Sarah Mclachlan, "In The Arms Of An Angel"
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, July 17, 2021
"A Look to the Heavens"
"What's happening to this spiral galaxy? Although details remain uncertain, it surely has to do with an ongoing battle with its smaller galactic neighbor. The featured galaxy is labelled UGC 1810 by itself, but together with its collisional partner is known as Arp 273.
The overall shape of the UGC 1810 - in particular its blue outer ring - is likely a result of wild and violent gravitational interactions. This ring's blue color is caused by massive stars that are blue hot and have formed only in the past few million years. The inner galaxy appears older, redder, and threaded with cool filamentary dust. A few bright stars appear well in the foreground, unrelated to UGC 1810, while several galaxies are visible well in the background. Arp 273 lies about 300 million light years away toward the constellation of Andromeda. Quite likely, UGC 1810 will devour its galactic sidekick over the next billion years and settle into a classic spiral form."
Kahlil Gibran, “The Farewell”
“The Farewell”
“Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness,
and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over,
and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day,
and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more,
we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream
we shall build another tower in the sky.”
- Kahlil Gibran, “The Prophet”
The Poet: Mary Oliver, “October”
“October”
"There’s this shape, black as the entrance to a cave.
A longing wells up in its throat
like a blossom
as it breathes slowly.
What does the world
mean to you if you can’t trust it
to go on shining when you’re
not there? and there’s
a tree, long-fallen; once
the bees flew to it, like a procession
of messengers, and filled it
with honey.
I said to the chickadee, singing his heart out in the
green pine tree:
little dazzler
little song,
little mouthful.
The shape climbs up out of the curled grass. It
grunts into view. There is no measure
for the confidence at the bottom of its eyes-
there is no telling
the suppleness of its shoulders as it turns
and yawns.
Near the fallen tree
something - a leaf snapped loose
from the branch and fluttering down - tries to pull me
into its trap of attention.
It pulls me
into its trap of attention,
And when I turn again, the bear is gone.
Look, hasn’t my body already felt
like the body of a flower?
Look, I want to love this world
as thought it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get
to be alive
and know it.
Sometimes in late summer I won’t touch anything, not
the flowers, not the blackberries
brimming in the thickets; I won’t drink
from the pond; I won’t name the birds or the trees;
I won’t whisper my own name.
One morning
the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,
and didn’t see me - and I thought:
so this is the world.
I’m not in it.
It is beautiful."
- Mary Oliver
"How To See Things As They Are"
"How To See Things As They Are"
by David Cain
"I’m in the back room of a coffee shop right now, switching between writing and another mental exercise: pretending I’m not here. I don’t mean I’m wearing a disguise, or hiding behind a potted plant. I’m doing a perspective-shifting practice that I’d recommend to anyone: now and then, wherever you are, look at the scene in front of you as though it’s happening without you.
From any seat, or standing spot, anywhere - in an office, a breakfast diner, a public square, a waiting room - see your surroundings just as they’d be if you weren’t here to see them. Focus on the look and feel of the setting. The way the light lays across things. Take it in like a shot from a movie. Notice the movement and speech of people or animals, the soundscape and overall ambiance. It’s just a little corner of the world where things are unfolding, and you’re not here. Maybe nobody is.
When you do this, you might notice a certain lightness or simplicity arising. Things are more poignant. Everything seems less complicated, because it’s just stuff happening, not stuff happening to you.
I used to call this practice “dying on purpose” but that sounds a bit dramatic. Maybe “looking at the world as though you don’t exist” is better, but a good way to understand how to do that is to simply watch what’s happening here as though you’ve died, or maybe never existed at all.
Right now, in this back room, there’s a long communal table, with three students working in front of a spread of laptops and textbooks. There’s music playing - a band that sounds like the Cranberries. Framed by the doorway to the front of the shop is short-haired, golden dog (this place allows animals) waiting for its owner to order. No humans are visible but there’s a lot of easygoing chatter. The far wall is all window, with potted plants on hanging shelves silhouetted against the mid-day brightness outside. Someone comes to pet the dog. There’s a warm, neighborly feeling in the room. Now the not-Cranberries song is over, and a Beach House song comes on.
