Bill Bonner, "The Wealth of a Nation"

"The Wealth of a Nation"

Thanks to Fed interest rate policy, stocks and bonds both hit epic highs - 

and the rich got richer than ever...GDP growth actually slowed, 

inflation increased, and we are left with $34.6 in debt.

by Bill Bonner

Dublin, Ireland - "Last week we looked at the Primary Trend... and wondered how Joe Biden or Donald Trump would make it worse. That is, after all, what the feds do. Markets don’t necessarily deliver what people want; but they always give them what they deserve. Left alone, markets provide products, services, timewasters... drugs, alcohol... whatever people willingly pay for. When the feds interfere - subsidizing, penalizing, prohibiting - people get less of what they want... more of what the feds want. They also usually get a lot of what nobody wants. Federal programs almost always come with fleas... they fail to provide the benefits promised... and almost always result in unwelcome consequences.

As we have seen, the Fed’s ultra-low interest rates drove the Primary Trend of 1980-2020 to extreme levels. One of the frequent promises of politicians, for example, is to lessen ‘inequality.’ Barack Obama said it was his top priority. But thanks to Fed interest rate policy, stocks and bonds both hit epic highs - and the rich got richer than ever. Meanwhile, GDP growth actually slowed... inflation increased... and we are left with $34.6 trillion worth of debt that can’t be paid.

And now, constrained by inflation, the feds cannot resuscitate the 1980-2021 boom. Instead, everything has turned around. Stocks and bonds go down... and the feds reinforce the new Primary Trend with higher interest rates and outsized deficits. And just as their policies resulted in extreme wealth (at least for some) during the last boom, their new policies are now likely to bring extreme poverty (perhaps for many) as the new Primary Trend runs its course.

Crazy Janet: But federal interference doesn’t stop with just wrongheaded monetary and fiscal policies. In today’s episode of Bonner Private Research we look at trade policies. Check this out from the Irish Independent: "Biden calls for tariffs on Chinese steel." "The US president has called for a tripling of American tariffs on steel imported from China... in order to protect producers from a flood of cheap imports. His announcement was made in an address to steelworkers in the battleground state of Pennsylvania..likely to play a pivotal role in deciding November’s election."

And this from CNN: "House lawmakers have once again passed legislation that could lead to a nationwide TikTok ban, renewing a massive threat to the company’s US operations. The move could fast-track a proposal TikTok has been fighting against for weeks. If the House’s gambit succeeds, TikTok could be forced to find a new owner or be banned from the United States entirely." Hey foreigners... got a new product? Lower prices? Better technology? Well... keep it to yourselves!

Mr. Biden’s announcement comes on the heels of his Treasury Secretary’s visit to China the week before. Ms. Yellen complained about ‘overcapacity’ in China. The point was almost immediately echoed by Lael Brainard, formerly with the Fed, now with the White House. She said the administration was protecting the nation from “unfair exports” coming from “China’s industrial overcapacity.” We have no idea what an ‘unfair export’ is. It hardly matters, since consumers can decide for themselves whose products to boycott and whose to purchase. But Biden’s opponent, Donald Trump, is fully onboard with tariffs too. CNN:

When former President Donald Trump was in the White House, he proudly referred to himself as a “TariffMan” - and he has no intention of retiring that self-proclaimed title if reelected. Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of imposing a 10% tariff on every good coming into the US, as well as a tariff upward of 60% all Chinese imports if he regains the presidency…During a campaign rally, he promised a “100% tariff” on cars made outside the US and warned of a “bloodbath” for the American auto industry if he doesn’t get reelected.

Mr. Biden (81 years old) panders to voters in Pennsylvania. Mr. Trump (soon to be 78) actually seems to believe that restraining trade would make Americans better off. There’s a life cycle pattern that makes sense of it. When a nation is young and vigorous, it is eager to compete. When it is old and tired, it grows fearful. Every sidewalk is covered in ice. Some nations are military threats. Others challenge its commercial success. Many have strange new ideas, innovative new weapons and new ways of doing things. Everyday brings something new; if only we could stop tomorrow!

Pineapples in Maine: Since the days of Adam Smith it has been obvious that trade is the key to economic success. What would happen if Alabama put a 100% tariff on cars imported from Michigan? Suppose you live in Maine and decide not to eat pineapples grown out-of-state? What if competition in surgery were banned... so that rather than seek out the best surgeon for your brain operation... from, say, the Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins... you had to rely on the local vet?

Material progress comes from technology and the division of labor. The bricklayer can lay bricks better than the baker. The baker, on the other hand, knows how to make a pain au raisin. They exchange output. Both are better off.

In primitive societies, people have to do everything for themselves. They hunt their own food. They build their own shelters and stitch their own clothes. In a rich society, they specialize. The typical person today sits in front of a computer... calls a physiotherapist to help straighten his back and orders food via DoorDash. He neither plants nor hunts. But he eats anyway. He uses a computer, but has no idea how it works. He takes a hot shower and drives a car - God forbid that they don’t work. His whole standard of living relies on a vast network of specialized knowledge, from all over the world. Anything the feds do to interfere with these voluntary exchanges will make people poorer. But isn’t that the point?

