Lugoff, South Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!
So, we rise from the rubble...
Friday, November 5, 2021
"Get Ready for Food Rationing and a Cold Winter"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly,
"Get Ready for Food Rationing and a Cold Winter"
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Related:
“5 Painfully Obvious Truths We Tend to Forget in Hard Times”
“5 Painfully Obvious Truths
We Tend to Forget in Hard Times”
by Angel Chernoff
“This is going to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
We are going to get through this, I promise,
and we’re going to get through it together. “
- Dr. Jon LaPook
“You know how you can read or hear something dozens of times in dozens of different ways before it finally sinks in? The little truths listed below fall firmly into that category – timeless life lessons that many of us likely learned years ago, and have been reminded of ever since, yet for whatever reason we tend to forget in the heat of the moment. This, my friends, is my attempt at helping all of us, myself included, “get it” and “remember it” once and for all, especially as we collectively cope with the evolving reality of COVID-19…
1. Life is short, and nothing is guaranteed. We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it happens to someone we know. It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted mind, and misjudging the final step. You expected there to be one more stair than there is, and so you find yourself off balance for a moment, before your mind shifts back to the present moment and how the world really is.
LIVE your life TODAY! Don’t ignore death – or the imminent dangers of COVID-19 – but don’t be afraid of life either. Be afraid of a life you never lived because you were too afraid to take positive action today. Death is not the greatest loss in life, neither is illness. The greatest loss is what dies inside you while you’re still alive and well. Even in these difficult times, be bold, be courageous, be a scared to death, and then take the next step anyway. Just change the way you do it.
Invest your heart and soul into whatever you have right in front of you. Bring passion into otherwise ordinary moments. You don’t have to be surrounded by lots of people. You don’t have to be going anyplace new. You can distance yourself from COVID-19, and still passionately engage in each moment.
2. Everything will change again soon. Embrace change and realize in many ways it’s necessary. It won’t always be obvious at first, but in the end most forms of change are worthwhile because they force us to grow. So keep yourself in check right now.
What you have today may become what you had by tomorrow. You never know. Things change, often spontaneously. People and circumstances come and go. Life doesn’t stop for anybody. It moves rapidly and rushes from calm to chaos in a matter of seconds, and happens like this to people every day. It’s likely happening to someone nearby right now.
Sometimes the shortest split second in time changes the direction of our lives. A seemingly innocuous decision rattles our whole world like a meteorite striking Earth. Entire lives have been swiveled and flipped upside down, for better or worse, on the strength of an unpredictable event. And these events are always happening – like the COVID-19 epidemic right now.
So just remember, however good or bad a situation is now, it will change. That’s the one thing you can count on. Accept it. Breathe. Be where you are. You’re where you need to be right now. There’s a time and place for everything, and every hard step is necessary. Just keep doing your best, and don’t force what’s not yet supposed to fit into your life. When it’s meant to be, it will be.
3. Changing your response is what puts you back in control. Have patience with everything that remains unresolved in your head and heart. And realize that patience is not about waiting, but the ability to keep a good attitude while working hard to stay true to your intuition and values. This is your life, and it is governed by your choices. May your actions speak louder than your words. May your daily choices preach louder than your lips. May your inner sense of satisfaction be your noise in the end.
And if your present life only teaches you one thing, let it be that taking a passionate leap is always worth it. Even if you have no idea where you’re going to land – even when there are so many unknowns – be brave enough to stand up and listen to your heart. Remember that the most powerful moments in life happen when you find the courage to let go of what can’t be changed. Because when you are no longer able to change a situation, you are challenged to change yourself – to grow beyond the unchangeable. And that changes everything! (Marc and I discuss this in more detail in the “Passion and Growth” chapter of “1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.“)
4. Life’s storms can be a great source of strength. Hard times are like strong storms that blow against you. And it’s not just that these storms hold you back from places you might otherwise go. They also tear away from you all but the essential parts of your ego that cannot be torn, so that afterward you see yourself as you really are, and not merely as you might like to be.