This vignette, seen in a certain way - as though it is happening, but not happening to me - can be just what it is, without any entanglement with my own interests. None of my reflexive moral judgments are present. The angle of the sun doesn’t remind me of everything I still have to get done today. Seeing twenty-year-old students doesn’t make me wish I was younger. Because I’m not here. It’s just life unfolding, and on its own it’s beautiful.
We have a habit of looking at what surrounds us through a self-referential lens. We don’t just see a thing, we see the way that thing fits, or doesn’t fit, into our lives. Seeing a luxury car might elicit judgment, or envy, or brand loyalty. Seeing someone enjoying what seems to be a day off might remind you that you do not have the day off.
It’s not that we all think we’re the center of the universe. But our lives do tend to feel something like The Biggest, Most Pressing Thing Ever to Happen, when it’s really only a short thread running through a vast, endless fabric of happenings that is life on Earth.
Even a short glimpse of something as it is- of any scene free from entanglement with our stories -comes with relief. What you witness in this way still has meaning, but it’s intrinsic meaning, like beauty, or some nameless quality. The meaning isn’t “What this means for me and my ongoing story.”
Those short glimpses are always available, by looking at what’s before you as though it’s happening without you. Every scene has its own signature, its own identity to express, which can only come through when it’s not mixed up with yours.
It’s not hard to achieve this perspective, for a few seconds anyway. Just see it as it would be if you weren’t there. This parking lot. This row of houses. This quiet kitchen. It looks exactly the same, but it feels different to see it this way.
When you look at a bug climbing a railing - at least for a moment, it’s nothing but a bug climbing a railing.
When you sit down with your coffee - just for a moment, the coffee shop is happening just as it does on days you’re not there, or as it might after you die.
When you look in the closet - just for a moment, it’s only clothing, hanging there quietly, as it does when nobody’s standing there choosing how they’re going to look today."
"We Are Never Deceived..."
"We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves."
- Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
"Welcome To The 21st Century Sequel Of The Catastrophic 1600s"
"Welcome To The 21st Century Sequel
Of The Catastrophic 1600s"
by Charles Hugh Smith
"As the chart above on 'how systems collapse' illustrates, the loss of stabilizing buffers goes unnoticed until the entire structure collapses under its own weight.
• Disruptive extremes of weather: check
• Rising geopolitical tensions with no diplomatic resolution: check
• Multiplying scarcities in essential commodities: check
• Domestic disorder accelerates as extreme positions harden into irreconcilable conflicts: check
Welcome to the 21st century sequel of the catastrophic 1600s, an extended period of mutually reinforcing crises that overturned regimes and empires from England to China and triggered unremitting misery across much of the human populace. ("Global Crisis: War, Climate Change and Catastrophe in the 17th Century" is a riveting overview of this complex era.)
What can we learn from the catastrophic 1600s? Leading the list: humans don't respond well to scarcities. They get crotchety, argumentative, and prone to finding ways to become disagreeable rather than agreeable. Their derangement deepens as they form self-reinforcing echo-chambers of the like-minded, and the source of their misfortune shifts from fate to equally fixated human opponents.
Three extended quotes come to mind: the first bitter satirical rant from Mark Twain, the second from Patrick Henry and the third from James Madison:
Mark Twain: "O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle - be Thou near them! With them - in spirit - we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it - for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."
Patrick Henry: "But we are told that we need not fear; because those in power, being our representatives, will not abuse the powers we put in their hands. I am not well versed in history, but I will submit to your recollection, whether liberty has been destroyed most often by the licentiousness of the people, or by the tyranny of rulers. I imagine, sir, you will find the balance on the side of tyranny. Happy will you be if you miss the fate of those nations, who, omitting to resist their oppressors, or negligently suffering their liberty to be wrested from them, have groaned under intolerable despotism! Most of the human race are now in this deplorable condition; and those nations who have gone in search of grandeur, power, and splendor, have also fallen a sacrifice, and been the victims of their own folly. While they acquired those visionary blessings, they lost their freedom."
