Mohammad Marandi, 1/17/26
"Israel In Total Panic As Iran's Punishment
For IDF Will Be Devastating"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Saturday, January 17, 2026
"Blackrock Taking Over The Federal Reserve; Laid off With No Warning"
Jeremiah Babe, 1/17/26
"Blackrock Taking Over The Federal Reserve;
Laid off With No Warning"
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Adventures With Danno, "Two Massive Food Recalls We Need To Discuss!"
Adventures With Danno, 1/16/26
"Two Massive Food Recalls We Need To Discuss!"
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Musical Interlude: Metareflection, "Sunset Sonata"
Full screen recommended.
Metareflection, "Sunset Sonata"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“NGC 3199 lies about 12,000 light-years away, a glowing cosmic cloud in the nautical southern constellation of Carina. The nebula is about 75 light-years across in this narrowband, false-color view. Though the deep image reveals a more or less complete bubble shape, it does look very lopsided with a much brighter edge along the top.
Near the center is a Wolf-Rayet star, a massive, hot, short-lived star that generates an intense stellar wind. In fact, Wolf-Rayet stars are known to create nebulae with interesting shapes as their powerful winds sweep up surrounding interstellar material. In this case, the bright edge was thought to indicate a bow shock produced as the star plowed through a uniform medium, like a boat through water. But measurements have shown the star is not really moving directly toward the bright edge. So a more likely explanation is that the material surrounding the star is not uniform, but clumped and denser near the bright edge of windblown NGC 3199.”
The Poet: Sheila Black, "The Earth"
"The Earth"
"What can I tell her over breakfast when she says
her son suffers from madness, and because there
is no mental health, he has ended up in jail,
and she is relieved, because at least he might
be safe there or he might get to see the doctor.
We are eating egg-white omelets; we are counting
carbs. We are buttoning ourselves in our clean dresses
and high-heeled shoes in order to bring home the bacon,
doing what we need to do and “It is what it is.”
Her granddaughter and daughter are living with her
in the one bedroom. Nights, the daughter lounges by
the pool, looking at her phone, while she teaches the child
to plant seeds in a flower bed she feels bad she does not own.
She tells she cried in the car coming here; she did not know
me then. She thought we would be talking to each other
the whole time about what we are selling, what
the other might buy, but somehow we left that behind
over the toast with the tiny pots of strawberry jam.
Who can explain all this luxury, all this despair?
Or how we all hold our secret shames so close
and gloss our lips with “Cinnamon Fire” as if that were
some legitimate form of protection. Cinnamon Fire!
She just turned fifty. I tell her wait ten years - you
won’t know more, but you will get closer to forgiving,
because it is all happening on a wheel that spin
so fast. Why not stop to look at the pink flowers
you’ve planted with your granddaughter? Why not feel
your bare toes in the good wet earth? We play with the crusts
on our plates. The waitress takes the coffee away. We
are strangers again, each carrying our lonely fear
our children won’t find their way, wishing for them
some inner logic - sacred trust of earth and self, that exists
for each of us so far within, so far under the skin, we
can’t even begin to say what it is made of; it merely is,
poised between love and grief: the blue space we call wonder,
which is merely the dew on the grass, the shadow the sun
makes as it rolls over the vast skin of the Earth."
- Sheila Black
Rumi, "Become Light: Transform Your Soul Into Light"
Full screen recommended.
Rumi, "Become Light: Transform Your Soul Into Light"
"This video is a mystical musical journey into the timeless poetry of Rumi (Jalaluddin Balkhi). Each verse calls us to transcend the ego, cleanse the heart, and become the pure essence of love. Rumi reminds us: we were once clay, now we are soul - let us become the Beloved. This transformation is not about wealth, status, or words - it is about surrendering the self and shining as pure light. This music video is an offering of beauty, spirituality, and unity - may it inspire hearts across the world."
"One Can Make People Believe..."
“One could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."
- Hannah Arendt, "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
Of course, we know very well what to expect...
Dan, I Allegedly, "Foreclosures Are Exploding - Is Your City Next?"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 1/17/26
"Foreclosures Are Exploding - Is Your City Next?"
"71% of Realtors sold NOTHING last year! The housing market is shifting fast, and I’m breaking down what this means for buyers, sellers, and the economy. From skyrocketing foreclosures to the struggles of commercial real estate, this episode dives into the growing pains of the housing industry. The foreclosure market is ramping up, and commercial properties are taking huge hits with record-low occupancies. Plus, hear about shocking HOA fee increases in Florida and why many homeowners are walking away from their properties. If you’re in the market for a home, deals are coming - but be prepared for the economic challenges ahead. And yes, 71% of Realtors didn’t sell a single property in 2025! It’s a tough reality out there, but we’re all in this together."
