Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite,
with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"The Sin Nature of Theologians & The Primate
Nature of Biologists... Are The Same"
by Paul Rosenberg
"This is one of those things that needs to be said, even though it’s jarring and unlikely to change public discourse any time soon. Apologies where due.
What theologians call “man’s sinful nature” is just about the same thing as the primate chemistry we humans have inherited, however it was that it came to us. (I’ll leave the fights over ultimate origins to others.) Bear in mind, please, that what I’m calling “primate nature” is, in us, more like primate inclinations, and that we also have post-primate inclinations, or in theological terms godly inclinations. But there’s only so much we can cover in a single post, so I’ll pass over most of that today.
Let’s use the five “Thou shalt nots” of the Ten Commandments as a reference point for the sin nature. It’s not an ideal list, but it’s very well known and will serve our purpose well enough. And we’ll stay with the closest primates to us: chimps first and then baboons (which also happen to be the animals I’ve studied the closest).
Thou shalt not murder. Chimps very definitely murder, and brutally. But they murder mainly outside their immediate troops. In other words, they’re murderously xenophobic. Most of their murders could be considered a type of war, and they are endlessly in conflict with other bands of chimps living nearby. And so aggression in humans, and particularly aggression between groups, are very definitely chimp things.
But there’s even more to this story: Murder and war are mainly (though not exclusively) a male activity among chimps. Female chimps accomplish most of their aggressions indirectly, by forming nepotistic dominance hierarchies and putting down both underlings and competitors, coldly and cruelly (at least from our perspective). When killing is required, they generally influence males (usually related males) to get it done.
Thou shalt not commit adultery. The big goal for male primates is to become the top animal and to copulate with as many females as possible. This, rather obviously, translates to adultery. Mid-level males wait till the big bosses are gone, then copulate with females the bosses previously monopolized, and by this the females spread their influence. Females frequently trade sex for favors such as protection or quality food.
Thou shalt not steal. If and when they can, primates steal. The high-status animals can get away with it a great deal, as when boss males chase away lower-status animals who find a bush bearing ripe fruit. They’ll bark, slap and if necessary do worse to chase the pleb away and get the good food they found. And again, the females have their own version of this, with high-ranking females intimidating and punishing lower-ranking females. It’s a very soap-opera set of interactions.
Thou shalt not bear false witness. Misdirection and guile among animals is hard to identify, but I’ll go out on a limb and assert that this goes on plenty. Still, I can’t support it directly, leaving this one to stand as an open suggestion.
Thou shalt not covet. Low-status primates very certainly covet what the high-status animals have, but can’t get it. As a result (and yes, this has been measured), they suffer with markedly elevated incidents of high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, a suppressed immune system, reduced fertility and other stress-related maladies.
Also...Bear in mind that both primates and humans are hard-wired for the recognition of status, to which this suite of bad behaviors is tied very tightly.
Last Words: I like making these posts fairly brief, and so I’ll bring this to a close by noting two things: Everything above is substantiated by seemingly good research, and it clearly ties the sin nature of the theologians to primate nature. That an odd and even troubling concept, but it can be verified by anyone who wishes to undertake the necessary work.
As noted earlier, there’s also an upward side to this, and it leads us toward wonderful places and times. Despite the far-too-common condemnational aspect of theology, an upward and very promising theology is available. But I’ll go no further on that, save to point out that David, the great Psalmist, announced “You are gods,” and that Jesus repeated the statement without reservation."
"What if the real apocalypse isn’t outside us, but within us? In this video, we dive into Carl Jung’s prophetic warnings about the “age of filth” - a time when humanity would drown in distractions, illusions, and emptiness, while the soul withers in silence. Jung foresaw a mental apocalypse: the collapse of meaning, the rise of mass conformity, and the eruption of the repressed shadow into chaos and despair. Yet within this crisis lies an opportunity. By facing our inner darkness, reconnecting with archetypes, and awakening to the Self, Jung believed we could transform the apocalypse into a revelation - a rebirth of consciousness."
"Why are more Americans sleeping in their cars than ever before? The hidden housing crisis in the United States is growing fast - and it's affecting working families, seniors, and even children. In this video, we uncover the reality behind vehicle homelessness and why millions are slipping through the cracks. Here’s the thing… this isn't just about unemployment. Many people living in cars have full-time jobs, yet rising rent, inflation, stagnant wages, and a severe affordable housing shortage have pushed them out of traditional housing. We explore how these economic pressures are reshaping the American Dream. What most people don't realize is that many homeless families remain invisible. Children still attend school, parents continue working, and seniors struggle to survive - all while living out of vehicles. We also examine eviction trends, housing policies, mental health challenges, and why current solutions often fail to address the root causes. The reality is that this crisis is larger than official numbers suggest. Watch till the end for a fact-based breakdown of what's driving America's housing emergency and what it could mean for the future."
