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Thursday, July 31, 2025

Bill Bonner, "The Information Problem"

"The Information Problem"
by Bill Bonner

"History will be kind to me. For I intend to write it."
- Winston Churchill

Eugenie les Bains, France - ‘It certainly has a 1999 feel to it,’ we said to no one. Working alone in our little octagonal office in rural France, ‘no one’ is our assistant...our confidante...our right hand man. As sharp as a tack. As empty-headed as a cabinet member.

We look back. As the 21st century gestated, the US stock market became more and more absurd. Companies with no earnings, no business plans, no employees, and no real hope were suddenly worth millions of dollars. These were ‘dot.coms,’ the enterprises - often created by kids who recently dropped out of college - that would remake the whole world based on a new model. The new model depended on an idea - that material progress was the result of “information.”

‘What is the difference between Manhattan and Mozambique?’ asked the callow cognoscenti. Mozambique has rich farmland. Beautiful beaches. Mineral wealth. Agricultural wealth. And with 33 million people, a substantial human wealth too.

Manhattan, meanwhile, has no lush fields...no pristine beaches...no active mines and only 1.6 million people. But these Manhattanites are far richer, with a total GDP of about $1 trillion compared to a total GDP for Mozambique of only about $22 billion.

Why the difference? They share the same air...the same 24-hour day...the same laws of the universe. But one group knows how to take these resources and work them up into skyscrapers and YouTube. The other doesn’t.

‘Information is the key,’ they said. They claimed to understand how the information revolution wrought by the internet had changed everything. ‘And now,’ they said back in 1999, ‘the folks in Mozambique have access to all the facts and figures regularly used by the Manhattanites to make money, it is just a matter of time until they put up their own Rockefeller Center and begin dining at their own Tribeca Grill.’

Of course, they were wrong. It’s been a quarter of a century since the internet was fully built out. Mozambique is still poor. Manhattan is still rich. And the internet is a mess - filled with lies, distortions and time wasters. For every page of the periodic table, there are thousands of pages of fake news, claptrap science, and kitten videos. In short, the internet mirrors real life itself - with a fool on every corner and a jackass in every high public office.

But wait. Hallelujah. Now we have AI! Finally, the AI companies - Nvidia in the lead - are at the top of the stock charts, just as the dot coms were 25 years ago. They offer to solve the problem created by the internet...‘too much info.’ Instead of sorting through thousands of pages ourselves...trying to separate the beer from the foam...we have AI to do it for us.

Test it yourself. Just go to ChatGPT or Musk’s Grok 3. Ask it to cut through the crap and give you a straight answer. Are stocks going up or down? Will tariffs really help the US economy? Is Israel really murdering women and children?

In every case, you will get a fairly intelligent mush-mouth answer. And talk about time wasters! Using AI tools, you can not only disperse info (as on the internet), you can create it...mountains of it...sometimes true, sometimes false...sometimes helpful, sometimes not.

Want to see a video of Donald Trump driving his golf cart off a cliff? How about a video of ‘Gone With the Wind’...but with the Confederate States victorious? True history; fake history? You can rewrite history to suit any crackpot theory you come up with. Yes, dear reader…AI will make the ‘information problem’ worse, not better.And what an opportunity for the elite. All over the world, mainstream governments are finding it harder and harder to justify themselves.

Populations are declining. Social welfare systems — set up like Ponzi schemes — are going broke. Economies are trussed up by far-reaching regulations, taxes, sanctions, inflation, central planning, and wasteful government programs. Debt grows by the trillions. The rich get richer than ever. But the typical citizen finds it harder and harder to get ahead. Thanks to tariffs, deficits, and the Big, Beautiful Budget Abomination we’re on course for a national debt of $150 trillion by mid-century.

Of course, the debt bubble will blow up long before that. In the meantime, AI will be useful. It will help keep the voters confused and docile, so the parasitic elite remain in control. CarnegieEndowment.org: "AI: The New Face of Propaganda." On June 23, 2025, WITNESS received a WhatsApp video showing clouds of smoke billowing from Evin prison in Tajrish, Iran. Filmed from a nearby apartment, the communication carried a stark message: “They are trying to open Evin.” The infamous prison - a site of torture, killing, and confinement of dissidents, journalists, and activists - had been bombed. Israeli officials deemed the strike “symbolic,” a gesture against the Islamic Republic’s repression. For many Iranians, shattering the gates of Evin seemed to be a resonant symbol of hope for the freedom of the nation’s best and brightest long held behind its walls.

On social media, Israel tried to capitalize on this development. Its foreign minister posted another clip showing Evin’s entrance gates being blown apart in an apparent surgical strike. He boasted on X (formerly Twitter), “¡Viva la libertad, carajo!” (“Long live freedom, damn it!”). But unlike the first video, the Israeli footage was likely fake.

Forensic analysis of the Israeli clip suggests that it was likely created using artificial intelligence (AI). For example, it contained still images of the Evin gates found in an article published in 2021; these images could have been manipulated by AI tools. These findings were corroborated by the Deepfakes Rapid Response Force, a rapid response mechanism for evaluating deceptive AI run globally by WITNESS. Yes, AI will be a useful tool. Not necessarily a beneficial one."

"Russian McDonald’s New Menu! Russia’s Cutest Burger?"

Full screen recommended.
Lisa With Love, 7/30/25
"Russian McDonald’s New Menu!
 Russia’s Cutest Burger?"
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Full screen recommended.
Window To Moscow, 7/30/25
"Hot Summer in Moscow 2025! 
Real Life Inside Russia Capital City"
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Jeremiah Babe, "WTF? $7,000 To Rent A Haul To Move To Alabama"

Jeremiah Babe, 7/30/25
"WTF? $7,000 To Rent A Haul To Move To Alabama"
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Dan I Allegedly, "Don’t Get Ripped Off Again! Avoid These Dirty Tricks!"

