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Childhood’s End

     America has become a malfunctioning pageant without feasible roles that children can realistically project themselves into….

 


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The phoniest trope in American life goes like this: We must find the cause of X so that it never happens again. Of course, it will happen again. We only pretend that the cause is a mystery. Let’s count the ways that school massacres happen.

American schools are fantastically depressing places. They are designed to look like medium security prisons and insecticide factories. They send the message: Enter here and be psychologically brutalized. They are too big, overwhelmingly alienating, ugly, devoid of visible symbolism signaling the value of being human. The interiors of the schools are designed for the convenience of janitors, hard surfaces of tile and linoleum that can be hosed down easily like the quarters of zoo animals. Children act accordingly.

The “facilities,” as we call them, are deployed in the illegible landscape of a demolition derby, separated from all the other activities of daily life, which themselves have reached a culminating state of meaninglessness: big box shopping, national chain franchise food installations, strip malls of empty storefronts, parking lot wastelands, nothing that will excite a child’s imagination with emotions other than bewilderment, anxiety, and aversion.

The “teaching” that supposedly goes on in schools is a broken remnant of preparation for an economy that no longer exists. We’re no longer a society of people who do things, but rather a society of people to whom things are done, many of them harmful, humiliating, and arbitrary. America’s demoralized teaching corps is so unhinged by their own anomie that they resort to imposing sadistic fantasies on the children in their charge.

Thus, all the inappropriate curricula around adult preoccupations with sex, such as the Drag Queen Story Hour, for which mentally ill men are invited to act-out impersonations of women-as-monsters for young people who can’t possibly be expected to make sense of the spectacle. (I suspect that even six-year-olds, hard-wired to function as successful animals in this world, understand it as some kind of affront to reality.) Otherwise, American teachers are out of ideas, and are themselves damaged by the same forces in culture that they are now asked to direct.

America has become a malfunctioning pageant without feasible roles that children can realistically project themselves into. What ten-year-old longs to become the Burger King fry-o-later boss in a brown apron and an asinine cardboard crown? Rather, they are prompted to aspire to become sports star millionaires, of which there are perhaps fewer than 5,000 positions in a land of 340-million. By age twelve, they probably comprehend the unlikelihood of that outcome, or of becoming the next Kardashian… or Spiderman. (Superheroes are supplied by the entertainment cartels to occupy the imaginative realm of children because American culture is bereft of reality-based roles worth aspiring to.)

In this tumult of cultural impoverishment, psychotic grandiosity creeps in. Be big if you can’t be anything else. Hence, one achievable role for young persons in American life is mass murderer. It is a way of becoming important, of having an effect on other people and society in general. Your name may be forgotten, but the act itself will endure in the collective memory of a people. It will be some kind of a mark in history, even better remembered, perhaps, than whoever played third-base for the Atlanta Braves in 1994… or the woman who once capered down the red carpet at the Oscars in a dress fashioned on a slaughtered swan.

The mayhem unleashed in a school shooting is just the rectified essence of the manifold derangements in our national life. Everything is out-of-whack, including our perception of what’s going on and what it means. There is almost nothing left of childhood in this land, in the way of young, unformed creatures assisted by adults who love them into a future worth being part of. We have forgotten how to be grateful for coming into this world at all, leaving us unworthy of being here. The quality of virtue, meaning that some things and some doings are recognizably better than others, was deceitfully replaced by the equity of nothing being allowed to be better than anything else. Truth and beauty have gone outlaw. Bad faith and wickedness rule, led by a Party of Chaos. So, really, what do you expect? And what do you deserve?


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James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

615 Responses to “Childhood’s End”

  1. messianicdruid May 27, 2022 at 10:00 am #

    @kbird – Have you considered the Hegelian Dialectic?

    Problem

    Reaction

    Solution

    Your demand for a solution shows where you are. Isn’t it convenient that a solution [ which *will* cause other problems ] has been provided?

    Messianic Druid — You appear to be impertinent, but your comment is so oblique, it’s hard to tell.–JHK Admin

    • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 10:06 am #

      What is depressing (actually another depressing thing) is that right away we have people demanding actions that we already know don’t solve anything.

      Background checks, we already have those.

      Even the armed security idea- school shooter can and have just waited until the kids are outside the school.

      • Penelope Dreadful May 27, 2022 at 10:09 am #

        And then come to find out, the police waited around outside in a bureaucratic stupor while the murderer shot the place up for about an hour. Then even handcuffed a man and tased a woman, if the story was true.

        • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 10:15 am #

          Obama’s remarks about George Floyd and police seemed to me to be a reminder of what can happen to police who do take action.

          If the story about it’s being a border patrol agent who finally ended the spree, that puts the announcement from the Biden administration that he’s going to issue new edicts as to what federal police are allowed to do, in a new light.

          • Penelope Dreadful May 27, 2022 at 10:32 am #

            How true. It is the optics which is important now. A white man kneeling on a black man. Plus, Chauvin’s lawyers screwed up big time by not putting him on the stand, They should have re-enacted the whole thing for the jury with the lawyer under Chauvin.

            The only thing that I fault Chauvin and the other cops for was not getting off Floyd several minutes into it, to see if he had calmed down any. But I think where Floyd was health-wise, he was about to croak whatever. Meth and fentanyl are not a healthy concoction.

          • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 10:40 am #

            Hey now! You’re talking about St. George here.

            It’s been suggested that Washington DC be renamed ‘Floydville’, and a monument depicting St. George be placed in every town square in the United States.

          • hmuller May 27, 2022 at 10:48 am #

            They say it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun, (which happened in the Texas shooting). You won’t see the MSM emphasize that part of the story.
            According to libtard thinking, we can create a society where bad people can never ever get their hands on guns. Just ask Beto.
            A more realistic approach is keep a school arsenal in a safe in the principal’s office. Armed and trained responsible adults can stop the attacker.

          • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 11:01 am #

            Not Floydville, just Floyd. Washington needs to be renamed Floyd, after the greatest man who ever lived.

          • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 11:19 am #

            OMG Jarek, people will think it’s named after a barber from Mayberry.

          • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 12:11 pm #

            Floyd Lawson – American Icon!

          • hmuller May 27, 2022 at 1:52 pm #

            Not to leave out famed psychiatrist Siegfried Floyd.

          • Daddyotis May 27, 2022 at 2:00 pm #

            Floyd the Mayberry barber was a classic archetype of gay when homosexuality was still tucked back into the closet

          • draupnir May 27, 2022 at 2:38 pm #

            Backrowheckleer, My granddaughter (23) visited his shrine. I think she left a teddy bear. The fact that Floyd was a felon, a drug addict, and a thoroughly worthless waste of space who once held a gun to the belly of a pregnant woman during a home invasion is completely irrelevant to her. =

          • Lyndy33 May 27, 2022 at 4:30 pm #

            I lived in Texas for several years. 1947-52 I remember about half the pickups had a rack by the back window which held a rifle and a shotgun rather much on display but loaded and ready. No one was shooting things up and certainly no school shootings.

        • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 10:59 am #

          Apparently they went in for five minutes, found out how well armed he was, and fled back outside to wait for the heavies to get there. Completely rational and utterly lacking in heroism. So they lied about it at the press conference.

          One mother run around to the back or side, jumped the fence, and went in and got her kids.

        • pyrrhus May 27, 2022 at 11:00 am #

          Very strange..the tranny shooter was shooting at random people outside the school for 12 minutes, mostly missing, and no responders showed up..Around here, the deputies would show up with guns drawn within 5 minutes…Then he enters the school, and the cops don’t go after him, but prevent parents from rescuing their kids, although some of the cops rescued THEIR kids..Then the shooter becomes Annie Oakley and kills 19 kids and 2 teachers with zero wounded…At that point a Border Patrol guy enters and kills him..cops still doing nothing….

          • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 11:05 am #

            Conspiracy Moment: Where they told to stand down so that the Democrats (and Republicans!) could have the sacrifice needed to move the Agenda forward?

            The Second Amendment is the only area where the real Right has been able to hold its ground to any real extent.

          • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 11:20 am #

            Some of what we hear could just be sloppy reporting.

          • bluedog May 27, 2022 at 12:04 pm #

            Lol what’s a matter with you the cops were only following the script like they were when they cut JFK down, it’s all a game with both parties involved, and it will never change until the people find a pair and change it.

          • Prospero May 27, 2022 at 12:05 pm #

            I’m not so sure about the “zero wounded” part. According to one source, “More than a dozen other people, including children and law enforcement officers, were also injured.” If this is true, there’s a chance that the death toll might increase.

          • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 12:07 pm #

            Also, the shooter ran his truck into a ditch while being pursued by police, fled on foot, and THEN stood around for 12 minutes shooting at people at a funeral home, before entering the school.

            So…. What happened to the police who were pursuing him when he ditched the truck and fled on foot? Was their squad car unable to keep up with him? Did they decide not to bother pursuing him? Would it not have been obvious that he was armed? What was it? An AR-15, I think. So it wasn’t concealed in his back pocket.

            So a kid that the police are pursuing flees on foot (towards a school), carrying a semi-automatic rifle, and the cops see no reason to go after him?

          • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 1:01 pm #

            Prospero: Interesting. No talk of wounded at all from what I’ve heard. Just the deaths. Trying to simplify the narrative to make it easier to excise awkward parts of it?

            The Sandy Hook parents are everywhere right now. If Alex Jones tries to do his thing, they’ll help organize the Uvalde parents to sue him.

          • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 8:56 pm #

            The media is playing down the tranny part — bigtime!

        • Alfred May 27, 2022 at 1:53 pm #

          Comment of the day elsewhere…

          “That’s why we need guns. The cops aren’t going to save us.”

          This is an appalling display of cowardice on the part of law enforcement. Truly shocking they stood around waiting for ‘safety protocols’ to be met.

          Safety First – You Last.

          • Sneed May 27, 2022 at 2:42 pm #

            More like “an appalling display of cowardice, incompetence and dishonesty.,” in other words a typical performance by a government agency.

          • Uncle Bob May 27, 2022 at 10:47 pm #

            Cowardice? Most likely. CYA? Most definitely. Why risk your career and the reputations of both yourself and your department by running in and engaging the murderer, when doing so could result in another summer of rioting, looting, and murders of cops? No, better to be safe and wait for the paramilitary guys to show up. (Honestly, I would’ve expected them to wait for an armored division to show up, except posse comitatus is still on the books, for now anyway.

        • Walter B May 27, 2022 at 4:57 pm #

          They are cowards Penelope controlled by a corrupt system and clearly in it for the paycheck and the pension. I know a number of officers of a number of types, and some are very committed and wanting to do what should be done, but I fear that the days of guardian angel cops like my uncles and their fellow officers are over. Standards for recruits have been lowered to bargain basement levels and the brass should drop the br and call themselves what they are, asses. Jim Comey anyone?

          We are on our own.

          • Night Owl May 28, 2022 at 6:54 pm #

            “We are on our own”

            This statement applies to many things, and this statement is why so many submit to tyranny.

            This concept has never been clearer to me than it has in the past few years.

        • Hereward the Woke May 28, 2022 at 9:14 am #

          Me, I would have whispered to the waiting cops that a frail, unarmed 71-year-old business associate of Donald Trump was in there. That would have got them in.

      • Hereward the Woke May 27, 2022 at 12:40 pm #

        The best way to ban school shootings would be to ban public schools. Some solutions are simple.

        • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 1:51 pm #

          @ Hereward:

          Yup. Been saying that for 20 years.

        • MaryQueen May 27, 2022 at 6:27 pm #

          You bet.

          Jim nailed the description of them, above.

          Just prison-like indoctrination centers.

        • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 7:50 pm #

          ‘Yup’ here as well

      • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 7:48 pm #

        This is an interesting point. I am not certain, but I’m not recalling any incidents where this occurred.

        A number of years ago I developed a presentation on wound ballistics.

        The focus, what a surprise, was on wound ballistics. I based it on the work of Martin Fackler, as he was prominent in this field, particularly in the 1980’s.

        As one example, I used the wounds sustained at a school shooting in Stockton CA.

        Without boring any reader with the particulars of wound ballistics, the Stockton shooter bypassed schools with armed security. He chose the school without armed security.

        This country has federal laws prohibiting firearms in schools.

        Certainly I am open to any comment noting how criminals obey such laws and the rate of compliance.

        Apparently, from what is known so far ( the story does need to age a bit for real facts to emerge, such as how much prior involvement was present by 3-letter agencies) the parents at this recent incident in Texas were prohibited from entry to the school while armed to rescue their children.

        Apparently the ‘law enforcement’ people are told to rely on (when seconds count, the police are only minutes away) missed the memo on prompt, decisive intervention. They prohibited the parents from attempting to rescue their children. It would have been a Felony to attempt an armed rescue of one’s child.

        Great country we’re living in.

        “Gun Control” in full view in one of it’s better moments.

    • Penelope Dreadful May 27, 2022 at 10:07 am #

      I seem to recall H.L.Mencken writing that same thing a long time ago. I will try to find it.

      • Penelope Dreadful May 27, 2022 at 10:38 am #

        This isn’t it, but it is getting close. I may have to actually pull out my Mencken Chrestomathy book and find it, but I have several home improvement projects planned for my 4-day holiday.

        ““It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume…that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.”
        ~ H. L. Mencken

        • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 11:08 am #

          If the only tool you have is a hammer, you’re going to start seeing nails everywhere. And if you see yourself as a hammer, you’re going to see others as nails to be hammered down.

          Confucius: The superior man is not an instrument.

          Or in the vernacular: Don’t be a fucking tool.

          • Paul May 28, 2022 at 10:39 am #

            And if your only tool is an AR-15 . . . ?

      • Penelope Dreadful May 27, 2022 at 11:28 am #

        OK, I found it, and I posted it down below, but I put a link in, which sent it into moderation, so that comment may be in limbo for a while. Sooo, here it is again without the links! The first quote was new to me, but it is a doozy!

        “9. As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

        and this one!

        1. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

        • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 7:53 pm #

          i read this somewhere else quite recently.

        • Paul May 28, 2022 at 10:41 am #

          Them are good ones. Re. #1: _______?; re. #2: Pox-monkeys?

        • Not_GeorgeT May 28, 2022 at 2:48 pm #

          Thanks for looking for the source and the wording, certainly fits these times

          I’m making a note so I can recall it

    • messianicdruid May 27, 2022 at 12:10 pm #

      I’m sorry please remove it.

      • messianicdruid May 27, 2022 at 1:23 pm #

        Right on both counts. Please remove everything I have posted today and ban me for a couple weeks so I will no longer be tempted to communicate with people that cannot hear. Thank you.

        Again, sorry for screwing up your fine blog.

      • Redneck Liberal May 29, 2022 at 6:08 pm #

        Am I incorrect in assuming that the “kbird” you were addressing is NOT, in fact, JHK?

  2. sanspeur May 27, 2022 at 10:03 am #

    “America has become a malfunctioning pageant without feasible roles that children can realistically project themselves into. ”

    As always you hit the mark with eloquence.

    • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 10:07 am #

      Yes. Bleak eloquence.

    • pyrrhus May 27, 2022 at 11:05 am #

      It is tragic that today’s children will never know the freedom and joy we experienced two generations ago..No helicopter parenting, no 3d world immigration, little crime, hardly any government intrusion…

      • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 1:49 pm #

        I grew up in a little town where few of the kids had ever even seen a black person. When I was in 5th grade in the late 50s–just at the beginnings of civil rights stirrings–our teacher told the class that two black women had applied for teaching jobs at our school and asked us how we would feel about having a black teacher.

        We kids were dumfounded. She might as well have asked us how we would feel about having a Martian as a teacher.

        I was probably one of the few kids in the class who had ever seen a black person, since my parents occasionally drove to downtown Kansas City. (This was about once every 5-10 years.) So I had seen one black guy at a distance out of the car window and one black woman who was an elevator operator at Jones’s.

        • Paul May 28, 2022 at 10:51 am #

          My Dad reminded me of a trip to England in 1962 when I was very young. He took us on a double-decker bus and of course we rode upstairs, right in the front row. I remember seeing a gaggle of young, dapper lads wearing Straw-boaters walking along the crowded street, but Dad reminded me that the conductor of the bus was a VERY dark-skinned East African immigrant to the U.K. Dad wondered what the reaction of his son might be upon seeing such a dark-skinned person for the first time in my short life. He observed that I had no reaction whatsoever, which was consistent with how our parents raised us. They wanted us to be fine, decent human beings. We hope we haven’t let them down too much!

    • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 11:09 am #

      A Gay Pride Parade! A caravan of despair…..

      • Hereward the Woke May 27, 2022 at 12:42 pm #

        “Gay pride”: one of the many absurd oxymorons that litter the wreckage of our cultural landscape.

        • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 3:17 pm #

          Yeah I could never figure out WTF is there to be so proud of? Pounding your buddies butt? Where is the Pride in that? Maybe I’m missing something.

          • boarwild May 27, 2022 at 5:31 pm #

            Amen to that! Never understood why making some guy’s hairy a**hole the object of affection is something to be “celebrated”

          • Hereward the Woke May 28, 2022 at 9:16 am #

            You have to give grudging admiration to their PR department. They managed to steal the rainbow, one of God’s most beautiful creations, and use it to represent anal sex.

        • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 8:19 pm #

          I’m not looking to disparage anyone, just make comment regarding how they (gay pride parades) are entertaining.

          If you’ve been a participant on the trailer/float with all the clad-in-black folks beating kettle drums and simulating BDSM behaviour among other fantasy-driven actions, it’s kind of fun to be an observer. Great show, hope you had fun. Sincerely… it’s an excise of free speech if we head into the proverbial weeds defining rights.

          I’m figuring it’s likely fun for the participants.

          People can do pretty much as they want, short of actual harm to others. Harm… It’s a wide net, I’m not going there beyond this point.

          Where my rights end and your’s begin is the age old issue which still needs prominence.

          Maybe we should try a ‘kids fun parade’ where kids just do a short parade and have some fun. They do kid stuff. Just being a child having child fun, another wide net.

          My sense is the kids aren’t having as much fun these days.

          Harmless mischief is on the table, like raiding the refrigerator for ice cream or cake, or getting caught with a hand in the cookie jar.

          Where has childhood gone?

          • Paul May 28, 2022 at 10:52 am #

            Where has childhood gone? It’s buried in an imaginary hole in Minecraft.

    • Alfred May 27, 2022 at 2:00 pm #

      I agree, and with a thoughtful thread to the how these things fester and blow. We got a huge problem with purposeless people.

      Wait… what? Isn’t that what COVID was for? My own insanity has feedback loops.

      It’s a right of passage in the clown world to be part of the mayhem in tearing it down. I’m afraid it’s catching on.

      Let’s hope the other 80 million or so gun owners who didn’t shoot up anything continue their law abiding ways.

    • ThorsHammer May 27, 2022 at 5:31 pm #

      The levels of madness to which the USA has sunk are so extreme that even the most tortured novelist a generation ago couldn’t conceive of it.

      The most extreme example is the degeneration in the way we treat our children. We have used an entire generation as an experimental subject for mass genetic alteration using the unproven mRNA delivery system. In order to provide illusory short term protection against a virus that children almost never catch, we have opened the door to the zombiefication of a generation. I speak not only of the long term medical and as yet unknown side effects from the Shot, but of the madness of forcing children into isolation behind a mask in their social developmental years. With the Mask to hide behind, children’s developing ability to judge the emotions and communication of others is stunted and their actual measurable IQ is reduced. After being bombarded by waves of violence and debased sexuality on the visual media, is it any wonder that ever growing numbers choose to act out in the roles they have been taught and become mass murderers?

      If there were an ounce of Justice left in America society the perpetrators of child abuse (masking and inoculation with fake vaccines) would face a firing squad. That is you, Pfizer executives, and large stockholders. That is you, CDC officers and decision makers who devise such diabolical policies. That is you, mouthpieces like “Dr. Fauci who sell it to the confused public, That is you. members of the Bedpan Administration who put their stamp of authority on it.

      And that is You, Parents who use their authority and power over their children to subject them to torture. For you I advocate not the firing squat because you followed sadistic Leaders, but rather ten years at hard labor rebuilding rebuilding the infrastructure of the country.

      • MaryQueen May 27, 2022 at 6:29 pm #

        Well said, Thors.

        • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 8:25 pm #

          Echo

  3. Penelope Dreadful May 27, 2022 at 10:03 am #

    That is a great title for an article – Childhood’s End! It is kind of like the sci-fi book in a way, by Arthur C. Clarke – where the nice aliens end up looking Demonic.

    That is us I think, and there are Demons behind so many things now.

    • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 10:09 am #

      We’ve been living in a cheesy sci-fi movie for over two years now.

      Another well known person, just up and dies, with no apparent cause. Millions of people have no idea there’s anything untoward going on.

      • Penelope Dreadful May 27, 2022 at 11:48 am #

        Maybe. Or maybe we have been living in a Paul Simon song, American Tune:

        Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken
        And many times confused
        Yes, and I’ve often felt forsaken
        And certainly misused

        Oh, but I’m alright, I’m alright
        I’m just weary to my bones
        Still, you don’t expect to be bright and bon vivant
        So far away from home, so far away from home

        And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
        I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
        I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
        Or driven to its knees

        But it’s alright, it’s alright
        For we lived so well so long
        Still, when I think of the
        Road we’re traveling on
        I wonder what’s gone wrong
        I can’t help it, I wonder what has gone wrong

        • Nigel Tufnel May 27, 2022 at 3:14 pm #

          This song should be our new national anthem.

          And Dylan’s “Idiot Wind” should be the new battle hymn of the Republic.

          • ThorsHammer May 27, 2022 at 5:39 pm #

            Nigel

            I nominate “Everybody Knows” by Lenoard Cohen

      • Hereward the Woke May 27, 2022 at 12:43 pm #

        Beryl, I’d appreciate it if you use the correct, PC, state-approved euphemism: “died suddenly”. And btw, famous actors have always died suddenly. Just like 17 year old soccer players and swimming stars. /s

        • Night Owl May 28, 2022 at 6:52 pm #

          “Following a short illness” is also acceptable.

          🙂

    • Paul May 28, 2022 at 10:57 am #

      Unfortunately, when I first read the title, “Childhood’s End”, it was neither Arthur C. Clarke nor science fiction, nor demons that first came to mind.

    • justanotherguy May 28, 2022 at 4:52 pm #

      I’ve read so much by this man, but I learned this recently and it broke my heart with anger.

      “> The following appears courtesy of today’s Agence France-Presse news wire:
      >
      > Arthur C. Clarke confesses paedophilia as Charles prepares to knight him
      >
      > Agence France-Presse
      >
      > Sat, 31 Jan 1998
      >
      > LONDON, Feb 1 (AFP) – The science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke on Sunday
      > confessed in a newspaper interview to a life of paedophilia, as Prince Charles
      > prepared to knight him on an official visit to Sri Lanka.
      >
      > Clarke, 80, who wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey” and who has lived in Sri Lanka
      > for 40 years, said in the Sunday Mirror: “Once they have reached the age of
      > puberty it is O.K. … it doesn’t do any harm.”
      >
      > Speaking in his house in the capital Colombo, where Charles arrives Monday,
      > Clarke said: “I’m trying to think of the youngest boy I have ever had because
      > of course you can’t tell here.”
      >
      > Asked if he had had sexual relations with young boys he said simply “Yes”.
      >
      > He added: “I think most of the damage comes from the fuss made by hysterical
      > parents afterwards. If the kids don’t mind, fair enough.”
      >
      > Clarke was the first foreign celebrity to be given tax-free status in the
      > country and is also Chancellor of Colombo’s Moratuwa University.
      >
      > He is to be presented with his knighthood by Prince Charles at the British High
      > Commission in Colombo on Wednesday after being named by Queen Elizabeth II in
      > her New Year’s honours list.
      >
      > Clarke has written more than 80 books about space travel and science fiction
      > and has been hailed as a “prophet”.
      >
      > After Sri Lanka, where he is due to take part in celebrations for the 50th
      > anniversary of Sri Lankan independence, Charles will also visit Nepal and
      > Bhutan.”

  4. joejoepelligrino May 27, 2022 at 10:09 am #

    One common denominator in all these shootings that I’ve heard brought up sometimes, but still too infrequently, is the presence of all the antipsychotics/antidepressants/stimulants prescribed to these zombified kids. The brain is still somewhat of a mystery to the most informed minds in neurochemistry, but my guess is that these drugs to more to de-realize/deindividuate/desensitize these kids than first person shooters or Marilyn Manson’s faux satanic music.

    Then there’s also the weird behavior of the feds with these kids (especially in Buffalo) where they watch for the warning signs, see them, and sometimes even see literal and direct threats being made by the subjects….and then let them go on to commit the crimes. Someone observed recently that in radical Islamist circles, imams search for disaffected, even disturbed men who they groom to be suicide bombers. I guess our imams wear blue silk jackets, mirrored shades, and fitted ballcaps.

    • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 10:11 am #

      It will soon be out that this latest shooter was known to the feds.

      • Hereward the Woke May 27, 2022 at 12:44 pm #

        He was indeed. However, he seems to have been a deranged trans Hispanic, so it will all fade away quickly.

        • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 8:29 pm #

          “behavior of the feds” = common denominator

          has been such for many years

          the argument could be made it dates back to the NFA Act in 1932 and the events leading up to it.

          “Empire” by J. Edgar Hoover a book never written (at least not to date).

    • Penelope Dreadful May 27, 2022 at 10:20 am #

      I am pro-cop, but there are some of them that are just plain stupid, cowardly, and lazy. Like the Columbine cops, and apparently the Uvalde fuzz. Then there was the FBI who were told that Arabs were learning how to fly planes, but not how to land them. Then the FBI vs Trump, where valuable resources were wasted on crap. Or the whole FBI going after parents who got po-ed at the school boards. Some of this is just pure incompetence, and some of it is mendacity. Add to that the persecution of Chauvin over what was some junkie over-dosing – or least to the point where there was reasonable doubt.

      • lizharmon May 27, 2022 at 10:39 am #

        Serious question. Why are you “pro-cop?” What can a cop do that you can’t do better yourself?

        • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 11:19 am #

          That’s the anarchist or antifa mentality. The poor man’s Libertarians.

        • Penelope Dreadful May 27, 2022 at 11:23 am #

          I am pro-cop because they have a hard job to do, but one that is necessary. Now, could I defend myself from a criminal. Probably yes. Where I live, it is legal to pack heat, if certified. Which I am, and you can openly carry without a permit. So yes, if armed robbers broke down my front door, I could shoot them much faster than the cops could get here.

          But, could I handle a car wreck? No. I could pass out business cards! Could I handle a noisy neighbor next door by myself? No. If I were robbed while not at home, or my car was hit, could I run fingerprints? No. If I were out on the town, and a bunch of inner-city yutes began coalescing into a mob, could I handle it myself? No. Could I stop a drunk driver careening down the street? No. Could I stop a fist-fight or knife-fight or baseball bat fight between Romeo and Juliet down the street? No.

          I could go on and on..

          • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 11:43 am #

            I can’t find a serial killer and arrest him before he kills again.

          • Penelope Dreadful May 27, 2022 at 12:09 pm #

            Beryl – good point! I think another problem is our “Catch and Release” judicial system. IMHO, most murderers should be executed within a year or so of conviction. We could set up special appeals court systems just for capital cases, to do a immediate review of the case, and if there are deficiencies, then grant a new trial. That court should inquire into whether there is any DNA evidence that might be exculpatory, and perhaps even review the physical evidence, not just the oral proceedings. But if guilty – off to the guillotine.

            I think the death penalty should be allowed for dealing in drugs, and in cases of multiple serious felonies. Third felony, and you get executed.

            We continue to have a lot of crime because we do not remove bad criminals from the system. Frankly, there should probably be 6 or 7 million people in prison at least, and as a society, we can not afford that. Right now there are about 2 million people in prison, and we still get guys like the dude who shot the banker in the subway. 20 something convictions, and he is out walking around.