Ultimately, you realize you are here to endure these storms, to sacrifice your time and risk your heart. You are here to be bruised by life. And when it happens that you are hurt, or betrayed, or rejected, let yourself sit quietly with your eyes closed and remember all the good times you had, and all the sweetness you tasted, and everything you learned. Tell yourself how amazing it was to live, and then open your eyes and live some more.
Because to never struggle would be to never grow. You must let go of who you were so you can become who you are. Again, it is within the depths of the strongest and darkest storms that you discover within you an inextinguishable light, and it is this light that illuminates the path forward.
5. You don’t need all the answers right now. Accept the feeling of not knowing exactly where you are going, and train yourself to love and appreciate this sensation of freedom. Because it is only when you are suspended in the air, with no destination in sight, that you force your wings to open fully so you can fly. And as you soar around you still may not know where you’re traveling to. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is the opening of your wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as your wings are spread, the winds will carry you forward.
Truth be told, some of the greatest outcomes that transpire in your life will be the ones you never even knew you wanted. As long as you keep your mind open to new perspectives and yourself moving forward, there really are no wrong turns in life, only paths you didn’t know you were meant to travel. And you never can be certain what’s around the corner. It could be everything, or it could be nothing. You keep gliding steadily forward, and then one day you realize you’ve come a long way from where you started.
All details aside, someday all the pieces will come together. Unimaginably good outcomes will likely transpire in your life, even if everything doesn’t turn out exactly the way you had anticipated. And you will look back at the hard times that have passed, smile, and ask yourself… “How in the world did I get through all of that?”
"Doubt..."
“Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the handmaiden of truth. Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery. A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief. Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false. Let no one fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it; for doubt is a testing of belief. The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing, for truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure. He that would silence doubt is filled with fear; the house of his spirit is built on shifting sands. But he that fears no doubt, and knows its use, is founded on a rock. He shall walk in the light of growing knowledge; the work of his hands shall endure. Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help. It is to the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the handmaiden of truth.”
- Robert T. Weston
"The Old 'Rug Pull' Trick"
"The Old 'Rug Pull' Trick"
by Bill Bonner
"There is growing evidence that this project has rugged.
Please do your own due diligence and exercise extreme caution."
– CoinMarketCap website, referring to Squid Coin
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – First, just for our own amusement, let’s look at more of the nuttiness caused by the Federal Reserve’s fake money and fake interest rates. Then, we’ll take up the question posed yesterday: Will the Fed bring an end to the madness? It’s this question that is most important to investors. If the answer is “yes,” then it’s time to go into the safe room, with a stock of food, water, and ammunition. If the answer is “no”… then… well… you can hold out a while longer.
Rug Pull: Last week, another new crypto appeared on the metaverse radar. This was not particularly interesting, in itself; there were more than 13,000 of them already. But this one had a very catchy name – the Squid Coin, which sounded for all the world as though it was related to the Netflix hit, Squid Game. It also suggested some kind of game playing, which sounded as though it might be fun… maybe even profitable. Plus, it advertised a glowing recommendation from Elon Musk, who said – according to the Squid Coin website, at least – that he thought this one was going to the moooon.
One other feature is worth mentioning: Squid Coin welcomed buying with open arms… but it treated selling like a visit from a parole officer. Whoever heard of a currency that you couldn’t freely spend or trade? The whole thing was puzzling… and preposterous. Nevertheless, propelled upwards by these booster rockets, Squid Coin quickly launched into space. It rose from pennies to $2,860 per coin in a matter of days… and made the early adopters millions richer. For a moment. On paper.
Vanishing Wealth: None of this would have been very surprising. The crypto world is lousy with goofy coins… and millionaires. But as we described yesterday, when the money goes… everything goes, including all sense of what anything is really worth. And sometimes, they’re not worth anything at all, which is just what the Squid Coin “investors” found out at the start of this week. According to the press reports, the coin’s anonymous creators had done the old “rug pull” scam on them.