Adam Smith popularized the idea that, looking out for themselves, people actually made things better for others. It was as if they were guided by a ‘hidden hand.’ Is it possible that the feds are also guided by a ‘hidden hand?’ In trying to make things better for themselves, they invariably make them worse for everyone else. And by trying to force the markets to do their bidding, they inevitably exaggerate the trends they were trying to stop. Tomorrow, we’ll look at America’s biggest competitor... China. Stay tuned."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Jim Kunstler, "The Bad Faith Olympics"

"The Bad Faith Olympics"

by Jim Kunstler

“This is the weirdest era in human history. By far. Nothing else even comes close. Billionaires trying to kill everyone. Civil society unable to form a coherent thought. Institutions lie in smoldering ruins. Poisons handed out like candy. We are Neanderthals with iPhones.” 

- Dr. Toby Rogers

"Did it warm your heart to see all those blue and yellow Ukrainian flags waved by our elected officials in Congress Saturday night with the passage of the $60-plus-billion aid bill to the Palookaville of Europe? You realize, don’t you, that the tiny fraction of that hypothetical “money” - from our country’s empty treasury - that ever reaches Ukraine will rebound on the instant into Mr. Zelensky’s Cayman Islands bank account. The rest of the dough enters the recursive shell-game between US weapons-makers and the very hometown folks in Congress waving those blue and yellow flags, who will receive great greasy gobs of fresh “campaign donations” from the grateful bomb and missile producers. No wonder they’re cheering.

What the $60-plus-billion won’t do is provide any fresh arms and equipment to Ukraine’s sad-sack army soon enough to prevent Russia from bringing this cruel, stupid, and unnecessary war, which we started, to a close. Yes, we started it, not Russia, in 2014 with our Intel blob overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych in the so-called “Maidan Revolution of Dignity” (what Wikipedia calls it). And for what reason? To jam Ukraine into NATO as a prelude to “weakening” Russia sufficient to bust it up and gain control over Russian oil, ores, and grain.

Yes, that was actually the neocon’s game, equal parts megalomania and hubris, a fiasco as strategically ill-fated as Hitler’s push to gain control of Russia’s oil fields via Stalingrad in 1942-3. With failure and humiliation looming in Ukraine, the blob’s objective for now, in theory, is the vain hope of prolonging the hostilities just long enough to get its hologram president, “Joe Biden” re-elected, so that said blob can continue its amoebic digestion of what’s left uneaten by it in our sore-beset republic. You’ve got to wonder, of course, what this blob thinks will remain to rule over when it’s done gobbling up everything and jailing everyone from sea to shining sea who objects.

You tell me what conceivable way Ukraine can prevail in this proxy war now without just tripping off the civilization-ending nuke exchange? America does not have enough tactical missiles and artillery shells at hand to send over there. What we did have is gone. NATO never had much to begin with. Ukraine has run out of available cannon-fodder to conscript from its dwindling population. Despite Mr. Macron’s recent bluster, NATO can’t raise a credible army, or even agree on which country would send what. Nobody is riding to the rescue. Instead, Russia is fortifying its home-grown armaments industry and its military while systematically turning off the electricity all over Ukraine by blowing up the power stations. Very soon, Ukraine will be reduced to medieval living conditions - no lights, no phones, no Internet, no shopping, no ability to conduct modern warfare. End...of...story.

This is apt to play out much faster than America’s blob-controlled news media will be able to lie about. I’d guess it can be functionally over before mid-summer. The result will be yet another humiliation on the “Joe Biden” scorecard. When it’s over, you can be sure the Russians will abstain from an end-zone dance so as not to provoke America’s genius-losers into some final petty grand act of requital. Russia will just soberly declare what is self-evident: that for centuries Ukraine has been in its sphere-of-influence, as Mexico is in ours, and that they have reestablished the natural order of things in that corner of the world.

After that, America and the rest of Western Civ can get on with the collapse of their financial system and very likely a period of profound political and economic chaos in which governments fall, nations change boundaries and shapes, and their populations suffer dramatically from an imploded standard of living. That process may actually play out somewhat slower than the end of the Ukraine war over the coming years. It will look like a combined game of musical chairs and hot potato, with the opportunities to get a seat steadily fading, and the losers left holding things they can’t handle.

In the meantime, our country - remember it, the USA, when it had its once-enviable mojo working? - is busy being insane and finding sixty ways to Sunday to commit suicide. How do you suppose the Democratic Party will actually pretend to put up “Joe Biden” for re-election when the Ukraine failure is completed? Answer: they can’t. This dumbshow of the old gaffer hiding at his beach house and avoiding direct engagement with reality is also drawing to a close. Instead of calling “a lid” on “JB’s” activities, some humid morning in the swamp his handlers will call in “a medical alert” instead, and that will be the last we see of that dreadful apparition.

