"Book of Hours II, 16"

"How surely gravity's law,
strong as an ocean current,
takes hold of even the strongest thing
and pulls it toward the heart of the world.
Each thing-
each stone, blossom, child-
is held in place.
Only we, in our arrogance,
push out beyond what we belong to
for some empty freedom.
If we surrendered
to earth's intelligence
we could rise up rooted, like trees.
Instead we entangle ourselves
in knots of our own making
and struggle, lonely and confused.
So, like children, we begin again
to learn from the things,
because they are in God's heart;
they have never left him.
This is what the things can teach us:
to fall,
patiently to trust our heaviness.
Even a bird has to do that
before he can fly."

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

"Don't You See..."

"Can't you see that the courage to risk, to dare, to toss that gold coin up in the air over and over again, win or lose, is what makes humans human? They are fragile, doomed creatures, blinder than worms yet braver than the gods."
- Jennifer Donnelly, "Stepsister"

"Be Kind..."


"Angel: Well, I guess I kinda worked it out. If there's no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters... then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. What we do. Now. Today. I fought for so long, for redemption, for a reward, and finally just to beat the other guy, but I never got it.
Kate Lockley: And now you do?
Angel: Not all of it. All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because, I don't think people should suffer as they do. Because, if there's no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.
Kate Lockley: Yikes. It sounds like you've had an epiphany.
Angel: I keep saying that, but nobody's listening."

"We Are Being Amused And Abused to Death"

"We Are Being Amused And Abused to Death"
By Jim Quinn

“But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s "Brave New World." Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy.” – Neil Postman, "Amusing Ourselves to Death"

"I find myself ruminating about whether there is anything myself or any other average Joe can do to make a difference in this world, controlled by psychopaths, satanists, egomaniacal billionaires, corrupt evil politicians, a cabal of greedy financiers, neocon warmongering globalists, and the propaganda entertainment complex. When a complex entity becomes too large, it becomes inefficient, bureaucratic, corrupt, and uncontrollable.

The corruption, waste, and purposeful use of governmental power to enrich politicians and their billionaire benefactors, to the detriment of the country and the average citizen, has grown to an incomprehensible and uncontainable level. Whether DOGE was a legitimate undertaking by Musk and his tech geniuses to cut wasteful spending and uncover fraud, or nothing more than a PR stunt designed to keep the MAGA army satiated with the appearance of making America great again, it appears to have sunk into the swamps of DC, foiled by the uni-party once again.

But the show must go on, and this past week’s episode of “As the Empire Crumbles” was certainly entertaining, with the most powerful politician in the world hurling insults at the richest man in the world, who responded by accusing the president of pedophilia, while calling for his impeachment and the creation of a new political party. The MAGA acolytes were flabbergasted, as their two heroes, who were going to usher in a new golden era, came to blows and have irreconcilably broken up. Who could have predicted that the two biggest egos on the planet would ultimately clash and dissolve their partnership? Many of the twitterati were convinced it was just more 4D chess, just as they believed the Q bullshit during Trump’s first term.

The world was captivated and enthralled by this trivial social media war, while NATO/Ukraine desperately attempted to initiate WW3 with their attacks on Russian airbases, the Crimean bridge, and Russian passenger trains. Thousands of tweets and hundreds of articles have been written about this Trump/Musk bickerfest, while the world is imploding and we are accelerating headlong towards a global war, initiated by the three stooges running France, U.K. and Germany, and cheered on by the likes of Lindsey Graham and Mike Pompeo.

Trump’s campaign trail promise to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours has proven to be nothing more than his predictable bloviating bullshit. It has become clear he has absolutely no sway over the EU warmongers, or his own Deep State CIA operatives carrying out the attacks on Russia, as his weak and ineffectual efforts to end the conflict start to diminish his presidency from the outset.

The Gaza genocide continues, with American financial and military support, even though Trump promised to end that conflict. Iran continues to resist efforts to stop its nuclear enrichment program. China pretends to be negotiating with Trump on tariffs but is content letting the Soros installed leftist judges across the country place roadblock after roadblock in the way of Trump’s tariff, deportation, and governmental downsizing agenda. Foreign leaders know they can wait out all of Trump’s threats by just slow walking negotiations and hoping the Republicans lose the House in 2026.

China is biding its time until they believe America is sufficiently preoccupied with its own domestic turmoil and its Ukraine quagmire, and they will initiate their inevitable Taiwan takeover. The United States has not won a war in 80 years and is in no position to wage war in Europe and Asia simultaneously. Trump professes to be for peace, but the Deep State actors controlling the government and the globalist billionaires pulling the strings will force him into WW3. That is how Fourth Turnings roll.

