Monday, March 15, 2021

"This Is What You Voted For"

"This Is What You Voted For"
by Jim Kunstler

"Well, naturally, Woke Hollywood staged a riot in tribute to George Floyd at this year’s Grammy awards, complete with “police” (actors) shooting a black man (another actor) in the back, a demagogic harangue for “justice, equity, policy, and everything else,” and a stage-set of burning buildings in the background - a harbinger of things-to-come? Haven’t riots become another form of entertainment this restless pandemic year of lockdowns and shutdowns? And how else might youth occupy itself, especially these fervid days that presage the loamy heavings of springtime?

It’s about “systemic racism,” you understand, because how else do you explain the rather spectacular failure-to-thrive in such a big demographic chunk of the US population? By an odd coincidence, in the slot just before the Grammys, CBS’s 60-Minutes showed how: spotlighting St. Louis’s Circuit Attorney (equivalent of DA) Kim Gardner’s battle with the city’s police department, who arrest too many black men. Left out of the argument by CBS correspondent Bill Whittaker was why they are arrested. Might it be for committing crimes, you know, robbing stuff, killing folks. 60-Minutes didn’t want to know and didn’t ask.

It happened anyway that the weekend was ripe for fighting in the streets. After the long, dull, semi-lockdown winter, riots resumed in the irascible West Coast cities of Seattle, Portland, and LA, purportedly in honor of Breonna Taylor, member of a Louisville, KY, drug-trafficking outfit who got shot in a police raid on her apartment after her boyfriend opened fire on the cops. This was a few years after the dead body of one Fernandez Bowman was found in her rent-a-car, and she was unable to explain to the police how it got there. She must have been turning her life around when she got shot. Now, it’s game-on for Antifa and BLM. The coronavirus hasn’t been hard enough on small business owners, so let’s smash some storefront windows and, by the way, attempt another insurrection at Portland’s long-besieged federal courthouse.

So far, not a peep out of Washington, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and company. They are still too busy objurgating over the January 6 “insurrection” at the US Capitol building, which has so far led to charges against 400 people. Federal prosecutors have asked for a 60-day delay in further action, saying, “While most of the cases have been brought against individual defendants, the government is also investigating conspiratorial activity that occurred prior to and on January 6, 2021.” Yet last week federal prosecutor Kathryn Rakoczy told federal district court Judge Amit Mehta that there was “no evidence of conspiracy” in the matter. I guess will have to wait for the new Attorney General Merrick Garland to sort all that out.

Meanwhile, up in Minneapolis, where jury selection is underway in the trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd, the City Council approved 13-to-0 a $27-million wrongful death civil settlement to Mr. Floyd’s family. Say, what…? The way it’s supposed to work is that a civil case for wrongful death follows the criminal trial - for how would you know what’s rightful or wrongful in a matter before the facts in the case have been adjudicated? Sounds like Hennepin County, MN, may not be the right venue for these proceedings.

Should Mr. Chauvin face a jury that will likely have heard news reports that the city council already decided the verdict, and in the most imprecise terms possible? “Mr. Floyd died because the weight of the entire Minneapolis Police Department was on his neck,” Floyd family Attorney Ben Crump said when the suit was filed. Systemic racism, you see. Following the George Floyd riots last year, the Minneapolis City Council announced its plan to defund the police. In February 2021, the council announced the release of $6.4-million to hire more police, following a dramatic uptick in crime. Such are the strange inconsistencies of life under the crypto-Jacobin revolution in America today.

Speaking of Joe Biden, alleged to be president, he was oddly absent altogether on the front page of Monday’s New York Times, leading the curious to wonder if last Tuesday night’s Coronavirus Action speech drained his dwindling mojo for the rest of the month. The curious might also seek to know why Mr. Biden’s “team” is still so wound up about eradicating Coronavirus, yet eager to let tens of thousands cross the border illegally from Mexico, many of them live vectors of the virus, who are then bussed all over the USA under the revived “catch-and-release” policy. Mr. Biden’s “honeymoon” period is about over. The country had not quite discovered just how leaderless it is. Will it come as a shock to find out? After all, isn’t this what you voted for?"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 3/15/21"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Updates 3/15/21"



March 15, 2021 8:48 AM ET:
The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 119,925,600
people, according to official counts, including 29,461,663 Americans.
Globally at least 2,653,900 have died.

