"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI)is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding,safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
"Once upon a time potatoes were what the poorest people in society would eat because they were so inexpensive. But now we are being charged an average of $4.19 for a carton of medium fries at McDonald’s. There are many that are very upset about the rapidly rising cost of fries, and this is yet another example that shows that our standard of living is being absolutely shredded. As costs rise, the labor market just continues to get even weaker. So we are being hit with much higher prices at the same time that paychecks are stagnating and mass layoffs are occurring all over the nation. So what is going to happen to our standard of living if these trends continue to intensify during the months ahead?
By about a two to one margin, middle-income Americans feel like their financial situations have gotten worse over the past year…"The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment survey showed that 44% of middle-income respondents said their financial situation was worse than it was a year ago, while 23% said it was better, based on a three-month average ending in September. Those who feel worse off overwhelmingly said it was because of higher prices."
Federal bureaucrats continue to insist that inflation is low, but everyone can see that is simply not true. Compared to the year just prior to the pandemic, so many of the things that Americans regularly spend money on have gone up dramatically. During a recent segment on Fox Business, viewers were shown how much some of the most popular menu items at McDonald’s increased in price from 2019 to 2024…
McDonald’s Price Increases from 2019 to 2024:
Medium French Fry $1.79 -> $4.19
McChicken $1.29 -> $3.89
Big Mac $3.99 -> $7.49
10 McNuggets $4.49 -> $7.58
Cheeseburger $1.00 -> $3.15
Some of this is over a 200% increase in price. This isn’t inflation — it’s legalized robbery. $4.19 for a carton of medium fries is obscene!
For years, many of us warned that the very foolish decisions that our leaders were making would lead to very painful inflation. Needless to say, that is precisely what happened. A cheeseburger at McDonald’s is now more than three times as expensive as it was in 2019. How are young families supposed to afford that? How is anyone supposed to afford that? We have never seen the price of cheeseburgers go up so rapidly. Not even during the Carter administration did we see this sort of “burger inflation”.
Unfortunately, this is just the beginning, because the size of the U.S. cattle herd has dropped to the lowest level in about 75 years…"Tyson Foods will close a major beef plant in Lexington, Nebraska, with about 3,200 employees in January after U.S. cattle supplies dropped to their lowest level in nearly 75 years, the meatpacker said on Friday. The closure in the heart of cattle-feeding country signaled that supplies will remain tight, forcing meatpackers to pay steep prices for cattle to process into steaks and hamburgers."
You may think that you will just switch to turkey. Well, the price of a frozen turkey is 40 percent higher than it was last year…"The USDA recently projected that wholesale prices for frozen whole turkey hens will reach $1.32 per pound in 2025. That’s a 40 percent increase from 2024’s price of 94 cents per pound. “The 2025 rise in price is a response to lower production with HPAI pressures combined with steady demand,” according to a report from the American Farm Bureau Federation."
When talking heads on television tell us that “inflation is low”, I just want to scream. Since 2019, the annual income needed to afford a median-priced home in rural U.S. counties has more than doubled…"Homeowners need an annual income of $74,508 to afford a median-priced home in rural U.S. counties, up a staggering 105.8% from before the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the pandemic, rural buyers only needed to earn $36,206, according to Redfin’s analysis, which compares the third quarter of 2025 with the third quarter of 2019.
The income needed to afford a median-priced home in suburban counties rose 90.9% to $102,120 during that same period. Previously, potential buyers only needed an annual salary of $53,482. The income needed to afford a home in urban counties climbed 87.5% to $118,300. Buyers needed an annual salary of $63,103 prior to the pandemic."
Take a close look at those numbers again. They are completely and utterly outrageous. Let me ask you a question. Has your income doubled since 2019? If not, you are falling behind.
Vehicle prices have soared into unprecedented territory too…"Car prices are trending up and the average cost of a new car is at an all-time high, approaching the $50,000 mark for the first time. The average transaction price for a new vehicle in October was $49,105, according to data from Edmunds." In the old days, you could buy an entire house for $50,000. But now thanks to the widespread adoption of “planned obsolescence”, $50,000 will just get you a “new vehicle” that has been designed to start breaking down shortly after the warranty expires.
Meanwhile, the employment market just keeps getting weaker and weaker. At this point even the government is admitting that the unemployment rate just reached the highest level that we have seen since the early days of the last pandemic. Young people are being hit particularly hard, and we are being told that this is the toughest market for college graduates in a very long time…"Rising youth unemployment could be an “early indicator that the economy is slowing down or maybe even heading towards a recession,” said Anders Humlum, assistant professor of economics at the University of Chicago.