Full screen recommended.
Dan I Allegedly, AM 7/30/25
"Don’t Get Ripped Off Again! 
Avoid These Dirty Tricks!"
"Mechanic scams are everywhere, but you don’t have to be a victim! In this video, I’m exposing shady practices from dealerships and mechanics who try to rip you off. From unnecessary $7,000 airbag repairs to bogus diagnostics, you’ll hear real stories and tips to avoid being scammed. Learn how a $25 scanner or a trusted local mechanic can save you thousands! Plus, we’re talking about the importance of having honest professionals in your life, whether it’s a mechanic, accountant, or attorney. Stay informed and protect yourself from getting ripped off in the auto industry and beyond."
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Adventures With Danno, "Shocking Prices at Kroger"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, AM 7/30/25
"Shocking Prices at Kroger"
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Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Adventures With Danno, "Grocery Prices Are Skyrocketing!"

Adventures With Danno, PM 7/30/25
"Grocery Prices Are Skyrocketing!"
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"Necessary Losses: The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go"

"Necessary Losses: 
The Life-Shaping Art of Letting Go"
by Maria Popova

“The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” Elizabeth Bishop wrote in one of the great masterpieces of poetry. “Every mortal loss is an Immortal Gain,” William Blake wrote two centuries before her in his beautiful letter to a bereaved father.

We dream of immortality because we are creatures made of loss - the death of the individual is what ensured the survival of the species along the evolutionary vector of adaptation - and made for loss: All of our creativity, all of our compulsive productivity, all of our poems and our space telescopes, are but a coping mechanism for our mortality, for the elemental knowledge that we will lose everything and everyone we cherish as we inevitably return our borrowed stardust to the universe.

And yet the measure of life, the meaning of it, may be precisely what we make of our losses - how we turn the dust of disappointment and dissolution into clay for creation and self-creation, how we make of loss a reason to love more fully and live more deeply.

That is what Judith Viorst explores in her 1987 consolation of a book "Necessary Losses" (public library) - an inquiry into the profound and far-reaching relationship between our losses and our gains, revealing renunciation as a fulcrum of growth. She paints the vast landscape of loss upon which life plays out:

"When we think of loss we think of the loss, through death, of people we love. But loss is a far more encompassing theme in our life. For we lose not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. And our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our conscious and unconscious losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety - and the loss of our own younger self, the self that thought it always would be unwrinkled and invulnerable and immortal.
[…]
These necessary losses… we confront when we are confronted by the inescapable fact… that we are essentially out here on our own; that we will have to accept - in other people and ourselves - the mingling of love with hate, of the good with the bad;… that there are flaws in every human connection; that our status on this planet is implacably impermanent; and that we are utterly powerless to offer ourselves or those we love protection - protection from danger and pain, from the in-roads of time, from the coming of age, from the coming of death; protection from our necessary losses."

These losses are a part of life - universal, unavoidable, inexorable. And these losses are necessary because we grow by losing and leaving and letting go. As a sculpture is shaped by what is chiseled off from the block of stone, so too are we shaped by what we lose - by choice, with all the complexities and difficulties of letting go, or by the scythe of chance, which takes away as impartially as it gives. Viorst writes:

"The road to human development is paved with renunciation. Throughout our life we grow by giving up. We give up some of our deepest attachments to others. We give up certain cherished parts of ourselves. We must confront, in the dreams we dream, as well as in our intimate relationships, all that we never will have and never will be. Passionate investment leaves us vulnerable to loss. And sometimes, no matter how clever we are, we must lose… It is only through our losses that we become fully developed human beings."

We enter the realm of loss the moment the umbilical cord is cut to sever what Viorst calls the “blurred-boundary bliss of mother-child oneness” - the primal loss that sets off the ongoing task of becoming ourselves. From this origin point, she traces the lifelong vector of losses and gains:

"Exchanging the illusion of absolute shelter and absolute safety for the triumphant anxieties of standing alone… we become a moral, responsible, adult self, discovering - within the limitations imposed by necessity - our freedoms and choices. And in giving up our impossible expectations, we become a lovingly connected self, renouncing ideal visions of perfect friendship, marriage, children, family life for the sweet imperfections of all-too-human relationships. And in confronting the many losses that are brought by time and death, we become a mourning and adapting self, finding at every stage - until we draw our final breath - opportunities for creative transformations."

In a sentiment the poet Mark Doty would echo - “you need to both remember where love leads and love anyway,” he wrote in his beautiful reckoning with love and loss - she adds: "We cannot deeply love anything without becoming vulnerable to loss. And we cannot become separate people, responsible people, connected people, reflective people without some losing and leaving and letting go."

Complement Necessary Losses, which goes on to explore the many regions of loss in human life and how they can become frontiers of growth, with Hannah Arendt on learning how to live with the fundamental fear of loss, Thoreau on living through a loss, and Alan Watts on learning not to think of gain and loss, then explore two uncommon lenses on loss: fractals and chlorophyll."

Musical Interlude: Juzzie Smith, "Bluesberry Jam"

One-man-band extraordinaire!
Juzzie Smith, "Bluesberry Jam"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"To some, it looks like a giant chicken running across the sky. To others, it looks like a gaseous nebula where star formation takes place. Cataloged as IC 2944, the Running Chicken Nebula spans about 100 light years and lies about 6,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Centaur (Centaurus).
The featured image, shown in scientifically assigned colors, was captured recently in a 12-hour exposure. The star cluster Collinder 249 is visible embedded in the nebula's glowing gas. Although difficult to discern here, several dark molecular clouds with distinct shapes can be found inside the nebula."

The Poet: Joy Harjo, “Remember”

“Remember”

“Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is. I met her
in a bar once in Iowa City.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe. I heard her singing Kiowa war
dance songs at the corner of Fourth and Central once.
Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.
Remember that you are this universe and that this universe is you.
Remember that all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember that language comes from this.
Remember the dance that language is, that life is.
Remember.”

- Joy Harjo,
“How We Become Human”

"Helpless People"

"Helpless People"
“Almost all Americans have had an intense school experience which occupied their entire youth, an experience during which they were drilled thoroughly in the culture and economy of the well-schooled greater society, in which individuals have been rendered helpless to do much of anything except watch television or punch buttons on a keypad.

Before you begin to blame the childish for being that way and join the chorus of those defending the general imprisonment of adults and the schooling by force of children because there isn’t any other way to handle the mob, you want to at least consider the possibility that we’ve been trained in childishness and helplessness for a reason. And that reason is that helpless people are easy to manage.