Comments here:
"Geopolitics 1/17/26"
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson,
"Israel is Digging It's Own Grave as IDF Collapses on All Fronts"
Comments here:
o
Col. Douglas Macgregor,
"Israel’s Last Gamble - Nuclear War on the Table"
Comments here:
o
o
Full screen recommended.
Marshal X, 1/17/26
"The Russian Monster in Tehran…
and Israel Opens the Shelters!"
Comments here:
"What In The World Has Happened To Our Society?"
"What In The World Has Happened To Our Society?"
By Michael Snyder
"Things weren’t always this horrible. Once upon a time, America’s shiny new cities were the envy of the entire world. Our citizens dressed sharply, they treated one another with respect, and they worked incredibly hard. But now our country is teeming with extremely slothful degenerates that want everything handed to them on a silver platter. Rampant greed is everywhere that you look, crime is completely out of control, we are facing the worst drug crisis in the entire history of our nation, millions of our fellow citizens are absolutely seething with hatred for one another, and those that attempt to stand up for what is right are considered to be the problem. We should be deeply grieved by what has happened to our society, because it truly is a great tragedy.
Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. Matt Walsh published an excerpt from a letter that an infantryman sent to his family during the Civil War…"If you want to see how much the English language has deteriorated in modern times, go read the letters that random infantrymen wrote home to their families during the Civil War. These were young men often without much formal schooling who wrote naturally like poets. One example:"
Can you write like that? I certainly can’t. Those of us in this generation like to think of ourselves as the pinnacle of human history, but the truth is that we can’t even compare to those that have come before us.
Let me give you another example. More than a century ago, the streets of New York City were filled with extremely civilized people that dressed incredibly well when it was time to go out into the public arena…
Full screen recommended.
But now New York City is a crime-ridden, drug-infested hellhole. At this point, drug overdoses account for 80 to 85 percent of all accidental deaths in the Big Apple…
New York Times:
Is this “progress”? I don’t think so.
In Portland, conditions have gotten so bad that more than 2,600 businesses have left the downtown area over the past few years…"Business owners are fleeing Portland in droves amid a pronounced rise in crime and homelessness, officials in the Democratic stronghold have revealed. Public data shows that since the pandemic, more than 2,600 downtown businesses have filed changes of address with the U.S. Postal Service to leave their downtown ZIP codes. Several big-name employers, from Unitus Community Credit Union to Umpqua Bank, have been among the mass exodus, carried out by owners who have taken issue with the rising crime levels and homelessness – and the city’s failure to address it."
Apparently officials want even more businesses to leave, because now a bill that would give homeless individuals $1,000 a month “in no-strings-attached cash” is being seriously considered…"Oregon is considering giving its vast homeless and low-income population $1,000 in no-strings-attached cash. The bill was proposed by woke State Senator Wlnsvey Campos – who was among those calling to abolish the police in the summer of 2020 when the city of Portland was besieged by protesters – and Rep. Khanh Pham." If they actually do this, most of that money will go straight to the drug dealers.
Down in San Francisco, drug addicts are fueling a crime spree that is worse than anything that the city has ever experienced. When one woman recently went into the city for a yoga class, she was told that the building “had been broken into six times in two months”…"Yesterday I went to a yoga class in San Francisco for the first time in years. They had the front door locked (had to be buzzed in), a sign on it that said “no cash on premises,” and the woman at the front desk said they had been broken into six times in two months."
Over in Los Angeles, violent crime has become such a problem that extremely expensive “executive protection dogs” have become a very hot commodity…"The elite animals - typically German shepherds, Belgian Malinois, Dobermans, cane corsos or a mix of those breeds - are marketed under names such as “personal canine bodyguards” and “executive protection dogs.” Amid a spate of high-profile crimes in upscale parts of Los Angeles, they have become highly sought after among the rich, many of whom worry about being targeted.
Protection dogs, they say, provide an immediate layer of front-line defense, unlike security cameras (which merely show an intruder on the property, and only if the devices happen to be pointed in the right direction) and home alarm systems (which can be bypassed or ignored). Even if police are summoned, they can be slow to respond, if at all. So homeowners who can afford it are being more proactive."