It’s also looking more and more as though the Republican Party faces its own civil war, especially after Speaker Mike Johnson’s perplexing flipperooski on the Ukraine aid vote. You recall, just weeks ago he said no dice to such a deal without a stop to the invasion coming across our Mexican border. Then, the intel blob boys lured him into a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) where they showed him...something! Everyone’s dying to know what. A secret signed agreement making Ukraine our 51st State? Photographs of Mike engaged in unwholesome recreations with Gawd knows who or what? Or did they just have a little talk with him about how stuff is supposed to work? Whatever it was has made Mike Johnson untenable in his position. And he has explained nothing. He’s got to go.

At the other end of all that stands - or, rather, sits at a defense table - Donald Trump, the seemingly inevitable leader of a party seeking to cough him up like a hairball stuck in its craw. And yet, every week that passes, the various lawfare traps set up to snare him look more amateurish and gauche - while the Golden Golem of Greatness somehow manages to power through all that adversity. A big faction of the party he leads is in on that nefarious game. The wild card is the increasingly inflamed mood of the American people, in whose name the game is supposedly being played. With absolutely everyone lying to them about everything, it’s turned into some kind of bad faith olympics."

- https://kunstler.com/

"US Congress Betrays America While Waving Ukrainian Flags"

"US Congress Betrays America While Waving Ukrainian Flags"

by Mike Adams

"Every single person I've heard from over the weekend feels completely betrayed by the U.S. Congress approving another 95 billion for Ukraine and Israel - while waving Ukrainian flags on the floor of the House - while approving ZERO funding for securing the U.S. border. It's the ultimate insult, and it proves that we've lost America to a cabal of special interest gold-digging whores who claim to be our "representatives" in Washington D.C. Full details in today's Brighteon Broadcast News, plus a shocking interview with Miguel Casas about human trafficking across the wide open border." Full broadcast and interview here: 

- https://www.brighteon.com/

o

George Galloway MP, 4/22/24

"Colonel Douglas Macgregor: 

Washington Insiders Now Call It Epstein Island Large"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot 4/22/24"

"Economic Market Snapshot 4/22/24"

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Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

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"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 

You and I are not in the Big Club."

- George Carlin

o

Market Data Center, Live Updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data 

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- https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/

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Comprehensive, essential truth.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

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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."

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- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...

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And now... The End Game...

o

"War, What's It Good For?"

"War, What's It Good For?"

by Jim Quinn

"We have only seen a handful of movies in a theater over the last decade. Ever since the kids grew up, there hasn’t been a reason to spend too much for too little. Regal Cinemas in Oaks was the place to go in the old days. It had 24 theaters and was always packed. You could never get a parking spot close to the venue. The restaurant near the theater always had a line and you usually had to wait 30 minutes to get a seat.

We decided to go and see Civil War on Friday night, and boy times have changed. Regal Cinemas went bankrupt a few years ago after Covid, and the theater was taken over by some local businessmen. They now play four or five movies, but $10 per ticket is pretty reasonable compared to the chains. Instead of hundreds of cars in the parking lot, there were about 30 cars. We expected a long wait time at the PJ Whelihans, but there were dozens of seats at the bar and booths.

When we ventured over to the cinema, there was no one checking that we had tickets, and it was like a ghost town. A Friday night at the movies a decade ago was a big deal. The place would have been bustling. I can’t see this place making it over the long haul. There were eight people there to see Civil War. The previews were so loud, we thought we were going to need ear plugs. The sound became more reasonable once the movie started.

I had read a few reviews of Civil War and they leaned negative, for a myriad of reasons. Some people seemed disappointed and angry that the director did not pick a side, or even make a single political statement. My interest in this movie stemmed from the snippet shown in previews, where a guy holding some journalists at gunpoint asks them who they are, they respond “Americans”, and he asks them:

I think that is a profound question, as this country has already split into at least two enemy camps, with the leftists already fighting the war using any means necessary. Laws and morality no longer matter during this time of coming conflict. Knowing we are in the back end of this Fourth Turning, there is a high likelihood of civil and/or global war in the next few years. Whenever I point this out, many scorn the possibility of civil war. Some think keyboard warriors will never actually have the guts to get into a shooting war with the government and/ or leftist fanatics.

I was hoping the movie would provide some thought provoking fodder giving me an inkling of what might be on the near term horizon. The movie is more about the journalist characters traveling from NYC to Washington DC in order to get an interview with the embattled president. There was no background regarding what started the civil war, who were the good guys, and whether the entire country was involved. The entire movie took place in the eastern U.S. My observations are as follows:

• The conflict was between the Western Forces versus the existing U.S. government forces. The Western Forces constituted Texas and California, with Florida leaning in their direction. It was not clear whether all the states chose a side. Since both sides had high tech military weapons, the assumption is the U.S. military split its allegiance. That means rogue generals did what southern generals did in 1860.

