Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 4/9/26
"The Middle Class Is Breaking:
Food Banks See Unprecedented Demand"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Thursday, April 9, 2026
Gerald Celente, "Ceasefire Fraud, Markets Rigged, Tanking Economies"
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 4/9/26
"Ceasefire Fraud, Markets Rigged, Tanking Economies"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What's Next in these increasingly turbulent times."
Comments here:
"How Could You? A Dog's Story"
"How Could You? A Dog's Story"
by Jim Willis
"When I was a puppy I entertained you with my antics and made you laugh. You called me your child and despite a number of chewed shoes and a couple of murdered throw pillows, I became your best friend. Whenever I was "bad," you'd shake your finger at me and ask "How could you?" - but then you'd relent and roll me over for a bellyrub.
My house training took a little longer than expected, because you were terribly busy, but we worked on that together. I remember those nights of nuzzling you in bed, listening to your confidences and secret dreams, and I believed that life could not be any more perfect. We went for long walks and runs in the park, car rides, stops for ice cream (I only got the cone because "ice cream is bad for dogs," you said), and I took long naps in the sun waiting for you to come home at the end of the day.
Gradually, you began spending more time at work and on your career, and more time searching for a human mate. I waited for you patiently, comforted you through heartbreaks and disappointments, never chided you about bad decisions, and romped with glee at your homecomings, and when you fell in love.
She, now your wife, is not a "dog person" - still I welcomed her into our home, tried to show her affection, and obeyed her. I was happy because you were happy. Then the human babies came along and I shared your excitement. I was fascinated by their pinkness, how they smelled, and I wanted to mother them, too. Only she and you worried that I might hurt them, and I spent most of my time banished to another room, or to a dog crate. Oh, how I wanted to love them, but I became a "prisoner of love."
As they began to grow, I became their friend. They clung to my fur and pulled themselves up on wobbly legs, poked fingers in my eyes, investigated my ears and gave me kisses on my nose. I loved everything about them, especially their touch - because your touch was now so infrequent - and I would have defended them with my life if need be. I would sneak into their beds and listen to their worries and secret dreams. Together we waited for the sound of your car in the driveway. There had been a time, when others asked you if you had a dog, that you produced a photo of me from your wallet and told them stories about me. These past few years, you just answered "yes" and changed the subject. I had gone from being your dog to "just a dog," and you resented every expenditure on my behalf.
Now you have a new career opportunity in another city and you and they will be moving to an apartment that does not allow pets. You've made the right decision for your "family," but there was a time when I was your only family.
I was excited about the car ride until we arrived at the animal shelter. It smelled of dogs and cats, of fear, of hopelessness. You filled out the paperwork and said "I know you will find a good home for her." They shrugged and gave you a pained look. They understand the realities facing a middle-aged dog or cat, even one with "papers."
You had to pry your son's fingers loose from my collar as he screamed "No, Daddy! Please don't let them take my dog!" And I worried for him and what lessons you had just taught him about friendship and loyalty, about love and responsibility, and about respect for all life. You gave me a goodbye pat on the head, avoided my eyes, and politely refused to take my collar and leash with you. You had a deadline to meet and now I have one, too.
After you left, the two nice ladies said you probably knew about your upcoming move months ago and made no attempt to find me another good home. They shook their heads and asked "How could you?"
They are as attentive to us here in the shelter as their busy schedules allow. They feed us, of course, but I lost my appetite days ago. At first, whenever anyone passed my pen, I rushed to the front, hoping it was you - that you had changed your mind - that this was all a bad dream... or I hoped it would at least be someone who cared, anyone who might save me. When I realized I could not compete with the frolicking for attention of happy puppies, oblivious to their own fate, I retreated to a far corner and waited.
I heard her footsteps as she came for me at the end of the day and I padded along the aisle after her to a separate room. A blissfully quiet room. She placed me on the table, rubbed my ears and told me not to worry. My heart pounded in anticipation of what was to come, but there was also a sense of relief. The prisoner of love had run out of days. As is my nature, I was more concerned about her. The burden which she bears weighs heavily on her and I know that, the same way I knew your every mood.
She gently placed a tourniquet around my foreleg as a tear ran down her cheek. I licked her hand in the same way I used to comfort you so many years ago. She expertly slid the hypodermic needle into my vein. As I felt the sting and the cool liquid coursing through my body, I lay down sleepily, looked into her kind eyes and murmured "How could you?"
Perhaps because she understood my dogspeak, she said "I'm so sorry." She hugged me and hurriedly explained it was her job to make sure I went to a better place, where I wouldn't be ignored or abused or abandoned, or have to fend for myself - a place of love and light so very different from this earthly place. With my last bit of energy, I tried to convey to her with a thump of my tail that my "How could you?" was not meant for her. It was you, My Beloved Master, I was thinking of. I will think of you and wait for you forever. May everyone in your life continue to show you so much loyalty."
○
"If there are no dogs in Heaven,
then when I die I want to go where they went."
- Will Rogers
Dogs are better people than people will ever be...