Helpless people can be counted upon to act as their own jailers because they are so inadequate to complex reality they are afraid of new experience. They’re like animals whose spirits have been broken. Helpless people take orders well, they don’t have minds of their own, they are predictable, they won’t surprise corporations or governments with resistance to the newest product craze, the newest genetic patent - or by armed revolution. Helpless people can be counted on to despise independent citizens and hence they act as a fifth column in opposition to social change in the direction of personal sovereignty.”
- John Taylor Gatto,
o
Big Brother & The Holding Company, 
"Heartache People"

The Daily "Near You?"

New Braunfels, Texas, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Never..."

“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest - forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.”
 - Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
Freely download "The Origins of Totalitarianism" here:

"The End of History"

"The End of History"
A somewhat exaggerated obituary...
by Joel Bowman

“History is a cyclic poem written by time upon the memories of man.”
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

"Remember when history ended, dear reader? The year was 1992. "Under the Bridge" and "Tears in Heaven" were playing on the FM radio. The Cold War, which had promised such a “Bang!” had ended with barely a whimper. And American philosopher, Francis Fukuyama, had just published a daring book: "The End of History and the Last Man."

In light of the great Soviet collapse, Mr. Fukuyama was of the opinion that The West had not simply triumphed over The Rest, but that the world had finally reached “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

In other words, whatever was to be done in the fickle and turbulent realm of politics had, by the grand old year 1992, already been done. Here is Mr. Fukuyama, joining a long line of intellectuals (including Marx) to have become ensnared in the labyrinth of Hegel’s dialectical materialism: “Both Hegel and Marx believed that the evolution of human societies was not open-ended, but would end when mankind had achieved a form of society that satisfied its deepest and most fundamental longings. Both thinkers thus posited an "end of history": for Hegel this was the liberal state, while for Marx it was a communist society. This did not mean that the natural cycle of birth, life, and death would end, that important events would no longer happen, or that newspapers reporting them would cease to be published. It meant, rather, that there would be no further progress in the development of underlying principles and institutions, because all of the really big questions had been settled.” ~ Francis Fukuyama

But a curious thing happened on the way to the end of history; namely... history did not end. The political pendulum did not come to a full stop. Stubbornly, insolently, it kept right on a-swingin’...

Time and Again: Indeed, the ‘90s were a time of great political upheaval and experimentation, not all of it leading to the holy grail of western liberal democracy, as imagined by Mr. Fukuyama.

In the power vacuum created by the collapse of the Soviet Empire, Gorbachev’s perestroika (a program of political and economic “restructuring”) delivered the Russian people from the brutality of communism… into the unloving embrace of a corrupted oligarchy…and then to a kind of faux democracy that has seen the same man at the helm for a quarter of a century. (After this year’s “election,” Vladimir Putin became the longest-serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953.)

As for the Americans, co-belligerents in the aforementioned ideological conflict, they continued their own long march…headlong toward a special brand of political circuses and economic madness. In a country where any boy, girl or two-spirit animal might grow up to be president, the nation that enthusiastically sent its soldiers abroad to “make the world safe for democracy” offered up a Bush, followed by a Clinton (twice), followed by another Bush (twice), then very nearly another Clinton. Two decades of political power, held in the hands of two dynastic families.

Meanwhile, beneath fierce power struggles at the executive level, America’s vast and menacing security state – about which General Eisenhower famously warned in his farewell address in ‘61, at the height of the Cold War – continued its inexorable mission creep into the lives and private affairs of the good citizens of The Republic.

The Scourge of War: Neither the defeated Soviets nor the victorious Americans appeared willing to take the path Fukuyama had so carefully laid out for them. The End of History would have to wait...

Ah, but what about Europe, some venture to ask? Indeed, Mr. Fukuyama himself preferred the transnational euro-model to the comparatively unipolar American offering. Might not the “post-historic” world manifest itself over on the continent, where a common “Esperanto” currency – in the form of the euro – would facilitate free trade and citizens of all backgrounds, creeds and cultures would walk arm in arm from the Seine to the Danube, the Bay of Biscay to the shores of the Black Sea?

“I believe that the European Union more accurately reflects what the world will look like at the end of history than the contemporary United States,” declared Fukuyama at the time, in brave defense of his curious, end-of-days timeline. The EU’s attempt to transcend sovereignty and traditional power politics by establishing a transnational rule of law is much more in line with a ‘post-historical’ world than the Americans’ continuing belief in God, national sovereignty, and their military.”

Alas, not unlike the Ruskies and the Yankees before them, the Europeans would go on to disappoint Mr. Fukuyama, too. After a relatively sanguine start to the new millennium, the Eurozone spent most of the ensuing two decades descending gradually into first economic, then political, and now widespread cultural disaster. Today, protests from one end of the continent to the other – Finland to Greece, the Netherlands to France, Poland to Ireland and plenty more between – underscore real discord between neighbors in the great eurocrat utopia. Not to mention the scourge of war, which threatens to drag the entire continent, if not the whole western world, into yet another great conflagration.

Under the Bridge: And so, almost a quarter of a century after Mr. Fukuyama stopped the clock on History, it plods along regardless. Evidently, something about the political spirit of mankind just doesn’t want to sit still. In the year 2025, the world is faced with a plethora of political challenges, for which many of the seeds were sown in the dimming twilight of the last century.

That is to say, the ideological struggle continues against the backdrop of protests, uprisings, springs, occupations, revolutions and, over the weekend, here in the United States of America, attempted assassinations. (How close the Republic was to having its own Franz Ferdinand moment, we may never know...)

When Mr. Fukuyama stopped the clocks back in 1992, America’s debt clock was just ticking past $3 trillion. As we type these very words, that figure is fast approaching $37 trillion, a rather brassy 785 percent increase. According to the latest estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, it is set to top $60 trillion within the next decade. And the rate of increase is only accelerating…

In its report the CBO revised its estimate of the budget deficit for 2024 from $1.6 trillion to $1.8 trillion - an increase of more than 20 percent.

As a proportion of annual GDP, the debt will rise from almost 100 percent this financial year to 122 percent in 2034, meaning that the debt is growing at a much faster rate than real economic output. Interest rate costs to service the debt, now approaching $1 trillion, will rise to $1.7 trillion by 2034, when it will become the single largest line item on the federal budget.