This is the world that we live in now. But most Americans don’t seem to care. We are literally living in an “idiocracy” in which people are dropping dead all around us, but most Americans are so far gone that they can’t even understand what is happening.
Of course it isn’t just the United States that is facing such problems. Up in Canada, crime rates are absolutely exploding thanks to the reckless policies of the Trudeau regime…"The Toronto Police Service data portal shows that Toronto experienced a 17.2 per cent spike in overall major crimes in 2022, including a 9.8 per cent increase in assaults, a 44.2 per cent spike in auto thefts, 6.5 per cent growth in break and enters, a 28.5 per cent jump in robbery, an 11.3 per cent increase in sexual violence, and a 35.8 per cent gain in theft over cases."
And in many areas of South America crime has risen to levels that we have never seen before…"Countries across Latin America and the Caribbean continued to experience high murder rates in 2024, as cocaine production reached new heights, the fragmentation of gangs continued, and the flow of weapons across the region grew more acute.
For Ecuador, the situation was downright catastrophic. Historic amounts of cocaine entering the country fueled violence, with murders skyrocketing as gangs targeted judicial officials and killed police officers at record rates. That cocaine came largely from Colombia, where recently inaugurated President Gustavo Petro has promised to shift away from the war on drugs in favor of efforts to achieve a “Total Peace” with the country’s rebel and criminal groups."
Our entire world is deeply sick. We have turned our backs on what is good, and we continue to run after evil as rapidly as we can. As a result, our society is a complete and total mess. We truly are living during one of the most critical times in all of human history, and we desperately need to change course. Unfortunately, most people seem to think that everything is just fine, and so they see no need for a new direction."
Stipendium peccati mors est...
"Don’t Waste Time, That’s All You Have"
"Don’t Waste Time, That’s All You Have"
by John Wilder
"One of Seneca's (Dead Roman Philosopher Dude) most famous quotes is, "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it." What surprises me is that Seneca wrote this before Twitter® existed. But even back in the time of Rome, there were ways to waste time. I’m thinking Facebook® might be that old. Regardless, his message is timeless: every moment that we’re breathing here on Earth is precious. We may not always get a choice as to how we spend our time (Ted Kaczynski seems to be booked every day) but the true crime is to waste time. Oh, and blowing people up.
I have been as guilty as anyone of wasting time. And one of the biggest wastes of time is to become consumed by negative thoughts and emotions. In reality, most of the time (most) the things that irritate me are small. How small? So small that if I pack up my emotions, and really assess as to why I’m mad, it just looks silly. When Hillary reflects on why she’s mad, well, she calls the Suicide Hotline and places an order.
But that reflection is crucial. It’s called self-control, and although it appears to be unfashionable in certain locations (Chicago, I’m looking at you) it is the only way to be successful. If I threw a temper tantrum when (spins wheel) I drop a sock on the floor, I think there’s a simple word for that in the English language: Leftist feminist the ATF unstable.
No, when I’m upset I stop. I take a deep breath. I ask myself, “Does it matter?” Most of the time, it doesn’t. At all. Very few of the things that have irritated me matter at all over any rational timeframe. The old two rules apply: 1. Don’t sweat the small stuff. 2. It’s all small stuff.
The second question is, can I control whatever the situation is or influence it? If the answer is no, then that’s like being mad that the Sun is coming up in the morning. Even if it’s my mistake, it’s sillier than being angry over the English coal minimum price subsidy in the 1800s or...anything that happened in 1619.
One concept I’ve come across recently is "amor fati," which is Latin for “put armor on fat people”. Oh, wait, my translator was wrong. It really means, "love your fate." I think I first heard a variation of this when I was a kid: “You get what you get, and you’ll like it, and grease up the fat people so we can put plate mail on them.”
The reality of amor fati is this, though: I am where I am, and I have a choice. I can get up every morning and be mad, or I can be happy where I am. Does that mean I’m content? No. Does that mean I’m not going to fight like hell? No. Does that mean I’m not going to try to change certain things with the fire of a thousand suns? No.
It does mean that if life sucks, I can still find meaning, still find purpose, and still try to create the change that I seek to create. It’s not complacency. Heck, Seneca himself was one of the richest dudes in all of Rome. That didn’t just happen. He didn’t just wake up one morning, and say, “Holy crap, I have an amazing amount of money. How did that happen?” Seneca embraced what he had, and tried to better himself, and change himself. He did okay.