"Courage..."
“I was as afraid as the next man in my time and maybe more so. But with the years, fear had come to be regarded as a form of stupidity to be classed with overdrafts, acquiring a venereal disease or eating candies. Fear is a child's vice and while I loved to feel it approach, as one does with any vice, it was not for grown men and the only thing to be afraid of was the presence of true and imminent danger in a form that you should be aware of and not be a fool if you were responsible for others.”
- Ernest Hemingway, "True at First Light”
"Our Society Has Produced A 'Lost Generation' That Doesn’t Have Any Hope"
"Our Society Has Produced A 'Lost Generation'
That Doesn’t Have Any Hope"
by Michael Snyder
"How can we possibly undo the severe long-term damage that has been done to an entire generation of young people over the course of several decades? One of the most powerful pieces of evidence that our society is a failure is the fact that we have produced a “lost generation” of young adults that doesn’t have any hope. We shipped most of them off to public schools where they were trained to believe that they came from monkeys, there is no purpose to their lives, and when they die nothing waits for them on the other side. This sick philosophy is endlessly pounded into the heads of our young people, and many of those that have adopted it have come to the conclusion that they might as well live as hedonistically as they can while they are here. Of course that doesn’t give them any meaning or purpose either, and so a lot of them end up sort of drifting through life seeking anything that can fill the painful emptiness that they feel inside.
It isn’t really a mystery why so many of our young people have gone completely insane. Our modern liberal society urges them to constantly chase after things that will never satisfy them. As a result, we have a national epidemic of loneliness, a national epidemic of depression, a national epidemic of drug abuse, and a national epidemic of suicide. Our young people are offered one hamster wheel after another. Each time, they are told that if they will just run hard enough they will finally be happy. Of course that never actually happens.
It all starts in the public schools. Parents send their children to these schools believing that they will receive a quality education, but the truth is that the quality of education in our public schools just keeps getting worse…"The reading and math scores of 12th graders have plunged to their lowest level in over 20 years. The scores, part of a test from the National Assessment of Education Progress, showed the average reading score for 12th graders dropped to the lowest level since the NAEP first administered the reading assessment in 1992. The average score for 12th graders in math in 2024 was the lowest since 2005, when the math assessment framework changed significantly."
I went to public schools all the way through high school, and then I attended two public universities for a total of eight years. The quality of the education that I received was a joke. The entire system is a fraud! It is about time that we all finally admit that the emperor doesn’t have any clothes on. But what our public schools are good at is indoctrinating young minds. For example, just consider what has been happening in the state of Maryland…
"Schools are subverting students’ mental health by endlessly hectoring them to doubt or despise their own bodies. These school antics reached epidemic level even before the start of the Covid pandemic. In 2019, the state of Maryland issued regulations to promote “viewing each student’s” “gender identity and expression” as “valuable.” Government officials and political appointees arrogated to themselves the prerogative to redefine gender in the state of Maryland. Montgomery County, the largest school system in the state, announced that it would choose books for the curriculum “through an ‘LGBTQ+ Lens’ and ask whether books ‘reinforced or disrupted’ ‘stereotypes,’ ‘cisnormativity,’ and ‘power hierarchies,’” according to a brief filed at the Supreme Court by parents who successfully challenged the school system.
That brief also noted that “teachers are told to frame disagreement with [pro-LGBTQ] ideas as ‘hurtful,’ and to counter with examples of ‘men who paint their nails’ or ‘wear dresses.’” The goal is to instill in children “a new perspective not easily contravened by their parents,” as the county school board admitted. The indoctrination produced a 582% increase in the number of kids self-identifying as “non-binary” in Montgomery County schools. “Disrupting children’s thinking” has been so successful that almost half of the students identified themselves as non-binary."
Sadly, most parents have no idea what is really going on in these schools. They just assume that their kids are being prepared for life in the real world. But instead they are having leftist “values” systematically shoved down their throats. Needless to say, it gets even worse at the next level. Our colleges and universities are completely and utterly dominated by radical leftists.
This is why so many of our young people abandon the values that they were raised with once they enroll in these “institutions of higher learning”. This is a point that was made exceptionally well in a recent article by Victor Davis Hanson…"Hundreds of thousands of students emerge from campuses not just indoctrinated with contempt for the Western tradition and American exceptionalism, and not just often thousands of dollars in debt from inflated tuition, but also poorly educated by the standards that once defined education.
The working classes and high school graduates, supposedly the losers of our society, are not those who are dividing the country. They are not often advocating violence or trying to use any means necessary to overturn the established order. But so often the products of the modern university are doing just that. Sadly, in all these recent horrors, the ideology behind them - the premise that either birthed or appeased them - was birthed in modern higher education."
He is right. Once upon a time, colleges and universities were primarily concerned with equipping students with the skills that they would need for their future careers. Today, colleges and universities are primarily concerned with brainwashing impressionable young kids.