A college degree is often considered the best pathway to a well-paying job, but that may no longer be as true as it once was, experts say. “For the first time in modern history, a bachelor’s degree is no longer a reliable path to professional employment,” Gad Levanon, chief economist at the Burning Glass Institute, told CNBC." I feel very badly for college graduates that are searching for work in this very tough environment. In fact, I feel very badly for anyone that is searching for work in this very tough environment.
Nobody can deny that economic activity is slowing down all around us…"There are not as many goods moving around the country. Ship counts from Asia to the US are down roughly 30% from last year. Railcar loadings are down roughly 6% against last year. The trucking industry also continues to see shrinking capacity. If there are fewer things to move around the country, then the industry will likewise need fewer drivers, loaders, and various workers. Idle trains and empty containers don’t need a lot of people to mind them." When less stuff is being moved around the country, that means that the economy is slowing down. We can all feel it.
Looking ahead, an alarmingly high percentage of Americans are convinced that they will be even worse off next year…"A report by Primerica found that in the third quarter of 2025, just 21% of middle-income Americans believe they’ll be better off financially in the next year, while 34% believe they’ll be worse off and 33% expect their situation to remain the same.
Those figures are notably more pessimistic than the firm’s data from the third quarter of 2020 showed, when 33% of middle-income Americans thought they would be better off financially in the next year versus just 17% who thought they would be worse off and 40% expected they would be about the same."
The mood of the entire country has changed dramatically. I have heard from so many people that have cut back everywhere that they can, but it still isn’t enough. Even many households that are bringing in six figure incomes have shifted into survival mode…"The effort to keep up with higher prices feels relentless to Teri Kopp, who lives in Southbury, Conn., and works as an administrator at a synagogue. “I’m tired,” she said.
Kopp and her husband Bill, an HVAC technician, earn a combined $115,000 a year. They often sit in the dark with only strings of LED lights on to save on electric costs. She is considering painting rocks to send to friends as Christmas gifts. Their biggest vacation this year, a road trip to Maine, was mostly covered by cash back from a shopping-rewards program.
Kopp, 59 years old, doesn’t see any way to quickly pay off the $15,000 in credit-card debt the family took on largely to cover medical bills for knee surgeries. She also has $30,000 in debt from her daughter’s undergraduate degree in biology, which has yet to yield any job offers in a tough labor market for new graduates."
It took a long time for us to get here. We borrowed and spent tens of trillions of dollars that we did not have, and the Federal Reserve just kept shoveling more cash into the financial system. As a result, the cost of living is out of control and our system is reaching a breaking point. Our leaders kept kicking the can down the road, but in the process they kept making our long-term problems even worse. Now a carton of medium fries is more than 4 dollars, and America’s middle class is being systematically destroyed."
"Echoes from the Mist" was inspired by dreams and journeys, past and future – to move on and create your own destiny in life. The album contains ten songs each with its own story, journey and connection, using natural sounds of bird life, wind through the trees and thunder storms. Instrument samples include flute, piano, guitar, strings and choir. "Echoes from the Mist" is a restful and inspirational album."
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again.”
"Caliban is talking to Stephano and Trinculo in Shakespeare's “Tempest”, telling them not to be "afeard" of the mysterious place they find themselves, an island seemingly beset with magic, strangeness, ineffable presences. And you and I, and, yes, all of us, find ourselves inexplicably thrown up on this island that is the world, and we too, if we are attentive, hear the strange music, the sounds and sweet airs, that seems to come from nowhere and everywhere
No, I'm not talking about the usual ubiquitous clamor, the roar of internal combustion, the blare of the television, the beeping of mobile phones. I'm not talking about the Limbaughs and the Becks, the televangelists, the blathering politicians, the twitterers and bloggers (including this one). I'm not even talking about the exquisite music of Mozart, the poetry of Wordsworth, the theories of Einstein.
I'm talking about the sounds we hear in utter silence, in moments of repose, in the heart of darkness, when we are a little bit afraid, disoriented, off kilter. A strange music that comes from beyond our knowing, a felt meaning. You've heard it. I've heard it. You'd have to be deaf not to have heard it.