March 15, 2021 8:48 AM ET:
"The COVID Tracking Project"
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, 
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.
March 15, 2021 9:25 AM ET
Where I Live:
3/15/2021: "Pinal County is at a very high risk level.The test positivity rate in Pinal County is very high, suggesting that cases are being significantly undercounted. We’ve recommended additional precautions below."
 

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/15/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/15/21"
"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will
do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
- John Maynard Keynes
"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
Only the consequences are real - to you!
Your guide:
Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/15/21

"Important Updates: Stocks, Bonds, Cryptos"

"The more I see of the monied classes, 
the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

CNN Market Data:

CNN Fear And Greed Index:
A comprehensive, essential daily read.
March 14th and 16th, Updated Daily 
Financial Stress Index
"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."
Daily Job Cuts

Sunday, March 14, 2021

The Poet: David Whyte, “The Sea”

“The Sea”

“The pull is so strong we will not believe
the drawing tide is meant for us,
I mean the gift, the sea,
the place where all the rivers meet.

Easy to forget,
how the great receiving depth
untamed by what we need
needs only what will flow its way.
Easy to feel so far away
and the body so old
it might not even stand the touch.
But what would that be like
feeling the tide rise
out of the numbness inside
toward the place to which we go
washing over our worries of money,
the illusion of being ahead,
the grief of being behind,
our limbs young
rising from such a depth?

What would that be like
even in this century
driving toward work with the others,
moving down the roads
among the thousands swimming upstream,
as if growing toward arrival,
feeling the currents of the great desire,
carrying time toward tomorrow?

Tomorrow seen today, for itself,
the sea where all the rivers meet, unbound,
unbroken for a thousand miles, the surface
of a great silence, the movement of a moment
left completely to itself, to find ourselves adrift,
safe in our unknowing, our very own,
our great tide, our great receiving, our
wordless, fiery, unspoken,
hardly remembered, gift of true longing.”

~ David Whyte,
“Where Many Rivers Meet”
“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute.
 We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. 
And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law,
 business, engineering – these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. 
But poetry, beauty, romance, love – these are what we stay alive for.”
- “Dead Poets Society”
Gnomusy, "Footprints On The Sea"

"Housing Crash Is Coming! Mortgage Rate And Lumber Shortages About To Pop The Housing Bubble"

Full screen recommended.
"Housing Crash Is Coming! Mortgage Rate And 
Lumber Shortages About To Pop The Housing Bubble"
by Epic Economist

"The U.S. housing price bubble is facing extra pressure as soaring lumber prices are slowing the construction of new housing units, keeping inventory tight, and pushing prices even higher. Meanwhile, inflation fears are mounting as the coming 1.9 trillion dollar stimulus package has just passed, which consequently led mortgage rates to unexpectedly hike over the past few weeks. Record-low interest rates were the main booster of the latest housing market rally, but experts say they are expected to trend higher this year. Thus, amid expensive inputs, supply shortages, heightened rates, and skyrocketing home prices a housing market crash looms, as the price bubble grows increasingly more unsustainable with each passing day. That's what we're going to discuss in this video.

The red-hot U.S. housing market has outperformed pretty much every sector of the economy during the current recession, primarily supported by historically low mortgage rates and an elevated demand. However, rising mortgage rates are about throw cold water on the market and cool off demand, as housing prices continue to soar to unprecedented levels and buyers face further difficulties to find a place to call home.

This means that demand is not only being crushed by the dangerous housing price bubble but also by the prospect that lenders will keep rising mortgage rates buyers won't be able to pay. On the other hand, the bubble continues to be expanded as supply remains tight. All across the country, homebuilding dropped more than expected in January, falling 2.3% on a year-on-year basis, while housing starts declined 6.0%. The housing rally is being threatened by lack of land and expensive inputs, as builders have been alerting that record-high lumber prices were adding thousands of dollars to the cost of a new home and causing some builders to abruptly halt projects.