With the intense opposition to the Big Beautiful Bill from Musk and key Republicans in the Senate, the next few months could get messy on the fiscal front. Musk is entirely correct, calling the BBB a massive, outrageous, pork-filled disgusting abomination of congressional pork. When the mind numbingly stupid media outlets declare it will add $3 trillion to the national debt over ten years, that means $3 trillion more than the $21 trillion of additional debt already projected. And this assumes no recessions, no financial crisis, no wars, and no fake pandemics. They purposefully give the impression our national debt only goes up by $3 trillion over ten years.

I’m absolutely certain the average prole, distracted by their technological bread and circuses, has no clue our debt is on automatic pilot to increase by nearly 70% over the next ten years. The average person remains trapped in a false comfort zone, designed by their overlords, to keep them satiated with toxic foodstuff, propaganda disguised as entertainment, and believing going deeper and deeper into debt, buying trinkets and baubles makes them wealthy. Until that comfort zone is shattered by the bitter reality of the next financial implosion, the masses will do nothing to try and alter the disastrous course plotted by their overlords.

The GOP passage of $9.4 billion of DOGE cuts is nothing more than a PR stunt to convince the ignorant masses they are actually doing something about the deficit. The dopes making bets on Draft Kings and posting videos on Instagram have no concept about how ridiculously out of control our government has become. They add $6 billion to the national debt every single day, so their $9.4 of “cuts” will be gone in 37 hours. Our deficits are big, but they are not beautiful. Our deficit in FY24 was $1.8 trillion. Through the first 7 months of FY25 the deficit is $1.049 trillion. At the current rate of spending, the deficit will be $2.2 trillion by the end of the fiscal year.

Interest on the national debt is now the second biggest expenditure and has gone from $500 billion during Trump’s first term to $1.3 trillion today. These deficits are clearly unsustainable, and anything which is unsustainable will not be sustained. But the corrupt, captured politicians and insatiably avaricious Wall Street bankers will keep dancing until the music stops. Then they will use their next engineered financial crisis to take more of our money and further restrict our liberties and freedom. CBDCs and social credit scores anyone?

The real reason Trump and the GOP need to pass the big beautiful, bloated pig of a bill is because our Ponzi scheme economy depends upon the never-ending issuance of trillions in debt every year to give the fabricated appearance of stability. This is why the GOP applauds Musk’s low hanging fruit DOGE cost savings and ignores them in their outrageously corpulent budget bill. The truth is any actual reduction in government spending (36% of GDP) would ripple through an economy entirely dependent upon government largess and immediately create a massive recession and probable depression.

Ponzi schemes have to keep growing until they run out of suckers believing the bullshit underlying the Ponzi. This is where those controlling the levers of society (Bernays’ invisible government) utilize their limitless well of propaganda techniques, technological distractions, and mindless entertainment venues to keep the ignorant masses amused, delusional, and living in denial of the reality staring them in the face.

Since the 2008 financial crisis we have been muddling through economically at a 10,000 feet macro level, with periodic crisis episodes (housing collapse, fake pandemic) utilized by the powers that be to issue trillions more debt as the antidote to the initial crisis created by too much debt. At a micro level, the average American has seen a significant decline in their standard of living, as official government reported inflation has eroded 40% of their purchasing power, when in reality they have lost more than 60% of their purchasing power. The reality for the average American prole is debt slavery, either self-imposed to keep up with the Joneses or forced upon them to survive this globalist-imposed death by a thousand cuts economy.

Credit card debt of $1.3 trillion is at an all-time high, up $350 billion (35%) since 2020. The average balance on those credit cards is over $7,000 and the average interest rate on those unpaid balances is over 21%. Student loan debt of $1.8 trillion is at an all-time high, up $100 billion since 2020, with over 25% of these loans in default. Auto loan debt of $1.7 trillion is at an all-time high, up $350 billion (27%) since 2020. The average length of these loans is now 70 months. The borrower is underwater by the fifth year of these loans. Shockingly, credit card and auto loan delinquencies have been soaring in the last year, with credit card delinquencies above 3% for the first time since 2012, and auto loan delinquencies surpassed 8% for the first time since 2010. Does that sound like a consumer on solid ground?

In addition, the housing market is a disaster looking for a trigger. The Wall Street hedge funds (Blackrock) bought up millions of homes, driving prices 140% (Case Siller Index) higher than the 2012 low, while outstanding mortgage debt has risen from the 2012 low of $13 trillion to $21 trillion today. Prices are ridiculously high and mortgage rates of 7% make it virtually impossible for an average working stiff to buy even a small home. The market is frozen.

