"For Millions Of Americans, This Holiday Season Will Be A Season Of Very Deep Suffering"

"For Millions Of Americans, This Holiday Season 

Will Be A Season Of Very Deep Suffering"

by Michael Snyder

"If you live in a warm home and you have plenty of food to eat, you should consider yourself to be extremely blessed, because millions of others are deeply suffering right now. Most of the country is living paycheck to paycheck, the number of homeless Americans is higher than ever, demand at food banks is back to pandemic levels, and many victims of Hurricane Helene are living in very thin tents and are not getting the help that they need from the government. Children in the mountains of western North Carolina are literally shivering in the freezing cold all night long because their parents have nowhere else to go…

Nearly two months since Helene hit, hundreds of local families are left with nowhere to go. Now some of these children are living in tents and cars as their parents try desperately to find a new home. One of those parents is Dana Wunsch.

She showed News 13 the camper where she and her partner, along with her two daughters, are now staying. We are taxed extremely hard, and one of the things that our tax dollars are supposed to pay for is disaster relief. But while FEMA personnel in North Carolina are sleeping in heated trailers, many victims of Hurricane Helene are sleeping in extremely flimsy tents that look like they could literally be blown away at any moment.

Full screen recommended.

Could you imagine having your kids sleep in a flimsy tent night after night? And now snow has arrived in the mountains of western North Carolina…"Some survivors in western North Carolina have had to navigate their recovery efforts around potentially hazardous conditions as snowfall ranging from a light dusting up to about 2 feet has blanketed the area. In addition to snow, those living in tents have also been facing very high winds…

Additionally, Helene survivors in western North Carolina will also have to manage with powerful winds. Wind gusts are expected to reach 30-40 mph in Asheville, while other areas may feel gusts of 50 mph or greater."

Of course Hurricane Helene is just one of the historic natural disasters that have hit our country here in 2024. Overall, there have been 24 “billion dollar disasters” in the U.S. so far this year…"During the first 10 months of this year alone, 24 disasters have occurred in the U.S. with losses exceeding $1 billion, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. That’s roughly three times the average annual number since 1980."

Our nation just keeps getting pummeled over and over again. Is there anyone out there that still believes that this is just a coincidence? Meanwhile, the homelessness crisis in the U.S. just keeps getting worse, and there are millions more Americans that could soon be joining the ranks of the homeless.

If you can believe it, one recent survey discovered that 22 percent of all U.S. renters say that “all their regular income goes toward rent payments”…"22% of U.S. renters say all their regular income goes toward rent payments, according to a recent Redfin-commissioned survey. 19% of renters report they have worked a job they hated to afford rent. Just over one in five (22%) U.S. renters say all of their regular income goes directly to paying their rent, according to a recent Redfin-commissioned survey."

Working a second job is also a fairly common way for renters to pay housing costs, with 20% of renters citing that method. Nearly the same share (19%) say they have worked a job they hated to afford rent. If all of your income is going to paying rent, you are just one step away from being homeless.

Sadly, most of the country is just barely scraping by from month to month at this point. According to Bank of America, from 2019 to 2024 there was a 10 percent jump in those that are living paycheck to paycheck…"The share of U.S. households living paycheck to paycheck has grown across all income brackets over the past five years, according to a new study from the Bank of America Institute.

A new analysis released by the think tank on Tuesday found that more than a quarter of Americans, 26%, have necessary expenses that chew up more than 95% of their takehome pay, and nearly a third, 30%, of households spend upwards of 90% of their income on critical bills like groceries, housing, utilities, gas, insurance and child care. The data showed a 10% increase in those living paycheck to paycheck in 2024 compared to 2019."

Economic pain is all around us, and the cost of living just continues to go even higher. Once upon a time, if you were making $50,000 a year you were doing well. But now the average American believes that it takes an income of $270,000 a year in order to be “financially successful”…"The average American thinks a salary of just over $270,000 a year qualifies them as “financially successful,” but there are huge disparities between generations, according to a new study."

Needless to say, the vast majority of the population does not make that sort of money. Instead, the vast majority of us are just trying to survive. Unfortunately, the outlook for the year ahead is not good because our economic momentum is heading in the wrong direction very rapidly. In fact, it is being reported that the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has fallen for eight months in a row…"Weakness in the housing market and manufacturing, as well as higher jobless claims, pulled the leading indicators for the U.S. economy down for the eighth consecutive month in October.

The Conference Board said its index of leading indicators dropped 0.3 percent last month. The Conference Board pointed out that over the six-month period between April and October 2024, the index declined by 2.2 percent, slightly more than its two percent decline over the previous six-month period, suggesting that drags on the U.S. economy picked up."

If we are seeing such tremendous economic suffering now, what will conditions be like if the U.S. economy continues to deteriorate? For decades, we have been living a debt-fueled standard of living that is way beyond what we have actually earned. Now that bubble is starting to burst, and our society is not going to be able to handle it. We are in far more trouble than most people realize, and an immense amount of pain is ahead of us."

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

o

$174 BILLION for goddamned Ukraine, God knows how many billions to the psychopathically degenerate inbred Israeli monsters, but nothing, NOTHING for Americans! As I've asked many times... WTF is wrong with this country?! We are an absolutely disgusting disgrace in every possible way! Shame, shame on us... - CP

"How It Really Is"

 

“‘Bloom’: A Touching Animated Short Film About Depression and What It Takes to Recover the Light of Being”

“‘Bloom’: A Touching Animated Short Film About 

Depression and What It Takes to Recover the Light of Being”

by Maria Popova

“Sometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands,” the poet May Sarton wrote as she contemplated the cure for despair amid a dark season of the spirit. But what does it take to perch that precarious if in the direction of the light? When we are in that dark and hollow place, that place of leaden loneliness and isolation, when “the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain,” as William Styron wrote in his classic account of the malady – an indiscriminate malady that savaged Keats and savaged Nietzsche and savaged Hansberry – what does it take to live through the horror and the hollowness to the other side, to look back and gasp disbelievingly, with the poet Jane Kenyon: “What hurt me so terribly… until this moment?”