Which brings us back to the lessons of history…Will the United States have to go “Full Argentina” before the pendulum swings back the other way, to sanity, fiscal responsibility and limited government? Or is the die cast? We wait to see…Of course, Mr. Fukuyama is not alone in wondering how all this ends. Only, if history has taught us anything, it doesn’t. The show, as always, goes on."

"Col. Douglas Macgregor: Fall of the American Empire - A Study in Decadence"

Glenn Diesen, 7/30/25
"Col. Douglas Macgregor: 
Fall of the American Empire - A Study in Decadence"
"Douglas Macgregor is a retired Colonel and former advisor to the Secretary of Defense. Col. Macgregor argues that Trump is presiding over the collapse of the American Empire: “Washington is hurtling toward a sovereign debt crisis, escalating foreign wars, and potential domestic unrest without a clear path forward. While President Trump did not create these challenges alone, he now bears responsibility for addressing them.”
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Gregory Mannarino, "Now Break Out The Popcorn Because The Real Clownshow Is About To Begin"

Gregory Mannarino, 7/30/25
"Now Break Out The Popcorn Because 
The Real Clownshow Is About To Begin"
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"How It Really Is"

"We Like To Think..."

"We like to think that we are rational beings; humane, conscientious, civilized, thoughtful. But when things fall apart, even just a little, it becomes clear we are not better than animals. We have opposable thumbs, we think, we walk erect, we speak, we dream, but deep down we are still routing around in the primordial ooze; biting, clawing, scratching out an existence in the cold, dark world like the rest of the tree-toads and sloths."
- "Grey's Anatomy"

"War Phase Of This Fourth Turning Has Arrived"

"War Phase Of This Fourth Turning Has Arrived"
by Jim Quinn

“The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind’s willingness to use it.” – Strauss & Howe – "The Fourth Turning"

“History offers no guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong – the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin. Losing in the next Fourth Turning could mean something incomparably worse. It could mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence – perhaps even our nation – might never recover.” – Strauss & Howe – "The Fourth Turning"

As I observe the seemingly endless narratives of ongoing and future wars, traitorous machinations of Deep State snakes, curious “assassination” plots, BBB legislation designed to set the stage for financial Armageddon, and the coverup of a global pedophile network implicating the ruling elite, I can’t help but be reminded of Shakespeare’s assertion the world is a stage and we are all merely bit players in this tragedy disguised as a comedy. Based on what I’ve witnessed over the last several months, I would change the line to “the world is staged”. This really came into focus during the Israel – Iran dustup several weeks ago. The entire episode had a theatrical vibe to it, with Israel assassinating key military leaders and the top nuclear scientists of Iran, while both sides launched missiles at each other for a week or so.

What passes for war these days is now missiles and drones lighting up the sky for TV cameras while inflicting relatively moderate damage and few casualties. Only Putin seems to understand wars are won on the ground, with armies destroying the enemy in brutal bloody combat. Israel appears to have been tasked with lighting the fuse on this Fourth Turning powder-keg of religious hate, neo-con retribution, globalist new world order schemes, Deep State machinations, and an empire of debt, delusion, and degradation in its death throes.

Did Trump know Netanyahu was going to launch a surprise attack on Iran, knowing he lacked the firepower to eliminate their underground nuclear facilities? Or was Trump fully onboard with the plan to distract Iran with fake negotiations, so they would let their guard down? In either case, Netanyahu is calling the shots and Trump has been doing his bidding. Trump, the self-proclaimed peace president, has misled those of us who believed he wanted to end the Ukraine and Middle East conflicts.

When Israel began getting pummeled by Iranian hypersonic missiles, proving their Iron Dome wasn’t living up to its hype, Netanyahu knew he could appeal to Trump’s vanity to save the day by using our bunker busters on the underground nuclear facilities. Israel knew they couldn’t take out those facilities but started the war anyway. Their plan all along was to have Trump do the dirty work. The question is whether Trump was in on it all along or forced into it by Bibi’s puppet master machinations.

Everything seemed to be staged once the U.S. entered the fray. The U.S. alerted the Iranians their three underground facilities were going to be obliterated. The Iranians then warned the U.S. about their token retaliatory attack on our Qatar air base. And then an arranged cease fire the next day. When do enemies warn each other about coming attacks, inflict no casualties, and already have a cease fire pre-arranged? When it is nothing but a show.

A cease fire is not the end of hostilities. Israel is rearming with the help of their good buddy Trump and his military industrial complex cronies. Iran is rearming with the help of Russia, China and North Korea. The lull in hostilities will be broken by Israel, as they continue their Gaza genocide, with nary a peep from their bought off swamp creatures in DC and have turned their sites on obliterating Syria as part of their Greater Israel master plan.

Netanyahu will stop at nothing to instigate a WW3 scenario with Iran, creating the conditions which would “force” Trump to engage our military, compelling Russia, China, Turkey and the rest of the Middle East to become involved. The masses have been lulled back to sleep with the Epstein and Obama narratives being flogged by our overlords, but a Middle East and possibly global conflagration is only a few missteps or miscalculations away.

We are now in the 17th year of this Fourth Turning, with a likely climax before 2032. Based on a very limited sample of three previous Crisis periods in American history, we would expect a major war or wars, with unthinkable destruction and death. With the technological “advancements” in warfare this destruction and death could be unleashed in an instant. But no one seems worried or concerned with this outcome, as the EU, with the military backing of the U.S., continues to provoke Putin into responding in a way that will ignite WW3.

The rationale for this insane strategy is to distract their enraged citizens from the fact they have encouraged a Muslim invasion which has destroyed the social fabric of their nations and destroyed the financial health of their states. As always, when politicians have created domestic chaos by their reckless blunders, they seek a foreign bogeyman as a dire threat in order to rally the people to their side.

The three stooges: Macron, Merz and Starmer, with the orchestrator of lies and propaganda – Ursula von der Leyen – continue to financially and militarily support the corrupt Ukrainian cokehead even after the war has already been won by Putin’s armies the old-fashioned way, by destroying the enemy’s armies, industrial capacity, logistical hubs, and energy infrastructure. Of course, the peacemaker, Trump, who was going to end the Ukraine war in 24 hours, tells the American public he is no longer arming the midget dictator/actor, while selling the arms to the EU so they can give them to the Ukrainian “hero”. The grift runs deep, with the U.S. military industrial complex reaping riches, which are dispensed to corrupt congress critters, and foreign leaders. Zelensky and his totalitarian regime skim billions from the “aid” they receive, as they bleed their nation dry in a fruitless effort to stop Putin at the behest of their overlords.