Where we differ is how we describe it. Mostly, we give its source a name. Angels. Fairies. Gods or demons. Yahweh. Allah. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Nixies, E.T.s, shades and shadows. Naiads, dryads, Ariel and Puck. A host of invisible creatures who are, in one way or another, images of ourselves. And, in naming, we are a little less afraid.
And some of us are just content to listen, to take delight. Having woken to the inexplicable mystery of the world- the sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not- we let the music lull us back into a sweet slumber, a kind of dreamless dream, a reverie. Does reverie share a deep root with reverence? I don't know.”
"I strongly urge you to pick up "Forgotten Civilization; New Discoveries on the Solar Induced Dark Age," by Robert Schoch. Schoch: In "Forgotten Civilization" covers a lot of ground, including the very important issue of the cataclysm that ended the last ice age, approximately 12,000 B.P. (before the present). Schoch shows (to my satisfaction) that it was almost certainly a solar eruption that did in the ice age mega-fauna (and almost all of our ancestors), and not a comet. Schoch is almost certainly right. Read Schoch’s book if you’re interested in this. But be forewarned: Schoch doesn’t pull any punches about the coming cataclysm. He gives us multiple lines of evidence that mean it’s overdue."
Hueyatlaco is an archeological site in the Valsequillo Basin near the city of Puebla, Mexico. After excavations in the 1960s, the site became notorious due to geochronologists‘ analyses that indicated human habitation at Hueyatlaco was dated to ca. 250,000 years before the present (my emphasis).[1][2]
These controversial findings are orders of magnitude older than the scientific consensus for habitation of the New World (which generally traces widespread human migration to the New World to 13,000 to 16,000 ybp). The findings at Hueyatlaco are the subject of continued debate by the scientific community, and have seen only occasional discussion in the literature." [3]
"Retail stores are collapsing right in front of our eyes as American families struggle to make ends meet. In this video, we're looking at what's really happening with our economy, from completely empty malls and major store closures to massive layoffs hitting right before the holidays. We're seeing Claire's, Target, Kroger, and other major retailers shutting down locations. Walmart and Amazon are cutting tens of thousands of jobs. And regular people are being forced to choose which bills they can afford to pay each month.
The reality is that malls that used to be packed are now ghost towns. Companies are laying off employees with zero warning, people are literally waking up locked out of their accounts. And with Christmas around the corner, families are realizing they just can't afford what they used to. This isn't just about retail anymore. This is about what's happening to working Americans who are doing everything right but still can't get ahead. The cost of everything keeps rising while jobs disappear and wages stay flat.
If you're feeling the squeeze right now, you're not alone. Let's talk about what's really going on and how people are coping with this economic reality. Drop a comment and let me know, are you seeing stores closing in your area? How are you handling the holidays this year?"
The Cost of Living in America is breaking people - and it’s only getting worse. In 2025, working hard doesn’t guarantee survival anymore. Families are being crushed under rising rent, soaring grocery bills, and utilities they can’t afford to pay. The American Dream? For many, it’s nothing more than a distant memory. Debt is skyrocketing. Savings are gone. People are walking away from their homes, their jobs, and their old way of life because the system is no longer working for them - it’s working against them. In this video, I’m sharing the growing financial crisis in America and why so many people are giving up on traditional living. But giving up doesn’t mean failure - it means breaking free from a broken system and creating a new path forward. Now is the time to get serious about preparedness. Stockpiling food, cutting expenses, finding alternative income streams, and learning old-school survival skills could make all the difference in the hard times ahead."
Millions of Americans Are About to Lose Everything"
"America is heading toward a dangerous breaking point. By 2026, millions of Americans could lose everything as rent skyrockets, wages stay frozen, savings disappear, and the cost of living becomes impossible to manage. Families who once felt secure are now one paycheck away from eviction, and the housing crisis is spiraling out of control. This video exposes the brutal truth behind why homelessness is expected to explode across the country, how ordinary Americans are being pushed to the edge, and why the system is failing to protect the very people who keep the nation running. This is the reality no one wants to admit - millions could soon be homeless, and America is not prepared."
"Americans once believed that the biggest fast-food chains would always be there - glowing arches, busy drive-thrus, dollar menus, and meals that felt too cheap to ever disappear. But as 2025 unfolds, that belief is fading fast. Behind rising prices, shrinking portions, and empty dining rooms, a deep fast-food unraveling is spreading across the country. From burger giants like McDonald’s and Wendy’s to pizza staples like Little Caesars and Pizza Hut, entire segments of the industry are being squeezed by inflation, franchise debt, labor shortages, and a consumer base running out of room to breathe. This isn’t just about closures - it’s about how the American economy itself is shifting under pressure.