During a recent dark season of the spirit, a dear friend buoyed me with the most wonderful, hope-giving, rehumanizing story: Some years earlier, when a colleague of hers – another physicist – was going through such a season of his own, she gave him an amaryllis bulb in a small pot; the effect it had on him was unexpected and profound, as the effect of uncalculated kindnesses always is – profound and far-reaching, the way a pebble of kindness ripples out widening circles of radiance. As the light slowly returned to his life, he decided to teach a class on the physics of animation. And so it is that one of his students, Emily Johnstone, came to make ‘Bloom’ – a touching animated short film, drawing from the small personal gesture a universal metaphor for how we survive our densest private darknesses, consonant with Neil Gaiman’s insistence that “sometimes it only takes a stranger, in a dark place… to make us warm in the coldest season.”

Full screen recommended.

Complement with Tim Ferriss on how he survived suicidal depression and Tchaikovsky on depression and finding beauty amid the wreckage of the soul, then revisit “Having It Out with Melancholy” – Jane Kenyon’s stunning poem about life with and after depression.”

- https://www.brainpickings.org/

"You Know..."

“You know, we never see the world exactly as it is. We see it as we hope it will be or we fear it might be. And we spend our lives going through a sort of modified stages of grief about that realization. And we deny it, and then we argue with it, and we despair over it. But eventually - and this is my belief - that we come to see it, not as despairing, but as vitalizing. We never see the world exactly as it is because we are how the world is.”

- Maria Popova

"This Is What (Stoic) Gratitude Actually Looks Like"

"This Is What (Stoic) Gratitude Actually Looks Like"

by Ryan Holiday

"Gratitude is one of those things that’s simple…but not easy. Today is Thanksgiving in America. It’s a day that we’re supposed to center around gratitude. The usual candidates come to mind: family, health, and the food in front of us. And rightly so. These are the cornerstones of a fortunate life, and they deserve recognition and appreciation.

But what about all the other stuff? The obstacles. The frustrations. The wrong turns. The difficult people. The bad days. Should we be grateful for those too? Yes - those especially. Especially because they are hard to be grateful for.

Epictetus was born into slavery and he spent the next thirty years in that institution. He wasn’t even given a name - Epictetus just means acquired one. He was tortured. And when he finally found freedom, he was almost immediately exiled by a tyrannical emperor.

You know in "Les Mis" where she sings about how the dream she dreamed was so much different than the hell she was living? That was basically Epictetus’ real-life story. Yet what he came away with was not bitterness, but gratitude. The key to life, he said, was not to dream for things to be a certain way, but to dream for them to be the way they were. To be grateful that you had the fate you had. “Convince yourself that everything is the gift of the gods,” was how Marcus Aurelius put it, “that things are good and always will be.”

In the mornings when I sit down to journal, one of the notebooks I write in is a gratitude journal. When I first got it, I would fill the pages with the lineup I mentioned above–my family, my health, my career, the people and things and opportunities in my life that mean a lot to me. But after a time, this came to feel sort of pointless and rather repetitive. I needed a new approach.

What I began to do was try to find ways to express gratitude, not for the things that are easy to be grateful for, but for what is hard. I wanted to practice seeing everything as a gift from the gods, as Marcus Aurelius wrote. Because while it’s easy to count my blessings of the good things in life, it’s much more difficult to see the bad things as gifts, too. But with this practice, I’ve learned to see they can be.

That troublesome client - thank you, it’s helping me develop better boundaries.

That traffic jam - thank you, it gave me time to call my wife and have a nice, meandering conversation.

That rejection email - thank you, it forced me to reevaluate and improve my work.

The political realities of our time - thank you, it’s a chance to test myself, to really stick to what I believe in.

That loss - thank you, for reminding me of what truly matters in life.

And on and on.

When Epictetus talks about how every situation has two handles, this is what he means. You can decide to grab onto anger or appreciation, fear or fellowship. You can pick up the handle of resentment or of gratitude. You can look at the obstacle or get a little closer and see the opportunity. Which one will you grab?

It’s so easy to miss the fact that Marcus Aurelius could not have been Marcus Aurelius without that unending series of troubles. The difficulties that shaped him, refined him, called greatness out of him. It’s also easy to miss, when we focus on all the bad breaks the guy got, all the tragedies he experienced, that on the whole, Marcus was incredibly lucky. After all, this dude was chosen to be emperor. For next to no reason at all, Hadrian selected a young boy and gifted him unlimited power and wealth and fame. Marcus had a wonderful wife, a stepfather he adored, amazing teachers and he discovered Stoicism, which guided him when he most needed it. For everything that went wrong in his life, for everything that was taken from him, the Gods actually gave him an equal number of gifts.

As Cicero pointed out, “You may say that deaf men miss the pleasure of hearing a lyre-player’s songs. Yes, but they also miss the squeaking of a saw being sharpened, the noise a pig makes when its throat is being cut, the roaring thunder of the sea which prevents other people from sleeping.” See, there’s a positive to every negative!

In the chaos and dysfunction of the world, I try to notice where I have been gifted in the latter category than where I have been deprived in the former. Besides, it’s already happened…what’s the use in getting upset?

So, as you gather with family and friends this Thanksgiving, appreciate the obvious gifts - the food, the health, the love in the room. But as the moment fades and life returns to its usual pace, challenge yourself to make gratitude a daily practice.

Not just for what is easy and joyful, but for what is hard. For what tested you, stretched you, humbled you. Whatever 2024 has been for you - however difficult, however painful - be grateful for it. Think about what it helped you miss. Think about how it shaped you. Think about how it could have been worse.

Write this gratitude down. Say it out loud.

Thank you.

Until you believe it."