"Those that boldly proclaimed that the global energy crisis was over have been proven dead wrong. Within the past 24 hours, the Iranians have attacked numerous commercial vessels that were attempting to travel through the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians have told the world over and over again that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will never go back to the way that it was before the war, and they mean it. Any commercial vessels that want to go through the Strait must get permission from Iran and they must travel a very specific route that has been authorized by the Iranians. Any vessels that do not meet those requirements are subject to attack.
The rest of the world can never accept permanent Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz, and that is just one of the reasons why this war is far from over. For now, the Iranians are running the show in the Strait, and CNN is reporting that three commercial vessels have been attacked…"Iran fired on three commercial vessels Tuesday in Oman’s territorial waters near the Strait of Hormuz, according to a US official. The official described the strikes as a “gross violation” of the memorandum of understanding with Iran. The third strike had not previously been reported. The US has a broad range of potential responses to the alleged violations and is considering all of them, according to the official."
I agree that this is a very serious violation of the Memorandum of Understanding. But the Iranians are going to keep doing it until somebody forces them to stop. Just a little while ago, there were reports that a fourth commercial vessel has now been attacked by Iran…
These guys are not bluffing. Just two days ago, the Iranians once again made it very clear that any commercial vessels that attempted to travel through the Strait of Hormuz using the “Omani route” would be subject to attack…"On Sunday, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) warned that its navy deployed patrol boats to block the “Omani route,” Iranian media and a Telegram channel affiliated with the IRGC said. In its report on the alleged attack, Iran’s Fars News Agency cited its sources as claiming the tanker had been attempting to transit the “Omani route.”
When your enemies tell you exactly what they intend to do, you should believe them. In response to the latest attacks, the Trump administration has already “revoked a waiver allowing Iran to sell oil and petrochemicals”…"The Treasury Department on Tuesday afternoon revoked a waiver allowing Iran to sell oil and petrochemicals, prohibiting Iran from a significant revenue source negotiated during recent talks and again escalating the tensions between the two sides. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said the action is effective Tuesday. The waiver the U.S. issued last month as part of the 14-point memorandum of understanding allowed Iran to sell oil as talks continued."
It is likely that this won’t be the only response. Many are expecting renewed U.S. military action against Iran in the coming hours. The Memorandum of Understanding is coming apart at the seams right in front of our eyes, and President Trump has warned that if Iran doesn’t make a deal he will “finish the job”… “And it won’t be tough to finish the job. I’d rather make a deal because I don’t want to affect 91 million people,” the President said.
“We can knock down their bridges in one hour. We can knock out their energy supply. All of those big plants that they built, big, beautiful, modern plants. They had a lot of money. They don’t have any money now. We haven’t given them any money. But we can knock out their electricity and power-generating plants in, I would say, a small part of an afternoon. Every plant will be gone, and they know that.”
Unfortunately, no negotiations between the United States and Iran are happening right now, and the Iranians are warning that they won’t even begin if Trump keeps making threats…"Iran’s foreign minister said Tuesday that Tehran will not resume negotiations if threats continue, a day after President Trump said the U.S. would “finish the job” if no peace deal is struck. In a social media post, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said neither the Iranian people nor the Islamic Republic’s military would be “moved by any threats,” without referencing Mr. Trump’s comments specifically.
“Negotiations on final Deal will not commence if threats continue,” Araghchi warned, citing the memorandum of understanding signed by President Trump and his Iranian counterpart in mid-June, which calls for both sides to “refrain from the threat or use of force against each other.”
I don’t mean to spoil the ending for those of you that still want to be surprised, but there isn’t going to be peace in the Middle East. And that means that the global energy crisis is going to continue to intensify.
Last week, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve dropped to the lowest level that we have seen since April 1983…"The United States is burning through its emergency oil stash at a pace that hasn’t been seen in over four decades. Strategic Petroleum Reserve inventories have dropped to 319.5 million barrels as of July 3, the lowest level since April 1983.
The most recent weekly draw pulled 6.2 million barrels out of the reserve, part of a broader government initiative to release up to 172 million barrels. The goal: address global supply gaps driven by the ongoing conflict with Iran and try to keep domestic fuel prices from spiraling further out of control."
This is how close to disaster we really are at this stage. Commercial oil inventories in the U.S. also continue to decline…"U.S. crude stocks fell to their lowest last week since 2018 as domestic refinery demand rose, while gasoline inventories also fell ahead of the July 4 holiday weekend, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday. Commercial crude inventories fell by 3.8 million barrels to 408.4 million barrels last week, the lowest level since September 2018, compared with analysts’ expectations in a Reuters poll for a 4.5 million-barrel draw."