So how is that working out for our society? Well, we now have a raging epidemic of loneliness among our young people…"Half of U.S. youth say that loneliness has a daily disruptive impact on their mental health, according to Hopelab and Data For Progress survey results shared exclusively with Axios. In addition, the percentage of the population that is suffering with or receiving treatment for depression has nearly doubled over the past decade…"
Depression remains an ongoing problem in the U.S. as historically high rates persist, polling company Gallup reveals. The reported percentage of U.S. adults suffering or receiving treatment for depression has been higher than 18 percent for the past two years. A decade ago, in 2015, the number was just over 10 percent.
“The increase is alarming, and it is important that we keep an open mind and explore all possible causes for the rapid, and apparently sustained, rise in depression rates over the past decade,” Dr. Gerard Sanacora, a professor of psychiatry, director of Yale Depression Research Program and co-director of Yale New Haven Hospital Interventional Psychiatry Service at Yale University, told Newsweek."
On top of everything else, “deaths of despair” caused by alcohol abuse, drug abuse and suicide are absolutely soaring…"Two non-profits, Trust for America’s Health and Well Being Trust, published a report this month which paints a harrowing picture of reality for millennials with an addiction in the United States. According to the report, which is an analysis of data from the CDC, millennials are the most likely age demographic to die from alcohol, drug abuse, and suicide. Millennials are most often defined as people who were born between the years 1981 and 1996, although some definitions expand the category to cover people who were born up through the year 2000.
Over the course of one decade, from 2007 to 2017, the rate of alcohol-related deaths among millennials rose by 69%, the rate of deaths caused by drugs rose by 108%, and the suicide rate rose by 35%. The report also indicates that the opioid epidemic has devastated millennials. From 1999 to 2017, the rate of fatal opioid overdoses among millennials rose by 500% and the rate of fatal overdoses involving synthetic opioids (especially fentanyl) skyrocketed by 6,000%."
Please go back and look at those numbers one more time. What we are doing is clearly not working. We have a system that does not give our young people any hope, and the consequences have been absolutely devastating.
Those of us that refuse to go along with the system are increasingly being marginalized and pushed to the fringes of our society, but we will not yield because we have found hope in Jesus Christ. If you would like to study the evidence that proves that the Christian faith is true, I would strongly encourage you to read my book entitled “Why”, because it contains a lot of information that has been kept from the general population.
Our schools aren’t going to tell you the truth. Neither will the other major institutions in our society. If you are tired of being lied to, it is time to wake up and start thinking for yourself. We live at a time when deception is literally all around us, but the truth is still out there, and you can find it if you are willing to search for it."
"Retirement Is Dead - 85 Is the New Retirement Age"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 4/9/26
"Retirement Is Dead -
85 Is the New Retirement Age"
"The idea of retiring at 65 is quickly becoming a thing of the past. In this video, we break down why more Americans are facing the harsh reality that retirement may not happen until age 85 - or at all. With rising living costs, failing pensions, uncertainty around Social Security, and poor financial preparation, millions of people are being forced to work later into life just to survive. This isn’t just a theory - it’s happening right now across the country. We also dive into the collapse of commercial real estate, bad investments, and how government mismanagement is making the situation even worse. From shrinking retirement funds to skyrocketing expenses, the financial pressure is building fast. If you’re not prepared, you could be caught in the same trap. This is a must-watch for anyone concerned about their financial future, retirement planning, and the real state of the economy."
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Stock Up at Kroger Before Price Increases!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 4/9/26
"Stock Up at Kroger Before Price Increases!"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 4/9/26
"Higher Prices: The Concerning Economic Trend"
Comments here:
"US-Israel-Iran War, 4/9/26"
Full screen recommended.
OPTM, 4/9/26
"Iran Just Did Something Out Of This World
as Pakistan Negotiations Fall Apart"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Tucker Carlson Network, 4/9/26
"Israel Has Done It Again"
Comments here:
o
Prof. John Mearsheimer, 4/9/26
"Iran Retaliates:
Full Evacuation Ordered, Hits Tel Aviv"
Comments here:
o
Prof. Jiang Xueqin, 4/9/26
"Iran Hurls 1,800 Ballistic Missiles,
Iron Dome Collapses, US Panics"
"Iran launches an unprecedented 1,800 ballistic missile barrage, overwhelming Israel’s multi-layered defenses and triggering a dramatic U.S. naval response. This in-depth GeoStrike Network analysis breaks down how the attack was executed, why Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow systems struggled under saturation pressure, and what America’s rapid repositioning reveals about modern deterrence limits. We examine missile technology, operational tactics, and the broader geopolitical consequences shaping the future of warfare. From cost asymmetry to maneuverable warheads, this event marks a turning point in global military strategy and power balance in the Middle East and beyond."
Comments here:
Bill Bonner, "The Fog of Peace"
"The Fog of Peace"
by Bill Bonner
"In this plan, America is fundamentally committed to guaranteeing non-aggression, the continuation of Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz, the acceptance of enrichment, the lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions, the termination of all resolutions of the Security Council and the Board of Governors, the payment of Iran’s damages, the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from the region, and the cessation of war on all fronts, including against the heroic Islamic Resistance of Lebanon." - Iran’s Supreme National Security Council on the ceasefire.