Lumber prices have almost tripled, with boards used in residential construction jumping 250% since last spring, says the letter. Now, lumber is trading at $1,000 per thousand board feet, an all-time high, and this extraordinary hike has lifted the national average price of a new single-family home in the U.S. by more than $24,000 since April 2020. Prices for wood are still expected to record further gains this year, as Forest Economic Advisors experts pointed out that home building and will renovations cause demand to outstrip production, and production is going to have a hard time keeping up with demand growth.

Consequently, on top of enabling the expansion of the price bubble, and increasing the imminence of a dramatic housing crash, the affordability crisis will financially impair the next generations, as homes are the main asset of a large part of the population, and if there aren’t enough homes to meet the growing demand, the largest generation of the U.S. won’t be able to start building equity, which will in turn make them more economically vulnerable than previous generations.

More importantly, the looming housing market crash, the affordability crisis, higher mortgage rates, and widening wealth gaps are all a result of growing inflation. Central banks have fueled the housing price bubble by enacting near-zero rates in a time inventory was lean. In that way, they artificially created a "wealth effect" that was simply not sustainable.

The 1.9 trillion dollar stimulus package will send interest rates to pre-outbreak levels of about 3.5%. That is to say, once the economy reopens and more money flows into the economy, if demand doesn't bounce back soon enough, central banks won't be able to sustain the bubble unless they keep pouring enormous amounts of money inside the market, but that won't remove the dangers of a crash, it will simply slow down the process.

If house prices are going up, but incomes and population aren’t going up, then you’re either going to have a crash or the market is going to move to a permanent level of being less affordable. Even if higher interest rates temper demand a little bit, it could take years before the supply of housing can meet demand, and throughout this process, millions of Americans will remain priced out of the market.

Although no one can accurately predict when a housing market crash will occur, we have to keep in mind that the more assets are inflated and prices get out of touch with our economic reality, the fewer people will be able to afford such exorbitant prices. Let's remember the two things that were boosting the rally: record-low interest rates and an elevated demand. Mortgage rates are already spiking, and if demand drastically drops, that's the end game no central bank will be able to reverse. A price correction is just a matter of time, and we shouldn't ignore the warning signals."

Greg Hunter, "Financial System Fake La La Land"

"Financial System Fake La La Land"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Michigan State Economics Professor Mark Skidmore revealed three years ago there was $21 trillion in what he called “Missing Money” from the Department of Defense (DOD) and Housing and Urban Development (HUD). To hide what was going on with the federal books, Congress made all government accounting a national security issue, making it impossible to get real accounting of money “We the People” pay in taxes. Now, even more unofficial and unaccounted for cash has been revealed from the DOD. It’s an eye popping $94 trillion from the years 2017 to 2019. So, add in the $30 trillion in official debt, and that means there is at least $145 trillion in overt and covert money floating around in the federal government, not counting Social Security and Medicare commitments. This story sounds like a fantasy or a cartoon, but it’s totally backed up with facts you will never hear on the legacy media. Dr. Skidmore, who is an expert in public budgets, explains, “In my mind, it does not follow the principles laid out in our Constitution in accounting for revenues coming in and expenditures going out. It’s fraudulent in my mind.”

The entire accounting system of the federal government is fraudulent? Dr. Skidmore says, “I think it is. It doesn’t have any integrity. The federal government can modify the financial statements for the public, and they are not going to tell you how or to what degree. So, you get a financial statement or a report that’s available to the public, but it means nothing. What does that mean? It’s totally fraudulent. It’s fake. We are in La La Land. I’m just a normal professor of economics who has a background in budgeting, and I am just stating the obvious. It’s not rocket science. I am just not pretending. I am just saying what it is.”

What are the risks to the public? Skidmore says, “The risks are really kind of unknowable. The derivatives market is so enormous and so complexed, and who knows if some of the money that we are not able to account for in the government books is pushing into a quadrillion dollar derivatives market? We don’t know that. It could be. It would be small potatoes in quadrillions (in the derivative market). It’s incomprehensible. My gut tells me this ends awfully with a very abrupt disruption of some sort that could include a transition to some sort of new financial system, and potentially a much more draconian system.”