            Unfortunately, a democracy like ours will be unable to do what it needs to do to defend itself. Sooo, I look for us to get a whole new authoritarian system before 2099.

          • CrusherMuldoon May 27, 2022 at 12:52 pm #

            Do you like donuts?

          • Islander May 27, 2022 at 1:55 pm #

            Depending on how one looks at things, how one imagines future conditions developing if “exit velocity” SHTF, it could be pretty important to have an effective LOCAL police force that is able to make sensible rapid decisions and act with dispatch.

            That of course depends on the quality and training of the officers. .

        • Alfred May 27, 2022 at 2:02 pm #

          Pull me out of a wrecked, burning vehicle.

          I tend to be pro first responder.

          Maybe we need a different class of responders for different kinds of events…

        • MaryQueen May 27, 2022 at 6:32 pm #

          I can’t do most of what cops do.

          1) have the guts to walk or run into a dangerous situation where someone is armed;

          2) the type of focus you need to do a chase and pit manouver, etc.

          That’s just off the top of my head.

          • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 8:37 pm #

            Mary,

            It takes a certain mindset.

            Not going into a tome, it involves calculated risk. The calculation is it will not likely , however not guaranteed, happen to you. The risk is it might. Back to the calculation, it most likely will not happen. If it does, it will happen to someone else, such as the person next to you, which is a different type of trauma with a different set of sequence of post-event trauma.

            end of comment

            The long answer isn’t feasible, and likely not too appropriate, here.

      • malthuss May 27, 2022 at 10:48 am #

        once upon a time, some police departments had very high standards for recruits.
        Then AA and feminism appeared.

        The IQ test is illegal to give a job applicant.

        • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 8:44 pm #

          I’ll take maybe some, but definitely not total, exception to feminism.

      • hmuller May 27, 2022 at 10:58 am #

        Penelope, I don’t blame the individual cops as much as the deep state, globalists and their agenda to use law enforcement – not to protect the general public, but to help enslave us.

      • Hereward the Woke May 27, 2022 at 12:45 pm #

        Anyone who is pro-cop needs their head examined. Cops are out for their pensions and their bosses. Not us.

        • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 8:52 pm #

          There is some truth to this. Why it came to this is a different topic.

      • Wizard of the Saddle May 27, 2022 at 3:19 pm #

        Great piece today. Bottom line conclusion: We live in a very sick society. TOTB could confiscate everything we own and leave us all literally “naked and afraid” and some would still find ways to murder their fellow humans. All the jabber about guns being the problem is utter hogwash.

    • pyrrhus May 27, 2022 at 11:06 am #

      Psychotropic drugs should be banned outside of mental institutions…

      • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 11:26 am #

        When it comes to young males with extreme mental health issues, if they are used at all, it should only be within a hospital where they can see how a patient does on them.

        They are not something that should be thrown at people whose brains are still developing.

      • Hereward the Woke May 27, 2022 at 12:48 pm #

        Partly, disagree. I know at least 3 people in my entourage, including my wife, whose lives were saved by Prozac. It’s easy for people who have never suffered from clinical depression – not “the blues” or getting out of the wrong side of bed, but full blown depression – to criticise SSSIs. The problem is more misdiagnosis and over-prescription.

        • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 1:31 pm #

          Yes. It’s very frustrating to me to see the “psychotropic” label thrown around like an epithet. I too have seen some people greatly helped by proper usage of such medications.

          I remember how Brooke Shields was bashed for her book in which she revealed she used medication to alleviate her severe postpartum depression.

          Misdiagnosis, over-prescription, and also the notion that a bag of pills is a substitute for hospital care, for the severely ill.

          If you correlate the increase in mass shootings with the date we started closing psychiatric facilities, you will find something interesting.

          BTW not all shootings that take place on school property are mass shootings. Lumping them all in togethe is misleding.

      • Ishabaka May 27, 2022 at 7:18 pm #

        I guess you’ve never been close to someone with schizophrenia, or type 1 bipolar illness.

  5. docmartin May 27, 2022 at 10:12 am #

    Mr Kunstler don’t know Jack shit about real families and real kids. He only know what the media tells him and then he does a spin on that . He reminds me of those old ivory tower professors except he has lived in the quasi country for years and used to fly into urban areas with a chip on his shoulder to scold them about their urban planning. The last time he knew about real families and real kids was when he was a kid, and I bet he was scolded a lot. Shrink his overreaching vocabulary down and see the mind numbing knee jerk reactions of his posts.

    Docmartin — Quasi-literate trolls are not welcome here. Show up again and I’ll bounce you. — JHK Admin

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    • DyersEve May 27, 2022 at 10:16 am #

      hmm, seems like somebody hit a sensitive spot. so it takes having an active family to see the current state of the child in America these days? i think no, grow up.

    • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 10:18 am #

      I know plenty about families and kids, and I have no idea what you are talking about.

      Why don’t you enlighten us?

    • Ron Anselmo May 27, 2022 at 10:20 am #

      Doc – 10:12 am is probably a little too early to start drinking.

      • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 10:30 am #

        Not according to Johnny Depp.

        • MaryQueen May 27, 2022 at 6:34 pm #

          Zing!

          • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 8:55 pm #

            Zing! Zing!

      • hmuller May 27, 2022 at 11:04 am #

        LOL. I wonder if doc can manage to be grammatically correct when sober. It’s doubtful.

    • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 10:24 am #

      Sounds like doc was one of those brutalized kids. Good luck with that and please stay away from automatic rifles. That won’t end well for anybody.

      • elysianfield May 27, 2022 at 11:04 am #

        Dis,
        I would suggest that most kids were/are brutalized in school, if bullying, taunting, and shunning be part of that definition. It might be a necessary part of “growing up”, it being so ubiquitous.

        • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 11:21 am #

          Not sure about necessary, but it was certainly ubiquitous. But a certain amount of all that should probably be considered normal as part of the socialization process, if not in school, then elsewhere.

        • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 11:23 am #

          Kids aren’t good for other kids. Kid herds are the worse idea ever. Yes, at some point (can it be a bit later?), it’s natural for age groups to form groups and with it, a pecking order. Why not wait to adolescence?

          Close the schools. The people will benefit a hundredfold.

          Lao Tzu

          • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 2:45 pm #

            One of the worst features of the public schools is herding hundreds or even thousands of kids into one place. Another is segregating them by age. As a result, they virtually have no adult influence, since the adults in schools act primarily as police, with no personal relationship with the kids. So the kids bond entirely with each other and get their worldview and values from each other: the immature leading the immature.

            Contrast that setting with homeschooling within an extended family–which is something I’ve seen firsthand, since it’s fairly common around here. The kid grows up being taught by people with a genuine connection with him/her and engaged in learning real skills. I’ve known people who say they learned math from using a roofing square–which is beyond me. I’m told that a roofing square is kind of a crude slide rule.

          • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 3:02 pm #

            A co-worker once told me she went on vacation to Novia Scotia. She was amazed to find the teenagers treated her like she was a human being. I knew exactly what she meant.

            Yes, to getting their whole world view and values from other kids and now mediated kid culture. Robert Bly’s point in his book “Sibling Society”.

    • elysianfield May 27, 2022 at 10:59 am #

      “d I’ll bounce you.”

      A metaphorical defenestration!

    • Tate May 27, 2022 at 3:08 pm #

      Why????

    • amb May 27, 2022 at 6:50 pm #

      Who are you with… CIA or NSA?

      • anmariwakaranai May 27, 2022 at 10:14 pm #

        Last thread the good doctor was saying along with some others how jhk is too negative about the future, I have the opposite opinion. I think usually this column is way too hopeful about people in the US waking up and taking back their country. Still it’s always very good to read, but when he goes dark, look out.

        Prepare for the worst people. I believe the worst will be an as yet unseen in history persecution of the free and the faithful beyond anything you can imagine.

        Up here in the gr8 white north they just announced more gun laws incoming. Hideeho.

  6. DyersEve May 27, 2022 at 10:12 am #

    Nailed it. A sense of true (ie, spiritually genuine) purpose and meaning is horribly, sadly missing in our national consciousness. We float from whim to whim, impulse to impulse, looking for something that can never be found in this morally repugnant mire.

    • Hereward the Woke May 27, 2022 at 12:50 pm #

      It’s as easy to suggest causes as to offer facile solutions, but TV, the breakdown of the family and social media have to have played a role. And of course, all three have been avidly pushed on us by our “elites”.

      • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 8:59 pm #

        “TV, the breakdown of the family and social media have to have played a role”

        Agree.

        Societies survive and can prosper with some basic norms. When the norms are designed to be counterproductive, it’s a downward spiral.

  7. Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 10:13 am #

    Pitch Perfect, Jim! SO GLAD to see someone with your writing chops and the still functioning remnants of an actual soul has analyzed this problem seriously and come up with this. You continue to lead the pack in diagnosing what ails us, Jim, and continue to shine at least a small amount of hope and light in a land that is rapidly descending into abject darkness. Kudos, my friend!

    • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 11:26 am #

      Western Rifle Shooters posts him every Monday and Friday asap. Not all gunsexuals (thank you Avatar) are savages.

      • 100th Avatar May 27, 2022 at 11:44 am #

        Not savages, but they believe the problem is the solution.

        Guns are made to kill.
        People have guns to kill.

        You can say “neutralize the threat”, but they’re to kill.

        I have many guns.
        To kill.

        Again, they’re the solution to their problem.
        Just part and parcel with American life.

        What differentiates me from the gunsexuals is that having lifelong intimate experience and knowledge with firearms I know they are a problem.
        Just as automobile exhaust is and power plant pollution is and industrial runoff is.

        I don’t pretend they solve life’s problems like other posters here:

        “Hell if everyone had a gun all the time nothing bad would happen “

        Guns are bad.
        But they’re a reality
        Like cancer and Alzheimer’s

        A snake eating it’s tail.
        Sometimes only a gun can stop an idiot with a gun… an idiot who thinks it can solve their problems

        • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 12:56 pm #

          Ava comes out as a gunsexual.

        • Rodster May 27, 2022 at 1:12 pm #

          In reality pretty much anything can be used as a weapon to kill. In the UK, knife attacks and killings are a major problem. Ask Jo Cox who was killed with a knife by a crazed lunatic or more recently Conservative David Amess.

          How about lories in Europe where crazed individuals decide to drive and plow busses or trucks into crowds? Bricks and stones can also be used to kill as well. There are many ways to kill without a gun.

          But making guns the evil object is easy because the government would love nothing more than to disarm the public. With a disarmed public they can further push their totalitarian agenda.

          It has become too predictable every time one of these events take place. You can count on your favorite or least favorite [insert politician’s name] to come running out telling us why we need to ban guns.

          • 100th Avatar May 27, 2022 at 1:45 pm #

            This is a totally tired and disingenuous argument.

            Cars and busses are not built to kill nor are most knives or trucks.

            Guns are built to kill. Period.

            If you knew anything about them, owned them, shot them, or trained with them you would KNOW this.

            The broader point is that guns are an every day part of American society.

            And they’re going to be used for their intended purpose again and again.

            To kill.

            It may be innocents, it may be victims, it maybe oneself, it may be in defense.

            But they will keep on doing what they are made to do.

            I am all for the right to own one, but I believe certain rights (gasps!) should be earned in today’s day and age.

            What was once a universal good for a comparably civil society is not good for the current sociopathic one.

            Heck there are arguments that people should have to qualify to vote… or give birth, but let’s stay here for now.

            Now qualifying for certain weapons won’t stop senseless and stupid behavior because humans are going to human, there are always ways around, and the genie is already out of the bottle. Millions upon millions of weapons in circulation.

            But it may mitigate it.

            And, lest you’re confused, your guns, AR or not, are not going to stop Big Brother. They don’t even have to get violent. They won’t.

            I mean, for goodness sake, look how much they take from you every day, and nobody bats a lash or squeezes a finger.

            Nah, it just sits there, locked away in the cabinet, just like its lawfully abiding owner.

          • Socrates-Detroit May 27, 2022 at 2:49 pm #

            100th Avatar

            Yes, vehicles and kitchen knives are not designed to kill, but can be harnessed for the purpose without too much trouble.

            One could argue that a vehicle is a better choice for a wacko, to take out more people more quickly.

            While we can debate whether guns would deter excessive or oppressive government, one thing that we know is that the use of a firearm, or even it’s MERE PRESENCE can, and has, deterred a crime.

            People need guns for safety.

            To have the government “screen” people is tantamount to having the government take away your right to possess a gun.

            Most people in this space would be banned.

            While my heart goes out to the victims, their families, the kids who witnessed this awful scene, NO, I am not willing to give up our right to bear arms.

            Today’s article gives some very solid insights as to why we are where we are.

            Should we ban the internet? TV? Newspapers? The lack of publicity might deter these acts.

            Is society going to bring back religion–in the form of simple, non-denominational biblical values–to schools? NO.

            Is society going to make feeble, but helpful, effort to help married couples raising their biological children by giving them tax breaks, which will make it easier for one parent to stay home? NO.

            Is society going to get away from the industrial production school model described? HECK NO!

            So no, we are not going to be intimidated by the false pretenses of those who want to take guns away from the public, or turn lawful people into criminals.

          • Rodster May 27, 2022 at 4:29 pm #

            “This is a totally tired and disingenuous argument.

            Cars and busses are not built to kill nor are most knives or trucks.”

            But they kill people, go ask the families of those victims in Europe. I bet they will feel a lot better hearing you tell them a Knife, Truck, Bus or Van, instead of a gun murdered their love one.

          • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 9:05 pm #

            Prior to firearms being invented, people had knives, swords, pikes, long bows, crossbows, catapults, forms or mortars, the anti firearm crap should fade fast when acknowledging this. But it won’t. Because the issue is disarm and control.

          • Rodster May 27, 2022 at 11:33 pm #

            “Prior to firearms being invented, people had knives, swords, pikes, long bows, crossbows, catapults, forms or mortars, the anti firearm crap should fade fast when acknowledging this. But it won’t. Because the issue is disarm and control.”

            Hits nail right on head. I can guarantee the anti-gun crowd that ignores knife killings that a good portion of “KNIVES” sold today are not to “butter bread”. Their sole purpose is to injure, maim and kill. They are used solely for protection.

  8. Ron Anselmo May 27, 2022 at 10:14 am #

    Morning Jim – my goodness, excellent as always. Thanks.

    “The quality of virtue, meaning that some things and some doings are recognizably better than others was deceitfully replaced by the equity of nothing being allowed to be better than anything else.” ~ JHK

    The weaving of your thoughts & wordsmithing is unsurpassed – a gift.

    • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 9:07 pm #

      echo

  9. Rodster May 27, 2022 at 10:17 am #

    And it certainly doesn’t help that those who pull off these mass shootings will know that they will earn rock star status when the Media et al shows their crime over and over again.

    The Columbine massacre was a good example on why you don’t want to show that over and over again because it encourages and creates copycats. We can show these awful events over and over again and let’s be honest, “it has entertainment value to the media”. It gets people to watch their channel.

    But the question becomes, why does the media show these events over and over again and yet TV crews at a baseball game refuse to show a fan running onto the field during a game?

    Probably because it serves as Reality TV for the Media.

    • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 10:28 am #

      Good points. That might be the best advice for any of this. Report the fact that it happened as dispassionately as possible the day of, with no morbid details, and then leave it alone. But of course that will never be allowed either, what with our vaunted “freedom of the press” and all that other happy horseshit.

    • cowbell81 May 27, 2022 at 10:28 am #

      We need to get rid of this mass media hype that exists. Go back 50, 80, 100 years this would all be a localized instance that didn’t garner any national attention whatsoever. People are too addicted to the 24 hour news cycle, their phones, etc. The dis-information system of technology cannot come down soon enough, in my opinion. It would make life richer and worth living so much better.

      • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 10:44 am #

        Very true Cowbell. I have all the Hartford Courants from 1927 in a bound volume (the Courant was tossing them); May 18 the school massacre in Bath, Michigan was the headline, May 19 the story was put of the news. Of course it was around the time of Lindbergh’s flight to Paris, which took up every page.

        • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 11:28 am #

          Lindbergh warned us about the dangers of Globalism and International Finance. Did we listen?

          No.

          • Hereward the Woke May 27, 2022 at 12:52 pm #

            Shame Lindy didn’t warn us about the Austrian guy he was so enamoured of.

          • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 12:55 pm #

            Why would he? The Austrian guy was fighting the bankers. So what did we do? Fight on the side of the bankers!

            Dumb Americans.

          • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 3:30 pm #

            Hey Janos I once met Lindbergh’s biographer Scott Berg. He was in town doing research on Katherine Hepburn — her sister was our town librarian. A few local bibliophiles got an invite to a little event they were having at the Hepburn house, which included me … I started talking to him about Lindbergh — a little off topic but he didn’t mind. He knew pretty much all there is to know about Charles Lindbergh, and was very close to the family too. A real classy, erudite dude Mr. Berg was.

          • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 4:28 pm #

            Oh? What did Berg say about Bergh? Pretty critical I imagine. But I could be wrong.

          • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 6:01 pm #

            It would probably be hard to write a bio on somebody you didn’t like. The only time I ever saw that was a biography on Elvis by a NYC author by the name of ?? Goldman. Thought Elvis was White Southern Trash, as well as his fans.

      • shovel88 May 27, 2022 at 8:01 pm #

        I agree. I am old enough to remember the Jonestown Massacre 1978. It was coverered for a few days and that was it. Over 900 Americans dead including many children…. mainly blacks from lower income areas whom followed the white pyschopath whom fooled them as a “pastor” Jim Jones. Could you imagine if that incident occured today? News coverage for a year or more!

        • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 9:09 pm #

          it’s where the phrase ‘drink the kool aid’ came from

    • UN OUT OF USA May 27, 2022 at 2:08 pm #

      Rodster, it’s a kind of “blood-porn” that excites people. Like rubber-neckers driving slowly by a bad traffic accident.

  10. cowbell81 May 27, 2022 at 10:20 am #

    I love looking at the architecture of the older school buildings, beautiful woodworking, terrazzo tile floors, marble interiors, brickwork facades with decorative cornices. This provided a place for the student’s mind to aspire to. Like Jim said, now these schools are built like nothing more than a prison. I guess they need to do this in order to have the wireless internet systems installed, etc. They claim too many of the old buildings cannot be retrofitted, and therefore they are torn down or left to rot. A true shame if you ask me.

    Let’s get back to the one room school house days where a school marm was brought in to properly teach the kiddies from the immediate vicinity only. Hopefully once the system all falls this will be what we return to again, that or simple home schooling.

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    • Penelope Dreadful May 27, 2022 at 10:25 am #

      I bet they are tearing them down so that friends of the politicians can get juicy contracts, and have more moolah to pass around. That is one reason why TPTB hated Trump. Can you imagine their anger and disgust when Trump bragged about saving a Billion bucks or so on those two embassies??? Think of all the money that cost them and money to hire their relative and supporters. What was good to Trump and America was an anathema to them.

      • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 9:22 pm #

        Penelope,

        I had the fortunate experience of being part of a community for a while in a rural part of the mountains in the eastern US.

        They were homeschooling, moving about 20 children to a different house every few days based on the topic and skills of the parent(s)-teacher(s) from the community.

        They kept the one-room schoolhouse, which is the point. Remodeled at their own expense and with their own tools, they made a community center.

        Among my experiences and memories, some great Thanksgiving meals with days of preparation preceding the event, greatly looked forward to as time spent with some excellent people and enjoyed by all.

    • draupnir May 27, 2022 at 10:51 am #

      Oh, but they were prisons too.

    • Hereward the Woke May 27, 2022 at 12:54 pm #

      People forget that compulsory government run schooling has only been around for 150 years. And it began in hyper militarized Prussia as a means of producing good little worker bees and cannon fodder.

      • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 1:39 pm #

        The idea of kindergarten has fallen by the wayside too. Small children weren’t ready for all that schoolwork, so they would play and learn songs, etc. in a classroom.

        Also the class size was kept small.

        When I went to school we didn’t start reading until first grade. Now they teach reading in kindergarten, where they stay all day, and I think it turns many kids off to reading because they start them too early.

        • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 3:10 pm #

          I full day is too long for most first and second grade kids. I used to keep my kids home from school occasionally when they were that age, because I felt they were getting run down. When I was in first and second grade, we took a nap every day. Recesses were long, and the noon recess was particularly long because a lot of kids–literally all the town kids–walked home for lunch.

          It was probably because the school day was tailor to suit kids’ actual physical/social needs that we were able to tolerate the “silent classrooms” of the old days. And I do mean SILENT. One of my teachers once sent me to take a note to a teacher on the third floor. The entire school was as silent as a tomb.

        • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 3:20 pm #

          In affluent suburban schools, you kid is expect to be able to read when they start kindergarten, and if the kid isn’t reading by the end of their kindergarten year, the school will suggest that the kid repeat kindergarten.

          One of the reasons these schools do this is because it improves the schools’ test scores. That is, if your first-grade class (or any other grade) is slightly older, on the average, than those in another district, their test scores will be higher, and your school district will be ranked higher.

          Another game that played by affluent school districts is to try to place as many kids as possible in LD classes, since the LD kids’ test scores don’t count for the purpose of ranking the school’s performance. This makes the school’s average test scores higher.

    • Uncle Bob May 27, 2022 at 11:06 pm #

      I hate to say it, but comparatively few teachers, especially the younger ones, are very good at teaching kids worth a damn. How does a Milennial high talker teach her students elocution, when all of her declarative sentences sound like questions and her questions sound like definitive declarations? Then you have the 19,000 “genders” (sexes) that Jennie and Hank learn about. How do you figure out who you really are, when you’re told that you may be a gay eel rather than an eight-year-old boy, and school districts have policies preventing parents from knowing what goes on at school? As with pretty much the rest of Western society, America’s education racket, er system is failing, and we’re all going to pay a high price for that.

      • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 11:41 pm #

        I know, but what can you do? Our town of 26,000 just voted to build a new HS, price tag: $160 million originally, but we were recently informed because of inflation it might run closer to $200 million.

      • D from OR May 28, 2022 at 9:22 am #

        The teachers are terrible. It doesn’t matter the age or the era. Its the personality type that goes into the profession.

        The teachers at my well-regarded high school 35+ years ago weren’t any better. Most were lazy and then there were the burnouts. The coaches that taught were generally stupid. The only ones I did admire were the ones teaching the AP courses which makes sense.

        There’s nothing positive about centralized public education, It’s watered down and worthless.

      • Hereward the Woke May 28, 2022 at 9:25 am #

        I’ve never understood how a person who has spent all his life in school since the age of 4 and has never been outside the educational bubble is supposed to teach children “life skills”.

  11. chopper May 27, 2022 at 10:22 am #

    I don’t know the answer to your question “What do we deserve”. I do know society is convulsing into a course correction that will bring many major changes. One I hope will be a revolution in our view of size, scope and limits on government control of our lives. It appears none of that will happen without destruction of existing systems and much chaos needed to wrest power from those responsible for our present direction. I have a list of names do you?

  12. jerrydylan May 27, 2022 at 10:24 am #

    I sell custodial services to schools, both public and private. The private school teachers look much happier as do the students. They seem to have a respect for each other and lots of smiling everywhere. I do see this in public schools but I also see the riff raff (the students en masse are obese, have weird hair colors, looking almost delusional-it’s glorified babysitting) and hear from teachers of the relative horrors of getting them to pay any attention. One public school teacher I know is miserable. She is smart experienced and committed but stuck just babysitting and has no power of reprimand.

    • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 10:39 am #

      That’s what school teachers used to complain of, even back when school were not as bad as they are now. If they kicked a child out of class for being disruptive, the kid was right back in class te next day, none the worse for wear.

      People used to always try to throw in up to me that the Catholic schools were better, back when I used to defend the public schools.

      The reality was Catholic schools had two advantages. Behind every student was an adult who went to the trouble of getting them there, and if a child didn’t want to act respectful in the classroom they might not be coming back to that school.

      I know a mother who tried to get her son into the local Catholic High School and they woulldn’t accept him, because his grades weren’t good enough.

      • zekesdad May 27, 2022 at 11:01 am #

        I went to Catholic schools, kindergarten through college. In my high school a kid stupidly tagged the building with his initials in letters about 4 inches high. It was cleaned off the brick in short order, but the kid was gone swiftly expelled permanently.

        • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 12:03 pm #

          That’s the way. Think you’re better than the teachers, who stand in for the Church, and the Church for Christ? You ain’t shit. Get lost.

          After Vatican Two, which taught that nothing mattered, countless nuns and priests left to enjoy the world, which was now good according to Vatican Two. So they had to hire lay teachers to fill the gap.

      • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 3:47 pm #

        The truth is, possibly around 25% of kids simply don’t belong in school–at least not beyond the early grades. And school should be rigorous enough that no more than about half of all kids would have any need (or interest) in attending beyond 8th grade. Grades 9-12 should be for kids who want to pursue advanced math and science, and read the classics in the original Latin.

        Most people can learn to read, write, and do basic arithmetic, including basic algebra, by the end of 8th grade. If they can’t, they are probably ineducable. Adults occasionally whine on Facebook about how there is no need to teach kids algebra, because they’ve never used algebra in their lives. This is no doubt true. Therefore, these people should not have been in school. They have probably never in their lives used anything they learned in high school.

        And, frankly, it irritates me to think of all the years I was forced to sit in their chairs all day, when, if left to my own devices, I would have been learning to work on my car, garden, cook, sew, do woodworking, carpentry, and house wiring, or hunt squirrels and snare rabbits, or dozens of other things. I would probably also have devoted some of those extra hours to reading good literature, as opposed to the schlock in the high school literature books.

        • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 4:13 pm #

          Bingo! 1-8, maybe even 1-6 compulsory. All the rest by invitation only. Then let the private sector – maybe with some government incentivizing – take up meaningful apprenticeship training in the trades. A lot of the disinterest will evaporate once the youngsters see practical applications for what they’re learning. I hated the fuck out of school, but once I got in the USAF I was all ears. Should have happened ten years earlier.

          • SpeedyBB May 27, 2022 at 7:19 pm #

            Looking back at four years of high school, I recall two experiences that served me as an adult: touch-typing and driver education.

            The rest was, in retrospect, useless. Not even memorable.

          • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 11:10 pm #

            Likewise.

    • Hereward the Woke May 27, 2022 at 12:56 pm #

      Interesting insights, Jerry. I work indirectly with private schools. Unfortunately, the ones I am linked with are even MORE Woke than the public schools. Private schools still need to be accredited – and guess who controls the accreditation organisations? Yep, the same leftist creeps who control every other organisation in our society.

  13. rainmaker May 27, 2022 at 10:24 am #

    “Schools” are a huge part of the problem. The American “school system” is daycare and child warehousing for working parents. I went through the American public school system, back in the ’60s and ’70s, and it was the most miserable part of my life. Frack you American schools, and the “teachers”, too.

    • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 10:44 am #

      I had some teachers I did not deserve, because they were that good.

      American public schools drew some of the best and the brightest from all over the world, they were one of the things that made America great.

      That’s why the commies have been working so hard to destroy our system from within.

    • EdD May 27, 2022 at 12:21 pm #

      I entered the first grade in 1957, and I hated every day spent in that prison system. My guess is that the “golden age of public schools” must have been much earlier than the 1950s. Maybe there never was any golden age at all.

      • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 12:48 pm #

        I just never liked having to be someplace I didn’t want to be. I did like the teacher and what we learned in the classroom, frequently, but overall it felt to me as if I had been drafted.

      • Hereward the Woke May 27, 2022 at 12:58 pm #

        There never was a Golden Age. Today, the ethos is Wokedom; 70 years ago it was My Country, Right or Wrong. That was probably more palatable than today, but it was still a place where individualism and critical thinking were not encouraged.

      • Islander May 27, 2022 at 2:01 pm #

        I loved school.

        I was lucky.

        Four grades in one room; we loved our teacher.

