Clusterfuck Nation
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And so the Democratic Party has gone and hoisted the flag of “socialism” on the mizzenmast of its foundering hulk as it sets sail for the edge of the world. Bad call by a ship without a captain, and I’ll tell you why. Socialism was the response to a particular set of circumstances in time that drove the rise of industrial societies. Those circumstances are going, going, gone.
The suspicion of industry’s dreadful effects on the human condition first sparked in the public imagination with William Blake’s poem “Jerusalem” in 1804 and its reference to England’s newly-built “dark satanic mills.” Industry at the grand scale overturned everyday life in the Euro-American “West” by the mid-19th century, and introduced a new kind of squalor for the masses, arguably worse than their former status as peasants.
And thus it was to be, through Karl Marx, Vlad Lenin, and the rest of the gang, ever-strategizing to somehow mitigate all that suffering. Their Big Idea was that if government owned the industry (the means of production), then the riches would be distributed equally among the laboring masses and the squalor eliminated. You can’t blame them for trying, though you can blame them for killing scores of millions of people who somehow got in the way of their plans.
Nobody had ever seen anything like this industry before, or had to figure out some way to deal with it, and it was such an enormous force in everyday life thereafter that it shattered human relationships with nature and the planet nature rode in on. Of course, the history of everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and we’re closer to the end of the industrial story than we are to the middle.
Which opens the door to a great quandary. If industrial society is disintegrating (literally), then what takes its place? Many suppose that it is a robotic utopia powered by some as-yet-unharnessed cosmic juice, a nirvana of algorithms, culminating in orgasm-without-end (Ray Kurzweil’s transhumanism). Personally, I would check the “no” box on that outcome as a likely scenario.
The self-proclaimed socialists are actually seeing the world through a rear-view mirror. What they are really talking about is divvying up the previously-accumulated wealth, soon to be bygone. Entropy is having its wicked way with that wealth, first by transmogrifying it into ever more abstract forms, and then by dissipating it as waste all over the planet. In short, the next time socialism is enlisted as a tool for redistributing wealth, we will make the unhappy discovery that most of that wealth is gone.
The process will be uncomfortably sharp and disorientating. The West especially will not know what hit it as it emergently self-reorganizes back into something that resembles the old-time feudalism. We have a new kind of mass squalor in America: a great many people who have nothing to do, no means of support, and the flimsiest notions of purpose in life. The socialists have no answers for them. They will not be “retrained” in some imagined federal crusade to turn meth freaks into code-writers for Google.
Something the analysts are calling “recession” is ploughing across the landscape like one of those darkly majestic dust-storms of the 1930s, only this time we won’t be able to re-fight anything like World War Two to get all the machines running again in the aftermath. Nor, of course, will the Make America Great Again fantasy work out for those waiting in the squalid ruins of the post-industrial rust-belt or the strip-mall wastelands of the Sunbelt.
Most of the beliefs and attitudes of the present day will be overturned with the demise of the industrial orgy, like the idea that humanity follows an unerring arc of progress, that men and women are interchangeable and can do exactly the same work, that society should not be hierarchical, that technology will rescue us, and that we can organize some political work-arounds to avoid the pain of universal contraction.
There are no coherent ideas in the political arena just now. Our prospects are really too alarming. So, jump on-board the socialism ship and see if it makes you feel better to sail to the end of the earth. But mind the gap at the very edge. It’s a doozie.
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Just wondering…
Is Social Security socialism?
Is Medicare?
What are all the social agencies of Gov’t that provide for and protect the welfare of society?
Is corporate socialism different in some way such that it sidesteps all the alleged evils of whatever “socialism” is?
Social Security is taking the money that I earned and promising to give it back once I am too old and worn out to earn any more, or at least as much. It is not taking everybody’s money and divvying it up equally around the population. THAT would be socialism. Social security is an insurance policy that we buy and damned well better be able to collect on once the terms are met. Period!
Walter you better f’n believe that and they collected our Earned Income Retirement Insurance we paid for in each and every paycheck and/or 1099 we ever paid for +40 yrs of our lives.
The Kochs and Lloyd Blankfein want to lie about that and call it “entitlement” to fool people.
They say it’s “popular” but no…..its survival life and death for millions.
One day a few years ago I saw a newsclip that ran by mistake and saw Blanfein of Goldman Sachs leave his office building downtown NYC. A gaggle of reporters and cameramen followed him.
He turned around and said
“The American people are going to have to learn to live without their “Entitlements”.
He then turned on his heel and kept working while the press called out questions he refused to answer.
That’s what the billionaire class wants….unlimited money and a looting operation on every Public Sector in the world in every country.
Tax collection is the new resource.
Many of us will be depending on “entitlements” such as Social Security for the lions share of our income. For many it will be their entire income. By definition this benefit goes to those who have worked for many years and paid into the system. As someone who was self-employed for many years when I was farming, I had to pay 15.3%; the employer and the employee share. You better believe I plan on collecting to support myself in my old age.
But what happens if the government is no longer able to pay those benefits because it is bankrupt; which by the way I believe a point that we have already reached, but don’t realize it yet because of the machinations of the Federal Reserve? There will be a point in the near future when that unpleasant reality will have to be faced. At that point, the essay today is on point. The devastation we have wrought on nature and human character will come into contact with reality. History won’t stop, but only the strong, clever and wise will thrive.
Mountain gal, my kindred spirit! I too paid a lion’s share and both sides of my SS deposits when I ran my own engineering firm for 15 years. Those years were my prime earning years, and just like you, had to pay both sides of the bill. Of course, even if an employer has to pay the other share, it is NOT government money, it is money that they could have paid US instead.
And shotho, what should we do if and when the government can no longer make it’s payments on their end of the deal? What do they do when we cannot make payment? Take our homes, incarcerate us? THAT is what we need to do when they default on us, take their shit, lock THEM up.
“History won’t stop, but only the strong, clever and wise will thrive.”
Shotho,
Then you, by extension, assume that the strong clever and wise got rich through their abilities?
Do not discount luck for wealth or survival.
“I owe my success to a few words my father whispered to me upon my graduation from Harvard…take this million and don’t lose it….”
Mountain gal, here’s something to reflect upon. Imagine being one of those poor souls in the USSR on Christmas Day 1991. You wake up, only to find that the past 70+ years of Communism was a kind of fraud. Millions had their lives cut short, millions worked themselves into the grave, all for the greatness of Communism. So you wake up and ask, what happened? The response – oh, just forget about that – we have a new scheme now. All those promises made, well, they’re just in the past.
Over time, I expect Social Security to evolve into a program that mainly benefits the poor. More affluent retirees will see much of their benefits taxed away and then further reduced by Medicare premium surcharges. The income levels at which benefits become taxable has not been adjusted since such benefits first became taxable in 1984. But the percentage of the benefit subject to income tax did increase from 50% to as much as 85% almost a decade later.
The income levels at which Medicare premium surcharges kick in have not been increased since they were first introduced in 2007, while the surcharge schedule has become more onerous for more seniors. A few more bursts of inflation will make a lot more seniors subject to the premium surcharges.
If the country’s financial picture really turns ugly, don’t be surprised if the US constitution is tossed onto the scrap heap of history. That’s what happened in 1933 in Germany. But the promoters of Holocaust remembrance never seem to make the connection between the collapse of the German mark (and the value of Germans’ savings) in 1923, the spike in German unemployment in 1931 and 1932 and the opening of the country’s first concentration camp in 1933. Perhaps they ought to read or re-read the first few chapters of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”, which William Shirer wrote when the US was at the peak of its power and influence in the world and deficits did matter, at least to President Eisenhower.
AKlein, you bring to mind an ancient (pre-paywall) Dmitry Orlov commentary, comparing (as usual) the collapse of the USSR with our own coming spectacle.
As I recall the thrust of his exposition was that the average Russian family unit, with its modest victory garden, animals living in the back of the house, hand-cranked water pump and other basic amenities, was better prepared for the upheaval than what our esteemed host terms this contemporary ‘happy-motoring’ society, wherever practically no one under 85 has any practical day-to-day survival skills.
There just aren’t that many people in the ‘Billionaire Class’, BT. ‘What they want’ is really inconsequential. I dare say you could confiscate every single dollar from every billionaire and it wouldn’t make much of a difference in anything.
Incidentally, nice to hear from you.
Brh
You aren’t understanding my point. I care about the idea that they are using the public sector to wet their beaks cninually in this system of reverse engineered socialism for their own pockets. Everything Public is going to privateers.
It isn’t just about taxing the rich to where they were in the ’60s, but its about not allowing them to take from the tax-payers.
Again. Globalism isn’t just about free trade, its a mechanism for looting the public sectors of all countries for the few.
That’s what you need to understand.
In 2011 Mueller gave a speech. In it he described the new challenges of fighting crime and said that Globalism allowed for what he described as the Iron Triangle. He said it involves entities from organized crime, CEOs and Govt.
To that effect I found 3 articles describing the corrupt leadership of Malaysia who allowed Goldman Sachs, and then in another article described a different leader in Malaysia paying Chris Christie and Trump lawyers with tax-payer money set aside for infrastructure……
GET IT?
oh PS….thanks…I do check this blog out every so often.
$5000 a year for 40 years. That’s $200 K. You could collect a million $ if you live to be a 100 years old. Or you could leave all that on the table if you are dead before you’re 60 years old. But, and this is the big hairy butt, if you pay in you will not as an elderly person be on the street and homeless. That is what makes America great. In the past your family made sure you didn’t wind up on an ice float. In many cases that is not true anymore. Not in all, but in many.
that would be an “ice floe”
In some parts of the US, average monthly Social Security benefits would not even be enough to pay the rent for a market rate apartment.
Walter, you better get your mind wrapped around the concept that the fund has been robbed, and the money spent.
Who do you expect to collect from?
If there is no cash, we can always take it out of their hides!
They always have money for war and the private contractors who profit from it…..so saying there’s no money…..get printing Rumpelstiltskin.
You let the looters in, replace what you stole. We are constantly paying into and it better be there as long as the country still exists in whatever form.
Hello, Walter.
In the context of the Long Emergency, I suspect any “taking it out of their hides” will only occur with a few of the local yokel bigshots who didn’t get out of Dodge quickly enough. And once that fleeting phase has passed, I suspect that Jim’s vision of a reborn, brutal feudalism will emerge. At that point, the bosses might be new, but they certainly won’t be more enlightened in their outlook than those who beat feet or ended up swinging on a rope. My two cents in any case.
Cheers
That’s a good point monte, they are well insulated and very protected. Another thought that I had after posting that was that there is no reason that they every have for not paying, since they can always print up cash out of thin air. So if they do refuse to pay one day it will be to precipitate a big die off among the old folk. THAT may be a real possibility because it is something I know they have always wanted.
Don’t you think that the system is flawed, and therefore the problem, rather than the current DC crop that is just gaming the system?
They really can’t be that smart, otherwise they would recognize what they are in for.
Absolutely TB TB, the system is completely and totally corrupt and those that run it know this and have chosen to take care of number one and say the hell with the rest of us. After all, what can we do even if we did realize it and get super pissed? Nothing and they know it so they might as well cash in because with enough wealth they can always protect themselves from the angry crowd, even if that means heading underground with the other snakes.
I guess my point is that if it is all just a game, and if there is not much we can do about it, then for our own individual health and piece of mind, we shouldn’t take it too seriously.
And, in that regard, we need to be open to realistic radical ideas that amount to a game reset (and not get married to ideas like social security being a birth-right).
If it’s a game TPTB then it’s the game of Life and only the mindless will ever have peace of mind. Sometimes in life a person has to stand up and fight for what is right, that’s part of the game. Those who refuse to do this under any and every circumstance become chronic victims, but that is not my style. I would rather fight, but that’s just me.
I commend you Walter. Your journey on earth will not likely bring you peace along the way, but you know that it will be there waiting for you.
… and assuming it is not improper, I’d like to add another perspective:
Plato’s account of the trial of Socrates
“We shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good, for one of two things: either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and a migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by the site of dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king, will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now, if death is like this, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead are, what good, O friends and judges, can be greater than this? …Above all, I shall be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in that; I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. …What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! For in that world they would not put a man to death for this; certainly not. For besides being happier in that world than in this, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.”
Whats funnier than the story is the photo that illustrates it,
https://news.gallup.com/poll/246602/americans-confidence-finances-keeps-growing.aspx
Hi Walter, FINALLY, someone who understands that SS is an insurance policy, a “fail-safe” system that ensures that those who have worked (and contributed) during their working lives, will not fall into abject poverty. Most Americans today don’t understand that it’s not an “investment product.” Nor is it an “entitlement.” We pay into it and we have every right to collect it. It is not socialism.
Walter, the Social Security Tax scheme is a very real Ponzi scheme whereby the government takes taxes from your working input and then they give you a worthless IOU in exchange to reimburse the contributions you made by giving some of that promissory note back to you with core inflation stripped out of it so that people on Social Security get less instead of more of what they thought was promised.