Our choices are our choices, but even more than that, we always have the choice how we feel, even Ted Kaczynski. We may have lost everything else, but we always retain that. We should not be overcome by fear or despair. To be clear – those are just about the most negative things we can let into our lives, unless you know one of the women on 'The View.'
The only proper way to deal with tough times is to face into them. Our obstacles make us stronger. Each obstacle we face with virtue and excellence improves us. Except for bullets. Those sound like they really suck.
Regardless of all of that, the first point is still the most important: our lives aren’t too short – our lives are exactly as long as they are. Deal with it. Love it. Use your time – every minute. Every second you waste? It’s wasting your life. Now, go make something happen."
"The Lines Between Fact and Fiction Are Blurred... Here's Why You Should Question the Narrative"
"The Lines Between Fact and Fiction Are Blurred...
Here's Why You Should Question the Narrative"
by Chris MacIntosh
"I believe we are at a critical juncture where it is imperative that we do NOT fall for the ruses being put in front of us. They are playing us. Almost everything in our news cycle is questionable. The lines between fact and fiction have become blurred. What our leaders and mainstream media peddle as the truth is often misinformation… and what is really the truth is smeared as misinformation. Furthermore, attention spans have narrowed so significantly that even when the truth is hard to cover up, the populace can be distracted with a barrage of information unrelated to the problematic topic. Who, for example, still asks the question: where is Epstein’s client list?
In this never ending exhausting stream of "information," the brain tires and the default of emotions rises with logic taking a back door. It’s far easier to be emotional than logical. This plays into the hands of, in particular, our "elites" masquerading their greed as virtue. Reality has been replaced by false messaging and imagery to such an extent that one cannot distinguish between fact and fiction. And as a result of this, everyone squabbles through the prism of their own confirmation biases and ideological impulses.
We are ruled by a nefarious group of individuals that have an unquenchable thirst for power, control, and money. They don’t care what they have to do to get it - and that includes tricking people into thinking they are the virtuous good guys who are here to keep us all safe. And tragically, millions of people are completely duped by this. What we have witnessed over the COVID response, the war in Ukraine, the Net-Zero agenda on climate change, and many other current issues is a movement of faux virtue that has been carefully crafted by corrupt politicians, messengers within legacy media outlets, greedy corporations, messiah delusional billionaires, and undemocratic technocrats to create the impression that they are the virtuous ones who are our friends.
These people are not our friends. Their primary objective is to hoodwink us into believing and complying to their virtue, but in reality, being tricked into giving away more freedoms, power, wealth, and assets to these virtue vultures.
The reality of all of this is that we are sleepwalking towards the biggest asset grab in the history of the planet. They are trying to destroy farms, land, businesses, freedoms, housing, individual wealth, travel, and own them or sell them off to the highest bidder. And at the same time, they are trying to ring-fence society into the entrapment of being controlled by data - either through health passports or the slow mission creep towards central banking digital currencies (CBDCs). It’s a giant asset grab of what we own and control. Of course, they frame all of this being in our best interests. But make no mistake - it’s the biggest swindle ever.
This gargantuan virtue con-trick also comes with a huge slice of authoritarianism. Anyone who sees through it, questions it, stands up to it, or shows opposition to it are immediately ridiculed and ostracised by the group-think mob.
Question the COVID response? You’re a "Covidiot."
Question the Ukraine war? Bugger off, you Putin apologist, you.
Question the Israeli war on the Palestinians? Antisemite!
Question Net-Zero? You must be a far right climate change denier!
This is gutter politics designed to shut down and undermine any opposition or questioning. It works if you allow them to emotionally engage you. Don’t fall for it! But not questioning the narrative is a huge form of denial. Because any government, technocrat, or institution that advocates medical discrimination, suppression of civil liberties and a transfer of wealth and public assets to the rich while the rest of society endures a cost of living crisis is not your friend.
Don’t be fooled by their virtue. It’s a giant con! In reality, they are indulging in a massive asset grab. They are treating the world as feudalism, but under the guise of "it’s for your own good" or "safety" faux virtue. A Machiavellian weapon that power hungry sociopaths use for control.
Fake virtue peddled by governments and authorities for mass compliance and social control is the oldest trick in the authoritarian playbook. Don’t fall for it. Because when totalitarianism arrives, it will come cloaked in fake virtue. And now we have not only Venezuela, but Bangladesh, too, and this brings me to US foreign policy, which is a giant Ponzi scheme.
A Ponzi Scheme: Here’s how it works in six steps…
• Buy foreign leaders who are willing to sell out their people and grant cheap resources/labor to the Empire.