One investor lost his entire life savings in the Squid Coin scam. And some investors are blaming the media for fueling the coin’s meteoric rise. But the Squid Coin had no relationship to the popular Squid Game TV show. It had, therefore, no right to use the name and trade off the popularity of the series. Nor had Elon Musk ever heard of Squid Coin… until it appeared bearing his endorsement like a papal seal.
And then, as quickly as the coin and its creators rocketed up into the thin atmosphere of great wealth – they disappeared, apparently absconding with their ill-gotten gains. The coin then plummeted back to Earth. Pity the poor “investors” who expected to buy new houses in Santa Monica with their Squid Coin winnings.
Wacky World: They should have taken a flier on DWAC, instead. Digital World Acquisition Corp. is a SPAC… a special-purpose acquisition company. In this case, its special purpose was buying Donald Trump’s new company – Trump Media & Technology Group. And when word of the purchase got out, DWAC shot up bigly. Shares rose from $10 to $175.
As a general rule (in our rulebook, at least), all SPAC deals are bad deals. But who knows? There was no trace of it in the documents made available to the public, but DWAC might even eventually come up with a way to make money. And in this wacky world, you don’t need to make money to get money. What money do the cryptos make? What money do the NFTs make? What money has Elon Musk made? What money did Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell make? Between the two of them, they gained $105 million in new wealth since 2004. Where did it come from?
Invisible Debt: You either make it or you take it. And the Fed is helping people take it on a scale never before seen in America. In August 2019, the Fed had total assets (a rough measure of how much money it has “printed”) of $3.7 trillion. Now, it has $8.5 trillion. The difference, nearly $5 trillion, was added in just 25 months.
Not a penny of that money was earned… made… or saved. Instead, it is taken from the public… embezzled, in the form of future inflation. And today, think of all the fortunes that depend on it – all the dopey business models… all the SPACs… all the cryptos… all the debt refinancing… all the federales’ boondoggles.
During that same 25-month period, U.S. debt increased about $6 trillion, too. Putting 2 and 2 together, we see that almost every penny of deficit spending by the U.S. government was financed by the Fed’s money-printing. That is why there is so little opposition to today’s $3 trillion deficit – nobody thinks he has to pay for it.
A Great Scam: What a marvelous flim-flam. The gist of the “rug pull” scam is making people think they have something they don’t really have… wealth that doesn’t exist, for example. It’s the game of choice for today’s crypto-grifters… and for the Fed, too. They “print” money – crypto or paper – and pass it out as though it were the real thing. And then the public gets the rug pulled out from under them."
"I Know Why You Did It..."
“Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn't there? Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror. I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. ”
- Alan Moore, "V for Vendetta"
Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 11/5/21"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 11/5/21:
"Collapse: The Economy Continues To Crater Faster,
Inflation Out Of Control"
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Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/5/21:
"Epic! This Market Is About To Do Something Extraordinary!"
Thursday, November 4, 2021
Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 11/5/21"
"Weekly News Wrap-Up 11/5/21"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Some big off year political elections were held this week, and the biggest newsmaker was the GOP win in Virginia. Remember, Virginia was called for Biden right after the polls closed on Election Night 2020 even though Trump was ahead. The problem was never investigated, but through the magic of what appears to be election fraud, Biden won the state in the wee hours of the morning the next day when votes magically appeared. All that to say, you know the Dems cheated, and they have cheated again in 2021. It’s what they have to do because their policies are hated by everyone including Democrats. It looks like the cheating was overwhelmed by Dem voters switching sides, and that gave the Governor’s office and the state legislature to Glenn Youngkin and the GOP. The big problem for the Dems now is the 2020 election fraud can and will be investigated—no doubt.