James Madison: "Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people... (There is also an) inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and... degeneracy of manners and of morals.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
Apt descriptions of 1641 and 2021? Check, check and check. War and conflict appear to be the solution once people are in the grip of this crisis-hardened derangement, and they discover their folly after their misery has increased 100-fold.
So where does all this lead? Nowhere good. Concentrated wealth and power breed hubris and open the door to catastrophic consequences flowing from the addled decisions of the few at the top. Voices of calm reason are shouted down and excoriated, and compromise becomes impossible. Those seeking to maintain their exploitive grip on wealth and power whip up intensities of derangement to further their own self-interest, always under the banner of some noble cause.
In the confusion of decay and failure, the herd seeks a simplistic explanation and solution. Those seeking to maximize their private gain are keen to provide the easy answer, which just so happens to maximize their private gain at the expense of the herd.
In self-organizing emergent systems, every individual is making decisions based their perceived self-interests. This seems to be a stable arrangement, but the line between stability and instability thins in eras of scarcity and crisis, and trends that seemed linear and predictable suddenly shift into non-linear dynamics, in which seemingly small actions trigger enormously consequential reversals of trend. Stability wobbles and then dissipates, and those experiencing the loss of stability slowly come to realize there is no way to put the genie back in the bottle.
As the chart above on how systems collapse illustrates, the loss of stabilizing buffers goes unnoticed until the entire structure collapses under its own weight of artifice, debt, fraud, obfuscation, greed, inequality and incompetence. Two short quotes come to mind:
"The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority,
but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."
- Marcus Aurelius
"I never did give anybody hell.
I just told the truth and they thought it was hell."
- Harry S. Truman"
"Economic Crash Will Be The Worst In History; Don't Go Into Debt Buying Dumb Stuff; Fake And Broke"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/17/21:
"Economic Crash Will Be The Worst In History;
Don't Go Into Debt Buying Dumb Stuff; Fake And Broke"
Friday, July 16, 2021
"There is No More Stimulus or Free Lunch. The Party is Ending"
Full screen recommended.
Dn, IAllegedly, PM 7/16/21:
"There is No More Stimulus or Free Lunch. The Party is Ending"
"The Party is over! There will be no more stimulus or free lunch. People
need to get ready to get off the unemployment, pay their rent and get a job."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Venus, named for the Roman goddess of love, and Mars, the war god's namesake, come together by moonlight in this serene skyview, recorded on July 11 from Lualaba province, Democratic Republic of Congo, planet Earth.
Taken in the western twilight sky shortly after sunset the exposure also records earthshine illuminating the otherwise dark surface of the young crescent Moon. Of course the Moon has moved on. Venus still shines in the west though as the evening star, third brightest object in Earth's sky, after the Sun and the Moon itself. Seen here above a brilliant Venus, Mars moved even closer to the brighter planet and by July 13 could be seen only about a Moon's width away. Mars has since slowly wandered away from much brighter Venus in the twilight skies of the coming days."
"They Warned Us That There Would Be A Collapse Of Civilization In Our Generation, And They Were Right"
Full screen recommended.
"They Warned Us That There Would Be A Collapse
Of Civilization In Our Generation, And They Were Right"
by Epic Economist
"The brightest scientific minds of our era are warning a dark future awaits us if we stay on our current course. For decades, our society became increasingly obsessed with the idea of short-term results and infinite growth, but maybe that obsession came from a fear of thinking about what would actually happen in the long run. Something we learned from the health crisis and the current economic recession is that our leaders are definitely not prepared to deal with the consequences of their actions nor are they willing to think about the longer term. Even though many still prefer to believe in what the politicians in Washington say - that all of this is transitory and everything will be fine - if we pay close attention to the latest global events, we can see that every aspect of our society is coming apart. However, the era that we are moving into will be even more nightmarish - a terror most people wouldn't dare to imagine.