• For most of the movie, you can’t tell who is fighting who. That seems realistic in a civil war scenario. The scene where the journalists are asked “What kind of American are you?” captures how confusing and chaotic it would be. I don’t think the guy dressed in military garb is on either side. They were dumping bodies into a hole. Without anyone to enforce laws, warlords will rise up and execute retribution on locals they consider enemies. Every local community will become a battleground. Neighbors versus neighbors, families versus families. With 300 million guns, there will be blood.

• Two characters let it be known that their parents have stayed on their farms in Missouri and Colorado, pretending their is no civil war. They seemed dismayed that they wouldn’t choose sides. That made me wonder whether those who choose to not participate in the coming civil war will be able to work their farms in peace. Since modern society will come to a grinding halt, with shortages of fuel and food, I’m afraid small farmers will come under attack by the hungry masses. It will be essential for small communities of like minded folk to form militias to protect their farms and communities.

• We all know our existing uni-party government is corrupt, evil and hates us. Whether we call it the Deep State, corrupt oligarchy, or corporate fascist totalitarians, it is clear they are our enemy. They are continuing to implement their Great Reset/Great Taking scheme, and will only be stopped through violent means. This movie did not take sides, but did imply the existing government will be defeated. The question is who or what takes their place. Sadly, it is unlikely that a republic will be reborn from the ashes of this empire of debt, delusion and decay.

• Civil War was a sobering and depressing movie. I think it is a foreshadowing of what lies ahead. Innocent people will die. Senseless slaughter will be the norm. The boundaries between good and evil will blur. Right and wrong will become meaningless. It will be unclear who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. Conflict is upon us. Will the cessation of our Constitution before the upcoming election be the spark that starts this civil war? Where and when will our Fort Sumter moment happen? I don’t know, but I fear it is close upon us."

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time 

with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.” 

– Thomas Jefferson in a letter to John Adams

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

Hat tip to Jim Quinn and 

The Burning Platform for this material.

"Life in the City of Zombies, Kensington, Philadelphia"

Full screen recommended, if you can stomach it.

"Life in the City of Zombies, 

Kensington, Philadelphia"

Full screen recommended, if you can stomach it.

"This Is America!"

o

Meanwhile...no aid for America.

"House Approves $95 Billion Aid Bill

 for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan"

If I said what I really think and feel about this, and them, 

they'd delete this blog in a heartbeat...

- CP

Greg Hunter, "UN Plans Tyrannical Future for You"

"UN Plans Tyrannical Future for You"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular book “Deep State” and the new best-selling book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death,” says the UN’s quest for total tyrannical control of your life is coming sooner than you could imagine. Newman explains, “The bigger story here that people are not paying attention to is the UN is coming together in September and they are having ‘The Summit of the Future.’ They are telling us they are going to bring out radical drastic reforms in the structure of the UN and the power of the UN. Think of it as the biggest power grab ever at the global level. The Secretary General of the UN (António Guterres) has put out briefs where he is calling for the UN to be the one world global dictatorship with him at the helm. In emergencies, the UN would have all power in emergencies and have all power to oversee emergency response. They say the crisis could be a climate crisis, an economic crisis, environmental crisis, pandemic crisis, black swan crisis or maybe something from outer space. So, basically, anything could be a crisis, and when the Secretary General declares a crisis, all power and authority would go to the UN. This is like a blank check on the wealth and liberty on every person on the planet, and this is coming soon. It is eminent. This is coming in September at the UN, and it is a power grab of historic proportions. They know their time is short, and they are going for the big enchilada here. This is really a summit for a tyrannical future. They want control of every aspect of your life.”

If you think the “depopulation” or murder program by the Deep State is some sort of conspiracy theory or myth, think again. Newman says, “One of the interesting things about going to the UN conferences is they are totally open and totally transparent about the fact that they think there are way too many of us on this planet. We are taking up their space and consuming their resources. They say this openly. They say there are way too many people having way too many babies, and we have to drastically cut back on the number of people on the planet. They have a whole agency dedicated to this called the UN Population Fund.”

One sure fire way to kill a lot of people in a short amount of time is war. Newman says, “They have understood, the globalists, the Deep State, the evil doers and the sick cabal, have understood for a very long time that war was the best mechanism for bringing about their totalitarian one world government. This is not speculation on my part. This is what they say. Their game plan is war, famine, energy crisis and economic crisis. These are all tools and catalysts for accelerating this agenda. If millions of people die in a third world war, and it does not matter if it is Iran and Israel, or China and Tiawan, or Ukraine and Russia, it really does not matter, they want millions and millions of people dead so people will give up their attachment to the nation state, self-government and individual liberty and give up anything, money or freedom, anything to make it stop.”

Don’t lose hope because Newman also talks about all the things you can do to not comply with tyranny. Newman also points out what state and local governments can do and are doing to resist this UN total control of everything. Newman says, “We are at war, and everyone needs to put on the full armor of God.” There is much more in the 40-minute interview.

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with hard-hitting journalist Alex Newman, founder of LibertySentinel.org and author of the runaway best-selling new book called “Indoctrinating Our Children to Death.” 