Baltimore, Maryland - "Who cried ‘uncle?’ Like the Virgin Birth, or ‘printing press money,’ the victory over Iran is largely incomprehensible to modest minds. But so is the history of warfare and foreign policy, generally. Reaching for an insight...we note that most of what we know is probably false...and that even those elements that are true are like mere foot soldiers in a farcical war. They are real. And they are ready to die. For what? Nobody really knows. The media spent yesterday trying to sort it out. Was there a ceasefire in effect...or not? Did it include the Israelis...or not? Was traffic moving through the Strait? Whose peace proposal had been accepted...the US version, or Iran’s? Is Lebanon part of it?
In any event, Gen. Caine warned that a “cease fire is just a pause.” It turned out that it was such a short pause that if you went to the bathroom, you may have missed it. At around 10am came a report from NBC that: "Israel launches huge attack in Lebanon after cease fire agreed."
By 11am, the Strait was closed again. Jackson Hinckle: "BREAKING: Iran OFFICIALLY CLOSES the STRAIT OF HORMUZ until further notice due to Israel’s attack on Lebanon - Fars New Agency."
The Wall Street Journal added detail at 1pm: "Iran told mediators it would limit the number of ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz to around a dozen a day and charge tolls under the cease-fire struck by President Trump, showing Tehran plans to keep control over the world’s most important energy-shipping lane. Ships that pass will have to coordinate with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful paramilitary group that has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union, Arab mediators said."
And by 3pm the ceasefire ceased to be a ceasefire. Came a headline: ‘What Ceasefire?’ World Politics Review: "In reality, not much has changed on the ground in the past 24 hours. Iranian airstrikes are continuing to hit targets in Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia reported that a critical east-west pipeline that carries oil to the Red Sea had been struck. Traffic has not resumed through the Strait of Hormuz.
Israel, meanwhile, launched what it said was its heaviest wave of airstrikes yet against Lebanon as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Lebanon was excluded from the deal, flatly contradicting Sharif’s statement. Indeed, the Americans seem to be the only ones who have stopped shooting."
By 4pm we discovered that somebody hadn’t read the fine print. Reuters: "US did not agree that ceasefire would cover Lebanon, Vance says." Whatever else might be said about it, the ceasefire was at least equal to the war it was meant to stop: neither was what it was advertised to be.
You’ll recall that the stock market didn’t take the end of the world very seriously. But now that the world wasn’t going to end so soon, it shot straight up at the opening yesterday. The price of oil collapsed by $22 on the opening...and held in the low $90s for the rest of the day. And as of this morning, the fog of war had been replaced by the fog of peace. Only America’s war-fighters have stood down...and wondered why they ever stood up in the first place."
"Iran Activates Satan-2 Nuclear 15-Ton Warhead From Russia - Israel Has 24 Hours to Evacuate Tel Aviv, U.S Panics"
The Jiang Report and US Power Analysis, 4/8/26
"Iran Activates Russia's 15-Ton Satan-2 Missile,
Tel Aviv Has 24 Hours to Evacuate, U.S. Panics"
"Iran has reportedly activated Russia’s RS-28 Sarmat, known as Satan-2, triggering a 24-hour ultimatum for Tel Aviv. This video breaks down the missile’s terrifying capabilities, including MIRV warheads and hypersonic glide vehicles, and why experts believe it is nearly impossible to intercept. We analyze how Iran gained access, the deepening Russia-Iran alliance, and the rapid U.S. military response. As Washington scrambles and Israel faces an unprecedented threat, this crisis could reshape global power dynamics. Is this the beginning of a new multipolar world - or the brink of escalation? Watch the full breakdown to understand what’s really happening."
Comments here:
o
"Russia Puts Advanced Sarmat
Nuclear Missile System On ‘Combat Duty’"
"Moscow has put into service an advanced intercontinental ballistic missile that Russian President Vladimir Putin has said would make Russia’s enemies “think twice” about their threats, according to reported comments by the head of the country’s space agency. Yuri Borisov, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, said Sarmat missiles have “assumed combat duty”, according to Russian news agency reports.
“The Sarmat strategic system has assumed combat alert posture,” the state-run TASS news agency quoted the Roscosmos chief as saying. “Based on experts’ estimates, the RS-28 Sarmat is capable of delivering a MIRVed warhead weighing up to 10 tons to any location worldwide, both over the North and South Poles,” TASS said in its report.
Putin said in February that the Sarmat – one of several advanced weapons in Russia’s arsenal, is deployed now. In 2022, some two months after Russian troops invaded Ukraine, Putin said the Sarmat would “reliably ensure the security of Russia from external threats and make those, who in the heat of aggressive rhetoric try to threaten our country, think twice”.
The Sarmat is an underground silo-based missile that Russian officials say can carry up to 15 nuclear warheads, though the United States military estimates its capacity to be 10 warheads. Known to NATO military allies by the codename “Satan”, the missile reportedly has a short initial launch phase, which gives little time for surveillance systems to track its takeoff.