Very few people can comprehend the potential loss of life in the coming Fourth Turning wars. Since they only happen every 80 years or so, those who experienced the death and destruction have passed into the great beyond. About 5% of the entire adult white male population were killed, with another 4% wounded, during the American Civil War. An equivalent loss today would be 5 million dead and 4 million wounded. Approximately 75 million people died, with tens of millions wounded during WW2. This death toll was about 3.2% of the global population. An equivalent death toll today would be 250 million.

This level of death is incomprehensible to the indoctrinated ignorant masses, staring at their igadgets, rooting for their sports teams, going further into debt buying shit they don’t need with money they don’t have, eating toxic manufactured corporate foodstuff, and oblivious to history. Technology exists to create and exceed the level of casualties described, and this technology is in the hands of unhinged psychopaths ruling our nations.

Even though Fourth Turnings follow a general pattern of an initial trigger, one or more regeneracies, conflict, and climax, the aspects and specifics will always be different, due to technological advancements, cultural changes, financial dynamics, and the particular traits of the leaders making the crucial decisions during the Crisis. The progression of technology since the American Revolution has increased the ability to kill vast numbers of human beings efficiently and quickly. The level of firepower has probably increased by a factor of one hundred or more as we progressed from the American Revolution Fourth Turning to the Civil War Fourth Turning to the Word War II Fourth Turning to the yet to be named Fourth Turning we are living through today.

Technology has also drastically increased the ability to communicate and coordinate forces during conflict. During the American Revolution and Civil War, armies often stumbled upon each other by accident. Lee’s battle plan was accidentally left on the ground by one of his messengers, letting McClellan prepare for his attack at Antietam. Stonewall Jackson was killed by his own men, because visual scouting was the only reliable method to determine your enemy’s position. World War II saw a huge advancement in communication technology, but glitches often resulted in mass casualties.

The British breaking the German communication codes and the Americans breaking the Japanese codes were crucial in winning that war. The Americans were able to shoot down Yamamoto’s plane because they broke the code. These enhancements also created the opportunity for misinformation. By creating a fake army under Patton and leaking that information to the Germans, they were able to convince them the D-Day landings would be at Calais, rather than Normandy.

We are currently experiencing warfare on multiple fronts, through multiple means, with technology the key factor in conducting this warfare. This technological “progress” has been neither beneficial nor positive for humanity. In fact, it has drastically dehumanized our world and with the onset of AI, could lead to humanity’s demise. Huxley’s prescient warnings from over seven decades ago have come to fruition.

“Advances in technology do not abolish the institution of war; they merely modify its manifestations.” – Aldous Huxley

“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” – Aldous Huxley

I’ve been speculating whether the advancements in technology could possibly alleviate the level of death and destruction in the looming conflicts. But I believe that is a forlorn hope. War is being waged against the American people and most of the citizens in this world on a daily basis and multiple fronts that did not exist during the previous Fourth Turning. Propaganda did exist prior to the last Fourth Turning, as described by Edward Bernays just before the onset of the Depression/WWII Fourth Turning in his 1928 book – "Propaganda":

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

Essentially, he described an early version of the Deep State, as men in the shadows behind the curtain manipulating the masses using whatever means to achieve the ends desired by themselves and their cohorts. This was done inefficiently and haphazardly one hundred years ago using newspapers and radio. But the inception of television, the internet, social media and artificial intelligence laid the groundwork for the perfect Orwellian surveillance and propaganda network, spanning the globe.

The same exact message created by those “invisible government” controllers is delivered on multiple platforms simultaneously to overwhelm the senses and make the masses believe rather than think critically. These technologically powerful propaganda techniques have proven to be incredibly fruitful in manipulating the masses into obeying and following orders.

The covid scam brought to fruition decades of propaganda enhancements and government school indoctrination, convincing billions the annual flu was a lethal pandemic and the only way to survive was to be injected with a toxic experimental Big Pharma enriching gene altering concoction, which did not keep you from getting the flu, spreading the flu, or dying from the flu. But it did kill many instantaneously, continues to cause myocarditis and infertility in young people, has driven the mortality and disability rates for young people higher, and has spiked the number of turbo cancers.

The covid mRNA jab is a depopulation war against humanity being waged by Gates, Soros, and the other globalist psychopaths who constitute a major faction of the invisible government that really calls the shots. They have realized psychological manipulation/warfare against the masses is effortless, efficient, deniable, obscure, and extremely effective in manipulating their opinions without the use of force. This “soft” totalitarian state, enslaving the masses with debt, delusions and debauchery, has successfully navigated our world for decades. Again, Huxley nailed it when describing how the masses would come to love their servitude.

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” – Aldous Huxley

The war for our souls has been waged in the government-controlled K-12 social indoctrination centers disguised as schools. They teach obedience, feelings over thinking, dependency on their government overlords, and to never question authority. Any child who doesn’t adhere to their doctrines is immediately diagnosed with ADHD and heavily drugged. Female teachers stop at nothing to feminize boys, making them act like girls.

These indoctrinated drones then move onto universities completely controlled by left wing professors and administrators who further indoctrinate them with socialist and communist doctrines. They have won the war for our youth by having matriculated millions of non-thinking, non-questioning, outright morons, who are addicted to their phones, fast food, and porn, into society. The degradation of our moral character as a nation is directly attributable to this war on our youth.

The Epstein Mossad pedophile/blackmail coverup and the unearthing of documents proving an Obama/Clinton treasonous plot to undermine a duly elected president is essentially a war within the Deep State/Invisible Government for control of who dictates how we are going to be controlled. None of this is for the good of the American people. The ruling elite will always protect themselves. Justice and the law are meaningless to them.

The Constitution is an outdated piece of paper in their warped view. We are worthless peasants to them. They will go to war and use us as cannon fodder to keep their treasure chests filled. There will be hearings, accusations, ten thousand articles written, hundreds of Fox News interviews, and conservative influencers will make millions flogging these stories, but no one of substance will be perp walked or spend one minute in prison. It’s a big club, and we ain’t in it.