In this investigative countdown, we break down the twelve major fast-food chains now cutting stores, losing traffic, retreating from cities, or battling financial strain. Using the latest verified data on closures, pricing spikes, and changing consumer behavior, we examine what’s really happening - and what it means for working families, small towns, and the future of American eating. A new reality is emerging - one where even the most iconic names can unravel almost overnight."
"When people tell you who they are, Maya Angelou famously advised, believe them. Just as important, however, when people try to tell you who you are, don’t believe them. You are the only custodian of your own integrity, and the assumptions made by those that misunderstand who you are and what you stand for reveal a great deal about them and absolutely nothing about you."
"1. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. Regardless of what you know, don’t discuss it - especially if you are a public figure, news anchor, etc. If it’s not reported, it didn’t happen, and you never have to deal with the issues.
2. Become incredulous and indignant. Avoid discussing key issues and instead focus on side issues which can be used show the topic as being critical of some otherwise sacrosanct group or theme. This is also known as the “How dare you!” gambit.
3. Create rumor mongers. Avoid discussing issues by describing all charges, regardless of venue or evidence, as mere rumors and wild accusations. Other derogatory terms mutually exclusive of truth may work as well. This method works especially well with a silent press, because the only way the public can learn of the facts are through such “arguable rumors.” If you can associate the material with the Internet, use this fact to certify it a “wild rumor” which can have no basis in fact.
4. Use a straw man. Find or create a seeming element of your opponent’s argument which you can easily knock down to make yourself look good and the opponent to look bad. Either make up an issue you may safely imply exists based on your interpretation of the opponent/opponent arguments/situation, or select the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Amplify their significance and destroy them in a way which appears to debunk all the charges, real and fabricated alike, while actually avoiding discussion of the real issues.
5. Sidetrack opponents with name calling and ridicule. This is also known as the primary attack the messenger ploy, though other methods qualify as variants of that approach. Associate opponents with unpopular titles such as “kooks”, “right-wing”, “liberal”, “left-wing”, “terrorists”, “conspiracy buffs”, “radicals”, “militia”, “racists”, “religious fanatics”, “sexual deviants”, and so forth. This makes others shrink from support out of fear of gaining the same label, and you avoid dealing with issues.
6. Hit and Run. In any public forum, make a brief attack of your opponent or the opponent position and then scamper off before an answer can be fielded, or simply ignore any answer. This works extremely well in Internet and letters-to-the-editor environments where a steady stream of new identities can be called upon without having to explain critical reasoning — simply make an accusation or other attack, never discussing issues, and never answering any subsequent response, for that would dignify the opponent’s viewpoint.
7. Question motives. Twist or amplify any fact which could be taken to imply that the opponent operates out of a hidden personal agenda or other bias. This avoids discussing issues and forces the accuser on the defensive.
8. Invoke authority. Claim for yourself or associate yourself with authority and present your argument with enough “jargon” and “minutiae” to illustrate you are “one who knows,” and simply say it isn’t so without discussing issues or demonstrating concretely why or citing sources.
9. Play Dumb. No matter what evidence or logical argument is offered, avoid discussing issues with denial they have any credibility, make any sense, provide any proof, contain or make a point, have logic, or support a conclusion. Mix well for maximum effect.
10. Associate opponent charges with old news. A derivative of the straw man usually, in any large-scale matter of high visibility, someone will make charges early on which can be or were already easily dealt with. Where it can be foreseen, have your own side raise a straw man issue and have it dealt with early on as part of the initial contingency plans. Subsequent charges, regardless of validity or new ground uncovered, can usually then be associated with the original charge and dismissed as simply being a rehash without need to address current issues — so much the better where the opponent is or was involved with the original source.
11. Establish and rely upon fall-back positions. Using a minor matter or element of the facts, take the “high road” and “confess” with candor that some innocent mistake, in hindsight, was made — but that opponents have seized on the opportunity to blow it all out of proportion and imply greater criminality which, “just isn’t so.” Others can reinforce this on your behalf, later. Done properly, this can garner sympathy and respect for “coming clean” and “owning up” to your mistakes without addressing more serious issues.
12. Enigmas that have no solution. Drawing upon the overall umbrella of events surrounding the crime and the multitude of players and events, paint the entire affair as too complex to solve. This causes those otherwise following the matter to begin to lose interest more quickly without having to address the actual issues.