We had a very large cushion when the war with Iran began. Now that cushion is much, much smaller. If you would like to get an idea of where things could eventually be heading, just check out what has happened to gasoline prices in Alaska…"John Stelling had just cranked the digits of his fuel pump to $9.10 at his gas station in this remote Alaskan community when he realized he had a problem. Could he push the meter to $10 if he had to? “Not sure if it’ll handle those,” he said of double-digit fuel prices.
In rural Alaska, the war with Iran has led to some of the highest fuel prices in the nation. Remote towns and villages aren’t connected to the road system, so they pay hefty premiums to procure gasoline, heating oil and diesel for cranking out electricity.
When I was in my early twenties, there were times when I would keep running my vehicle even though the gas gauge was sitting on empty. That was a very foolish thing to do. But now we are literally doing the same thing as a nation. The party is about to end my friends. The final countdown is upon us, and things are going to get so crazy in the months ahead. Sadly, even though what is transpiring in the Middle East should be obvious to everyone, most people in the western world are still convinced that everything will work out just fine somehow."
"The people who are supposed to see the shock coming have been blinded. The jobs and inflation numbers were never calculated gone forever. The tariff bill you were told you weren’t paying lands in full this fall, right as holiday spending peaks. A $6 trillion debt bomb is sitting under the small regional banks that hold your money. Your retirement is balanced on one unproven AI bet the Fed itself just called an unresolved danger. The grid is bracing for record winter demand while AI data centers devour the power. The Federal Reserve changes hands at its most fragile moment. And the government’s own watchdog already admitted, in writing, there’s no rescue coming this time. Every one of these has a date and they all land in the same season. You’re not being paranoid. The dread was never irrational. It was early."
“Personality is persona, a mask…The mask is magic…Larva means mask; or ghost…it also means mad, a case of demoniacal possession.” – Norman O. Brown, "Love’s Body"
"In 2021 you could walk the streets in the United States and many countries and would see streaming crowds of people possessed by demons, masked and anonymous, whose eyes look like vacuums, staring into space or out of empty sockets like the dead, afraid of their own ghosts. Fear and obedience oozed from them. Death walked the streets with people on leashes in lockstep.
That they had been the victims of a long-planned propaganda campaign to use an invisible virus to frighten them into submission and shut down the world’s economy for the global elites was beyond their ken. This is so even when the facts are there to prove otherwise. It is a clear case, as Peter Koenig tells Michel Chossudovsky in this must-see interview, that is not a conspiracy theory but a blatant factual plan spelled out in the 2010 Rockefeller Report, the October 18, 2019 Event 201, and Agenda 21, among other places.
Who can wake the sleepwalkers up in this cowardly new world where culture and politics collude to create and exploit ignorance?
Fifty-six years ago Bob Dylan released his song “Like a Rolling Stone.” It arrived like a rocking jolt into the placid pop musical culture of the day. It was not about wanting to hold someone’s hand or cry in the chapel. It wasn’t mumbo-jumbo like “Wooly Bully,” the number one hit. It wasn’t like the pop pap that dominates today’s music scene. It wasn’t Woody Guthrie in slow time.
It beat you up. It attacked. It confronted you. Maybe, if you were alive then, you thought Dylan was kidding you. You thought wrong. Bitching about his going electric was a dodge. He was addressing all of us, including himself.
Still is. But who wants to hear his recent “Murder Most Foul” and read Dylan’s scathing lyrics about the assassination of JFK, the killing that started the slow decay that has resulted in such masked madness. “And please, Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” he tells us in capital letters for emphasis. Exactly what all the mainstream media have done, of course, and not by accident.
There are no alibis. “How does it feel/To be on your own/with no direction home/A complete unknown/Like a rolling stone?”
It was in the mid-1960s when confidence in knowing where home was and how to get there disappeared into thin air. If you left mommy and daddy, could you ever get back from where you were going? Who had the directions? Absolutes were melting and relativity was widespread. Life was wild and the CIA was planning to make it wilder and more confusing with the introduction of LSD on a vast scale. MKUltra was expanding its scope.Operation Mockingbird was singing so many tunes that heads were spinning, as planned. The national security state killers were in the saddle, having already murdered President Kennedy and Malcolm X as they sharpened their knives for many more to come. The peace candidate, Lyndon Baines Johnson, had been elected nine months earlier with 61.1% of the popular vote and went immediately to work secretly expanding the war against Vietnam. War as an invisible virus. Who knew? Who, but a small anti-war contingent, wanted to know? War takes different forms, and the will to ignorance and historical amnesia endure. War is a disease. Disease is weaponized for war. In 1968 Richard Nixon was elected on a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War and then ramped it up to monstrous proportions, only to be reelected in 1972 by carrying 49 out of 50 states.