This is why Trump and his GOP minions must avoid a recession at all costs by continuing to rack up $2 trillion annual deficits. A recession would result in millions of layoffs, which would mean unpaid mortgages, which would mean foreclosures and slashing of home prices, which would trigger housing collapse 2.0, which would turn the recession into a depression, causing a stock market collapse. Now you know why they are desperate to pass this big, beautiful behemoth of bilge.

The Fed is in a precarious position of their own making, with all choices pointing towards disastrous outcomes. They are already sitting on over $1 trillion of unrealized bond losses, while their Wall Street owners sit on another $400 billion of unrealized bond losses. If these entities ever have to realize those losses, our entire banking system would collapse. The Fed has cut rates by 1%, but market rates went up, as their power to mislead market players diminishes.

They have reduced their balance sheet from $9 trillion to $6.7 trillion. The last time they tried to reduce their balance sheet in 2019, the repo market spasmed and they used the Covid cover to drastically print more fiat. Trump is mocking Powell and demanding interest rate cuts. Powell is pretending to be independent, but he is praying for some kind of crisis to again set the printing presses to hyper-speed. I’m sure the ruling oligarchs are hatching a new crisis to expand their wealth, power, and control, while further impoverishing and enslaving the plebs.

It is clear at least to me, we stand on the precipice of an economic conflagration capable of putting the final nail in the coffin of this empire of debt. At the same time there are unrelenting evil forces who are frantically creating the casus-belli to initiate World War III and the massive death and destruction that would produce. The simultaneous commencement of these two events would produce the type of climax expected in the waning years of a Fourth Turning, with a final resolution expected by 2032.

Most people are blissfully unaware of the imminent demise of their comfortable existence, so addicted to their techno-gadgets and mindless social media performance art, they are incapable of critical thought regarding the dystopian world they inhabit.

“People will come to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think”

If you ever needed proof politics is nothing but show business, it is this big, beautiful bill episode of drama, fiction, comedy, and tragedy. Excellence, clarity, and honesty have no part in this absurd psychodrama of lies, accusations, and continued downward spiral of this empire of debt. We know Huxley believed the masses could be sufficiently distracted by their own ego driven pursuits, but I don’t think even he realized how much power the technological “advances” of our times (TV based mass media, the internet, corporate/government controlled social media, Big Pharma) would be used by the ruling elite to control, manipulate, sedate, and scare the ignorant masses into voluntary subservience. Everything we are witnessing and living through is nothing more than a theater production, designed by Bernays’ invisible governing authorities to herd us towards their technological gulag, with the slaughterhouse as the other alternative.

Huxley’s 1932 dystopian vision, which he believed was more likely than Orwell’s 1949 dystopian vision of the future, and reinforced in a letter to Orwell in 1949 shortly before his death, has been the pre-dominant method used by our overlords to rule over, manipulate, and exploit the foibles of the unthinking masses. They have kept their citizens distracted with pleasures, drugged into passivity, taught to feel rather than think in government run indoctrination centers (public schools) and overloaded with so much useless trivial information, they are incapable of distinguishing between good and evil – actually believing their servitude is freedom.

While Huxley’s dystopia continues, the ruling class fears their passive mind control methods aren’t as effective in achieving their great reset agenda, and in need of some Orwellian censorship, disinformation, brute force, government intimidation, harsh mind control, and guaranteeing compliance through fear. Aren’t we lucky to be experiencing the best of both dystopian visions. Those controlling the levers of society have used the school system to create a soulless amalgamation of hedonistic mass consumers; purposeless, apathetic, with muddled brains unable to understand their unintended enslavement to the evil demons running our world and controlling their lives.

Knowing most of what we see on our screens and hear from supposed “experts”, left wing corporate media talking heads, and Fox News bimbos, is gibberish and propaganda, it is hard to distinguish real threats from clickbait, purposeful disinformation, and scare tactics designed to make you do what they want you to do. The precarious financial situation of the country is real. The danger from an AI cage built through a tech-state merger with Palantir to surveil and digitally profile everyone is real.

The threat of the Ukraine-Russia conflict morphing into WW3 is real. The desire by billionaire globalists to introduce a Great ResetGreat Taking, and CBDCs is real. The planned, funded, and executed invasion of our southern border during the Basement Dummy administration by third world dregs, with the sole intention of destroying the social fabric and finances of the country, run by the Soros/Clinton/Obama triumvirate is real.