The anger, vitriol and animosity oozing from the pores of every critical thinking American, Russian, Chinese, and Western European, who can clearly decipher the globalist agenda of creating a new world order, with CBDCs, social credit scores, 15 minute cities, eating meatless meat and bugs, trapped in a 24 hour electronic surveillance gulag, and artificial intelligence weaponized to control us all, will come to a boil once a particular event triggers the chaotic unwind. Keeping the masses distracted and amused by their electronic gadgets, in debt up to their eyeballs, and running faster and faster on their hamster wheels to make a buck that loses value every single day, works as long as the economy and financial markets provide the appearance of stability and growth.

Our glorious leaders had to pass the “big beautiful bill” adding another $3 trillion of debt to the $21 trillion already projected over the next ten years, bringing our future national debt to a nice round $60 trillion by 2035. Their solution to our debt problem is to add an infinite amount of more debt. They believe they can pull off this insane scam because they believe the USD will retain its reserve status forever. But Russia, China and the rest of the BRIC countries may add a dose of reality to that American dream scenario. And that is the main reason for the animosity towards Russia and China exhibited by the neo-cons and Deep Staters who know their American empire is in peril.

In my opinion, the most likely trigger for the more violent phase of this Fourth Turning would be a financial crisis causing a global financial meltdown. With the stock market at all-time highs, bitcoin at all-time highs, low unemployment, positive GDP, and Trump declaring America is great again, there is virtually no “expert” predicting a financial crisis, just like 2007/2008. What the “expert” stock market shills fail to acknowledge is a housing bubble 15% greater than the epic 2006 bubble, leaving home prices 90% above the long-term median. The last bubble burst in 2008/2009 did a bit of financial damage. But this time the commercial real estate market is even far worse than the residential market. Extend and pretend doesn’t work forever. This Jenga tower of debt is teetering.

Both the Fed and their Wall Street owner banks have massive levels of unrealized losses due to purchasing Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities when interest rates were close to zero (courtesy of the Fed). The banks currently have $450 billion of unrealized losses, while the Federal Reserve has over $900 billion. If these losses were realized, our entire banking system would be destroyed. They all seem to be in a bit of a pickle, but no one in the MSM, DC, or financial industry says a word. They use the Sergeant Shultz mantra – “I see nothing!!!”. The reality is we are in an extremely risky situation.

Stock market valuations, based on historic measures, have only been higher during the dot.com bubble, and are currently 30% higher than the long-term averages. The shysters, who make their money fleecing the average schmuck, have convinced millions to invest at these all-time highs with narratives about a new paradigm created by AI and crypto-currencies. This time is always different.

It’s almost as if the overlords pulling the strings are expanding this everything bubble to mammoth proportions before “pulling it” and creating the crisis they need in order to save the day by implementing their “Great Taking” of your 401k, IRA, mutual funds, and bank accounts, while offering CBDCs as compensation for absconding with your life savings. They would get the added benefit of pinning the catastrophe on Trump. Based on the almost absolute compliance by the masses during the covid scam, our ruling elite controllers are confident they could pull this off. If not, civil war would be the alternate outcome.

There is a myriad of other more ambiguous potential triggers which could light the fuse on this powder keg, disguised as civilized society. There are quite a few lunatics running countries with the ability to launch a nuclear missile. One miscalculation, with additional dominos falling, and the world turns into an ashtray. Earthquake and volcanic activity seem to be increasing. A volcanic winter caused by a massive eruption would cause global havoc and starvation. A massive grid failure due to a solar event, EMP, or just plain incompetence would cause pandemonium. NATO pushing Russia too far, with missiles launched at Germany, triggering treaty obligations as in 1914, with dire consequences for the globe. The assassination of Putin and ascension of Medvedev to president/dictator would surely ignite WW3. China invading Taiwan would certainly get the fireworks going.

The truth is no one knows what will initiate the next bloody phase, but you can’t deny the volatile concoction simmering, as societal collapse awaits. I know I sound like a broken record, but Strauss & Howe conjured up four potential outcomes to this Fourth Turning, and I think their educated guesses are on target and deeply concerning. The long road ahead will be stormy and dangerous. Hopefully we come out whole on the other side with a renewed appreciation for our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Currently, the odds for that outcome seem long.

Strauss & Howe provide four possible outcomes to our current Crisis:

This Fourth Turning could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing. If mankind ever extinguishes itself, this will probably happen when its dominant civilization triggers a Fourth Turning that ends horribly. For this Fourth Turning to put an end to all this would require an extremely unlikely blend of social disaster, human malevolence, technological perfection and bad luck.

The Fourth Turning could mark the end of modernity. The Western saecular rythm – which began in the mid-fifteenth century with the Renaissance – could come to an abrupt terminus. The seventh modern saeculum would be the last. This too could come from total war, terrible but not final. There could be a complete collapse of science, culture, politics, and society. Such a dire result would probably happen only when a dominant nation (like today’s America) lets a Fourth Turning ekpyrosis engulf the planet. But this outcome is well within the reach of foreseeable technology and malevolence.

The Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation. It could close the book on the political constitution, popular culture, and moral standing that the word America has come to signify. The nation has endured for three saecula; Rome lasted twelve, the Soviet Union only one. Fourth Turnings are critical thresholds for national survival. Each of the last three American Crises produced moments of extreme danger: In the Revolution, the very birth of the republic hung by a thread in more than one battle. In the Civil War, the union barely survived a four-year slaughter that in its own time was regarded as the most lethal war in history. In World War II, the nation destroyed an enemy of democracy that for a time was winning; had the enemy won, America might have itself been destroyed. In all likelihood, the next Crisis will present the nation with a threat and a consequence on a similar scale.

Or the Fourth Turning could simply mark the end of the Millennial Saeculum. Mankind, modernity, and America would all persevere. Afterward, there would be a new mood, a new High, and a new saeculum. America would be reborn. But, reborn, it would not be the same."