- https://rumble.com/

Musical Interlude: Spirit Tribe Awakening, "Raise Positive Vibration"

Full screen recommended.

Spirit Tribe Awakening, "Raise Positive Vibration"

"Peaceful, empowering and soothing music and nature to nurture your mind, body, and soul, supporting and empowering you on your life journey. 528Hz positive energy healing music with 417Hz Solfeggio frequency. These frequencies have a specific healing effect on your subconscious mind." Headphones recommended, not required. Be kind to yourself, savor this extraordinarily beautiful video... 

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Namibia has some of the darkest nights visible from any continent. It is therefore home to some of the more spectacular skyscapes, a few of which have been captured in the below time-lapse video. We recommend watching this video at FULL SCREEN (1080p), with audio on. The night sky of Namibia is one of the best in the world, about the same quality of the deserts of Chile and Australia.

Full screen recommended. 

Visible at the movie start are unusual quiver trees perched before a deep starfield highlighted by the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. This bright band of stars and gas appears to pivot around the celestial south pole as our Earth rotates. The remains of camel thorn trees are then seen against a sky that includes a fuzzy patch on the far right that is the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. A bright sunlight-reflecting satellite passes quickly overhead. Quiver trees appear again, now showing their unusual trunks, while the Small Magellanic Cloud becomes clearly visible in the background. Artificial lights illuminate a mist that surround camel thorn trees in Deadvlei. In the final sequence, natural Namibian stone arches are captured against the advancing shadows of the setting moon. This video incorporates over 16,000 images shot over two years, and won top honors among the 2012 Travel Photographer of the Year awards.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130204.html

Chet Raymo, “Telling Stories”

“Telling Stories”

by Chet Raymo

"When the pulse of the first day carried it to the rim of night, First Woman said to First Man, "The people need to know the laws. To help them we must write the laws for all to see"... And so she began, slowly, first one and then the next, placing her jewels across the dome of night, carefully designing her pattern so all could read it. But Coyote grew bored watching First Woman carefully arranging the stars in the sky: Impatiently he gathered two corners of First Woman's blanket, and before she could stop him he flung the remaining stars out into the night, spilling them in wild disarray, shattering First Woman's careful patterns."

This episode from the Navajo creation story of is from "How the Stars Fell Into the Sky", a children's book by Jerrie Oughton. It is a lovely story, full of ancient wisdom. For centuries, Navajo children heard the story at an elder's knee. The story was taken literally, or at least accepted with a willing suspension of disbelief. I heard a similar creation story in my youth - of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Serpent. I accepted the story with a willing suspension of disbelief.

All cultures, everywhere on Earth, have stories, passed down in scriptures, traditions or tribal myths, that answer the questions: Where did the world come from? What is our place in it? What is the source of order and disorder? What will be the fate of the world? Of ourselves? No people can live without a community story. The problem comes when the community story becomes so disconnected from empirical experience that it no longer commands a suspension of disbelief. For many of us in the West, that is the case with the creation stories that have undergirded Western civilization.

Today, a New Story exists for those who choose to accept it. It is the product of thousands of years of human curiosity, observation, experimentation, and creativity. It is an evolving story, not yet finished. Perhaps it will never be finished. It is a story that begins with an explosion from a seed of infinite energy. The seed expands and cools. Particles form, then atoms of hydrogen and helium. Stars and galaxies coalesce from swirling gas. Stars burn and explode, forging heavy elements - carbon, nitrogen, oxygen - and hurling them into space. New stars are born, with planets made of heavy elements.

On one planet near a typical star in a typical galaxy life appears in the form of microscopic self-replicating, carbon-based ensembles of atoms. Life evolves, over billions of years, resulting in ever more complex organisms. Continents move. Seas rise and fall. The atmosphere changes. Millions of species of life appear and become extinct. Others adapt, survive, and spill out progeny. At last, consciousness appears. One of the millions of species on the planet looks into the night sky and wonders what it means. Feels the spark of love, tenderness, responsibility. Makes up stories - of First Woman and Coyote, of Adam, Eve and the Serpent - eventually making up the New Story. The New Story places us squarely in a cosmic unfolding of space and time, and teaches our biological affinity to all humanity. We are inextricably related to all of life, to the planet itself, and even to the lives of stars.

It has been the task of many of us gathered here on this cyber porch to help wed the New Story to the spiritual quest, to create what Thomas Berry calls an "integral story." In his introduction to Kathleen Deignan's collection of Thomas Merton's nature writing, Berry writes: "Today, in the opening years of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves in a critical moment when the religious traditions need to awaken again to the natural world as the primary manifestation of the divine to human intelligence. The very nature and purpose of the human is to experience this intimate presence that comes to us through natural phenomena. Such is the purpose of having eyes and ears and feeling sensitivity, and all our other senses. We have no inner spiritual development without outer experience. Immediately, when we see or experience any natural phenomenon, when we see a flower, a butterfly, a tree, when we feel the evening breeze flow over us or wade in a stream of clear water, our natural response is immediate, intuitive, transforming, ecstatic. Everywhere we find ourselves invaded by the world of the sacred."