Weighing more than 200 tons, the Sarmat has a range of some 18,000km (11,000 miles) and was developed to replace Russia’s older generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICMBs) that dated from the 1980s. Russia test-fired the Sarmat missile in April 2022 in the Plesetsk region of the country, located some 800km (almost 500 miles) north of Moscow, and the launched missiles hit targets on the Kamchatka peninsula, in Russia’s far east region."
o
RS-28 Sarmat
15 warheads per missile, 11,000 mile range, hypersonic speed of 15,880 mph.
One Sarmat can destroy an area the size of Texas or France.
A hypersonic nuclear missile launched from Russia will hit Washington, DC in 23 minutes.
o
The Poseidon Torperdo
Full screen recommended.
Fully operational and deployed, the Poseidon torpedo with a 100 megaton warhead explodes deep underwater, causing a 1,600 foot high tidal wave which destroys everything on the U.S. East Coast as far inland as West Virginia. England would simply disappear beneath the waves...
It would look exactly like this, only twice as high...
as far inland as West Virginia.
Do we really want to do this? Pray to God we don't...
Wednesday, April 8, 2026
"Alert! Well, That Was Quick, Strait Closed Again"
Canadian Prepper, 4/8/26
"Alert! Well, That Was Quick, Strait Closed Again"
Comments here:
"Trump Crashes Out, 25th Amendment Plans Begin"
Full screen recommended.
OPTM, 4/8/26
"Trump Crashes Out,
25th Amendment Plans Begin"
Comments here:
"People Will Freak Out When Gas Prices Hit $10 In The Coming Weeks"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 4/8/26
"People Will Freak Out When Gas Prices
Hit $10 In The Coming Weeks"
"Gas prices just hit $8 a gallon in Los Angeles, and experts are already warning that $10 could be next. In this video, we're reacting to real people across the country sharing what they're experiencing at the pump right now, and what it's actually doing to their lives. This isn't just about numbers on a sign. It's about the everyday decisions that millions of Americans are being forced to make because of where fuel prices are heading.
We start by looking at what's happening on the ground in California, where drivers are stopping to photograph gas station signs because they simply can't believe what they're reading. At $8 a gallon, filling up a regular tank means spending over $300 a month on fuel alone, before insurance, before car payments, before anything else. For a lot of families, that's not a budget line they can absorb without giving something else up.
From there, we get into the bigger picture. There are a lot of different opinions floating around about what's actually causing this spike. Global oil markets, strained supply routes, domestic policy decisions, corporate pricing behavior. The truth is probably a combination of all of it, and most people watching their tank drain faster than their paycheck don't have the luxury of waiting for economists to agree on an answer. What's clear is that the pressure is real, and it's not going away anytime soon.
The part f this conversation that hit hardest was hearing from everyday people who are quietly restructuring their lives around the cost of gas. Someone skipping a fitness class because the drive isn't worth it anymore. Someone in Tennessee shocked to be paying prices they associate with New York or LA. A person putting 37 cents in their tank because that was all they could spare. These aren't dramatic stories. They're ordinary moments that say something serious about where things stand for working Americans right now.
We also talk about a few practical things you can do to stretch your fuel budget further while prices stay elevated. Nothing that fixes the bigger problem, but small habits that add up over time and give you a little more breathing room when every gallon counts.
If you've been feeling the weight of this at the pump, you are not alone. This video is for anyone trying to make sense of what's happening and figure out how to keep moving forward without burning through their savings every time they leave the driveway. Watch until the end, share your thoughts in the comments, and let us know what gas prices look like where you live right now."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 4/8/26
"Major US Businesses Are Collapsing, Millions Warned"
Comments here:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Except for the rings of Saturn, the Ring Nebula (M57) is probably the most famous celestial circle. Its classic appearance is understood to be due to our own perspective, though. The recent mapping of the expanding nebula's 3-D structure, based in part on this clear Hubble image,indicates that the nebula is a relatively dense, donut-like ring wrapped around the middle of a (American) football-shaped cloud of glowing gas.
The view from planet Earth looks down the long axis of the football, face-on to the ring. Of course, in this well-studied example of a planetary nebula, the glowing material does not come from planets. Instead, the gaseous shroud represents outer layers expelled from the dying, once sun-like star, now a tiny pinprick of light seen at the nebula's center. Intense ultraviolet light from the hot central star ionizes atoms in the gas. The Ring Nebula is about one light-year across and 2,500 light-years away."
"The Things We Did Not Do..."
"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."