- https://ryanholiday.net/

Dan, I Allegedly, "60 Million Are Eating This Banned Thanksgiving Food"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 11/28/24

"60 Million Are Eating This Banned Thanksgiving Food"

"Today we're exploring the real story behind seemingly busy malls like the Irvine Spectrum, while examining troubling signs in the retail sector. Learn about Santa Monica Place's $300 million loan default and why even successful-looking malls are facing serious challenges. Get the latest updates on personal consumption expenditure (PCE) numbers and their impact on inflation. Plus, fascinating statistics about Thanksgiving spending habits and shocking revelations about Stove Top Stuffing's ingredients banned in other countries. #thanksgiving #Bannedfoods #iallegedly"

- https://www.youtube.com/

"How It Really Is, For Far Too Many"

 

"Rules of Engagement: Thanksgiving Edition"

"Rules of Engagement: Thanksgiving Edition"

A helpful guide for avoiding rhetorical pitfalls over the holiday dinner table...

by Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina - Our American readers are celebrating Thanksgiving this week. Many years have passed since the Pilgrims celebrated their first harvest of the New World, back in 1621. The holiday has been commemorated, on and off, since George Washington declared it a national day in 1789, but it wasn’t official until Honest Abe made it so, proclaiming...“Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens,” calling on the American people to also, “with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience .. fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation...”

On the subject of perverseness and disobedience, just while we’ve got you, your Australian-born editor has always had a special affection for this most American of holidays, known to him as the day when families come together to flesh out irreconcilable political differences over too much cider and victuals.

Though our quasi-American wife assures us this behavior is not exclusive to Thanksgiving (“some families drag their frivolous disputes on until Christmas, or even beyond...”), we recall with fondness many a fracas in which tipsy uncles clashed with college student nephews and nieces over the controversial topic du jour.

Of course, there are certain ways of getting one’s point across that are more helpful than others... and some that are downright harmful. And so, with the holidays just around the corner, we thought it might be fun to examine a few of the dos and don’ts of artful dinner table rhetoric. Please enjoy a light-hearted guide for Turkey Day veterans and newcomers alike, below...

"Rules of Engagement - Thanksgiving Edition"

By Joel Bowman

"The first, and perhaps most obvious, rule for maintaining civil discourse (even within the family) is to never resort to ad hominem. Essentially, this means turning to personal attacks, rather than sticking to matters of logic. “Playing the man and not the ball,” as sportsfolk are heard to say. It’s just bad form, mate.

So even if Aunt Joan is a prattling old windbag with decidedly dated views... and even though Cousin Charlie is a well known charlatan who deserves to have lost his money on scammy meme stocks... and even if Uncle Jeffrey is a dipsomaniacal bore whose third wife is even more insufferable than the previous two... best not to say so.

Also steer clear of labels like “fatso,” “dunderhead,” “moron,” “millennial,” “skinflint,” “feckless pest,” “half-wit,” “jackass,” etc. Oh, and if Niece Elly decides she now identifies as a fern and asks to be referred to using gender/species neutral neopronouns, just nod along and go with it. You can lament the downfall of Western Civ and traditional values at the Chick-fil-A drive through on your way home.

Now that you’ve holstered the nasty slurs, a close second on the “Logical Fallacies to Avoid on Holidays List” is the Hasty Generalization trap. This occurs when one interlocutor summons a few, often anecdotal instances to make loose and sweeping claims, often on a subject they know precious little about. For instance, just because every single person you’ve individually encountered with blue/pink dyed hair happens to have proven themselves a brainless weirdo, that doesn’t mean there isn’t someone out there eager to establish themselves as the exception to the rule.

Recall Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan analogy: while a thousand sightings of white swans is not sufficient to prove once and for all the statement “all swans are white,” a single sighting of a black swan is adequate to disprove it. In other words, you are just one friendly, witty, well-informed, empathetic, self-aware, blue-haired Starbucks barista away from having all those harmful and triggering stereotypes disproved. Rejoice!

Pot, Meet Kettle: Next we have the notorious Appeal to Hypocrisy tactic, wherein the speaker defends himself against a particular charge by pointing out the obvious and demonstrable fact that the accuser is similarly guilty. Also known as the “pot calling the kettle black” gambit.

For instance, don’t say “Well, Republicans also lie, cheat and steal” as a way of defending Democrats from doing likewise (or vice-versa). Simply agree that both political parties are chock full of ratbags and that anyone who seeks office ought immediately to be disqualified from holding it on reasonable suspicion of hubris and delusions of grandeur. You and your new ally may wish to commemorate this novel common ground with a toast to liberty and apolitical enlightenment.

Next up we have the popular Circular Argument ploy, a favorite of cutesy, tag-teaming couples (think honeymooners, newlyweds, college sweethearts, etc. who don’t yet know what they’re in for). Infuriatingly, this often occurs when said saccharine duo completes one and other’s sentences. “Smoking pot is wrong because it’s against the law....”

“... Exactly, babe, and that’s precisely why it’s against the law; because it’s wrong.”

“You got it, babe!” (*Breaks for conspicuous canoodling*)

Textbook circular argument. Rather than getting between the pawwing pair, better to just annoy everyone present by saying something like, “While not a smoker myself, I happily defend every same-sex couple’s right to guard their personal weed stash with their firearm of choice.”

Which brings us to the popular False Dilemma ruse, whereby the speaker offers (always generously) two equally poor options as if no others existed. (We covered this in last week’s Sunday Session, "The Illusion of Choice", which garnered quite a number of, ahem... enthusiastic responses.) Recall George W. Bush’s classic line, “We will fight them over there so we do not have to fight them over here.” Boy oh boy did they misunderestimate Dubbya! Never mentioned was the apparently ludicrous idea that “we” might not fight “them” at all, something one might have expected to occur to a man who also said, “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.” Umm...? Moving along...

I, Bernanke: Another classic holiday ploy is the Argument from Authority. Someone out there, possibly one of our dear readers, will find themselves this year seated across from a man recently awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. When the subject of the economy inevitably comes up, likely introduced by the faux-modest laureate himself, you may be sure the Argument from Authority is lurking close by. (So too the aforementioned False Dilemma.)

“It took a certain ‘courage to act,’ I freely admit,” Mr. Bernanke will hold forth, “but our economy was on the brink. In fact, were it not for my deep knowledge of financial meltdowns, and of course the bravery with which my name has since become synonymous, we may not be gathered here today, enjoying this sumptuous feast, brought to us by Julia and Maria in the kitchen. Gracias señoritas. In fact, we may not have an economy at all...”