13. Alice in Wonderland Logic. Avoid discussion of the issues by reasoning backwards with an apparent deductive logic in a way that forbears any actual material fact.
14. Demand complete solutions. Avoid the issues by requiring opponents to solve the crime at hand completely, a ploy which works best for items qualifying for rule 10.
15. Fit the facts to alternate conclusions. This requires creative thinking unless the crime was planned with contingency conclusions in place.
16. Vanishing evidence and witnesses. If it does not exist, it is not fact, and you won’t have to address the issue.
17. Change the subject. Usually in connection with one of the other ploys listed here, find a way to side-track the discussion with abrasive or controversial comments in hopes of turning attention to a new, more manageable topic. This works especially well with companions who can “argue” with you over the new topic and polarize the discussion arena in order to avoid discussing more key issues.
18. Emotionalize, antagonize, and goad opponents. If you can’t do anything else, chide and taunt your opponents and draw them into emotional responses which will tend to make them look foolish and overly motivated, and generally render their material somewhat less coherent. Not only will you avoid discussing the issues in the first instance, but even if their emotional response addresses the issue, you can further avoid the issues by then focusing on how “sensitive they are to criticism.”
19. Ignore proof presented, demand impossible proofs. This is perhaps a variant of the “play dumb” rule. Regardless of what material may be presented by an opponent in public forums, claim the material irrelevant and demand proof that is impossible for the opponent to come by (it may exist, but not be at his disposal, or it may be something which is known to be safely destroyed or withheld, such as a murder weapon). In order to completely avoid discussing issues may require you to categorically deny and be critical of media or books as valid sources, deny that witnesses are acceptable, or even deny that statements made by government or other authorities have any meaning or relevance.
20. False evidence. Whenever possible, introduce new facts or clues designed and manufactured to conflict with opponent presentations as useful tools to neutralize sensitive issues or impede resolution. This works best when the crime was designed with contingencies for the purpose, and the facts cannot be easily separated from the fabrications.
21. Call a Grand Jury, Special Prosecutor, or other empowered investigative body. Subvert the (process) to your benefit and effectively neutralize all sensitive issues without open discussion. Once convened, the evidence and testimony are required to be secret when properly handled. For instance, if you own the prosecuting attorney, it can ensure a Grand Jury hears no useful evidence and that the evidence is sealed an unavailable to subsequent investigators. Once a favorable verdict (usually, this technique is applied to find the guilty innocent, but it can also be used to obtain charges when seeking to frame a victim) is achieved, the matter can be considered officially closed.
22. Manufacture a new truth. Create your own expert(s), group(s), author(s), leader(s) or influence existing ones willing to forge new ground via scientific, investigative, or social research or testimony which concludes favorably. In this way, if you must actually address issues, you can do so authoritatively.
23. Create bigger distractions. If the above does not seem to be working to distract from sensitive issues, or to prevent unwanted media coverage of unstoppable events such as trials, create bigger news stories (or treat them as such) to distract the multitudes.
24. Silence critics. If the above methods do not prevail, consider removing opponents from circulation by some definitive solution so that the need to address issues is removed entirely. This can be by their death, arrest and detention, blackmail or destruction of their character by release of blackmail information, or merely by proper intimidation with blackmail or other threats.
25. Vanish. If you are a key holder of secrets or otherwise overly illuminated and you think the heat is getting too hot, to avoid the issues, vacate the kitchen.”
Or they can simply delete you permanently with no warning. After 12 years and one month of daily posts the first "Running" was suddenly deleted by Blogger on Sept.10, 2020. Thanks for stopping by, while we last! - CP
“Knowing can be a curse on a person’s life. I’d traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn’t know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can’t ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.”
"Things weren’t always this horrible. Once upon a time, America’s shiny new cities were the envy of the entire world. Our citizens dressed sharply, they treated one another with respect, and they worked incredibly hard. But now our country is teeming with extremely slothful degenerates that want everything handed to them on a silver platter. Rampant greed is everywhere that you look, crime is completely out of control, we are facing the worst drug crisis in the entire history of our nation, millions of our fellow citizens are absolutely seething with hatred for one another, and those that attempt to stand up for what is right are considered to be the problem. We should be deeply grieved by what has happened to our society, because it truly is a great tragedy.
Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. Matt Walsh published an excerpt from a letter that an infantryman sent to his family during the Civil War…"If you want to see how much the English language has deteriorated in modern times, go read the letters that random infantrymen wrote home to their families during the Civil War. These were young men often without much formal schooling who wrote naturally like poets. One example:"
Can you write like that? I certainly can’t. Those of us in this generation like to think of ourselves as the pinnacle of human history, but the truth is that we can’t even compare to those that have come before us.
Let me give you another example. More than a century ago, the streets of New York City were filled with extremely civilized people that dressed incredibly well when it was time to go out into the public arena…
Full screen recommended.
But now New York City is a crime-ridden, drug-infested hellhole. At this point, drug overdoses account for 80 to 85 percent of all accidental deaths in the Big Apple…
New York Times:
Is this “progress”? I don’t think so.
In Portland, conditions have gotten so bad that more than 2,600 businesses have left the downtown area over the past few years…"Business owners are fleeing Portland in droves amid a pronounced rise in crime and homelessness, officials in the Democratic stronghold have revealed. Public data shows that since the pandemic, more than 2,600 downtown businesses have filed changes of address with the U.S. Postal Service to leave their downtown ZIP codes. Several big-name employers, from Unitus Community Credit Union to Umpqua Bank, have been among the mass exodus, carried out by owners who have taken issue with the rising crime levels and homelessness – and the city’s failure to address it."
Apparently officials want even more businesses to leave, because now a bill that would give homeless individuals $1,000 a month “in no-strings-attached cash” is being seriously considered…"Oregon is considering giving its vast homeless and low-income population $1,000 in no-strings-attached cash. The bill was proposed by woke State Senator Wlnsvey Campos – who was among those calling to abolish the police in the summer of 2020 when the city of Portland was besieged by protesters – and Rep. Khanh Pham." If they actually do this, most of that money will go straight to the drug dealers.
Down in San Francisco, drug addicts are fueling a crime spree that is worse than anything that the city has ever experienced. When one woman recently went into the city for a yoga class, she was told that the building “had been broken into six times in two months”…"Yesterday I went to a yoga class in San Francisco for the first time in years. They had the front door locked (had to be buzzed in), a sign on it that said “no cash on premises,” and the woman at the front desk said they had been broken into six times in two months."
Over in Los Angeles, violent crime has become such a problem that extremely expensive “executive protection dogs” have become a very hot commodity…"The elite animals - typically German shepherds, Belgian Malinois, Dobermans, cane corsos or a mix of those breeds - are marketed under names such as “personal canine bodyguards” and “executive protection dogs.” Amid a spate of high-profile crimes in upscale parts of Los Angeles, they have become highly sought after among the rich, many of whom worry about being targeted.
Protection dogs, they say, provide an immediate layer of front-line defense, unlike security cameras (which merely show an intruder on the property, and only if the devices happen to be pointed in the right direction) and home alarm systems (which can be bypassed or ignored). Even if police are summoned, they can be slow to respond, if at all. So homeowners who can afford it are being more proactive."
This is the world that we live in now. But most Americans don’t seem to care. We are literally living in an “idiocracy” in which people are dropping dead all around us, but most Americans are so far gone that they can’t even understand what is happening.
Of course it isn’t just the United States that is facing such problems. Up in Canada, crime rates are absolutely exploding…"The Toronto Police Service data portal shows that Toronto experienced a 17.2 per cent spike in overall major crimes in 2022, including a 9.8 per cent increase in assaults, a 44.2 per cent spike in auto thefts, 6.5 per cent growth in break and enters, a 28.5 per cent jump in robbery, an 11.3 per cent increase in sexual violence, and a 35.8 per cent gain in theft over cases."
And in many areas of South America crime has risen to levels that we have never seen before…"Countries across Latin America and the Caribbean continued to experience high murder rates as cocaine production reached new heights, the fragmentation of gangs continued, and the flow of weapons across the region grew more acute."
For Ecuador, the situation was downright catastrophic. Historic amounts of cocaine entering the country fueled violence, with murders skyrocketing as gangs targeted judicial officials and killed police officers at record rates. That cocaine came largely from Colombia, where President Gustavo Petro has promised to shift away from the war on drugs in favor of efforts to achieve a “Total Peace” with the country’s rebel and criminal groups."
Our entire world is deeply sick. We have turned our backs on what is good, and we continue to run after evil as rapidly as we can. As a result, our society is a complete and total mess. We truly are living during one of the most critical times in all of human history, and we desperately need to change course. Unfortunately, most people seem to think that everything is just fine, and so they see no need for a new direction."