In closing, Skidmore says, “For me, we are talking about a whole bunch of money we don’t know about. You have about $115 trillion unsupported unverified transactions that we can’t know about and about $30 trillion in official debt. Also, we still have made promises in the form of Social Security and Medicare that are underfunded. You have a $100 trillion to $200 trillion depending on the assumptions you make, and we know that is unsustainable, as well. We are burning through it faster than we anticipated because of Covid and other things. It’s so out of whack it’s like a cartoon.”
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One
 with Michigan State University professor Mark Skidmore.
Dr. Skidmore has a new website called Lighthouse Economics, and you can find it at Mark-Skidmore.com. Dr. Skidmore is a prolific writer, and his work and analysis is free to the public. To contact Dr. Skidmore click here.

Musical Interlude: Kevin Kern, "Another Realm"

Kevin Kern, "Another Realm"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Over 400,000 light years across NGC 6872 is an enormous spiral galaxy, at least 4 times the size of our own very large Milky Way. About 200 million light-years distant, toward the southern constellation Pavo, the Peacock, the remarkable galaxy’s stretched out shape is due to its ongoing gravitational interaction, likely leading to an eventual merger, with the nearby smaller galaxy IC 4970. IC 4970 is seen just below and right of the giant galaxy’s core in this cosmic color portrait from the 8 meter Gemini South telescope in Chile.
The idea to image this titanic galaxy collision comes from a winning contest essay submitted last year to the Gemini Observatory by the Sydney Girls High School Astronomy Club. In addition to inspirational aspects and aesthetics, club members argued that a color image would be more than just a pretty picture. In their winning essay they noted that “If enough color data is obtained in the image it may reveal easily accessible information about the different populations of stars, star formation, relative rate of star formation due to the interaction, and the extent of dust and gas present in these galaxies.”

Chet Raymo, “Try To Remember…”

“Try To Remember…”
by Chet Raymo

“In a sleepless hour of the night, I was trying to remember the last name of a person I have known well for more than forty years. When my spouse stirred in her sleep, I asked her. She couldn’t remember either. One again I started mentally through the alphabet. “I think it starts with B,” I said. Ten minutes later she rolled over and said, “The next letter is R.” Bingo! The name popped into my head. Or I should say, “popped out of my head.” Because it was in there somewhere, recorded in a tangle of neurons as materially as if it were written on a piece of paper.

There was a time, back when I was a young man, when some scientists thought memory might be molecular – stored as proteins or RNA molecules that have somehow been modified by experience. The molecule theory of memory rested on experiments with worms (I remember the cover illustration on Scientific American). The worms were taught to navigate a simple maze. Then they were ground up and fed to untrained worms, which seemed to navigate the maze without training. Only molecules, it was thought, could have survived the transfer. Those experiments have been discredited. Scientists now overwhelmingly believe that memories are stored as webs of connections between spider-shaped brain cells called neurons. Each neuron is connected through electrochemical connections to thousands of others. According to the current view, experience fine-tunes the connections, strengthening some, weakening others, creating a different “trace” of interconnected cells for each memory.

But truth be told, memory is still deeply mysterious. How exactly are a lifetime of memories stored and retrieved at will? We know how it works for computers, but how for the human brain? What is self-consciousness? What are dreams? This is the primary scientific agenda for the 21st century. In the middle of the night I go fishing, in that sea of potentiated synapses that are the human soul, for a name that becomes ever more difficult to extract as I get older. I troll the alphabet: A, B, C, D… The name is in there, along with a face and more that forty years of interactions. The Nobel Prizes are waiting.”
Graphic: Salvador Dali, “The Persistence of Memory”

"I Can't Convince Myself..."

“I can’t convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at.”
- Kenneth Smith

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/14/21: "Markets, A Look Ahead: Stocks Will Move"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 3/14/21:
"Markets, A Look Ahead: Stocks Will Move"

The Daily "Near You?"