Even with the dismantling of their USAID insurrection funding source, this week’s festivities in Los Angeles kicked off the summer of civil war. There is nothing real or spontaneous about these riots. Whenever pallets of bricks suddenly show up on streets in city centers, you know Soros and his ilk are behind the organized destruction of that particular city. The brick and bomb throwers are being paid to riot and take photo ops. This will assuredly be rolled out in our other Democrat controlled urban shitholes across the land. The governor of California and the communist mayor of Los Angeles are paid acolytes of Soros, stoking insurrection and should be arrested and thrown into the dungeons of DC, like the grandmothers and patriots who sauntered through the Capitol on January 6.

We find ourselves on the precipice of a financial, social, and military calamity, all driven by the three driving forces of this Fourth Turning: debt, civic decay, global disorder. Anyone not noticing events are intensifying, conflict is expanding, anger is building, and the world is accelerating towards that precipice at breakneck speed, is simply ignorant or their minds are so numbed by their i-gadgets and government school indoctrination, that it’s beyond their comprehension to acknowledge reality.

At this point in history, I do not believe there are enough awakened critical thinking citizens to make a difference during the waning years of this Fourth Turning. We can’t vote our way out. We likely can’t shoot our way out. We can’t buy our way out. When the majority are proud of their ignorance and believe it is superior to actual knowledge, your society is pretty much f*cked.

“What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of ‘being informed’ by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this world almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information –misplace, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information – information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing. I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?” ― Neil Postman, "Amusing Ourselves to Death"

The existing financial, social and political paradigms will have to collapse and be swept away for any real change to occur. The problem is it appears that is exactly what the billionaire globalist elite are trying to trigger. In the aftermath, amidst chaos, financial ruin, civil and global war, social strife, and a political vacuum, they envision establishing an authoritarian global world order, with CBDCs, social credit scores, 15-minute cities, and Big Brother level surveillance. If this vision prevails, Orwell wins the award over Huxley for the most accurate dystopian nightmare.

Our only hope resides in the hubris and arrogance of the ruling class. Once the collapse is underway, its course is unpredictable and unstable. The best laid plans have a way of going awry. This could offer an opportunity for normal rational people to make their stand. If a liberty movement, backed by the 300 million firearms residing in the red states, could re-ignite the brush fires of freedom in the minds of men, maybe we could reset the course of our country. The odds probably aren’t worse than they were in 1776. At this point, all we can do is prepare mentally, physically, and spiritually for the coming storm. Buy supplies, guns and ammo. And remember what your forefathers accomplished with far less. The choice is slavery or freedom."

“It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority,
keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

“The time is near at hand which must determine 
whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.” 

“What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one...

Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those
 who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism... 

Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. 
Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance...

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy...

As Huxley remarked in 'Brave New World Revisited', the civil libertarians and the rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In '1984,' Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In 'Brave New World,' they are controlled by inflicting pleasure...In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us."
Huxley was quite obviously correct...

The Daily "Near You?"

Sand Springs, Oklahoma, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Once Upon A Time, The End"

"Once Upon A Time, The End"
by Martin Zamyatin

"Those that can make you believe absurdities
can make you commit atrocities."
- Voltaire

"The small group of devoted followers gathered around Chicago housewife Dorothy Martin sat in stunned silence as the clock on her suburban living room wall struck midnight on the twentieth of December, 1954…and nothing happened. Many had left jobs and spouses and given away all their money and possessions in order to await the arrival of alien beings from the planet Clarion, who Martin had assured them would descend at that appointed hour, carrying the faithful few off in their flying saucers just before huge floods engulfed the planet Earth. Finally, four hours after their scheduled departure time, Martin broke her silence.

As the group readjusted their bras, belts, and zippers - having been instructed to discard any metal objects which might interfere with the aliens’ telepathic radio transmissions - their tearful host revealed the reason why their intergalactic rescuers had failed to appear: Apparently it had all been only an elaborate test of faith, and the group’s advanced state of enlightenment had saved the entire planet from a watery destruction!

Surprisingly, only one or two of Martin’s followers were unconvinced by this perfectly rational explanation. Among them, however, was social psychologist Leon Festinger, who had secretly infiltrated the group. Festinger would later write about Martin - using the pseudonym of Marian Keech - in his groundbreaking 1958 book, "When Prophecy Fails." (Not surprisingly, Festinger is credited with coining the psychological term ‘cognitive dissonance.’)