Joe Biden and crew are offering up another vax coercion for 84 million workers. OSHA is going to require total submission to unscientific policies and an experimental CV19 vax. If not, there will be endless testing, job losses and fines. There is no appreciation for science or the 100 million people who have natural immunity because they were infected with CV19 and got well. This sounds like a desperate move in pushing this unscientific and coercive policy. Maybe it’s because the narrative continues to unravel in an embarrassing and criminal way for the Biden Administration. Oh, by the way, Press Secretary Jen Psaki just tested positive for Covid even though she was “fully vaxed.”
The Federal Reserve has done a great job enriching the 1%. For the rest of “We the People,” inflation is ravaging families, and it’s just getting started. Great job, Chairman Powell. Responsibilities should be taken away from the feckless Fed. Just the opposite may happen because there is a professor of law, Saule Omarova, nominated for comptroller of the currency. Omarova wants the Fed to have the power over all of us, including turning on and off our bank accounts. Heaven help us if she gets past the Senate confirmation."
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he talks about these
stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up 11/05/21.
"We Can All Be Uber Drivers As Economy Implodes; Working To Survive; People In The Matrix"
Jeremiah Babe PM 11/4/21:
"We Can All Be Uber Drivers As Economy Implodes;
Working To Survive; People In The Matrix"
"Something Really Strange Is Happening At Hospitals All Over America"
Full screen recommended.
"Something Really Strange Is Happening
At Hospitals All Over America"
by Epic Economist
"Something really odd is happening at hospitals all over the country, but no one seems to be talking about it. In one of the strangest years we've had in modern times, there's an alarming mystery surrounding the lives of tens of thousands of Americans. Right now, emergency rooms are absolutely crowded, and with each passing day, they continue to overflow with severely ill patients, but no one can actually explain why this is suddenly happening.
Even though the number of new virus cases in the United States is now less than half of what it was just a couple of months ago, hospitals are still completely packed. As opposed to what many people were anticipating, a decline in the number of confirmed virus cases isn't easing the healthcare crisis we've been facing over the past 18 months.
In every corner of the country, ERs are full. In many cases, seriously ill patients are having to be cared for in the hallways because emergency rooms are unavailable due to the staggering number of patients in critical conditions. We're seeing in our hospitals the type of scene we would typically see in third-world countries in times of crisis. The level of chaos going on right now is absolutely shocking. But the weirdest thing about this is that nobody knows why so many people a suddenly falling sick.
In an article entitled “ERs Are Swamped With Seriously Ill Patients, Although Many Don’t Have [The Virus]," health care workers of the emergency department at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan, described the crisis they are facing every day. Their staff members are struggling to care for patients showing up much sicker than they’ve ever seen.
The ER’s nursing director, Tiffani Dusang, is experiencing severe anxiety for having to watch patients lying on a long line of stretchers pushed up against the walls of the hospital hallways. “It’s hard to watch,” she says. All of the ER’s 72 rooms are already filled. If the rate of confirmed virus cases was starting to move upwards again, it would make sense for emergency rooms to be so packed. But that's not the case.
The situation is getting so complicated that even people who arrive by ambulance are not guaranteed a room. The head nurse has to run triage and screen those who absolutely need a bed and those who can wait or get treatment on the hospital's hallways. Months of treatment delays have aggravated chronic conditions and exacerbated symptoms. According to the hospital's doctors and nurses, "the severity of illness ranges widely and includes abdominal pain, respiratory problems, blood clots, heart conditions, among other diseases".
Heart conditions are, in fact, one of the most commonly mentioned health diseases in the past few weeks. Several cases involving young healthy people have made the headlines recently. For instance, a report published a couple of days ago told the story of a healthy high school soccer manager, who greatly enjoyed his team’s championship victory Saturday, and later that evening, he faced a sudden and fatal cardiac arrest.
In a nearby city in the same state, a healthy 12-year-old boy's life was taken too soon because of an issue with his coronary artery. He suffered from a congestive heart failure involving his coronary artery, according to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office. We commonly see heart problems affecting adults and elderly people with other underçying diseases, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol levels. The fact that this is happening to healthy young people is not only odd but extremely worrying.