Bay Shore, New York, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"17 Words that Changed My Life Forever"

"17 Words that Changed My Life Forever"
by Jerry Clark

"When you want something, 
all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."
- Paulo Coelho

“I remember several years back I heard something that changed my life forever. Up until that point I had been struggling through life – doing everything the hard way. I couldn’t figure out why my life wasn’t going the way I felt it should be. I saw some people going through life effortlessly and seemingly with less tension and frustration while I was wondering if I could ever straighten out the mess my life had turned out to be. I was behind on my dreams, my promises, and my bills. Then one day I was listening to a tape and the lady was talking about the power of having dreams and goals and all of the other stuff that those motivational speakers talk about. By that point I had listened to hundreds of such tapes, but it seemed as if nothing worked for me.

Probably the only reason I was listening to that one was because I had developed a habit of listening to cassette tapes while driving my car. The statement the lady said was simple and I think I had even heard it somewhere before but this time a light bulb went on in my head. I remember stopping the tape and rewinding it over and over again to hear the 17 words she said. I couldn’t believe it was so basic and simple. I was looking for something sophisticated and complicated. I thought I had to attend a $10,000 seminar. I didn’t know I could find it on a $10 tape program.

I’m taking the time to tell you all of this preliminary information because when I tell you the 17 words, I really want you to get it and get it NOW! Because if you get it NOW, your life will never be the same. You will be using the same principle that all who have became wealthy before you have used. Even those who became wealthy and can’t tell you how they did use this same principle without even being aware of what they are doing. Well, are you ready for the 17 words that made a powerful and positive impact on my life and on the life of tens of thousands of individuals who have achieved unimaginable success? Of course you are… Well, here they are…

For things to change, 
you must get a picture of what you want them to change to. 

Yes, it’s as simple as it sounds and as easy as it seems… Don’t try to make it any complicated than this because it will only frustrate you. You must know exactly what you want and the more specific and clear you can get, the better. This is important because Human Beings are Teleological in nature. In other words, we move towards the pictures we constantly hold in our minds. Let me give you an example. Suppose you went to the store and bought a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle but it didn’t have a picture on the box of what the end result should look like.

Would you have a much harder time putting the picture together? Of course. You may eventually figure it out; however, the person who has a clear picture of what the end result should look like will be more than 100 times ahead of you. The question is are they 100 times ahead of you because their IQ is 100 times greater? Is it because they are 100 times better looking than you? Maybe it’s because they live 100 times closer to the person who created the puzzle? Ohh, I know – they were one of the first students to take the Evelyn Woods mind-expanding speed-reading and comprehension course right? If none of this is true then what is?

Yes, the person who had the clear and specific picture of what the outcome was supposed to be was simply operating in accordance to how our brain works. It moves towards the pictures we hold in our mind. It’s interesting because once you know exactly what it is you are moving towards, you seem to automatically know the steps to take or the necessary steps will soon become noticeable.

Your brain's subconscious mind, operating similar to a magnet, will start to attract in your direction the conditions, people, and circumstances that will help you move closer to the mental picture you maintain in your mind and it will repel all of those things that do not correlate to the picture you have in your mind. Therefore, the people who are clear and specific about what they want are using the powers of the Universe to assist them. This is, indeed, an awesome power. A person who knows how and uses this awesome power of the Universe to his or her advantage is a person who is working smart. A person who struggles every day trying to move closer to the success that they have no idea how it’s supposed to look is a person who is working hard.

Based on your observations over the years, do you think that most people are working hard or working smart? People who just work hard day in and day out without a clear picture of what they are moving towards are about as exciting as a tulip. Even though they may seem to be willing to work hard and put in the hours, they don’t seem to have much life in them. And people want to follow people who seem to have some life in them. If they want to find people who don’t seem to have much life in them, all they have to do is go to their job. People will follow people who look like they know where they are going and look like they are excited about the journey.

You must understand that your strength comes from knowing what you want. This will ignite the fire inside of you and enable you to borrow from the promise of the future so you can engage in the activities today that will move you closer and closer to what you want. It will enable you to go through the trials and tribulations that may be necessary so you can arrive at your destination. But remember the journey will be more important than the destination because in the journey you will become the person you require to become to finally arrive at your destination. So when you reach your destination, look at the person you have become and set a new destination so you can continue to grow and develop.