Following publication of Festinger’s book, the group predictably collapsed under the weight of public ridicule. Martin fled to Peru to warn the clueless natives about the imminent re-emergence of Atlantis, before later resurfacing in Arizona, where she joined crackpot L. Ron Hubbard’s nascent pseudoscientific movement, Scientology.

It seems that for as long as people have inhabited the world, they have anticipated its imminent demise. (In fact, the oldest known apocalyptic prediction is depicted on Assyrian tablets from 2800 BC.) In what may be the earliest example in European folklore, a Frankish villager wandered off into the forest in 591, only to be accosted by a swarm of ravenous flies. Overwhelmed, the poor fellow completely lost his mind and returned to his village clothed in animal pelts, claiming he was Jesus Christ, sent to gather his flock before the coming Rapture. (Perhaps resenting the competition, a local bishop hired a gang of thugs to capture the Lord of the Flies, who they rapturously hacked into little bits.)

The failure of one apocalyptic prophecy not only failed to deter its devoted followers but in fact spawned several entirely new religions. When the world failed to end as predicted in the ‘Great Disappointment’ of 1843-44, Massachusetts preacher William Miller’s tens of thousands of followers splintered off to found the Seventh Day Adventists, as well as the obnoxious doorknockers known as Jehovah’s Witnesses. When the next fateful year of 1874 passed without the desired fireworks, the latter’s charismatic founder, Charles Taze Russell, explained that Jesus had indeed returned, but was invisible to all except the truly devout. (Predictably, few dared admit to being lacking in the requisite level of faith.)

The founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, had declared way back in 1832 that 1890 would be the year of Jesus’s long awaited return engagement. (Later jailed for fraud, Smith somehow failed to predict his own deliverance by an angry mob at age 39.) Russell revised the fateful year to 1881…then 1914…and finally, 1918. (The latter dates spanned World War I and the Spanish Flu epidemic, events that while apocalyptic for many, fell short of being world ending.)

Our own time has seen the horrors of the Peoples Temple - in which 914 adults and children committed suicide in the jungles of Guyana in 1978; the Branch Davidians, an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventists - 75 of whom died in the FBI standoff at Waco in 1993; Aum Shinri Kyo - whose poison gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1994-95 left 19 innocent people dead; and - neither least nor unfortunately, last - Heaven’s Gate, 39 of whose members committed suicide in 1996, fully expecting (like Dorothy Martin) their spirits to be carried away by aliens hiding in the wake of an approaching comet.

It was probably no coincidence that all of these cults were acting in anticipation of an impending Bible-inspired Day of Judgement. One is tempted to blame these kinds of incidents on the delusions of a small minority of misguided religious fanatics, except that millions of people alive today are expecting an imminent Biblical apocalypse. In a 2012 global poll, fully one out of 7 people said they thought the world would end during their lifetime - and rather ominously, Americans topped the list of doomsayers at 22%. Since their government has the means to fulfil their death wish many times over, one can only hope their gloomy prediction won’t one day become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just call it a bedtime story for humanity."

"Man's Nature..."

"Man has one name, and many more than two natures. 
But the essential two are these:
that he shall strive to impose order on chaos, 
and that he shall strive to take advantage of chaos…
A third element of man's nature is this: 
that he shall not understand what he is doing."
- John Brunner

"Heartless Libertarians"

Argentine President and “heartless libertarian,” Javier Milei, addresses
 the crowd at the Madrid Economic Forum on Sunday, June 8, 2025.
"Heartless Libertarians"
by Joel Bowman

“I believe that the State is a criminal association and that taxes are theft.”
~ Javier Milei at the Madrid Economic Forum, June 2025

Ohrid, Macedonia - "Caesar and the Optimates... Robespierre and the Jacobins... Putin and the Oligarchs...There is nothing new about power and money falling out of favor. The case of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and the world’s most powerful man, Donald Trump, is but the latest such divorce... but it will not be the last. And now that words have been said which cannot be taken back... feelings have been hurt and egos bruised... it’s time to look forward.

Our advice to Mr. Musk – unsought and gratuitous – is to take his dough and head south of the border... all the way down to the End of the World. “Ancapistan,” as some (we) have taken to calling Argentina, is ground zero for free markets... and getting freer by the day. Musk and his money are sure to be treated well, or at least fairly.

For readers just joining us, Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, is a rare breed indeed. Alone among world leaders, he understands what his contemporaries either cannot comprehend or choose to willfully ignore: when it comes to politics and its grubby practitioners, less is always more. It is not better politics, in other words... or “3D governmental chess”... but rather less government and more freedom, less regulation and more private transactions, less bureaucracy and public serpents, and more free minds and free people.