~ Sydney J. Harris
The Poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, “Sunset”
“Sunset”
“Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you,
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth,
leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so helplessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs -
leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke
"'Life Doesn’t Owe Anyone a Damn Thing'; or 'Handle Hard Better'"
"'Life Doesn’t Owe Anyone a Damn Thing';
or 'Handle Hard Better'"
by Justin Smith
“We all wait in life for things to get easier. It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better. That’s what happens. Most people think that it’s going to get easier. Life is going to get easier. Basketball is going to get easier. School is going to get easier. It never gets easier. What happens is you become someone who handles hard stuff better. And if you think life when you leave college is going to all of a sudden get easier because you graduated, and you got a Duke degree, it’s not going to get easier. It’s going to get harder. So make yourself a person that handles hard well.” ~ Kara Lawson, Head Coach for Duke University Women’s Basketball Team and Graduate of the University of Tennessee [July 5th 2022]
"An incredible number of Americans today have been coddled, pampered and fed a sense of entitlement from birth that continued into their early adulthood, making them always look to others or the government for help in acquiring their needs and wants. They have been raised without a backbone, weak-willed and dependent; and so, whenever they find themselves to be in a minority, they more often than not petition the federal and state governments, protest and riot, in order that their particular concerns are proactively pursued and implemented as favored, privileged and superior, no matter how insane, from destroying humanity by way of transgenderism or energy and job-killing fallacious “climate change” policies.
From my earliest memories, I saw hard men, laughing, loving, fighting hard and playing just as hard, as they’d rise each day to head out to work, in the mines, the forests, office buildings and on the nation’s lines of defense, and in particular I recall learning something of worth from each of them, much as I did from my Granddad Spurge, who was a coal miner and a stone mason. They were a hardy bunch of industrious scrappers, who pulled up their sleeves and worked hard to make a better life for themselves and their children, to build better communities, a better America.
But what passes for young “men” today is but a mere shadow of men of worth from better days gone by, what with their feminine appearances and their aversion to doing anything to break a sweat. And aside from weak bodies, too much coddling has made their minds work in a new, cunning devious manner, in which they waste enormous amounts of effort sidestepping real work and figuring out how to get something for nothing rather than perform an honest day’s work to pay for bills they make, without any intention of ever repaying, such as student loans.
Half of America seems content to allow Uncle Sam to make life better for them and their children via the welfare system and the government cheese, even tho’ it means a life of subsistence, just scraping by. Although today, many have developed gaming the system into a real art, whereby they live just about as good as anyone working a full-time job, complete with HUD homes, EBT cards, late model cars, color T.V.s and government purchased cellphones.
Life doesn’t owe any of us a thing, regardless of the circumstances and station of our birth. The miracle of your birth alone doesn’t mean you are automatically owed a job, a house, a bed or a single meal after you are a grown adult and supposedly capable of doing for yourself. You’re not owed recognition and understanding for simply existing, and neither are you owed success and comfort, abundance and happiness or immunity from the problems, pain and suffering that is simply a part of the human condition, and you certainly aren’t due any money you haven’t earned through your own sweat and effort, not from me, the American taxpayers or the U.S. government.
The only thing anyone should expect from The Government, if we are to accept the Contract found in our Constitution, are those things enumerated in its original form, and in that sense, we are owed a strong, affirmative and fierce defense of our Inalienable God-given Rights, as expressed and defined in the Bill of Rights, to be left alone to our own devices to live and thrive as free born Americans, without interference from The Government and its agents where no real harm is being done.
People aren’t created equal in the very real definition of the word and life has never been fair to anyone, and yet, the constant refrain heard all across all levels of American society today, from the ranks of the Mau Mau Marxist-Maoist totalitarians, those lovers of “democracy”, is “the world is so unfair”. They were evidently raised to believe “all men are created equal” in the context of the Declaration of Independence meant they are somehow guaranteed equal outcomes in everyday life, instead of the simple “equality under the law” as intended. And their voices are now amplified by an out-of-control regime that seeks to use their envy to complete the fundamental transformation of America, by any means necessary, no matter how unconstitutional or illegal they might be and are currently proving to be.
Standing on one’s own two feet and making your way through the merit of your own knowledge and work are now a thing of the past, as the poorest results in school and on the job are given the same weight and worth as the best and everybody gets a participation trophy. And in its place, envy, greed, sloth, gluttony, lies, sex and murder, the destroyer of worlds, are the rule, for a generation indoctrinated through Marxist-Maoist multiculturalist doctrine and propaganda, taught from kindergarten through university, who are now driven by an unhinged hate and anger directed at white society and capitalism.
This, in part, is the reason we see whole cities, controlled by the Marxist-Maoists and the totalitarian minded, enacting new “laws” that make the theft of anything $900 or less a misdemeanor, giving way to thousands of groups of poorly taught, undisciplined, predominantly black “youths” rampaging, rioting and looting numerous times a day, taking $900 dollars worth of merchandise nine times a day, if not more, taught racism and hatred and driven by envy and greed. It’s the reason cities across America are folding up, shriveling like a crop attacked by locusts and dying on the vine where once they thrived, back when our people, indeed our youth, had more pure hearts and moral directions and had not strayed far and away from America’s Christian roots.