Currently, the US Government is woefully underfunded in terms of liability but it is actually the unfunded liability that will ensure that you a pretty well guaranteed a couple of cups of coffee and a few groceries to keep you from starvation.
Never forget Burgess Meridith in the movie State of Grace where he plays the part of the old man on Social Security eating stewed tomatoes out of a tin.
All people in the US on Social Security will soon be eating stewed tomatoes out of a tin when the unfunded liabilities topple government expenditures due to no more money in the coffers on a state-by-state basis, eh. Illinois is a case in point and so is Jersey. NYC is in dire straights too as RE implodes coffers via lost taxation on rents.
RW
What we have right now thanks to the Chicago Sch. of Business, Milton Friedman’s model of Neoliberalism is socialism turned on its head…..sometimes you go so far from Govt services you get socialized benefits for the rich and well-connected CEO/Banker and privatized war profiteers and extreme capitalism for the people……
YUP that’s what the Republicans are trying for in every action and law they create.
So you’re in favor of the Wall, right? And ending all immigration? As you know (bet you don’t though), the more people, the smaller the pieces of pie. They want us at 400 million by 2050. Thus the pieces of pie will be half as big as they were when we were 200 million or so, back when these programs started.
You’re right that what we have isn’t Socialism, but rather Oligarchical Plutocracy. But Marxist Socialism already failed – and it is just Globalism; what we already have under a disguised form. And this is what the Corporations want for us, the masses.
For a glimpse of what we can expect from “The Corporations” all we need to do is gaze upon the “greatness” of those who are their figureheads. I say figureheads because it’s quite likely that’s just what they are. Take Bezos, for example. A brilliant genius, or just a clever front-man? Personally, I suspect the latter. Same for all the other “greats”, such as those at Google, Starbucks, etc.
Another piece of evidence that I would point out Evelyn that would indicate that Social Security is not socialism is the fact that mega-wealthy capitalist billionaires even collect it:
https://www.fool.com/retirement/2017/05/27/how-much-do-billionaires-get-in-social-security.aspx
I’d call the countrys’ current tax and monetary policy Socialism for wealthy people and stock holders. But then, socialism for the wealthy and powerful, and dog-eat-dog capitalism for everyone else has been the American way for decades.
The people in this country have been brainwashed into believing that giving money to poor people makes them lazy. ALL of them. Every single one. But, giving money to rich people makes them “job creators”. Every single one. Apparently, the American people have an affinity for the flavor of bullshit.
Although, I do agree with Jim’s point that all of the political-economic ideologies that everyone argues over so emotionally need to be rethought. The conditions in which those stories and ideals arose is now different with 7.7 billion people, shaky ecosystems, invasive and harmful technology, etc… It’s time to come up with new ideals and stories.
Socialism for the wealthy and corporate jerks, eh? I like that. You should put in for a copyright on that one.
The real bad guy in the room is Communism, one form of socialism.
Communism is the government ownership of the means of production. Making all the decisions by a very small group for the productive forces of a country. No market forces allowed.
That is why it inevitably fails.
Socialism in Europe is based on political expediency, where the government is deemed the best way to conduct business. Healthcare comes to mind. Social Security was started to move older people in jobs out so younger people could go to work. Medicare to address the problem that the biggest users of healthcare could not afford to use it.
Government steps in to fill the gaps, so to speak.
The core of western governments are still capitalistic and competitive, it the New World Order is trying their best to change that.
The Corporations and Banks you worship are completely on board for Socialism. You simply don’t get it. If they are forced to shift direction, they will simply smirk and rule us directly from the board rooms rather than the political puppets they fund. And many of them would probably prefer it, completely comfortable with letting billions die rather than slowly bringing down the World’s population a la the Georgia Guidestones.
The idea that everyone has health care is very new. The idea of countless people dying on the roads is the norm. You want to go back to the norm because the current system isn’t perfect. Your ideological blinders are every bit as opaque as those of the Communists who ruined the 20th Century.
The ‘bad guy’ in the room is ‘capitalism’?
“We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN “
Y’all could have done it the republican way and put your money into Enron instead.
It is a fine conceit to think that for all those years you were investing in yourselves with SS but the reality is that it was just you doing your share to provide relief for the millions who had no other form of income at the time.
Having lived during the golden age of being an American citizen the money you paid into SS was skimming some cream off the top for use to enable a seriously needful demographic survive.
Most refuse to see it this way but when the entire shindig breaks down blame it on those who robbed the SS piggybank to finance “spreading democracy” and …er…looking after corporate interests.
If you boomers think you had it bad paying what in a rear view mirror was a paltry tax to help the otherwise hopelessly screwed “greatest generation” put yourself in the shoes of a worker today who pours his money into the same rat hole to support the schmucks who allowed their choices for leadership to get us into the mess we are now in.
I like this framing. I just collected my 2nd SS check while I’m still working. It’ll all be taxed away but I just wanted them to have to send it to me… I am not expecting to be able to have a knee replacement in 10 years or a Grand Circle tour of Spain. If the Ponzi scheme makes it until I’m 78, then it’ll just be my kids taking it on the chin…
Yes, FICA is meant to be an insurance program that is self sufficient through contributions funding benefits. Since the benefits are capped, the amount of income subject to the FICA tax is also capped (currently at $132,900 at 12.4%).
Since the Reagan administration, however, the Government has been raiding the Social Security ‘Trust Fund,’ which was meant to meant to fund the benefits, for general treasury operating expenses. That’s why our National Debt, currently over $20,000,000,000,000.00 (pretty scary to see it in numerical form, huh?), is owed primarily to ourselves. About half the National Debt, more than is owed to China, Japan, Britain, and the Netherlands combined, is owed to the good old USA.
Aside from the obvious bad faith of basically everyone responsible for this travesty (and there’s plenty of blame to go around), there is another overlooked implication. If the FICA ‘Trust Fund’ is actually simply a tax being used for general treasury operating expenses, why is the income subject to the tax capped?
This makes for a massively regressive tax system. People making less money are taxed at a higher rate than people making more money. OK if it’s an insurance program, not OK if it’s actually a tax.
Your dentist is paying the same amount of FICA as Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates He’s probably paying more that the GGG, the dark secret of whose tax returns is likely that they show no income at all due to completely legal real estate pass through rules and carry back losses. ‘Completely Legal’ doesn’t mean that the laws aren’t deliberately arcane and fixed, but that’s a discussion for another day. Today’s topic is FICA.
BTW, of course it is absurd for the Cato Institute to consider Social Security to be an entitlement program, clearly done in bad faith to deliberately mislead.
As a dentist, I resemble that remark….I recall 1991 when George HW Bush published his tax return and made 4x my income and paid somewhat less in tax. I took the story to my accountant. I saw where his dog wrote a book and made $400,000….
Socialism is being used by people like Trump as a trigger word to make people think of Communist China and the Communist USSR. In actuality, there are many democratic countries that have aspects of socialism, such as Canada where we have universal health care and other programs that Americans would probably call socialist. The attacks on “socialism” are similar to the McCarthy era where anybody who advocated something that might help ordinary people was immediately branded a “communist” to shut them up. People like Woodie Guthrie were branded “communists” and blacklisted just for singing songs about better conditions for working people. Yet he never advocated state ownership of the means of production.
Woody Guthrie was also a dead-beat father who effectively abandoned his wife and children to scratch it out as a pre-beatnik.
There are a lot of dead-beat fathers, but they don’t all get branded as “communists” because they advocate for more equality.
There is truth to that. I only bring it up because I thought it the evil to his good, and no one whom has ever mentioned him to me seems to be aware of his darker side.
Socialism means the state owns and operates the means of production. A social democracy like Sweden is very much capitalistic with very successful companies . Taxing corporations and individuals to fund certain social programs is not socialism.
Thank you.
That’s big-S Socialism. There are many other forms. What they all have in common is an emphasis on the collective over the individual. The greater the emphasis, the greater the degree of socialism. Until we reach a point where individuality doesn’t matter or count for anything. The Founding Fathers would have called this a “tyranny of the majority”. This is why we have a Bill of Rights and INDIVIDUAL liberties. Anyway, the point is that socialism is a gradient. The USA has socialist elements, but less so than, say, France.
Yes, that’s right and another word for it is ‘statism’. We already have it in two forms, welfare statism and warfare statism which might actually be worse than socialism. In socialism, the individual is supposed to be supreme, as in the People’s Republic. Of course, it never works out like that and has to be enforced by a police state. Here, power is concentrated in a few hands as in ‘socialist’ countries but we continue to believe that every vote counts..
A good article in today’s Guardian by Robert Reich: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/11/trump-offers-socialism-for-the-rich-capitalism-for-everyone-else
A quote from the article: Trump is promoting socialism for the rich and harsh capitalism for everyone else in other ways. GM has got more than $600m in federal contracts, plus $500m in tax breaks. Some of this has gone into the pockets of GM executives. Chairman and CEO Mary Barra raked in almost $22m in total compensation in 2017 alone.
But GM employees are subject to harsh capitalism. GM is planning to lay off more than 14,000 workers and close three assembly plants and two component factories in North America by the end of 2019.
When he was in business, Trump perfected the art of using bankruptcy to shield himself from the consequences of bad decisions – socialism for the rich at its worst – while leaving employees twisting in the wind.
Now, all over America, executives who run their companies into the ground are getting gold-plated exit packages while their workers get pink slips.
GM cars aren’t selling too good. I bought a new Malibu last year and it seems ok so far.
brh
GM cars aren’t selling too good. – BRH
===============
On the rare occasion I word a sentence that way my kid Thom, a chip off the ol’ block, will say to me: “no dad, it’s too well.”
Bought my wife a Chevy Malibu with all the bells and whistles car looked like a spaceship inside.
Drove well and ran well for about two years then it started having some quirks. Right about the time we started taking it to the dealership to attempt getting the quirks fixed someone rear ended my wife with an end over end roll over accident that nearly ran her head on into a Semi-truck and a ditch totaled the car. Had she been in many of the other cars today I suspect she would be dead.
Flash forward three years progressive finally paid her five grand for the chiropractor and 3500 for the car mind you she never had a day of back pain and now she lives with it just like I do. We had to sue progressive to take responsibility for their insured running a red light at 70 miles and hour and taking out three cars. We now have a hyndai which also seems to have some quirks. CARS TODAY GO FIGURE.
The executives are professionally bound to make profit for the shareholders and in doing so they get executive compensation for keeping the share price as high as they can get it. Executive compensation is based upon a percentage of the profits. Shareholders are incentivized to boost executive pay as long as they are making profits themselves. GM owes no allegiance to their customer if they provide a marketable product that the public will buy. GM is consolidating their position within all market activity and they are taking advantage of the end of bull markets by investing heavily in the future manufacturing sector of electric cars so that they can compete with the other manufacturers that will eat their lunch if they don’t make the industry move towards renewable resource utilization for the transportation sector.
In ten years the electric car will be the average car on city streets in North America. They will have to iron the bugs out of it in CANADA though. Our temperatures would freeze most electric car batteries.
RW
Kunstler is clueless to the questions you pose. He seems to believe that the continuing and unrelenting concentration of wealth and power should be left alone. Trying to spread the wealth would somehow, in Kunstler’s mind, be worse then the horrid end he paints for us currently. I don’t know what brand of kool-aid kunstler’s been chugging lately, but he really needs to back off a bit.
Kunstler begins his pontification with a statement suggesting that democratic socialist want all businesses turned over to government control. I haven’t seen that proposal from anyone on the left. Not even from the evil Bernie Sanders or AOC.
Kunstler states America no longer has any real wealth, so there’s nothing to divvy up for fairness sake. If you buy that argument he has a bunch of books he’s written which you might like to purchase. The sale of which I presume will garner him some of that fake wealth.
Kunstler is only doing as everyone else, presumably you as well. Grad all you can while you can. I see America as a great big beached whale, being carved alive by the bystanders. At some point, there’s nothing left.
Jim isn’t making a lot from his books.
I’m surprised one of the movie studios haven’t picked up a World Made by Hand novel.
brh
Not really surprising. Jim’s vision implies the ultimate failure of the progressive outlook, and Hollywood is too invested in that outlook to depict it as having not succeeded.
Cheers
Question to you why do rich people need to pay more than anyone else?
What do you consider rich?
You do realize that compared to half the rest of the world everyone in America is rich!
If you have a toilet and indoor plumbing your doing pretty well.
Consider that in the world of Globalism what you have someone else wants to take from you.
Now what do you consider being rich?
Should you be taxed at 30%, 50%, 90%?
I ask because I have seen what truly poor people look like and how they live and even our homeless people live better than many people in Africa parts of Asia and India.
test
Yes Jim, the real scary part is that there is not only nothing that can be done to correct our course, but that there are too many powers to be that can stand in the way and block any progress from being made towards any solutions. If they even had any solutions, that is, but they don’t.
The navigator has gone AWOL, and the sky is darkening.
Cheers
Socialism is a cure that will solve nothing and make things worst. The Socialism cure is like a headshoot being a great cure for a headache.