If, by some twist of fate or punishment, you do happen to be seated at the above table and on the receiving end of said sermon, please do us all a favor and refuse to accept such balderdash. Call the man out. Herewith, some suggested notes: “Facts do not care for your prizes and positions, my dear man. Fortunately for us all, reality is not subject to opinion. Your tenure as Fed Chairman, unblemished by a single instance of success or real insight, was objectively disastrous. Indeed, your much lauded actions led us into the mess in which we presently find ourselves mired. True courage would have involved thoughtful inaction. Now, unless there is another round of those delicious cookies... thank you Julia and Maria for a delicious meal, thank you Mrs. Bernanke for the invite, and good evening to you all.”

Although there are a great many more Rhetorical Weapons of Mass Destruction (too many to cover in one pithy Sunday Sesh), we would be remiss if we didn’t conclude with the oft-misquoted Godwin’s Law, or Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies. Always a cheerful party favorite, especially after a round or two of Moscow Mules, you’ll hear this one invoked when one or another dinner guest inevitably falls to reductio ad Hitlerum to prove a point. It is usually then said that “the first person to bring up Hitler loses the argument.”

But this is a misnomer. Introduced into the common vernacular by American attorney and author, Mike Godwin, back in the early ‘90s, the eponymous law simply asserts that, as online discussion forums grow, the probability that someone will veer into Nazi territory increases, eventually approaching a near certainty. Crucially, this tendency was observed regardless of the group’s participants and regardless of the topic under discussion.

So when Aunt Molly calls Cousin Mike a “fascist” for his views on the midterm elections... or Grandpa labels Grandma a “Nazi” for insisting that the menfolk eat leftovers at the table instead of on the couch in front of the game, know that it’s nothing personal. It’s just Thanksgiving."

-https://bonnerprivateresearch.substack.com/

"A Revision Of Belief..."

“Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race ‘looking out for its best interests,’ as a politician would say. On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.“

- Nassim Taleb

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble.

It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

- Mark Twain

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wishing you a safe and Happy Thanksgiving, folks!

Thanks for stopping by!

"Red Alert! Russian Markets Crashing! Nuclear Airspace Closed, Nuclear Tomahawks, NATO Article 5"

Canadian Prepper, 11/27/24

"Red Alert! Russian Markets Crashing! 

Nuclear Airspace Closed, Nuclear Tomahawks, NATO Article 5"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "Housing Market Faces A Nightmare Crisis"

Jeremiah Babe, 11/27/24

"Housing Market Faces A Nightmare Crisis,

FOMO Is Dead"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Amazon Is In Big, Big Trouble As Multiple Retail Stores Are Closing Down"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 11/27/24

"Amazon Is In Big, Big Trouble 

As Multiple Retail Stores Are Closing Down"

"Amazon is abandoning multiple brick-and-mortar stores this fall as its retail and grocery businesses face a series of challenges. Amid slower sales and a bleak outlook for the rest of the year, CEO Andy Jassy is cutting back on costs ahead of its quarterly earnings report that is about to be released next week and is likely to bring disappointing results for investors once again.

Earlier this year, the company’s stock was hammered due growing signs of struggle in its brick-and-mortar segment. The market rout was so brutal that it wiped billions of dollars out of Jeff Bezos’ fortune. Now, with consumer budgets still being stretched by rising prices, the retail behemoth is closing several locations where its tech innovations have failed to impress.

If you want to know whether your local store is on the chopping block, and understand how the retail recession is dragging Amazon down in 2024, stay with us until the end of the video because the news we are going to share with you today will certainly not be reported by the mainstream media."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Pink Floyd, "Comfortably Numb"

Pink Floyd, "Comfortably Numb"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“NGC 253 is not only one of the brightest spiral galaxies visible, it is also one of the dustiest. Discovered in 1783 by Caroline Herschel in the constellation of Sculptor, NGC 253 lies only about ten million light-years distant.

NGC 253 is the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest group to our own Local Group of Galaxies. The dense dark dust accompanies a high star formation rate, giving NGC 253 the designation of starburst galaxy. Visible in the above photograph is the active central nucleus, also known to be a bright source of X-rays and gamma rays.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap111220.html

"A Virgilian Thanksgiving"

Autumn sunset over the Tuscan hills.

"A Virgilian Thanksgiving"

The great Roman poet on love and loss,

 life and death, man and nature...

by Joel Bowman

"Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember.”

~ Virgil

“A happy life consists in tranquility of mind.”

~ Cicero

“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon 

the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest 

satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.”

~ Seneca

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "With the holidays nigh upon us, we count the tasks outstanding against the year’s twilight hours and discover, without surprise, that the former far outnumber the latter. There are deadlines to meet... invitations to send... victuals to prepare... libations to sup... and of course, friends and family to gather near (such as geography and busy schedules permit). No doubt you’ve plenty on your own proverbial plate, too. Allow us, therefore, to relieve one item from your brimming to-do list. Or at least, to offer up a humble suggestion, on behalf of one of our favorite poets...

Publius Vergilius Maro, known more commonly as Virgil, was born in 70 BC in what the Romans knew as Cisalpine Gaul, today’s northern, alpine Italy. Before he passed into the realm of the shades, just half a century later, Virgil had composed three of the most important poems in Latin literature: the "Eclogues" (or "Bucolics"), the "Georgics," and of course the foundational epic, the "Aeneid."

In this second work, which follows the tensions of the seasons and man’s struggle with, and eventual triumph over, the havoc and danger of the natural world, Virgil presents a masterpiece at turns didactic, elegiac, epic and even (as in the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice) epyllion. Loosely modeled on (the Greek poet) Hesiod’s famous Works and Days (composed around 700-650 BC), Virgil’s own poem muses on the classic, universal dichotomies of myth and reality, power and politics, cause and effect, heaven and earth, love and loss, life and death...

Under a Tuscan Sun: Many modern moons ago, having once again taken to wandering the world as a homeless peripatetic, your flâneuring correspondent found himself holed up in the ancient township of Città di Cortona, in Tuscany.