Dan, I Allegedly, No More Paper Checks! Banks Won't Even Take Them!"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, AM 7/30/25
"No More Paper Checks! 
Banks Won't Even Take Them!"
"No more paper checks! Come next month, all government departments and agencies must issue disbursements via electronic funds transfer (EFT) methods, like direct deposit, debit/credit card payments, digital wallets, and real-time transfers. Payments made to the federal government, like taxes, fees, fines, or loans, will also have to be made electronically, with limited exceptions."
Comments here:

"The Bubble Is Bursting: Delinquency Rates Have Doubled And Credit Card Defaults Are Soaring"

"The Bubble Is Bursting: Delinquency Rates Have 
Doubled And Credit Card Defaults Are Soaring"
by Michael Snyder

"Did you know that U.S. households are carrying $1.18 trillion in credit card debt? Considering the fact that the average rate of interest on credit card balances is now over 20 percent, that is not good news at all. Sadly, most of the country is just barely scraping by from month to month in this very harsh economic environment, and turning to credit cards for some relief can be extremely tempting. A thousand dollar credit card balance can turn into four or five thousand dollars in the blink of an eye, and once you get that deep into the hole it can be very difficult to ever dig yourself out. Of course if you end up losing your job or having a major medical emergency, that can be enough to push you completely over the edge financially. Today, that is happening to an alarming number of Americans.

For some perspective, let’s go back to the end of 2024. At that time, it was being reported that “credit card loan defaults soared this year”…"Experts are sounding the alarm over a new report indicating credit card loan defaults soared this year, warning the dam is about to break on Americans’ record-high consumer debt. During the first nine months of 2024, lenders wrote off more than $46 billion in seriously delinquent credit card loans, according to a report from the Financial Times citing data analyzed by BankRegData. That’s an increase of 50% from the first three quarters of 2023, and the highest since 2010."

Unfortunately, this crisis has continued to intensify in recent months. Delinquency rates have “hit the highest levels in more than a decade”, and this is especially true for younger borrowers…"Delinquency rates have doubled since the record lows of 2021. On one hand, this makes sense: Consumer credit has grown 20% since 2021. Stimulus-fueled excess savings drove down credit card balances during the pandemic, then, as the economy opened up, consumers depleted those savings. This has also reignited delinquencies.

But delinquency rates haven’t just rebounded — they’ve hit the highest levels in more than a decade. Even more concerning, the rate of credit card borrowers who transitioned to serious delinquency (90-plus days) is now at 2008 levels. Borrowers age 18-29 make up the biggest portion of this group."

This is starting to become a big problem for our banks. In particular, small banks have been getting absolutely hammered by very high delinquency rates.


Let’s hope that we can get this turned around. Our seemingly endless cost of living crisis is putting a tremendous amount of strain on our society, and even delinquency rates for high income households have been soaring…"Upper-income Americans are increasingly falling behind on credit card and auto loan payments, signaling an underlying vulnerability in the US economy as the labor market slows.

Delinquencies on such debts from those making at least $150,000 annually have jumped almost 20% over the last two years, faster than for middle- and lower-income borrowers, according to the credit-scoring firm VantageScore. A recent Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis study found the share of people making late card payments in the highest-income zip codes has risen twice as much over the last year as in the lowest-income ones."

Are the facts that I just shared with you a sign that the economy is healthy or that the economy is unhealthy? Needless to say, the answer is self-evident. Despite what the talking heads on CNBC are telling you, the truth is that most of the nation is really struggling right now. But no matter how much you are struggling, you should avoid going into credit card debt, because credit card debt is financial poison.

Unfortunately, today the average U.S. household is carrying more than $6,000 in credit card debt…
• The average U.S. household has $6,120 in credit card debt.
• Total U.S. household credit card debt is currently at $1.18 trillion, making up 6% of all household debt.
• Washington, D.C., carries the highest level of credit card debt per capita at $5,360 on average, while Mississippi carries the lowest at $2,940 on average.
• Americans aged 65 to 74 have more credit card debt than any other age range, coming in at an average of $7,720 in debt.

Can you guess what the average rate of interest on all of that credit card debt is? I just asked Google AI, and I was told that the “average APR for all credit card accounts in Q2 2025 was 21.16%”. Wow. If you are paying more than 20 percent interest on a credit card balance, you are getting absolutely killed financially.

And “buy now, pay later” plans can be even worse. At this point, those plans have become so lucrative that even Costco is getting in on the game…"Costco is now offering a buy-now, pay-later option for online shoppers through a new multi-year partnership with Affirm. The installment plans will allow customers to select the payment option at checkout for purchases ranging from $500 to $17,500. Customers will be checked for eligibility in real time and can choose a monthly payment plan that fits their budget."

I know that it can be so tempting to reach for a short-term solution. But don’t do it. You will always regret it later. But I certainly understand why so many Americans are looking for an easy way out. I shared this yesterday, but I felt that I should share it again today. A recent survey discovered that 83 percent of U.S. adults are experiencing “stressflation”

"A LifeStance Health survey released today reveals “stressflation” is affecting most Americans, with 83% reporting financial stress driven by inflation, mass layoffs, the rising cost of living and recession fears. Millennials and Gen Z report the most significant mental health impacts. If you are stressed about your finances, you have lots of company. Economic conditions are very painful, and more Americans are falling out of the middle class with each passing day."

Unfortunately, even more trouble is potentially on the horizon. The U.S. and China still have not been able to reach a permanent trade agreement, and if that does not happen by the deadline both nations “are set to once again place historic tariffs on each other’s imports starting August 12″…"Chinese and American trade negotiators concluded their two-day meeting in Stockholm without a resolution to avert tariffs from skyrocketing back to ultra-high levels that formed an effective blockade on trade between the world’s two largest economies. But President Donald Trump’s trade advisers and their Chinese counterparts sounded a hopeful note. Without an agreement, the United States and China are set to once again place historic tariffs on each other’s imports starting August 12."

We have about two weeks. Hopefully negotiators will be able to work something out. But even if an agreement is reached, so many other long-term trends are taking us in the wrong direction very rapidly. Now is a time to get “lean and mean” financially, because I have a feeling that the economic news is going to get very “interesting” during the second half of this year."

"Wilder’s Fables: Killing The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg"

"Wilder’s Fables: 
Killing The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg"

“Oh, yeah, call the police. Tell them about the Spear of Destiny,
 the golden goose, the lost Ark. Enjoy your stay in the psych ward.
 I understand Thorazine® comes in vanilla now.” 
– The Librarian: "Quest for the Spear"

"In the OG version of The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, (the OG version of which is pushing 2600 years old) a greedy farmer finds a goose that pops out golden eggs, but instead of chilling with the steady bling, yo, he decides to open up the bird for a quick jackpot despite the goose giving him a new golden egg each day. Shockingly, there is no gold mine inside. Just goose guts. And a lesson no one ever seems to pay attention to.