    • Paula D May 27, 2022 at 1:52 pm #

      I hated school also. Big waste of time and lots of boredom and misery.
      I never understand people who act like it’s a big privilege for children to be forced into going to school.

      • Not_GeorgeT May 27, 2022 at 9:41 pm #

        I loved school for the first few years. Straight A student, Honor Roll every quarter, learning was a joy.

        Then I got the nun from hell.

        She should have been retired instead of being left in the system to psychologically abuse children for just being children trying to learn.

        I’ll leave the Catholic Church problems here, let’s not go further.

        Recovery is difficult, takes years. I managed it on my own, a difficult time. Possibly my firm, positive base the first few years helped.

        Sometimes I wonder how many did not manage it very well.

  14. Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 10:28 am #

    Something I’ve been thinking about in the last few days- all the emphasis on ‘sex education’ and now disguising it under ‘gender’, hich has been going on for decades, and I’m still finding many very educated people who are astoundingly ignorant when it comes to matters related to human reproduction.

    It seems that somewhere along the line it became all about behavior, and from there it wnt to normalizing deviant behavior.

    There is no reason for children to have to know about that sort of thing than there is for them to need to know about non-sexual behavior of small groups of adults.

  15. lizharmon May 27, 2022 at 10:35 am #

    Where do kids get the idea that it’s okay to kill to solve their problems? Gee, I don’t know.

    Abortion is not killing, it’s a choice.
    Capital punishment is fine because, you know, an eye for a eye.
    Russia deserves to be nuked off the face of the earth.

    Both political persuasions are guilty of it in their own way. Both plant these seeds in impressionable young minds. It’s okay to kill provided you have a reason that makes sense to you and you alone…no matter how incredibly insane it might be to the rest of us. That’s America, version 2022. It’s the logical conclusion for ditching the Judeo-Christian code of morality and behavior. Somebody needs to explain that to the Betos of the world.

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    • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 10:51 am #

      Exactly. In a society so preoccupied with violence and killing – ideally state sanctioned only – it seems like a natural outgrowth that some of the inmates would take it upon themselves to exercise a little personal autonomy in that area themselves. I’ve always found it hard to reconcile the fact that you can join the military and go overseas and pretty much kill and maim whomever you want with total impunity, but then redeploy to the US and then have to flip a switch to turn all that off completely. Evidently a lot of my fellow vets feel the same way, as their rates of suicide and/or gun or other violence against others is considerably higher than their fellow American nut cases, which is saying a lot.

      • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 12:11 pm #

        There was a little, old pedophile priest they put in a cell with a maniac. The maniac jammed the lock and then started jumping up and down on the priest’s head and throat. When the guards came running, he happily called out, Don’t worry. I got him for you.

        Can’t feel that sorry, but still. The Founders in their Wisdom decided against cruel and unusual punishment – which England has long gloried in. And this obviously was a most cruel and unusual end.

        • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 12:12 pm #

          correction: had long gloried in, not has. They reformed in the 19th century I believe.

      • SpeedyBB May 27, 2022 at 7:24 pm #

        I recall reading of many such cases from 1946 onward – career killers were given their walking papers and then expected to settle down to a middle-class life as a worker at, say, Packard.

        Setting aside that killer instinct, ingrained deeply into combat troops, was not only a social issue but was not recognized as same for many years.

        By the time Vietnam rolled around PTSD and other such long-lasting reactions to bettle were finally being acknowledged.

        • justanotherguy May 28, 2022 at 5:16 pm #

          back then i remember the uncles calling it shell shock. wasn’t really considered unusual, just why some guys had some really bad days.

          the 50’s stability and conformity was the country’s way of taking a breath from international shell shock.

          then came the precious boomers…

  16. getsome May 27, 2022 at 10:38 am #

    James Howard: This, beyond doubt, is your finest prose on ANY subject.
    I watched Officer Joe Bolton, dressed up as a policeman, providing moral guidelines to impressionable children (who were watching the Three Stooges). He was a caring, forthright model, a person a child could intuit really cared about his “kids” watching. Such positive direction, inculcated early, formed the young mind to care about abiding by societal rules. You WANTED to be a “good person” for Officer Joe.
    PpChildren today have I phones as a role model input. Absolutely no wonder why the most mentally vulnerable act out in violence. Exposure to sex, violent characters etc early does permanent damage to a child’s psyche. The young singer Billie Eilish well documented her own early decent into “hell” due to the exposure to porn too early. Extent this exponentially across our society.
    “America” is a mental construct of Homo sapiens. It does NOT exist in the physical world. As such, the majority MUST believe in its existence AND have a mental connection to it – I’m an American – without which it evaporates back to a pnon corporeal ideal. We’re there now.
    My country is bordered by actual physical, observable limits. I know all the inhabitants. We think alike on the core issues. Should put in for sovereign status. Nuff Said.

  17. themetalmystic May 27, 2022 at 10:40 am #

    Nice blog and that is true. However there is another class of people who are perpetual children. My partner came with 3 kids. Two are out of the house and one wrapping up high school. It is astounding the level of underdevelopment of these kids. The best I can say for them is that they are not delinquents. I can’t say much in favor of them in terms of being young adults the way me and my generation were.

    They are incapable of having adult conversations. In almost 5 years of knowing them the eldest (25) and the youngest, (17) have never once asked me a question about myself or had anything approaching an adult conversation. The middle has more EQ and a real work ethic, but does not have much in the way of a cultivated presence we would call a young man. The eldest presents more like 11 in some facets and 6 in others. The youngest presents at about 6 or less in terms of responsibility, decision making, any hints of self reliance. These are kids who through connections and socio-economic status are destined for a place in the top 5-10% of society – assuming the status quo holds.

    Their cousins are brlliant – at least one of them is. Still, the presentation as adults is pathetic. One of them, “came out”, as some-sorta-sexual his first year of college. They are home now and came over the other night where he was painting his fingernails red with his cousin as his multiple ear rings and danglies flop around. The conversations consist of a circle jerk of phone gazing and laughing and sharing TikTok posts. If there are any serious topics raised, they would all be the delusions of woke.

    We live through a time where our nation is crumbling – a monumental event in human history given the profile of our nation and how advanced our civilization is, and they don’t even have the first idea. They are supposed to be young scholars – that is the point of being in college as I understood it growing up. What are they doing? They are preening as cross dressers on Instagram, defending unknown LGBTQ+ victims, relishing the social media banishment of a sitting president of the United States, claiming we are all racist etcetera and otherwise indulged in vaccuous forms of time wasting. So that is the progeny of our mid level elite – at least the picture of them that I have.

    Raise your children out of the city. Cultivate your relationship in your male-female pair bond. You can keep it loving and exciting. Raise your children, young boys especially, with intent. Have him help with chores and farm/ranch duties – even dangerous ones. Teach him firearm safety and skills no later than 10 years old. Have him hunting, fishing, building in the physical world and contributing to the household and the community through enjoyable hard work from the time he is 5 or 6. He will inherit the earth along with the formed men who have been raised to be one. He will truly be a man amongst boys.

    • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 10:52 am #

      Children raised in captivity don’t grow up as fast.

      The idea of college being for scholars seems to have fallen by the wayside. I doubt many college age people could tell you what a scholar even is, it’s become an archaic term.

      • themetalmystic May 27, 2022 at 5:03 pm #

        No. They cannot tell you what a scholar is nor do they know what a scholar is. They have zero capacity to think for themselves. I could spend hours and vast words here with anecdote after anecdote of the stupidity of this progeny. Mind you this is one of the most affluent places in America with one of the top school systems. It is a farce. The level of knowledge of even basic facts is gone missing. The youngest stands in front of the toaster oven befuddled with a bread crusted piece of food to heat up, “It’s going to get crumbs on the bottom. What do I do?” I just say, “I don’t know. What do you think?” She just stands there paralyzed.

        Of course there is fact checking and angry comments about the systems that are reliably power her lifestyle that they are stupid or evil… This individual is going to an upper mid-tier university in the fall.

        “Children raised in captivity don’t group as fast.” I wonder if, “going into society”, is ever leaving captivity. Burb to College to Corporation. Sounds like perpetual captivity. So maybe it should be, “Children raised in captivity are never really raised, and thus, they never grow up.”

        This particular child is a religious and relentless mask wearer. No complaint wearing a cloth mask all day every day, outdoors, indoors anywhere and everywhere. However, when the school proposed banning girls from wearing half shirts, the world ended and we never heard the end of the unfairness and injustice and sexism of this.

        Children raised in captivity relish their captivity as much as their perpetual childhood.

        • Q. Shtik May 28, 2022 at 4:57 pm #

          banning girls from wearing half shirts, – themetal

          ============

          What is a “half shirt?”

    • Penelope Dreadful May 27, 2022 at 11:42 am #

      You have nailed it! All the stupid-looking multiple earrings and nose rings. Belly button rings, and rings in unmentionable places. It reminds me of this book I bought years ago – Primitives. by Charles Gatewood, and the people therein were totally icky. About like those freaks in Madonna’s book, the one with the metal covers. Just icky freaky people inside, except for the German Shephard.

      And all the vacuousness. Obsessed by their phone, and they never have time to just flop out and read a good book. Their intellectual capability is practically non-existent.

      I almost hope for a Great Depression 2.0, where metrosexual lads will have to chop firewood for a living, and have to give up their smart phone for an old style flip phone, with no camera. Or games.

      • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 12:19 pm #

        Well said. German Shepherds are often so good. Many have an almost human presence that can make you feel self conscious when they look at you.

        Antifa has shown up at dog shows raving about dog racism. There are no breeds except the dog breed of dog.

        • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 12:54 pm #

          Remember the moment the beagle won Best In Show at Westminster?

          Somehow that was like America beating Russia at Lake Placid, or Donald Trump winning the presidency.

          I don’t know why.

        • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 6:44 pm #

          Most dogs are dogs. But every now and then you run across a dog that is a person.

          • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 11:09 pm #

            More often than not, you run into people who are dogs, and not very good ones, at that.

          • Anthea May 28, 2022 at 1:12 am #

            @ Disaffected:

            Well, there are for sure a lot of people who are not really people.

            Someone wrote an essay about a hundred years ago, titled, “Why Do We Not Act Like Human Beings?”

            The essay concluded that this is because we are not–that the great mass of people are the raw material from which the occasional human being emerges. This is kind of like dogs. The great mass of dogs are the raw material from which the occasional “dog who is a person” emerges.

    • justanotherguy May 28, 2022 at 5:26 pm #

      i recognize what you are saying – there are cartoon ‘adults’ aplenty one might picture while reading your narrative. they get all the cultural attention, but worse, all the ‘point and sputter’ attention of us grumpy old men sitting on the porch yelling ‘get off my lawn’, but…

      this week, we had our final trail life meeting of the school year, with a well supervised air gun range, a fire, and really excellent hot dogs and marshmallows after. we are planning loads of summer challenges.

      thursday night, i began teaching ground school at our local civil air patrol squadron, for the most amazing group of young kids you would ever care to meet, and about 10 or so committed parents and friends that make it run.

      inside every perception is a woke monster trying to eat us alive, and a human being, a citizen, a spirit aiming for gratitude and self realization. which one will win? either the worthy kid or the little monster you sacrifice your precious time on earth for.

  18. tom clark May 27, 2022 at 10:44 am #

    Jimbo…one of your better efforts, especially for someone who never had kids.

    BTW..the answer to your trivia question in para. 7 is Terry Pendleton.

    • JTinMD May 27, 2022 at 11:34 am #

      I had to look it up, thinking it was probably Chipper Jones, but he was hurt that entire (partial) year. I asked my boss, “Quick — who played third base for the Braves in ’94?” Without a second’s hesitation, he said, “Terry Pendleton.” Impressive.

      Good post, Mr K, if hard to swallow. I just don’t even want to think on this subject — AT ALL.

      Happy Memorial Day, everbody!

  19. Opie May 27, 2022 at 10:46 am #

    Wow Jim, your articles are always worth reading, but once in a while you hit it out of the park. These last two posts do just that. I just returned from my goddaughters wedding which was held in Iceland of all places. It reminded me big time as to how far gone we are in this country. When you’re in a sane society the madness at home is even more glaring. I have never in my life felt as safe as I felt in Iceland. A country of 350k that’s 99% homogeneous has 0-3 murders per year on average. For a population in which roughly 1/3 of the population is armed that is remarkable indeed. I met a couple at one of their hot springs which overlooks a bay. He pointed to a house out on the peninsula about 100 yards away and told me it was the presidents house. He said anyone can go up and knock on the door and if he’s home he’ll come out and talk to you! I told him that if someone in the US made it half way across they would be blown up ten different ways. The children are so happy looking compared to here, traffic at it’s worst and you never hear anyone honk, or some moron texting or blaring music. Teens walk down the sidewalks side by side engaged in conversation and laughing, no one with their nose buried in a phone. The only freakazoid people I saw walking about turned out to be….Americans. If I could tolerate the winters and was a younger man, I would consider it a good bug-out zone. They are near energy dependent with all the thermal plants, they produce 100% meat and dairy in country, and about half for their vegetables which are grown in giant greenhouse heated by their natural thermal springs. The country is insanely beautiful, pictures do not do it justice.

    • malthuss May 27, 2022 at 10:50 am #

      wait till the 3rd world arrives.

      • hmuller May 27, 2022 at 11:12 am #

        Yes, I’ll bet Klaus Schwab and Soros would love to send Iceland about 100,000 Somalis, et al to help their diversity.

        • elysianfield May 27, 2022 at 11:15 am #

          Somalis

          hmuller,
          Would it be any better to send 100K “average Americans”?

    • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 10:55 am #

      Better hurry, an awful lot of your Hollywood/celebutard types have become enraptured with Iceland because iit doesn’t have people like them in it.

    • Penelope Dreadful May 27, 2022 at 10:57 am #

      I think that is because in Iceland, you have some job security and the people who run their businesses are not always trying to find some way to screw their employees over.

      Living in America, you have a 30 year mortgage, and you don’t know if you will have a 30 year job, or if you will be downsized tomorrow. Lose your home, and you could be sleeping in your car in a few months. Unless you are a government worker, and then you can live pretty well.

      But what does a 35 year old paper-pusher have in the way of job security? And frankly, I think probably half the jobs in the white-collar world are just ephemeral. I mean, what does HR really do, but help document how come you fired somebody? Or the various diversity officers. Or the “quality control” people in the white collar world – not the quality control engineering types. But the white collar ones, who want “quality control” over paper flowing processes?

      My guess is that in Iceland, people do meaningful work and they kinda know what the future holds for them and they can have some sort of inner peace.

      • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 11:17 am #

        I often semi-joke with my fellow drones that the greatest quality improvement that we could make is to start at the top and eliminate 50% of management at every tier one tier at a time until things stopped functioning. My guess is that they could get all the way through line management and things would not only keep functioning, but they’d actually begin to thrive. Then take the savings generated by all those management positions being eliminated and apply them to right sizing the actual productive workforce – the people who actually DO things – and increasing their salaries accordingly.

        • Penelope Dreadful May 27, 2022 at 12:52 pm #

          That would be a good start. Too many managers think they can “manage” things beyond their control. A real example, with names and occupations changed.

          Suzie is a salesperson. She has been doing the job and doing it well for 10 years. The company sells a good product, but its customer base is limited, and it is much more expensive than its nearest competitor. The economy slumps and COVID hits, so sales decline.

          Maggie, the manager over Suzie, feels heat from above, and she pushes it down to Suzie. But there is only so much Suzie can do, despite all Maggies’ suggestions. People are pulling back, and no one can blame them. This is simply a phase that must be ridden out.

          But “management” can not simply do nothing. They have to pretend to manage. If those layers of management were reduced, then prices could go down, and the company could be more competitive.

          That solution to the problem, an obvious solution, will never be submitted from below.

        • JohnAZ May 27, 2022 at 3:40 pm #

          The problem with overgrown management stems from the power people that populate management. Pure power people do not care about people or achieving results. They care about how many people work for them and how big a budget they have. The worst example is the federal bureaucracy where improved productivity results in cut backs.

          Another pet beef of mine over the years is the habit of taking senior engineers or nurses and making them managers. Most I have dealt with were totally ignorant of what a manager is. It is no wonder the country feels that management is deficient, it is.

          Corporations, including the US government, need to concentrate adequate managerial training, people skills, on fewer folks and emphasize results instead of politics. Not just corporations!

          • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 4:03 pm #

            A buddy of mine and I actually submitted an AF Suggestion through official channels to bifurcate the work force into managerial and senior technical tracks. The idea was at some point, E-5 or E-6 we suggested, that based on supervisor’s input and possibly testing and employee input, people be separated into the separate tracks. Our primary point was to generate a dedicated cadre of “super-technicians” to work hard aircraft problems, who would have similar opportunities for promotion as their managerial counterparts. Of course we knew managers would likely always have an advantage, but it was at least a start and an acknowledgement that technicians are not just “plug and play” like they are now in the aircraft maintenance industry. Needless to say, it didn’t “have wings,” but I really enjoyed brainstorming it with him. Shane Bolles. At any rate, I think the idea applies to industry in general, and not just aircraft maintenance. Having found myself mired in management just a year or two later, I can honestly say it was the low point of my entire USAF career. Pure drudgery and bullshit all the day long, even in the mid-90’s. Meaningless commendations and unwarranted ass-chewings for things I had no control over whatsoever were the norm. Management By Objective (MBO) was the term then, which basically meant start collecting stats – any stats – on something, analyze them, and fix the problem, regardless of what you knew about such techniques (and rest assured, most people have no clue). And of course management (and cronyism) in the USAF and everywhere else has simply exploded in all the years since.

          • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 5:56 pm #

            DA, I always thought the ‘Super Tecnicians” were the Warrant Officers? That’s how it was in the Nav.

          • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 7:51 pm #

            Nah. USAF didn’t have those. It was up or out into management across the board. In the Army WO’s are all helicopter pilots.

      • hmuller May 27, 2022 at 11:18 am #

        Too many people doing nothing useful… Solution – enter Bill Gates with crates of monkey pox virus, enter Dr Fauci with many vials of “the cure”. The Elite have their plans for us.

    • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 12:23 pm #

      Their isolation has saved them, nothing more. From what I’ve heard, their girls are also obsessed with their phones and sexuality. And the people are utterly politically correct, yearning for diversity. Their prayers will be heard and answered soon enough.

      • malthuss May 27, 2022 at 2:37 pm #

        they practically forbid or do forbid downs babies to be born. like UK.

        god forbid UK has white retards [homeless] as they pamper dangerous minorities.

        • malthuss May 27, 2022 at 2:37 pm #

          I meant [harmless] not homeless.

  20. zekesdad May 27, 2022 at 10:49 am #

    Excellent piece today, Jim. I heard a preacher on the radio yesterday say that that all of these shootings are at their core a spiritual problem. I think the things you and others cite such as Drag Queen Story Hour, celebrity worship, absent fathers, etc. are symptoms of that.

    Your comments of public school design are very interesting. I often see even rural schools that look like prisons, I imagine new ones will look even more fortress-like. In my town the tony private elementary and high schools look like college campuses; very inviting in nicely landscaped settings. I wonder for how much longer. You must be familiar with architect and theorist Leon Krier who called modern public schools “Auschwittzs of the mind”. His unbuilt design for a European school is a sadly an example of what could be, but is rarely ever realized

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  21. 100th Avatar May 27, 2022 at 10:50 am #

    Excellent piece.

    I posit that superheroes are supplied to occupy, primarily, both the imaginative realm of ADULTS, and to assuage their inability to do anything in their self-interest or self-preservation in an increasingly chaotic society.

    A palliative for those without agency.
    Comic books always appealed to the meek and powerless. That’s where they were born.

    Now everyone laps up these garish and ridiculous sensory bombardments.

    Just read the plot outline for the next Thor installment..

    don’t be surprised if gray matter leaks from your ears in the process.

    • Why_weren't_we_asked_about_Degrowth May 27, 2022 at 11:45 am #

      People in my generation grew up with vigilante heroes. Dirty Harry, Death Wish and Rambo where the message was a person driven to violence could overcome a broken system of justice or a wayward government. Now Hollywood has convinced the masses that people are powerless and only super heroes in colorful costumes can overcome injustice and evil.

      We’re just forced to wait for a caped hero of diversity (they or them) to walk down the tarmac at Davos and destroy hundreds of private jets filled with evil doers.

    • SpeedyBB May 27, 2022 at 10:00 pm #

      I believe it was in the Comments section here at CFN that someone pointed out that the super-hero films represented the enforced infantilization of the masses.

      • justanotherguy May 28, 2022 at 5:37 pm #

        that is brilliant, and well worth repeating – thank you.

  22. mitchellc May 27, 2022 at 10:51 am #

    If you pull back focus, each new “event” seems like another skirmish in the slowly unraveling collapse.

    Ask yourself this, do you believe it will get better, satay about the same, or get progressively worse?

    For anyone in a position to understand what is occurring, it’s difficult to muster enough enthusiasm to attempt to correct.

    Rather, it’s time to keep your eyes open and adopt an attitude that you’re actually living through a low level war.

    • JTinMD May 27, 2022 at 11:58 am #

      It’s getting worse for me. Makes me wanna puke. But it’s getting soooo much better for the pointlessly-educated pencil-necks in the hideously bloated gummints around the world.

      • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 8:19 pm #

        I think the best course of action–for anyone in a position to do so–is to “go Galt,” or some iteration thereof, or to the greatest extent possible. Admittedly, this could be very difficult for a man or woman with a family to support or a spouse who is unwilling.

        In other words, get out of city. Get out of suburbia. Find a backwater rural area as far from cities and suburbs as is practical. If it’s really a backwater, it will be generally viewed as an undesirable place to live and will hence be cheap.

        This is what happened to me–more or less by accident. My search for a house I could afford to buy led me further and further outside the city, until at last I discovered a dump in a very rural lake community. The place had many deficiencies. The main one was that I had to haul water, as there was no city water service. The other major deficiency was that there was no heat but a wood stove. Thirdly, the roads were bad and, in winter, they were not always cleared of snow.

        If you move to such a place, you will almost certainly find yourself living among poor people–unless you are in a position to buy or build a house on a small acreage (which is immensely preferable), in which case you’ll find yourself among a better class of people. Many people cannot bear the humiliation of living in a dumpy house in a poor community, where they have neighbors known as Gumby, Froggy, and Chainsaw Bob.

        The neighbors will grow on you. Since moving away from this little paradise–and paradise it was–I still visit with a former neighbor to exchange seeds, plants, and advice. He is a licensed marijuana grower who lives in a single-wide trailer with his disabled wife and a grown son who is devoted to caring for his aging parents. In my estimation, the guy probably has a genius-level IQ and is a selt-taught chemist, botanist, hydroponic grower, and skilled gardener, as well as being highly skilled in several trades. He cares for his disabled wife (we’re talking about changing her diapers for years) without complaint and even with apparent enjoyment–driving her to the hairdresser, the nail salon, the botanical garden, the fireworks display, and the family gatherings. The guy recently gave me some opium poppy seeds sent to him by a friend in Montana, a variety descended from seeds spread by Chinese railroad workers in the 1800s.

        He also has a felony conviction. These types are fairly common in such places.

        This is interesting in itself. I sometimes think that modern American society has discarded some of its best and brightest–because of drug convictions or because they talk like hicks (the guy I speak of is not good at pronouncing binomial nomenclature), lack formal education, or because of being overtaken by other misfortunes, such as being married five times or going through a medical bankruptcy and resulting foreclosure–or simply losing their high-roller job as a car saleman. These are people who, in a free-market economy, probably would have been self-employed and built successful businesses or farms, but have been shut out of both free enterprise and the corporate world that is now dominant.

        So, going Galt will involve a culture shock. (You will find the more polished type of people at church, to which I recommend that you betake yourself.)

        I sincerely believe that this is the route to the good life.

        • justanotherguy May 28, 2022 at 5:41 pm #

          sound like you have a book in you – great story and telling.

          these people beat many to the punch – going galt might sound all bookish and fancy.

          shrug…

  23. 100th Avatar May 27, 2022 at 11:12 am #

    Life’s Rich Pageant

    There’s the progress we have found
    A way to talk around the problem
    Building towered foresight
    Isn’t anything at all
    Buy the sky
    And sell the sky
    And bleed the sky
    And tell the sky

    I am Superman and I know what’s happening

    Malfunctioning (rich) pageant indeed

    • malthuss May 27, 2022 at 2:41 pm #

      REMs last album I bought, weak album.

  24. erik May 27, 2022 at 11:13 am #

    Well, now folks, at least with 2 consecutive mass shootings, our national moral panic du jour can switch from “saving democracy and freedom” in Ukraine to garment rending and breast beating about the “need to do something” about mass shootings. But exactly what do do is recondite, the problem being that the peeps who do these shootings are essentially Kamikaze pilots and deterring a person who’s prepared to die anyway is whole nother kettle of fish compared to deterring someone who wants to commit an atrocity and get away.
    These days anomie and alienation have gotten so mainstream that there are many mostly young people who feel that “Life’s a bitch and then you die” to such an extent that they fantasize about at least making a big splash and enjoy an intensely thrilling experience of power before they punch their ticket.

    • JTinMD May 27, 2022 at 12:05 pm #

      How could you or any of us know the slightest useful thing about such people. All I can do is shake my head in wonder before I FORCE myself to STOP my pointless wondering. Sick does what sick is gonna do, and these people are quite obviously the sickest of ’em all. Can any of us truly relate to them? I sure can’t, so I’m simply at a loss to explain anything about it. I would have to somehow rewind their entire lives, and view all the sickening turning points as they happen. Then, maybe… No, thanks.

      • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 12:21 pm #

        That’s the thing. We never seem to get any closer to an answer as to why. I’m not sure the shooters know either. Which makes me think it’s larger than that. Probably multiple factors that may or may not be able to be summarized under one broad heading.

        • MaryQueen May 27, 2022 at 7:27 pm #

          The people who have offered the ‘why’ over and over again, are called conspiracy theorists and laughed and or ignored.

          So, the horrors will continue.

          • justanotherguy May 28, 2022 at 5:47 pm #

            continue while they are useful…

            the entire celebrated culture a car wreak, and phd’s being done on crash splatter minutiae by the select, while the rest of us are told we are told we are deficiency phd-less and can’t turn away, spinning mental wheels in the carefully manicured mud.

      • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 8:46 pm #

        I’d say that ultimately these are people who see themselves as having no value, as having no power to make a meaningful contribution to others or to have value merely as human beings.

        As JHK said, we have a society that offers young people (and people in general) no meaningful place: no economic place where they are anything more than a replaceable carbon unit, and no human place. A “human place” would be where you are important to someone and highly valued by some one, or several someones. Such a “human place” is usually a family, though it can sometimes be found in friendships.

        Our society has no belief at all in the inherent value of individual human beings. The liberal philosophy seems to be that humans are pretty much a plague on the face of the earth: vermin. (Liberals are nihilists at heart.)

        A person who feels that they have no value is a dangerous person. They assume that everyone else feels the same lack of value that they do. They would welcome death and assume that most other people would too–and we’d all be better off dead, anyway. If such a person suffers from some kind of emotional stress or trauma, they are likely to act out this philosophical position. Emotional stresses and traumas abound in that age group. You can be called a faggot, crossed in love, slighted by your bestie, or ripped on on a drug deal. Throw in some SSRIs and you could get a rage monster.

  25. Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 11:13 am #

    Talking about the physical appearance of some of the students today, must notably the extreme increase in the number of really heavy ones, it’s been obvious (to me anyway) that there is something more going on than just eating junk food and not getting enough exercise.

    They look physiologically off for someone their age. Young women who are already outcasts in the appearance department may naturally be attracted to a look that sets you apart as cool and belonging to a group that accepts you as you are.

    Hence the shaved heads, flaunting the flab, etc. It says, “I meant to look this way”.

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  26. vengeur May 27, 2022 at 11:22 am #

    Kunstler is a genius. He has once again written a masterpiece. Thank you Mr. Kunstler.