"Congressional stock trading is in the spotlight, and this video dives into the shocking details behind the $27M mystery surrounding Marjorie Taylor Greene’s rapid wealth accumulation. From a $700K net worth to $27M in just four years, the numbers will leave you questioning how congressional stock picks work! Plus, we touch on Nancy Pelosi’s staggering wealth and the rise of companies capitalizing on congressional trades."
"On the morning of November 11, I was passing through Pittsfield, Massachusetts, heading north. The traffic was stopped as a Veteran’s Day parade headed south. It was a sight for a musing mind, so that is exactly what I did, sitting in my car watching the parade’s celebration of the patriotism of military veterans. I asked myself: What are they still marching for?
I was once in the U.S. Marines but became a conscientious objector during the U.S. war against Vietnam and have opposed US militarism and wars ever since. I was brought up to be a patriot, and the marching men – mostly old – with their ancient rifles teetering on their shoulders as the season’s first snowflakes peppered their faces and the marching band drummed up a martial beat to counter the dreary morning, touched me in a melancholic and twisted way.
They seemed to be barely holding on – but to what? I wondered – war, their youths, past bonds, a lost country, some meaning in once having a cause to fight for, the best times of their lives, false nostalgia, the joy of killing?
Young, smiling, and excited 11-13 year-old girls ran alongside, handing out small American flags to any occupant of the halted cars who would open their windows. I was about to do so, despite a lifetime of rejecting the flag waving (but not the country) that has come to represent war mongering for me, but the cops motioned the traffic on. The marchers waved to the very few people scattered along the sidewalks who waved back. I drove on wondering why my heart opened to the marchers. It surprised me. Waves of conflicting emotions flowed over me.
When I arrived at my destination, there was a television playing in the waiting room of the office. I took a seat and watched it, something I usually avoid. It was a History Channel program about U.S. soldiers killed and wounded in Vietnam, the Medevac helicopters flying into combat zones and medics evacuating fellow soldiers. Very dangerous work by courageous men. Hearing the program’s narrator blather on about patriotism as it showed gruesome pictures of bloodied and dead soldiers, erased any previous sentiment I felt about the parade marchers. Like the documentary, the parade typically did not mourn the millions of victims of the endless U.S. wars nor did it picture or in any way illustrate all the U.S. dead, wounded, and crippled soldiers. The marchers’ smiles were pasteboard masks concealing the grim reality of war.
I felt rage rising in me, even as I admired the bravery of the evacuation teams bringing out their comrades. My blood boiled at the way the program was using bravery as a cover to continue to promote war, to say these soldiers had been defending their country and were therefore patriots when they were attacking another country over eight thousand miles away for the lies of son of a bitch politicians (LBJ and Richard Nixon, both of whom were elected as peace candidates) who always wage wars so easily, using the flesh and blood of young people as cannon fodder. Yes, the old lies told by jackals with smiling faces.
I wanted to grab the politicians by their turkey necks and force their hands into the massive bloodied hole in an 18 year old boy’s entrails, to push their lying faces low to smell the blood and guts of their easy-going wars.
I wanted to force them to drink their martinis sitting among the hundreds of slaughtered Vietnamese women, children, and old people in a Vietnamese village massacred in a U.S. “search and destroy” mission; force them to walk in their shiny shoes though the body parts in Iraq and Libya and Gaza and all the places soaked in blood by their decisions; make them spend their vacations locked up in the world-wide CIA torture black sites to listen to the screams of the victims.
I could understand how young draftees could have been hoodwinked by the government’s lies about the wars, but I was still flabbergasted by how veterans could still march in support of America’s wars after all the lies have been exposed so many times, not just about Vietnam but Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Latin America, etc. An endless tapestry of lies told to support criminal wars, genocide, and the subversion of countries around the world. In the words of the English playwright Harold Pinter: “The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.”
When I was earlier sitting in my stationary car, I felt as though I was sitting in a front row seat in a theater, watching a play. Then I realized that I was doing exactly that, and that the annual march was a reenactment of war’s death march – “the theater of war” – and the old soldiers were still playing their parts – but now as survivors – to remind the audience of the dead and their “sacrifices” for the flag, a reminder meant to celebrate wars while the band played on.
