Bill Bonner, "Beyond the Pale"

"Beyond the Pale"

by Bill Bonner

"I don't know but I'm going to find out about it, 

but Pete said he did not order the death of those two men."

- Donald Trump

Baltimore, Maryland - "USNI News: "4 Dead in Latest U.S. Strike on Suspected Narco Boat. U.S. forces struck a suspected narco drug boat, killing four people on board, Thursday in the Eastern Pacific following a three-week gap in publicized strikes. The death toll has climbed to 87 killed, of which 86 were killed in the strikes and one person was presumed dead after being lost at sea. Two wounded survivors were repatriated to their home countries.

The Independent: "President Donald Trump raged at a female ABC News reporter, calling her “the most obnoxious,” after she asked whether his administration would commit to releasing the double-tap boat strike video.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said he didn’t order the second strike against an alleged drug-running vessel on September 2, the first of more than a dozen U.S. strikes in the Caribbean and Pacific against what administration officials call “narcoterrorists.” In a tense exchange at a White House roundtable Monday, Trump insisted that he never said he’d release footage of the double-tap strike - which he’d promised to make public just four days earlier - and simultaneously fired off his latest attack against a female reporter."

We join the ‘liberal’ press in chronicling America’s descent into violence and corruption. But unlike the New York Times and the Washington Post we see it as a bi-partisan affair and take no pleasure in reporting it. Our guess is that, like a invasive peste on a banana boat, a dreadful worm came in with our maggot money...and now...

Foreign policy. Domestic policy. The Budget...the dollar...the Department of Justice...the Pentagon - the worm chews through the essential organs. The most dramatic expression of this slimy wiggler is neither $38 trillion of national debt nor a 35x increase in the price of a new Ford F-150 (since 1971). It’s more than just money; as he dollar declined, decency went down with it.

The US began assassinating people, or attempting to do so, in the 1960s. The first target, arguably, was Patrice Lumumba, who led the Congo to independence from Belgium. The CIA thought he had been ‘bought’ by the Soviets. Others simply saw African independence as a disagreeable trend. Even the usually sensible Dwight Eisenhower thought the world would be better off without him. But when it was suggested to Ike that the African leader should be assassinated, he replied: ‘That would be beyond the pale.’

That was in the early ‘60s. But the pale moved. Come the Vietnam war and the US was taking part in dozens of ‘extra-judicial’ killings. The Church Committee heard testimony of 634 different schemes that had been proposed to eliminate Fidel Castro.

Then, after a pause, the Bush administration opened up the throttle on the homicidal machine. Thousands of High Value Targets were struck in Iraq. Good people? Bad people? It turned out, nobody even knew who they were. When Daniel Hale released documents showing that more than 90% of the people killed were not the intended targets, he was charged with stealing classified documents and sent to jail. As we reported yesterday, Barack Obama kept the tradition going with his ‘kill lists.’ And the press did not merely turn a blind eye...it reported the murders approvingly.

And now, once again, the US is on a spree. This time it is killing neither enemies nor terrorists...nor heads of state...nor politicians nor combatants. The US has declared ‘war’ against people with no large calibre weapons, no ships, no planes, no army, no service academies, no official ranks, no tanks, no personnel carriers, no veterans’ benefits, no military bases, no artillery, no uniforms...no nothing.

Karoline Leavitt says of the critics: "They are attacking the brave men and women who have conducted these strikes well within the law, following the orders from their commander-in-chief."

But what would Eisenhower say? He had faced professional soldiers...real enemies, with real weapons - the Luftwaffe, the Panzers, the Wehrmacht. And he went on to be commander-in-chief. Where was the pale, he might wonder? Why couldn’t Admiral Bradley see it? Since when is it okey to whack civilians you don’t even know...who may or may not be transporting illegal drugs...that may or may not do harm to the people taking them (consumers can decide for themselves)... to people who may or may not be in the United States of America. Are these High Value Targets? Or are they Negative Value Targets, whose deaths do more harm than good, each one further undermining the real value of US assets?"

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"Why We Fail"

"Why We Fail"

by Charles Hugh Smith

"There are many reasons why we fail, but perhaps the most critical one is continuing to do more of what has failed. This has many potential sources, from the psychological (self-sabotage, etc.) to the ideological (the market is the solution to every problem, etc.) to cognitive biases (recency bias, etc.).

One enduring source of continuing to do more of what has failed is hard-wired on a deeper level than mere cognitive biases. One way to summarize this is: we can't let go of a story that explains how the world works unless we have a replacement story in hand.