• If leaders refuse, sanction them and stoke political discontent, murdering thousands.
Use the result of crushing sanctions as "proof" their regimes are bad for their people.
• Fund fascist "revolutions" again and again and again, until a new leader emerges who will sell out their people to the Empire.
• In the meantime, this is funded by taxpayers in the Empire. Additionally, these parasites will take videos and photos of the dying impoverished people who are dying and being impoverished by the actions of these parasites… and beg you for charity to help these unfortunate people.
• Instigate proxy wars when any of the above doesn’t work. These proxy wars cause refugee crises flooding Western countries, which destroys the homogeneity of nation states, making them weaker.
• It is nothing but a hollow, superficial crime gang masquerading as a society that only cares about one thing: perpetually increasing its power and wealth, at the expense of all else."
"This Species is Amusing Itself to Death. The Addictive Contaminated Media Reality"
"This Species is Amusing Itself to Death.
The Addictive Contaminated Media Reality"
By Dr. Gary G. Kohls
“And when they found our shadows (grouped ‘round the TV sets), they ran down every lead; they repeated every test; they checked out all the data in their lists. And then the alien anthropologists admitted they were still perplexed, but on eliminating every other reason for our sad demise they logged the only explanation left: This species has amused itself to death.” - Roger Waters
“Apathy and indifference are nurtured in the modern age as most peoples’ free time is frittered away with worthless trivia like ball games, computer games, movies and soaps, and fiddling with their mobile phones. These distractions might be fun, but after most of them you’ve learnt nothing of any value, and remain ignorant, malleable and suggestible, which is just how the elites want you.” – Clive Maund
“A truth’s initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed… When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker, a raving lunatic.” – Dresden James
“A lie gets halfway around the world before
the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
– Winston Churchill
"30 years ago (1985) Neil Postman (a professor of communications arts and sciences at New York University – until his death in 2003) wrote the best-selling book “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”. (Free download below.) The book exposed, among other things, the subtle but profound dangers to the developing mind from the mesmerizing (and addictive) commercial television industry.
The lessons from that book have essentially been ignored by the amoral and corrupted sociopathic capitalist system that says “damn the torpedoes/full steam ahead” and blindly and greedily promotes unlimited growth no matter what the costs and who or what gets hurt long–term in the resource-extractive, exploitive and permanently polluting processes.
But Postman’s thesis applies even more strongly today to the current internet/computer/ age-inappropriate, pornographic sex and pornographic violence-saturated televangelist/political-contaminated media reality with which the prophetic Postman was properly alarmed.
SOMA, the Drug That Predicted Prozac by 50 Years: In the classic “Brave New World” (1932) Aldous Huxley wrote about the new form of totalitarianism that has now come to pass in the developed world, thanks to the privatized profit-driven, drug, medical and psychiatric corporations whose practitioners were once (naively or altruistically?) mainly concerned with relieving human suffering and trying to holistically and permanently cure their distressed patients’ ailments (rather than lucratively “managing” said “clients” as permanently paying consumers of unaffordable prescription drugs). Nearly 30 years after he wrote the book, Huxley said,
“And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods.” Neil Postman’s very last sentence of his book concerned the prescription drug-infested victims of the new form of totalitarianism that Huxley had described in “Brave New World”.
Of course, Huxley’s book was all about his imaginary psychotropic drug SOMA that Prozac’s makers and promoters in the late 1980s to falsely claim to make its swallowers “feel better than well”. One of the characters in Brave New World said: “And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always Soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always Soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears; that’s what Soma is.”
Postman ended his book by writing: “What afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.” A couple of years after the publication of Postman’s book, Roger Waters (of “Pink Floyd’s The Wall” fame) released a “concept” album that was inspired by the book. He titled the album “Amused to Death”. The lyrics of the title track are as follows:
“Amused To Death”
by Roger Waters
"Doctor, Doctor what’s wrong with me?
This supermarket life is getting long.
What is the heart life of a color TV?
What is the shelf life of a teenage
queen?
Ooh western woman,
Ooh western girl,
News hound sniffs the air
When Jessica Hahn goes down
He latches on to that symbol of
detachment
Attracted by the peeling away of
feeling
The celebrity of the abused shell
of the belle
Ooh western woman
Ooh western girl
And the children of Melrose strut
their stuff
Is absolute zero cold enough?
And out in the valley warm and clean
The little ones sit by their TV screens
No thoughts to think
No tears to cry
All sucked dry down to the very
last breath.