  27. D from OR May 27, 2022 at 11:28 am #

    We decided to home school our 17-year-old son a little over a year ago. It has been a successful move and I highly recommend it. In fact I believe everyone should do it. Schools, as JHK describes them, are a horror. The teachers are worse.

    I will credit our son for much of the success as he is a thoughtful and curious person. Also his grade-school years were at a Waldorf school. so he was used to doing lots of self-directed projects so it wasn’t a stretch to continue the same style of learning.

    Also of note is beginning at grade one Waldorf emphasizes importance of politeness and looking adults in the eye. Each morning and afternoon the teacher is greeted with a handshake and a “how are you.” It’s a little thing that makes a difference in how these kids behave around adults.

    It’s also why as a general rule most adults have a very favorable opinion of our son. He looks them in the eye and speaks with confidence. These soft skills are just as important as the hard skills and we have pointed out it is an area that can reinforce your chances of success in whatever you choose to do.

    Our children are our responsibility. No one else cares the way we do. No teacher, no school.

    • Hereward the Woke May 27, 2022 at 1:06 pm #

      Well done, D. You gave us a glimmer of light and hope among the doom. We HSed our kids too, and it (mostly) worked.

      • D from OR May 28, 2022 at 9:58 am #

        Thanks Hereward. We aren’t the only ones doing this. It continues to grow.

        One of the young kids of the five that live across the street from us was discovered skipping school. He wasn’t being bullied or unable to do the work just didn’t want to go and said he didn’t like it. So his parent’s listened and now he is “unschooling”. There’s a local resource center for this and he’s met a community of kids doing the same and is doing well.

        In another place, without understanding parents, this kid would have had an entirely different experience. It would have been about failure, non-compliance, and punishment.

        • justanotherguy May 28, 2022 at 5:53 pm #

          it does me good to hear stories like yours and hereward’s. it takes a realization and maturity to invest yourself, to sacrificially burn some of our own precious time alive to invest in worthy young people. i concluded a while ago that there ain’t no other way.

    • MaryQueen May 27, 2022 at 7:29 pm #

      Extremely well-done, D.

      • D from OR May 28, 2022 at 10:00 am #

        I appreciate that MaryQueen. We take it seriously.

        • Q. Shtik May 28, 2022 at 6:18 pm #

          We take it seriously. – D from OR

          ============

          I assume at least one parent does not need to work outside the home.

  28. R banjo May 27, 2022 at 11:29 am #

    Oh ya, the school shootout. Same ole same ole.
    If not for the news ,no one would know or care.
    Check out Jobamas tweet. Disgusting. Oh ya, Michelle is a man.

    There were 33,000 drug overdoses in 2021.
    Thats 90 a day.

    I know of at least 5 or 6 here in the little town where I reside.

    The Diversity, inclusion, and equity mob have been part and parcel for all this crap.

    The last “virtue” is tolerance, when that is used up, which is coming, its going to get real…

    When it shocks you, its the same for everyone else “in reality.”

    When one lives in make believe its impossible to reach, we are a drug cartel culture.

    Work on the new and leave the old to fend for itself. Or fugedaboutit…

    • malthuss May 27, 2022 at 2:50 pm #

      There were 33,000 drug overdoses in 2021.

      or more?

      but thats the idea. Genocide.

    • justanotherguy May 28, 2022 at 6:08 pm #

      Societies are far when gone in depravity when toleration is considered good in itself, without regard to the thing tolerated. A.K. Chesterton

  29. Slugoon May 27, 2022 at 11:34 am #

    Jim. You’ve drawn tears. A beautiful and heartfelt piece of writing. Thank you.

  30. DanandMary May 27, 2022 at 11:42 am #

    Give every kid a pitbull. Theyll be too busy to plot any mischief.

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    • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 12:23 pm #

      And inflict needless violence and torture on pit bulls? Please, no!

  31. MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 27, 2022 at 11:43 am #

    …even better remembered, perhaps, than whoever played third-base for the Atlanta Braves in 1994

    Easy one! Terry Pendleton. Formerly of the Cards.

    • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 12:41 pm #

      One UFO pilot is said to have talked about Harry Aaganis, utility infielder for the Boston Redsox generations ago.

  32. amb May 27, 2022 at 11:47 am #

    Another masterpiece. Observations of our true reality and plight, disseminated in the form of elegant prose. We people of Western Civ have been asleep at the wheel for centuries. Despite the industrial/technological progress we’ve made, we lack the basic understandings and technologies that we truly need. Religion, science, medicine, philosophy, et al have all failed us. We are becoming extinct as a species, in a slow slow death spiral downwards.

    P.S. The AMA/APA and Big Pharma are behind 99.999% of all these mass murders and suicides. The Psychiatrist, long the tool of governments and militaries, as well as all of these false “sciences” of the mind (psychiatry, psychology, psycho-analysis, etc.) are one of our most basic ENEMIES and should be obliterated from our planet.

  33. MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 27, 2022 at 11:49 am #

    Hell of a post, JHK. Back to the basics, as they keep being presented to us again and again with a different cellophane wrapper as the months ceaselessly roll through into meaningless years (as far as they care, at least).

    This resonates (and will for decades to come, if people ever again decide to find benefit in listening to those with wordly experience):

    The quality of virtue, meaning that some things and some doings are recognizably better than others, was deceitfully replaced by the equity of nothing being allowed to be better than anything else.

    A recipe for developing the worst kind of mediocrity into a standard, at best. At worst, a deliberate capping of human ability. Sad state.

  34. restless94110 May 27, 2022 at 11:51 am #

    You got just about everything right. Everything except your idea that a kid will mass murder for some kind of ego thing or to make a point or whatever.

    There is something inhuman about murdering people indiscriminately. A person has to cross over out of being human.

    The way this is done is via taking anti-depressants, some or all of which have the potential side effect of homicide or suicide.

    Some that take those drugs become so severely alienated from themselves that they lose their humanity.

    The drugs are the last straw, not the architecture of the school, the lack of role models, the lack of any route to success.

    The drugs are the final step to school shootings.

    • 100th Avatar May 27, 2022 at 12:02 pm #

      There is no silver bullet.

      There is no single cause.

      There is no final “step”.

      There is something inhuman about a child’s environment.
      Ugly home in an ugly town with an austere school with socializing reduced to words on a handheld screen.

      Why did the Buffalo shooter record/stream his act?

      To make a point.

      Go rethink

      • cowbell81 May 27, 2022 at 12:07 pm #

        Exactly, it’s primarily the lack of social skills that causes so many societal problems. If we simply got to know people for what they are, flesh and blood fellow human beings with feelings, then there would be more compassion and less ability to explicitly inflict harm.

        Instead, society is pushing us more and more into separate spheres based on color, gender, sexual orientation, etc. We shouldn’t care about any of that, care about the person as a person!

        Unfortunately, things will likely get worse before they get better. If we can eventually manage to turn the tide, there will still be a large segment of the population (i.e. a lost generation) to deal with. It would take a lot to make such a huge correction to the system at this point.

      • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 12:15 pm #

        Alienation in an alien nation.

        None other than Mathew McConaughey is from Uvalde TX as well. Small world.

        • stelmosfire May 27, 2022 at 12:50 pm #

          “None other than Mathew McConaughey is from Uvalde TX.

          Isn’t he that bareassed bongo banger dude? Must be sumthin’ in the water. I think he’s running for Governor.

          • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 3:41 pm #

            Wouldn’t surprise me. He ran with Lance Armstrong back in the day. Big RomCom actor.

    • Islander May 27, 2022 at 2:11 pm #

      I think it is conceivable that a mixed-up kid, or one with a mix of severe problems that have not been diagnosed, could come up with the idea of going on a murder spree to get 15 minutes of fame and attention.

      IMO the problem with the “ban firearms” reaction is that its premise almost seems to be that mass shootings are “normal” behavior, so banning the guns will eliminate them. Kind of like, if you ban hammers, no nails will be driven. I guess that would in fact be the case . . .

    • Q. Shtik May 28, 2022 at 6:36 pm #

      The drugs are the final step to school shootings. – restless

      ===========

      Has it been determined that the shooter was on such drugs?

  35. zappalives May 27, 2022 at 11:55 am #

    Brilliant piece…………perhaps your best,Jim !

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  36. Why_weren't_we_asked_about_Degrowth May 27, 2022 at 11:57 am #

    Don’t forget that Texas has a law against doing government business with companies who oppose gun manufacturers and the NRA was holding a convention in the state this week.

  37. Prospero May 27, 2022 at 12:19 pm #

    In the early 1960s, I received both polio and smallpox vaccinations at the school during my 7th and 8th grade years. The school brought in a veterinarian and his assistant to administer the vaccinations to me and the other caged animals.

    Are experimental gene modification mRNA drug injections (currently called vaccinations) now being forced on children at their schools?

    • thwack May 27, 2022 at 1:36 pm #

      My mom shot me at home when I was 7

      • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 3:39 pm #

        Did you live?

        • elysianfield May 27, 2022 at 6:15 pm #

          Dis,
          How disrespectful. Show some compassion. Ask if he still wears a helmet….

  38. Jo-G May 27, 2022 at 12:20 pm #

    “The mayhem unleashed in a school shooting is just the rectified essence of the manifold derangements in our national life. ”

    This sentence makes more sense to me, with respect to the tone of the whole essay, when the word “rectified” is changed to “reified”.

    • JTinMD May 27, 2022 at 12:50 pm #

      I was thinking, may “clarified,” as in clarified butter?

  39. Weaver Revolt May 27, 2022 at 12:24 pm #

    Again, again, and again you hit the nail squarely on the head. A spiritual wasteland breeds vacant-eyed demons. All I will add is that a country that has for decades dispensed violence so profligately all over the globe cannot escape being touched by its own devaluation of life.

  40. cowbell81 May 27, 2022 at 12:30 pm #

    Was just reading that Rep. Lauren Boebert makes an interesting analogy.

    “The massacre at a Texas school is no a reason for greater gun control. When 9/11 happened, we didn’t ban planes. We secured the cockpit.”

    Put those little turrets occupied by an armed guard at each fence corner of the school. Then you will have what is truly intended all along, a prison of the body and the mind for our public school students.

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    • Paula D May 27, 2022 at 2:02 pm #

      Maybe it was disinformation but I read that there was an armed guard at the school.

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 27, 2022 at 2:23 pm #

        That has been walked back, I believe. There’s always some important part of the story that turns out to be incorrect. Or at least up in the air as to validity as the story evolves.

  41. Ishabaka May 27, 2022 at 12:30 pm #

    When it comes to children, here’s what worries me the most:
    The majority of mothers pushing baby carriages or strollers I see in my neighborhood are mesmerized by their phones, paying no attention whatsoever to their infants.
    The iPhone has been around for 15 years. Mammals evolved about 200,000,000 years ago, and for 199,999,985 of those years mothers focused with laser-like intensity on their infants.

    • Paula D May 27, 2022 at 2:05 pm #

      Yes. And for a while there was a fad where babies carried around in those car seats were completely covered with an opaque plastic shroud, making them unable to see anything. What did that do to their development? It has been known for decades that human babies prefer looking at a human face to any other thing.
      Same with the last two years of forcing humans to cover their faces.
      We already know that it had a harmful effect on the littlest humans.

    • Kevvia Knack May 27, 2022 at 4:30 pm #

      Agree. I saw a young father pushing his baby in a stroller yesterday. He was watching a TV show on his phone. He was totally detached from the child and completely ignoring the beautiful weather and scenery surrounding him. All I could think was Shit this guy is seriously disoriented….

      • jim e May 27, 2022 at 7:48 pm #

        I am an old father now but I never strolled. I held my kids.

  42. Frankenstein Government May 27, 2022 at 12:33 pm #

    Who knew, we’d be the last?

    No cellphones, laptops, or video games. We rode in the back of pickup trucks and didn’t wear some dumb ass helmet when we rode our bike.

    When we wanted to have fun- there were plenty of kids to round up. We played baseball on street corners and waited for cars to drive thru.

    In high school we brought our guns to school, in our pickups and cars, because we hunted that morning. We left the cars unlocked.

    We went to school, then to sport practice, then a job. We went to church on Sundays. Out to eat afterwards.

    Who knew we’d be the last?

    • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 1:01 pm #

      Many schools had gun clubs.

      • JTinMD May 27, 2022 at 1:27 pm #

        JT raises hand. Co-ed, even. Way back in the ’70s.

      • beantownbill. May 27, 2022 at 4:13 pm #

        I belonged to our gun club in high school.

    • JTinMD May 27, 2022 at 1:25 pm #

      Nice. “I like all those words.”

    • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 27, 2022 at 2:27 pm #

      Frankenstein – I believe I was about 10 years behind you by your description, but you still described essentially the same upbringing I remember in the 80s (except we had some early video games…well, my friends did, at least…I learned BASIC on a TRS-80 while they played Nintendo).

      How quickly things change between successive generations these days.

    • JackStraw May 28, 2022 at 6:56 am #

      I’m with you except for the helmet part, and I’m probably in your age group. One of my best friends died after falling off his bike and hitting his head on the curb. Helmets are one of the good ideas.

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 28, 2022 at 8:13 am #

        Awful. I lost my best friend in 5th grade to a freak wake-boarding accident on a lake – hit a dock at speed. Thankfully I wasn’t there to see it.

        Hope you weren’t there to see your friend hit the curb.

  43. thwack May 27, 2022 at 12:35 pm #

    whats with the comment moderation on bit chute links?

    or is it cuz Im black?

  44. farmgal May 27, 2022 at 12:41 pm #

    Mr. K my praise is redundant after so many glowing accolades upthread, but I do believe this is your finest yet. As I reread it my heart fell to my feet in not just depression but dread. I have a 16 year old grandson and granddaughters aged 2 and 6. Jesus H Christ what a future they have in store. They’re bright kids but after the nightmare scenario you portray they will be ground down year by year, their innocence and hopefulness sucked out of them until only a husk remains. And they have caring parents.

    Someone mentioned earlier about the bullying herd of children and I can only respond that it doesn’t have to be so. In the 60s I attended Dekalb County schools just outside of Atlanta. There was no middle school…only 1through 7 and 8 through 12. It was in the top 5 school systems in the country. In elementary there was a male principal and always one or two male teachers for 6th and 7th grades. They managed to weed out the bullies in short order. First offense was after school detention. Second was a 3 day suspension and third was a permanent trip to alternative school.

    Today there are no consequences for actions and no shame either. The socialists have done their job well. They’ve destroyed the family and the school and I see nothing other than a long emergency scenario that can change that trajectory. I could cry.

    • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 12:53 pm #

      In many urban schools, the kids run the show. When Black kids tyrannize the White kids, the teachers turn away so as not to see.

    • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 1:05 pm #

      I remember seeing my junior high principal smack some of the boys in the back of the head.

      • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 9:05 pm #

        When I was a junior in high school, a kid in the front row was doing something to antagonize the (male) teacher, though I was sitting behind him and couldn’t see what it was. I assume making faces, as kids at that time would not have dared make obscene gestures.

        The biology teacher went to the kid’s desk and strangled him for a good long time–long enough for the kid to turn red. The teacher was promoted to vice principal the following year. The kid went on to become a lawyer.

      • hilton33 May 29, 2022 at 11:11 am #

        My mom was a teacher in the late 70s. One of the kids told her to go piss up a rope, so she slapped him upside his head. He went home and told his mom, the next day they called my mom down to the office. The mom and kid were already in the principal’s office. The principal asked my mom if she hit the kid, she said yes, the mom asked why. My mom said that he told her to piss up a rope. His mom looked at him and slapped him upside the head and apologized to my mom and said it would never happen again, but if it did she had permission to slap him again.

    • Slugoon May 27, 2022 at 2:35 pm #

      As a father, farmgal, I’m in a similar predicament. I have two bright, intelligent children with the world at their feet. How much does one tell them that they can be anything they want to be, encourage them to pursue their dreams, and paint a utopian future versus the realities of population overshoot, resource limits and techno-narcissism.

      I think all we can do is raise them to act with compassion and empathy towards others?

      • farmgal May 27, 2022 at 3:12 pm #

        @Slugoon. Agreed about teaching them compassion and empathy but even 25 years ago I wondered if i was doing my kids a disservice by teaching them same

      • beantownbill. May 27, 2022 at 4:07 pm #

        I’d tell them to try, although they may not succeed due to factors beyond their control. It’s the trying and never giving up that counts. Also, I’d keep teaching them the Golden Rule.

      • MaryQueen May 27, 2022 at 7:36 pm #

        Honestly? It’s nice to teach them compassion and empathy but that is normally present in healthy humans. Life skills, and confidence will take them farther.

        Today’s kids are stripped of confidence and intellectual curiosity. Expose them to nature every chance you get, and teach them toughness.

      • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 9:16 pm #

        It’s who you are as a person that matters. “Population overshoot, resource limits and techno-narcissism” are completely irrelevant to that, even if they may impose some material constraints.

        If they understand that it is their character that matters, material difficulties will not disturb them.

        Well–okay–maybe they’ll disturb them, but they’ll manage. (I have been pretty disturbed by having a serpentine belt break on the freeway, but I got over it.)

      • D from OR May 28, 2022 at 10:22 am #

        Slugoon, raise them with compassion and empathy towards others but build up their confidence and common sense first.

        They need to be strong before they can help others.

        The world has always been a dangerous place. We were just in a small window when it wasn’t that way.

        Your job is to raise humans to advance us forward with intelligence and love for human kind. Nothing more and nothing less. If your job is done well they will take care of the rest

  45. Jarek May 27, 2022 at 12:51 pm #

    The quality of mercy is not strained.
    It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
    Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
    It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

    Shakespeare

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    • beantownbill. May 27, 2022 at 4:03 pm #

      Yeah, but Ben Franklin said, “Neither a lender or borrower be.”

      • Mac May 27, 2022 at 7:23 pm #

        I believe that was Shakespeare too

      • Q. Shtik May 28, 2022 at 8:27 pm #

        “Neither a lender or borrower be.” – bean

        ===========

        Neither a borrower nor a lender be

    • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 9:33 pm #

      I think the prayer of St. Francis is of particular practical value.

      Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
      where there is hatred, let me sow love;
      where there is injury, pardon;
      where there is doubt, faith;
      where there is despair, hope;
      where there is darkness, light;
      where there is sadness, joy.
      O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
      to be consoled as to console,
      to be understood as to understand,
      to be loved as to love.
      For it is in giving that we receive,
      it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
      and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

      It’s especially helpful to remind yourself that you should seek to love rather than to be loved. Few things will make a person as unhappy as seeking the love and validation of others as a primary object.

      Not having the love and validation of others can make you unhappy, but the sacrifice to obtain it can be too great, and the habit of expecting to be praised and flattered and catered to leads to taking offense at imaginary slights–besides being an all-around unpleasant quality.

      I have a couple of family members like that–suffering from a regular hollow leg in their appetite for special attentions. They both have Venus in Virgo.

    • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 9:42 pm #

      Since we’re in a philosophical mood, here is Kipling’s “If.” I think you have to get old to fully appreciate this one.

      If you can keep your head when all about you
      Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
      If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
      But make allowance for their doubting too;
      If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
      Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
      Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
      And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

      If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
      If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
      If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
      And treat those two impostors just the same;
      If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
      Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
      Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
      And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

      If you can make one heap of all your winnings
      And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
      And lose, and start again at your beginnings
      And never breathe a word about your loss;
      If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
      To serve your turn long after they are gone,
      And so hold on when there is nothing in you
      Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

      If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
      Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
      If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
      If all men count with you, but none too much;
      If you can fill the unforgiving minute
      With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
      Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
      And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

      • D from OR May 28, 2022 at 10:26 am #

        Thank you for posting. It’s always so good.

  46. Amman May 27, 2022 at 12:54 pm #

    “So, really, what do you expect? And what do you deserve?” – FINAL QUESTION

    James, when you posed this question, is it addressed to your readers who sojourn with you? Or is it intended to the American people in general? Can you be particular about to whom you think this question is most fitting?

    Thank you.

    • cowbell81 May 27, 2022 at 1:00 pm #

      It is up to each of us to form an answer to these questions. As to what to expect, I would say it should come as no surprise. Like any functioning system, the output you expect is based upon what you put into it.

      As to what you deserve, the American populace now deserves the platter of shit that they have chosen for themselves time and time again through this “choose your own adventure” novel that we call American society. You should not be able to cast blame on anyone else. Like the inner city core that is wracked with violence and decaying storefronts, you have no one else to blame but yourself. If you want something better, pick yourself up by the britches and quit bitching. Stop electing “leaders” that promise everything but do nothing. In the end, you get what you deserve.

      • Beryl of Oyl May 27, 2022 at 1:15 pm #

        Some of us elected a president who we thought was going to finally make a real difference. I didn’t get to vote on all the members of his own party who did whatever they could to prevent him from carrying out the wishes of the electorate.

        I’m not sure what the next step is, I only know what my ancestors did back in 1776.

    • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 10:59 pm #

      How can anyone know what they “deserve?”

      There are always some heartaches or misfortunes that you can trace to some fault of your own, but there are many more that you cannot. Do some people deserve shitty parents? Do we all deserve fluoride in the drinking water? Or, on the plus side, can any of us say we deserve electricity and hot and cold running water, a good-running car, or a laptop? Few of us could build any of these things ourselves.

      There is a passage in Barbara Kingsolver’s “Poisonwood Bible” that I think is profound. Anatole tells Leah:

      “Don’t expect God’s protection in places beyond God’s dominion. It will only make you feel punished….when things go badly, you will blame yourself….Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you are good, bad things can still happen. And if you are bad, you can still be lucky.”

      That may have been the part where the Congolese village is overrun by flesh-eating driver ants (nsongonya) and everyone has to flee for their lives. Perhaps this was because they collectively fucked up. Or maybe not.

      In any case, you are not here to get what you deserve. You are here because you have certain types of work to do. You are given the life circumstances that best conduce to that end.

      If you find yourself living in “interesting times,” it may be because you have an extraordinary mission in life and job to do.

      If you find yourself blessed with electricity and running water, it may be that this conduces to the performance of your job. If you find yourself afflicted with unpleasant people, it may be that your job is to shed grace upon them.

      There is a great quote by Epictetus on this: “My will is simply that which comes to pass. For I esteem what God wills better than what I will. To Him will I cleave as His minister and attendant; having the same movements, the same desires, in a word the same will as He.”

      • Amman May 28, 2022 at 4:25 pm #

        Well put. What someone ‘deserves’ is at best that which fate or some power or cause spins for them. I don’t think the German civilians in cities deserved the events that fell happened to them, say, for example, in 44-45 . Nor were Russian civilians in any way whatsoever deserving of the Lightning war unleashed on Russia by OKW. But it happened anyway.

      • Paula D May 28, 2022 at 7:24 pm #

        You’re on a roll of wisdom.

  47. hooting May 27, 2022 at 12:58 pm #

    This piece reads like the old Jim I used to love to read many years ago. Wonderful insight!

  48. Nik Charles May 27, 2022 at 1:15 pm #

    In the early 1970’s Clarkstown South High School was built in my suburban New York neighborhood.

    The construction company also built prisons and had learned tricks about institutional buildings. The school has tall, narrow windows.

    The reason for the tall windows, I was told, was that if there are riots and rock throwing the windows would be less expensive to replace. As a kid I thought that was a strange but practical idea.

    • thwack May 27, 2022 at 2:58 pm #

      In the Fast food restaurants in black neighborhoods, the chairs and tables are bolted to the floor.

      Not that theres anything wrong with that, but I’m just sayin…

      • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 11:16 pm #

        In the old days, the desks in schools were bolted to the floor. In the modern classroom, kids move the desks around all over the place. Having furniture bolted to the floor prevents a lot of problems and saves the major housekeeping problem of the teacher having to put all the desks back in order at the end of every class period.

  49. BuckeyeDoug May 27, 2022 at 1:28 pm #

    Imagine this scenario – “The white police officers stormed a peaceful elementary school on rumors of a shooting, which has yet to be verified. The white racists over reacted and in a show of brazen disregard to the safety of the dear children, callously shot and killed a Hispanic-trans American teen who was struggling with mental illness. There was no indication that he was going to kill any children and no attempt was made to reason with this poor soul. These cops, their superiors and anyone who ever golfed with them must be fired and send to prison for the rest of their lives.”

    What is a law enforcement officer to do…

    • Paula D May 27, 2022 at 1:40 pm #

      Yeah, that would have been the spin, for sure.

    • Mac May 27, 2022 at 7:25 pm #

      I think he would have been called a trans dreamer.

  50. wfrantz May 27, 2022 at 1:34 pm #

    JK:
    Are you a distant relative of George Orwell?
    You have described the “Animal Farm” to a tee.
    Think GO is stirring in his grave.
    To use one of your favorites:
    Prescient baby….prescient.

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  51. Barry Bliss May 27, 2022 at 1:41 pm #

    Really good one, James.

    After being away for thirty years, I visited the town that I am from.
    I can’t remember any building having anything that discerned it from any other, and of course there was no art, no craftsmanship, no gargoyles, no nice unique signs. It was as if a 3D printer had printed out the whole city using 2 colors of ink and one or two templates.

    • Slugoon May 27, 2022 at 2:03 pm #

      A British town?

      • Barry Bliss May 29, 2022 at 7:04 am #

        No.
        Portsmouth, Virginia. USA.
        It never did have gargoyles, not when I was alive anyway, but now it’s like everything is made of tan colored boxes.

  52. Paula D May 27, 2022 at 1:45 pm #

    Most Americans know that they can’t be Kardashians- no money.
    They know that money is all-important and if you don’t have it, you have to live under a bridge, or with your grandmother.
    But when it comes to a 18 y.o. kid buying two expensive guns there is never a question about where the hell he got the money?
    He also had a pickup truck? Was it a Toyota?
    Because Americans never wonder where ISIS, supposedly ex-cons going rogue, got the money for all those Toyota trucks, matching uniforms, endless ammo for multiple guns, factory-made flags and a printing press that put out monthly magazines in multiple countries in multiple languages. Not to mention their well-made videos on their social media accounts.

    • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 5:52 pm #

      Those Daniels Defense rifles cost about $2000 apiece. He had two of them, plus a semi auto pistol which at least goes for $500.

      • Mac May 27, 2022 at 7:26 pm #

        Don’t forget a bunch of expensive ammo and swag.

  53. Cactus Girl May 27, 2022 at 2:01 pm #

    One thing Jim left out (or maybe it was implied, but I missed it?) as a cause is redundancy. Between the industrial revolution and globalism, most Americans have been made redundant. Especially men, in traditional men’s roles. We outsourced all our manufacturing, and most of the jobs that are left can be done by anyone who can handle the machinery, i.e.—strength isn’t needed. The logical solution to this would be to have less children. But no, people continue to breed kids that have no worthwhile place waiting for them in the world. Especially boys. And with modernized warfare, we don’t even really need them in the army. That was always a traditional way of bleeding off excess males.

    Do you think these kids don’t know this? Maybe not consciously, but deep down, they do. I remember a book I read when I was a teen. Wish I could remember the title. There was a character in it who was a camp counselor, and he points out a buffalo to this kid, and tells him, “See that buffalo? That’s a ding. Know what a “Ding” is? It’s something that’s useless and obsolete. That’s what you are.”

    People, and especially boys and men, have become dings, thru their own monkey cleverness at inventing power tools.

    • Slugoon May 27, 2022 at 2:18 pm #

      I was talking to someone about this recently whilst lamenting the run-down state of many of our (British) former industrial cities. The Industrial Revolution (which is to say the fossil fuel revolution) gave birth to many ‘careers’ and gave people a lifelong job to do, something to become specialised in, good at, and proud of.

      A sense of purpose, really. Attending to machinery and producing ‘stuff’ instead of chasing down food or defending territory from hostile tribes, as is the way for all other mammals.

      We seem to be nearing the end of that era and so what is left for people but to revert to their former ways? Is it a coincidence that these types of mass shootings seem to be at their worst in America? You were the furthest ahead and you have the farthest to fall.