In short: we must have a story that accounts for the world around us. Not having any story is not possible. We can have multiple overlapping stories - Jungian psychology, general theory of relativity, Keynesian economics, and so on but we need a story that explains key elements of our experience and what we observe and "know," with know in quotes to indicate that the story we embrace defines what we know and what we can know.

Given this need for a story, we can only relinquish a story that's failing to account for what we observe if we have a better story available: and by "better" I mean one that more accurately accounts for what we observe.

This substitution of a new story for an existing story that no longer makes sense (i.e. offers constructive predictions) of the world is easily confused with another human trait: the power of the Powers That Be rest on a foundational story, and replacing this story removes the source of their power. Replacing the story that empowers them discredits their claim to superiority, effectively stripping away their entitlement to authority and their overweening delusions of grandiosity that come with entering the ranks of the Powers That Be.

This desire to maintain the status quo story as part of maintaining their authority and power is the core dynamic described by Thomas Kuhn in his classic "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:" the Old Guard who embraced the story that the universe revolves around the Earth resists accepting the new story that the Earth is an inconsequential minor planet that orbits the sun in a local system which is in motion in much larger structures even as all the observational data undermines their story and supports the new story.

Fast-forward to the present and we have multiple Old Guards clinging to ideological stories that no longer track what we observe. Yet like all previous Old Guards, the Powers That Be are loathe to accept a new story that strips away their claim to authority and all the perquisites of power they currently enjoy.

We live in a world torn between the artifices needed to make "the Earth is the center of the Universe" somewhat plausible even as that story crumbles into incoherence and the formation of a new story that actually tracks reality. In terms of a metaphor, consider a glossy "lifestyle" publication that simultaneously touts a new chocolate cake recipe that is simply out of this world and a new diet to slim down in a healthier way than taking meds with horrible side effects that must be taken for life.

No wonder the world seems deranged - it is deranged by the immense strength of an Old Guard clinging onto power by any means available even as the world around them spins into incoherence.

Economic incoherence:

Political incoherence:

Psychological incoherence:

- https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/

"15 Big Retail Chains That Are Falling Apart After Stores Were Empty This Black Friday!"

Full screen recommended.

RV Crisis, 12/10/25

"15 Big Retail Chains That Are Falling Apart 

After Stores Were Empty This Black Friday!"

"Fifteen major retail chains faced surprisingly quiet Black Fridays. The video analyzes footage revealing shifts in consumer behavior and economic pressures impacting these stores. Explore the reasons behind these changes and their potential long-term effects."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

John Wilder, "Is Everything Fake?"

"Is Everything Fake?"

by John Wilder

"The issue boils down to this: do we care about freedom? Do we care about responsibility and accountability? Do we care that our government and media have been bought and paid for? Do we care that average Americans are being looted in order to subsidize the fattest of cats on Wall Street and in government? Do we care? When the chips are down, will we stand up and fight, even if it means standing up against every stripe of fashionable opinion in politics and the media? Times like these have a way of telling us what kind of a people we are, and what kind of country we shall be." - Ron Paul

"The economy recently feels to me like a(nother) bad sequel to "The Matrix": smoke, mirrors, simulated steaks and guys pretending to be girls directing everything. It made me think of "Bowfinger", a 1999 Steve Martin flick. Steve Martin plays the titular producer, Bobby Bowfinger. His character drops this gem while trying to scam a crew into working on his latest film: “That’s after gross net deduction profit percentage deferment ten percent of the nut. Cash? Every movie costs $2,184.” The rest, it’s like Hollywood? Fake sets, fake stars, fake everything. Our economy, I think, has officially hit 8.9 out of 10 on the Bowfinger scale.

It’s a façade of trillions propped on fraud, fiat, and fairy dust. The evidence is everywhere: from federal slush funds laundering cash to “charities” that fund political hit squads, to Somali scams siphoning billions for terrorist toys, to the AI hype train where Nvidia’s® GPUs vanish into vaporware voids. It makes me ask one question: Have we peaked at “peak fake”?

Start with the government’s golden shower of “aid.” In the last few months, we’ve watched as the public found out that billions flood from Uncle Sam’s coffers to “nonprofits” and foundations that, surprise, boomerang right back to commentators, politicians, and partisan ops that give the opinions to the Democratically-appointed judges to make sure that their cash lifeline is safe from scrutiny. Sibling marriages are less incestuous.

Remember the post-election blitz Democratic blitz? A Free Press® investigation uncovered a $27 billion rush-out-the-door bonanza, with $20B hitting eight leftist nonprofits faster than Kamala could say “unbourboned by what has been.”