Socialism works, but only for those doing the collecting and the re-distribution, and it only works as long as there are enough patsies to rob that have enough stuff to rob in the first place. Once the serfs are left with not enough to take any more, another revolution will follow, unless you do what the Soviet Union did and break up the scam on your own.
“Hup hup hup, me Tarzan, made it all by myself, fuck you very much. You snowflake Jane, pinko Socialist, keep your hands off my stuff. We own this Country to make money for us….Tarzan’s family, not Jane’s”.So says the Erik Princes of the World, Mnuchins, Trumpers, Devos….. fixing education problems, Bushes, Clintons, etc.
Yep, things are winding down, maybe. We’ll just smugly call it entropy, which is just another cop-out chickenshit way of whining, “There’s no use, no use, nothing will change”. and “There’s just no money”
Folks, “There’s always money when ‘they’ want some, so said my 98 year old mom (WW2 vet) who just died. “There’s always money”.
I remember hearing this same shit when I signed up the airline I worked for 40 years ago. We unionized, and the owners said outright, “I think you forget we own the airline for us, not the employees”. I remember replying, “I think you forget we do all the work and take all the risks flying your junk around so you can go for lunch everyday at Arnold’s hotel”.
Spread it around, already. Give a token raise to at least make it look fair and not rigged. Otherwise, to quote Bob Lee Swagger in the movie ‘Shooter’, “I’m going to burn their playhouse down”. If these idiots want to continue having their host citizens around paying their payday loans, student loans, credit cards, 7 year car payments, they’re going to have to spread a little more cash on the masses, and not just more fertilizer while they suck blood all the way to Davos.
Is it too much to ask just to be able to go to the fucking doctor without being afraid or angry.
Get the matches out, already. What are people waiting for, potato famine Ireland? There’s no place left to run for a better life. Time to stand up and quit bending over for the oligarchs.
The purest form of Socialism, Native American Culture, was doing just fine until it encountered the greediest form of culture.
The wealthy tribes of the Northwest Coast would destroy their goods to show who had the most and was the least attached to it. And they would kill their slaves since they were just “goods”.
Don’t forget the widespread cannibalism, cult of torture, and general warlike nature of many of the tribes. If you were doing so good, how could we have taken this continent from you so easily?
It was easy to take the continent! Just be generous to the native savages by giving them stuff contaminated with variola and get them hooked on firewater!
We thought America was a damn good place
Too damn good for Red Man Race.
So we took it by fire and storm, strong arms and strong drink. You no like? So why are you still here? Run back to Europe and become a dhimmi. The Mexican Indians have told you to get out and many of their North American cousins have said the same. Yet you remain. Why? As Thoreau said, there are 999 patrons of virtue for every virtuous man.
As someone who really has Cherokee ancestry I demand you leave me the keys to your house and cars as well as your bank account and go back to Europe!
I find it amusing that people from Mexico think they have any more right to anything than anyone else simply because they have some splash of Native American blood mixed in.
The Native Americans were eliminated utilizing superior technology, which will be how we are eliminated as well.
The Springfield rifle and Colt revolver?
The Henry repeater, Gatling gun and 12 pound artillery pieces as well. Sticks and stones may break your bones, but serious firepower will blow your ass to hell!
Walter,
You would enjoy this title if you haven’t read it already.
The Social History of the Machine Gun, by John Ellis.
Some interesting insight to be had in that one. A quote by a reader:
“it’s a fascinating overview of the machine gun’s integration into warfare from the Maxim gun in the late 19th century to the brutally asymmetrical colonial wars in Africa”
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98294.The_Social_History_of_the_Machine_Gun
Cheers
Thanks for the suggestion, I have bookmarked it for checking out later.
… You just can’t consolidate 15,000 years and thousands if not tens of thousands of cultures under one rubric.
But- I think everyone knows what you mean. The most noble conceptualization based on elements of a historical understanding. There were enough of those elements encountered first hand by immigrants in the early centuries to prove they existed. And of course elements confirming the worst stereotypes.
Native America lives on within the DNA of many of us. When Liz Warren clambakes a media potlach with anscestral or cultural affiliation, it is in good faith, with honorable principles and intention, and those principles should not be discarded out of hand as anachronistic. Instead they should be closely appraised on their own merits on the context it is applied. After all there is no consideration of “the native American vote”, it’s numerically irrelevant.
If nothing is culturally appropriated, that culture is destroyed. So as long as Warren is promoting the principles in a contietious way, I have no problem with it.
“Good faith”
Yes, faith that her entrance to elite universities will be that much more likely.
A typical American hustler.
BTW, my favorite part of that video you linked is the figurine caricature of a black man eating watermelon up on the shelf. There is a close up of it available on the Net.
Just imagine the press and McResist reaction if Trumpi had that on his desk.
Elizabeth Warren lied about how much Native American DNA she actually had she actually has far less then most people who don’t claim any Native America heritage but who’s family has been here for several hundred years.
She used it to further her agenda!
It is now back firing on her bigly.
This woman is phony and it comes out in every ridiculous stunt she pulls to include her failed video of her husband and her owe I want a beer.
Such a wooden fake person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWehvtOL_VI
It is a window to her pathetic soul.
>>> The purest form of Socialism, Native American Culture, was doing just fine until it encountered the greediest form of culture.
LOL. If by “doing just fine” you mean living at the very edge of existence, with stone age technology, ceaselessly attacking each other, then yes I agree. FYI, there wasn’t one culture. The Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs, for example, all had distinct cultures. That being said, they all practiced cannibalism and human sacrifice, so they had that in common, I guess. Yes it was quite the socialist utopia!—except for the ones being sacrificed or eaten.
All of them, huh?
U R so stoopid.
Nice and yet you can’t prove him wrong….Nor can you spell stupid.
http://www.native-languages.org/iaq13.htm
Q: Were Native Americans cannibals?
A: Not for the most part, no, but there were some groups who were. The Aztecs were notorious for ritual cannibalism (warriors would eat a strip of flesh from enemies they had slain in combat). Some people dispute this, but the Aztecs’ own written and oral histories seem to support it as the truth. The Karankawa tribe of southeast Texas was also said to practice ritual cannibalism on defeated enemies. There were a few Amazonian tribes who practiced funerary cannibalism (family and friends would eat part of a dead tribal member’s body as a religious ceremony at the funeral). Finally, the Carib people of South America were said to kill and eat prisoners of war, though it’s been pointed out that the Spaniards who made this claim were lining their own pockets by doing so (Queen Isabella had forbidden her subjects from selling Africans, or Indians, as slaves unless they were cannibals).
None of the other 1200 Native American cultures engaged in culturally sanctioned cannibalism at the time of European contact. That doesn’t mean cannibalism never happened–there were certainly stories in the American Indian oral history about cannibalistic incidents (a hunting party trapped in a snowstorm who fell to eating each other, a war chief who taunted captives by striking them in the face with their leader’s heart and then taking a bite out of it.) Such incidents also occurred in American and European history under similar starving-in-the-wilderness and war-atrocity circumstances (a company of Crusaders, for example, bragged of having grilled and eaten a Saracen; a Jamestown settler was executed for cannibalizing his wife during a famine). Cannibalism should not be considered part of American Indian culture on this account any more than it would be considered part of European or American culture–it was culturally unacceptable behavior. The Sioux considered cannibalism a sin, the Cree considered it a mental illness, the Algonquin and Ojibwe considered it a sign of possession by an evil spirit. In almost all cases, American Indian cannibals–just like European or American cannibals–were put to death as soon as they were discovered.
Q: But weren’t they cannibals before that–in ancient times, before European contact?
A: Most of them definitely were not. It’s been suggested that the pre-Iroquois Mohawk and the ancient Anasazi may have practiced group cannibalism. This is possible, though it has not been proven. The Mohawk were called “man-eaters” by their Algonquian enemies on account of this belief about their lurid past. Some Mohawks think it was probably true, others that you shouldn’t give too much credence to slurs people’s enemies cast at their ancestors. The claim about the ancient Anasazi came more recently, when anthropologists found a burial site with skeletons whose flesh had apparently been hacked off the bones after their death. Personally, I’m not too impressed by that evidence. Even if those bodies were cut up for cannibalistic purposes, we’re talking about one anomalous site with only seven bodies in it. Of the hundreds of ancient Indian burial sites exhumed by archaeologists–including dozens of Anasazi ones–this was the only one with this strange appearance. For all we know it was the work of some Anasazi psychopath. We can’t assume ancient Anasazi culture included cannibalism from this one unusual case any more than we could say American culture includes cannibalism because of Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer.
This isn’t the first time you’ve forecast that The Singularity will not be the problem more technologically optimistic futurists expect it will be. I recall watching you in “Prophets of Doom” telling Hugo De Garis that and getting him to consider other issues as more pressing. One of those is climate change, which got into the news last week when 2018 officially became the fourth warmest year on record. I fully expect this year to be even warmer. El Nino in action!
What the left of the Dem party really want is a return to the mixed economy of FDR with Medicare for all.
Say what you want about affordability in the face of spending more on the Pentagon and a new class of nuclear weapons…close to 1,000 bases around the world. Talk of a new branch of the Military to be funded for weaponizing Space and then of course the money laundering kick-back “Wall” using the l’il people’s money since the rich only want to pay 0 for all their advantages…..
I don’t think the Dems have done themselves a favor since most of Trumpy’s voters who aren’t hard core White Nationalists and Eurocentric might actually like to go back to the economic model before Nixon let Milton Friedman in and went off the gold standard and instituted the profit center in all things from news to medicine to real estate…..
Yup I think that perhaps defining the real demands might be better than to think these people are gunning for Lenin.
Maybe the Green Party wants real Socialism, but anyone running in the Dem party wants the mixed economy model which we had from the 40’s through into the 70’s….
We have over 40 years of Neoliberalism to know the money isn’t moving down to the people.
AOC said in an interview last week that there’s room for Capitalism in her thinking as well and mentioned FDR.
Of course there is the issue of not being able to get the velocity of growth needed to really make it work, so we need to think about what takes the place of manufacturing.
“… so we need to think about what takes the place of manufacturing”.
WAR!
Like 1941
War=manufacturing =jobs
War = death, debt and disinformation.
Why the f— did USA fight in WW1 and 2?
Well WWI we entered kicking and screaming oh wait WWII as well.
You’re forgetting her ethnic supremacism. She says Mexicans and Central Americans are Native Americans and have every right to be here – as opposed to you, paleface. Those White Women who work for her are ethnomasochistic fools. The whole plan is simply a way to rob Whites.
Guess what anyone born here is NATIVE American!
For a frame of reference I would suggest people open their eyes to what is happening in South Africa to the Boers a people who found land with no native people, tamed it, farmed it, made it valuable and then got kicked off by people who came hundreds of years later to suck off the land of milk and honey.
Now those same people who came from the continent but have no more or less right to the land have now made it legal codified into law the right to demand farms from a people who have had the farms in their family for hundreds of years and better yet murder them if they refuse to leave them. This of course only applies to the melatonin challenged people of Dutch/English ancestry.
SA going the way of Zimbabwe!
>>> What the left of the Dem party really want is a return to the mixed economy of FDR with Medicare for all.
Unfortunately, the “Medicare for all” part includes everyone who manages to cross our borders…
New York City will cover illegal immigrants as part of $100 million-a-year health-care expansion
Do the math, and you will find that degrading our military capabilities will not pay for it all. Even liberal-leaning “fact checkers” can’t bring themselves to agree with AOC’s claims.
Dems don’t want a “return to the mixed economy of FDR”. How can we return to something we’ve never left? We still have FDR’s mixed economy. What Dems want is to EXPAND it and move toward Big S Socialism.
Certainly a nugget of foundational truth here. And ‘adaptations’ to this lizard-brain awareness that the ship is going down are manifesting in frantic behaviors all over the place.
But in the meantime, it garners the likes of Bernie Sanders, AOC and the rest of that crowd votes. Doesn’t really matter in the end if they can actually come through with all of the promised freebies; they just wanna get elected. Then they can proceed with their Uber liberal agenda, Socialist agenda, whatever. Makes for great sound bites you gotta admit. The Twitter crowd isn’t used to critical thinking or long position papers anyway.
Indeed, the Industrial Revolution was wicked and its effects baleful. The damage done to community and nature is incalculable. As is said in this essay, there is no way to undo the damage. Humanity will simply have to deal as best it can with the after-effects. And, as said here, that means a return to local community and try to learn how to live with hard work and cooperation. There isn’t much left to help us do that. Families, churches, schools, economies, et al, have been blasted to hell and back. The citizenry is reeling from isolation and meaninglessness. I’m reading a book about the fall of the Soviet Union and how that event destabilized the ordinary Russian citizen who had come to believe that the State would always care for them. There’s no reason Americans can’t learn the same, but arguably we have much further to go, as Russia had not gone as far into human degradation as we have done here today.
Check out the death rate after the implosion of the FSU. That and alcoholism. They had vodka, we have opioids. Same results in the end.