One MIT study from 1972 made the headlines this week as a group of scientists that projected that our civilization would collapse at some point during the 21st century has now confirmed that we're right on track of witnessing the end of the world as we know it. The team studied the risk of civilizational collapse over several years using the dynamics model known as ‘limits to growth’ (LtG), and revealed that the collapse of our industrial civilization is already underway due to the overexploitation of our planetary resources. The most alarming part of their findings is that the decline of our society is likely to happen within less than 25 years.
The study was conducted by Gaya Herrington is now available on the KPMG website. Herrington's analysis examined data such as population, fertility rates, mortality rates, industrial output, food production, services, non-renewable resources, persistent pollution, human welfare, and ecological footprint. The research team found that the data most closely aligns with two particular scenarios, ‘BAU2’ (business-as-usual) and ‘CT’ (comprehensive technology).
As it turns out, both scenarios have extremely bleak outcomes. In the comprehensive technology scenario, the economic collapse would already have started, and a series of negative impacts such as a major drop in food production, wild swings across a number of categories, including industrial output, and also the significant decline of the global population, would put the entire world on the edge. In that context, only a substantial investment in education and technology could save us. We would have to quickly readapt our model of production to pursue sustainable alternatives. In that case, while new technology develops food production would eventually recover and the societal collapse wouldn't occur under those specific circumstances.
On the other hand, there's no room for optimism or hope if we chose to take the second track, known as the business-as-usual scenario. In this scenario, we would essentially continue to ignore the growing risks and make no changes to our current behavior. Similar to the CT scenario, our economic growth would be dwindling, but it would hit a wall around 2030. However, that wouldn't be a temporary blip nor lead us to a period of stagnation, it would mark the point of no return - which means, by 2040, the entire planet would irreversibly collapse. The world's population, food production, industrial output, and several other key aspects of our civilization would all take a steep decline, with pollution levels soaring while we rapidly exploit and burn the planet's remaining available resources with absolute disregard for the catastrophic consequences.
At this point, both scenarios are still possible, the study noted. But that also means that to avert the complete degeneration of our society we would have to start making major changes in the way we live right at this moment, and that doesn't seem like a realistic option to our increasingly divided population. Herrington stressed that the window of opportunity to change things around is closing fast and if we don't act rapidly enough, our future is going to be apocalyptic.
To make matters worse, geopolitical tensions and social turbulence are already triggering widespread chaos in many countries. Our society is growing more unequal, politically divided, and angry. The rate of offenses is skyrocketing, and some of the wild scenes that are playing out around the globe are just utterly shocking. As we move closer to into the abyss of collapse, the best we can do is to try to get prepared before everything starts to fall apart around us. The coming years are going to be extremely chaotic, so we can suggest only that you plan accordingly."
"Are Americans Ready to “Storm the Bastille?”
'"Are Americans Ready to 'Storm the Bastille?'”
by Brian Maher
"Why did furious revolutionary tantrums seize France in 1789? And do they afford us a frightful glimpse of the American future? Today we glance backward… in the hope it may help us look forward.
From yesterday’s reckoning (and our co-founder Bill Bonner): "By the 18th century, France had become the greatest power in Europe, the richest and most populous country in the western world, and the clear leader in art, science, philosophy, education, cuisine, fashion, architecture...and, of course, viticulture. It had the richest people in the world, the prettiest women, and the best booze. It also had the most enlightened economists - the physiocrats - from whom Adam Smith was boosting some of his best ideas.
A poll taken in the early 1780s might have shown the French to be extremely optimistic and confident. And why shouldn't they be? The last major financial crisis - caused by John Law's Mississippi Bubble - blew up over 60 years before. And had the world ever seen anything approaching the splendor of Versailles?"
Then came 1789 and its revolutionary deliriums: "But in 1789, Paris mobs came to the crossroads of history and veered left. They replaced an absolute monarch who had very limited power, with a people's republic restrained neither by common sense nor common decency."