It would be one thing if these were soup kitchens serving the starving, but these are slush funds for radical agendas, exploiting tax dollars to bankroll everything from election meddling to “community organizing” that looks suspiciously like astroturf Antifa® activism. It’s like if United Way™ funded Trotsky but funded by the Czar.

And USAID? They shelled $44K to Politico™ for subscriptions chump change, but emblematic of how federal funds feather media nests. Nonprofits are NGO scams, funneling billions to progressive power grabs, sometimes even recycling it from overseas. Ukraine is the country that just keeps giving. I mean, if you’re a Democratic politician.

House hearings exposed how these networks weaponize your taxes for ideological insurgency. You’re paying for the people who keep bleating: “muh democracy.” This is Bowfinger budgeting: real costs hidden, profits pocketed by players who script the narrative.

Speaking of Minnesota Somalisota... (otherwise known as Mogadishu on the Mississippi), the relentless spotlight has turned from Indian invaders to Somalian swindlers. The “Feeding Our Future” fraud, where Somali networks allegedly pilfered over $250M from child nutrition programs during COVID. That’s bad enough, but state audits have found broader scams at over $1 billion in taxpayer theft, with funds funneled overseas to anti-American terrorists. I mean, not just anti-American Democrats, but actual “was given a dowry of AK-47s, goats, and C-4” dirka-dirka terrorists.

This isn’t petty theft: this is peak fake philanthropy that rivals the Clinton Foundation. “Charities” as cover for African clan cash grabs, shipping your dollars to fund foes abroad. If you watch videos of interviews with these people, they have no connection philosophically to the United States, wish to live under sharia law, don’t speak English, and don’t have jobs, other than stealing. I guess the only saving grace is that at least these “charities” didn’t pay for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding and the terrorists are fine with using standard NATO rounds.

The next fake? I’ve mentioned it again and again, Nvidia®. It’s not so much Nvidia™ as the hype around A.I. Nvidia® seems to (mostly) be just selling computer chips. Mostly. Their stock has been exploding upward like a Somalian with a grenade, doubling since April, with a market capitalization flirting with $4 trillion. Who is buying all those GPUs, and for what? Is it kids playing Fortnite®?

Ed Zitron, tech industry writer, estimates Big Tech needs $2T in AI revenue by 2030 just to justify their A.I. spending binge, or it’s going to lead to a fall that will leave a mark. We’re back to Wilder’s A.I. Paradox: if A.I. is valuable enough to be worth the money that’s being invested in it, it will wreck the economy with a wave of unemployment. If it’s not, it’ll wreck the economy because it failed. Yay! It’s almost like we don’t have a choice! It’s a lot like the French having a military: if they fight, they lose, and if they run, they lose.

Who is buying this stuff? The usual suspects: OpenAI®, Microsoft™, Oracle©, Amazon™, and Google©. As we’ve shown here before, this investment simply doesn’t have the infrastructure like electricity, PEZ®, or clean water production to support it even if they could build all that stuff. It smells like tulips in the Dutch Republic back around 1637.

Me? I think it’s entirely possible that we’re building a multi-trillion-dollar computer that might wreck our economy if it works. And it might wreck the economy if it doesn’t. So, is this peak fake?

We’ve got governments gifting billions to grifters on an endless cash spin-cycle. We’ve got immigrants importing scams and exporting cash to jihadi Jamal in Jowhar. Also, we have A.I. alchemists turning silicon into massive debts that might be decadal mistakes.

If it was just that, yeah, it might all work out. But there’s this: the economy is a house of cards built on counterfeit confidence: $36 trillion in fiat debt, infinite inflation, and innovations that might wreck everything if they don’t become a robotic overlord. Is it any wonder that the smallest pebble dropped onto this slope might cause a landslide?

Fake fails eventually, but often lasts longer than almost anyone would believe during inertia. Will we reset? I think that’s almost certain. When will we reset? That I can’t tell. As long as everyone agrees that the market is up, the market is up. But Wendy’s™ is getting ready to close 5% of its restaurants because the business is so great. I think the lower end of the income spectrum has thrown in the towel. “A Dave’s Single™? What, do I look like a Rockefeller?”

Going back to "The Matrix": “You know, I know this steak Dave’s Single® doesn’t exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.” Ignorance, bliss? What do those words even mean? In other news, I’m in a great mood!"

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

"WTF?! The System Crashed, Silver Absolutely Explodes!"