Bartender what is wrong with me,
Why I am so out of breath?
The captain said excuse me ma’am,
This species has amused itself to death
We watched the tragedy unfold,
We did as we were told.
We bought and sold,
It was the greatest show on earth.
But then it was over,
We oohed and aahed,
We drove our racing cars,
We ate our last few jars of caviar,
And somewhere out there in the stars
A keen-eyed look-out
Spied a flickering light
Our last hurrah.
And when they found our shadows,
Grouped ‘round the TV sets,
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test,
They checked out all the data in
their lists.
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed.
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise,
They logged the only explanation left.
This species has amused itself to death.
No tears to cry,
No feelings left,
This species has amused itself to
death…"
○
Freely download “Amusing Ourselves to Death:
Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, by Neil Postman, here:
"Why Is Everything Such a Hot Mess?"
"Why Is Everything Such a Hot Mess?"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"Nobody believes that "doing more of what's failed" will actually fail, because to date it's only made insiders rich. Why is everything such a hot mess? Let's summarize the consensus views.
1. Sociopaths are in charge. There are two options: A) the sociopaths gained power through official, legitimate means such as elections or royal bloodlines, or B) the real web of power is hidden from public view and operates behind the screen of official authority.
2. Alternatively, the system itself is sociopathic and so it doesn't matter who's in power, as the system elevates sociopaths to power by its very nature.
Yes, there are sociopaths and yes, there are conspiracies. Every corporate price-fixing scheme is a conspiracy that is consciously organized to benefit the few at the expense of the many and protect the conspirators from any negative consequences. These are the defining traits of every conspiracy: pull hidden strings of power for private gain (more power, more wealth, etc.) and moat the conspirators from any consequences.
In this view, if we replaced the sociopaths who gained power and exposed the conspirators/ hidden web of power to consequences, then we could restore legitimacy, stability and functionality to the system. The alternate view is: since the system itself is sociopathic, the only way to restore legitimacy, stability and functionality is to change the system from the ground up: change the structure of power, oversight, incentives, the whole ball of wax.
In a conspiracy, those organizing the hidden web of power know it's wrong which is why they must hide it: exposure means ruin because the system still has the capacity to punish fraud, exploitation, abuse of power, etc. When the system itself is illegitimate and dysfunctional, then those rising up the ladder to positions of power don't see it as wrong; it's simply BAU -Business As Usual, the way things work and have always worked.
In this view, perverse incentives have been normalized and are accepted as status quo. So for example, addicting your customers to destructive products and services is an excellent business plan as it maximizes profits while directing the consequences onto the customers, not the corporate leaders who planned and executed the profit-maximizing strategy.
Since fraud and exploitation generate higher profits, any CEO that reverses this strategy will be fired for gross incompetence, as the means to increase profits don't matter, only increasing profits matters. Maximizing fraud and exploitation maximizes personal enrichment. But in a sociopathic system, this isn't viewed as wrong, it's BAU - Business As Usual, as the system's explicit goal is the maximization of private gains by any means available.
In my book "Investing In Revolution", I trace how success and abundance generate sociopathic systems. The process isn't guided by sociopaths, it's human nature amplified by centralized, institutionalized power.
The psychology of what appears to participants as permanent abundance goes like this: In the initial boost phase of the organization, success is not guaranteed. Success is contingent on the organization fulfilling its real-world purpose: transparent, competent governance, making products of enduring value and functionality, etc. This requires feedback from the real world that hasn't been filtered, as filtered feedback generates false signals, and responding to false signals leads to failure.
The leadership of the organization understands this and accepts accountability, for the organization won't survive contact with the real world if leaders are not accountable for failures. Feedback and accountability are transparent out of necessity.
This changes once the organization has institutionalized its success. The perception of those inside the organization changes: the organization is now viewed as so stable and successful that its existence is no longer contingent; it's guaranteed.
Insiders no longer have to concern themselves with feedback and accountability; the focus shifts to maximizing private gains. Since the organization is permanent and rich in resources, revenues and political protection/power, there's no need to invest in maintaining feedback or accountability, as the system basically runs itself via rules that govern the centralized hierarchy.
The organization selects those amenable to hierarchy and obeying rules. Those applying for positions self-select: those who chafe at hierarchy and rules quit. Over time, this leads to leadership optimized for following rules and protecting the organization from consequences. Those with the capacity to adapt to sudden changes by reworking the entire organization on the fly have been weeded out by either self-selection or the optimization of business as usual, i.e. the artifices of filtering feedback, limiting accountability and defending the organization from negative consequences.