Even athletes with perfect health records are suffering from heart attacks these days. Over the weekend, Barcelona striker Sergio Aguero suddenly collapsed on the pitch during a match against Alaves. The Argentinian was examined by medical staff at the stadium and then he was taken to a nearby hospital to undergo further examination. Aguero has been diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmia, a condition in which the heart's beats don't work properly, causing the heart to beat too fast, too slow, or irregularly.
Unfortunately, cases of young, healthy people suffering from heart complications are becoming all too common. Icelandic midfielder Emil Pálsson suffered from tachycardia during a match in Norway’s second division. "The 28-year-old Sogndal player suffered the attack as the game against Stjordals-Blink entered the 12th minute," his club said in a statement. So many similar cases are being reported on a daily basis. And yet no one knows the cause behind such tragic incidents. Why are so many young people suddenly having such serious heart problems? Is there something the media isn't telling us? Does anyone out there know what is truly going on? There's something really odd going on, and once again, they are not telling us the whole truth."
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Yes, there's an explanation, and here it is:
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Dwarf galaxies NGC 147 (left) and NGC 185 stand side by side in this sharp telescopic portrait. The two are not-often-imaged satellites of M31, the great spiral Andromeda Galaxy, some 2.5 million light-years away. Their separation on the sky, less than one degree across a pretty field of view, translates to only about 35 thousand light-years at Andromeda's distance, but Andromeda itself is found well outside this frame.
Brighter and more famous satellite galaxies of Andromeda, M32 and M110, are seen closer to the great spiral. NGC 147 and NGC 185 have been identified as binary galaxies, forming a gravitationally stable binary system. But recently discovered faint dwarf galaxy Cassiopeia II also seems to be part of their system, forming a gravitationally bound group within Andromeda's intriguing population of small satellite galaxies."
Chet Raymo, “Mortal Soul: The Great Silence”
“Mortal Soul: The Great Silence”
by Chet Raymo
“If there is one word that should not be uttered, it is the name of – no, I will not say it. Any name diminishes. In the face of whatever it is that is most mysterious, most holy, we are properly silent. It is appropriate, I think, to praise the creation, to make a joyful noise of thanksgiving for the sensate world. But praising the Creator is another thing altogether. When we make a big racket on His behalf we are more than likely addressing an idol in our own image. What was it that Pico Iyer said? “Silence is the tribute that we pay to holiness; we slip off words when we enter a sacred place, just as we slip off shoes.” The God of the mystics whispers sweet nothings, as lovers do.
In a diary entry for “M.”, near the end of his too-short life, Thomas Merton wrote: “I cannot have enough of the hours of silence when nothing happens. When the clouds go by. When the trees say nothing. When the birds sing. I am completely addicted to the realization that just being there is enough.” The natural world was for Merton the primary revelation. He listened. He felt a presence in his heart, an awareness of the ineffable Mystery that permeates creation. It was this that drew him to the mystical tradition of Christianity, especially to the Celtic tradition of creation spirituality. It was this that attracted him to Zen.
There come now and then, perhaps more frequently in late life than previously, those moments of being (as Virginia Woolf called them) when creation grabs us by the shoulders and gives us such a shake that it rattles our teeth, when love for the world simply knocks us flat. At those moments everything we have learned about the world – the invaluable and reliable knowledge of science- seems a pale intimation of what is. In Virginia Woolf’s novel “The Waves”, the elderly Bernard says: “How tired I am of stories, how tired I am of phrases that come down beautifully with all their feet on the ground! Also, how I distrust neat designs of life that are drawn upon half sheets of notepaper. I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on the pavement.”