Prepper News, 12/9/25

"WTF?! The System Crashed, 

Silver Absolutely Explodes!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"America: The Land Of Opportunity Is Now Slavelandia Owned By The Billionaires and Politicians"

Strong language alert!

Gerald Celente, 12/9/25

"America: The Land Of Opportunity Is Now Slavelandia

 Owned By The Billionaires and Politicians"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events

forming future trends. To access our premium content, subscribe to the Trends Journal"

- https://trendsjournal.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDEl2oazyq

Col. Doug Macgregor, "Russia Takes Over Odessa: Ukrainian Army Surrenders and NATO Freaks Out"

Col. Doug Macgregor, "Russia Takes Over Odessa:

 Ukrainian Army Surrenders and NATO Freaks Out"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Dollar Is No Longer Safe; 18 Million Californians Told To Stay Indoors"

Jeremiah Babe, 12/9/25

"The Dollar Is No Longer Safe; 

18 Million Californians Told To Stay Indoors"

Comments here;

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures with Danno, "Walmart Cracks... It Finally Happened"

Adventures with Danno, 12/9/25

"Walmart Cracks... It Finally Happened"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"People Are Regretting Buying A House As Costs Spiral Out Of Control"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 12/9/25

"People Are Regretting Buying A 

House As Costs Spiral Out Of Control"

"Millions of Americans are waking up to a harsh reality. The home they thought would build their future is draining them financially. New construction homes are falling apart within months. Buyers are discovering foundation problems, cracking walls, and code violations that cost hundreds of thousands to fix. Even million dollar properties are being sold with serious defects that inspectors are exposing on social media. But construction failures are only part of the problem. Homeowners who bought during the 2021 to 2024 boom are now trapped. Interest rates have locked them into starter homes they can never upgrade from. Monthly payments are so high that families have nothing left after the mortgage clears. They call it being house poor and it is happening everywhere.

The math is brutal. A refinanced mortgage at today's rates can still mean paying nearly double the home's value over 30 years. People who stretched to buy are watching their equity disappear as prices drop nationwide. Almost a million homeowners are now upside down owing more than their homes are worth. Foreclosure filings are surging with some states seeing increases of 20 percent or more.

This is starting to look a lot like the warning signs we saw before 2008. Are we heading for another housing crash that wipes out everything people worked for? Share your story in the comments. Are you stuck in a home you regret buying? Did you discover problems after closing that no one warned you about? Subscribe for more videos on what is really happening in the economy that mainstream news will not tell you."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

A Classic Musical Interlude: "West Side Story," "America"

Full screen recommended.

"West Side Story," "America"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Why is the sky near Antares and Rho Ophiuchi so colorful? The colors result from a mixture of objects and processes. Fine dust illuminated from the front by starlight produces blue reflection nebulae. Gaseous clouds whose atoms are excited by ultraviolet starlight produce reddish emission nebulae. Backlit dust clouds block starlight and so appear dark.

Antares, a red supergiant and one of the brighter stars in the night sky, lights up the yellow-red clouds on the lower center. Rho Ophiuchi lies at the center of the blue nebula near the top. The distant globular cluster M4 is visible just to the right of Antares, and to the lower left of the red cloud engulfing Sigma Scorpii. These star clouds are even more colorful than humans can see, emitting light across the electromagnetic spectrum.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120828.html

"This Is Your Life..."

“This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice.

To be or not to be.

Every time you don't throw yourself down the stairs, that's a choice.

Every time you don't crash your car, you re-enlist.

If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume

and come back as a new character...Would you slow down? Or speed up?"

- Chuck Palahniuk

"If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make,

who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?"

~ Stephen Levine

The Poet: Theodore Roethke, "In a Dark Time"

"In a Dark Time"

"In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;

I hear my echo in the echoing wood -

A lord of nature weeping to a tree.

I live between the heron and the wren,

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.

That place among the rocks - is it a cave,

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,

And in broad day the midnight come again!

A man goes far to find out what he is -

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,

And one is One, free in the tearing wind."

- Theodore Roethke 

“Now Is the Time of Monsters”

“Now Is the Time of Monsters”

by Jeff Thomas

“In ancient Rome, interregnum was the term given to the period between stable governments when anything untoward might occur, and sometimes did – civil unrest, warfare between warlords, power vacuums and, finally, succession wars. But eventually the dust would settle and the victors, whoever they might be, would at some point restabilize the empire, often with a new map, showing the latest lines of geographic possession.