Who wants to know now? The historian Howard Zinn once said correctly that this country’s greatest problem wasn’t disobedience but obedience. What’s behind the masks? The lockstep?
On the same day that Dylan released “Like a Rolling Stone,” Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, just back from a “fact-finding” trip to Vietnam, recommended to LBJ that U.S. troop levels in Vietnam be increased to 175,000 and that the U.S. should increase its bombing of North Vietnam dramatically. This was the same McNamara who, in October 1963, had agreed with JFK when he signed NSAM 263 calling for the withdrawal of 1,000 military personnel from Vietnam by the end of 1963 and the remainder by the end of 1965. One of the moves that got Kennedy’s head blown open.
Poor McNamara, the fog of war must have clouded his conscience, confused the poor boy, just like Secretary of State Colin Powell holding up that vile vial of “anthrax” at the United Nations on February 5, 2003 and lying to the world about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Powell recently said, “I knew I didn’t have any choice. He’s the President.” How “painful,” to use his word, it must have been for the poor guy, lying so that so many Iraqis could be slaughtered. Of course, he had no choice. These war criminals all wear masks. And have no choice.
Masks, or demonic possession, or both. You?
Also in that fateful year 1965, far out of sight and out of mind for most Americans, the CIA planned and assisted in the slaughter of more than a million Indonesians, led by their man, General Suharto. This led to the coup against President Sukarno, who two years earlier had been on good terms with JFK as they worked to solve the interrelated issues of Indonesia and Vietnam. Their meeting planned for early 1964 was cancelled in Dallas on November 22, 1963. And the politicians and media luminaries came out in their masks and told the public that communists everywhere were out to get them.
It’s tough being on your own. It hurts to think too much. Or think for yourself, at least. To obey an authority higher than your bosses. “I was tricked” is some sort of mantra, is it not?
"You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all did tricks for you..."
Dylan was lost and disgusted when he wrote the song. His own music sickened him, which, for an artist, means he sickened himself. He had just returned from a tour of England and was sick of people telling him how much they loved his music when he didn’t. He needed to change. What else is the point of art but change? If you’re dead, or afraid of getting dead, you aren’t going to change. You’re stuck. Stuck is dead. Why wear a mask if you know who you are?
Knowledge, or more accurately, pseudo-knowledge or mainstream media lies, is a tomb “the mystery tramp” sold to us, a place to hide to avoid pain and guilt.
I have read more books than anyone I know. It sickens me.
I know too much. That sickens me.
I sicken myself. All the news sickens me.
I know so much no one believes me.
As Francesco Serpico once told me: “It’s all lies.”
Of course. Dylan and Serpico are blood brothers.
Only art tells the truth. Real art. Not bullshit pop art. Some say “Like a Rolling Stone” is about Edie Sedgwick, “the girl of the year” in 1965 and one of Andy Warhol’s superstars. Perhaps to a degree it is, but it’s far more than that. It’s about us.
Poor Edie was poisoned by her wealthy family at a young age and barely had a chance. She was an extreme example of a rather common American story. People poisoned in the cradle. Thinking of her got me thinking of Andy Warhol, the death obsessed hoarder, the guy who called his studio “The Factory” in a conscious or unconscious revelation of his art and persona, his wigs and masks and the hold he has had on American culture all these years. Isn’t he the ultimate celebrity?
Warhol once took my photo on a deserted street. His and my secret but this is the truth. West 47thStreet on an early Sunday morning, 1980. I guess he thought he was doing art or collecting images for his museum of dead heads. When I asked him why, he said I had an interesting face. I told him he did too, rather transparent and creepy, but I didn’t want to capture him. He was a ghost with a camera, a face like a death mask, trying to capture a bit of life. I told him I didn’t give him permission to shoot me, but he turned and walked away into the morning mist. The shooters always just walk away in pseudo-innocence.
I then went down the street to the Gotham Book Mart that was my destination and asked James Joyce why he had written “The Dead,” and Joyce, secretive as ever, quoted himself, “Ed,” he said, “Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.” Now that was direction.
Only those who know how to play and be guided by intuition are able to escape the living tomb of so-called knowledge; what Dylan called, lifelessness. But that was from “Desolation Row,” released as the closing track of Highway 61 Revisited on August 30, 1965. The only acoustic song on the album. Slow it down to make the point another way. “Like a Rolling Stone” was the opening track.