Does Mr. Bonner “pity the plumage but forget the dying bird?” That is, does he oversympathize with the monarchy... and undersympathize with its subjects? Perhaps he does - to hammer home a larger point. But the larger point may be plenty sharp.
Austrian political scientist and journalist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (dates 1909-1999): "Much of what may appear positive to us today – liberality, intellectuality, humanitarianism – had all been already brought to us by the liberal, courtly absolutism, while the French Revolution which used all these words in reality did nothing more than brutally extinguish them."
Revolutionary Sparks: What spark - or which sparks - set the revolutionary fires raging?
Caveat lector: You do not hold a history book in your hands. You hold what passes as a financial newsletter… and barely at that. Its editor is not a historian at a lectern. He is instead a popinjay in an armchair, given to the simplifications, half-truths, errors and pomposities of the type. We nonetheless proceed… in the spirit of scholarly inquiry...
First, there was the estates system; a feudal hierarchy, a social pyramid. At the pinnacle was the First Estate - the church and its officiating clergy. Wedged in the middle, in the Second Estate, was the nobility. Below the nobility squatted the remaining 98% of France, the massive base of the pyramid - the Third Estate - merchants, tradesmen, lawyers, peasants, etc.
The government squeezed the majority of its tax revenues from this Third Estate. That is, the lower 98% hauled the bulk of the freight. The 98% kept the 2% bouncing along in a sort of opulence. Naturally... the 98% bristled and bridled under the burden. But they had been accustomed to the business for generations. Why finally raise a mighty rumpus in 1789?
The Hungry Times: An army marches on its stomach, it has been said. A people too marches on its stomach. And in the 1780s, the people of France were falling out of formation...
France was the most populous nation in Europe. It thus required the most foodstuffs. A fantastic volcanic eruption in 1783 - in present Iceland - threw out so much soot it blew out the sun. Winter was grim. And the 1784 harvest yielded lean, lean pickings. The following summers witnessed drought, busted harvests… and famine.
1787 and 1788 brought more hungry times. With them, inflation. That is because slender harvests raised the price of flour - hence, the price of bread. Hunger plus inflation is a dreadful combination. A shrinking belly... twinned with a shrinking currency... equals a growing crisis. It means a heart filling with resentment and a head filling with ideas. It meant - in this instance - revolution. It meant the slaughter of civilization. It meant rivers, lakes, seas of blood. It meant war… ultimately.
It meant two centuries of ideological mischief of one sort or other. Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro and other 20the century hellcats took their examples from the French revolutionists and their bloodlettings.
The Alan Greenspan of the 18th Century: But we have neglected the crucial role of a critical actor... “the Alan Greenspan of the 18th century” - Monsieur Jacques Necker - to whom we now turn. As Mr. Bonner explains: "None of this might have happened, however, except for the efforts of the Alan Greenspan of the late 18th century - Jacques Necker. It was Necker who replaced laissez-faire economist, Jacques Turgot, as French finance minister in 1776.
Turgot's free-trade policies had the fatal flaw of all sensible rules - they benefited everybody to the advantage of nobody in particular. Turgot dissolved the guild system, eliminated the corvee (the forced labor of the peasants), imposed a simple property tax and opposed all forms of economic privilege at the expense of the common good. He even set himself against Marie Antoinette, by refusing to grant favors to her cronies. Since everybody in France in the 18th century as well as every American in the 21st wanted the privilege of picking someone else's pocket, Turgot eventually made enemies of nearly every class. Louis XVI, though responsible for the well-being of the entire nation, had not the strength to stand up to the special interests.
Turgot even had a prophetic intuition and a view of history similar to our own. Periods of civilized progress are followed, he noted, by periods of barbarism and madness. Dismissed in 1776, he warned Louis XVI: "Do not forget, Sire, that it was feebleness that placed the head of Charles II on the block."