Whatever you do, just always remember that for things to change, you must get a picture of what you want them to change to. These are the "17 Words that Changed My Life Forever"… why not allow them to change yours too?”

The Poet: Aldous Huxley, “Lightly My Darling”

“Lightly My Darling”

"It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly - it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos,
no self conscious persona putting on its 
celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered."

~ Aldous Huxley

"Regret..."

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time;
it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."
- Sydney J. Harris

"Doug Casey on the Dangers of the Growing 'Snitch Culture' in the US"

"Doug Casey on the Dangers
of the Growing 'Snitch Culture' in the US"
by International Man

"International Man: Since the start of the Covid hysteria, Americans have snitched on people for not wearing a mask, called the police when their neighbors had guests over at their house, and reported businesses that were not compliant. Has the US become a nation of snitches?

Doug Casey: Without doubt, the US is transforming from a nation of whipped dogs into something much worse, a nation of squealing rats. It’s because fear is being used by the powers that be to “unite” the country, much the way the inmates of a prison are united.

We’ve always had snitches, of course, starting with the silly little girls in Salem that turned in “witches” for keeping to themselves or gathering medicinal plants. More recently, the government has cultivated a class of snitches looking to profit from others they think aren’t paying their “fair share” of taxes. More recently, we’ve encouraged snitches to seek out suspected terrorists—which constituted a near-zero threat. And now, we have plague snitches.

COVID is basically a ghost, mainly affecting old people with serious comorbidities. It doesn’t affect kids or young people at all. Anyway, if somebody is affected by it, they should simply quarantine themselves, the way sensible people do when they have a bad cold or the seasonal flu. But forget about common sense. A relatively minor medical phenomenon - on the order of the previous Asian, Hong Kong, bird and swine flus and not even remotely comparable to the Spanish flu - should have and could have been left to the physicians of the affected, not the politicos. The capite censi seem more easily swayed than ever. It’s brought about some of the most serious societal changes in US history. It’s a major cultural shift.

International Man: After the 9/11 attacks, the government and mainstream media urged Americans that if they “see something, say something.” Was this the beginning of a cultural shift? Where did things start to go downhill?

Doug Casey: Its roots - namely encouraging busybodyism on a national level - go back at least to Woodrow Wilson or Teddy Roosevelt. The trend is increasingly Orwellian. Ratting out your neighbor is the type of thing Big Brother would require you to do - report them to the state for any real or imagined offense. It’s been correctly said that 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual

One time, I was in a line that was snaking back and forth at immigration. My carry-on weighed about 25 pounds, so I put it down and left it each time, about 15 feet before the turn, so I could pick it up as the line snaked back. Not once, but twice, somebody looked around like a righteous busybody citizen and said, “Unattended baggage! Unattended baggage!” I did nothing either time just to see what would happen.

Most people are really just a standard deviation removed from chimpanzees, pack animals that feel safer when an authority is there to tell them what to do. This monkey see, monkey do behavior is encouraged by the government. Anyway, as I eventually passed my bag and picked it up to carry to the next 180-degree turn, I sarcastically said, “See something, say something.” But they didn’t think I was being sarcastic. They thought I approved of what they were doing. The situation has gotten worse over the years. It’s accelerating like an avalanche rolling downhill and getting bigger and faster.

In the US prison system, next to child molesters, the prisoner most despised by other inmates is the rat, somebody who snitches on his mates. Americans are encouraged to act like snitches and rats. The US is looking more like Guantanamo. Nobody can trust anyone else. The masks everybody self-righteously wears have become the equivalent of Nazi armbands, or the red scarfs of the old Soviet Union’s Young Pioneers.

They want people to unite against the enemy, namely people that protest against or don’t wear masks. The non-PC have become the enemy in large parts of the US. People in the rural heartland states don’t generally wear masks or take COVID nearly as seriously as the liberal elites on the coast do. As a consequence, the virus is accentuating the cultural divide between the red people and the blue people.