Tuscan room with a view. Cortona

The fortified hamlet sits atop a picturesque Italian hillside, which overlooks the same fertile plains as once viewed by the Etruscans... the Romans... perhaps even Virgil himself (who would have traveled south to Rome and onto the port city of Brundisium, modern day Brindisi, where he eventually gave up the ghost).

Perched on a fine little Juliette balcony, we lazed one afternoon under a late Tuscan sun, Sangiovese (literally: “blood of Jove”) within easy reach. Through the wrought iron we scanned the plains below, plowed through the ages by man and beast, tiny clumps and copses scattered between the fields, green and fallow. Virgil’s work lay open in our lap, Book I...

“Wait… where exactly did I leave Jupiter’s blood, again?”

It is from the first book of the Georgics, in part a supplication to the Gods (as well as Augustus himself), that we recite our yearly Thanksgiving toast, remembering always those who went before us... as well as the halcyon days in Virgil’s birth country... and the longed-for future, when we will venture there once more. Please enjoy the immortal poet’s words, below…"

"A Thanksgiving Toast, from Virgil’s Georgics, Book I"

"What makes a plenteous Harvest, when to turn

The fruitful Soil, and when to sowe the Corn;

The Care of Sheep, of Oxen, and of Kine;

And how to raise on Elms the teeming Vine:

The Birth and Genius of the frugal Bee,

I sing, Mecaenas, and I sing to thee.

Ye Deities! who Fields and Plains protect,

Who rule the Seasons, and the Year direct;

Bacchus and fost'ring Ceres, Pow'rs Divine,

Who gave us Corn for Mast, for Water Wine.

Ye Fawns, propitious to the Rural Swains,

Ye Nymphs that haunt the Mountains and the Plains,

Join in my Work, and to my Numbers bring

Your needful Succour, for your Gifts I sing."

(As translated by the English poet, John Dryden, 1631-1700)

- https://joelbowman.substack.com/

“Here’s The Real Story About Thanksgiving You’ve Never Heard”

“Here’s The Real Story About

 Thanksgiving You’ve Never Heard”

Especially the parts about Squanto the “friendly Indian.”

by Nick Bauman

“The Thanksgiving story you know probably goes a bit like this: English Pilgrims, seeking religious freedom, landed in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where they found a rich land full of animals and were greeted by a friendly Indian named Squanto, who taught them how to plant corn. The true story is more complicated. Once you learn about the real Squanto - also known as Tisquantum - you’ll have a great yarn to tell your family over the Thanksgiving table.

I asked historian Charles Mann, the author of “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus”, and Paula Peters, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe and an expert on Wampanoag history, to tell me the real story. “This is not revisionist history,” Peters promised. “This is history that’s just been overlooked because people have become very, very comfortable with the story of happy Pilgrims and friendly Indians. They’re very content with that - even to the point where no one really questioned how is it that Squanto knew how to speak perfect English when they came.”

Here’s what really happened. In 1614, six years before the Pilgrims landed in modern-day Massachusetts, an Englishman named Thomas Hunt kidnapped Tisquantum from his village, Patuxet, which was part of a group of villages known as the Wampanoag confederation. (Europeans had started visiting the northeast of what is now the United States by the 1520s, and probably as early as the 1480s.) Hunt took Tisquantum and around two dozen other kidnapped Wampanoag to Spain, where he tried to sell them into slavery.

“It caused quite a commotion when this guy showed up trying to sell these people,” Mann said. “A bunch of people in the church said no way.” Tisquantum escaped slavery - with the help of Catholic friars, according to some accounts- then somehow found his way to England. He finally made it back to what is now Massachusetts in 1619. As far as historians can tell, Tisquantum was the only one of the kidnapped Wampanoags to ever return to North America, Peters notes.

But while Tisquantum was in Europe, an epidemic had swept across New England. “The account that’s recorded by Gov. Bradford of Plymouth Plantation is that there’s a shipwreck of French sailors that year on Cape Cod,” Mann said. “One of them carried some disease and it wiped out a huge percentage of the population in coastal new England. The guess is it was some kind of viral hepatitis, which is easily communicated in water. It exploded like chains of firecrackers.”

When Tisquantum returned to Patuxet, he found that he was the village’s only survivor. “Into this bumbled the Pilgrims,” Mann said. “They had shown up in New England a few weeks before winter. Up until the Pilgrims, the pattern had been pretty clear. Europeans would show up, and Indians would be interested in their trade goods, but they were really uninterested in letting [Europeans] permanently occupy land.” Often, armed native people would even force Europeans to leave if they attempted to stay too long.

This time, the Europeans wanted to stay, and the disease that had decimated Patuxet ensured that they had a place to settle. “Patuxet ultimately becomes Plymouth,” Peters explained. “They find this cleared land and just the bones of the Indians. They called it divine providence: God killed these Indians so we could live here.” A website Peters helped create for the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival puts it even more bluntly: “The graveyard of [Tisquantum's] people became Plymouth Colony.”

Massasoit, a local Wampanoag leader, didn’t trust Tisquantum. “He looks at this guy and smells trouble,” Mann said. Massasoit kept Tisquantum under what was essentially house arrest until the Pilgrims showed up and promptly started starving to death.

Patuxet wasn’t the only native village decimated by the plague. The entire Wampanoag confederation had been badly hit – as much as 75 percent of the Wampanoag population was wiped out, Mann said. But the Narragansett, a rival neighboring group, basically weren’t affected by the disease at all. That put the Wampanoag in a precarious strategic position. Massasoit had an idea. “He decides we’ll ally with these guys, set up a good trading relationship, control supply of English goods, and the Narragansett won’t be able to attack us,” Mann said. On March 22, 1621, Massasoit went to meet with the Pilgrims. He brought Tisquantum along to translate.

Mann described the meeting in a 2005 article in Smithsonian Magazine: “Tisquantum most likely was not the name he was given at birth. In that part of the Northeast, tisquantum referred to rage, especially the rage of manitou, the world-suffusing spiritual power at the heart of coastal Indians’ religious beliefs. When Tisquantum approached the Pilgrims and identified himself by that sobriquet, it was as if he had stuck out his hand and said, “Hello, I’m the Wrath of God.”