So when the time inevitably comes where radical re-organization is the sole path to survival, there's no organizational memory to tap and nobody in the organization with the ability to manage it. The leadership will simply increase the resources devoted to artifice- - bogus statistics, happy-story narratives, fake reforms, and so on.
To serve these now-embedded goals of filtering feedback, limiting accountability and defending the organization from negative consequences, insiders modify the organization's rules of the game incrementally, eroding the authenticity of feedback and loosening accountability, as these modifications increase private gain and reduce exposure to consequences.
Once exposure to consequences has been eliminated, accountability is lost and the system loses the capacity to self-correct: feedback is edited/curated to maintain the appearance that the organization is fulfilling of its purpose admirably and the leadership is fully accountable, i.e. the leaders will experience negative consequences for the organization failing to fulfill its purpose.
This dismantling of feedback, accountability and consequence isn't a conspiracy or a takeover by sociopaths; it's all being done by perfectly average people who take their kids to soccer practice, etc., just like everyone else. They don't see the erosion because it started long before they grasped the first rung in the ladder to authority. They're blind to the erosion of real feedback and accountability, and so they're blind to this erosion leading to the organization's failure to fulfill its purpose.
Since the organization rewards optimizing the tools of artifice - filtering feedback and moating the leadership from consequence - that's how to they use their power: increase the artifice because restoring authentic feedback and accountability threatens not just their personal self-enrichment but the legitimacy and stability of the entire organization. So they vigorously pursue doing more of what's failed until the consequences of the corrupted feedback and loss of accountability lead to Model Collapse: the entire model that generates the rules that guide the organization collapses in a heap.
That's how everything became such a hot mess. Nobody believes that doing more of what's failed will actually fail, because to date it's only made insiders rich. Ultimately, this leads to a stark choice nobody accepts as inevitable: invest in Business As Usual or "Invest In Revolution." Doing more of what's failed doesn't generate success, it simply accelerates the collision with consequences. But nobody inside the organization believes this, as doing more of what's failed has been wildly successful for their entire career.
It didn't have to be this way. Of course it did. The causal chain leaves no other option."
"Scott Adams and Intellectual Courage"
"Scott Adams and Intellectual Courage"
by Jeffrey Tucker
"When Scott Adams died, People Magazine led with a line that dominated most of the media for days: “Scott Adams, Disgraced Dilbert Creator, Dies at 69.” It’s a message for the living: depart from saying what you are supposed to say and you will lose everything. Even in death, your life will be called worthless. This was not eulogy but rather an enforcement action to keep the opinion cartel functioning.
It was in 2015 that the famed creator of the Dilbert cartoon first started speculating that Donald Trump had what it takes to become president. The feeling of shock was palpable. No one else was saying anything like this – more specifically, no one of his status and reach as a cultural influence. In those days, the opinions of The Nation and National Review were identical: this clown cannot be president.
For my own part, I recall feeling appalled by Adams’ statements. At the time, I was firmly in the Never Trump camp, without fully understanding that I was then accepting the most conventional opinion possible at the time. I further failed to understand the complex dynamic operating beneath the surface, namely that a broken system of government/media/tech had long ago stopped serving the cause of freedom and dignity and turned to full-time exploitation in surreptitious forms.
In words, Trump was out there saying that the system was gravely broken and needed to be fixed. This was Adams’ view as well, and he further saw that Trump had the gravitas necessary to pull people over to this view.
Adams of course turned out to be correct about this. It’s difficult to recreate the sense of those times to understand just how disruptive his views were. It was a universally shared opinion at the time that Trump was an unwelcome and deeply dangerous invader into electoral politics.
The establishment figured that the best way to shut down Trump’s effort was to treat them as wholly inadmissible to public life. The Huffington Post put their coverage under the entertainment category, while every other mainstream venue ran countless millions of articles on his evils.
Adams saw something others did not. He saw that Trump was compelling in ways no other political figure was. He was talking about real issues no one else would mention. He was a master improviser on stage. He was also funny. It was only after Adams’s comments that I started to listen. I realized that he was onto something important.
For holding this view, and then becoming ever more open about his support of Trump, Adams lost everything. His high-paid corporate speaking gigs were cancelled. He lost his income stream and social/cultural status. Eventually his syndication was cancelled too, on thin pretext. This cannot have come as a shock to him. He knew exactly what the consequences would be for departing from the status quo. He did it anyway.