    • thwack May 27, 2022 at 2:52 pm #

      “most of the jobs that are left can be done by anyone who can handle the machinery, i.e.—strength isn’t needed.”

      ************

      at first I was shaking my head wondering what kind of man thinks this; then I noticed it was written by a girl.

      Does your iDildo choke, pull your hair and degrade you?

      *check mate*

      • elysianfield May 27, 2022 at 6:12 pm #

        ” Does your iDildo choke, pull your hair and degrade you?”

        Yes, and what color is it?

        Just askin’…not that it means anything….

      • Cactus Girl May 28, 2022 at 11:44 pm #

        Spoken like a true ding.

      • MontanaMan May 29, 2022 at 4:53 pm #

        Excellent!! Bravo ? Bravo ?

  54. Paula D May 27, 2022 at 2:11 pm #

    I can’t remember who mentioned it, but someone posted a week ago or so about online first person shooting games.
    They are very popular with teen boys, and also the military, because they take away the natural human reluctance to kill other humans.
    Now that they are online it allows realtime surveillance of the players.
    This is also helpful for military recruiters, but doesn’t it seem that a boy ready to kill fourth graders in this country would be noticed?

    • cowbell81 May 27, 2022 at 2:23 pm #

      Yeah, and now you have the whole virtual metaverse thing to consider too. I was reading elsewhere that people are “murdering” and “raping” people in the metaverse. If there isn’t an “actual” person being harmed, can it really be considered rape? And now they are working on banning such actions in the metaverse.

    • Jarek May 27, 2022 at 2:34 pm #

      Hunting is also fine training for war. To kill and then butcher the animal so that it can be eaten!

      But generations of boys and young men learned to do this, without becoming mass murderers.

      • malthuss May 27, 2022 at 2:39 pm #

        I saw an ad today.

        ‘we require excellence not experience.’
        a photo of a black woman with goggles? on.

        NAVY ad.

        • cowbell81 May 27, 2022 at 2:49 pm #

          What a joke. May as well say “Just give us your warm body and we will provide the keyboard and joystick.”

        • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 5:50 pm #

          Well, it’s common knowledge the best soldiers, marines and sailors are black women from the hood, gay men, and transvestites you see on Ru Paul’s TV show. Really, no others need apply.

          • malthuss May 27, 2022 at 8:15 pm #

            O MY

      • thwack May 27, 2022 at 3:48 pm #

        I would never kill my own white slave.

        • elysianfield May 27, 2022 at 6:09 pm #

          “I would never kill my own white slave.”

          thwack,
          Never say never…there may be tax benefits.

      • Paula D May 27, 2022 at 7:40 pm #

        I don’t think that hunting trains boy to kill humans.
        I read a book called On Killing which said that in WW1 only a small proportion of soldiers fired at other humans. I know that far more men back then had grown up slaughtering animals, so that must not do it.
        In WW2 they worked on that but still a lot of men refused to kill. My mother’s co-worker landed at Normandy in 1944. He told her he just hauled ass to the shore and then hid.
        The military thinks this is a problem. They have been working on it for a while and got the percentage up to 90% by Vietnam.
        The book, which was written in 2009, was already talking about them using video games to desensitize teenaged boys. Call Of Duty was subsidized by the military.
        But the online games let them monitor much more completely than they ones that are not connected to the internet.

    • Amman May 27, 2022 at 3:52 pm #

      20 million boys, pick one?

  55. PeteAtomic May 27, 2022 at 2:45 pm #

    Beautifully written observations, Jim. Thanks.

    Furthermore, how do you think this deranged populace, bereft of the the strength of good men, rudderless from a depraved elite, will react?

    For a person to describe it as a collective tantrum is too mild. Cascading institutional failure compounded by food and energy shortage is the sauce of ultra violent civil disorders and revolution.

    Ultimately, an authoritarian figure must arise, because political and societal chaos only can exist for relatively short periods of time.

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  56. cowbell81 May 27, 2022 at 2:54 pm #

    At least the guns used to shoot up the school in Uvalde were not ghost guns. Thank you for that President Biden, thank you!

  57. Roundball Shaman May 27, 2022 at 3:03 pm #

    “American schools are fantastically depressing places. They are designed to look like medium security prisons and insecticide factories.”

    This was intended to instill in us all from an early age a foreboding sense of dread and hopelessness . You know, get us ready for our adult lives as the Predator Class arranged for us in the twisted caste system we have in the World of ‘People Who Count’ and ‘People Who Don’t’.

    This ‘educational’ process has wildly succeeded in that end. Generation after generation of lifeless and hopeless people being directed in to dead-end jobs for low pay while eating bad food and getting into bad relationships with each other to have kids so that the entire dreadful process just repeats itself forever.

    “Thus, all the inappropriate curricula around adult preoccupations with sex…”

    Nothing like taking a necessary human emotion and human physical process and turning that around as a weapon to be used against us. Make us sexually confused and dysfunctional so that we can become fully confused and dysfunctional in all other areas of Life. Sort of like making someone hungry and then making sure you only feed them meals that will make them sick.

    “The mayhem unleashed in a school shooting is just the rectified essence of the manifold derangements in our national life. Everything is out-of-whack, including our perception of what’s going on and what it means.”

    Perpetual Childhood is the goal for us from the Predator Vulture Class that salivates to rule over us like gods. Perpetual dependence. Perpetual need for a Mommy and Daddy that the Vultures are only too happy to provide for us.

    The thing about childhood? It was intended to go away one day in favor of something better… personal agency, power, and true adulthood. But none of those things serve ‘Them’. And of course, in the world of ‘Full Spectrum Control’… EVERYTHING must serve
    ‘Them’.

    “We have forgotten how to be grateful for coming into this world at all, leaving us unworthy of being here.”

    Where do kids go today to learn ‘values’? School? Enough said about that horror chamber. Parents? The ones trying to make ends meet or just peering into their little magic box all day instead of teaching their kids how to be responsible adults? The churches? You mean, those impotent social clubs concerned more with teaching people how to be rich while at the same time never, ever ‘offending’ anyone or taking a courageous moral stand on something? Government? (OK, well pause a moment while you stop laughing or gagging on your last meal).

    In short, NO ONE is teaching anyone A DAMN THING about how to become a good person of any age. When you live and grow up in a Moral Vacuum… you can’t be surprised when you’re empty and dead inside. You planted no ‘good seeds’ along the way. And you now harvest a crop of empty misery.

    We are a magnificent creation living atop a blessed and magical World that was created for us out of nothing. And yet, we are choosing to live as if we are useless meat bags on top of a pile of garbage that spins without purpose in the darkness of empty Space.

    And all the while… someone is sitting back… and laughing.

    One might even say… “Ask not for whom the school bell tolls… It tolls for THEE.”

    And don’t dare be late!

    • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 3:29 pm #

      Magnificent!

    • beantownbill. May 27, 2022 at 3:53 pm #

      Excellent writing, RS. I understand what you’re saying, but I believe it’s all our responsibility.

      My parents were married for 76 years, and were together since they were 17 until my father died in 2010. They weren’t effective as parents, and I had a lot of conflict with them. They never grew up emotionally, past the age of 16 or so.

      In spite of that, I turned out ok. You know why? While my youth was painful, my parents did one thing very right: They always told me they loved me. I grew up in a seriously dysfunctional household, but I never doubted their love for me. I believe that was why I’m ok now.

      It’s a simple thing, really, just telling your child a lot that you love them, and I wonder if today’s youth and young adults haven’t got enough declarations of love.

      • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 4:50 pm #

        Goddamit Bill, that brought a tear to my eye. You are a good man.

      • Roundball Shaman May 27, 2022 at 4:58 pm #

        “While my youth was painful, my parents did one thing very right: They always told me they loved me. I grew up in a seriously dysfunctional household, but I never doubted their love for me.”

        It’s a wonderful thing when someone can overcome personal challenges and obstacles and become something greater than what their environment was, or perhaps what they themselves thought about their own self in the beginning.

        Good parents can have problem children. And less-than-stellar parents can give birth to some amazing children sometimes. There is no determined outcome to this. All one can do is to provide an environment that encourages a certain outcome and pray for the best.

        “It’s a simple thing, really, just telling your child a lot that you love them, and I wonder if today’s youth and young adults haven’t got enough declarations of love.”

        For some reason this isn’t simple for many people because they find this so hard to do. And some parents almost never do this. One possible reason that the parents don’t actually love themselves enough. They feel unworthy or lacking and they carry that feeling into their relationships with others. There are people in this World who actually have better relationships with others the farther they are from them in a family or emotional sense. Again… lack of honest and healthy love for self and that is where so many of our World’s ills are hatched from.

        We share… or don’t share.. what is already inside us. And then we reap the results of that.

        People hear the words, “Love is the Answer”. And many will snicker or just ignore these words as simplistic or naïve.

        But love IS the answer. And no one will EVER find a better one.

    • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 4:48 pm #

      What about the WAR in Ukraine? It looks like interest is fading; as I indicated last thread US & Euro media is finally admitting Ukraine is getting its ass kicked and their cause is hopeless. You can only keep up the bullsh#t for so long before reality sets in, and the reality in Ukraine is that Russia has captured its eastern provinces, the Black Sea ports, and the Russian hold on Crimea is secure. It’s hilarious to hear Zelensky hammer the elitists in Davos; apparently he never heard the aphorism “don’t bite the hand that feeds you” haha! Maybe Z will be deep sixxed, and the Davos crowd will get their own man in there. I thought Z was their man, but I could be wrong. The elitists in Davos are living it up irregardless, pounding each others butts and drinking champagne while the world ignites.

      • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 5:51 pm #

        It’s summer time, brh, and young men’s fancies turn to mass shootings. Will there also be fighting in the streets during the dog day’s of August? All signs say yes! Might be worth looking into if Vegas has established an over/under on the number of mass shootings over the summer (dead >12 to qualify). I’m betting at least 6. Z will likely have his own talk show by the fall, maybe even a network TV biopic. Something to look forward to!

        • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 7:58 pm #

          And dare I say it, maybe a US political appointment sometime after that? I can see Z definitely generating some mass political hysteria.

    • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 28, 2022 at 9:53 am #

      The churches? You mean, those impotent social clubs concerned more with teaching people how to be rich while at the same time never, ever ‘offending’ anyone or taking a courageous moral stand on something? Government?

      It appears that you haven’t had a good church experience (at least in a very long time)…I get the sentiment, but one of the major things lacking in our society as a “normal” and/or “expected” thing is the interest in belonging to a community group based on something larger than ourselves. I am part of this problem as well, though at least I recognize that there are still plenty of folks out there who know that this leaves something lacking in their lives, compared to what they saw around them as a child…for example, as a result I am changing my habits with my family accordingly, as I can.

      In short, NO ONE is teaching anyone A DAMN THING about how to become a good person of any age.

      Not 100% true (see above), but way more true in our current society than most would like to admit.

  58. JohnAZ May 27, 2022 at 4:00 pm #

    How about a discussion about why Americans feel a need to have guns. Not hunters, but just Joe Average.

    Libs are right, if you somehow magically eliminated guns with no black market response, gun violence would cease. Gun violence. No guns? Bombs, knives, remember in West Side Story, 50s edition, the zip guns? Wood stock, rubber band and a nail.

    Americans feel an innate need to have guns. Protection? That is the results of having a crazy population to deal with. Sport? Target shooting?

    How about the ten people per year that buy guns to kill other people in mass shooting. How about the city gangs that buy guns to protect turf?

    How about law enforcement? Would they need all their fire power if the public they face weren’t armed to the hilt?

    The American personality needs guns! We are rebels, opposed to authority, believers in individuality. We are a square peg that will never fit into a NWO round hole.

    Maybe that is why the WEF sponsored Democratic Party wants to replace us with the browning of America,

    • gustafson.robert.22 May 27, 2022 at 4:38 pm #

      In the colonial period, those who shied from farming-labor in exchange for a subsistence-existence based on hunting with a rifle were criticized as “going to the gun,” which was an accusation of laziness and failure to be civilized.

      Part of this criticism was a based on a prejudice against any hunting-based lifestyle as “savage,” but another aspect of the criticism was almost a direct critique of the ease with which firearm-technology made kills… The finer skills of hunting were reduced to a lazy trigger-pull and, bang!, instant death. Kind-of like the Amish, who depend on the “English” economically while officially condemning “English” practices and technology, colonial-period ruffnecks who had “gone to the gun” rejected civilization’s (farming’s) labors, but still used this piece of technology, the gun, to make their subsistence-hunting easy… too easy. This laziness was a degradation. These civilization-averse people who thought of themselves as “independent survivalists” had actually merely taken a cheap shortcut (to independence from the shackles of civilization). They had not chosen a legitimate alternative lifestyle that had integrity. They had merely “gone to the gun.”

      • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 5:40 pm #

        Guys, author and historian Alexander Rose addresses that exact point in his landmark book “American Rifle: A Biography”.

      • Anthea May 27, 2022 at 11:53 pm #

        I don’t recall reading that a hunting-based lifestyle was frowned upon in former times. If it was frowned upon, it was probably sour grapes. A “long hunter” in Colonial times could earn a princely income. It was of course also a very risky occupation, besides being a very skilled one. My impression is that this was an occupation that was quite highly regarded.

        To get an idea what was involved, the book, “Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier,” is an excellent read.

        Later in US history, the professional hunter was more often a trapper (mainly of beaver) and trader–a “mountain man.” These men mostly lived out their lives in very remote wilderness areas. If anyone thought about them at all, it was to regard them as almost mythical beings.

        • gustafson.robert.22 May 28, 2022 at 3:23 am #

          You are talking about hunters and trappers doing it for valuable pelts… or western explorers. I was talking about people in the east mainly, who refused to, or gave up farming to subsist on gun-hunting, and were looked down on for it.

          I can’t remember where I read it, but Backrow has read something similar. But, you haven’t, so you’re compelled to point out that it is probably false because you have not read it before… I guess? And to confuse who is the subject of the historical tidbit also, in the process.

          And, YOU are also talking about the brave hunters and trappers who almost wiped-out the buffalo to clear pastureland, and vacuumed up species for the European fur-market. Heroes like that. And Daniel boone, I guess (more of an explorer).

          No, there was absolutely a distaste out there, by many, for those who refused to farm arable land, and more specifically, for white gun-hunters who did so… especially in places where civilization had already put its roots down.

          In these areas, gun-hunting was a sport or an occasional supplement to farming, not a way of living off the land full-time.

          Hunting became something you do on the weekends to relax… as it still is. The proper British attitude to the activity.

          • gustafson.robert.22 May 28, 2022 at 3:41 am #

            And, yes, remember those “wilderness areas” where the “mountain men” lived? They were already growing scarce and purely mythical in USA-territory by the 18th century. An example of civilization’s frequent reverence and nostalgia for what it has just bulldozed the minute before.

          • Anthea May 28, 2022 at 9:48 am #

            What is a person who “subsists on gun-hunting,” as opposed to farming, but a “long hunter,” like Daniel Boone? We know little about most such men, but Boone deserves every bit of the mythical-heroic stature that has been bestowed on him.

            I have frankly never even HEARD of any other type of gun-hunter. Which is basically what I said. Did some other layabout type of gun-hunter exist? Probably–though it is impractical to subsist off of hunting alone in any settled area. There will always be lazy farmers/tradesmen/doofuses around who will be reduced to shooting squirrels for dinner. Their neighbors probably didn’t think much of them, but it’s a stretch to imagine that they were a social phenomenon–any more than Bronson Alcott comprised a social phenomenon.

            The “mountain men” hunters/trappers/Indian traders were an entirely separate group from the hunters who almost wiped out the buffalo–although the depredations of the former on the beaver population were so severe that it ultimately destroyed their livelihood, as the West got pretty well trapped out.

            The buffalo were wiped out by pure government policy, whereby a princely bounty was paid for buffalo hides. The purpose of this policy was to destroy the livelihood of the Plains Indians to make way for Western settlement. The idea was to starve them out and thus avoid having to remove them by the more direct (and more costly) method of military action. Military occupation of the entire Great Plains was obviously impractical anyway.

            You can cavil all you want about whether these colorful and almost mythical men were “heroic.” There were some notable characters among them, but for the most part they were doubtles just “guys”–maybe guys of an unusually courageous and adventurous cut, maybe misfits and ruffians, maybe some mean sonafabitches.

            There are two take-aways here. One of them is that the displacement of both plant and animal species and varieties, including the human ones, is just nature at work. That’s what life does. Grasslands naturally succeed to brush and shrubs,, which succeed to forests. Animal species/varieties replace other animal species/varieties. Animal populations overshoot and undergo die-off. Humans are also creatures of nature and undergo the same processes.

            You seem to want to stop the clock, wishing for a world that is static and unchanging–and preferably one that became static and unchanging about 20,000 years ago. It seems that it should be unnecessary to point out that it just ain’t gonna happen.

            The other take-away is that the US is almost unique in that there was a long period in our history during which nearly absolute personal freedom was possible–though invariably at great personal risk. Few other nations–if any–have a strong mythos of this kind. We are thus unusually stubborn about retaining–and if possible regaining–personal freedom.

          • gustafson.robert.22 May 28, 2022 at 10:34 am #

            Somehow, on grounds outside the realm of logic and historical nuance, I have offended the simple-minded local president of the American Exceptionalist club.

            Your take on grasslands inevitably turning to shrubs and forest was the worst part, I think.

          • Jarek May 28, 2022 at 12:14 pm #

            Gustaf: You are very idealistic, like me. In contrast, Anthea is often in the “if it happened it had to happen” type mentality.

            BRH often glories in the opening up of the West. But it was all over in a couple of generations. Just a bonfire, an orgy of destruction in a deep sense. Some got rich or at least got a home and some land. Others got mentally ill from the isolation or died by violence.

            They want to go back to what got us here. But those conditions no longer exist. So we must go forward, but to what? They have no vision but the past. Here is where such mentalities fail.

          • Anthea May 28, 2022 at 12:55 pm #

            The bottom line:

            Life wants to live (except for Gustavson, it seems). Life forms collide with other life forms. Some prevail; some die. If you are willing to die to leave room for competing life forms and to sacrifice your progeny to them, that is okay with me. This too is probably the way of nature; life forms may die from the sheer lack of the will to live and prevail.

          • gustafson.robert.22 May 28, 2022 at 1:34 pm #

            I see. You are not really reacting to my “gone to the gun” post. You are reacting to anti-civilizational ideas in old posts of mine.

            It’s funny, because you assume that the project of civilization (in the Western Civ/American sense) represents a genuine struggle of the force of life to prevail and survive, and not a degradation of that struggle or that force of life… an attempted (and surprise! failed) shortcut to make that true struggle of life disappear or be artificially eased.

            A pact with Satan, if you will.

            If Jarek is right that your stance toward history could be described as “if it happened, it had to happen”… I could agree. But, I would not agree that everything that had to happen is also morally justifiable, or ideal, or desirable in future contexts.

          • Anthea May 28, 2022 at 8:50 pm #

            Does, “the project of civilization (in the Western Civ/American sense) represent a genuine struggle of the force of life to prevail and survive, and not a degradation of that struggle or that force of life”?

            This is a valid and interesting question, but it first requires that you define what you mean by “civilization.”

            Just off the top of my head, without thinking about it deeply, I’d say that what we call “civilization” encompasses two parallel developments. On the one hand, civilization involves creating a material basis that is abundant and secure, along with progress and refinements in the practical sciences, architecture, culture, and all the arts and crafts. Because of this, I have a laptop, indoor plumbing, electric lights, an electric range, salmon from afar in the freezer, unlimited access to the world’s music, art, and literature, and a few drops of ylang-ylang in the bath water.

            The darker aspect of “civilization” is not civilization at all, but the State–which springs up wherever prosperity arises, to batten upon it as a parasite. You can’t call the State civilization, as there is nothing civil about it; it merely steals the productions of true civilization by violence. It is here that you find the degradation of the life force.

            The nature of the State is to grow ever more greedy in its parasitization of civilization–eventually reducing its host to something resembling a CAFO–until its vitality is extinguished. Thus we see that civilizations have a limited lifespan, usually estimated at roughly 300 years.

            Is there a remedy for this? I suspect that this is about the same as hoping for a remedy for death. Maybe if there were no Bad People….

          • gustafson.robert.22 May 29, 2022 at 10:14 am #

            @Anthea, I enjoyed reading your last post. Detailed discussion.

            My view is that what gives the state power to grow large and parasitic is economic overreach in the form of agricultural and mineralogical overconsumption, and that where civilization goes wrong is when this economic overreach occurs, which is often, in what we think of as “the great civilizations of the world,” and certainly in Western Civ culminating in the USA.

    • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 5:13 pm #

      I just love Winchester and Marlin lever rifles, and Colt single action revolvers (Rugers too). They’re like Jeeps and P51 Mustangs, yes, ulitarian objects mass produced, but pieces of sublime industrial art, the perfect synergy between form and function. For me, the Winchester Model 1894 rifle in .30-30 is the apex object manufactured by US industry during the high summer of American civilization. Invented by John Browning, it’s perfect in every way. And in 1910 you could buy one for $28. The Model 1894 Winchester was everyman’s rifle, just about anybody could afford one. With a Model 94 you could protect the homestead, bring down a deer, teach your son to shoot. And they last forever. I have a friend who owns a Winchester 1894 that was manufactured in 1911 and it still works. How many products manufactured 111 years ago still operate like the day it came out of the factory?

      • Jarek May 28, 2022 at 12:16 pm #

        Hard core stuff. He caresses his collection with various oils…..

        • Anthea May 28, 2022 at 8:10 pm #

          It is good to take care of your “stuff,” whatever it is you collect, whether it’s teapots, LaMancha goats, or antique roses–or guns. No domestic finery at your place? Nothing you value?

    • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 5:53 pm #

      Grenades are where the growth is. What I’d like is some Claymore Mines. Now THERE’S some first rate perimeter defense!

      • JohnAZ May 28, 2022 at 1:47 am #

        I chuckled at this Dis. I have thought one of the reactions of the scum to losing their guns could be moving into bombs. It has happened before.

        • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 10:20 am #

          After all these years, you still can’t beat a good Claymore for home defense.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claymore_mine

        • Jarek May 28, 2022 at 12:18 pm #

          Whatever the government has, we must have. If they have nuclear weapons, we must have them, perhaps one in ever patriot’s garage.

    • elysianfield May 27, 2022 at 6:06 pm #

      “How about a discussion about why Americans feel a need to have guns:

      John,
      And why do you feel that the overriding emotion is…need? When I purchased my first revolver*, a duty weapon when 21, I developed a…want, not need, for future purchases.

      *Smith & Wesson Model 15 Combat Masterpiece, 4in blue steel, 38 spl.

      • Blackbird May 27, 2022 at 10:43 pm #

        Good point about the use of language in the gun argument. Anti-gun people (not JAZ, he just used the wrong word and got hauled in for questioning) typically frame the gun owner as having some immature, emotional “need” for a gun – probably to compensate for some inadequacy…

        I’d rather not have to point a weapon at someone. And guns are so damned noisy.
        But I just might meet somebody who needs shootin’ one of these days. I see the probability of that kind of encounter increasing as the fabric society is shredded. So I made the entirely rational decision to invest in a little firepower as a hedge against marauding dumbfucks – on or off the gov’t payroll. My only emotional connection to my guns is an occasional pang of guilt that I’m not interested enough to practice as I should. But don’t try to take them from me – they just might go off.

        • Anthea May 28, 2022 at 12:40 am #

          @ Blackbird:

          You nailed it. There is an ever-increasing likelihood of NEEDING a gun for self-defense, and especially to defend ones home. This is true whether you live in the city or the country. People who live on relatively isolated farms are especially vulnerable and often have motion-sensing security lights for this reason. Nobody will be coming to help you–at least not in time to do any good.

          The area where I live is mostly made up of private residences on 10-20 acres. Many are set quite far back from the road–like 100 yards–so your neighbors could be unaware of a home invasion. You are effectively isolated. Until my daughter’s husband began working from home, she was home alone on their small acreage pretty much all the time. She and her husband bought a shotgun for home defense, and my daughter’s in-laws gifted her with a pistol. The idea was that she could carry it when doing outdoor chores, especially after dark or when it was getting dark. They also have a .22.

          I live next door to them, and I recently bought my first gun. Never owned one before in my life. It’s an AR-15. To be honest, I have realized that it’s WAY too much gun for an old lady. I doubt if I could hold it steady to aim it. So I have decided to give it to my daughter and son-in-law. It should be an excellent deer-hunting rifle, and a fine piece for shooting varmints (coyotes, raccoons and such). I think what I really need is a .22, and possibly a handgun of some kind. I would like to be able to shoot rabbits (which can eat up your garden) and squirrels (which I am told are quite tasty). It would also be good to have a defensive weapon–that I can handle–just in case.

          Owning a gun or three is ABSOLUTELY a rational and intelligent decision. I’d say that anyone who doesn’t own a gun probably has shit for brains.

          • JohnAZ May 28, 2022 at 1:45 am #

            No,I meant NEED because it has become a need for much of America. It is the right word.

          • BackRowHeckler May 28, 2022 at 1:58 pm #

            JAZ, you’re not armed?

  59. JohnAZ May 27, 2022 at 4:11 pm #

    I read this blog with great respect for the opinions and the writing styles of the CFN crowd.

    I also realize that these skills were learned, in schools, by teachers. Dismissing one’s school background is fruitless, the myriad of teaching and socialization made us what we are today.

    A huge problem today is stupidification. Since the Feds got involved in education, the “average IQ” of America has dropped like a rock. They have dictated to locals the “equality” aspect and created the mundane curriculums that have resulted. The results are next generation teachers and parents that cannot, not will not, cannot pass education to the next generation. Hence, accumulative stupidity and ignorance.

    Step one. Eliminate the Department of Education and all Bill Gates inspired testing programs.

    • Paula D May 27, 2022 at 7:46 pm #

      I didn’t learn to write from school. I learned from reading and I learned to read before I went to school.
      School was mostly a waste of time.

      • gustafson.robert.22 May 27, 2022 at 8:17 pm #

        Yes.

      • MaryQueen May 27, 2022 at 9:20 pm #

        Same. And my mom was a teacher so our learning started day 1.

      • Blackbird May 27, 2022 at 10:46 pm #

        School provided great opportunities to learn how to deal with people I’d otherwise avoid.

        • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 12:27 pm #

          It provided me endless entertainment. I hung with the class clowns.

          • Paula D May 28, 2022 at 7:36 pm #

            I was the class clown. It got me in trouble many times.
            I even got into trouble as an adult, both in staff meetings and one time in court when I was doing jury duty and the guy next to me was funny as hell. We were having a good ol’ time yukking it up, but the judge got mad.
            It was like being back in school.

  60. JohnAZ May 27, 2022 at 4:22 pm #

    Speaking of stupidity, I am listening to a discussion on how to harden schools. Ten thousand political worthless items about guns, cops , doors, etc.

    This is so easy it is ridiculous.

    Make the school a gun free environment, where all doors are monitored and locked except one that is monitored by a plainclothes policeman that is unidentified. The kids do not even know who it is. The monitoring procedure to be as unobtrusive as possible. One door open to the playgrounds for recess with officer monitoring present. So no more that two doors open at any time.

    If a serious tack is to be taken to protect the kids, people need to get serious. Politicians will just hem and haw until the next madman acts.

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    • cowbell81 May 27, 2022 at 4:35 pm #

      There is no 100% safe environment in life, there will always be risks. I think that with the whole Covid hysteria we have lived with for the past nearly three years now, people have become soft and extremely risk averse.

      The only way to almost guarantee a safe gun-free environment would be to install a TSA-like security checkpoint at the main entrance of every school. Full body scan, pat downs, etc. Even then, there is risk. How far do people want to go with invading their personal freedoms and mobility, that is the question?

    • MaryQueen May 27, 2022 at 7:43 pm #

      LOL.

      Like a prison, and a prison yard.