Massasoit was right not to trust Tisquantum, who soon tried to pit the Pilgrims against him. But the plan didn’t work: Massasoit “is just pissed off and demands the Pilgrims hand him over because he’s gonna execute him,” Mann said. The Pilgrims didn’t. Instead, Tisquantum stayed in the colony with them, helping them prepare for the next winter.

“Never did the newcomers ask themselves why he might be making himself essential,” Mann wrote in Smithsonian. “But from the Pilgrims’ accounts of their dealings with him, the answer seems clear: the alternative to staying in Plymouth was returning to Massasoit and renewed captivity.”

It’s all a lot more complicated – Machiavellian, even – than the story you might have learned. Mann in Smithsonian again: “By fall the settlers’ situation was secure enough that they held a feast of thanksgiving. Massasoit showed up with “some ninety men,” Winslow later recalled, most of them with weapons. The Pilgrim militia responded by marching around and firing their guns in the air in a manner intended to convey menace. Gratified, both sides sat down, ate a lot of food and complained about the Narragansett. Ecce Thanksgiving.”

So what does this all mean? “While it was by far not the first occasion of human trafficking conducted by European explorers to the new world, the capture of Squanto and his fellow tribesmen would forever alter the course of history for people on two continents,” Peters wrote on the anniversary website. “We learn about Columbus landing in 1492 and it’s as if nothing happened for over 100 years until the Pilgrims landed,” Mann added. “But the Tisquantum story gives you this tiny peek into that all the people involved had been interacting for more than a century. And today, of course, the Wampanoag are still around.”

- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Gerald Celente, "Thanksgiving? Very Little To Be Thankful For As U.S. Remains In Debt And Continues To Support Wars"

Gerald Celente, 11/27/24

"Thanksgiving? Very Little To Be Thankful For 

As U.S. Remains In Debt And Continues To Support Wars"

"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing 

global current events forming future trends."

- https://trendsjournal.com/

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"War..."

"War does not determine who's right... only who's left."

- Bertrand Russell

The Daily "Near You?"

Patrick Springs, Virginia, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"This Assumption..."

"It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge."

- H. L. Mencken

"Israel Humiliated: Iran, Lebanon, Yemen Bring IDF to Its Knees"

Danny Haiphong, 11/27/24

"Israel Humiliated: 

Iran, Lebanon, Yemen Bring IDF to Its Knees"

"Israel is in huge trouble as it finds itself coming apart internally. War correspondents and journalists Ghadi Francis and Elijah Magnier joined the show and revealed how deep the crisis is for the Netanyahu regime and argue that the end of Israel as we know it not a question of if, but of when."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Growing Threat of Nuclear War"

"The Growing Threat of Nuclear War"

by International Man

"International Man: Recently, Biden approved Ukraine’s use of American long-range missiles to strike deep inside Russia - something Vladimir Putin has explicitly warned is a red line. What are your thoughts on the implications of this decision?

Doug Casey: The Bidenistas are extremely dangerous fools. They’re taking one more step on the escalation ladder toward World War III. I’ve watched governments scale the ladder since the 1950s when schoolchildren drilled to "duck and cover" - get under their desks when the air raid sirens went off. And I well remember the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when we came within a hair’s breadth of nuclear war.

In the mid-1980s, the Soviets could sense that their empire was collapsing - the world was again on the edge of nuclear war - it was a "now or never" thing for them. Fortunately, it was a "not now." However, what’s happening now may be the most serious crisis of all. Nuclear war is being considered as a realistic option.

Herman Kahn, the author of "On Thermonuclear War and Thinking the Unthinkable", became a friend when I lived in Washington, DC. His rational contemplation of how a nuclear war might start and how it would end was considered outrageous. But now it’s something that’s discussed in the popular media; people have come to accept the near inevitability of it.

The world is ramping up towards World War III. The atmosphere is like that of the late 30s when the civil war in Spain and the Japanese invasion of China were overtures to World War II. People don’t seem as scared of the prospect as they were in past crises. But they should be more scared now than ever before. At least in some ways.

I say that because, in the past, ICBMs couldn’t be targeted with great precision. To make up for that, their payloads had to be gigantic to get the job done. We’re talking megaton-size city busters; the Soviets tested their 50-megaton Tsar Bomb in 1961 for a reason. But precision delivery systems have obviated the need for giant bombs. And it’s become obvious that there’s no need to destroy an entire city when you can neatly target military or intelligence installations, which are the real dangers.

That means a nuclear war using 1 or 10 kiloton (Hiroshima-sized) warheads is now, arguably, just as "winnable" as one using the 10-megaton devices of 50 years ago. You always want to limit collateral damage. As a result, nuclear weapons, by themselves, no longer necessarily mean the end of civilization. That also means that Putin’s threat to use nukes in retaliation to a serious assault on Russia is very credible. Especially since it appears Russia has missiles that are both hypersonic (10x the speed of sound) and maneuverable, which means they can’t be intercepted.

Of course, it’s no longer just Russia and the US that might go at each other. There are at least nine nuclear powers in the world (US, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea). Nuclear technology is no longer a secret. At least 20 countries around the world could create nuclear weapons within a matter of months if they chose to. Anybody can get them. And they don’t need missiles or bombers. Freighters, cargo planes, or trucks are perfectly viable delivery systems. So is FedEx for a miniaturized weapon.

I’m afraid the cat’s out of the bag. The bottom line is that anything that can happen eventually will happen. And there’s a good chance that is now. Especially with the reckless incompetents who still occupy Washington continuing to provoke Moscow, using the Kiev regime as a cat’s paw.

International Man: Putin recently signed a nuclear doctrine that lowers Russia’s threshold for deploying nuclear weapons, particularly if its territorial integrity is threatened. What’s your perspective on this development?

Doug Casey: Putin and the Russians have been very rational and restrained about this. US neocons provoked the war between the Ukraine and Russia, and the US has financed and prolonged it.