We need to appreciate just how rare this is in higher circles of public influencers. This is a world in which everyone knows what they are supposed to say and what is unsayable. No one needs to send memos or give marching orders. The proper orthodoxy is in the air, discerned from all the signs by all intelligent people.
Entering into the upper echelons of opinion making, whether in academia or media or civil society generally, requires three types of training. First, you need to develop expertise in some area or at least be able to present evidence that other experts regard you as an expert. Second, you need to show evidence that you can speak the rarified form of language that is reserved to elite opinion, which has its own special vocabulary for communication and cultural signalling. And third, you need to develop proficiency in knowing what to say and believe.
This is what advanced training amounts to. Master all three, and you cross into a different realm from that inhabited by the rabble. Staying in that place requires close adherence to the rules and the presentation of ongoing evidence that you are willing to play the game, even better if you strongly believe in the game itself.
There is a narrow bound of opinion holding that pertains at all times. In moments of genuine crisis – disruptive political leaders, wars, huge legislative changes, trade agreements, pandemic responses – when the stakes grow much higher, the enforcement of these rules becomes much more strict. The slightest deviation raises eyebrows and reduces trust in your reliability.
Everyone in these realms knows what to do and say. That’s not even a question. The issue becomes: what does one do when the intellect and conscience conspire to lead one into a position of dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy? That’s when you have to size up the costs and benefits of courage. The costs are overwhelming: the risk of power, position, material support, reputation, and legacy. The benefits come down to the feeling of having done the right thing.
Adams knew this better than anyone. He could not stay quiet. Not only that, he stuck to his opinions, always checking himself to make sure they came from an honest and sincere position based on existing evidence.
After all, the whole point of the cartoon he had drawn for years and years was to poke fun at the pretense, pomp, and sheer fakery of management speak and corporate protocols within the heavily bureaucratized world of big business. This is why he was beloved: he told the truth that no one else would. He afflicted the comfortable and made big shots look ridiculous. He mocked elites and denied expertise.
This is why he was popular. But when he turned the same method and eagle eye to matters of politics, taking a position not unlike that he had developed toward the corporate world, his fortunes dramatically changed, as he surely knew they would. He lost everything.
Oddly, as so many others have discovered, there is something freeing about that. He eventually started his own daily show in which he would spend hours calmly talking through the day’s headlines and trying to make sense of the unspoken orthodoxies that frame permissible opinions in a heated environment of political division.
On matters related to Covid, Adams proved himself overly credulous. He waited too long to join the dissidents on masking but eventually did. And when the shot came out, he agreed publicly to go along because he needed the vaccination to travel. He later agreed that they failed to stop transmission but maintained that they surely reduced severe injury. After his cancer diagnosis, he finally conceded in January 2023: “Anti-vaxxers clearly are the winners.” He spent the next two years repeatedly expressing regret that he had ever believed that it was fine to get the shot.
Adams was an honest critic. This worked for him professionally for decades, until he became too honest. The point is that Adams looked at the costs and benefits of compliance with prevailing opinion norms and decided it was not worth it. He chose courage instead. Thousands of others did too, and they have paid a heavy price. Even now, scientists who are looking honestly and truthfully at vaccine injury, the costs of lockdowns, the conflicts of interest in science and medicine, and are trying to reform the system face unrelenting attack and outright cancellation.
Just for example, the journal Oncotarget published a peer-reviewed paper by Charlotte Kuperwasser, and Wafik S. El-Deiry called “COVID vaccination and post-infection cancer signals: Evaluating patterns and potential biological mechanisms.” It’s a meta-analysis of vast reports linking the Covid shots with the rise of cancer. The journal was hit with DDOS attacks that lasted a full week and took down the entire site.
Brownstone stepped in to post the paper on its servers. We served more than 5,000 downloads before we too were hit with a massive DDOS attack. We fended it off by requiring a CAPTCHA check from every user, and eventually the attacks died down. It’s hard to see what was achieved by those who wanted this paper to go away.
The Streisand effect (warning people against something only draws more attention to it) is real. Not only real but the main path to truth for a public increasingly convinced that prevailing orthodoxies are a tissue of lies, sustained only by money, careerism, and the paucity of courage in public life today.
Adams was an early dissident and among the most famous. He showed the way. To make sure that he is not an example for others, reliable ruling-class venues made sure to attempt to humiliate him in death. It’s been this way since the ancient world, apparently: those who dare challenge elite opinion cartels will always pay the price. But they can live and die with a clean conscience. What matters more?"
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