Over the past thirty years, the nutcases of the Democrat Party have advocated a pathologically negative agenda for America that is based on destroying the Founding and revising history to portray early America as evil and worth casting on the ash-heap of history. Accelerating their plans through the public education system, an entire generation of America’s youth have been brainwashed to believe our planet is dying due to manmade CO2 and “climate change”, in defiance of actual science, and as if that isn’t enough, we are all constantly inundated with one alarm after another raised over racism — even as reverse racism against whites is now advocated, capitalism — which hasn’t really existed in America for over 100 years, homophobia / gender bigotry, capitalist oppression — even tho’ our system is economic fascism, and the fallacious assertion that White Supremacist Nazis are ascending in every community in America.
The real problem found within the ranks of the Takers? They just can’t face the fact that life isn’t easy for anyone, especially the Makers; and it never has been, although exceptions can be found in those born into wealth. But even the wealthy are weighted with life’s problems, if of a different variety, much as the old adage says that “money can’t buy you love or happiness”, even if it does buy you a line of coke and hookers, in a sad sort of dystopian world of a different immoral construct.
The routines many of us indulge in daily have made the largest percentage of Americans, a fairly large majority, complacent and apathetic, caring next to nothing on matters of government and whether or not they are actually living free.
Americans rise each morning, check their emails and cellphones, shower, shave and maybe brush their teeth, to rush off to their same, everyday, boring regular job that may or may not quite pay the bills, grabbing their $7 dollar cup of Starbucks special latte of the day, to do a job they find meaningless. At day’s end, they may grab some overpriced fast-food on the way home, to relax and maybe drink a cheap beer or glass of whiskey, while they watch The Voice — or is it porn [?] — call some friends to complain over how bad things are, and then simply watch some news, ’til they call it a night, sleeping fitfully and rising the next morning to do it all over again, and everyday afterward, year after year, until one day someone hands them their walking papers or a copper watch upon their “retirement”.
Too many live under the delusion that they should be able to drive brand new $60k cars, own $400k homes complete with the most exquisite adornments and furniture on their $15 per hour paycheck at McDonald’s, having never put forth the effort to gain useful knowledge demanded by skilled and professional career positions, in order to make themselves more valuable to society on the whole, and thus able to demand a salary that would allow them to buy all the trappings of such success. Instead, they cast an envious eye in the direction of the Makers and scheme on how to take what they want, by any scheme, any illegal act, any means necessary. They believe their mere existence entitles them to other people’s property, just because deep down in their black little souls, they really, really want it — just not enough to go after it the right way.
Our youth have lost all sense of shame and seem fine with getting anything they want, right when they want it, no matter how they come to acquire it. They never learned that something worth having is worth the work it takes to purchase, as if stuff is just supposed to fall from the heavens and land in their lap.
Things of real worth don’t come easy.
Sure. Not everyone has the intelligence and capability to become a surgeon, but if that’s your dream, you will never know if you could have been one, until you try — same for anything else that any of you are dreaming of being, no matter if you dream of being a content farmer or a successful writer. Whatever you want in life, put forth the effort to achieve competency in that field and then go do it.
If you want something of worth in life, stop depending on others. Venture out on your own in some business or capacity you love, rather than settling to work for someone else your entire life. And for your own sake, quit wallowing in self-pity over bad circumstances created by your own bad choices.
As Ms Lawson notes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDzfZOfNki4) at one point: "Any pursuit in life, if you want to be successful, it goes to the people that handle hard well. Those are the people that get the stuff they want. People that wait around for easy, you probably see them at the bus stop. They’re waiting on the easy bus to come around. Easy bus never comes around. Go handle hard.”
Too many parents, too many schools, too many churches have failed America by failing to teach them that hard times won’t break you if only you have the right state of mind on life — that there is a loving God — and no one will ever find a fulfilling or positive way of life by looking to The Government for answers and solutions. Our society stopped teaching the youth how to be strong and independent somewhere along the way, as the tyrant-wannabes persisted in teaching “everyone is a victim”; but the fact remains today, anyone can be a proud survivor of hard times, if only they persevere and never give-up and never give-in to defeat, choosing to ultimately succeed and live good, prosperous and happy lives."
"Out of Time"
"Out of Time"
by Edward Curtin
“If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives him away.” - Walter Benjamin “The Storyteller,” 1936
"Today’s rustlers are stealing the silence needed to allow stories to percolate in our minds. They are noisy speedsters, gunning down the highway of regret, constantly pushing us to abandon any sense of living deliberately and relaxed for the bait of faster internet speed and 24/7 lives in which no one is ever “off.” Like our machines, we are barely sleeping in “sleep mode” and always ready for a fast wake-up to jump into action before our use-by-date is up. Run as fast as you can. Vamoose. You can be sure that those who send and receive the most cell phone messages and emails have not heard from themselves in a long time.
Walter Benjamin was a German-Jewish writer who knew that doing nothing and reposing into boredom was the secret to creativity and wisdom. He knew that silence was an endangered species whose extinction would eradicate boredom. He knew, of course, with WW I and then Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, that the times were out of joint.
“Contrary to many interpretations of Nazism, which tend to view it as a reactionary movement,” writes Modris Eksteins in "Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age," “as, in the words of Thomas Mann, an ‘explosion of antiquarianism,’ intent on turning Germany into a pastoral folk community of thatched cottages and happy peasants, the general thrust of the movement, despite archaisms, was futuristic.”