Berry reminds us that we will neither love nor save what we do not experience as sacred. The older creation stories locate the source of the sacred outside of the creation. The New Story, the scientific story of creation, provides unique opportunities to experience the creation itself as holy and good.

We should treasure the ancient stories for the wisdom and values they teach us. We can praise the creation in whatever poetic languages and rituals our traditional cultures have taught us. But only the New Story has the global authority to help us navigate the future. Of all the stories, it is certainly the truest. It is the only story whose feet have been held to the fire of exacting empirical experience.”

- http://www.sciencemusings.com/

"It's Just...Life"

“Bad things don’t happen to people because they deserve for them to happen. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s just… life. And no matter who we are, we have to take the hand we’re dealt, crappy though it may be, and try our very best to move forward anyway, to love anyway, to have hope anyway… to have faith that there’s a purpose to the journey we’re on.”

- Mia Sheridan

"A Lot Of People..."

"When science discovers the center of the universe

a lot of people will be disappointed to find they are not."

- Bernard Baily

“The Loss Of Dignity”

“The Loss Of Dignity”

by The Zman

“If you step back and think about it, the normal man can probably list a dozen things he cannot say in public that he grew up hearing on television, usually as jokes. Then the jokes were no longer welcome in polite company and soon they were deemed “not funny” by the sorts of people who worry about such things. The same was true of simple observations about the world. Somehow noticing the obvious became impolite, then it became taboo and finally prohibited.

The reverse is true as well. Middle-aged men can probably think of a dozen things that were unimaginable or unheard of, which are now fully normal. Of course, normal is one of those things that is now prohibited. It implies that something can be abnormal or weird and that itself is forbidden. The proliferation of novel identities and activities that demand to be treated with dignity and respect is a function of the old restraints having been eliminated. When everything is possible you get everything.

The strange thing about all of this is there is seemingly no point to it. The proliferation of new taboos was not in response to some harm being done. In most cases, the taboos are about observable reality. The people turning up in the public square with novel identities or activities demanding respect did not exist very long ago. If they did, not one was curious enough to look into it. The public was happy to ignore people into unusual activities, as long as they kept it to themselves.

Of course, none of what we generally call political correctness is intended to be uplifting or inspirational. The commissars of public morality like to pretend it is inspiring, but that’s just a way to entertain themselves. These new identity groups are not demanding the rest of us seek some higher plane of existence or challenge our limitations. In fact, it is always in the opposite directions. It’s a demand to lower standards and give up on our quaint notions of self-respect and human dignity.

In the "Demon In Democracy", Polish academic Ryszard Legutko observed that liberal democracy had abandoned the concept of dignity. This is the obligation to behave in a certain way, as determined by your position in society. Dignity was earned by acting in accordance with the high standards of the community. In turn, this behavior was rewarded with greater privilege and responsibility. Failure to live up to one’s duties would result in the loss of dignity, along with the status it conferred.

Instead, modern liberal democracy awards dignity by default. We are supposed to respect all choices and all behaviors as being equal. There are no standards against which to measure human behavior, other than the standard of absolute, unconditional acceptance. As a result, the most inventively degenerate and base activities spring from the culture, almost like a test of the community’s tolerance. Instead of looking up to the heavens for inspiration, liberal democracies look down in the gutter.

Dignity comes from maintaining one’s obligations to his position in the social order, but that requires a fidelity to a social order. It also requires a connection to the rest of the people in the society. In a world of deracinated individuals focused solely on getting as much as they can in order to maximize pleasure, a sense of commitment to the community is not possible. Democracy assumes we are all equal, therefore we have no duty to one another as duty requires a hierarchical relationship.

In the absence of a vertical set of reciprocal relationships, we get this weird lattice work of horizontal relationships, elevating the profane and vulgar, while pulling down the noble and honorable. The public culture is about minimizing and degrading those who participate in the public culture. In turn, the public culture attracts only those who cannot be shamed or embarrassed. The great joy of public culture is to see those who aspire to more get torn down as the crowd roars at their demise.

The puzzle is why this is a feature of liberal democracy. Ryszard Legutko places the blame on Protestantism. Their emphasis on original sin and man’s natural limitations minimized man’s role in the world. This focus on man’s wretchedness was useful in channeling our urge to labor and create into useful activities, thus generating great prosperity, but it left us with a minimalist view of human accomplishment. We are not worthy to aspire to anything more than the base and degraded.

It is certainly true that the restraints of Christianity limited the sorts of behavior that are common today, but he may be putting the cart before the horse. The emergence of Protestantism in northern Europe was as much a result of the people and their nature as anything else. Put more simply, the Protestant work ethic existed before there was such a thing as a Protestant. The desire to work and delay gratification evolved over many generations out of environmental necessity.