The average Soviet citizen still knew how to work and take care of themselves because the State could not do it due to corrupt hierarchy. Yes, many turned to alcoholism as an antidote and still do for that matter. But times were hard for just about everyone here and they did not have the illusion of entitlement that we are suffused with here and now.
Yes. And I read women averaged 7 abortions. The women would jump off their refrigerator, having missed a period.
You might find this article interesting:
https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2017/03/who-lost-russia.html
“Indeed, the Industrial Revolution was wicked and its effects baleful”
Shotho,
Reconsider. The Industrial Revolution had its excesses, but gave you a standard of living that could only be envied by the princes and their peers of past centuries. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, what was the life expectancy? Damn near twice now what it was then. You eat well, you do not freeze in the winter, you do not live in a mud hut, you do not unnecessarily toil for subsistence.
Life in the Industrial Age has been good. Yes, there are winners and losers…millions of more winners than losers, I would expect.
Perspective
The Industrial Revolution also got us out of Feudalism….now we are returning to Neofeudalism and the regressive tax structure is re-creating Aristocracy…..isn’t that special?
Even national socialism wasn’t socialism. The “s” word has gotten a bad rap lately because people think it’s a giveaway from government. Ha! I say. Ha! Ha! Ha! The reason taxes are 50% +++ is socialist countries is you get something for that money and because the government negotiates prices in a my way or the highway scenario like Medicare in this country, you get tremendous value for your buck. If government administers health care and college education, you’ll still pay for it, just in a different way, and it’ll cost less. That has never been in question. Socialism works because it essentially is government price controls for things that should not be for profit, like health care and education. That we are approaching 20% GDP in our healthcare system should be enough for anyone with half a brain to know that it needs overhauling.
“thus it was to be, through Karl Marx, Vlad Lenin, and the rest of the gang…”
I always feel bad for Karl Marx when he gets thrown in with the likes of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc… I swear these guys never read the communist manifesto, because what they implemented had very little in common with what Marx was espousing. Marx was a small business guy, a worker owned cooperative guy, not a Statist. In fact, I would wager that most sane reasonable people would find him non controversial. I think he would have been very disturbed to have lived to see what has been carried out in his name.
Right on joe. Without labor there is no capital.
This is true. Marx was the academic, intellectual architect of the theoretical system, Lenin and Stalin were the ruthlessly politically savvy opportunistic executors of one variation of that system. Marx allegedly didn’t even believe the system was achievable until capitalism had first played itself out. So maybe there’s hope for a variation of it to succeed yet.
Lenin’s dying wish was that Stalin not have the power. You put an equals sign between them that should not be there. Stalin then killed the heros of the revolution. Made sure Trotsky, the revolutionary head of the red army was out of the picture. All of the Stalinists, which means that those who actually came after and those we mistakenly equate with earlier men of vision were all posers. Revolutions eat their children.
I know you mean no harm. That would be devilish. The thing is that most readers are just here to have their way of looking at the world confirmed and feel good for a moment or two. Historical inaccuracies cause people to have strange notions having nothing to do with actual fact and everything to do with the strange fantastical twitchings of their individual brain folds. They they get Trumpish when unprocessed inaccuracies worm in. Then they get strange. More strange. Nuff said?
The massacres started under Lenin and Trotsky. But yes, Trotsky was worse because more radical. Lenin was heard screaming at him for ordering the execution of the Czar and his Family. He feared a Saint had been created. He was right. For that you People will not be forgiven until the End of the World.
Your north pole points south and it gives you a special thrill.
Aleksandr Ilyich Ulyanov
How many times has this rolled up newspaper been shaken in your face. Plenty! And still you persist!
On May 8th 1887, a young revolutionary went to the gallows with four other comrades for an attempt on the life of Tsar Alexander III.
Went to the gallows isn’t exactly the way they do things in Russia. They pick random moments and like to get people unprepared and then they are gone.
Had Lenin’s brother been buggered before he was hung the fate of the Czars children would have been more brutal.
I’m not talking about that Czar. There was more than one I hope you know.
You need to roll in the snow. Your brain is on fire. Try making a dog snow angle.
The Dawg’s on FIRE today!
His collected works run to sixty volumes. I’ve heard that there are many Marxes. You can find the one that suits you. Most prefer the bearded Prophet who encourages the workers to take their vengeance upon the Capitalist class. The small communitarian is there, but only in a small way. He wanted to be influential and he was – that means people like Lenin and Mao.
You just want to pull my chain. Sixty volumes my ass.
“Marx/Engels Collected Works (also known as MECW) is the largest collection of English translations of the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It contains all works published by Marx and Engels in their lifetimes, and numerous previously unpublished manuscripts and letters. The Collected Works, which was translated by Richard Dixon and others, consists of 50 volumes.”
And in web layout setting box model to {box-sizing: border-box} sets all content border and margins to the width specified and not just content. Likewise those 50 volumes for two men not one are chock-full-of-footnotes, commentary and sundry metadata. Or as people here would think; chock-full-of-nuts.
I stand corrected. You have them? Try reading them – or are they unreadable? There’s many racist gems I hear….
I’m with you on this. Mr. K, you’re attacking the wrong socialism. What we are proposing is sharing the power, whether there’s any “wealth” to share or not. I would suggest that a conversation between you and Richard Wolff would be worth having, and worth listening to.
Another great post this morning, Jim!
Their Big Idea was that if government owned the industry (the means of production), then the riches would be distributed equally among the laboring masses and the squalor eliminated.
The Big Question now is, what do we do now that what passes for “industry” these days (actually Big Finance, Big Pharma, Big Entertainment/Media, and Big National Defense and all its subsidiaries) owns the government and their impotent regulatory agencies?
In short, the next time socialism is enlisted as a tool for redistributing wealth, we will make the unhappy discovery that most of that wealth is gone.
Sadly, already true as well. Neither capitalism nor socialism holds any long term answers for our current state, and this the greatest danger of all in current events. That said, the current capitalist arrangements enabling unlimited concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of a very few have made plain their ultimate goal if dis-empowerment, disenfranchisement, and ultimately, elimination for the many. We are indeed squeezed between a rock and a VERY hard place these days!
Right ol Scratch
The big picture is simple actually but politically elusive.
We need the incentive of Capitalism to inspire enough folks to kick the means of production into gear.
We need something to control the bad side, and it is bad, of Capitalism as its end game is competitive and few folks ultimately live the American Dream to its utmost. The income inequality, which is a direct result of Capitalism, is a direct threat to the social order.
What to do to stem the income inequality?
That is what is currently under debate in Washington DC and all the states.
Capital centralizes. One of Marx’s gems. It’s pretty obvious and he may not have been the first to say it – but he saw its inevitable conclusion. You refuse to see it or its conclusion. We’re going to be ruled by the Big. Isn’t it better to be ruled – as Mr Kunstler pointed out on Friday – by those who are sworn to serve our interests? At least they can theoretically be voted out or thrown out. In contrast, Executives can be sued for their stockholders if they do anything against the bottom line. Usually it doesn’t come to that – they are just replaced.
Basically you think greed is good. That water can rise above its source. What was that parable of Jesus, Do men gather grapes off thistles or something like that? You think they do and thus you deny the Master.
Greed is evil.
People are evil.
Greed is a symptom and their are many types of greed.
>>> What to do to stem the income inequality?
You might as well ask: How do we stem differences in skills and experience? Liberals have been trying to raise welfare class standards for decades at great expense. Now they realize that it’s much easier to lower the top than to raise the bottom. After all, the delta is all that matters. If they make everyone stupid, then they’ve achieved equality!
And what worked so well for education will surely work for wealth as well. Once again they can’t raise the bottom, but they can surely lower the top—with wealth redistribution schemes. Think Mao’s China. Make everyone poor, and there will be no more wealth inequality.
We live in an era where leaders like AOC need remedial lessons on how many branches of government we have. I think we can safely say that the new socialists have nothing new to offer.
The Big Question now is, what do we do now that what passes for “industry”
What you want answers too? Whining is not enough! This is the land of anything goes. Pick out your hobby horse and climb on, ride baby. Your ‘we‘ is all in your head. Enjoy the show because there are no answers. But you are the devil and already know this. You are playing with me again. Throw that ball.
The Dog is feeling frisky today! No digging in the garden, dammit, but by all means DO get them gophers if they happen to pop their little heads up!
The “K” stands for Killer.
Yeah,
Chow dogs are known biters….
JHK’s chapter on entropy in TLE explains everything that is going on.
The Main Street economic model versus the Big Box approach. Making everything more and more efficient with the final blow being the dehumanization of the process is totally catastrophic for everyone even the elite.
Think of the capital pool of the US as a bathtub with inflow being wealth input and the drain being the utilization of money by the people. If you throttle down the wealth input by creating stuff with no human value ie manhours, eventually the tub drainage subsides to zero when the tub empties. Jobs are the core of it, to maintain the bathtubs level, a job needs to be created for every one lost. Add on to that our nations trend of providing means to non productive elements, and the drain valve opens wider. The wider drain is why UBI will not work. UBI just accelerates the decline.
The bathtub emptying = The Long Emergency
The elite suffer when the means of production loses purchasing power and the stock market tanks as a consequence. Everybody loses.
Venezuela. The biggest fools in the US are the ones that thing that if the Progressives take over that socialistic Communism takes over, it will be successful THiS time.
The definition of insanity is when you expect a different outcome with the same conditions over and over.
“The definition of insanity is when you expect a different outcome with the same conditions over and over.” I just used that quote on JHK’s last posting. It was in regards to the Republican’s constant drone of “Cut taxes, deregulate. It failed miserably under “W”, but it’ll work this time, you’ll see.
It’s a very lame definition.
Reality is in a constant state of change.
At all levels right down to the blinking in and out of existence of particles at the quantum level.
So conditions are NEVER the same.
Right Evie. Sometimes 1=1 and sometimes it don’t. Almond Joy got nuts, Mounds don’t. You like Almond Joy.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Patterns. Laws. Rhymes. You should have taken that Philosophy 101 rather than Navajo Basket Weaving. Two roads diverged in the woods, and you took the wrong one. And it has made all the difference.
Janos Frost Skorenzy
>>> So conditions are NEVER the same.
Logical fallacy. What happens to particles in a quantum context isn’t particularly significant to our reality. Particles may pop in and out of existence, but people do not. Yes the river is always changing, allowing some wise-ass to claim that no man ever steps in the same river twice. But in fact it IS still the same river in every way that matters.
I’m sorry you weren’t able to keep up with the conversation.
But using your example, that’s why a fisher casting her baited hook into the water (that “IS still the same…in every way that matters”) isn’t insane despite not having landed a fish in a week of trying.
>>> that’s why a fisher casting her baited hook into the water (that “IS still the same…in every way that matters”) isn’t insane despite not having landed a fish in a week of trying
Does the fisher have reason to believe it will work? Caught fish before using the same bait? Same technique? Great.
But what if the fisher is using fish repellent for bait? And fishing in the dead sea? Then—yes—insane.
Fish move they don’t stay in one spot so casting your line today might be just in time for the fish that was across the lake yesterday!
It’s called hope!
“Most of the beliefs and attitudes of the present day will be overturned with the demise of the industrial orgy, like the idea that humanity follows an unerring arc of progress, that men and women are interchangeable and can do exactly the same work, that society should not be hierarchical, that technology will rescue us, and that we can organize some political work-arounds to avoid the pain of universal contraction.”
ya
Feudalism is right. Humanity will fall back to systems that fostered survival & social stability. So, that means a pre-industrial agricultural society of hierarchy & obligations; and all of the attendant forces of religion, myth, peasant culture, and a warrior elite.
Feudalism is right. Humanity will fall back to systems that fostered survival & social stability.
In a multi racial. cultural and multi lingual Merika, aint happening pops.
Rome, Parthia, Carthage.. had large, multi ethnic/lingual empires. However, brutality in response to revolt against the central authority would become soup du jour once again.
PeteAtomic, I stumbled on a Wikipedia page yesterday that hooked my interest – although I’m a Texan (long ago anyway) I’d never followed the lethal comedy of errors that led to “…central authority…” opening fire on citizens, most of them unwary and uninvolved (and including veterans, ex-cops, various purported pillars of the community).
I think all those involved were deeply shocked at the overkill. But that seems to be the logical conclusion of “massive retaliation”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Waco_shootout
“Feudalism is right. Humanity will fall back to systems that fostered survival & social stability.”
Also ain’t happening in a world that is “woke” enough (to borrow a term) that the masses won’t go for the concept of divine right.
Stability and fairness are both human desires, but they are mutually incompatible. The dances will continue.
I don’t think US society would go directly to a feudal system. There would be periods of bad instability before that would happen. “Provisional governments”, Yugoslav styled civil war, strongmen/warlords, etc..
My greater point being that whatever happens in the future will most likely look like something very ancient.
There is nothing new under the sun.
I’ll buy that. I’m not much for predicting what comes after TSHTF, but that it will resemble something from the past is reasonable. There are just too many unknowns.
Yeah it is – just means War and divvying up the proceeds by right of Conquest. We’re great at that when we put our minds and hearts into the work. Blacks and Brown less so. The East Asians could give us a lot of trouble if they keep pouring in though. Ditto the Muslims.