      You are galloping in the wrong direction, JAZ.

      • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 7:47 pm #

        Edicts are meant to be ignored or forgotten. Reminds of here at the bomb factory. The more they tighten up, the more ways people find to circumvent their rules. Make enough rules and people either quit or just figure out how to ignore them and not get caught. “Law and order” never really works.

      • JohnAZ May 28, 2022 at 1:39 am #

        Wrong!

        Just because ingress, egress is controlled does not mean that the inside of a school cannot be a happy, joyful place. It depends on principals, teachers and parental involvement and the attitudes about education.

        To me, the day the DOE adopted testing as the primary objective of schools, was the beginning of the end of good education.

        Solution, again, get rid of the Feds and their damnable testing!

        • JohnAZ May 28, 2022 at 1:39 am #

          Meant for MQ.

        • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 12:29 pm #

          You just keep giving them more and more ‘security’ that doesn’t come close to fixing the actual problem.

          If someone wants to shoot up a school, they’ll find a way.

          There is no system that is unbreachable.

          I see your solution as silly.

          • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 3:03 pm #

            This is true. How about simply going around to the side and shooting in the windows? Or are they gonna take all those out too? Where there’s a will there’s a way, especially if you don’t plan to make it out alive anyway.

            All that said, you really have to hand it to the original Columbine duo. They had by far the best planning and preparation of any that have come along since. Almost professional, in fact. Those boys were committed!

        • Paula D May 28, 2022 at 7:38 pm #

          They keep the doors unlocked so that if there’s a fire kids don’t get trapped inside.

          • Anthea May 28, 2022 at 9:05 pm #

            Yes. Many schools are gargantuan in size, and they have many fire doors, which, by law, occupants must be able to open from inside the building–at all times.

            What actually happens in schools is the students open the fire doors to let intruders enter the building. This is a VERY well known and VERY common problem. I’m not sure who these intruders are; many are probably drug dealers. Also, if you’ve ever taught in an inner-city school, you’ll see a lot of super-annuated kids around. They graduated years ago, but still like to hang out. Sometimes they are homeless and just want a warm place to sleep. So they pretend to be students in some substitutes’s or new teacher’s classroom and make themselves comfortable.

            A number of years ago there was a big kerfuffle because there was a fire at Southeast Middle School in Kansas City, and it was discovered that the fire doors were locked. The administration had decided to keep them locked to keep the kids from letting in intruders.

            The reason there was a fire was because the kids were always starting little fires at that school.

    • Blackbird May 27, 2022 at 10:50 pm #

      “Harden” schools? The damned things are already too hard.

      Soften them. Make them smaller. So small everybody knows everybody. So small everybody learns.

      • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 11:26 pm #

        Towns around here are dotted with little one room schoolhouses, some dating back to the early 19th century. It’s amazing how many of them have survived, most converted into private homes, a few into museums. We have photographs — barefoot kids & young female teachers looking back at us thru the decades and centuries, and inside the one classroom a flag, and pictures of Lincoln & Washington on the wall.

      • JohnAZ May 28, 2022 at 1:40 am #

        Maybe another victim of the big box economy of scale mentality?

      • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 12:29 pm #

        Agree.

  61. cowbell81 May 27, 2022 at 5:14 pm #

    Well, here’s wishing a very safe and happy (emphasis on the word “safe”) Memorial Day holiday on all USA readers of the CFN blog. Stay out of downtown Chicago and its vicinity, as I am sure they are set for another whopper of a bloodbath. Looking forward to reading all about the final tally come Tuesday morning. Happy trails!

  62. Walter B May 27, 2022 at 5:21 pm #

    I spent 4 years in the public-school education system from 1964 to 1968 and had a number of teachers who were so outstanding and good at what they did that I probably learned all the skills and knowledge I needed to get me through a long and prosperous career during that time. I still recall them and my time in their classrooms. They were outstanding. Back then America needed educated and motivated people to get out into the work force and get things done. Today, the system, as George Carlin once said, “Obedient workers who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork and dumb enough to passively accept these increasingly shittier jobs, with the lover pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the moment you go to collect it!”

    Fortunately, or unfortunately, I have raised two sets of children who all attended public school completely (almost for the little one) during 1994 through today and what I have witnessed is a depressing and degrading decline into garbageland. It’s not school, it is programming and programming to be worthless and witless. When armies send troops out into territory in search of the enemy they send skirmishers, or scouts to lead the way. The public school system has become the skirmishers and scouts for the evil US government and the Klaus Schwab types who own them have been sent them to engage their enemy (US) in the infant stage, turn them against us and leave them angry, disturbed, and without any kind of idea of what morality was or should be.

    Just as Lo Armistead told his rebels to turn the guns on the Union troops on Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg, the government has turned the “education” system has our children turning the guns on not only US, but on each other

    • BackRowHeckler May 27, 2022 at 5:44 pm #

      Well, here in Stepfordville , Ct, we have been notified copies of the novel “Gender Queer” will be made available in the Middle School Library, and a discussion of the book will take place at the next LBGQT after school meeting.

      • Walter B May 27, 2022 at 6:05 pm #

        Well, you don’t need math, all you need to know is how much the monthly payment is so why teach that? And reading isn’t necessary because it takes too much time, and why write when all you have to do is stare at your Dinglebox for your next emotional activation? May as well concentrate schooling on what it is that’s hiding in your underwear and what you want to have done to it. Tattoos and piercings anyone? Why not, it’s not like you’re going to have to save up to buy a house or anything……

        • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 8:03 pm #

          I think they’ve got apps for pretty much all that now, Walt. I can imagine school curriculums eventually turning to those. That’s the goal, an app for everything you would possibly ever need to know. If they don’t have an app, then you don’t need to know it. Just think of it. All the math you spent grades 1-8 learning reduced to a few phone apps. Anything any higher than that pretty much already has been.

    • MaryQueen May 27, 2022 at 6:21 pm #

      I remember when being stupid started to come into fashion in the 1970s. Image started to become everything, even then.

      • Blackbird May 27, 2022 at 10:54 pm #

        “I remember when being stupid started to come into fashion…”

        So funny, but so true too.

      • Hereward the Woke May 28, 2022 at 9:47 am #

        I remember that too, Mary. But I can’t recall when it became compulsory.

        • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 12:30 pm #

          Ha! I think that occurred around 2008 or so.

  63. MaryQueen May 27, 2022 at 6:20 pm #

    Wow, James, you hit it out of the freakin’ park today!

    This is most excellently stated. I’ve been trying to put our national angst and devolution into psychosis into words for a couple of years now, and could never come close to explaining it, except in short spurts.

    You’ve done an incredible job here. Thank you.

    And then we can add to this the fact that the lettered agencies – well, esp. one in particular – sure likes its ‘programs’ of the sort they used on Ted Bundy and the Unibomber, among countless others. We have no idea, for instance, how many potential ‘sleepers’ there are stashed around the country. One expert on the MKUltra program (ex-agent) estimates around 30,000.

    And as we can see from the mass formation psychosis and how unbelievably fucked up people are from that, how easy it is for the PTB to program us into either submission or psychotic behavior.

    • Amman May 30, 2022 at 11:32 am #

      I understand MK is big in Hollywood, MQ.

  64. amb May 27, 2022 at 6:45 pm #

    This is caused by Psychiatry and Big Pharma. The media will cover up that this poor, unfortunate programmed puppet was on psych drugs. Just another Manchurian candidate. This will continue until the above mentioned two culprits and the evil lunatics that use them (CIA, etc.) are annihilated.

    • JohnAZ May 28, 2022 at 1:33 am #

      Amb

      When I took psyche clinical in nursing school, I remember thinking that the only things the Docs did was give drugs. I wondered what happens when psyche drugs are withdrawn for whatever reason, or what happens when someone becomes conditioned to them, like opioids?

      I think we may be finding out the answers.

  65. Lonicera May 27, 2022 at 7:17 pm #

    Hits close to home, as I grew up in the disputed territory between the Rio Grande and Nueces River (not convinced that area was worth the Mexican-American War.

    Anyway, I tried to avoid all the aforementioned nonsense that goes on in public schools by homeschooling my children. Wasn’t an overwhelming success because they still have to make their way in a dysfunctional society. But at least they’re gainfully employed.

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    • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 7:54 pm #

      Tough country down there.

      • JohnAZ May 28, 2022 at 1:28 am #

        Question for lonicera

        All the stuff coming up about the cops in Uvalde.

        How many cops are within a few minutes of that school. How isolated from legitimate police protection were those kids. Why did it take a group from the border patrol an hour to get there. The ones that finally put an end to it.

        Say the kids put out 911s, how long would it take to get any realistic form of police to the school? Are the cops, as usual, getting a bad rap?

        • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 10:15 am #

          Population 15,217, about the same as up here. We’ve got tons on MICC money sloshing through here, so I’m sure ours is bigger, and it’s still not very big. Maybe a dozen in the whole department? Uvalde probably depends highly on state cops and border patrol for any emergency. And if you saw the photos of the first responders the other day, the girth of the local cops was shockingly noticeable. That can’t be a good thing.

  66. Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 10:47 pm #

    A song for reflection in our burnt out age where nothing seems to matter, written for an event that heralded our current profits before people circumstances 140 years ago, the Johnstown Flood. Sung by one of our most profound modern bards in what are now surely his golden years. Takeaway: “When the light that dies within us reaches the sky.” Indeed!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAwhD9rKxog

  67. tom clark May 27, 2022 at 10:54 pm #

    Kamala Harris…boring and dead meat in 2024.

    Mike Pence…interesting, at least. May he twist in the wind!

    • Disaffected May 27, 2022 at 11:18 pm #

      You really should invest more in thinking skills, tc. A mind – even yours – is a terrible thing to waste. Have you considered medical marijuana? I think it might be just what the doctor ordered.

      • JohnAZ May 28, 2022 at 1:23 am #

        Kamala Harris. The most under qualified politician ever in the administration. A good word to describe her

        Silly, like a little girl. I cannot imagine anyone taking her seriously to be president,

        Except maybe Joe Biden, another silly old man.

        Mike Pence, the penultimate Deep Stater, with Trump, phony as hell, stabbed Trump in the back at first opportunity. Jan. 6 should be his death knell.

        To find an alternative to Trump, look south!

  68. Blackbird May 27, 2022 at 11:19 pm #

    In the US today, childhood doesn’t have to end. Peter Pan came ca. 1954 and we ran off with him to Neverland. We have become more infantilized with each generation since the end of WWII. Talking, dressing, acting like children. No responsibilities, no consequences, no thought for the future. All me all the time.

    Neotony – reaching sexual maturity while still in the larval stage. That’s US. Not only have we been sold the lifestyle, as a bonus gift, we get free, unlimited chemical treatment (growth hormones, endocrine disrupters).

    If we aren’t careful, we will become big-headed, small-bodied, gray humanoids hurtling to Earth in oversized pans of Jiffy Pop Popcorn to warn our ancestors: “Don’t become us!”

    • JohnAZ May 28, 2022 at 1:18 am #

      Very good!!!!!

      Maybe?

      Liberal=Democrat=infantile?

      No logic, only feelings, name calling, inability to communicate effectively, power only bullying, inability to compromise, etc.

      The RINO is a new add on to the infantile group.

      I would say that our government right now is the most educated, but immature group of supposedly smart folks ever.

      • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 11:56 am #

        C’mon now, JAZ. Give the GOP their chance to show their true colors again too. They’re every bit as infantile, given half a chance, which they will be again soon enough.

    • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 12:24 pm #

      Well said, BB.

      Peter Pan syndrome gone amok, for sure. No more adults in the room, or the ones that are, are dying off .

      These upcoming generations – yeesh. I feel for them. They’ve been so much more indoctrinated than even my generation was.

      I work with a couple of young women (in their 20’s) who are amazingly capable, great at their jobs and responsible as it gets. They are also studied and not materialistic. That gives me just a little hope or at least helps me to see that their generation is not ALL living home with mommy & daddy and using GoFundMe in lieu of a job.

      • BackRowHeckler May 28, 2022 at 1:56 pm #

        Good points Mary. You mention a couple of young women, is it your observation that women in the age group you indicate are having an easier time of it than young men, are perhaps more focused and disciplined? That’s what I’m seeing.

        • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 7:44 pm #

          That’s a good question. It does not seem to me that men have it tougher BUT there are a lot more women being hired I think as well as minorities in places because of the idiotic diversity crap.

      • Blackbird May 28, 2022 at 11:21 pm #

        “…using GoFundMe in lieu of a job.” Really? Is that a thing?

        To hell with pride and all that make-believe shit. I’ve paid my dues. Whaddya say world? For just a few dollars a day, you can take me out of the job market.

  69. JohnAZ May 28, 2022 at 1:52 am #

    Wonder if the reason the MSM is not broadcasting great victories in Ukraine any more is that there aren’t any? Is Russia starting its kick ass phase now? What is the WEF led NATO going to do when Russia eventually wins the war. What are all the MIC generals going to do when US weapons do not do the job?

    Do not listen to Biden, he will probably just cut manning and weapons in the military. I wonder if any quartermasters have ordered replacements for all the arms wasted in Ukraine?

    • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 10:09 am #

      Feels that way to me. Not necessarily “kick ass” phase, but mop up and eliminate for sure.

      The media? They’ve moved onto homegrown terrorists and police malfeasance now.

    • thwack May 28, 2022 at 11:01 am #

      My bit chute links of UAF KIAs have been going straight to “moderation”

      The RF is stacking bodies like cord wood and asking the Ukrainian government to come collect their dead; which they ignore.

      • BackRowHeckler May 28, 2022 at 1:39 pm #

        Wapo and the NYTs are finally admitting the truth about the war, which is Ukraine is getting its ass kicked and has been since Day 1. Why report this now? Well, reality can be covered up for only so long. Also, western media needs to get ahead of the curve for when the Ukes call it quits and most likely depose Zelensky.

        • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 2:57 pm #

          Starting to appear that this really was about the US getting the Euros to commit economic suicide through the Russian sanctions. Gotta keep ’em dependent on Uncle Sugar, even though the old sod’s got one foot in the grave now. Then hopefully it bleeds Russia out slowly too, buying the DC boys some more time to come up with another plan. Z’s smart though. He’ll land on his feet back here in the US in no time, rewarded handsomely for selling out his home country.

          • BackRowHeckler May 28, 2022 at 5:39 pm #

            Z reportedly has $800 million in the bank.

            He’s a good saver.

      • Paula D May 28, 2022 at 7:45 pm #

        The Ukrainian government doesn’t want to admit when soldiers are dead because they don’t want to pay the death benefit, so they leave them missing in action.
        I saw videos of POWs picking up the bodies so that they could be buried by the Russians.
        No problem though.
        The Ukies and their US/NATO handlers are swearing that they are simply going to build a million man army next month, to replace all those dead soldiers the US spent billions of dollars and 8 years training.
        Hand them a weapon and tell them to visualize themselves as soldiers is the plan.

  70. SoftStarLight May 28, 2022 at 4:41 am #

    “Bad faith and wickedness rule, led by a Party of Chaos. So, really, what do you expect? And what do you deserve?”

    Well, I feel like it’s an unfair situation generally. The whole a few bad apples spoil the bunch thing appears to be the operating principal of the moment. A complete immersion into a narrative of collective sin ie another form of a religious rapture replete with the requisite moralizing and pulpit grandstanding. But the very odd circumstances of these recent events like for instance the apparent participation of fed groomers or seemingly inexplicable police standdowns deserve much more scrutiny imo. Also the fact that such a significant portion of the population, including kids, are managed with psychotropic drugs. Not to mention the exploding mental health crisis which was never really resolved after the lockdowns. Amazing how the media and political class had their narrative coordinated and deployed minutes after the first reports. And yet they avoid the actual root causes. Whether by design or negligence. But either way certainly the spiral will continue until it can’t or won’t.

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  71. Wolf Bird May 28, 2022 at 8:50 am #

    One of your best which is saying a lot. Home school is the answer but the problem with the answer is that the empire of debt has already destroyed the family to the point that no one is available for the job of teacher. Mom and Dad are uneducated debt/consumption slaves out chasing paper so that the grotesque lifestyle and culture we have created can be maintained. Living through the beginning stages of the collapse of the empire used to be bewildering….. now it’s just horrifying.

    • D from OR May 28, 2022 at 10:44 am #

      Not everyone is a debt slave or uneducated. Many around me discovered they can belt tighten and budget better if one is doing the home-schooling. No child care costs, less car maintenance and gas, less dining out and less hassle.

      Lots of ways to do this and many are. Sure you could say you don’t see it where you are but how would you even know?

    • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 12:18 pm #

      There is actually a perception that home schooling needs to mirror actual schools. They don’t. All you need is 2 hours a day.

      • Paula D May 28, 2022 at 7:48 pm #

        Attendance taking goes fast.
        And home schoolers can skip the sex/gender education part.
        Also the CRT oppression lessons.

      • Blackbird May 28, 2022 at 11:11 pm #

        And you don’t even need to do it yourself. Go knock on the door on that brainy old fart down the road, he just might be able to spare some time from gettin’ high and solving the world’s problems online – and whatever else he does – and contribute his bottomless wisdom to the neighborhood kids.

        Community schooling. Some parents can’t. Some parents won’t. Some parents shouldn’t. Some should have been doing this all along.

  72. 100th Avatar May 28, 2022 at 9:03 am #

    “The party of chaos”

    Is so much more than a party.

    And it is all of which many here, and others out there, have said.

    It is a global order. A global movement..

    Rand Paul finally said what it is on national TV: an open conspiracy to usurp our sovereignty.

    Rand can’t even muster the courage to take on his neighbor, ole turkey neck wallflower Mitch, but he will talk about our country surrendering our republic, our agency to a global socialist order.

    Intriguing.

    A new world order.

    They conspired to rid the world of Trump and continue on the march to a centralized order of elite technocrats.

    Soros doesn’t have much time left, and he’s not tolerating any more speed bumps.

    Again, Joe Sixpack here is worried about gubmint comin’ fer my guns… when their government is not even their government anymore.

    When is this going to stop?

    (People blind to the loss of their country?)

    • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 11:10 am #

      I keep harkening back to Ned Beatty’s character’s speech in “Network” back in the 1970s. Apparently some already knew that there was no real sovereignty any more, and that the world was run and controlled by banks and corporations and whoever owns those.

      Now I guess a few more know, but the rest are still oblivious.

    • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 12:00 pm #

      It’s already over for the US, 100A. The only hope is that Russia and/or China aren’t in on it too. But I’m getting up there now, so I doubt I’ll live long enough to find out. It’s been a fun ride, I guess. Definitely had a lot of plot twists along the way.

    • Jarek May 28, 2022 at 12:42 pm #

      Since when did you care about our sovereignty? This is a different sub-personality.

      If anyone did try to really do something, your dominant sub-personality would come out to castigate them.

      • 100th Avatar May 28, 2022 at 2:00 pm #

        Oh Janos! Bless your heart

        I only castigate you when you blame the brown people instead of your Aryan masters… silly goose!

        • Jarek May 28, 2022 at 2:13 pm #

          They’re no Aryan, ultimately – as you very well know.

        • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 7:47 pm #

          But but but Avatar, it’s apparent that it’s women and blacks are ruining the world. Not rich white dudes. Well I mean once you exclude Schwab, Gates, Soros, Biden, Zuckerberg, Musk, Kissinger, etc.

  73. thwack May 28, 2022 at 10:54 am #

    Its GOOGLE that will end up taking your guns

    • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 11:54 am #

      The young aren’t so fond of guns as we oldsters, so it’s really just a waiting game for us to die off. Guns don’t really make the world go ’round anymore anyway. Their primary purpose is to give the gen pop a false sense of security. Lots of better ways out there to get people to go along or eliminate them than just shooting them. The Covid just being one of the better recent examples. There’ll be more coming down the pike any day now.

      • MrMangoOnMyShoulder May 28, 2022 at 12:32 pm #

        ..so it’s really just a waiting game for us to die off

        Yep.

        Scary to think what things will be like when the quickly-graying older few generations are gone. But I suppose every aging generation has to accept that as an inescapable fate and eventually just shrug their shoulders, looking around at the damn kids trying to hard to screw things up in their own way.

      • 100th Avatar May 28, 2022 at 2:09 pm #

        Yep: freeze your electronic wallet

        Kill cash

  74. stelmosfire May 28, 2022 at 11:01 am #

    Well the Memorial Day Barbecue is off. Monkey Pox running rampant in town. Already 12 cases, 4 Macques, a half dozen Capuchins, and a couple Howlers.

    • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 11:45 am #

      Those Howlers are the life of every party, but of course some people like to sleep too.

  75. MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 11:13 am #

    Families have been conditioned to be split up for centuries all in the name of ‘civilization’ and forced schooling. This is a failed experiment, IMHO. For many of the reasons James states in this week’s fine article.

    Splitting up the family was never a good idea, but now it’s the norm.

    And look at all the dysfunction! Really coming to a head now.

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    • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 12:04 pm #

      The atomization of society. Every person being an “economic unit,” just like any livestock. The herd’s been stirred, but that keeps them compliant in the long run. Dysfunction’s just a POV.

      • JohnAZ May 28, 2022 at 12:53 pm #

        Dis

        Yes!

        Two methods

        Immigration and the Department of Education.

        I will bet with four decades of both, the percentage of the population tainted by both is around 50%.

    • JohnAZ May 28, 2022 at 12:51 pm #

      Hmmm!

      Adolescence has been blamed for decades for breaking up families and creating monster teenagers. It is built in?

      I wonder, is it built in as a natural movement of kids to leave the nest?

      Or is it a result of kids being put into peer groups at school and listening to everyone bad mouthing adults?

      Or both?

      • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 2:23 pm #

        My guess is the latter, primarily. I was a pretty unruly fuck at 18 as well.

      • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 7:49 pm #

        Seems to me, teenagers who are raised well aren’t monsters for the most part. Puberty is hard, and parents that aren’t empathetic and supportive probably end up with their hands full.

        • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 8:03 pm #

          I’ve noticed that too, but it also strongly correlates to the parents’ income levels. A lot easier to be supportive and empathetic when you’re not working a dead end job to barely make ends meet, especially when that’s the same environment the parents grew up in too. Apple and the tree, and all that.

      • Paula D May 28, 2022 at 7:56 pm #

        I talked to a psychologist on Amtrak one time and she pointed out that for most of human history people lived in tribes. The tribes were large extended families.
        So the postulation is that in order to keep humans from inbreeding, young people, especially the males, had to leave their home tribe and roam into unknown territory looking for a mate.
        Who would want to leave their home and family and head off into the scary wilderness without some sort of shift in their brain that makes them horny, reckless and less likely to weigh risks?
        Hence: the adolescent male.

        • Paula D May 28, 2022 at 7:58 pm #

          It works the same way with some other animals also.

    • Jarek May 28, 2022 at 1:03 pm #

      Add in no fault divorce, enabling women to take the kids and cash out at any time, and we have the current perfect storm. And of course from there it just goes down hill, with women not even bothering to get married to have kids, just marrying Uncle Sham.

      And from there? No male model around for the boys or the girls. It goes down further. Gangs have to step in from here. There is no other way. They will be the nucleus for the Tribes to come.

      • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 7:50 pm #

        Yes, it is all women’s fault, poor men have no say and nothing whatsoever to do with it, even though they run everything.

    • Night Owl May 28, 2022 at 6:58 pm #

      Yep. Destroy any form of social or material support.

      The prey is alone.

    • ThorsHammer May 28, 2022 at 11:28 pm #

      MQ

      At least among the privileged class families still matter. In selecting our Supreme Leader the most important qualification is Family Name. Billy and Hellary Clinton. Dumb and Dumber Bush. The Dead Kennedys. President Bedpan and his crack head son who he appointed family CFO in charge of harvesting loose billions in the Ukraine. Occasionally there is new blood like the chemically manufactured Deep State automaton Obama. And more recently, Round Heels, Obama’s selection to become the first Woman President and Chief Giggler as soon as Bedpan drowns in his own vomit.

  76. hustled enough May 28, 2022 at 12:57 pm #

    JHK Admin,
    I really like the first half of the post today. I would have only added something about fascist architecture of the seats and seating arrangements.

    The Drag Queen Happy Hour? Seriously? Maybe that is a unicorn that you brandish but it is amazing how many kids have SFA knowledge of the birds and the bees–well, at least the bits dealing with the need for condoms, prevalence of STI’s, and treating each other like people rather than as porn actors in the movies they run in their heads. That is not school–that is home’s deal. School is a band-aid and blaming schools for the faults of home? Well, you got plenty of conservative fuck ups growing up just as you have progressive fuck ups growing up …
    As for why the murders? I have no idea about individuals. But more generally: Where are the meaningful rites of passage in our culture? For children leaving childhood and embracing adulthood. I see so many–they are lost. How are they supposed to process the idea of death–the death of childhood? The death of their civilization? Do they fight? Do they give up? Do they struggle for a better world. What about: The death of parents? The death of their friends? Untimely death? Violent death? Thank god, it’s about time death?

    We are a death denying culture. Who is teaching our kids what they need to know about death and change and what is facing us? Not yours; not mine. We don’t give our children the tools–neither side does–because the adults don’t have them either. And we wonder why kids do this shit? They have been fed a crock and they know it. And school? God knows it has a ton of problems–but that is what happens when we abrogate the responsibilities we have to ourselves and each other. School can also be part of the solution, but authoritarian Big Daddy structures are not going to do the trick–we tried that–it worked great in the Third Reich. The Big Mummy structures are not great either, but the answer lies with the first half of your post–a critique of late industrial capitalist values and the desire for a move to more humanist ones–that our first duty is to raise decent HUMANS rather than COMPLIANT DOCILE OBEDIENT WORKERS…

    One key: Do not give your obedience in advance but always responsibly question. That is how we need to educate our kids and ourselves. If you want an idea of what I mean by “responsibly” I mean that there has to be an agreement about certain things–for example: the clear distinction between causation and correlation and how to use them. I would throw in “the scientific method” as short hand for critical thinking and the heuristics we often associate with it–sourcing, corroboration, absence of relevant information, and contextualisation.

    You want a return to good old fashioned values and teaching–the sad thing is that when you look at those who cancel on both left and right–and on those who follow orders and produce and consume things, these beliefs have led us HERE. You are a Cassandra and I agree with you with the bigger picture, but you offer nothing but the “blessings” of a cleansing fire and the Great Reset, a la “World Made by Hand.”

    I think of another path–yes, its going down, but the work we do now can help in the formation of that new world. And education is ONE place to start. There are teachers and schools–yes, public ones, that give a shit about this. Teachers who see what you see and rather than despair, gird their loins, and get to work to help prepare, to fight, and to answer responsible questions. Because that is what the next generations who live in that new world are going to need.

    • gustafson.robert.22 May 28, 2022 at 1:49 pm #

      Apparently not hustled enough. Apparently you keep coming back for repeat hustlings, since you return and return and return with the same bland critique, communicated non-constructively and with few specifics that have any punch.

      • SoftStarLight May 28, 2022 at 2:05 pm #

        Rude

      • hustled enough May 29, 2022 at 9:37 pm #

        gustafson.robert.22,
        If you want to offer me this brief, bland, vague, non-constructive and additionally lazy critique, than please have at it … I think vodka adds a certain punch to punch, don’t you, except Stoly seems to be losing its punch of late…

    • SoftStarLight May 28, 2022 at 2:12 pm #

      I’ve heard it is important to think about death at least three times per day. Accordingly it is supposed to help one better focus on the important matters of life. And I agree with the assessment that overall our culture is death denying. Maybe that is part of the reason murder and mass murder are perceived to be almost something of a video game play. And death itself is used for political gain etc.?

      • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 2:49 pm #

        Very true. I don’t make it a point to think about death everyday, but I always do anyway. If nothing else, the aches and pains of age will do that for you. Plus the fact that I’ve been disaffected with the whole soul-stripping rat race concept of living we’ve constructed here in the west.