Still, culture is an important part of man’s environment and environmental factors shape our evolution. It is not unreasonable to say that the evolution of Protestant ethics magnified and structured naturally occurring instincts among the people. With the collapse of Christianity as a social force in the West, the natural defense to degeneracy and vulgarity has collapsed with it. As a result, great plenty is the fuel for a small cohort of deviants to overrun the culture of liberal democracies.

Even so, there does seem to be something else. Liberal democracy has not produced great art or great architecture. The Greeks and Romans left us great things that still inspire the imagination of the man who happens to gaze upon them. The castles and cathedrals of the medieval period still awe us. The great flourishing of liberal democracy in the 20th century gave us Brutalism and dribbles of pain on canvas. The new century promises us primitives exposing themselves on the internet.

There is something about the liberal democratic order that seeks to strip us of our dignity and self-respect. Look at what happened in the former Eastern Bloc countries after communism. Exposed to the narcotic of liberalism they immediately acquired the same cultural patterns. Fertility collapsed. Religion collapsed. Marriage and family formation collapsed. These suddenly free societies got the Western disease as soon as they were exposed to western liberal democracy.

The reaction we see today is not due to these societies being behind the times, but due to seeing the ugly face of liberal democracy. It is much like the reaction to the proliferation of recreational drugs in the 1970’s. At first, it seemed harmless, but then people realized the horror of unrestrained self-indulgence. That’s what we see in the former Eastern Bloc. Their leaders still retain some of the old sense of things and are trying to save their people from the dungeon of modernity.

That still leaves us with the unanswered question. What is it about liberal democracy that seems to lead to this loss of dignity? It is possible that such a fabulously efficient system for producing wealth is a tool mankind is not yet equipped to handle without killing ourselves. Maybe we are just not built for anything but scarcity. Want gives us purpose and without it, we lose our reason to exist. Either way, without dignity, we cannot defend ourselves and the results are inevitable.”

- http://thezman.com/wordpress/

Jeremiah Babe, "Things Are Accelerating Out Of Control, Time Is Running Out!"

Jeremiah Babe, 4/21/24

"Things Are Accelerating Out Of Control,

 Time Is Running Out!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

West Liberty, Kentucky, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"Know What's Weird?"

"Know what's weird? Day by day, nothing seems to change,

but pretty soon... everything's different."

- Calvin, from "Calvin and Hobbes"

The Poet: Maya Angelou, “Alone”

“Alone”

“Lying, thinking

Last night

How to find my soul a home,

Where water is not thirsty

And bread loaf is not stone.

I came up with one thing

And I don’t believe I’m wrong,

That nobody,

But nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires

With money they can’t use,

Their wives run round like banshees,

Their children sing the blues.

They’ve got expensive doctors

To cure their hearts of stone,

But nobody,

No, nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,

Nobody, but nobody

Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely

I’ll tell you what I know…

Storm clouds are gathering,

The wind is gonna blow.

The race of man is suffering,

And I can hear the moan,

‘Cause nobody,

But nobody,

Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone,

Nobody, but nobody,

Can make it out here alone.”

- Maya Angelou

"The West That Was", Part 1

Full screen recommended.

"13 Things from the 1950s 

Kids Today Will Never Understand!"

o

Full screen recommended.

"1950s USA, Real Street Scenes of Vintage America Colorized"

"The West That Was"

by Paul Rosenberg

"A great tragedy of our era is that young people have no feeling of what Western civilization was like. In the government owned and operated schools where they sat for years, they were presented with a litany of the West’s failures, most of them exaggerated, or even imagined. In this post, and in several that will follow, I’ll be ignoring anti-Western propaganda. To obsess on flaws is dishonest and destructive. The fact that the people of the West have been conditioned to require them is not something I’ll indulge. All civilizations have had their failures, and our Western civilization stands out, not as the worst, but as the least bad.

My goal for this series of articles is to give you a deep sense of Western civilization and the cultural assumptions that informed it. I’ll be careful to stay with the truth of each era, but what I want is for you to understand the West that was, down to your bones. That’s a tall order, of course, especially for short posts, but that’s what I’m going for. And to get the best start possible, I’ll begin in my own time, describing the America of about 1960. To be precise, I’m probably best describing the years 1953-1963; from the end of the Korean war to the assassination of John Kennedy.

What It Was Like: The first thing to understand about this era is that it was still a time of community. People felt a kinship with their neighbors. They looked out for one another. If something went wrong in your home, you went immediately to your neighbors for help. If your car broke down far from home, you went to the nearest house, knocked on their door and asked if you could use their telephone to call for help. (And were as likely as not to have someone pull out a toolbox and take a look at the car for you.) Crime wasn’t that much less in this era, but people still trusted one another, partly of necessity and partly because we weren’t inundated with fear every waking moment.

Doctors made house calls on their way home. (I vividly remember my brother being examined on our dining room table.) If you had children, the neighbors – even the ones you argued with – would bring over some milk when there was a heavy snow and you couldn’t get to the store. This was standard in more or less every neighborhood. People did stupid and thoughtless things, of course, but we also relied upon one another. We weren’t atomized as people are now.