The little wind-up mechanical tin toy soldier I was given as a toddler – a World War I (the “Great War”) doughboy that I called Mechanical Mikey after the neighbor who gave it to me – reminds me of the theatrical nature of child’s play, wars, the military, and their parades – all social life actually. The ways play is a way for adults to catch children in the social net of lies, imitation, and violence, not necessarily out of cruelty but ignorant love. And for the adults to play their parts of eternal innocents on the social stage where performing is de rigueur.
Such child’s play is a dress rehearsal (etymology: to bring back the hearse) for death and a life of repeating the dead hand of the past, but no child would know this. Death is hidden in the play, the roles serving a distancing technique: “now back to real life.” I wonder if I was choking Mikey in this photo. His key was on his left side. Had I wound him up and then decided to stop him in his tracks as he marched across the rug? Was the boy aware at some level that some day he would be following the words of the singer Phil Ochs, "I Ain’t Marching Anymore." I know Eddie became Eddy, a name change that suggested that a whirlpool was brewing down river.
In "The Great War and Modern Memory," Paul Fussell writes the following: “Seeing warfare as theater provides a psychic escape for the participant: with a sufficient sense of theater, he can perform his duties without implicating his ‘real’ self and without impairing his innermost conviction that the world is still a rational place.”
Those who march in military parades are acting out parts in a play that both repeat and prepare for the next show. The parade serves a double function, just as my toy soldier had a key for me to wind him up again and again to create a form of psychic socialization through repetition. The key being repetition. Repeat, Rehearse, Remember – do it again.
Norman Brown puts it thus in "Love’s Body:" “Ancestral voices prophesying war; ancestral spirits in the dance macabre or war dance; Valhalla, ghostly warriors who kill each other and are reborn to fight again. All warfare is ghostly, every army an exercitus feralis, every soldier a living corpse.”
Watching the parade and then the History Channel’s documentary, I realized I was watching live and taped versions of repetitive religious performances of sacrificial rituals of a mythic nature, similar to the election every four years of the U.S. president. They are two liturgies of the national religion rooted in war-making, lying, and an economy dependent on killing. But most people act as if they are not choosing to pretend such parades and television documentaries are about remembering and honoring past “sacrifices,” when they are endorsement for future wars.
Likewise, the presidential elections serve to promote the illusion that the the next president will be different from his predecessor and will end the U.S. wars, which never end. The most recent example is the election in 2024 of Donald Trump, with some diehard Trump supporters continuing to believe in Trump’s irenic intentions despite his blatant betrayal of his antiwar promises, just like his recent predecessors Bush, Obama, and Biden. These men are elected to wage war, support the military industrial complex, and therefore the U.S. economy based on war.
It does not matter which political party is in power in Washington, D.C. Their political platforms are meaningless; they are sops thrown to an electorate desperate for illusions, as anyone with a smidgen of historical knowledge would know. Yet many justify the ruthless war-making of the American empire and how it underlies the entire economy by arguing that the parties differ on domestic policies, which is often true.
But the lesser of two evils is still the evil of two lessers and another form of bad faith, for the domestic economy, being dependent on warfare and funded by the politicians of both parties, is an economy of death. Harold Pinter said it truly in his Nobel Award Address: "The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."
But as with every religion – maybe more so – as Dostoevsky said of conventional Christianity, such political belief also depends on miracles, mystery, and authority rather than freedom. The flight from freedom is commonplace, despite all the rhetoric that uses it to justify the wars and the war makers.
The problem we are faced with is an issue of objectivity and reality wherein the public as audience suspends its disbelief in the theater of politics and war and plays its part as audience, as if war and politics were a Broadway show. It’s one big show with everyone in on the act. It is mass hypnosis, a passive surrender to what is perceived to be superior power. Ernest Becker, in his stunning book, "The Denial of Death," when commenting on Freud’s work on group psychology and people’s tendency to abandon their judgment and common sense writes: "Freud saw right away what they did with it: they simply became dependent children again, blindly following the inner voice of their parents, which now came to them under the hypnotic spell of the leader. They abandoned their egos to his, identified with his power, tried to function with him as an ideal."
This is another way of saying that on the stage of social life few people choose to not play their assigned roles as obedient children to authority. It is a protection racket, what Jean Paul Sartre calls bad faith – mauvaise foi – and what Hemingway fictionalizes in his masterful story, “A Clean Well-Lighted Place.”
Such bad faith can probably not be countered by an essay like this. Maybe Liam Clancy’s compelling version of Eric Bogle’s great song about a non-mechanical Aussie doughboy in WW I might pierce the heart and break the spell in a better way."
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