In 1929, the Italian Antonio Gramsci was in a fascist prison, writing about what he considered to be a new interregnum – a Europe that was tearing itself apart. He anticipated civil unrest, war between nations and repeated changes in the lines of geographic possession. At that time, he was attributed as saying, “The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”

And, of course, looking back from our vantage point in the twenty-first century, we have no difficulty in confirming that he was correct in his prognosis. The world war that followed brought forward the worst traits in mankind. The sociopaths of the world came center-stage. By the time the dust had settled, tens of millions were dead.

What we do have difficulty with is recognizing that the same pattern is again with us. National leaders and their advisors are spoiling for war, building up weaponry, creating senseless proxy wars in other nations’ backyards and playing a dangerous game of “chicken” with other major powers. This will not end well. It never does. Once the shoving-match has begun, it only escalates. At some point, whether it’s the false-flag assassination of an Archduke, as in World War I, or the false flag invasion of Germany by Poland, as in World War II, we can always count on some excuse being created to justify diving headlong into war.

It’s also true that, when empires get into economic trouble that’s too far gone for any viable solution, a trick that’s always employed by political leaders to keep the citizens from removing them from their seats of power, is to start a war. A people will, if they believe their homeland is in peril, accept the “temporary” removal of their freedoms. Even in the United States, the famed “Land of the Free,” political leaders have routinely imprisoned dissidents in times of warfare. People tend to get behind their leaders in wartime, no matter how undeserved that loyalty might be.

And so, now is the time of monsters, as Mr. Gramsci rightly stated. A time of uncertainty, when countries are in turmoil and would-be leaders are jostling for power with existing leaders. An interregnum.

Troubled times tend to bring out all the crazies – all the sociopathic-types that would find it hard to succeed in stable, prosperous times. In such times, the average person becomes worried that things are not going to turn out well. That’s perfectly understandable. Unfortunately, most people lack both the imagination and the courage to cope with how the times are impacting their lives. They instead rely on others to provide a torch that might help them escape from the darkness. Not surprising then, that every snake-oil salesman in town sees an opportunity to offer big promises – promises that he has neither the ability nor the inclination to fulfill.

At such times, the people of a country tend to become polarized, placing their faith in one political party or another, hoping that their party will “make the bad stuff go away.” In the US we see, on the liberal side, promises for “free health care for all,” a guaranteed basic income, housing for those who cannot afford it, and an endless stream of promises that, if the government were to implement them all, they will not be able to pay for them, even with 100% taxation from those who presently pay tax.

On the conservative side, we see promises such as “Make America Great Again,” with tax rebates that do not rejuvenate the economy, breaks for firms that have expatriated, but do not fool them into returning, claims to cut budgets, only to increase them, and promises to eliminate debt, only to expand it.

We see presidential elections in which one of the two leading candidates is a textbook narcissist, whilst the other displayed all the traits of senility. And we see a waitress elected to Congress by a substantial margin, raised to the status of heroine merely for promising all things to all people, whilst offering no plan as to how that might come about. Record numbers of candidates pour into the political arena, seeking a last grab at power prior to systemic failure.

To be fair, the US is by no means alone in delivering incapable people with nonsensical solutions to the higher offices. In the UK, each leading party states emphatically that the other party would be a disaster, yet neither party can come up with a working alternative. What they can do, as in America, is point fingers and shout invectives at each other.

In France, whilst the disconnected president essentially says, “Let them eat cake,” serving only to create further fury on the street. To be sure, the problem begins at the top. But it doesn’t end there. It sifts down to the proletariat, who, unable to come up with constructive solutions, create their own monsters, trashing the shops and burning the cars of people who had no hand in creating the problem.

But surely this is just a one-off phase, in which the best and brightest are temporarily pushed offstage, but will soon return, yes? Well, unfortunately, no. Historically, a period such as this one is followed by one of increased madness. Historically, the next step is societal breakdown. Riots, secessions and revolutions become commonplace, accompanied by economic collapse.

Out of these events come the worst monsters of all. It’s in the wake of such developments that the people of any country then turn away from those that made the empty promises and toward those who promise revenge against an ill-defined group who are characterized as having caused the problems. That’s when the Robespierres, the Lenins, the Hitlers – the greatest monsters – are swept into power. They invariably deliver the same message – that they’ll seek out the aristocracy, the gentry, the patricians, and strip them of their positions and possessions.

Invariably the way that this shakes out is not that the average man rises up, taking his “fair share” of the spoils. Instead, the leaders take the spoils and the proletariat are reduced to an equality of poverty. Our friend Mr. Gramsci found himself imprisoned by Benito Mussolini and died from illnesses incurred in prison. Unfortunately, his approach was to complain, but remain, as his country deteriorated around him. This proved, for him, to be the worst of choices. And, so it is today.”