Herman Kahn knew the Pentagon well, and even in the 50s and 60s, he was more afraid of the US starting a war than the Soviet Union. The fact of the matter is that governments in general, and particularly our current government, is populated by psychopaths. We don’t get the best and brightest in Washington, DC. We get the worst kind of people. People that go into government are looking to control and manipulate other people.

In point of fact, the Russians have been reticent about escalating the war. Which, you’ll recall, was intended to end Zelensky’s war against the secessionist Donbas provinces. Their demands, especially in view of the reckless expansion of NATO, are - I know this is shocking to most readers - actually quite reasonable. It's the Americans, led by the Bidenistas, who are pushing the world towards global thermonuclear war.

International Man: If the Ukraine war escalates further before Trump takes office, how might that impact his ability to resolve the conflict? Do you think his promise to end the war quickly is realistic?

Doug Casey: Once again, the war in Ukraine has been fomented, financed, and prolonged by the US. The Ukraine would have had to let its secessionist Donbas provinces go, acknowledge that Crimea was always part of Russia, and forget about joining NATO, without US support. At least 600,000 dead Ukrainians would still be alive, and half the country wouldn’t be in ruins. And things could get much, much worse.

I believe Trump can and will end it. Although I’m afraid that the Jacobins now controlling Washington may yet start a war with Russia in order to declare a state of emergency and keep themselves in office somehow. We’re dealing with criminal personalities who also suffer from severe Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Of course, Ukraine isn’t the only match that might set off World War III. The US is involved in the potential conflagration between Israel and Iran. And we could easily be drawn into a conflict between the PRC and Taiwan. Our unfriendly Uncle Sam is sticking his nose into hornets’ nests all around the world, and eventually, he is going to wind up getting what he’s asking for, which is war.

International Man: What would the immediate and long-term effects of a US-Russia nuclear war look like? Is a "limited nuclear war" even possible, or would the use of nuclear weapons inevitably lead to total escalation?

Doug Casey: Let’s return to Herman Kahn. He projected that if a nuclear war had taken place in the 1950s, 60s, or 70s, there would have been scores of millions of casualties and wholesale destruction. But, on the bright side (he was a jolly fat man, with an impish sense of black humor), he projected that the world would recover to pre-war GDP levels within roughly 30 years. There’s no question he was lampooned in Stanley Kubrick’s "Dr. Strangelove" (a superb movie and one of my all-time favorites).

For the reasons I gave earlier, I suspect Herman’s projections are overly grim. On the other hand, things have changed. The real danger today is biological warfare, either by itself or as a post-nuclear adjunct. Governments are certainly preparing for biowar, although none discuss it. Global casualties might run 50-90%. Cyber warfare would also be part of the package. And since the world now runs on computers, WW III would be a real dog’s breakfast.

Apart from that, if the US engages in a real war - not just the nasty little sport wars it’s fought since WW II - it will definitely lose its place in the world pecking order. We’ll fall down several rungs, as did Europe after destroying itself in World Wars I and II. Countries that remain relatively unaffected by the war, basically those in South America and parts of Asia, would become the new world leaders.

The war would be even worse for Russia since it would invite invasion by China, which logically would take over most of Siberia. It would be catastrophically bad for the US, Russia, and Europe. Because of the inevitable biological and cyber aspects, an all-out global thermonuclear war could be even worse than it might’ve been if the war had occurred a couple of generations ago, with only megaton city-busters.

Is a limited nuclear war even possible, or will the use of nuclear weapons inevitably escalate? If the US and NATO keep provoking the Russians, as they’re doing now, there may well be local strikes in the Ukraine against mainly military targets. It could stop there. Maybe… At that point, the West might see that the Russians really are serious and that it’s a bad idea to prod the bear into a corner.

With any luck, the war would stop before the obliteration of cities and would be limited to military targets. But we’re dealing with psychologically unstable narcissists, especially in the Western countries. It’s, therefore, unpredictable. War has always been the most unpredictable of human activities. The four horsemen of the apocalypse are stalking humanity in earnest."

- https://internationalman.com/

John Wilder, "The Amusement Singularity"

"The Amusement Singularity"

by John Wilder

"After a meeting, a colleague and I sat down in my office. “Man, it has been a long year,” I said. “Yes, it’s like we haven’t had a moment to rest for months.” This really made me think. I chatted with several other people, and for them as well this year had been relentless as far as the pace of the year. It wasn’t necessarily bad, mind you, there was just something always going on. All the time.

I think, partially, is that we’re seeing the inevitable consequences of Wilder’s Law of Greatest Amusement – that principle that says that, given two likely outcomes, inevitably the most amusing outcome will occur. For whatever reason, I don’t think that this is an accident – I think it might be hard-coded into the fabric of the Universe by a Creator with more than a little sense of humor. I mean, propane, right?

I don’t know if amusement is hard-coded, but I do know that the amount of change, or “novelty” that we’re seeing on a regular basis is off the charts. If I were to make a comparison, many weeks during 2024 have contained more fundamental change than was seen in the lifetimes of most medieval peasants. Really.

I mean, many peasants were born and died in the same mud-hut with only change being repair on the thatched roof. Most peasants saw no meaningful changes at all to church, governance, demographics, or technology – in their entire lives. The most that they had to look forward to was to one day wear a hat made up of a very larger turnip. If they were lucky.

In the span of Pa Wilder’s lifetime, Pa went from his first rides being in a horsedrawn buggy to watching man set foot on the Moon before he was fifty. And let’s not forget that within one human lifespan Russia went from a Czarist empire to a communist hellhole to a, well, whatever it is today. I mean, they love ice dancing, right?

This change appears to be happening at a faster and faster rate. Alice Cooper (who I met, and he’s very chill) noted this back in the 1970s with the lyrics to Generation Landslide that I’ve referenced before: “Stop at full speed at 100 miles per hour, the Colgate® Invisible Shield™ finally got ‘em.” It seems like we’re on a treadmill of innovation and that treadmill keeps getting faster and faster.

Part of it, of course, is that more information is available now than at any time in history. I can look up, without leaving my writing chair, information on almost any topic and get results. This allows people to very quickly make use of the solutions that others have found to problems. I can’t count the number of times that an Internet search or a YouTube® video has provided enough information to solve a problem that only an expert could have solved even twenty years ago.