In moments of soul-stirring epiphany, it is reassuring to feel beneath our feet a floor of reliable knowledge, the safe and sure edifice of empirical learning so painstakingly constructed by the likes of Aristarchus, Galileo, Darwin and Schrodinger. But at the same time we are humbled by our ignorance, and more ready than ever to say “I don’t know,” to enter at last the great silence. Erwin Chargaff, who contributed mightily to our understanding of DNA, wrote: “It is the sense of mystery that, in my opinion, drives the true scientist; the same blind force, blindly seeing, deafly hearing, unconsciously remembering, that drives the larva into the butterfly. If the scientist has not experienced, at least a few times in his life, this cold shudder down his spine, this confrontation with an immense invisible face whose breath moves him to tears, he is not a scientist.”
The whole thrust of the mystical tradition, the whole thrust of science, is toward the great silence- an awareness of our ignorance and a willingness to say “I don’t know.” A lifetime of learning brings one at last to the face of mystery. We live in a universe of more than 2 trillion galaxies. Perhaps the number of galaxies is infinite. And the universe is silent. Achingly, terrifyingly silent. Or, rather, the universe speaks a little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on the pavement.”
The Poet: Carl Sandburg, “From the Shore”
“From the Shore"
“A lone gray bird,
Dim-dipping, far-flying,
Alone in the shadows and grandeurs and tumults
Of night and the sea
And the stars and storms.
Out over the darkness it wavers and hovers,
Out into the gloom it swings and batters,
Out into the wind and the rain and the vast,
Out into the pit of a great black world,
Where fogs are at battle, sky-driven, sea-blown,
Love of mist and rapture of flight,
Glories of chance and hazards of death
On its eager and palpitant wings.
Out into the deep of the great dark world,
Beyond the long borders where foam and drift
Of the sundering waves are lost and gone
On the tides that plunge and rear and crumble.”
- Carl Sandburg
"What Foolish Forgetfulness..."
“You live as if you were destined to live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has already gone by you take no heed. You squander time as if you drew from a full and abundant supply, so all the while that day which you bestow on some person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals… What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to defer wise resolutions to the fiftieth or sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained.”
- Denis Diderot
“Three Hard Truths About American Collapse”
“Three Hard Truths About American Collapse”
by Umair Haque
“I’m going to keep this short and bittersweet. America’s probably not going to recover in our lifetimes, if ever. Let me start with some alarming and necessary factoids. America’s a country whose three main indicators are all blinking nine-alarm red – they’re what “collapse” really means. Life expectancy’s falling. Real incomes are shrinking. And 80% of people live paycheck to paycheck. By all means – elect anyone you want to. An electoral change might mitigate those, but it’s not going to magically alter the downwards trajectory. The American future is a grim choice between a return to yesterday’s slow collapse and the continuation of today’s light-speed implosion – probably not anything remotely like Europe or Canada’s gentle, hopeful upwards trend in quality of life.
That’s because these megatrends of collapse are the culmination of decades of self-destructive choices, trickle-down economics, neoliberalism, market fundamentalism, a total lack of investment in people, a culture of cruelty, a modern day caste society, Walmart capitalism, all of which added up to Weimar republic style ruin – letting middle classes implode, leaving the poor to die in the streets, because a predatory elite was allowed to capture more than 100% of society’s gains, and worse still, Americans were told to believe, by wise men, that all that was noble, righteous, and true: only the strong should survive. So these megatrends, because they took decades to gather momentum, and carry great inertia, are not going to be undone overnight, or even in a year, or even in a decade. Reversing them is the work of a generation, at the very least. Why?
America doesn’t have any functioning institutions whatsoever – and it’s not going to anytime soon. Government, media, corporations, judiciary, “jobs”, healthcare, transportation, finance, banking, pensions, retirement, education - go down the list. Do any of these function as they should – even remotely, in a healthy society? Its media is still fawningly profiling Nazis. Its opposition party is the most craven thing since Neville Longbottom. It has no agenda whatsoever. Its “best” educational institutions turn out little soulless predators aspiring to be hedge fund managers – hardly statesmen, intellectuals, and decent human beings. And so on.