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

o

"The Next World Order: 

How the Great Powers Are Dividing the Globe"

"This Real Moron Thing..."

"Aphoristic Granularity, or Perhaps Granular Aphoristity. It’s Hard To Tell"

"Aphoristic Granularity, or Perhaps 

Granular Aphoristity. It’s Hard To Tell"

by Fred Reed

"The Column Racket Explained: A political columnist should choose a place on the Left-Right spectrum. It doesn’t matter which. He needn’t believe it but should never deviate from it. Readers do not want intelligence or original thought. They want affirmation, to be told what they already think, over and over.

Editors want predictability, not thought or insight. An editor’s nightmare is to wake up every morning and think, “Oh God, what the hell has Reed said now, and how much will the lawyers cost?” Consequently they want slot-columnists: The tame white conservative male, the black female mildly racist woman, the white liberal male, and so on. Predictability, predictability, predictability.

Politics compressed: At their purest, conservatives are heartless and liberals, goofy. Conservatives don’t want to pay for anything for anybody else, and liberals want to pay for  everything for everybody else. Conservatives see enemies where there are none; liberals don’t see enemies where there are. Countries deserve what they tolerate (may God preserve us). Left and Right are twin halves of a national lobotomy serving to forestall governance.  I need a drink.

America begins its wars by overestimating itself, underestimating the enemy, and misunderstanding the kind of war it is entering. This explains a lot.

More on the public prints: In political discourse, avoid the highbrow. Americans resent intelligence. They are unlikely, if under thirty, to know anything they didn’t learn from Tiktok. Don’t confuse them.

More on journalism: A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. A reporter should know the difference.

On Liberal Politics: There is no more satisfying display of one’s virtue than public repentance for one’s sins. It is not necessary actually to have committed the sins.

When a politician says, “the American people,” or, worse, "the American Dream", put your hand on your wallet and send for a  rope. There is no greater sign of contempt for the populace.

Dictionary: “Unacceptable.” Acceptable.  Said to indicate something that is being accepted. It implies moral firmness on the part of the speaker while presaging nothing.

Defense: Offense.  Indicates capacity for armed attack on another country to get its natural resources ,or a transfer of money to the arms industry mediated by bribes. These transfers bear no relation to defense of anything. The last time the armed forces defended America was in 1945 or, arguably, 1812.

Supreme Court:  An auxiliary legislature of last resort.  Sometimes regarded as having to do with constitutionality, though there is little evidence for this.

United Nations:  An international organization having no discernible purpose. It serves as a venue for laudable speeches to which no one listens by countries which have no power.

War crime: Military behavior as usual when discovered by a reporter.

International law:  A phrase invoked to indicate the speaker’s piety without requiring action. Law if not enforced  means nothing. By tradition, it isn’t.

Religion clarified: A Methodist is a Baptist with shoes. A Presbyterian is a Methodist with a Buick. An Anglican is a Presbyterian with a stock portfolio. A Unitarian is a Democrat who believes that God is a force for community betterment.

Politics: People know when they are cold, wet, hungry, or scared. Most know little else. Polls reveal that large majorities cannot name the branches of government, can barely read, and even think that the sun revolves around the earth.  Politicians competitively shoo them in desired directions as if herding hamsters, which is how they view the electorate.

Fear is the best incitement, so tell  the electorate that something bad is coming to get them, the Russians or Chinese or almost anything frightening. Then increase the budget.

Women are realists pretending to be romantics. Men are romantics pretending to be realists, especially true of military men, who resemble Boy Scouts with scary hormones. It shows.

Democracy: First control what people know and then give them all the democracy they want.

Ignorance:  The normal state of humanity. Washington is a conspiracy to conceal ignorance. Knowing things requires time and effort better spent in running for reelection and soliciting bribes.  Reporters ask a senator, “What should be our policy on Afghanistan,” not “Do you have the slightest idea where Afghanistan is?”  The Senator replies, “Well, i think we need to support the Afghan freedom fighters in their struggle for democracy and to overcome the communist threat.” This disguises the fact that he doesn’t know where Afghanistan is and does not remind the public that they don’t know either.

The public will is often determined by the idiotic question, “Do you think the country is headed in the right direction?”  To know the direction in which the country is headed requires  familiarity with the behavior of tectonic plates, a familiarity few have. There is no hope. But, with tectonic plates, neither is there much hurry.