On another front, there is a movie on youtube of a deformed boy.
these are comments,
How 3M and DuPont made billions by exposing the entire world to a toxic chemical which causes cancer and birth defects and is now found in the blood of 99.7% of Americans.
DUPONT killed thousands of indegenous peoples in south america to secure rubber trees!!! lobbied to make marijuna illegall worldwide. poisions the world with chemicals. we the people should hunt this family and all the companys board members past and present into extinction for their crimes against humanity . boycott completley to drive them out of buisness.
My former boss up to a year ago was an alumnus of DuPont. Insufferable prick.
There is no boss, he was an employer.
Several have noted mental illness runs in du ponts.
One of them did the biggest [at least then] personal bankruptcy.
another killed an Olympian.
I was thinking the other day about the sources of all those free polyfluorinated compounds. Apart from the bonded species, on undamaged cookware.
Bike chain lube
That spray on stuff that makes your tires shiny
Glide dental floss
Various waterproofing for consumer products
Automobile engine lubricant additives
Detergents & corrosion inhibitors
The EPA is holding back an avalanche of data on this stuff. Personally I don’t think the public will absorb the implications. Cause and effects are too abstracted. Plus technically it’s going to be impossible to treat or control for reasons inherent in the physical chemistry.
What about Petroleum Jelly or so called vasoline? Can you get high with it?
“Can you get high with it?”
Janos,
No, but the multitudes “get low” with it….
Why they they want pot illegal? To make more money off it?
Cotton industry feared it as a better material and grows anywhere.
The dictatorship of the Coasts and Illinois has taken a big hit this Spring. The state tax deduction is gone on the 1040.
The impact is already an eight percent reduction in refunds.
The urbanization of the US is forming to coastal predominance of political power and the move Left of our polity.
Andrew Cuomo is the first to bellyache about the tax change. The wealthy of New York is moving to South Florida faster.
The effect will be enormous. The impoverishment of the area will put pressure on the tax revenue required to pay long term debt, especially pensions. If the socialists just increase the tax rate, more people leave, a no win scenario. California is a perfect example.
The great promise of the Socialists, economic security, goes away.
Socialism ALWAYS fails.
Baby killer Cuomo.
Now the satanists can do their ode to Moloch legally. Pizzagate redux.
Fetus is a dish best served cold
“Socialism ALWAYS fails.”
Everything fails, but socialism fails faster, it has the glide profile of a rock.
Greek clarity. People like Az rave about how Detroit was destroyed by Socialism. But other big Midwestern Cities with the same philosophy did and do “fine”. Blacks destroyed Detroit, not Socialism.
Whites can make Socialism work – as in National Socialism. Europe was doing Ok under Socialism but the profound malaise lead to boredom. Plus the heavy taxes and Feminism made getting married and having children difficult. Solution? Open the borders. Now they have all the adventure they can handle and other races are having the children they couldn’t have – and on their dime.
National Socialism would never made these mistakes.
You fail the color of the peoples skin is not the problem it’s the belief system in place.
They let people in who are bent on taking and taking over but not giving back nor assimilating into society.
Different ethics and belief systems.
“Socialism ALWAYS fails.”
John,
Yes, as do all systems, eventually.
I think everyone is conveniently ignoring the 800 lb gorilla in the room. Communist Russia defeated Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany was capitalist, not socialist. Far more industries were privatized than were nationalized. They even employed that crowning jewel in all capitalist wet dreams, slave labor on an industrial scale. Nevertheless the communist system trounced them badly. That’s historical fact. It wasn’t even close. The T-34 tank was the best tank ever designed. It cost 1/4 of what the Panthers and Tigers it fought did, and as we all know quantity has a quality all its own.The Yak-9 outfought the ME 109 and the Focke Wolfe 190. Thus non-profit industries designed and built far better weapon systems than for-profit systems did. And we are talking Germans here, the best engineers in the world. So no the communist system was not a failure at all, it was a stunning success.
All true, but I’m not sure I’d chalk the Soviets’ success up to Communism. More the fact that they were brutally authoritarian and the fact that that they were literally fighting for their lives on their home soil. Point taken on the weapons systems though. The Russians have always had a knack for that kind of thing, as Putin is demonstrating today.
Scratch,
Yeah. Much of the victory of the Soviet Union in that war can be chalked up to Stalin finally getting smart and telling the people to fight for Mother Russia, communism and other ideologies be damned. To be sure, the army of commissars kept up a drumbeat of censorship, and sometimes, terror … but the average Soviet soldier, the bulk of whom were ethnic Russians, fought for Russia, not for communism’s ideals or Stalin.
Cheers
Pure communism doesn’t work any better than pure capitalism. Like anything else, extremes cause problems. “Moderation in all things, save the pursuit of liberty.”
well said
A much needed correction of this Devil. Good old Monty, always quick with quip or a drink.
After the War, Russians began the long march back to taking their country back from the Tribe. This effort was the best part of Stalin’s tarnished legacy. The Georgians had to go as well. Ditto the “Letts”. After many reversals and much corruption, they triumphed in the Person of Vladimir Putin and his group. If only Trump could have been his equal, but alas we are destined for our own Via Dolorosa.
Not true. National Socialism is neither Capitalism nor Communism nor the uneasy midpoint, Socialism. It is the High Middle, the Apex of the Triangle (but not the Masonic Eye) and it seeks to create another “line” all entirely. Instead of things riding Man (materialism), Man will ride “things” – and that includes systems. The Sabbath was made for Man not Man for the Sabbath.
Please STOP with your stream of gibberish!
As Gandhi said, First they laugh at you. Then they ignore you. Then they fight you. Then you win. Helen described funny feelings in head upon reading my posts. That was her brain function slowly reviving. The above is your version of the same thing.
How is it any different than your mockery of my racial teaching when you first heard it? Or are you still denying my role in your conversion?
Then there is the Russian Winter….
“And we are talking Germans here, the best engineers in the world. So no the communist system was not a failure at all, it was a stunning success.”
The failure to capture Moscow in December 1941, poor German insight into the geographic vastness of Russia & environment, the terrible decision to launch Operation Blau & become engaged at Stalingrad in late 1942 losing 1/4 million men, the failure to mobilize a strong anti-communist Ukrainian & ethnic population, disasters on other German fronts like North Africa… so, its much more complicated then just tanks & planes..however, you are correct about the eventual Soviet superiority in both of those arms. However, it took upwards of 30 million dead, and enormous cessation of Russian territory before that happened.
I tend to read history between the lines and as such I think several aspects of your analysis are wrong. First of all conventional history says the Russian winter derailed the German offensive, and while true it leaves out one very important fact. It was the single greatest and most effective use of a secret weapon in history. The T-34 tanks was sprung on Germany right when German troops could see the Kremlin in the distance. This nearly collapsed the entire front. All the while German troops had kicked ass across hundreds of miles of Soviet territory. They were invincible. Then, right at the point of victory, Stalin unleashed the best tank in the world on them. Psychologically the Germans never recovered. They were deep in enemy territory, hundreds of miles from home, and they were outgunned and outclassed. Stalin has lured them in. German soldiers of the time say this. We were too stupid, too arrogant really and nothing breeds stupidity quite like arrogance, to see the trap that lay before us.
History also tells us Hitler wanted Stalingrad because it had his rival’s name on it. Again maybe true, but far from the crux of the matter. The Red October Tractor Factory was in Stalingrad and was producing T-34 tanks at an insane rate. That factory, still in operation today, was the bait. Even in the midst of the fighting, when Germany held 90 % of the city, that factory was still spitting out T-34’s. The Germans were going insane seeing this. Stalin was a far superior strategist than Hitler. It wasn’t even close. Hitler admitted this late in the war.
Incidentally this also began Hitler’s famous fascination with secret weapons. In the end he had hoped to do to Stalin what Stalin had done to him. He never did.
What about lend-lease?
How much logistics came from factories in the USA?
And yes, the Soviet Union did pay back every penny (which I recently learned after being correcred by Finca)
Brh
Yes, all that was American Technology. That was our biggest contribution to the War – along with the billions. But it makes sense as Communism is a Capitalist Front.
Yes, if He had only treated the Liberated Slavs as Brothers. Perhaps the Dark Forces could have been checked if not crushed, allowing him to create Ultimate Weapons. The rocketry was already there, at least in theory.
Until the 90’s
There is no question that Russia did the heavy lifting to save the western world from the Hitler but it should be pointed out that had the Brits not been willing to all but float their supply ships in blood to keep Russia in the game when they were on the verge of collapse to the Germans, the outcome would have been far different.
The Americans were willing to sit back and watch it all happen until the Japanese gave them a poke.
Hitler had no intentions of conquering the West–that was Communism. They called it the Communist International for a reason. Cultural Marxism, open borders, neoliberalism, neoconservatism, Globalism, political correctness, multiculturalism, and on and on are all downstream of Communist infiltration. Isn’t it lovely?
>>> There is no question that Russia did the heavy lifting to save the western world from the Hitler
Well it wasn’t an act of charity or compassion! Russia was fighting for its survivial and had no choice. It traded land for time while it up-armored itself. Ironically, not having the luxury of time and resources led it to create the rough-and-ready T-34. Necessity forged that tank—not a design committee. The tanks initially even lacked radios, and were thus beaten on the field due to lack of coordination. The addition of the radios was the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany.
Geez you have a hard time keeping on track in a conversation don’t you?
Of course Russia was fighting for its survival, so was Britain. Why else would they expend so many lives to help the Bolshevik nation they despised before the party started?
What has the subject of charity or compassion have to do with anything.
Go back and re-read what this topic was about and forget about showing off your feeble knowledge about the military hardware that has utterly nothing to do with the subject.
Don’t you hate it when not so bright people butt into conversations with clueless comments?
>>> Don’t you hate it when not so bright people butt into conversations with clueless comments?
Sorry but when it comes to idiocy and clueless comments, I’ll have to defer to your wealth of experience.
LOL – as always, weak sauce when you have no reply for the topic itself.
But yes, it is true, me have much experience – there be’um many palefaces like you.
In fact the same thing is happening today. For profit arms makers in the west, America in particular, are designing complex, questionably effective weapons systems that are designed to extract as much profit as possible but are in no way intended to be effective, easy to manufacture, and cheap. Look at the F-35. A total dog. I see people post numbers like a single Tiger tank was equal to 10 T-34 or a Panther was equal to 5 T-34. At the Battle of Kursk, the greatest tank battle in history, Russian T-34 would run directly at Tiger tanks and ram them, effectively immobilizing them. After that they were sitting ducks. 1 Tiger tank equaled one T-34 tank. A not for profit state is by definition going to build the most effective weapon systems. A for profit state will build the most expensive ones. I’ll give you 2 guesses who will win.
A King Tiger cost $300,000 vs $31,000 for a T-34. That’s what will happen in America’s next war, trillion dollar systems will get beat by billion dollar systems.
https://heroesandgenerals.com/forums/topic/70339-cost-of-german-tanks-vs-other-nations/
A country with a large population can afford to throw men and material into the gap. A country with a smaller population only has a chance if it’s technology is superior, and not much of one at that.
Ask the men we sent to the front in “Zippo Lighters”. The Germans could not hope to beat the Russians at their own game. This has to do with logistics, not philosophy, as does the ultimate defeat of Germany.
These logistical arguments are why I believe we will see biological weapons used when the next round of wars begin. A small population is easier to inoculate.
Epicur, now you are into the sweet spot of what I believe also.
After every major war the planners devote their resources preparing to fight the next one. We spend trillions to find better and better ways to use bombs, bullets, and explosives –
Meanwhile we’ve become utterly and hopelessly reliant on digital technology to survive. If for some reason the internet went down the country would implode in unimaginable ways.
With the incredible rapidity of genome and DNA expertise how unthinkable is it that an entity could develop an effective vaccine to neutralize the effects of a terrible disease, inoculate a selective demographic, and finally release the terrible disease itself, also developed in their labs.
Do you think there are any clever (and likely wealthy enough) humans on earth to have a go at this?
The Germans lost to the Russians due to weather, inadequate clothing and supplies, and the fact that the Wehrmacht was spread too thin.
The rest is nonsense.
You got that mostly wrong.
The sheer amount of people living in Russia and the brutal cold of Russia beat Nazi Germany.
The humble invention of anti-freeze had a part.
The fact that Russian soldiers were told no retreat or they would be shot by their own also had a part in it.
The Russian people are tough and Hitler screwed up when he attacked Russia before beating the British!
Japan attacking Pearl harbor was also a huge problem and the industrial might of America was instrumental in defeating Nazi Germany we shipped off billions of dollars in food, trucks, steel, aircraft, and materials to Russia and the over all war effort across Europe as well.
Don’t believe me look it up without all that even the Russians would have been ground under eventually and Stalin knew it.
Yep. My wife’s grandfather was one of the last surviving soldiers to get flown out of Stalingrad.
The family rarely talks about it for obvious reasons, but he left a diary. Brutal conditions.