For these three megatrends of collapse to be reversed, America’s going to have to be remade whole – first institutionally, and then via a new social contract. Think of Britain’s NHS or BBC, the German idea that unions sit on company boards, the French national pension system, Scandinavian social democracy as a whole. Institutions that make up a better social contract. But every single one of America’s institutions is broken. The question isn’t so much reforming dysfunctional ones as building functional ones. But the idea that America should have an NHS or BBC or debt-free education or a Public Retirement System is science fiction, and it always has been. Not only does neither party support it – though maybe the “democratic socialists” come mildly close – but nobody in any position of power in society seems aware that such a problem of broken institutions even exists. So who’s going to build them?
America doesn’t have the values to prosper without self-destructing – and it probably never did – because its prosperity has always been predatory. America doesn’t have working institutions because Americans, quite frankly, don’t care about each other. American prosperity has been based more on predation, people keeping others down, than it has on people lifting each other up. But that approach can only end in collapse. I know you’ll find that harsh.
And yet, the logic is very simple. America never developed what we might call the values of a genuinely civilized society. Empathy, compassion, truth, wisdom, benevolence, humanity. Fundamentally, that if everyone’s only out for themselves, then there is nothing that everyone in a society can enjoy as a basic human right. But if that’s the case, quite obviously, people will go without decent healthcare, education, finance, media, and so on. Worse, if everyone’s trying to compete for those things, punching everyone else down, by definition, those very things will always be absent in society – even when they can and should be available to all.
Public institutions provide social goods for all people to enjoy. America is the only – the only – rich society in the world that never built them. Why? Well, the premise of America until 1971 or so was segregation – and before that, slavery. But you can’t build public institutions that work for everyone if the point of your society is to discriminate, subjugate, and repress.
And yet, even after 1971, every single time the issue of working public institutions was raised, American whites, especially elites, flatly, absolutely refused them. They didn’t want anything that belonged to everyone in society, not healthcare, not education, not income, not retirement – their attitude was more or less, “As long as I get mine, why should I care about those dirty blacks, immigrants, Mexicans, gays, Jews, Muslims? They don’t deserve anything!” And that attitude still what prevails. It’s what kept America from building the working institutions of a functioning society, which might have provided good lives for everyone. But without those institutions, America was only getting rich by preying on itself – and that game had to run out sometime. That time is now, when 80% of Americans are broke. Bang! Prosperity based on predation leads to collapse.
Do you see the irony? Americans just don’t value one another as human beings, really – and they never have. Only some people – whites value whites, elites value elites, and so on. Hence, Americans would rather keep the basics of life from one another, in order to preserve superiority and dominance over others, than grant them to everyone, and live better lives. They have always thought this way – and nothing has ever changed that underlying logic. But that logic is not only immoral – it’s also self-destructive. Because there comes a point when the price of dominance is self-destruction. If I’m denying you healthcare, so that I keep you down, and retain a higher social status, stratum and income, but it costs me and my kids and our very own healthcare, sanity, and life expectancy, too – then what’s the purpose of the game I’m playing, except spiteful ruin? And yet, that’s what America is, and what it always has been.
The irony of America, if you ask me, is that it never understood this most basic lesson of history. The problem with a Promised Land is that it tempts people to believe that its abundance must belong only to them, and to them alone. In that way, a Promised Land can never be a place for everyone. It will be a bitter, bruising war for conquest, possession, and domination, forever – instead of being something like a healthy, sane, caring society. And yet a war against itself is what America has always been – and what, if you ask me, it will go on being. Unless, improbably, it grows up, and recognizes the dignity and possibility in every life is worth more than any Promised Land will ever be.
America probably isn’t going to make it. If you are, though, I think that a life worth living begins there.”
"As Covid Lockdowns Increase Economic Growth Will Decrease"
Gerald Celente, 11/4/21:
"As Covid Lockdowns Increase Economic Growth Will Decrease"
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