        • SoftStarLight May 28, 2022 at 6:28 pm #

          Is it a rat race or a hamster wheel race? 🙂

          • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 7:51 pm #

            It’s a race to the mythical kitten-caboodle, is what it is. ;.)

            But you knew that.

          • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 7:52 pm #

            I’m still emoji impaired. :-O!

        • Gastrophanes May 29, 2022 at 2:33 am #

          Disaffection is a peaceful refuge. Few surprises, mostly just unexpected maintenance. A comment here & there on the outpourings, or the reactions observed; just my ephemeral wisp of smoke diluted through the universe. Enough that it’s freed from the source. Belief in change is the province of youthfulness.

      • Not_GeorgeT May 28, 2022 at 3:22 pm #

        It is an approach, and realizing we are all renters here might help with putting matters into perspective.

        Youth feels immortal. Aging brings the mortality into perspective.

        Video games can be fun, and I enjoy taking a break with the RTS (Real Time Strategy) genre.

        The FPS (First Person Shooter) genre is where some of this death-denying could be coming from. (hanging preposition, definitely becoming a slacker regarding writing)

        characters become ‘healed’ and go on to play again.

        I’ll offer people were much more conscious of death in the 1800’s. It was a part of life and always in front of the people in a visible manner.

        • SoftStarLight May 28, 2022 at 6:33 pm #

          That is an interesting thought. We are all renters in the end. And judging from these crazy people I need to be thinking of myself as a happy renter so your idea actually makes that make more sense. Without their crazy input. Lol see how easy they are to beat! Even if just on a psychic level

    • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 7:50 pm #

      OK, groomer.

    • Paula D May 28, 2022 at 8:09 pm #

      Toddlers need to know about STDs and condoms, therefore having Drag Queen Story Hour is a good thing?
      Yeah, no.
      Kids don’t need to know any of that until they are ready to hit puberty but you have schools teaching kindergartners about the Gender Unicorn, fisting, and the importance of choosing pronouns that they can throw fits about if adults don’t comply. Teach them not to obey? Sure, dude. The consequences of not following the Gender Unicorn are harsh.
      It isn’t ”old fashioned” to object to children being taught absolute nonsense that goes against every natural instinct humans have. Knowing the difference between male and female is instinctive and important for every human.
      The agenda to overcome that in order to create customers for Big Pharma and the puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, not to mention the booming plastic surgery scam now cutting off 14 y.o. girl’s breasts like some sort of deviant horror film come to antiseptic life, is horrendous.
      I can’t believe any decent human being would look on this as anything but depraved.

      • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 8:22 pm #

        THANK YOU.

        Agree 1000%!!!

      • Blackbird May 28, 2022 at 9:46 pm #

        I read “Gender Unicorn” and thought, “What?”

        Immediately after I read “fisting” and thought, “WHAT?! Kindergartners?!”

        Well, now I know about the Gender Unicorn – as well as the “Genderbread Person”.

        Three more reasons to get your kids the hell outa public (or is it “pubic”?) school!

        In addition to lifelong pharmaceutical subscriptions, they want us busting our toys so we can’t breed.

  77. Jarek May 28, 2022 at 1:21 pm #

    Finding White Identity in Seattle
    Stephen Hedger, American Renaissance

    Posted on May 28, 2022Finding White Identity in Seattle
    American Renaissance, May 28, 2022

    This is part of our continuing series of accounts by readers of how they shed the illusions of liberalism and became race realists.

    In my childhood home of 1980s Seattle, non-white immigrants came in a hurry. Microsoft boomed with discount Indian programmers, apple orchards flourished with low-cost Hispanic laborers, and the region careened into cultural chaos. Hindu temples sprang up in historically white, suburban neighborhoods. Traditional churches, once glorious in their proud, perpetual upkeep, drooped despondently in dreary disrepair, emptied of their parishioners. Ballet halls and piano practice rooms were shuttered and quickly replaced by Indian Vedic cultural centers and sprawling Mexican markets. Defeated, many whites stole away to rural areas, hesitatingly half-smiling at the new arrivals while loading up their moving vans with an innate urge to hold on to a forbidden identity. My leftist parents, however, staunchly stayed put, gushingly greeting the eager arrivals.

    Supposedly to soothe white Seattleites still skeptical of the benefits of this onslaught, diversity billboards featuring smiling multiracial characters soon became a common sight along the I-405 corridor. Meanwhile, a fractured white identity screamed in primal angst within the maladjusted milieu of a drug-infested grunge music scene. The neighborhood parks where we had once grilled hamburgers, and where my friends and I had dreamt of becoming the next Jim Thome or Mark McGwire, quickly became the default venues for Indian wedding celebrations and religious festivals. Though unbeknownst to me at the time, I now realize that the burgeoning depression of my friends and I stemmed directly from this flagrant displacement and loss of purpose and peoplehood.

    White identity frayed further at my high school of the mid-1990s, during which anti-white ideology grew commonplace, the concerns about which were summarily dismissed with an amused chuckle by all of the enlightened adults. Looking back, the white children had an instinctively wiser awareness of diversity’s perils than our parents did. Yet I, still too young to process fully the extent of the degradation around me, ensconced myself in my studies, excelling at music, mathematics, philosophy, and history. During my junior year at university, where I majored in history, a prominent black professor took me under his wing, promoting me to a rare position as an undergraduate researcher and writer, alongside graduate school entrants, for a prominent website on African American and global African history he had launched. What I was about to learn in my investigations would transform my nascent racial resentments into a clear-eyed understanding of race and a passionate commitment to my people.

    Due to my extremely leftist upbringing and lack of exposure to blacks, I expected my studies to reveal an Africa afflicted with postcolonial devastation traceable to white rule. Instead, what I found was unmixed mayhem linked squarely to blacks. Using the valuable objectivity that my science professors had imparted to me, I strained to see how blacks were oppressed by whites. What I found instead was how desperately blacks depended on whites and their billions of U.S. dollars in foreign aid to sustain blacks’ very existence. And I saw how these charitable infusions were greedily misappropriated in what had become a flagrant and growing industry of institutional larceny.

    Poring over decades of GDP data, I discovered how colonized countries had fared well under white rule, with infrastructure and forms of civility duly erected, only to fall into abject ruin upon declaring independence. In 20th century Africa, I learned about entire communities of blacks filling their drinking buckets from the same water source in which they defecated. I also found out about the blacks who starved to death due to a lack of basic maintenance of their once-thriving farms, which had been set up and properly stewarded by whites, only to be raided and abandoned in a spate of childlike mismanagement upon the dissolution of colonial rule. I learned about the continent’s endemic rape problem. I learned about the AIDS epidemic and how black men sought out intercourse with virgin women in an attempt to cure the disease.

    I considered how some formerly colonized countries in Asia had economically vaulted ahead of some white nations, but I could find no explanation, other than racial differences, why not even one black nation had managed to achieve parity with the West. The entrenched pattern of incompetence among blacks was simply too global, too persistent, and thus too easily explainable by biology. Meanwhile, my evolutionary biology professor presented many noteworthy findings of differences in disease resistance, blood type, and internal organ size among the various subgroups of humanity. I began to consider that the capacity for civilization was also not universally human.

    Knowing I was not the only person to have reached these conclusions, I sleuthed around a fledgling internet and found American Renaissance. After fifteen years, thousands of articles, and a hundred or so books, my entire existence has been upended. I married a Ukrainian woman, for whom white racial solidarity is a given, and for whom racial differences are an objective reality. My wife and I have since had two beautiful white children whose future I cannot say is certain, but whose mental health I know will be better because of their unabashedly proud sense of peoplehood.

    Having been reared in a bastion of leftism, I can testify to the power that anti-white indoctrination holds over society. I can also testify to the seething anti-white sentiments of the incomers, who understandably disdain obsequious, effeminate leftist whites and their shameful lack of instincts for self-preservation. Within two to three decades, the US will become a majority non-white nation, and persecution of whites will be on the agenda for our new rulers. Political transpirations happen suddenly — much faster than people living in the moment ever imagine. Hence we need to act fast while time remains to effectively organize ourselves. The abruptness of the anti-white protests of 2020 and the unexpected, dramatic sociopolitical changes that took place thereafter should serve as stark warnings for us. We are the American nation, but our legacy will endure only if we commit ourselves to outsmarting our corporate, media, academic, and government overlords and choose to forge secret societies that are self-reliant and able to withstand persecution.

    Now is the time. Not tomorrow. We as a people must organize for ourselves a government for the sake of not only our own race, but also for all of humanity. Western civilization has shined the light of scientific knowledge and Christian morality on the world. Owing to our pathological altruism, this light has been dimmed. Yet together, with proper leadership and intelligent planning, we can rebuild our institutions. Together, with foresight and fierce determination — and humble hearts ready to listen and learn — we can stand tall once more in forging our own nation.

    Jarek: Here is the missing piece. Dis and others freely talking about the isolated and atomized individual, seen only in economic terms by the elite. But they don’t understand the existential alternative – which is the only complete cure – namely, that of becoming part of a People again.

    Do any of your really think there could have been an America without it being White European and Christian? When any of that came into doubt, America began to die in equal proportion.

    • gustafson.robert.22 May 28, 2022 at 1:56 pm #

      Or was the seed of future decay already present in White, European Christians from the start, inherent in that cultural DNA? Was there a lack of integrity there?

      For me, a people without integrity is not actually a people, whatever else they share…or they are a dead people, having already self-initiated the death-process.

      You’re right, we share idealism.

      • 100th Avatar May 28, 2022 at 2:13 pm #

        They transferred their integrity from what made the west: philosophy and logic

        To

        Abrahamic cults born outside the occident

        Christianity killed the west

        • Jarek May 28, 2022 at 2:20 pm #

          Christian morality made us better – but only when it didn’t kill off basic pagan commonsense for the people. The Church took much of the pagan learning and made it its own. But the Feminization occurred, along with the Protestants and a return to scriptural roots. Christ’s Kingdom was not of this world, so we couldn’t be either. Then along came social gospel or Tikkun Olam – remake the world to make it all rainbow ponies, no men allowed.

          And of course they are intensely hostile to men and women who choose the monastic path as well. They are abandoning the world, and the social nexus – their false god.

          • 100th Avatar May 28, 2022 at 9:01 pm #

            Uhh yeah so abrahaminism ruined it all

        • CrusherMuldoon May 28, 2022 at 5:07 pm #

          And video killed the radio star

      • Anthea May 29, 2022 at 6:24 am #

        @ gustafson:

        The seeds of decay and death are present in all life. That is its nature.

        I’ll bet you’re one of those people who is quick to tell people who have cancer that they surely brought it on themselves, or the woman whose husband beats her that she surely did something to provoke him.

        If you would like to make an accusation that an ending or decay or death are due to some “seed” of evil, you ought at least to specify what it is. Besides sparing the rest of us these glib accusations-for-the-sake-of-making-accusations, specificity would aid you in your own analysis, thus helping you figure out what’s really going on. I.e.: WHAT lack of integrity? WHOSE lack of integrity?

        Explain to me how Daniel Boone “lacked integrity,” or Antonia or Lena Lingard, in Willa Cather’s “My Antonia.” Maybe you could fill me in on the Original Sin of my Swedish great-grandparents, who took up land in Kansas in the late 1800s, where they built a farm and raised a large family.

        My suspicion is that you would tell me the above people were “racist” or held our LGBT brethren in disfavor–or would have, if they’d ever seen a black person or had the slightest idea that LGBT people existed–and thus sowed the seeds of America’s future decay.

        You are seriously capable of finding unforgiveable awfulness in Lena Lingard, because she became a dressmaker, in Antonia’s sexual indiscretion, in the fact that my grandparents committed the awful evil of farming and having kids, or that my grandmother on the other side of the family sold her surplus eggs.

        Accusing unspecified people of unspecified sins is so much talking to hear your head rattle.

        • Jarek May 29, 2022 at 1:08 pm #

          Bravo for resisting the guilt program that the Elite have foisted on us! Seriously. However:

          Though the Indians didn’t have private property, they did have tribal territories that they defended. So although your family didn’t kick them off as individuals kicking off other individuals, they were part of a people dispossessing another people.

          All that we have is a result of the conquest and dispossession of the Indians. That’s the price we paid to found and built this nation; the price of being the Native Americans.

          Of course if you deny that we are a group and that the Indians were a group, I guess that’s one way out of the uncomfortable dilemma, though that certainly wasn’t the general mindset back then.

          How did Daniel Boone lack integrity? The Mountain, Indian Fighters, and Explorers didn’t forget their people and helped them to settle new areas. They helped to open the West and in so doing, helped to end the very way of life that they were living. Of course Boone probably never thought about it, but that doesn’t mean that the unintended consequences were real. In contrast, the Indians had no intention of ending their way of life, and their actions were consonant with NOT ending their way of life. Thus they were rational and had an integrity that someone like Boone simply did not have.

          That’s not to say he wasn’t a fine man with many outstanding qualities of course.

          So to summarize: Life lives on life. We devoured them by dispossessing them. Some linger on in a reduced state, remembering what they once were and hating us. Others have accepted it and moved on, becoming Americans. The Navajos did well by getting into sheep herding, becoming the most populous tribe by far.

          The price of victory is bearing the hatred of the conquered. You share in this existential burden since you enjoy the fruits of the conquest. The Elite took this this thing, the load, and began to weaponized it, even though no one benefited from the conquest as much as them. Misdirection. Again, kudos for your resistance to this. The existential burden itself? That you cannot escape. It must be born unless you were to renounce the world and your social karma by giving up all that you have.

          • Jarek May 29, 2022 at 1:11 pm #

            correction: that doesn’t mean the unintended consequences were not real

    • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 2:44 pm #

      Dis and others freely talking about the isolated and atomized individual, seen only in economic terms by the elite. But they don’t understand the existential alternative – which is the only complete cure – namely, that of becoming part of a People again.

      No, I understand it all right. I just don’t believe it has a snowball’s chance of happening again, that’s all. Had we begun these discussions 100 years ago, maybe; but we’re way past the point of inflection now. The ironic part being it was the whites (mostly Christian and Jewish Zionist) who did all this to us, so who ya gonna blame? The third-worlders who followed opportunity here (most after we ruined theirs through economic exploitation first), or the mostly white and Jewish overlords in the eastern US power centers who decreed it all to happen in the first place?

      So once again, it comes back to the economics of the rich and powerful. They know damn well what they want and they want us to want us too, which we largely do. People want their fair share of those same riches, never taking the time to figure out that that can and will never happen. There’s simply not enough to go around anymore, even assuming the current haves would ever consent to share it, which they obviously won’t. And having exhausted the US of its resources and capabilities (first the native Americans, then one by one all the European immigrants, and soon enough all the remaining hordes that are still invading as we speak), they’re taking the next logical step: going global.

      It’s a global parasite system that can only die or completely subjugate its host. There are no other options in what will ultimately be a winner take all game.

      • Jarek May 28, 2022 at 3:21 pm #

        It’s not the river but the stream.

        It wasn’t during the night, but the early morning.

        Population and Load: Is there a connection?

        All 8 billion living on one or two acre organic farms. Who could make that happen? The Elite. Do they want to do that? No. Assuming it’s even feasible from a logistical (people and acres) or agricultural pov.

        • GreenAlba May 28, 2022 at 3:34 pm #

          Why are my comments awaiting moderation??

        • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 4:09 pm #

          No, but .5-1B highly medicated and motivated droids could probably pull it off. By then the races will all be mixed and optimized, so no worries there either.

        • BackRowHeckler May 28, 2022 at 7:36 pm #

          I think the plan is to get everybody into Highrises like in China. You will be riding the bus; electric powered, and fare will be free.

          • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 7:49 pm #

            Agreed. As an interim step. High rises won’t be needed or desirable once the population gets right sized.

            I imagine life as one of the 500M might even be quite pleasurable, given the right ruling caste. There won’t be any need to abuse the working class once all their competition has been eliminated and life has settled down again, everyone knowing and happy in their place from birth. Think modern day India in terms of numbers with half the people spread throughout the world according to production needs, with robots and other technology doing most of the grunt work in the most objectionable places.

            As an ideal, it really is quite appealing.

          • Blackbird May 28, 2022 at 9:35 pm #

            “There won’t be any need to abuse the working class…” There never was. It has always been recreational abuse.

            You wanna clean house for the Clintons post-Reset?

          • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 9:44 pm #

            What I’m saying is that once they’re right sized and the rich actually *depend* on them again with few or no replacements available in the pipeline, there will be no need to abuse the help. To the contrary, there will even be a need to treat them with a modicum of respect.

          • Blackbird May 28, 2022 at 10:01 pm #

            They will breed as many replacements as they need – and they will need a lot!

            Someday in the future: you’re on your hands and knees scrubbing the Mexican tile floor of the Clinton’s Georgetown kitchen. That “clop, clop” sound coming up behind you? That’s Hillary in thigh-high platform boots and a strap-on…

            Gonna be Jeffrey Epstein visits Comet Ping-Pong all day every day once we are gone.

          • malthuss May 29, 2022 at 1:28 pm #

            Locked in apartments, starving?

        • GreenAlba May 28, 2022 at 9:37 pm #

          Turns out this was edited out of context and has now been removed. Sadly, a moral victory for the ‘fact checkers’and Mark Crispin Miller will be feeling bad for discrediting the ‘good guys’.

  78. tom clark May 28, 2022 at 3:37 pm #

    Mr. Kunstler…my brain is full because society has offered me too many choices. May I be excused, please?

    • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 4:06 pm #

      Have you checked into the marijuana yet, tc? I think a good Sativa – possibly as an edible to start – might just fix you right up. What have you got to lose?

    • SoftStarLight May 28, 2022 at 6:35 pm #

      The mood has changed tom. Try to keep up boo

  79. Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 4:10 pm #

    Local high school senior parade going on here now right outside my window. Poor bastards, little do they know…

  80. docmartin May 28, 2022 at 4:48 pm #

    Not a troll , just a critic like you. . I want very short terms on all politicians, gen 4 nuclear power, a chicken in every pot, transportation that clean, quiet and energy efficient , real jail for violent criminals only and social media over the age of 18 only.

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    • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 5:02 pm #

      I had another idea the other day, which would probably have to implemented from the ground up by the states: establish an in-state office for all the US senators and representatives and mandate that they be present every single business day throughout the year. In other words, no more going to or living in DC. Internet technology now allows all conferences and meetings to be conducted remotely, so there’s simply no reason for those fucks to go gallivanting off to DC to conduct business contrary to what their constituents sent them there to do. Additionally, make their schedule public, with call-in numbers and Webex/MS Teams information freely available so that the constituents can listen in to everything they do, plus a small auditorium on site so people can go listen in person. No more surprises! Then establish clear cut, easily implemented recall procedures so the dumb-asses can be brought to heel with minimal effort.

      • SoftStarLight May 28, 2022 at 6:44 pm #

        These are awesome ideas too!! The only thing I could think of additionally is to criminalize lobbyists?

        • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 7:05 pm #

          But wait… there’s MORE!

      • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 7:05 pm #

        This one really got the creative juices flowing, so in that light, let’s keep it rolling.

        -Senate and Representatives should be working part time only, and since most of them are rich already anyway, pay them accordingly, probably decreed by the states. For NM I’d suggest $50K/yr, means tested. If you’re a millionaire already, you can work for free. Take it or leave it.

        -Federal legislative sessions should take place for no more 30 days in Nov-Dec only on odd years to approve budgets and the like, and for 30 days on even years to consider new legislation as well as budgets. All done by remote, of course. All new legislation must be matched by repeal of equal existing legislation, to be determined by the Board of Directors.

        -Since the US operates as a quasi-corporation already and we have WAY too much power invested in one person as the president, which is now a virtual cult of personality, eliminate the presidential position altogether to be replaced by a five person Board of Directors, one each directly elected by, responsible to, and based in their home districts of the Northeast, the Southeast, the Midwest, the Southwest (which would include Texas), and the Northeast. This would also anticipate and possibly ease the pressure for the possible eventual breakup of the US.

        -Eliminate one of the services – the USMC – as they are actually a redundancy and exist only to usurp power from the USAF and the USA for the Navy. There are only three components to military power: ground, water, and air. Anything more is pure bullshit. Needless to say, the totally silly Space Force should be eliminated as well and expunged from the records, since it’s never actually existed anyway.

        -Eliminate ALL overseas bases and make the DoD once again true to its name: the Department of DEFENSE. They’re damn sure not defending anything occupying others’ territory. WWII is over. Let’s finally acknowledge that.

        -Eliminate the equally stupid Department of Homeland Defense. Nothing but a bunch of former military worthless fucks doing make-work jobs on the Federal dime the active Army could do better and more efficiently.

        -Eliminate the entire nuclear modernization and refurbishment program. Time for the US to LEAD for a change and renounce nuclear weapons altogether, rather than just preach and threaten.

        -Conduct a comprehensive audit with criminal prosecution teeth of all DoD contracts and contractors. This should keep the lawyers swimming in gravy for decades to come and lead to a gradual dismantling of the entire corrupt MICCIMATT (The Military-Industrial-Counter-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think Tank) complex.

        Christ, I’m just getting started…

        • Paula D May 28, 2022 at 10:00 pm #

          Excellent plan. I like it.

        • SoftStarLight May 29, 2022 at 1:04 pm #

          Yeah sounds good! Keep it rolling

        • MontanaMan May 29, 2022 at 5:07 pm #

          Absolutely Outstanding!!!! BRAVO! ? BRAVO!! ?
          BRAVO!!! ? I don’t post comments on JHK Website very often.

          In fact, it’s been at least, 5-months since I did the last time. But, after reading your truly epic comment,well thought ? out, really well laid-out….

          It, got me to jumping up and down emotionally inside!!! Thank you my friend!!!!

        • workingclasshero May 29, 2022 at 11:11 pm #

          A bit New Left populist for my blood. What self-respecting nation state would give up nuclear weapons once they already have them?

    • SoftStarLight May 28, 2022 at 6:39 pm #

      You simply forgot your manners and a spoonful of sugar. It sounds like a great agenda?

      • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 7:08 pm #

        Not fond of sugar and I’ve never been especially well mannered. Who am I kidding? I’m a roughneck fuck by nature.

        • SoftStarLight May 29, 2022 at 1:00 pm #

          Lol, well it was just metaphorical anyways. Don’t worry, we’ll trim up those rough edges with a nail file lol

  81. Night Owl May 28, 2022 at 6:49 pm #

    “In this tumult of cultural impoverishment, psychotic grandiosity creeps in. Be big if you can’t be anything else. Hence, one achievable role for young persons in American life is mass murderer. It is a way of becoming important, of having an effect on other people and society in general. Your name may be forgotten, but the act itself will endure in the collective memory of a people.”

    This is very similar to what I wrote in my final post for last week’s entry. America is sick culturally. Most of it is media driven, at the behest of the powers that be. Kids today grow up seeking fame, money, etc.

    I mentioned in that post that becoming an expat helped me understand the above far better than I did when I lived in the States. My wife (who is German) said she did not want to raise a child in the US. I understood why. Now I really understand why.

    No amount of gun control or security measures will solve what is a spiritual and psychological problem.

    • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 7:11 pm #

      Concur. Always wished I’d married German when I had the chance back in ’89-’92. Loved the country, loved the people. Young and stupid. I still hadn’t quite figured out where the world was headed and the urgency of making a choice.

    • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 7:54 pm #

      Yes, a sick, perverse society that rewards sociopathy, psychopathy and narcissism creates maniacs that shoot up schools and other places.

      And no one will dare touch that very obvious fact.

    • Blackbird May 28, 2022 at 9:30 pm #

      Exactly. Solving problems with a gun is the American way. It made us who we are.

  82. Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 7:38 pm #

    Stupid sports observations:

    Anyone out there drinking Chicken Cock Whiskey? Just noticed one of the NASCAR Cup cars has that as their primary sponsor. Thought that was pretty ballsy.

    Speaking of ballsy, new Miami Dolphins WR Tyreek Hill was quoted in an interview saying that QB Tua Tagovailoa threw “one if the prettiest balls I’ve ever caught.” I sensed that he immediately appreciated the comedic potential of what he said, as he immediately poo-pooed it with a statement to the effect of “that’s probably all I should say about that,” all the while wearing a slight Cheshire Cat grin. I immediately laughed out loud at the awkwardness of the statement. To my surprise, the media immediately (and consistently) attributed the “faux pas” to the fact that he was somehow damning his new QB (old QB, Patrick Mahomes) with faint praise, talking about how “pretty his balls were,” instead of their accuracy. Say fucking what! Are you insipid politically correct morons actually that stupid, or has “catching pretty balls” been so normalized that the media no longer gets it?

    • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 7:56 pm #

      Why are men so obsessed with their balls?

      • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 8:05 pm #

        LOL! I guess you’d have to be a woman to ask that question. They kind of make us who we are, for better or worse.

        • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 8:20 pm #

          I could argue a womb makes me who I am then, but I don’t feel a need to obsess over it.

          • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 9:24 pm #

            LOL! I don’t think it’s “obsessing” to think that men talking about about “catching pretty balls” in the current environment is a bit awkward, but that might just be me, any more than a female sports star saying something like “I really love pussies (referring to cats), they’re just the best. My pussy is my best friend.”

          • Anthea May 28, 2022 at 11:55 pm #

            @ Disaffected:

            We all identify closely with our sexuality and have a certain solicitous interest in our genitalia. It’s just that the coy little jokes about these matters seem a bit juvenile. A person is supposed to outgrow this sort of thing–along with potty humor–when they get past the age of twelve.

            For a grown man (or woman) to speak in this way is… (I hardly know what to call it.) It’s obviously a strong indication that you’re conversing with a retard.

          • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 12:52 pm #

            Thank you, Althea. I didn’t want to go there, but I’m glad you did.
            LMAO!

      • Blackbird May 28, 2022 at 9:23 pm #

        Some of us aren’t obsessed with our balls – that’s what our cock is for (mostly…).

      • elysianfield May 29, 2022 at 10:34 am #

        “Why are men so obsessed with their balls?”

        Mary,
        And you are suggesting that you are not?

        • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 12:51 pm #

          Yes. I am suggesting that.

      • Hereward the Woke May 29, 2022 at 1:27 pm #

        Well, I work a lot with chainsaws, so I have to think about them sometimes. I sing baritone, and that’s as high as I want to go.

        • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 1:37 pm #

          LOL!

  83. Namo May 28, 2022 at 8:24 pm #

    Besides the impact of the creeping purposelessness of American life and culture on children, I would add their typical lack of agency, particularly in middle-class households.

    As a foreigner, I have often found the degree of control exerted by American parents staggering. There is even a term for this: ‘overparenting’, or ‘helicopter parenting’. I read somewhere a while ago that the rise in overparenting — not just in America, but in the West ( since America often sets the cultural standard ) — is correlated with a society’s degree of socioeconomic inequality ( GINI coefficient ). The greater the gap between rich and poor, within a society, the greater the degree of overparenting — and the lower the levels of interpersonal trust.

    Talking to a few people, and listening to testimonies over the years, I heard that there were much fewer pressures exerted on kids — much more time and freedom for them explore and develop according to their own, genuine sense of self — in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. The advent of overparenting, and broad cultural paranoia over ‘stranger-danger’, among other ills, arising in the 1980s ( with neoliberal economics ).

    To me, being a kid in America, seems often akin to a prison sentence, in which one’s sense of wonder and chance at finding a true sense of self ( ontogenesis ), is essentially robbed. Maybe because this the best way to turn the population into worker-consumer drones?

    • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 9:46 pm #

      Growing up in the 1970s was awesome.

      • Blackbird May 28, 2022 at 10:04 pm #

        You probably had a banana seat bike didn’t you?

        • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 10:06 pm #

          YAY-essss I did.

          Also wore hip huggers, hot pants, and lots of orange.

          • Anthea May 29, 2022 at 12:00 am #

            I wore pink paratrooper pants from Fiorucci’s. I also had a pair of baby blue ones. I wore these with my 5-inch lavender ankle strap heels.

          • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 11:30 am #

            Niiiiice, Anthea!

      • Namo May 28, 2022 at 10:16 pm #

        Gen X — the latchkey generation — had much more freedom. Probably because their parents were too busy being yupies.

        I remember spending hours exploring the neighborhood, on my own. It was like: “See ya! I’ll be back for dinner”. And I was, what, 6 or 7 — maybe even younger? Today, in many places, if parents allowed that, they’d possibly get a visit from Child Services.

        Pervading surveillance, and control, shrivels the soul, especially during childhood.

        • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 10:41 pm #

          Yep. Hell, my parents let us drag the canoe down to the river and said, “don’t go over the dam, kids!”

          Those were the days.

          • Blackbird May 28, 2022 at 10:59 pm #

            Motorcycles. “Don’t get caught!” For years I didn’t – until I did.

            Cop made me call my grandma (folks weren’t home) who called friend with a pick-up to carry my brother and I – like a couple whipped dogs – and our bikes back home. The shame…

            Those were the days – although in those days I thought those days were in the future.

        • BackRowHeckler May 29, 2022 at 3:42 pm #

          Yup I was roaming the woods with my Winchester Model 62 with a magazine full of .22 shorts at age 11.

          My Mother: “Make sure you’re home on time for supper.”

      • Hereward the Woke May 29, 2022 at 1:30 pm #

        Very true, Mary. So many great memories! I remember when the Osmonds were THE big thing. They were coming to the UK on a tour and my, dad, being a journalist, tried to organise a photoshoot with Jimmy O. It fell through, but we kids still made the front pages of the tabloids, waving our arms around a cardboard cut out of the great man (boy). Those were the times! Tragedy was that we weren’t aware of how great those times were – or that things were about to change for the worse. Still, it’s something they can never steal from us.

        • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 1:40 pm #

          Well said, Hereward. I was more of a Partridge Family fan than an Osmonds but I did have one of their albums! Yes, incredibly good times. What a great memory for you.

          We basically left the house in the morning (during summer) and came back for lunch, left again, came back for dinner. No TV was allowed during the day and even at night a lot of the time I preferred to read.

          And all our dogs ran around all day and came home for dinner, too – lol.

  84. Billy Hill May 28, 2022 at 8:38 pm #

    This week’s post dissected the major news story without the predictable blather, offering a much larger context as suggested by the Clarke reference. Bravo. I would send to my siblings but the last time I did that I got the reply “what right-wing rag did you get that from?.”

    At which point I blocked their email.

    • Blackbird May 28, 2022 at 9:19 pm #

      I’ve never read the Clarke book. Never saw a need to, everyone else has read it.

      But I am familiar with the Pink Floyd song by the same name, on one of their most obscure albums. The Floyd song harmonizes well with today’s essay.

      Though the fear’s never voiced
      Say you have to make the final choice

  85. Dr. Coyote May 28, 2022 at 8:54 pm #

    My comment is still awaiting moderation, here’s a re-post sans the link to the Peak Prosperity web site.

    —-

    Chris Martenson had a worthwhile walk-through of the problem yesterday: [url deleted; mosey over to Peak Prosperity and search for “informed consent May 26]

    TLDR version (shamelessly cribbed from one of the comments there):
    1. Police didn’t go in. “Meh, not worth it.” Evidently so.
    2. High incidence of psych drug treatments in 15-24 yo shooters. Major clue.
    3. It’s not depression, it’s demoralization. It’s a somewhat rationally chosen check-out.

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  86. MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 9:31 pm #

    Gee I wonder who owns/influences The Atlantic? 4 year ago they were publishing glowing, fawning articles about parents transing their toddlers, touting it as stunning and brave, not Transhausen By Proxy horror. And now they want to convince us to off ourselves so as not to be a drain on the rich peoples’ society. I honestly don’t have a problem with choosing to die rather than undergo allopathic tortures to extend life but to me, this seems more like a toe in the water to introduce the concept of suicide as an option or euthanasia (as if they haven’t been committing that in nursing homes for decades on the sly anyway).

    WHY I HOPE TO DIE AT 75
    An argument that society and families—and you—will be better off if nature takes its course swiftly and promptly

    By Ezekiel J. Emanuel

    “seventy-five.

    That’s how long I want to live: 75 years.

    This preference drives my daughters crazy. It drives my brothers crazy. My loving friends think I am crazy. They think that I can’t mean what I say; that I haven’t thought clearly about this, because there is so much in the world to see and do. To convince me of my errors, they enumerate the myriad people I know who are over 75 and doing quite well. They are certain that as I get closer to 75, I will push the desired age back to 80, then 85, maybe even 90.”

    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/10/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/

    • Disaffected May 28, 2022 at 9:38 pm #

      Very nice. Personally, I don’t think I have 75 in me. Just not for me. Just more stupid linear thinking. Really not sure whether or I’ll make it to 65, and I’m 64 and 1/2 now. No need to resort to hope. Lots of other humane means available now.

      • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 10:09 pm #

        Ironically, I kinda agree with him on a lot of points. But my reason for posting is that this privileged fuck won’t off himself at 75, he’ll plant the seed in other peoples’ minds, and the the mainstream will get used to the idea… etc etc just like they did with the trans scourge.

        There is always an agenda, and it doesn’t include privileged assholes like him giving up the ghost at 75. That’s for OTHER people.

        • Blackbird May 28, 2022 at 10:26 pm #

          Well somebody just planted a seed in my mind, and it already sprouted. Consider, if you will…

          For one reason or another you’ve reached that point in life where you can smell Death’s cold, musty breath. You could die in a nursing home and be tossed out like yesterday’s grilled cheese sandwich. You could die surrounded by loved ones – and leave them with that dead body to dispose of. Or…

          A knock on the door of George Soros/Bill Gates/Hillary Clinton/Your Choice.

          Them: “Who the fuck are you!”

          You: “BOOM”

          Of course your loved ones will have to deal with the fact (and the publicity) that you blew Ronald McDonald to Kingdom Come, but hey, you did it your way.

          • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 10:33 pm #

            I like the idea of being 75 and the Soylent Green people come for me because I’m about to age out (ala Bladerunner, if I remember correctly? Although I think the age was 30 – yikes – but not sure), just sitting there with a grenade or an AK47 or better yet, an uzi.

            “Come on in and euth me, boyz!”

            KA-BOOOOOM! Like that scene from Breaking Bad when the ‘ding ding’ guy blew up his arch enemy in the old folk’s home.

            I come from feisty stuff. My 90 year old mom said last month that if she was on a flight with terrorists she’d try to disarm them because what the fuck, she’s 90.

            LOL.

    • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 10:11 pm #

      And why 75?

      I am guessing to close that gap in between the new retirement age (67) and death age even more.

      It’s always about $$.

      • Gastrophanes May 29, 2022 at 2:21 am #

        We should exchange only precious metals; and for the really big outlays an internal organ.

      • Night Owl May 29, 2022 at 7:42 am #

        This is a component of the Great Reset. A while back, I saw a video of some WEF ghoul asking why anyone really needs to live longer than 75.

        It is because 75 is considered the longest one can live and still be of any economic value to the system.

        IDK if you remember those death capsules they were promoting not long ago, but they are part of the same approach. It is also (IMO) the reason they were giving the elderly priority with the fake vaccines, and forcing the shots on people in nursing homes.

        You will own nothing, eat bugs, live in a pod, and leave this realm no later than 75 years of age.

        • elysianfield May 29, 2022 at 10:31 am #

          “u will own nothing, eat bugs, live in a pod, and leave this realm no later than 75 years of age.”

          …Und Joo Vill LIKE it!

        • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 11:28 am #

          You got it, N.O.

          Thanks for the reminder of the WEF ghoul talking about 75.

          Looks like The Atlantic takes its cues from them.

        • GreenAlba May 29, 2022 at 1:07 pm #

          “It is because 75 is considered the longest one can live and still be of any economic value to the system.”

          Kissinger’s had 24 extra years that a proper human being could have had.

          • Hereward the Woke May 29, 2022 at 1:33 pm #

            GA: Re, Kissinger. The devil looks after his own. Same goes for Soros and all the other globalist creeps who have long outlived any morals they ever had.

          • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 1:41 pm #

            Right? What a waste of space on earth that POS is.

            Also Soros is what, 90+?

          • Night Owl May 29, 2022 at 1:57 pm #

            In that context, GA, I will tell you something quite interesting that I recently discovered and confirmed for myself.

            I was watching an episode of Jason Bermas’s Mixed Martial Mindset (a weekly podcast with an MMA fighter friend of his. Bermas is one of the guys who did Fahrenheit 9/11). I have always respected Bermas as a critical thinker, and just like back then, he has been ahead of the game on the WEF/Great Reset stuff as well.

            In this particular episode, he was discussing a supplement that was was being pushed by a DARPA/NASA ghoul Dennis Bushnell in a private talk before an audience of high-level scientists, military brass, and various captains of industry.

            The supplement is known as NAD+, and is often referred to as a life extension supplement. There is a Harvard doc who started pushing it a few years ago as well. There are various ways to take it (straight, or in precursor form), but it serves to provide your cells with a means to communicate with each other and deliver needed minerals, vitamins, etc.

            As we age, our body has less of this substance and it is a key factor in the degredation of muscles, the circ. system, nervous system, etc.

            I ordered some for the heck of it, and have been taking it for about two weeks. I have never felt better. Tons of energy, aches and pains disappearing, mental clarity has gone through the roof. My wife took it and had the same reaction. Even does wonders for skin.

            I am sure this is just a drop in the bucket of what people like Kissinger have access to, and NAD still isn’t really known amongst the public. There is a reason so many of these ghouls live well into their 90s.

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2022 at 2:16 pm #

            Thanks, Night Owl – that’s really interesting. I’ll look for it. I thought I should build up stocks of the supplements I take for about 2 years (can’t imagine being around even that long!) as I think there will soon be shortages of all sorts of things, including the small number of prescription meds I have, including for cancer. Debi Evans, whom you will have seen on UKC, considers that they are going to roll down normal medicines generally in favour of all this experimental genetic stuff. Blood pressure meds were among the five she mentioned as being about to run short in the first instance.

            At this stage I’m not even concerned with prolonging my life, but I will take anything that stops them making me a 5G receptor! Chlorine dioxide was mentioned for that by Attorney (and former military man) Todd Callender, when talking to the CIC.

          • elysianfield May 29, 2022 at 4:12 pm #

            Alba,
            Remember that everyone is equal…but some are more equal than others….

          • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 9:13 pm #

            Just bought me some NAD+.

            Thanks for the head’s up, Night Owl.

            My naturopath was impressed with what I was taking, and the research I’ve done (esp. quercitine and NAC, adrenaline support).

            She doesn’t tout vit d or c as the big powerhouses, which surprised me. In fact, she said me taking 10K UI of vit. d was probably too much (do 5K).

            And of course, I have not gotten any virus since the plandemic began.

        • Q. Shtik May 29, 2022 at 1:12 pm #

          and leave this realm no later than 75 years of age. – NO

          =============

          When I was 64 I said to my wife “just 11 years to go.” The reason was that my father and both grand fathers died at 75. (It was only recently I discovered my paternal grand father actually made it to 76.) And then in 2014 my brother died suddenly (no previous major illness) at 77 years and 4 months to the day. So it seemed that 75 or so was genetically baked in the cake for me. But no, it was just 8 days ago that I passed 81.5 years so who knows?

          I now have a new goal which is to out-live my mother’s 84 years 6 months and 18 days.

          • Q. Shtik May 29, 2022 at 1:28 pm #

            it was just 8 days ago that I passed 81.5 years – Q.

            ==========

            On that day, May 21st, I drove my motorcycle home from the bike place after they installed a new battery for me. However, I DO worry about holding the bike erect at traffic lights due to my arthritic knees and hips.

          • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 1:42 pm #

            My mom thought she would die at 82 because her mom did. And she’s now turning 90 in July.

    • Blackbird May 28, 2022 at 10:12 pm #

      I don’t care about the age at which I die. Just as long as I get to be the Omega Man.

      Gotta wait ’til 120? Ok, I’ll pace myself. Check out time is tomorrow? Guess I should do my laundry.

      • MaryQueen May 28, 2022 at 10:27 pm #

        Same. I actually don’t want to be 90, sitting in a wheelchair, drooling with dementia.

        But my mom is 90 and she’s happy and still living in her house by herself, and getting along fine.

        I don’t think it’s about age it’s about quality of life.

        If I didn’t have that, then yeah, pull that plug, whatever.

        • Blackbird May 28, 2022 at 10:44 pm #

          Yeah, once I start peein’ myself – look out Ronald McDonald!

          Or maybe just help out some miners…

          Me: “So just hold the dynamite up here against the rock like this?”

          Miner: “Yeah, that’ll work. You can pick up your check next Friday.”

          Me: “Thanks”

        • Hereward the Woke May 29, 2022 at 1:35 pm #

          Mary, I wonder how unhappy people with dementia really are? My mum and dad in laws both have it and seem quite serene. It’s the rest of us who have to take care of them who seem to suffer.

          • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 1:44 pm #

            Good point. Well I do think it gets tougher for them as it worsens. When it’s not severe, it’s not too bad at all. I did manage a Memory Care facility for 1.5 years and Alzheimer’s is horrible at the end stages, both for the sufferer and the family. But there are all sorts of types of senility or cognitive dysfunction in the elderly. My grandmother who lived to be 92 was senile at the end, but it wasn’t the worst thing, either.

        • Jarek May 29, 2022 at 7:25 pm #

          When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
          With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
          And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
          And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
          I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
          And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
          And run my stick along the public railings
          And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
          I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
          And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
          And learn to spit.

          You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
          And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
          Or only bread and pickle for a week
          And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

          But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
          And pay our rent and not swear in the street
          And set a good example for the children.
          We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

          But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
          So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
          When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

          Jenny Joseph

  87. KesaAnna May 28, 2022 at 11:37 pm #

    ” The phoniest trope in American life goes like this: We must find the cause of X so that it never happens again. ”

    Case in point : Gun control.

    You just spent 20 years trying to bring gun control to Afghanistan and Iraq ,

    with helicopter gunships , heavy artillery , and Army Rangers , no less.

    Did I somehow miss the newspaper article on success in Iraq and Afghanistan ?

    I must have missed the newspaper article , too , where victory was achieved in Prohibition / The War on Crime / The War on Drugs ?

    Perhaps my perception is totally wonky ?

    Because as I understand the trajectory in those problem – solving , gun control campaigns ,

    the Mafias have gotten ever more militant , ever more ruthless , ever more heavily armed , and in sum ; ever stronger.

    To the degree that the current representatives of that species make Al Capone and Whitey Bulger look like fellows you would want to court your daughter.

    On the other hand , even the most presumably conspiracy – averse Journalists readily admit and freely concede that Whitey Bulger was practically an FBI Agent.

    Presumably if you would object to an FBI Agent courting your daughter , you would be the one with an attitude or perception problem.
    So …..

    Red Flag laws ?

    Correct me if I am wrong ;

    Several , or most , of the 911 Hijackers were already on Terrorist Watch Lists ,

    and not all of them had just gotten off the boat the day before , but had been wandering around North America for weeks , months , in one or two cases , for a year or more.

    Not to mention the legions of police officers , teachers , etc , who passed polygraphs , passed background checks , passed psyche evaluations , but who later turned out to be serial killers or child molesters , embezzlers , or entrepreneurial drug lords.

    Or the whole garden of CIA employees who passed polygraphs , passed background checks , passed psyche evaluations , but who later wound up in Moscow on a Russian government stipend.

    • BackRowHeckler May 29, 2022 at 7:37 am #

      “You just spent 20 years trying to bring gun control in Afghanistan …”-KA

      And quite ironically in our precipitous departure left behind 320,000 M-4 carbines and 100 million rounds of .223 ammunition. Tons of other ordnance and armaments of all kinds was abandoned too; I dare say, combine that with $54 billion of weaponry dumped into Ukraine in 2022 and you have enough weaponry and explosives to supply criminal gangs and terror cells worldwide for the next 25 years.

    • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 12:50 pm #

      “Several , or most , of the 911 Hijackers were already on Terrorist Watch Lists ,”

      9/11 was not done by those ‘terrorists’. It is impossible. They were a red herring.

      • Hereward the Woke May 29, 2022 at 1:36 pm #

        None of those “hijackers” were capable of flying a single engined Cessna, let alone a very sophisticated jetliner.

        • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 1:45 pm #

          THANK YOU.

          I always laugh about the found Atta passport, nice touch, CIA (or whoever).

        • elysianfield May 29, 2022 at 4:11 pm #

          HtW,
          Reall? The hard part about flying is the landing, and to lesser degree, the takeoff. I have a single engine land license, long expired, and trained in a Cessna. I could fly one of those airliners…up to a point.

        • Night Owl May 29, 2022 at 5:14 pm #

          I still remember seeing the interview with the flight school instrutor who trained two of them. He said exactly that: Neither of them could fly a Cessna, much less a jetliner.

    • SoftStarLight May 29, 2022 at 12:52 pm #

      In conclusion it would appear that virtually most corporate, government, and law enforcement organizations are in essence mafias?

      • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 1:45 pm #

        Yes, that’s how I see them, as well.

    • Anthea May 29, 2022 at 8:07 pm #

      @ KesaAnna:

      There are many occupations (police officers, teachers, etc.) where the people doing the hiring are child molesters, embezzlers, are doing or dealing drugs, or are up to some other kind of shennanigans. They do NOT want to hire a Dudley Do-Right type–someone who might blow the whistle on them. They want to hire someone with a problematic background, someone with something to hide. Such a person will look the other way if they find out that the higher-ups are doing things that are unsavory. They may even be expected to join in the criminal activity–or else. If they don’t keep their mouths shut and play along, their shady background can be exposed.

      I know there is no need to spell this out so explicityly.

      A lot of the time, the issue that’s being hidden is not that serious. One of my former collegues, a gay man, was hired as a teacher in very rural Kansas. This was partly because the gay man could be relied upon to go up to the city every weekend and buy liquor for the principal–who could not be seen purchasing booze.

  88. tom clark May 28, 2022 at 11:46 pm #

    75??? JC, just gettin’ started. Gotta a lotta livin’ to do!

    • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 11:34 am #

      Not if the WEF gets their way, tom!

    • BackRowHeckler May 29, 2022 at 12:23 pm #

      By any reckoning Klaus Schwab and Soros have aged out already, or are exceptions made? When Schwab and Gates talk up the efficacy of an all insect diet in order to stave off climate change somehow I can’t help but think they mean me and you eating roaches and scorpions but they themselves will still be dining on the best cuts of Kobe beef.

      • GreenAlba May 29, 2022 at 12:42 pm #

        Roast swan, with larks’ tongue stuffing, for Klaus.

        • BackRowHeckler May 29, 2022 at 1:40 pm #

          Last night I read an article in the Atlantic — WEF and Swamp Pit mouthpiece — by a prof from Colgate U stating why we no longer should be permitted to eat burgers — plenty of reasons but the number one reason is Climate Equity. Really? He didn’t come out and advocate insect consumption (for the Proles). So I thawed out a pound of hamburger, mixed in breadcrumbs and onions, and grilled up 3 large burgers just about an hour ago, grilled em slow on a gas grill over low heat — I particularly enjoy it when fat drips down onto the flame and the aromatic smoke wafts around the neighborhood.

          A sunny Sunday afternoon, thick burger, a six of Sam Adam’s, Mets on the radio, what more can I ask for?

          • GreenAlba May 29, 2022 at 2:03 pm #

            Yum. 🙂

            I’m ok with eating less meat, so that people who rarely get any can afford some, but not with being told by psychopathic eugenicists to do so. Just as I’m happy to do my bit for climate change, but not on the instruction of people with yachts bigger than my street.

          • BackRowHeckler May 29, 2022 at 3:33 pm #

            Yeah same here GA I do keep the red meat consumption down to a reasonable level, curb excessive driving and so on — in general try not to be wasteful.

            My neighbor told me a gallon of gas at the marina where he keeps his boat was $8.99, which will definitely put a crimp in boating this season.

  89. Gastrophanes May 29, 2022 at 2:12 am #

    Sadly, we seem as lost socially and ethically as the President is sensorially. My what a peculiar confluence…

    • SoftStarLight May 29, 2022 at 12:42 pm #

      I think it is a very difficult confluence too because I for one don’t feel lost but it does seem like a lot of dumb people (even if they are smart) are in positions of power and authority, while at the same time a lot of people are just dumb. That is why you see the persecution of genius and the degradation of excellence as major cultural initiatives of the moment.

      • malthuss May 29, 2022 at 1:43 pm #

        That is why you see the persecution of genius and the degradation of excellence as major cultural initiatives of the moment.

        That is not what I see.
        What I see is the persecution of WHITE genius and the degradation of WHITE excellence as major initiatives of the moment.

        Vastly inferior Blacks and halfricans are praised and elevated. Obama being an example of this push.

        • SoftStarLight May 29, 2022 at 7:51 pm #

          Oh, well yeah, I mean that is basically what I said. But still the system appears to be designed to bring all people down no matter who they may be. I saw a youtube video of poor, unfortunates in Korea living in essentially closet sized rooms. The man being interviewed said he had developed breathing problems after moving into his current residence. His doctor said it appeared to be due to claustrophobia. Also the lack of exposure to natural lighting caused a persistent low mood. He was studying to become a lawyer.

          • BackRowHeckler May 29, 2022 at 8:09 pm #

            What? The guy lived in a closet?

          • SoftStarLight May 29, 2022 at 8:34 pm #

            Yes. Well, it may have as well been one. I can’t remember the dimensions but it was a very very small cramped, micro place with enough room for a tiny bed, a tiny desk, a small refrigerator, and a sink and a sliver of a countertop. The bathroom was somewhere else in the building and was shared with the other tenants and people who came in from outside.

  90. malthuss May 29, 2022 at 1:46 pm #

    I considered how some formerly colonized countries in Asia had economically vaulted ahead of some White nations, [or part White].

    They yellows used White mans Juju [wiring, engines, micro processors].

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    • BackRowHeckler May 29, 2022 at 3:34 pm #

      But Chinese motorcycles and EVs are junk from what I understand.

      • MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 9:20 pm #

        Funny you should say that. I was watching “LiveLeak” on Telegram and there was a vid of two Chinese guys talking and suddenly one of their parked motor scooters just started up and made a beeline for one of them and knocked him over. LOL.

  91. PureBlood May 29, 2022 at 4:11 pm #

    ?Hospitals in USA and in first world countries are refusing life-saving Ivermectin treatment even with court orders. Big Pharma doing everything they can to jab us no matter what, while alternative COVID cures EXIST! There happens to be heavy censorship who are looking for these treatments. The Research Is Clear: Ivermectin Is a Safe, Effective Treatment for COVID.

  92. anmariwakaranai May 29, 2022 at 4:42 pm #

    On expectations & desserts, I must humbly here assert,
    That low my hopes for fame & fortune, woebegotten lame (miss)-fortune,
    Never ran the race to finish, didn’t suffer to diminish
    Pleasure & distraction all, most diverting news reel thrall,
    Never fully, never quite, never better, never bright,
    For a moment in the light, then choosing badly, then the night.

    I was a child of the times, bought fully in – the poli-lies,
    Decentralise, bastardize, walk alone, no family ties.

    It worked out badly in the end, but woke of late I must contend,
    No shooter here, but for my wad, no hero here but for my God.

    And so today I pray in thanks, for life & choice, freedoms signal,
    I chose badly but came round, now lay it here upon the (quickly losing) ground.

    So many words that I must seek, in books that I have yet to peek.
    ———

    Read a load of books lately, notably Waughs ‘Sword of Honour’, trilogy and a look at the Israeli peace process through the eyes of two non fiction activists one Palestinian, one Israeli, who both lost children in the troubles there. (2014ish)

    In those books I kept seeing our current situation writ small, the wars, walls, fascist/communist/allied craziness and its victims, from the UK to Alexandria, Greece and (J)ugoslavia. What a waste.

    But maybe our lives are not just tragedies. Maybe we are the compost of the collective soul. I don’t mean the transhuman or the transylvannian soul, I mean what will be left after our bodies are gone.

    Those who choose wittingly to conform to this thing upon us are doomed to the second death.
    For you, if you die today will know the truth and choose freely. I don’t think the willing partakers in this phantasm will have any last hope.
    ……..
    ### roundball shaman, excellent!

    • SoftStarLight May 29, 2022 at 7:58 pm #

      What is a transylvanian soul? That sounds dark and interesing lol

      • anmariwakaranai May 30, 2022 at 4:03 pm #

        Oh, you know, the crossdressers immortal soul.

  93. anmariwakaranai May 29, 2022 at 4:46 pm #

    Oh, MeWe , Stop Manditory Vax, official thread have copious good links today.

    Choose skip trial to get in quick and free.

  94. anmariwakaranai May 29, 2022 at 4:51 pm #

    Nice bjork ref j.

  95. MontanaMan May 29, 2022 at 5:15 pm #

    Jim you really really knocked it clean ?? Out of the park this time with this blog posting!!! Each one you release each Monday / Friday, is truly,
    Excellent.

    And, I nearly always put each-one on Facebook & GETTR. Sometimes, I will type out something to go with it. It just depends on how I feel. This time, I am going to be putting this one on each website with at least, a paragraph.

    A paragraph of something that will be bringing this blog-posting to folks attention in a manner that they MUST READ THIS ABSOLUTELY OUT FUCKING STANDING BLOG POSTING!!!!!!

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
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    • SoftStarLight May 29, 2022 at 8:03 pm #

      Hmmm. 2 question marks

  96. MaryQueen May 29, 2022 at 9:27 pm #

    Today, Caitlin Johnstone published this. What a keeper! You can use it for a reference whenever some nut (hello Fake Trae) tries to pretend that our leaders in the US are all nice dudes with our best interests in mind.

    https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/05/29/ten-times-empire-managers-showed-us-that-they-want-to-control-our-thoughts/

    • SoftStarLight May 29, 2022 at 9:56 pm #

      It would be amazing if only it were so. There is a war on your mind and soul and a war for your mind and soul.

  97. tom clark May 29, 2022 at 11:44 pm #

    I sense our host didn’t have a very happy childhood.

    • gustafson.robert.22 May 30, 2022 at 6:41 am #

      Third leading cause of evil in the world… happy childhoods.

  98. lloydaconway May 30, 2022 at 10:15 am #

    Thank you for a solid diagnosis of what’s happening before our electronic eyes today. Speaking as a father, veteran and teacher, I have been unable to get past this one. The inability of 14 heavily-armed men, trained and in body armor, to act to save children from a teenage killer adds horror to horror.
    We have two generations of children raised in a world increasingly bereft of anchors – family, faith, community, nation – for them to cling to. Too much stuff, too little love, drive-by daddies, disposable fathers, thanks to no-fault divorce, endless war on TV trivializing the million-plus blown away overseas since 9/11, homeless veterans on street corners, and no wonder we produce alienated children looking for their 15 minutes of fame.
    What would happen in one of them were taken alive, beaten and crippled, and made to stand trial? Would wanna-be copycats think twice about the imagined blaze of glory they see for themselves?
    Perhaps not, but returning to where I started, why would a group of cops with more firepower than the light infantry squads I used to be part of not act decisively, knowing that the risk of accidental injury to children and teachers is far less than the certainty of their deaths that their inaction virtually guarantees?

  99. MaryQueen May 30, 2022 at 11:35 am #

    Another ‘conspiracy theory’ proven to be legit. Of course, some of us have just been looking up for 20+ years…

    Chemtrails Confirmed
    by William Thomas

    “Chemtrails are reported all around the planet and this is the first research record to verify what Airline Pilots, Police Officers, U.S. Marines, Air Traffic Controllers and Tanker Crews are reporting. This book will reveal the scientist who are working n the project, Congressman who oversaw “America’s exotic weapons” project and the details so you can understand the Chemtrail project.

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2320600.Chemtrails_Confirmed#

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