As with its lightning fast warfare – Blitzkrieg – and emphasis on “breaking out” to the future – Aufbruch – it was technocratic and progressive, with an emphasis on speed. Its romantic visions of returning to a conservative past were pure propaganda, used to fool Germans into thinking the country was on its way back while it was hurtling forward to a nihilistic, mechanized future based on violence, nationalism, and demagoguery. Its future was futuristic.
What Benjamin didn’t and couldn’t know was that sound sleep, silence, and tranquility would, with the rise of digital technology, cell phones, and the internet, become very rare as speed and a general mood of constant emergency would dominate people’s subconscious lives; that permanent busyness would become the norm; that technique and machines, in the service of creating the machine mind, would come to dominate societies, no matter what the political rhetoric.
Wendell Berry’s 1968 poem, "The Peace of Wild Things," seems quaint these days:
"When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."
Berry is now an old man, a farmer-poet, a naturalist, a prodigious writer who has written all his work on a manual typewriter. He is a slow man; out of step with today’s speed time and being 91 years-old is nearing the end of his life as the world frantically races on faster and faster.
Hustler or idler, getting things done or leaving things undone? For myself, such a choice may be a bit extreme. But I know that I’m not going to read "The Tao Te Ching" for wisdom since the Tao doesn’t reside in books. Nor does sapience depend on a podcast or an encounter with God depend on reading the holy books. I don’t need any more studies or conferences on social issues whose truths have been long apparent.
How many details are necessary to grasp the obvious once you are acquainted with the principle? “It is so hard to forget what is worse than useless to remember,” said Thoreau in his essay “Life Without Principle.” Few were listening then and fewer now.
The modern view of time asserts it is an objective measurement; it ticks away and for everyone ends in death. So fight the clock; fight death. Hurry, hurry! Run, Rabbit, run. The clock is running out. But despite this view that clock time measures one’s journey toward death, I have experienced another dimension of time that is “timeless.” I am sure you have, also. It is timeless and exists alongside clock time. It is rooted in love and takes different forms – God, sex, art, moments playing basketball, and human solidarity against evil forces being a few.
This variation in the experience of time is also natural. Clocks “tell us” one thing, but our experience of time tells us another. Even now here in New England as winter comes on, our experience of time is slowing down as nature goes dormant until the spring. Then time speeds up for us as over one night in spring the vegetation grows exponentially. We wake up and feel our hearts beating faster and a spring in our step. Excitement pulses through our veins. All the while throughout the seasons, the clocks – now mostly digital – click their sad numbers so monotonously as if they are telling us something.
I am considering starting a movement to create “do nothing days” by announcing the movement has started and immediately bowing out to do exactly nothing. Things have gotten so bad these days that if you ask a retired person how they are doing, they will proudly tell you they keep very busy, as if that is a badge of honor. Any thought of the contemplative life is an anathematic kiss of death.
At the risk of boring you and putting you to sleep and not to hatch the egg of experience, I will tell you a weird story appropriate to our most weird times. That it occurred on the night between Halloween and All Saints Day, Nov. 1, and on the weekend when eidolons and spooky images of death perambulate the streets and byways of our imaginations, might be significant if you believe in conspiracy theories and all that way-out nonsense. I can attest to its factual nature only, not to its significance. Doing so could leave egg on my face.
On this recent Halloween night, my wife and I went to sleep at our usual early hour. In the morning when we awoke, the ugly little digital clock on the table by the window read 5 A.M. So we got up, this being our normal waking time. As we passed another room, we noticed that the clock in that room said the same. But when we got downstairs, we saw that a numbers of clocks reported it was 4 A.M. We checked all the clocks in the house and four said it was 4 A.M. and four plus the telephone said 5 A.M. Naturally we were confused. Daylight Savings Time was not scheduled to end until the following day and then the clocks were to be set back an hour, not forward, and yet four of ours jumped forward, as if to tell us to hurry up, time’s running away and we’re late, we’re late for an important date. Like Alice in Wonderland, we wondered if we had gone mad, and these lines popped to mind: “‘Have I gone mad?’ ‘I am afraid so, you are entirely bonkers. but I will tell you a secret… all the best people are.‘”
There was no technological answer for this strange occurrence. Were we “losing time” or “maintaining time” or “conquering time” or was some comedian sending us a message that despite clocks we had no control over time, that it was a mystery, as we are, that the line between then and now and tomorrow, between life and death, dreams and reality is so thin as to be ghostly? Despite this spooky reminder that we all live “out of time,” my wife synchronized all the clocks to pretend she was reasserting control and was not too bonkers. I decided to do nothing."
Judge Napolitano, Gerald Celente, "Ceasefire Or Lies? Trump Alien To The Truth"
Judge Napolitano, Gerald Celente, 4/8/26
"Ceasefire Or Lies? Trump Alien To The Truth"
Comments here:
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)