If you want to read a very well written, comprehensive analysis of life in a feudal society, read Hans– Werner Goetz’s “Life in the Middle Ages”.
It’s an excellent social/economic history.
Another good read is Barbara Tuchman’s ‘A Distant Mirror’ about European fuedal life in the 14th century. That’ the era of the black plague, so its not a pretty picture.
Brh
agreed.
The plague brought on the Renaissance and the Reformation.
Would they have happened without the ‘Black Death?”
“Pillars of the Earth” with sequel “World without end” by Ken Follett.
Trust me.
They are enormous so (excellent) audio is available too.
Thanks for the recommendation, PeteA
Just got a paperback copy from the Evil Empire for a mere £2.35. The postage was more! No Kindle version, sadly – I’m trying to impose a moratorium on myself in terms of physical books for a while just for the space issue. Can’t keep up with my impulse purchases!
“Can’t keep up with my impulse purchases!”
ha ha lol me too
.. I used to work at a bookstore too part time.. took a lot of discipline not to buy most of the books I saw.
Im a haunter of bookstores, new and used.
Unfortunately bookstores are gettin scarce
Brh
Of course, the history of everything has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and we’re closer to the end of the industrial story than we are to the middle.
Jim,
Well put. Nice to see the Long View being used to make sense of our situation. I am also a fan of the Big Picture, that is, seeing things in their broader context. Two methods of assessment that have sadly been (seemingly) forgotten by most people.
Cheers
Seattle has a bad assed underground tunnel that just opened last week. Billions over budget and years past the original completion date it finally got finished. I decided to drive the thing before they put tolls on it and see what it was like. This was last Tuesday. This thing has been a big deal in the local scene but when I stopped for the light to get in nobody was in front or behind me. It was all mine all the way through. I did not see a soul. A roll of the dice and I was alone.
As alone as anyone in America screaming socialism. Maybe other people scream too but they are to far apart to hear one another.
What socialism is not.
The idea that everybody works and has a social safety net that provides for their needs when they are unable to provide for themselves is not socialism under the American definition of socialism. In the American version of socialism socialists take power and start killing everybody. No reason given except this is what socialists do. They also steal everything so nobody owns anything. Since America is the embodiment of stolen property this scares a lot of people unnecessarily. It is a total overreaction, a logical fallacy.
Couch potatoes are not going to put down the remote and revolt. In America every man is an Island and nobody has any power without money. I can’t get my undies in a bunch if somebody wants to think about socialism and talk about it to the American wind because nobody else is listening. This is the land of me and people here don’t know how to do socialism or what it rreally is. America is without Solidarno?? and does not know how to do socialism. Or what it really is. Here it gets confused with Kentucky Fried Chicken.
But it is not considered finger licking good. People start shaking and twitching when they hear the word because that is what they were taught to do as pups. Mention sharing is caring around them when they are in a fit and they totally melt down.
In socialism you still have to pay for extra crispy but the old guy in the white suit gives you a dinner roll for free.
American definition of socialism????
Not your fathers Oldsmobile, that’s for sure!
What Americans call socialism is what others call welfare capitalism. That’s the safety net bit – institutionalised empathy, if you like, because everybody doesn’t have a family to keep them in old age or when they’re sick. Everybody isn’t well enough off to risk having a family in the first place or perhaps not pretty enough for someone to want to give them a family. Or even married and unable to produce babies, a misfortune that didn’t start in the 20th century. That’s why we have safety nets – so that life is just a little less mean and fewer people fall through cracks.
The amount of welfare/safety net is up to the society and what it can afford or wants to use for that purpose.
None of which negates the point that everything is going to change long term, but I agree the American terror of the S word is bizarre.
Dear, you need to get out more often, and see Merika.
Meanwhile, in the Motherland, old people freeze and muslims live high on the hog.
BUT i read the benes are better in Germany.
I love the idea of Muslims living ‘high on the hog’. Do you think before you write, malthuss?
Although, even figuratively, I wonder where you get your information from. Statistics happily accepted.
I don’t know what benes are. And I wouldn’t trust everything you read. Certainly not everything YOU read.
I am sooo tired of yr endless vitriol.
As one person here noted, ‘you are a slippery old gal.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3345461/Migrants-half-new-homes-built-five-years-Report-says-nearly-100-000-properties-year-needed-cope-demand.html
‘Vitriol’? From the ‘Kikes’ man who refers to (((people))) like this? Are you having a larf?
I read the article, thanks. No mention of Muslims at all – or anyone living high on the hog. And written in 2015 so still well inside the EU. Ergo, they might be Polish Catholics, Spanish, Romanians or anything else.
Could I make a general point, Malthuss?
I’m not English. I don’t live in England. I have no responsibility for either the number of Muslims in England or for anything they or anyone else in England gets up to. Or even English housing policy. Disappointingly, I am not overly concerned about Scottish Muslims – they seem to be reasonably integrated. The ones in my street certainly are.
I find your regular harassment of me about Muslims in England to be both irrational and a bit tedious. Perhaps you could redirect it towards someone English who might have more of a vested interest.
Thanks.
“As one person here noted, ‘you are a slippery old gal.’”
And that sounds like a malthussianism.
>>> I’m not English. I don’t live in England.
You know, GreenAlba, when Hitler was planning his invasions, he didn’t distinguish much between England vs Scotland vs Highlands vs Lowlands vs Wales vs Northern Ireland vs Ireland vs Britain vs Great Britain vs UK.
And neither should you.
The foreign cultures that are invading your happy little island family of common cultures that includes all these distinctions you find so important don’t see much of a difference either.
Thank your for Ex-splaining that to me, Exscotticus.
I was lost and now I am found.
*you*
In other words, the pieces of pie do NOT get half as big when the population gets twice as large. Believing that it does, or in any objective reality, is Fascism or National Socialism. As Winston said, freedom means the right to believe 1+1=2.
Yet in other contexts you two would deny that you were cornocopians. But when it comes to minorities, logic and causality must be put to rest. They are simply an unlimited Good. Nothing bad can ever come from them.
Janos
I have said elsewhere that the UK is a small country and it can’t absorb everyone. It doesn’t matter what colour they are – there wouldn’t be room for the whole of white America either, if it chose to flee back to mama.
You will have noted that one of the few things that makes me laugh about Brexit is that it will lead to fewer white Polish Catholics coming our way and more Indians.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
You have tried elsewhere to suggest that I support unlimited immigration. It doesn’t matter how many times you suggest it, it doesn’t become any truer.
Both demographics seem to be low on crime and good on hard work, so whatever, as far as I’m concerned, within the overall limits that we can manage. I’ll leave the English to sort that one out for themselves, as Scotland isn’t over-populated and shouldn’t be tied to legislation that’s based on English requirements. Such things should be devolved, as are other areas, like education and health.
I was perfectly happy with the white Polish Catholics, though. And their plumbers and builders tend not to take the piss as much as British ones, so what’s not to like? I think they raised standards.
@GreenAlba, while immigration policy is certainly at the forefront of Brexit, there are many other compelling reasons for it. I think it’s fair to say that the various EU institutions have grown in scope and power at the expense of member autonomy. To claim that every member has a vote and voted away that power is beside the point. The European Court of Justice, for example, has asserted its authority over the European Court of Human Rights, and increasingly over member judiciaries.
When you consider how difficult this process of extrication has been, I think it’s fair to say that if the UK doesn’t get out now, it likely never will. In theory, leaving the EU should be a relatively simple matter; it’s based on treaties between allegedly autonomous nations, after all. It’s not like California or New York trying to secede from the USA. And yet, clearly these “treaties” are so far-reaching, involved, and growing in scope year after year, that leaving is becoming more theoretical than viable.
Note I’m not arguing whether it will be better or worse for the UK in terms of trade or economics; I’m simply arguing that this is probably the UK’s last chance at true national autonomy.
“In theory, leaving the EU should be a relatively simple matter…”
Well it might be were it not that the Good Friday peace agreement, which was years in the making, depends on there being no hard border between the EU and the not-EU at the Irish border.
I know that for non-UK, non-Irish folks that’s a detail – it is for a lot of people in the UK too. But it actually matters. And so far, it’s proven intractable. No solutions in sight.
Actually, that’s not strictly true. It still wouldn’t be simple. Forty years of interwoven laws and regulatory agencies don’t just pull apart like unknitting a sock.You have to start again from scratch and things have to still work from day one.
I agree that the EU is overweening in its political ambitions. I personally think it will have to pull in its neck, due to pressure from countries within it. And when it does, the UK won’t be there to benefit from it, which is a terrible shame.
But for an ordinary person who loses employment rights (leaving aside all those who are going to lose their actual jobs) because they’re not an EU citizen, and has to accept the race to the bottom that elite Brexiters like Jacob Rees-Mogg (investment banker) and John Redwood (investment banker) are aiming for, their new-found ‘sovereignty’ will mean little.
“I’m simply arguing that this is probably the UK’s last chance at true national autonomy.”
And I would suggest that this is simplistic. The UK is an advanced economy. You might say it was THE most advanced in the sense that it gave birth to the industrial revolution and used up all its natural resources first (then went off to requisition other people’s!).
Now it’s highly dependent on foreign investment. National autonomy is a pipe dream. The massive Nissan factory in Sunderland, where people are beginning to see what voting leave actually means, has already cancelled its plans to build a new car there – it’s going to be built in Japan instead. This is just the start.
I’m fine with taking a financial hit to support my compatriots who lose their jobs. They can have 15-20% of my pension and I’ll still be just about OK. I’m a little less happy that I’ll probably be paying for medical care in a few years because the reduced economy will not be able to support the NHS – it was struggling anyway. US-style health insurance would take about half my income, so that worries me rather more.
This is not going to feel like taking back control for anyone but the wealthy who can survive any arrangement.
@GreenAlba, if I understand you correctly, you’re saying that even if Brexit goes through, the UK will not be truly autonomous because of its dependency on foreign investment. By that measure, few nations could claim to be autonomous. And I think you’re conflating autonomy with self-sufficiency.
America loves cheap plastic crap from China, but I wouldn’t say it’s a dependency that can’t be broken. No one ever said autonomy is cheap or easy.
Nissan’s not going to build a car? Join the club; GM is shutting down all over the USA—and it’s obviously not due to Brexit. Forget what Nissan says; they would have likely made the same decision regardless of Brexit; auto manufacturing is slowing down all over. In any case, every business that pulls out creates an opportunity for others to move in.
Even better, it creates home-grown opportunities. Look at the phenomenal success of the Raspberry Pi! Who could have imagined that the UK would dominate the thumb-sized PC market? And despite all attempts by the Chinese and others to wrestle it away, the UK continues to dominate in this arena year after year. Huzzah!
I agree that was a bad argument, Exscotticus. I’ll link it to a better one, though!
The UK is going to be desperate. The economy is going to lose anything up to 10% of GDP in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Even Jacob Rees-Mogg says it will take 60 years to recover. That’s fine for him. Like I said he’s an investment banker, and married to aristocracy to boot. Great.
Nissan said way back before the referendum that if it lost streamlined trade within the EU it would have to rethink its investment in the UK. That’s not being mean, it’s just JIT production. Airbus are saying the same – they make the wings in the UK.
Now the thing about desperation is that the UK needs to somehow make up for the fact that it’s pissing on the 60% of its trade which happens with the EU. Farmers are getting seriously worried. So are consumers – we can’t eat Raspberry Pis (I’ll find out what they are later, honest).
So, what does a desperate but fanatically Brexit-pushing Secretary for International Trade do? Well he rushes about the globe trying to secure trade deals, which takes years, but you’ve got to start somewhere. And which is the biggie that’s got to make up for the EU? That’s right, it’s you.
And what will you (not you personally) demand – not request, demand – in exchange for a signature on the dotted line? (Apart from the right to munch your way through the NHS). That’s right – you’ll include one of those TTIP-style clauses that provide for the UK government to be sued in a secret corporate court if we have the nerve to pass domestic legislation – domestic! – that risks hitting the bottom line of American corporations wanting to sell into the UK.
Now, call me naive, but to me that’s not national autonomy. That’s doing what you’re told because you have no choice. Because you foolishly put yourself in a position where, instead of being a greater-than-equal member of a trading community (yes, I know it’s more – I’m a citizen of the EU for 40 more days) to doing what a major power tells us to do in terms of domestic legislation because it’s bigger than us. And because we’re desperate.
Nothing personal at all Exscotticus. I’m not against Americans or their food products or their working conditions or whatever they choose for themselves. But we’re looking at a race to the bottom that we aren’t in now. And did I mention that you pay half what we do for petrol and diesel?
We’ve already got at least one country saying it won’t sign a trade deal until we remove human rights clauses. This is just the start. There was none of this crap with the EU.
How are the Muslims living high on the hog? Sounds like a right wing meme.
It is. A right silly right-wing meme.
I thought they had a thing against pork? Which is fine, more bacon 4 me.