The Hard Truth - Since coming to office a year and a half ago, Milei’s administration has taken a giant chainsaw to the bloated leviathan that is the Argentine government... a writhing political apparatus that had spent the previous 75+ years stifling innovation, crushing commerce, destroying the currency and generally grinding its citizens into poverty.

No more, said Sr. Milei, who began his tenure in the Casa Rosada with a hard truth, telling supporters and detractors alike: “No hay plata” (there is no money). Recognizing this rather inconvenient fact, something that leaders from DC to London, Ottawa to Canberra, Berlin to Brussels and beyond appear incapable of grasping, Milei aggressively pursued and ultimately implemented a “zero-deficit” agenda... the kind that Mr. Trump himself was passionately advocating not so very long ago. Here’s the self-styled “King of Debt,” in his very own words...



Mr. Trump was right, of course, and millions of voters agreed... sending him to the nation’s capital to fulfill his promises to “drain the swamp” and rein in the country’s reckless spending. (The US national debt is set to surpass the $37 trillion mark in a few short months... while the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects it will hit $43 trillion by the 2029 budget showdown.)

What, then, are those very same voters to make of the following, from USA Today: "Trump agrees with longtime rival Elizabeth Warren on need to abolish the cap on US debt.

WASHINGTON – "President Donald Trump announced he agrees with a longtime antagonist, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, on the need to abolish the cap on the country’s borrowing. The announcement marked a thaw in years-long criticism that Trump and Warren of Massachusetts have hurled at each other. The rare consensus came as Congress faces the need to raise the country's debt limit, a hurdle to approving an 1,100-page package of Trump's priorities for tax cuts, spending cuts, and border security.

No longer outraged with simply extending the debt ceiling... President Trump now wishes to abolish it altogether! Here he is again, on Truth Social: "I am very pleased to announce that, after all of these years, I agree with Senator Elizabeth Warren on SOMETHING. The Debt Limit should be entirely scrapped to prevent an Economic catastrophe." His words, dear reader. Not ours.

Poca-Muskus: Whatever the outcome of this big top fiasco, none could claim the circus is not at least entertaining. Who would have thought, even two weeks ago, that we’d be witnessing a drama unfold in which Musk is out... and Pocahontas is in? Strange bedfellows, indeed. Whether this is just a bit of post-breakup political promiscuity on Trump’s part... or more “3D chess,” we wait to find out...

Meanwhile, at the other End of the World, Milei continues delivering a master class in promises kept. Here he was, speaking at the Madrid Economic Forum in Spain last week: “We took a zero-deficit policy. That is, we decided that in Argentina, there is no more fiscal deficit. Argentina is one of the five countries in the world that has no deficit in the financial line. We did it after 123 years, where nobody else did it. And we succeeded within the first month of the administration.

And so, by the middle of last year, stage two of the program was concluded, that was the termination of money issuance [money printing]. Quasi-fiscal deficit was ended in Argentina. The Central Bank’s balance sheet was repaired. And the amount of money since has been fixed.

One year later, the poverty fell to 35% [from 57%], meaning the ‘heartless libertarians,’ those of us who ‘have no heart,’ those of us who ‘have no empathy,’ who do ‘no deal with the poor,’ we lowered poverty by 22%. That is, we got 10 million people out of poverty. Boy do freedom ideas work well for all, and especially for those who have less.”

Sh*t Politicians: By taking from the takers (the political ‘caste’) and giving back to the makers (citizens in the private sector), Milei’s libertarian economy is roaring to life. During the first quarter of this year alone, Argentina’s GDP expanded at an annualized rate of 6%. And in the second quarter, it has accelerated, growing at a rate of 8%.

But what about all the fear and scaremongering in the media? The blind assertions that cutting government would result in chaos and “anarchy”? Again, from Milei’s address in Madrid...“Give no credit to sh*t politicians who say that cutting leads to recession. We've made a cut of 15% of GDP. We made the cuts in the parasite, meaning the public sector. When you cut the public sector, the private sector expands itself.

Today, our popularity levels are at levels higher than when we began. And if you take it from international consultants, it’s even much higher. Meaning, cutting does not result in a loss of popularity. If the cuts fall on the political caste, popularity grows, because it means giving more resources back to the people. We had very ambitious goals. They said they were impossible to achieve. And yet, today, after a year and a half, we have fulfilled all of our campaign goals.”