Necker made enemies of no one. His program was the opposite of Turgot's; he favored particular privileges at the expense of everybody else. Rather than tax people to pay for state expenses, Necker borrowed - taking short-term, high-interest loans that brought the government close to bankruptcy. Then, Necker turned to accounting tricks to show that the government was actually running a surplus! The patsies loved it.
Pushed out for the first time in 1781, Necker was called back on the eve of revolution in 1788 for another dose of his financial magic. But it was too late. The old miracle elixirs - heavier debt and cooked books - wouldn't work any longer; bankruptcy was unavoidable. The aristocrats got rid of him again — on July 14, 1789. The mob, which still had faith, was so disappointed… it headed for the Bastille."
History Doesn’t Repeat, But It Rhymes: History does not repeat. But it does rhyme, as said the great scalawag Mark Twain. Now this question: Will Americans head for their own Bastille?Perhaps they already have in one sense... Substitute July 14, 1789, for January 6, 2021… substitute the Bastille for the United States Capitol… and you may have yourself a rhyme.
The cadence is a bit off, of course. The only blood at the Capitol came spilling out of a 35-year-old Air Force veteran’s neck, shot through by a Capitol policeman. No heads went up on spikes at the Capitol - feet merely went up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk. And the marauders walked out not long after they walked in… and went home. Nor were they famished. By the appearance of many, rather the opposite. In brief, 2021 America is not 1789 France. The Church is punchless, American nobility is a contradiction, no king beleaguers us.
Rhymes: But do millions of Americans believe they are being bossed and exploited by an overbearing elite? Do they believe they are languishing at the base of the economic pyramid... while the pyramid’s tip lives grandly - almost royally? Many do, yes. Do they believe the Federal Reserve chairman - whoever it may be - is a modern Jacques Necker? Again, many do.
Are they ready for a man upon a white horse? We do not know. But many believe, rightly or wrongly, that a man with white hair was fraudulently elected over a man with orange hair. Rasmussen reports that 41% of American voters do not believe the sitting president was lawfully elected. An electoral audit is far underway in Arizona’s Maricopa County. Momentum builds for additional audits in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. We do not pretend to know what they will reveal (our spies report alarming whispers. But we had best keep them dark).
Another possible historical rhyme: As in 1789 France, inflation is on the jump. It may or not prove transient. But take a frustrated population sat upon by elites… many wallowing economically… and losing faith in elections… and set an inflationary fire… And history’s rhyme might just be an awful clang. A prediction? No, of course not. Merely a possibility. And perhaps an unlikely one at that. But what is the ultimate impact of the French Revolution? “Too early to say.”
"Big Danger Is Ahead; Toxic People; Global Crisis - Depression 2.0; Foreclosure Flood Coming"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, PM 7/16/21:
"Big Danger Is Ahead; Toxic People;
Global Crisis - Depression 2.0; Foreclosure Flood Coming"
"Enemies of the People"
"Enemies of the People"
by Jim Kunstler
"Edging now into high summer, the “Joe Biden” apparatus swerves toward the totalitarian seizure of all communications. A White House equerry name of Jeff Zients with the awesome title Covid Response Coordinator called on “Biden allied groups” (DNC? NSA? AFT? CCP?) to monitor Short Message Services (SMS, i.e., texts) on cell phones in search of “disinformation being spread about vaccinations”… Surgeon General Vivek Murthy asked social media to “step up” to address “false claims feeding vaccine resistance”… White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki let slip that “We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation”….
America is oh so problematic! You people are working a little too hard to think for yourselves - you basket of deplorable, brain-damaged, flyover gorks - so pardon us while we remove your impure thoughts from the nation’s thought-spaces. We will do your thinking for you, because 1) we know better, and 2) we say so… Can you see now how things are working perfectly toward an autumn explosion of, shall we say, unpleasant disagreeableness?