K-Dog
That was my point 🙂
Now you can discredit the source and blame me,
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3345461/Migrants-half-new-homes-built-five-years-Report-says-nearly-100-000-properties-year-needed-cope-demand.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeZW1XVv3WQ
https://clarionproject.org/majority-europes-muslims-favor-sharia-over-democracy/
New couples wait for years to get a state owned home but Pakis right off the boat get one in weeks. Meanwhile English pensioners freeze to death in their homes. If you cared to know these things, you would. But you don’t, so you don’t.
There shouldn’t even be any Muslims in England, you ninny.
“There shouldn’t even be any Muslims in England, you ninny.”
There shouldn’t have been any British colonialists in India, ninny. But there were. Tough titties.
In other words, two wrongs make a right and everyone has to go into the water if the lifeboat won’t fit everyone.
Not that you care, but replacement levels of immigration were never inflicted on the South Asians by the British. Ditto most places by most of the European powers. I admit that Algeria was being inundated by the French and the Algerians stuck back hard. It still doesn’t explain why France opened its borders to them and others. Paul Bowles, who loved North Africa and its People, was dumbfounded, knowing they would never assimilate for the most part. Only people (like you) who have no intelligence apart from the Media are not dumbfounded. Again, I’m not accusing of having bad taste (Heaven forbid), but rather having no taste or capacity to discriminate at all.
The very pleasant and somewhat green Northern coast that is. The best part. The rest they left to the natives. But naturally, this was intolerable to the native Algerians.
Give it a rest, Skorenzy. You spoke about Pakistanis and I responded regarding Pakistanis. I am not interested in your ‘in other words’ or your interpretation of what I care about, or indeed your presumptuousness about where I get my information from. I lived in France for almost five years, which I think is more than you have.
“New couples wait for years to get a state owned home but Pakis right off the boat get one in weeks. Meanwhile English pensioners freeze to death in their homes.”
I may well freeze to death in my own home one day too but it will have sweet FA to do with Pakistanis.
Perhaps you have some verifiable statistics about these Pakistanis right off the boat getting ‘state-owned homes’ in weeks. You can include their route by boat from Pakistan just to give me the flavour of the journey, if you like, but the housing statistics would be the main thing.
Thanks.
GreenAlba, your fidelity to verifiable fact does you credit. But it will accomplish nothing, I’m sorry to say.
We should never forget the following exchange, reported by Ron Susskind, with an unnamed official in the George W. Bush administration (later understood to be Karl Rove). It provides essential insight into the way authoritarians think:
“The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ […] ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do’.”
While facts are the strength of reasonable and responsible people, ignorance is the strength of bigots. In fact, the satisfaction of indulging the unrestrained id is the chief reward of power. That’s true for the petty power of making people put up with just being an everyday asshole, just as it’s true of those who embrace that hideous strength which came to grief in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and soon quite possibly in Venezuela. The difference is just one of degree, not kind.
An authoritarian like Janos, on his petty level, takes satisfaction in the sense of immunity that comes from embracing ecstatic unreason. Not for him the constraints of, you know, what’s actually true; the alt-right is all about id-masturbation. When you try to use facts against Janos or his ilk, you invite contempt. And while their contempt is a compliment, that’s not the same as being effective.
>>> How are the Muslims living high on the hog? Sounds like a right wing meme.
Correct—if only because this metaphor clearly doesn’t apply to Muslims. Pork is haram!
Well, indeed, Elrond. Janos has explained that the truth is subservient to The Truth. And The Truth, for Janos, can be whatever you want it to be.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
American living in Germany here. Germany is the Fatherland, BTW. And benefits are better. The problem in Germany is their educational system. Which ensures that some people will never have a shot at a high salary. That said, it is difficult to freeze here unless you are a non-native who comes here unprepared for the job market.
And even then, there are options. The German welfare state is the envy of the West, if you need welfare. Unfortunately, the rest of us pay dearly for it. But I prefer it over the US system. Social Security is dead, and you are never more than a health crisis away from utter financial ruin.
“The German welfare state is the envy of the West”
It has some surprises, though, from what I’ve heard, unless the rules have changed.
Twenty years ago two separate people living in Germany – one native, one not – told me that if old people have to go into residential care they have to sell their property to pay for it. Fair enough – that happens in the UK too, it’s normal. But they said once the equity is used up the authorities can go for their children’s homes as well (in the UK the local authority would start to cough up at that point). Is that still the case? I wondered if that was why Germans traditionally used to rent for much longer than Brits, only buying homes in their 40s. Maybe they were waiting till home-buying didn’t come with such a risk.
You could have to sell your property, yes, but only if you cannot afford to pay for the residential care.
The system assumes you have been productive and worked long enough to have a monthly payment from your state Rentenversicherung to cover your expenses . If you don’t, you would be on your own.
The big benefit is that if you have been productive and also had a job where you got a pension (or perhaps you invested in private plan), you are swiming in cash in your golden years.
It’s all very German. Do it by the book and you are safe. Deviate and nothing is guaranteed.
Regarding purchasing property, most middle to upper-middle class people we know simply could not afford property until we hit our mid-30s or early 40s. Lending is extremely conservative here, so required Eigenkapital/downpayments are quite large. It would have been much easier to secure a loan if we had stayed in the US.
I suppose at least Germany has a well-managed rented housing sector, so people who aren’t able to buy (possibly ever) don’t get fleeced by greedy landlords to the extent they do here.
“You could have to sell your property, yes, but only if you cannot afford to pay for the residential care.”
That would cover pretty much anyone I’d be likely to know 🙂 .
I was thinking more about your kids having to sell their home too, which seems shocking to me, but I can see the logic, if you want to make sure all members of the family cough up for granny before the state steps in.
I presume there’s some sort of safety net for a life-renter with no serious assets who nevertheless needs residential care at the end of their life?
It’s a major issue here as local authorities have always had a statutory obligation to pay for elderly care for those who can’t pay for their own and those whose equity doesn’t run to the long-term cost of their care. But they’re in dire financial straits. The Tories’ answer, typically, is a life lottery, so if your parents get dementia, tough, you lose pretty much your entire inheritance, and if they don’t you’ll be fine.
Some people think a decent inheritance tax from everyone, including something from smaller inheritances, could be used to make it less dependent on brutal misfortune. Unfortunately the Tories’ base (many older people hoping to leave something to their kids) didn’t see it as the government did, so it’s been kicked into the long grass again.
>>> What Americans call socialism is what others call welfare capitalism. That’s the safety net bit…
@GreenAlba, what happens when welfare ceases to be a safety net, and becomes a lifestyle choice instead?
Americans don’t object to a safety net; Americans object to parasitic lifestyles and those in power who want to take our wealth and spend it on their pet projects “for our own good”. These projects include wealth redistribution schemes to their favored minority classes. The role of government should not include using stolen wealth to pick winners and losers.
>>> but I agree the American terror of the S word is bizarre.
You will never understand Americans until you acknowledge just how many moochers and takers are on the welfare roles, until you acknowledge just how many are creating families while on welfare. Why pay for your children when you can force others to do so? Moreover, we ENCOURAGE it; the more children you have, the more welfare you get.
Tens of thousand of immigrants are streaming toward USA borders as I type this—all demanding asylum. In accordance with USA law, that means total welfare support: food, clothing, shelter, medical, education—everything—at taxpayer expense.
“@GreenAlba, what happens when welfare ceases to be a safety net, and becomes a lifestyle choice instead?”
Then you and I would find ourselves, bizarrely, on the same side of the fence, Exscotticus.
But I wouldn’t call the lifestyle version ‘socialism’. I’d just call it people taking the piss out of the welfare capitalism system.
My only proviso would be that there are some people who, through no fault of their own, the modern economy really doesn’t want and has no use for. This goes beyond the ‘safety net’ as temporary succour. Some people like to call them ‘useless eaters’. I’d prefer to retain some humanity in my categorisations.
>>> But I wouldn’t call the lifestyle version ‘socialism’.
Agreed. My point is simply that socialism inexorably leads to these undesirable outcomes. Even something as simple as a safety net—designed to arrest the fall of the unfortunate and bounce them back into self-sufficiency—devolves into a parasitic system.
We can’t even make a simple safety net work, yet these new socialists think they can tackle even bigger fish? Health care for the entire world? Give me a break…
>>> Then you and I would find ourselves, bizarrely, on the same side of the fence, Exscotticus.
Consider yourself lucky you’re still allowed to have a fence. The new socialists consider fences “immoral”.
Well, I’m a sort of old centre-lefty, Exscotticus. But I know there has to be a fence so that my centre-leftyism doesn’t drip on to people who prefer their own flavours!
Unless I am mistaken the sobriquet “useless eaters” originated with the charmless Joseph Göbbels, referring to the handicapped – and making an argument for their euthanasia.
I read it in one of David Irving’s excellent biographies (free on-line downloads, by the way).
“We have a new kind of mass squalor in America: a great many people who have nothing to do, no means of support, and the flimsiest notions of purpose in life.”
According to the Democrat Party line the economic purpose of these people is to spend money the fastest when the government gives it to them, thereby “stimulating” the economy.
Sure is a good thing that the laws of physics don’t apply to economics, otherwise we’d be in deep $#it.
Money? Digital liquidity. The computers have been forced to run amok.
A report was put out describing the tax load for all the income ranges
A brief summary: 2016
The bottom 50% of taxpayers pay 3% of the taxes.
The top 1% pay 37.3%.
The top 1%. Adjusted gross income was $2 trillion
They paid $538 billion for tax rate of 27%
More than the bottom 90% of taxpayers
The top 10% AGI $4.7 trillion
Taxes paid $1 trillion. 11% of total receipts
“Overall, the top 50 % of taxpayers paid 97% of all individual income taxes”.
Just listen to the Left saying they want even more “from the rich”. They want more from everyone to finance their socialistic nirvana.
They want blood from a turnip.
I hope the American public wises up to these lying SOBs.
I am not optimistic.
This is not a place for optimism.
I do not sense optimism in JHK and the posters here.
Those of us that have been around since the fifties and sixties have seen first hand a nation that was rising and peaking in the world with more opportunities and achievements available for everyone since ever before in the world. All you had to do was commit yourself and work hard and for the most part and we all did well. As time went on, opportunities became far and few in between and those who climbed the ladders pulled the ladders up after themselves. They took care of their families and friends first and once “Greed became good”, the nation started on the downhill slide. Working hard no longer gets you ahead because somebody else makes the money off of it and keeps far too much at the top for trickle down to work anymore. This is not even a poor shadow of what it used to be, but don’t worry, once we old farts die off, no one will remember and whatever scrap they feed you today will be ok. Greed destroys everything.
Yet it is the Capitalist ethos. It has no other. In other words, it only worked as well as it did because of the remnants of Christian Culture and the solidarity and ethics that stemmed from it.
A Nation or even a Country needs a Culture so they are trying to replace Christianity with secular ideologies of Feminism and Multiculturalism. It won’t work because the Christian Remnant in America is still far too large. Plus these ideologies encourage self indulgence so they are Not as strong as Christianity at reigning in the Capitalists. Thus they want their Revolution to do it instead. But that will be a disaster because they don’t have Christian ethics to reign in their own hatred and desire for revenge against any better off than themselves – or against White people. War is coming and it will be Bosnia times Rwanda.
Wow Janos some of the wisest words you have posted. I second the notion.
I still can’t get over how dumb people can be. The height of the McRevolution for me was Pepsi running Resist ads with Kendall Jenner.
and once “Greed became good”, the nation started on the downhill slide.
Another product of the “boundaries and rules are passé” mentality, I’d guess.
Interesting comments.
Cheers
You talk like the rich pay through the nose, through the ass, through the ears, through every orifice in their body and then some and get nothing in return. When was the last time a poor person used a port or an airport. When was the last time the American military protected their interests like United Fruit in Guatemala or British Petroleum in Iran. When was the last time the American military invaded a county for them, like Afghanistan, so that American companies could plunder their mineral wealth. When was the last time the Space Shuttle put a telecommunication satellite up for them. The rich get an awful lot for their tax dollars,
Why not twist your stats in some other entertaining ways.
I’m guessing the income of the 1% after paying their paltry taxes still exceeds by many factors the total income that the bottom 50% are paying their 3% on.
I would guess further that if the 1% paid another 37% on what remained after the first tax the remainder would still exceed the total income of the bottom 50%.
I do agree with you that there are way too many turnips.
Janos say “Taxes no place to save money.”
I no say that. I no even know what that mean.
Well, on college campuses a few professors have openly called for extermination of whitey, specifically white men.
I’m sure parents who pony up $50,000 per year to send their sons off to college love hearing that sh_t.
When this killing spree starts hasn’t yet been determined, apparently. Maybe when Cory Bookers becomes president and appoints Al Sharpton AG.
Meanwhile, white undergrads, if you’re still in college, time to quit. Tell them to take their worthless degrees and shove them up their ass. Learn a trade. If you choose to stay, keep yor eyes open, your head down, avoid crowds, remain anonymous, and keep out of the Black Student Union.
Brh
“….we’re closer to the end of the industrial story than we are to the middle.”
Which also could mean the end of our species, if enough nuclear power plants melt down. Is it possible that the “World Made By Hand” series of books is way too optimistic about our chances?