Do you feel all alone or part of a masked gang roaming the streets incognito? Miss and Mr. Lonely, does that mask help? How do you feel? Desolation means very lonely. From Latin, de, completely, solare, lonely. Did that mask help? Do you feel alone together now, one of the crowd? Do you really want to know about desolation row? It’s here. It was here in 1965, too. Only the true lonely know how it feels to really be all alone.
The Umbrella People, those who some called the deep state or secret government under whose protection all the politicians work, said they wanted to protect us all from death and disease. They were lying bastards who’d gotten so many to imitate their masked ways. They could only sing a mockingbird’s song.
Listen to real singers. Dylan has arched the years, as true artists do. Who has paid close attention to what he said this year about the assassination of President Kennedy in his song, “Murder Most Foul”? Or were many caught up in the propaganda surrounding corona virus, and rather than contemplating his indictment of the U.S. government and its media accomplices, were they contemplating their navels to see if a virus had secreted itself in there. Viruses lurk everywhere, they say, and the corporate media made certain to circulate a vaccine about the truth in Dylan’s song. This is normal operating procedure.
We are still on Desolation Row.
“Take Off the Masks.” That was the title of a book by Rev. Malcolm Boyd that I reviewed long ago. He was a gay priest who decided that his mask was a lie. He came out into the light of truth. He had guts. It is time for everyone to take off the masks. Escape from Desolation Row by seeing what’s going on behind our backs. Listen to Dylan, long ago – today:
"What if your checking account paid 6% interest, reimbursed ATM fees, offered millions of dollars in FDIC protection through partner banks, and even paid you cash back every time you used your debit card? In today's video, I break down X Money and explain why many people are calling it a potential "bank killer." We'll look at the features, who benefits the most, and why this could put real pressure on traditional banks to improve the way they treat customers. We'll also discuss how higher interest rates, instant peer-to-peer payments, early direct deposit, business-friendly banking features, and lower fees could reshape the financial industry. Is this truly the future of banking, or is it simply an aggressive strategy to attract new customers? Watch the entire video and let me know in the comments: Would you move your money to X Money, or are you sticking with your current bank? Your opinion matters, and I'd love to hear what you think."
"Gone are the days of university freshmen reading classical philosophers like Plato or contemporary pedagogues like Ta-Nehisi Coates. These days, incoming college students are lucky if they can get through Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing.”
According to a new “Survey of Adult Skills” conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development - a forum for 38 high-income, predominantly Western countries - a not insignificant number of adult students enrolled in higher education are now reading and doing math at a level which, in a more functional society, would be alarming for a middle schooler.
The survey, first spotted by the Economist, tested around 160,000 people of all ages, across all 38 member states. It found that across all OECD member countries, a full 8 percent of college students are reading at the level of a ten-year-old, if not worse. While countries like Germany and France rang in at under 5 percent, countries like Poland, Israel, and the United States blew the curve at 21, 20, and 14 percent, respectively.
The numbers aren’t much better when it comes to math. Across OECD countries, 9 percent of college students do math at or below a ten-year-old level. In Italy, the US, and Slovakia, that figure jumps to over 15 percent - only outdone by Israel, where roughly 21 percent of college students were underachieving at the same low benchmark.
It seems there are numerous compounding explanations for these test results: pandemic-era learning gaps leading to lower levels of preparation, declining college enrollment forcing schools to lower admissions standards, and lower levels of public funding for education, to name a few.
The results also coincide with the explosion of large language models like ChatGPT, which by manyaccounts have carved out a new floor for academic failure in both K-12 and college-level education.
While there’s no denying how complicated the issue is, there is evidence that removing technology from classrooms altogether could offer an immediate boost. In one classroom in Minneapolis, for example, a literature and English teacher banned phones and laptops, requiring all coursework to be done on pencil and paper. As the school-year started in September, just 46 percent of the students involved said they felt confident about their reading skills. A few months later in February, that number stood at 95 percent.
Though it’s just one classroom, something is clearly off the rails in the education systems of the richest countries of the world - and the longer it goes unaddressed, the more students will be pushed into the world with the reading skills of 4th graders."
"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, 1929
"The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think.
The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."
"Sowell argues that modern education and culture have conditioned people to substitute emotional reactions for rigorous, logic-based reasoning. Instead of using evidence, deliberation, and problem-solving, people mistake their feelings for factual or moral arguments." - AI Overview
Statue of George Washington in Common Park, Boston.
"Veni, Vidi, and Then What?"
by Bill Bonner
Youghal, Ireland - "Yesterday we sat scratching our heads over a riddle that ought to trouble every citizen: how is it that the most colossal war-machine ever assembled - fueled on more treasure than the next ten nations heaped together - could go swaggering into two wars nobody obliged it to fight, against two flyblown and impecunious little countries, and come limping home, twice, licked?