In 1945, the West stood astride the world like an economic Applebee’s® with endless appetizers, its factories humming and the treasury brimming with gold. Literal gold, and some of it was even ours – I’ll skip my usual grumbling about FDR’s confiscation for another post. Some of the gold wasn’t, it was gold from our allies that had been given to the United States for safekeeping. Because, panzers.

But America was a far greater treasure than all the gold in the country. America at that time was the goose of golden prosperity. The United States was responsible for half of the world’s GDP, its assembly lines spitting out cars, steel, washers, sinks, and dreams of a better future. Add in the allies? It was a clear three-quarters of the world GDP, with only the Soviet Union, still bulging from the war steroids it took for a decade, being close. And there’s not a big market for a used T-34/76. “One owner, very nice. Ignore red stains, please. Last owner not so careful at Kursk.”

Allies flocked to the Western orbit. Some were spooked by the hordes of Soviet tanks, others were nudged by CIA coups, and then nudged again until they got it right. Most, however, was because Uncle Sam’s deal of bikinis and bourbon was sweeter than a Moscow winter and a Siberian GULAG. It was an empire, but it was an empire of alliance.

Fast forward to today. The Soviets are long gone, and the goose isn’t dead, but it’s close. The economy has been slowly strangled by a combination of bad policies and worse ideas, and none are deadlier than mass immigration.

To be clear: the wealth of the West wealth was no accident – things that produce wealth aren’t illiterate laborers, pools of oil, or uncut trees. Nope. The wealth producer, the golden goose was culture, not what Vox Day so eloquently described as “magic dirt.” By killing the goose, our future is becoming bleaker, and the GloboLeft is cheering the downfall.

The golden age peaked post-World War II, and the United States had a 20-year head start on the rest of the world while Europe and Asia rebuilt from rubble. By 1973, though, the United States began to falter economically. This wasn’t entirely from external foes, but at least partially from our own hands.

Four factors gutted the goose:
• dumping the gold standard,
• feminizing the workforce,
• enforcing affirmative action, and
• opening borders to unrelenting immigration.

The first three wounded us; the last is the mortal blow, changing our people, our culture, and our wealth. Let’s discuss the carnage.Dumping the Gold Standard (1971): Nixon’s pen stroke cut the dollar loose from gold, turning money into Monopoly® paper. Oh, wait, there’s a limit to how much Monopoly© cash they can print. The median home price in 1973 was $32,500. Today, it’s $412,300. Without gold’s anchor, our wealth’s a mirage, and the goose’s eggs are plastic.

Feminization of the Workforce: The 1970s pushed women into offices, doubling labor supply but halving family focus. Birth rates tanked - 2.1 kids per woman in 1973, 1.6 in 2023. Empty cradles mean fewer Actual American workers, and less innovation from the best workforce on Earth. The GloboLeft calls it “empowerment” when a woman has to leave the home for fifty hours a week in order to afford to pay for another woman to ignore her child by becoming a cubical Karen. Go figure.

Affirmative Action (Duke Power, 1971, for example): Forcing quotas over competence, the Supreme Court’s decision diluted merit. Companies hired to check boxes, not build bridges. A 2022 study found 30% of firms reported lower productivity post-DEI mandates. 30%. If diversity is our strength, I’m not sure who “our” refers to when we’re forced to play diversity bingo.

Mass Immigration: Here’s the killing blow. Since 1973, legal and illegal immigration flooded the West. There were 2.5 million border crossings in 2024 alone and those are the numbers that they’ll admit to, which we know are low. Now add in the Islamification of Europe, where France is nearly a Caliphate and the Germans keep going to work in order to pay for the illegals that flocked to them. Most don’t integrate. Imagine the farce: Mexican banners at California ICE protests where they tried to stop ICE from arresting underage illegals busy in the process of harvesting illegal (federally) marijuana. Can we be honest and just admit that immigration is not at all about joining the West, it’s about exploiting it. Immigration, though, is the dealbreaker because it changes the people. And everything is downstream of who the people are: culture, politics, and even PEZ®.

In 1973, a near-minimum-wage earner could buy a median home for $32,500, which was about five times the average annual wage. Today, that median home costs a stunning $412,300, ten times the average wage. Why? Illegals depress wages. Back in 1973, a high school grad could pull a great job in construction. But even since 1990, construction wages have dropped 15% in real terms. Illegals also drain services: illegal immigration costs taxpayers $150 billion annually (FAIR 2024), siphoning wealth like a cuckoo bird stealing the nest for its own young rather than for those that built it in the first place.

The GloboLeft insists “diversity is our strength,” but Pew’s 2019 study shows diverse communities have less trust. Many immigrants - legal or not - don’t assimilate and have no desire to assimilate. Ever. Many (not all!) second and third-generation Mexicans in California wave foreign flags because they’re only here for the gold, not the goose and, in fact, despise the goose.

Meanwhile, families, the nucleus of Western civilization, struggle. Low wages and high costs mean fewer kids - Europe’s at 1.5 fertility, which means that, pretty soon, the Swedish Bikini Team™ will have mustaches and be wearing burkas. As we often repeat, the future is there for those who show up.

The West’s prosperity had nothing to do with luck. It was culture. Discipline, merit, family, forged in Athens, Rome, and 1930s Detroit. The GloboLeft’s dogma remains one based in hate for the West: open borders, DEI, and reviling of every bit of the culture that creates wealth. They’d rather pluck the goose than protect it, and be happy with the result. But the goose isn’t dead yet. Bleeding? Yes. In a state that’s getting worse every day? Also yes. Is it worse than most people think? Absolutely. It is a dire point we find ourselves at.

But one thing I’ve seen when I read about Western Civilization is this: every time it looks bleak, and it looks like the flame of what we stand for is in danger of getting extinguished, people become firm and take that stand. And we win because we’re fighting, at the core, not for an economic idea but for the Truth, the Beautiful, and the Good. I think, in part, it’s because it’s not magic dirt. It’s in us, and this rallying from near defeat is what makes us who we are, what drives us to make civilizations, to make the golden goose, again and again. You know, that even inspires me. Almost gives me goose bumps."