There are some problems with this – why innovate when there’s a good enough solution on the Internet? It might stifle some solutions that bright people faced with a problem and no Internet would have solved, perhaps in a better way, without the information. But, on balance, it probably has created a lot of wealth, having this information store solving problems daily. However, it certainly has sped up the world.

When I was learning how to play chess at more than a “move the pieces correctly” level, Pa Wilder took my impulsive nature and said, “Wait. Stop. Look at the board. Think.” It is probably no surprise that taking that advice made my play much, much better overnight. But it also forced me to be able to think about the game more systematically, and to find things that otherwise I would have missed.

Taking time to contemplate actually made me a better thinker. Now, I figure that (at work) I have between 700 and 1400 contact points a week, and probably 60 decisions (mostly minor) an hour. The time that I have to sit, contemplate, and plan is nearly zero due to the near-constant “urgent” stream of activity. Not only that, many people are required to be connected to their positions via cell phone nearly constantly.

Long term, I think this constant stream of connection is horrible for people and is making many of them miserable. I’ve wondered if the nearly constant stream of psychological problems and psych medications that plague kids today was related to an adversity-free upbringing where outrage was fostered by GloboLeft teachers. I think, in part, it is. But the information flow that they’re steeped into is at least an order of magnitude higher than when I was a kid, and probably two or three times that.

It turns our perception of time into an eternal now – with one novel event following another in rapid succession as we head to a singularity of amusement. An assassination attempt on a presidential candidate is rare, a presidential candidate “nominee in all but name” dropping out happening in the same month while a billionaire shitposts about it and X® posts and engagements reach an all-time high? As A.I. generated content is now likely surpassing human-created written content, and will likely soon surpass human illustration content. In a year or two? Maybe it surpasses human-generated video. Yeah. The amusement is accelerating. Until it can’t.

The solution is simple, unplug, turn it down, and relax in contemplation. The next time I have a problem? I’ll figure out how to do it myself and skip YouTube® and end up with another comical tale of how not to remove bodily hair with propane."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

Midday Musical Interlude: Dark Legend, "Those Were The Days"

Full screen recommended. A must really!

Dark Legend, "Those Were The Days"

I'm simply astonished, awe-struck in admiration 

of the incredible excellence of these works...

"How It Really Is"

 

Dan, I Allegedly,"Pretend and Extend is Over - It's Time to Get Real"

Full screen recommended,

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 11/27/24

"Pretend and Extend is Over - 

It's Time to Get Real"

"The Truth About Commercial Real Estate's $1.7T Crisis: Ben Mallah's $500M empire crumbles as pretend and extend ends. Commercial real estate faces a $1.7T crisis by 2025. Join me at South Coast Plaza as we discuss the shift from pretend and extend to pray and delay in the market."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Bill Bonner, "The Man For The Job"

"The Man for the Job"

The world marches backward, from time to time, with deep, largely

 undetected under-currents that shape our political thoughts as 

well as our markets. They shape the candidates and the voters too.

by Bill Bonner

Baltimore, Maryland - "A torrent of opinion claims Donald Trump will be the death of our democracy. Salon: "Will Trump try to end democracy? Yes... "Dictator's Handbook" authors say a second Trump term will be dreadful - but he can't push US into autocracy."

This from Atlantic: "Donald Trump has won - and American democracy is now in grave danger. Yet while the election itself was clearly on the level, what comes next may not be. Having won power democratically, Trump is now in a position to enact his long-proposed plans to hollow out American democracy from within."

The opinionators give the man almost supernatural powers. According to them, he can change the way a nation of 330 million people functions - its rules... its habits... its customs and its sense of what is right and what is wrong. But Mr. Trump is the reflection of a major shift in the Primary Political Trend. He is not the cause of it.

Yesterday, driving into the office... all of a sudden, police sirens sounded... what seemed like dozens of them... on both sides of the highway. What was going on? Had WWIII broken out? Had the Russians landed in Annapolis? Nope. A pick-up had driven off the road. No one was hurt. Still, lights flashing, horns blowing, and handguns at-the-ready... a whole squad of first responders roared down the road... each trying to be the first to respond. “When did the local police get so muscled-up,” we wondered. This was not Andy of Mayberry, on the job. These were military-grade cops ready to handle an alien invasion.

But all over the world, governments - local as well as national - are lifting weights. The BBC: "US weapons sales abroad hit record high in 2023, boosted by Ukraine war. The US government directly negotiated $81bn in sales, a 56% increase from 2022, the state department reported. Poland bought Apache helicopters for $12bn, and also paid $10bn for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (Himars) and $3.75bn for M1A1 Abrams tanks, the department said in a report for the US government's fiscal year that ended in October. It also spent $4bn on Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command Systems. "Arms transfers and defence trade are important US foreign policy tools with potential long-term implications for regional and global security," the state department said in its annual memo released on Monday."

Bodybuilding and bullying by public officials are not Donald Trump’s doing. They are in the ‘air du temps.’ Everybody seems to want to kick someone else’s butt. Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris, did her best to imitate a butt kicker. But Donald Trump has spent his entire career rehearsing for the role. He’s been named in more than 3,500 lawsuits. He’s a real fighter, in other words... just the man for the top job... when pugilism is in style.

There are periods when civilization expands – by voluntary exchanges and consensual innovations. There are other times when the politicians and elites take over…with controls, sanctions, regulations tariffs, taxes – great campaigns to make the world a better place…and war. The world marches backward, from time to time….with deep, largely undetected under-currents that shape our political thoughts as well as our markets. They shape us, too... our candidates and the voters who elect them.

A petty thief may hold you up at gunpoint. But the elites have much more effective ways. Much of what we describe as ‘public policy’ is really just another way of robbing one group for the benefit of another. It is what you get when you are on the downswing of the Primary Political Trend.

Then, cometh the fighting spirit, cometh the fighter. Mr. Trump was not selected for his coherent economic views. Nor was he chosen for his deep knowledge of technology, the Constitution, or global affairs. The voters selected him because they are in the mood for a fight... and he’s a fighter."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/