Month after month... quarter after quarter... year after year... the results are becoming impossible to ignore. Government is not the solution, it is the problem. The future is free markets, free minds and free people... and for many, including the poorest among us, it cannot come too soon. Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World..."

Dan, I Allegedly, "Did You Know? Crazy Facts You Won’t Believe"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly AM 6/10/25
"Did You Know? 
Crazy Facts You Won’t Believe"
"Stick around as I talk about crazy laws, fun animal facts, skyrocketing pasta prices, and how people are rethinking their finances during these uncertain times. Oh, and did you know ketchup was once used as medicine? Trust me, you don’t want to miss this! Did you know a cow can legally officiate a wedding in Colorado?! That’s right, and it’s just one of the wild, unbelievable facts I’m sharing in this video! From dogs as wedding witnesses to metallic rain on Venus and even dolphins having names for each other – get ready for some jaw-dropping trivia you never knew you needed. Plus, I’ll dive into real-life stories about rising costs, parking ticket nightmares, and the insane housing market chaos here in Southern California."
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"US Military Preparing Cities for WW3!?"

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Prepper News, AM 6/10/25
"US Military Preparing Cities for WW3!?"
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"How It Really Is"

 

Adventures With Danno, "Massive Price Increases At Costco"

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Adventures With Danno, AM 6/10/25
"Massive Price Increases At Costco"
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"Do You Believe..."

“Do you believe,’ said Candide, ‘that men have always massacred each other as they do today, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools?”
“Do you believe,” said Martin, “that hawks have always eaten pigeons when they have found them?”
- Voltaire
o
“Murderers are not monsters, they're men.
And that's the most frightening thing about them.”
- Alice Sebold, "The Lovely Bones"

"The Last Days of Gaza - The Last Piece"

"The Last Days of Gaza - The Last Piece"
 - by Mr. Fish

"This is the end. The final blood-soaked chapter of the genocide. It will be over soon. Weeks. At most. Two million people are camped out amongst the rubble or in the open air. Dozens are killed and wounded daily from Israeli shells, missiles, drones, bombs and bullets. They lack clean water, medicine and food. They have reached a point of collapse. Sick. Injured. Terrified. Humiliated. Abandoned. Destitute. Starving. Hopeless.

In the last pages of this horror story, Israel is sadistically baiting starving Palestinians with promises of food, luring them to the narrow and congested nine-mile ribbon of land that borders Egypt. Israel and its cynically named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), allegedly funded by Israel’s Ministry of Defense and the Mossad, is weaponizing starvation. It is enticing Palestinians to southern Gaza the way the Nazis enticed starving Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto to board trains to the death camps. The goal is not to feed the Palestinians. No one seriously argues there is enough food or aid hubs. The goal is to cram Palestinians into heavily guarded compounds and deport them.
Members of a private US security company, contracted by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private US-backed aid group which the UN refuses to work with over neutrality concerns, direct displaced Palestinians as they gather to receive relief supplies at a distribution centre in the central Gaza Strip on June 8, 2025, as smoke bombs are fired by Israeli troops. (Photo by Eyad via Getty Images)

What comes next? I long ago stopped trying to predict the future. Fate has a way of surprising us. But there will be a final humanitarian explosion in Gaza’s human slaughterhouse. We see it with the surging crowds of Palestinians fighting to get a food parcel, which has resulted in Israeli and U.S. private contractors shooting dead at least 130 and wounding over seven hundred others in the first eight days of aid distribution. We see it with Benjamin Netanyahu’s arming ISIS-linked gangs in Gaza that loot food supplies. Israel, which has eliminated hundreds of employees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), doctors, journalists, civil servants and police in targeted assassinations, has orchestrated the implosion of civil society.

I suspect Israel will facilitate a breach in the fence along the Egyptian border. Desperate Palestinians will stampede into the Egyptian Sinai. Maybe it will end some other way. But it will end soon. There is not much more Palestinians can take.

We - full participants in this genocide - will have achieved our demented goal of emptying Gaza and expanding Greater Israel. We will bring down the curtain on the live-streamed genocide. We will have mocked the ubiquitous university programs of Holocaust studies, designed, it turns out, not to equip us to end genocides, but deify Israel as an eternal victim licensed to carry out mass slaughter. The mantra of never again is a joke. The understanding that when we have the capacity to halt genocide and we do not, we are culpable, does not apply to us. Genocide is public policy. Endorsed and sustained by our two ruling parties.

There is nothing left to say. Maybe that is the point. To render us speechless. Who does not feel paralyzed? And maybe, that too, is the point. To paralyze us. Who is not traumatized? And maybe that too was planned. Nothing we do, it seems, can halt the killing. We feel defenseless. We feel helpless. Genocide as spectacle.