Meanwhile, “Joe Biden” and “Biden allied groups” have engineered the US intel and security agencies to label anyone and anything that opposes the shutdown of wrong-think as “white supremacist domestic terrorism.” the FBI officially tweets: “Family members and peers are often best positioned to witness signs of mobilization to violence. Help prevent homegrown violent extremism. Visit https://go.usa.gov/x6mjf to learn how to spot suspicious behaviors and report them to the #FBI.” Nice set-up. Thus, Nancy Pelosi and Merrick Garland’s year-to-date production of the “Capitol Insurrection” pageant, and the captivity, in solitary confinement for months on end, in defiance of habeas corpus, of January Sixth’s hapless, selfie-snapping trespassers. That should prevent any outfit beside BLM and Antifa from mounting mostly peaceful protests, especially against “Joe Biden’s” creeping totalitarianism.
Yet, the flop-sweat is running like a babbling brook from end-to-end down Pennsylvania avenue as, in actual fact, the “Joe Biden” show lurches into its final act - which will be the collapse of the “Joe Biden” show in an odoriferous heap of bad faith and criminality. The specter of election audits is getting to the animatronic teleprompter-reader heading the federal regime. His chamberlains foolishly sent him out to Philadelphia this week to squelch any rising sentiment among PA state legislators to audit alleged ballot irregularities of 11/3/20. “Joe B’s” legitimacy is shredding and he looks more and more like a mere ghoul in the Oval Office, Jacob Marley in Uncle Sam drag, wailing and whispering of his political sins.
In Philly, the poor boob said, “For those who challenge the results and question the integrity of the election: No other election has ever been held under such scrutiny and such high standards!” That mouthful was followed by an even bigger gulp: “The Big Lie is just that: a big lie.” Did he know what he said there? (Cue: Joseph Goebbels spinning in grave with admiration.) The utterance was the perfect companion to his Big Brag on the campaign trail last October, saying, “We have put together, I think, the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.” Indeed, you did, Joe - or, at least, your worker bees in the DNC did, with, perhaps, some help from the Deep State’s Intel Community. That’s why folks all over the land have got a hankering to look inside those black boxes of ballots and Dominion voting machines.
Of course, it’s hard to tell now whether the “Joe Biden” act will go down in a flaming glob of proven election fraud, or just on its sheer abysmal performance, trying to put over one great big totalitarian hustle while the real economy craters and institutions augur into pits of corruption, recklessness, and incompetence - for instance, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s astounding move to invite a committee of UN rapporteurs to assess America’s standing vis-Ã -vis human rights and racism. Great idea! Let’s get envoys from Liberia, Yemen, Laos, Venezuela, El Salvador, and Chad to hold a CRT struggle session with the staff in Foggy Bottom... or, hey, maybe it’s time to defund the State Department.
When all else fails (to control the restive US population) it’s back to good old reliable Covid-19. The Delta variant is upon us, they say. Face masks are back in California, in contradiction to the CDC’s latest directives on masks. That ought to seal the deal on Governor Gavin Newsom’s recall election fate, scheduled now for September 14. (But can anyone rescue the state from sliding completely down the drain?) How about another round of lockdowns to ensure that nobody ever tries to start a small business again? Well, you know, small business is racist. Look at how many people of color are prevented (by racism) from starting small businesses. We demand social justice! Abolish small business! There, America, I fixed that for you!"
"The Future..."
"We do not rest satisfied with the present. We anticipate the future as too slow in coming, as if in order to hasten its course; or we recall the past, to stop its too rapid flight. So imprudent are we that we wander in the times which are not ours, and do not think of the only one which belongs to us; and so idle are we that we dream of those times which are no more, and thoughtlessly overlook that which alone exists. For the present is generally painful to us. We conceal it from our sight, because it troubles us; and if it be delightful to us, we regret to see it pass away. We try to sustain it by the future, and think of arranging matters which are not in our power, for a time which we have no certainty of reaching. Let each one examine his thoughts, and he will find them all occupied with the past and the future. We scarcely ever think of the present; and if we think of it, it is only to take light from it to arrange the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means; the future alone is our end. So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so."
- Blaise Pascal
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