A working democracy  depends on limitation of choice. Ask the electorate whether  it would prefer universal medical care or an intercontinental nuclear bomber; decent schools or a goiterous military empire in countries nobody has heard of; or affordable houses for the young or tax breaks for billionaires, and they will tell you. Consequently these questions are kept off ballots.

Political  thought consists ninety percent of emotion and ten percent of misinformation. In fairness, in some cases the reverse is true.

Abraham Lincoln said that “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”  Being a politician, he did not add that you can fool enough of the people enough of the time, and that is enough.” This is the bedrock of democratic governance.

Military stupidity comes in three varieties: normally stupid; really, really stupid; and invading Russia. We should keep this in mind.

No government wants democracy. Thus they expend immense resources to convince the public that they already have it. This prevents attempts to get it.  Willy Bill selling fan belts at the NAPA outlet  in East Needle, Nebraska is easy prey for infinitely computerized social media run by smart people who spend their lives at manipulation. What passes for electoral democracy  is political ping pong between two parties equal in their contempt for a public they regard as equivalent to gerbils.

Donald Trump is the first President to combine fascism with daffiness.

American foreign policy fails because it is  made by people who have no idea what they are doing. A friend, a former senator, once estimated to me that ninety percent of the Senate don’t know where Myan Mar is. On the House China committee there is no one who reads, writes, or speaks Chinese, or has an academic degree in East Asia studies. The forty members of the House Science committee include one real scientist, a particle physicist out of Harvard, and two medical doctors. The Current President confuses Azerbaijan with Albania. Ask the Senate, charged with making foreign policy, what countries border on Iran, which they want to bomb.

Most people derive their ideology from the world. Zealots derive the world from their ideology. The ideology is static, so they never learn anything they don’t want to know.

Democracy  selects as leaders those least fit to lead. To be elected one must lie, cozen, and swindle, the degree of mastery  of these arts increasing with progress to higher office. Thus we are ruled by unprincipled provincial lawyers selected in popularity contests. We could do better by choosing men sleeping under park benches. If they remained asleep, this would be even better.

There you have it, everything worth knowing about the workings of the country. There is no  more to be learned. I expect that across America whole university departments of poly-sci will close in despair, and most sociologists will take poison. At least we can hope."

- https://fredoneverything.org/

The Daily "Near You?"

Arvada, Colorado, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"In All Seriousness..."

"Thomas Edison said in all seriousness: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labor of thinking"- if we bother with facts at all, we hunt like bird dogs after the facts that bolster up what we already think- and ignore all the others! We want only the facts that justify our acts- the facts that fit in conveniently with our wishful thinking and justify our preconceived prejudices. As Andre Maurois put it: "Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true. Everything that is not puts us into a rage." Is it any wonder, then, that we find it so hard to get at the answers to our problems? Wouldn't we have the same trouble trying to solve a second-grade arithmetic problem, if we went ahead on the assumption that two plus two equals five? Yet there are a lot of people in this world who make life a hell for themselves and others by insisting that two plus two equals five - or maybe five hundred!"

- Dale Carnegie

"The More I Learn..."

"The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog."

- Mark Twain

"Inevitable"

"Inevitable"

by Todd Hayen

"I used to believe that the only way we were going to get out of this mess was to flip sheep (apologies to those offended by my continued use of the word “sheep” - old habits die hard). Meaning that if we got everyone, or mostly everyone, to see what truly was going on, then we could stop the insanity. In other words, if everyone woke up there would be no more compliance, no more believing in the lies, no more falling into the agenda’s traps. Now I am not so sure.

It seems now that the only way this insanity will work its way out is either by a direct act of God or if we are willing to wait 1,000 years or so when it works out on its own. Maybe we just need to face Armageddon, let it happen, and try to live the best life we can before and while it’s happening. I don’t mean “give up,” I mean to still fight but focus the fight on things other than trying to flip sheep.

I know I’ve said this before, but now I am refining this idea a bit. Although I do believe once we know something, we can’t unknow it - meaning we can’t force ourselves into a state of denial and pretend all is rosy as the sheep tend to do. But maybe we should stop focusing on it so much and try to get back to the basics of joyous living. Did I really just say that? No, of course not.

I have found myself envying the sheep. I recently had a friend on FB question something I had posted (a comment actually on someone’s meme about chemtrails). She had said she simply did not understand what was being said negatively about natural contrails that jets innocently leave behind. I turned her on to a James Corbett video interviewing Peter Kirby about chemtrails. She responded with the usual disbelief - “How could people be doing this without anyone knowing - purposefully poisoning the earth and all of the people on it?”