Back in this era, moms would leave their kids outside in their strollers (prams) while they went into stores. I knew quite a few women who did precisely this. I asked one of them about it long after and she told me this:

Oh, sure. We’d meet at a local restaurant. They gave us a table at the window and we’d park our kids right in front. If a kid needed attention, one of us – not necessarily that one’s mother – would go out, take care of him, then come back in. We all did that then.

And back before air conditioning (which came into homes just after this era), people slept outside on hot nights. In my home town of Chicago, hundreds of families would grab sheets and pillows, head to the lake (it was cooler there) and sleep on the sand.

Moreover, in places like Chicago (though definitely less so in the south or in occasional outbursts), daily race relations tended to be non-hostile. In my early experience, Negros (as they were then called) carried themselves with dignity rather than anger. Certainly I grew up in a nice area and I was sheltered when very young, but I rode the buses and trains by myself at a young age (it would probably be called child abuse now), and observed hundreds or thousands of random people, including at large events.

Another of my observations was that Jews and Blacks felt closer to one another. Both had dark histories of abuse and they felt a kinship. Typically the Jews were bosses and Blacks/Negros employees, but they were loyal to each other. I knew the son of one Black man whose Jewish employers continued to send him paychecks for many years after he became too old to work. That type of loyalty wasn’t terribly uncommon at the time.

Divorce was considerably less common in this era, largely because of a different set of incentives. First of all, people believed that the two-parent family was a necessary model, and those expectations (which could be benevolent or otherwise) drove couples to work harder at staying together. Secondly, there were few if any welfare programs that gave a mother more money if she was single. As a result, the nonmarital birth rate was far lower than it is today, and for all ethnicities.

Politics was less vile in this era. Certainly there was corruption and police brutality – those things are eternal where the few rule the many – but politicians and reporters were expected to do their jobs defensibly. Politicians were frequently scrutinized and public affairs were examined at length, rather than in five second sound bites. People read books on a regular basis. Politics had not yet overcome society.

College was where you went if you wanted to learn how to do important things. It wasn’t a place to get drunk or to get a work permit for a high status job. K-12 schools were more serious places of learning too (with zero politics), but I should add that there was plenty of bullying and a somewhat higher tolerance for brutality among the students.

Another thing that seems to have made a difference was that we felt we had something to prove. This was the era of the Cold War, and being better than the Soviets mattered to people. As a result, they defended their beliefs, worked to live up to them, and treated others who were likewise interested in the goodness of “the American way” with loyalty and respect.

We had movies and TV, of course, but the programming was far more family friendly. Not because of laws, but because the viewers had a strong preferences regarding what was appropriate, sometimes enforced with boycotts of advertisers. In other words, people cared about their culture and wanted to keep it strong. They believed in their ways.

This last point, I suppose, was the key to this era: People still believed in their ways. That is, they still thought the civilization of Abraham, Jesus, Raphael, Bernini, Da Vinci, Newton, Mozart, Locke, Jefferson, Brahms, Edison, Bell and the Wright brothers was a blessing to the world.

As in all generations, these people had their shortcomings, and were easily abused by those who claimed to be protectors of their civilization, but they still believed in it, and acted like they believed in it. These people most certainly understood that there was injustice in the world (they had just gone through World War II), and many of them found meaning in fighting injustice. There was plenty of complaining, but most of the complainers were trying to improve Western civilization, not to wipe it away as a curse.

In short, while all the usual human stupidities were present at this time, most people were also committed to a higher standard than their stupidities. And that not only minimized the damage they caused, but maintained an inter-personal environment that was less stressed, more dignified, more reliable, more forgiving, sometimes warmer, and far less suspicious than our present environment."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

Mary Hopkin, "Those Were the Days"

"How It Really Is"

Dan, I Allegedly, "How High-End Retailers Steal Your Money"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 4/21/24

"How High-End Retailers Steal Your Money"

"One Retailer left customers high and dry with unfulfilled orders totaling a staggering $33 million! Discover the dark side of luxury shopping and massive chargebacks that are shaking the industry. We break down the alarming practices that led to massive losses for both consumers and credit card companies, focusing on how American Express is now handling the fallout. If you’ve ever felt cheated by a high-end purchase, you're not alone. We dive deep into the world of luxury fraud and what it means for your wallet."

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- https://www.youtube.com/

"World War III Prelude Alert!"

Canadian Prepper, 4/21/24

"Alert! F-35 Nuclear 'Leak'; Israel E.M.P. Plan For Iran; 

USA Funds WW3; 'Secret' Weapon Will Be Used"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Scott Ritter, 4/21/24

"Iran Mocks Israel; Fighting On 4 Fronts

 But Defeat May Come At Home; Role of Russia/US"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Ray McGovern, 4/21/24

"Was Israel Going to Nuke Iran as 

Pepe Escobar's Source Claims?"

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- https://www.youtube.com/