These were not wars of necessity. They were wars of appetite, indulged like a fat man’s second dessert; they could give him a brief sugar high...or a diabetic coma. They cost trillions the Republic did not have. Worse than the money, they laid bare, for all the world to snicker at, the sheer, absurd incompetence of the whole apparatus.
Reaching for an insight: people get good at what they do; the US got to be very good at pumping up its economy on fake money…and then borrowing it back from foreigners. By contrast, its post-WWII wars were embarrassing.
Robert McNamara, who presided over the abattoir of Vietnam, lived long enough to fess up in his dotage that the war had been a blunder - we should have talked with the Vietnamese instead of trying to ‘bomb them back to the Stone Age.’ He actually shed a tear for the hundreds of thousands of innocent people his war had killed. It was a rare and useful sort of penitence. We should not hold our breath waiting for its like from Pete Hegseth, a much less thoughtful person. But let us ask the only question that finally matters: will the hanging judge of History render a kinder verdict on the attack on Iran? We doubt it. Herewith, in the spirit of impertinent curiosity, a brief meditation on the American record since WWII.
In the good old, brutal days, an empire faced a clean, honest choice: it devoured its rivals, or its rivals devoured it. Victory paid dividends you could weigh and count - booty, tribute, and slaves. Consider Rome, where the ambitious young man got his character, his cash, and his consulship the manly way, at the point of a sword. Veni, vidi, vici, scribbled Caesar - he came, saw, and helped himself to the whole of Gaul. He came home with plunder, human chattel, and, most importantly, an army that loved him and cared less for Rome.
After centuries of murder conducted on a heroic scale, Rome reached its zenith around 100 A.D. Thereafter the triumphs grew scarce and, most often, defensive. Having conquered so much territory, the Empire spent its next three hundred years clutching at it - by treachery and butchery - and eventually losing the whole shebang.
The English contrived something cleverer. Theirs was the first empire of the Machine Age. They hauled raw stuff into British mills, transmuted it into finished goods, and peddled those goods to every bazaar and shopping street on the planet. The manufacturers made money. Wages climbed. The old island grew rich. Trade rode the sea, and Britannia, as the anthem boasted, ruled the waves.
Into these outsized boots America stepped - the left foot in 1919, the right in 1945 - and commenced to strut. With the most productive and efficient factories ever built, she was the source of nearly half the market output of the entire human species. The American president, JFK, was the best-loved (and perhaps the most frequently, if you believe the gossip) man alive. And almost everyone was California Dreamin’.
Then, in 1971, came the counterfeit dollar, and the noble Republic quietly rotted into a shady empire of finance. Today she claims less than a quarter of world output - by some reckonings as little as a twelfth. Her rulers are likelier to be cursed upon than saluted. They still manage the veni and the vidi well enough; it is the vici that eludes them. She is good at finance, not war.
We put the case plainly in our 2006 volume "The Empire of Debt": here was the first superpower ever to fund itself on debt. It did not conquer its rivals - it borrowed from them. Its dollars were snapped up eagerly the world over. But it was a pernicious swindle: to print a dollar cost virtually nothing. Yet each one was a solemn IOU redeemable against the very goods and comforts Americans themselves depended on.
All living things breathe in and breathe out. They enjoy their hour in the sun and then endure their long, sweating night of terror and dissolution. Decay, death, the final curtain - these are as certain as the birth that preceded them. Empires, the historians tell us, run about 250 years - that grim little milestone the United States has just this year trundled past.
By our accounting the empire tilted towards decline some quarter-century ago, when George W. Bush proclaimed his “War on Terror” - a milestone of its own, being the Republic’s first war against nobody in particular. And here is the maddening part: it would have been child’s play to keep the old ship off the rocks a while longer.
On the money question, the whole trick was to keep faith with honest coin. That alone would have forestalled the Himalaya of debt now towering over the country like a landslide waiting to happen. And it should have been simple, for the Constitution forbade “bills of credit.” Dean Clancy: "Read in conjunction with the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and the obligation-of-contracts clause (Art. I, sec. 10, cl. 1), we can identify five monetary policies that are constitutionally requisite in the United States:
ͦ The basic unit is the dollar, a silver coin containing 371.25 grains of pure silver.
ͦ Only gold or silver coins and currency (banknotes fully backed by and readily redeemable in specie) may serve as legal tender.
ͦ No state may issue coins or currency.
ͦ No one may counterfeit U.S. Government-issued coins or currency.
ͦ Neither the states nor Congress may issue fiat money notes (’bills of credit...’).