I didn’t push it and just said, “You seem to be enjoying your life, keep doing that and don’t let this cat out of the bag. Let it go.” It was the first time I did something like that, and it felt right. I had the opportunity to possibly flip a sheep, and I didn’t take it. I believe, however, that this “letting go” only applies to sheep. Whereas before, I wanted sheep to learn the truth about the world, now I am not so anxious to be the one to wreck their day. They will figure it out soon enough.

Maybe this is an old person thing, and I am just tired. I have no young kids to look out for like so many of you do. I have little other than myself to sacrifice if the world goes down the tubes. I am not going to be here that much longer anyway. Although I do think some of this bad stuff is going to start happening long before I die, I am not so sure of that either.

Will another scamdemic hit soon, will social credit scores, CBDC, and Digital IDs come upon us that quickly, and if they do, will they have the devastating effect we all believe they will? Will we soon be living like the folks in "1984" or "Brave New World"?

Now, I don’t think I am going to die before much of that, but maybe the worst of it will not hit for another 20 years. Most likely I will be gone before then. Unless I get some shiny new body parts which will soon be available, but if shiny new parts do become available, I doubt if I will be able to afford them. All I am saying is that we will be faced with it soon enough, and maybe before we are, we should forget about trying so hard to stop it. As I type this I am getting nauseous. What an old geezer-coward I’ve turned out to be.

If it was possible to flip sheep I would say let’s keep flipping them. But since it is not possible to even make a dent in that woolly armor, then I say forget it. Most of you, I believe, quelled this effort long ago.

Maybe fighting at all is useless. When a person has terminal cancer, isn’t there a rational point to stop the effort to beat it and just enjoy what you’ve got left? Is that really a deeply defeatist attitude? I think falling somewhere in the middle might be a consideration. For us, it is different. As I said a minute ago, we don’t have the option, like most sheep do, to slip into complete denial. What we know, we cannot unknow.

The sheep are also not all that happy, happy, joy, joy. They obviously think something is afoot. It is interesting to observe their “inaccurate” concern. In the states, it is all about Trump destroying democracy, the constitution, women’s rights, gay rights, trans rights, and the rights of anyone who is not white and Christian (and male). When Biden was around, it was also about destroying Putin and Russia’s rampage to conquer the world, as well as Palestine and Iran destroying Israel and Islam in general destroying every Jew on Earth. So, sheep have worries, too, but in general, they are distracted from the truth.

I had been confused recently (before the US election) trying to determine who these memes are referring to, Trump or Harris - memes predicting the end of democracy, etc. Both sides were being accused of the same things. One of my recent favorites was a meme of a wolf eating sheep while saying he would protect the sheep and only ate a few of them. The sheep respond by saying to one another, “This guy is going to protect us, he’s the one for us!” I commented to the poster, “Who are the sheep?” The person posting the meme liked my comment, obviously assuming I was on her side. They think we are sheep, too.

I am wondering if there is a less obvious way to continue this fight. Maybe just by trying harder to create community and be more accepting of contrary views. I do think we shrews are better at doing that. Since we had all been categorized Trumpsters (whether we were or not), it is much easier for sheep (who had all been categorized liberals and Harris supporters - which they may or may not be) to hate us and not give us the time of day. This is where the real problem lies.

I am afraid now things will only get worse before they get better - assuming they ever will get better. Maybe it is time for us shrews to let go of sheep entirely - to attempt to create community without them. Not to reject them outright, but just not concern ourselves with them unless they voluntarily come into our fold. I don’t like the idea of “sides,” but I don’t think it is possible to ignore the fact that we are indeed polarized.

Although it may seem that I am suggesting we become complacent, I don’t think I am. We cannot become depressed though. When we fight, and then fail, and repeat that cycle, we can bring on depression. We must focus our efforts on success, not on things that are bound to fail, but rather on things we know we can be successful with. Like community, joy, and laughter coupled with a serious critical eye and a continued penchant for sniffing out the truth in a deeply illusional world.

I know it seems strange hearing this from me, Dr. Doom. I don’t have much to say in my writing other than pointing out negative aspects of our experience. I will continue to do this only because I think it is very easy for us to fall back to sleep. Maybe that is exactly what I am doing myself by writing this particular article. Maybe I have started to nod off, breathing in the intoxicating falsity of the good life still to be had that so many seem to be enjoying. If you feel the same, don’t let it happen. Stay awake."

- https://off-guardian.org/

o

Todd Hayen PhD is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies. He specializes in Jungian, archetypal, psychology. Todd also writes for his own substack, which you can read here.