International Man: During the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, children often snitched on their parents to the State. Similar events happened in East Germany, Mao’s China, and other totalitarian societies. How does the cultural change toward snitching in the US compare to historical events? Where is it all headed?
Doug Casey: A major cultural change is occurring rapidly in the US. The greatest underlying impetus is the school system, which has turned into a politically correct indoctrination system. Almost all of the professors in colleges are at least leftists, liberals or progressives, and many of them are Marxists. They’ve been indoctrinating kids for decades. They’ve been very successful.

It’s filtered down to the high schools and the grade schools and is reinforced by the media, the entertainment industry, many sports figures, almost all political figures, and now the corporate world. You’re a black sheep if you believe in traditional American values.

With the Greater Depression deepening - notwithstanding the bubbles in the financial markets - the situation can only get worse. When the going gets really tough, the average American is programmed to beg the government to “do something” - as if they haven’t already pulled out all the stops. They’ll do more, however. We’ve developed our own class of Jacobins - the people that were behind the horrors of the French Revolution in 1789. Our own class of Leninists, like those who took over Russia in 1917, and our own class of Red Guards, Maoists that led the Great Cultural Revolution in 1960s China, want to control everything and have totally infiltrated all aspects of American life.

The average American may not like them, but he’s completely incapable of countering their arguments. Soon, he’ll be afraid to speak out as well. If you believe in thinking for yourself, or if you believe in free minds and free markets, you’re in the minority. You better be careful.

H.L. Mencken, undoubtedly one of the greatest public intellectuals in American history and the best journalist in our history, is a cautionary example. During World War I and throughout the Roosevelt years, he basically stopped writing or saying anything controversial because he might’ve been singled out and persecuted.
I feel it happening now, personally, all around me. I’m starting to ask myself whether it makes sense to say anything - for the same reason it makes no sense to wave a red flag in front of an angry bull. You may feel the same way among coworkers, neighbors, and many people you thought were your friends.

Does it make sense to endanger yourself when, as they say, resistance is futile? It’s an interesting and important moral question. It’s sad, even pathetic, that rallying around Donald Trump is seen as a good refuge, but I suppose something is better than nothing.

International Man: There is a saying in Asia that goes something like, “The tallest flower is the first one to get cut.” In other words, it’s dangerous to stick out, especially when a country’s culture changes for the worse. What can the average person do about the situation to protect themselves?
Doug Casey: Yes, the “tall poppy” syndrome. As the standard of living goes down in the US, driving an ostentatious or expensive car, for instance, might “trigger” a large part of the population to think you’re a “10%er” or even a “1%er.” Having the money you bought it with is too white in a world full of deprived BLMers. You might find your car keyed out of envy.

In parts of the third world - Africa and the Middle East, particularly - if somebody is rich and wants to live well, the outside of his house is generally very unprepossessing, unpainted, with a wall around it. It looks unappealing or ordinary, even though on the inside, it’s luxurious. That’s the way Americans are going to have to be. Forget about conspicuous consumption. Don’t be ostentatious because it’s going to draw the wrong kind of attention.

During the depression of 1929 - 1946, you could find Duesenbergs, Cords, V-12 Lincolns and the like in barns all over the US. One reason was that many of their rich owners lost their money and couldn’t afford to drive them - and there was no market for them. The other reason was that they didn’t want to advertise the fact that they were fat cats. As time went by, the owner might have died, or a dozen other things. Decades later, hundreds of these cars have been found in barns across the country, with flat tires and roosting birds. That same thing can happen again.

It’s clear there are some ominous social, political, cultural, and economic trends playing out right now. Many of which seem to point to an unfortunate decline of the West. But the question was, “What can you do about it?” It’s basically impossible to reverse the flow of history. Apart from that, political solutions usually wind up being counterproductive, for reasons I’ve discussed elsewhere. The answer is to make sure - as much as possible - that you’re not adversely affected."
"Soon, he’ll be afraid to speak out as well. If you believe in thinking
 for yourself, or if you believe in free minds and free markets, 
you’re in the minority. You better be careful."
"You better be careful." Yeah...
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"How It Really Is"

"They Deem Me Mad..."