I have stopped looking at the images. The rows of little shrouded bodies. The decapitated men and women. Families burned alive in their tents. The children who have lost limbs or are paralyzed. The chalky death masks of those pulled from under the rubble. The wails of grief. The emaciated faces. I can’t.

This genocide will haunt us. It will echo down history with the force of a tsunami. It will divide us forever. There is no going back. And how will we remember? By not remembering.

Once it is over, all those who supported it, all those who ignored it, all those who did nothing, will rewrite history, including their personal history. It was hard to find anyone who admitted to being a Nazi in post-war Germany, or a member of the Klu Klux Klan once segregation in the southern United States ended. A nation of innocents. Victims even. It will be the same. We like to think we would have saved Anne Frank. The truth is different. The truth is, crippled by fear, nearly all of us will only save ourselves, even at the expense of others. But that is a truth that is hard to face. That is the real lesson of the Holocaust. Better it be erased.

In his book “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” Omar El Akkad writes: "Should a drone vaporize some nameless soul on the other side of the planet, who among us wants to make a fuss? What if it turns out they were a terrorist? What if the default accusation proves true, and we by implication be labeled terrorist sympathizers, ostracized, yelled at? It is generally the case that people are most zealously motivated by the worst plausible thing that could happen to them. For some, the worst plausible thing might be the ending of their bloodline in a missile strike. Their entire lives turned to rubble and all of it preemptively justified in the name of fighting terrorists who are terrorists by default on account of having been killed. For others, the worst plausible thing is being yelled at." You can see my interview with El Akkad here.

You cannot decimate a people, carry out saturation bombing over 20 months to obliterate their homes, villages and cities, massacre tens of thousands of innocent people, set up a siege to ensure mass starvation, drive them from land where they have lived for centuries and not expect blowback. The genocide will end. The response to the reign of state terror will begin. If you think it won’t you know nothing about human nature or history. The killing of two Israeli diplomats in Washington and the attack against supporters of Israel at a protest in Boulder, Colorado, are only the start.

Chaim Engel, who took part in the uprising at the Nazis’ Sobibor death camp in Poland, described how, armed with a knife, he attacked a guard in the camp. “It’s not a decision,” Engel explained years later. “You just react, instinctively you react to that, and I figured, ‘Let us to do, and go and do it.’ And I went. I went with the man in the office and we killed this German. With every jab, I said, ‘That is for my father, for my mother, for all these people, all the Jews you killed.’”

Does anyone expect Palestinians to act differently? How are they to react when Europe and the United States, who hold themselves up as the vanguards of civilization, backed a genocide that butchered their parents, their children, their communities, occupied their land and blasted their cities and homes into rubble? How can they not hate those who did this to them?

What message has this genocide imparted not only to Palestinians, but to all in the Global South? It is unequivocal. You do not matter. Humanitarian law does not apply to you. We do not care about your suffering, the murder of your children. You are vermin. You are worthless. You deserve to be killed, starved and dispossessed. You should be erased from the face of the earth.

“To preserve the values of the civilized world, it is necessary to set fire to a library,” El Akkad writes: "To blow up a mosque. To incinerate olive trees. To dress up in the lingerie of women who fled and then take pictures. To level universities. To loot jewelry, art, food. Banks. To arrest children for picking vegetables. To shoot children for throwing stones. To parade the captured in their underwear. To break a man’s teeth and shove a toilet brush in his mouth. To let combat dogs loose on a man with Down syndrome and then leave him to die. Otherwise, the uncivilized world might win.

There are people I have known for years who I will never speak to again. They know what is happening. Who does not know? They will not risk alienating their colleagues, being smeared as an antisemite, jeopardizing their status, being reprimanded or losing their jobs. They do not risk death, the way Palestinians do. They risk tarnishing the pathetic monuments of status and wealth they spent their lives constructing. Idols. They bow down before these idols. They worship these idols. They are enslaved by them. At the feet of these idols lie tens of thousands of murdered Palestinians."

There are no words strong enough to condemn YOU, Americans, for allowing and supporting this horror, for paying for every single bullet, rifle, tank, artillery piece, fighter bomber jet. 80,000 known civilians have been slaughtered, including 19,000 CHILDREN, and the Arab countries and the whole world watches it and does nothing! That blood's on YOUR hands too, to our eternal shame and disgrace! God damn them all to Hell, which is not hot enough, for eternity, which is not long enough... - CP