Instead, in 1971, the Republic swapped its gold-backed dollars for IOUs backed by thin air, and reaped the aforementioned Empire of Debt.
As for the foreign adventures, old George Washington had left, in his Farewell Address of 1796, a set of plain instructions. Stephen Kinzer: "It is poignant to read today what he warned us against two centuries ago: “permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world”; “frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests”; “overgrown military establishments, which under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty”; “the mischiefs of foreign intrigue”; “love of power and proneness to abuse it”; “excessive partiality for one nation and excessive dislike of another”; “the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists”; “projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives.”
Poor Washington knew what he was up against - not foreign devils but domestic fools. He had no illusions that his warning would take. Set beside the patriotic flapdoodle bellowed at us on the 250th anniversary, his own last words ring like a man talking, wearily and without hope, to a brick wall: “I dare not hope they will make the strong and lasting impression I would wish,” he wound up. He need not have worried on that score. They didn’t."
"Grocery prices are climbing faster than wages, and this video shows what that looks like at the register for real American households. You'll see one shopper hit $114 for a single dinner, another stretch $15 to feed a whole family, and a working parent with multiple jobs still coming up short. These are the receipts, the food bank runs, and the freezer stockpiling that define America's grocery crisis right now.What this video covers:
• A shopper trying to feed a family on just $15 at Walmart.
• One dinner ringing up at over $114 at checkout.
• A working parent with several incomes still unable to fill lunch bags.
• A family relying on a church food drive after rent takes everything.
• How egg prices climbed beyond what the shortage alone explained.
• People buying second freezers and stockpiling ahead of rising costs.
If these grocery store moments match what you're seeing at your own register, subscribe to follow more coverage of food prices and the cost of living. Drop a comment with what you paid on your last trip, and share this video with someone who's been feeling the same squeeze at the checkout line.This video looks at rising food prices, grocery store sticker shock, the egg price surge, food bank reliance, stagnant wages, and the cost of living crisis pushing American households to budget, stockpile, and rethink how they feed their families every week."
“What makes this spiral galaxy so long? Measuring over 700,000 light years across from top to bottom, NGC 6872, also known as the Condor galaxy, is one of the most elongated barred spiral galaxies known.
The galaxy’s protracted shape likely results from its continuing collision with the smaller galaxy IC 4970, visible just above center. Of particular interest is NGC 6872′s spiral arm on the upper left, as pictured here, which exhibits an unusually high amount of blue star forming regions. The light we see today left these colliding giants before the days of the dinosaurs, about 300 million years ago. NGC 6872 is visible with a small telescope toward the constellation of the Peacock (Pavo).”
"There is a four-line poem by Yeats, called "Gratitude to the Unknown Instructors":
"What they undertook to do
They brought to pass;
All things hang like a drop of dew
Upon a blade of grass."
Like so many of the short poems of Yeats, it is hard to know what the poet had in mind, who exactly were the unknown instructors, and if unknown how could they instruct. But as I opened my volume of The Poems this morning, at random, as in the old days people opened the Bible and pointed a finger at a random passage seeking advice or instruction, this is the poem that presented itself. Unsuperstitious person that I am, it seemed somehow apropos, since outside the window, in a thick Irish mist, every blade of grass has its hanging drop.
Those pendant drops, the bejeweled porches of the spider webs, the rose petals cupping their glistening dew - all of that seems terribly important here, now, in the silent mist. There is not much good to say about getting old, but certainly one advantage of the gathering years is the falling away of ego and ambition, the felt need to be always busy, the exhausting practice of accumulation. Who were the instructors who tried to teach me the practice of simplicity when I was young - the poets and the saints, the buddhas who were content to sit beneath the bo tree while the rest of us scurried here and there? I scurried, and I'm not sorry I did, but I must have tucked their lessons into the back of my mind, a cache of wisdom to be opened at my leisure.
Whatever it was they sought to teach has come to pass. All things hang like a drop of dew upon a blade of grass."
"We are fast moving into something, we are fast flung into something like asteroids cast into space by the death of a planet, we the people of earth are cast into space like burning asteroids and if we wish not to disintegrate into nothingness we must begin to now hold onto only the things that matter while letting go of all that doesn't. For when all of our dust and ice deteriorates into the cosmos we will be left only with ourselves and nothing else. So if you want to be there in the end, today is the day to start holding onto your children, holding onto your loved ones; onto those who share your soul. Harbor and anchor into your heart justice, truth, courage, bravery, belief, a firm vision, a steadfast and sound mind. Be the person of meaningful and valuable thoughts. Don't look to the left, don't look to the right; we simply don't have the time. Never be afraid of fear."
"While Americans were busy celebrating their nation’s 250th anniversary on July 4th, something important was happening 6,000 miles away that went largely unnoticed and lightly reported in the U.S. media. It’s something every American should be aware of. An estimated 10 to 15 million Iranians turned out over the weekend to mourn at the funeral for the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a revered figure throughout Shia Islam who was killed along with his wife, granddaughter and other family members by a U.S./Israeli missile on Feb. 28.
Here’s one video showing Tehran over the weekend:
Full screen recommended.
Here’s another:
Full screen recommended.
Iranians are in no mood to be gracious or polite, says Dr. Robert Pape, an expert on mass psychology in the geo-political realm, especially as it relates to war. They want revenge. Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago and one of the leading scholars on coercion, military airpower, and political violence, says the Ayatollah’s funeral has shifted the balance of political will in Iran’s favor, four-and-a-half months into the war.
In a podcast interview with At the Water’s Edge, Pape breaks down why wars cannot be won with air power alone and explains how this strategy can actually backfire and stir up anger in a society, while at the same time unifying its will to carry out revenge.
Even President Trump acted surprised by the turnout for the Ayatollah’s funeral. Trump expressing that he expected the late leader to be widely unpopular. Trump remarked, “I was shocked. I thought people hated him,” after witnessing the emotional response from mourners. This shows how detached from reality Trump is due to his propensity to listen to all the wrong people in the realm of foreign policy.
While you will find plenty of Americans who look at the above videos and say it’s all propaganda and Iranians were either coerced or paid to come out and publicly appear mournful, I find that to be a hard sell. As Pape points out, the crowds were so large that they could have steered their anger at the regime. There’s no way 100,000 IRGC troops, if they even had that many nearby, could have killed 10 million people if they decided to unleash their fury against the Iranian government. The crowds of people in Tehran made China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square protests look paltry by comparison.
What the U.S. did was use military air power to inflict misery on the Iranian population. In such a scenario, even those Iranians who hated their government began to hate the U.S. and Israel even more. This is common sense among those who study mass psychology and how it is influenced by war-time scenarios. Apparently, no one with any access to this knowledge was allowed to speak with President Trump before he decided to launch his war on Iran.
“Punishment doesn’t work,” Pape said, explaining what’s really happening inside Trump’s inner circle, and why he thinks Iran is trying to wreck the Trump presidency rather than cut a peace deal with Washington. In essence, Trump has kicked a hornet’s nest and opened Pandora’s box. And the ramifications going forward will play out for years to come in ways Americans will not be able to imagine right now.
In the video interview below, Professor Pape delves into what the funeral turnout really signals about Iranian public opinion. He says Iranian society has been traumatized, similar to the way the U.S. was traumatized after the 9/11 attacks, only times that by a factor of at least four. This is a must-watch interview for those wanting to grasp the full consequences of Washington’s foolhardy move of attacking Iran, a move that I believe will ultimately prove to be detrimental to both the United States and Israel.
Professor Pape discusses how a traumatized nation is likely to respond going forward. One thing to watch for is how Iran, having survived the initial traumatic scenario, is now collectively emboldened to seek retribution, not just militarily but economically.
Full screen recommended.
Pape’s believes the will of the Iranian people just shifted. He explains why Iran is rejecting the financial sweeteners offered by Trump’s New York real estate investors posing as diplomats, that being Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Pape believes airpower and blockades rarely break a nation’s will, and explains why he expects Trump to face pressure to escalate the war as soon as August. You can also read Pape’s latest Substack article, “The Escalation Trap.”
"A cinematic journey through memory, love, and the quiet disappearance of time. In a world where moments slip away like fading light, two souls reflect on everything they once believed would last forever - love unspoken, dreams unfinished, and the fragile beauty of being alive. As seasons change and years dissolve into silence, they begin to understand a simple truth: it is not us who run out of time… it is time that slowly runs out of us. This surreal AI film blends poetic storytelling, emotional imagery, and a hauntingly beautiful soundtrack to explore nostalgia, loss, gratitude, and the meaning of human connection. Some moments are never lost. They only live somewhere beyond time."
"Time don’t roll smooth… it rattles every bone on the way. “Getting Old Ain’t a Gentle Ride” is a rugged, truth-soaked Delta King’s Blues tune about rough mornings, hard miles, and hanging on with humor while the years keep moving. A gravelly acoustic guitar drives a slow, bumpy groove like an old truck on a back road. The harmonica bends raw and weathered, sounding like springs that seen too many miles. The rhythm stays steady but worn, built for folks who know life ain’t padded. This is blues for the rough road of aging. For people who creak, ache, and still keep riding anyway. Getting old ain’t gentle… but neither are the ones who survive it."