Nothing to do with your comment. It is just me but I never refer to Mankind as a ‘species’. It just sounds too much like Star Trek. I try to avoid lots of these words and phrases: event horizon, black swan, the banality of evil. The Irish writer Myles na gCopaleen (Flann O’Brien, etc) used to have a section in his newspaper column called the Catechism of Cliche.
Yes, generalizations. Very bad. Lead to what some call “ideas”. As Hume said, just cuz the Sun has “risen” every morning for billions of years is no proof whatsoever that the sun is going to rise tomorrow.
And just cuz a big something with long fangs (sabertooth) has killed 50% of your tribe is no proof that it will continue to do so, or that they’re all bad, or that they are a they at all. As Evelyn said, every moment is brand new with no relation to the previous moment. Having preconceptions or ideas just gets in the way of enjoying the moment. So what if you are destined to get eaten?
Buddha gave the parable. Man is chased by a tiger over a cliff. He clings on to the vines over the edge. A rat begins to gnaw on the vine, but he notices that the vine had grapes. He eats one and rejoices, “How sweet it is!”. Such is the life of the unenlighted.
Janos
No, I am all in favour of generalization. It is the cliches that I object to. One of the more common cliches I hear is, “You just can’t generalize like that !”
Here is a bit of Myles na gCopaleen I just found:
“A cliché is a phrase that has become fossilized, its component words deprived of their intrinsic light and meaning by incessant usage. Thus it appears that clichés reflect somewhat the frequency of the same situations in life. If this be so, a sociological commentary could be compiled from these items of mortified language.” Brian O’Nolan
Brian O’Nolan (1911-1966) was an Irish journalist and writer. His first book At Swim-two-Birds (published under the name Flann O’Brien) is a postmodern masterpiece. He wrote a column in the Irish Times (signed Myles Na Gopaleen), which sometimes ran his Catechism of Cliché.
What is a bad thing worse than?
Useless.
What can one do with fierce resistance?
Offer it.
But if one puts fierce resistance, in what direction does one put it?
Up.
In which hood is a person who expects money to fall out of the sky?
Second child.
If a thing is fraught, with what is it fraught?
The gravest consequences.
What does one sometimes have it on?
The most unimpeachable authority.
What is the only thing one can wax?
Eloquent.
How are allegations dealt with?
They are denied.
Yes, but then you are weakening, Sir. Come now, how are they denied?
Hotly.
What is the behaviour of a heated altercation?
It follows.
What happens to order?
It is restored.
Alternatively, in what does the meeting break up?
Disorder.
What does the meeting do in disorder?
Breaks up.
In what direction does the meeting break in disorder?
Up.
In what direction should I shut?
Up.
When things are few, what also are they?
Far between.
What are stocks of fuel doing when they are low?
Running.
How low are they running?
Dangerously.
What does one do with a suggestion?
One throws it out.
For what does one throw a suggestion out?
For what it may be worth.
What else can be thrown out?
A hint.
In addition to hurling a hint on such lateral trajectory, what other not unviolent action can be taken with it?
It can be dropped.
What else is sometimes dropped?
The subject.
Here’s a bit more I found:
What does it behove us to proclaim?
Our faith.
In what does it behove us to proclaim our faith?
Democracy.
From what vertiginous eyrie does it behove us to proclaim our faith in democracy?
From the house-tops.
At what time should we proclaim our faith in democracy from the house-tops?
Now, more than ever.
What action must be taken in relation to our energies?
They must be directed.
In what unique manner?
Wholeheartedly.
In what direction?
Towards the solution of the pressing post-war problems which the armistice will bring.
How will the armistice bring these problems?
In its train.
By what is the train hauled?
A 2-4-2 compound job with poppet valves and Pacific-style steam chest.
.
This brings the reader (inevitably) to Myles’s ‘For Steam Men’ persona:
WHEN IT suits their book, some people do not scruple to drop hints in public places that I am opposed to poppet valves; it is, of course, a calumny. The fact is that I supported poppet valves at a time when it was neither profitable nor popular.
As far back as the old Dundalk days, when the simple v. compound controversy raised questions almost of honour with the steam men of the last generation, I was an all-out doctrinaire compounder and equally an implacable opponent of the piston valve. I saw even then that the secret of a well-set poppet valve – short travel – was bound to win out against prejudice. I remember riding an old 2-8-2 job on a Cavan side-road, and my readers can believe me or not as they please, but we worked up 5392 I.H.P. with almost equal steaming in the H.P. and L.P. cylinders, a performance probably never equalled on the grandiose “Pacific” jobs so much talked about across the water. The poppet valves (“pops”, old Joe Garrigle called them – R.I.P, a prince among steam men) gave us a very sharp cut-off. And we were working on a side road, remember.
There is not the same stuff in the present generation as there was in the one gone by, trite as that remark may sound. In hotels, public houses, restaurants, theatres and other places where people gather, I hear on all sides sneers and jibes at compound jobs. They eat coal and oil, they are unbalanced thermo-dynamically, they “melt” on high cut-off, and all the rest of it. Really, it is very tiresome. Your old-time steam man understood nothing but steam, but at least he understood it thoroughly. To see some of the sprouts that are abroad nowadays and to hear their innocent gabble about matters that were thrashed out in the Dundalk shops fifty years ago is to wonder whether man is moving forward at all through the centuries.
The other day I wanted to make a trip to the south, and arrived at Kingsbridge to find the train stuffed to the luggage racks with – well, what do you think, cliché fan? “Perspiring humanity,” of course. I was told there was no room for me. Perhaps it was injudicious, but I rang up the authorities and asked could I, as an old steam man, be permitted to travel on the plate, offering to fire as far as Mallow, or take over the regulator when and if required. The refusal I received was, clichély speaking, blunt. After making this call I noticed a queer change coming over the station staff. I could hear phrases like the following being bandied about (and that’s a nice occupation, bandying phrases):
Your man is here.
The boss says your man is to be watched.
Don’t let your man near the engine.
Your man’ll do something to this train if we aren’t careful.
There’ll be a desperate row if your man is let up on the engine.
Your man ought to be heaved out of here, he’ll do something before he goes and get somebody sacked over it.
Don’t let your man near the sheds.
I did manage to get a look at the job they had harnessed for the run. There was any amount of evidence of “foaming”. Your men do not seem to realise that if water is carried into the cylinder with the steam, you get a sharp loss of superheat as well as damage to the piston valve liners. This of course is due to the use of feed water that is “dirty” in the chemical sense. What was wanted here was a good boiler washout and the use of some modern caster oil emulsion preparation to reduce the concentration of solids and suspended matter in the f.w. I know I might as well be talking to the wall, of course.
Yes, people rely to much on their engrams, the channels that they have allowed to be cut thru the brush of their minds by the media. If you try to play with their sayings, or extract the general principle, they act outraged and/or bewildered.
The Rainbow is a big symbol of the Left, but they have obviously never thought about it. Because the rainbow is the rainbow because the colors are distinct and not all smooshed together into a brown opaqueness.
Similarly, a cat Will jump back onto a hot stove because it doesn’t know “stove”. It won’t back onto the same hot stove though, but not because it’s hot or stove, but because it’s a “bad” thing, whether it’s on or off, hot or cold.
Oh, this is brilliant! I gotta find me this book.
Q Shtick
The book The Best of Myles na gCopaleen has (from memory) sections on the Catechism of Cliché, For Steam Men, and various others, including The Brother.
“…new with no relation to the previous moment.”
Another person whose reading comprehension is remedial at best. I said nothing about relationship.
The crux of my objection is that the definition of insanity presented is erroneous because nothing is ever the same from one instant in time to the next.
The best example is when Janos loses its keys and keeps looking over and over again in the same places until its brain finally jiggles enough to realize it was looking right at them in the first place it looked.
A point I made prior; necessary technicians for maintaining them will not show up when the erupting chaos threatens their family and even the possibility of travelling to the work site. No doubt that there will be accelerating violence which will eventuate the horrors of human rampage known through history as pillaging. Already expressed in menacing tattoos, popular music lyrics, road rage, growly-snarly racing motorcycles we witness the tremors just below society’s surface.
Already expressed in menacing tattoos, popular music lyrics, road rage, growly-snarly racing motorcycles we witness the tremors just below society’s surface.
You are correct; those are telling indicators. Change is coming and it may well be very unpleasant for a long period of time.
Cheers
I’m going to start pricing suits of chain mail. I’ll wear it under my clothes like Dethenor or Russ Bolton. Thus even if I am never attacked, my body will stay hard. The burden it entails will simultaneously be exercise, expiation of my sins, and protection.
Don’t kid yerself…
Your body will remain soft and flabby no matter what sort of carapace you paste around it.
Like an M&M, hard on the outside, soft and repulsive on the inside.
But not AS soft in any case. And I’ll be protected against your Granny’s skinning knives.
I used to think Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation was a clever analysis. Free trade was a ruthless international system that swept everything before it. I still like Raymond Crotty’s analysis of capitalism as essentially an agricultural thing. There is some interesting writing about all this but I don’t think it has much in common with our present day socialists. In fact, I don’t think it has anything at all in common with them. For starters, the old intellectuals, for all their faults (which were awful), at least read books and could think things through. What we have now in the Dems, and all over the West, is a kind of fashionable socialism that has everything to do with psychology (mass fantasy) and nothing to do with useful thinking. Breathtaking deceit and delusion.
I have been reading a good bit of Spanish historian Pio Moa about the Civil War and Franco and you can see some clear parallels with the present. The conventional history sees the Popular Front as fighting for democracy against fascism and totalitarianism but this could not be further from the truth. What there was was a concerted effort by the Left to undermine the new (1931) Republic, which had been handed over to them by a monarchy with no will to continue. After two years of state-sponsored violence (mainly directed at churches, Catholic educational institutions and priests) and ideologically driven legislation (such as land reform) the people voted them out. However the left-wing political establishment, from the ‘moderate’ Jacobin Aznar to the Socialist Largo Caballero (‘the Spanish Lenin) conspired to undermine the new government at every step, culminating in the failed rising of October 1934, which was really the opening movement of the Civil War. These were utopian socialists, high on their own rhetoric, who wanted to bring in a workers’ republic as in the USSR. And you had the lunatic Anarchists causing mayhem in the background. Leftist fools still idolize them. The only thing the Left had in common (and no, it was anything but ‘democracy’) was anti-clericalism, as in their deranged imaginations they saw the Church as a ‘backward’ institution. By the time a reluctant Franco led the counter-revolution in July 1936 the Republic was already long gone. The modern Socialist Party (PSOE) wants to strengthen La Ley de la Memoria Historica to make it an offence to question the conventional lies.
One of the things the modern Left (which includes practically all of the mass media) has in common with the Spanish revolutionaries is a contempt for the truth, because they think the self-evident rightness of their cause justifies all the lies. And of course they know they are right. Against this you have to make allowances for the fact that they have lost their minds and cannot be held fully responsible for their actions.
I linked to a YT video yesterday by Vincent James of the Red Elephants. He claims that AOC deleted her earlier ‘green’ manifesto from her website and that the accusation is made that it was made up by the Right to provoke mockery. The thing is, some people had saved copies of the original and it was really was as stupid as they say.
I have been meaning to do a summary of the reasons why the AGW story is a mass delusion but it will have to wait. You have to see it as a discrete historical event, a mass fantasy with much in common with all the other mass fantasies.
Yet all of the foolish female candidates on the Democratic side endorsed it anyway – proving that they are utterly unqualified. Many of male Democrats have as well, proving exactly the same.
“Yet all of the foolish female candidates”
Janos,
“Fallopians”
Wished I’d coined it, but I think SnakPak….
Great stuff. He’s the only good Snak or Pak.
Regarding the socialist / communist / anarchists fighting the Spanish Civil War: when it became apparent they were on a losing streak they shipped the Spanish state bullion to Moscow, for safekeeping.
‘That’s the last they’ll ever see of this gold’, Stalin was quoted as laughing.
A realist.
Freedom is just another word for people who don’t know what to do.
Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose and nothing ain’t worth nothing, but it’s free.
Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’
You gotta have somethin’ if you wanna be with me
Feel funny replying, because for the past few months re Trump and the state, JHK has pretty much reflected my thoughts.
As for ‘Dark, satanic mills,’ the passage:
‘And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hill?
And was Jerusalem buried here
Among these dark, satanic mills?”
The passage has been interpreted by some as meaning churches. Blake was hardly a friend of organized religion.
As for social security, I admit it saved my bacon last year. I don’t make a lot of money, was on reduced hours, and when I started collecting, I paid off my credit card debt, was debt free by autumn, and now am building a nest egg, helped also by a raise at work and normal hours. So, it’s been a great help to me, and I remember a lot of ‘neoliberals’ some years ago arguing it should have been discountinued because it helps too many older Americans and neglects the young and minorities…also, the ‘conservative’ crowd argues it is a drain and ‘wise investment’ would do us seniors better. Yeah, we saw what happened what Ivan Boesky et al. did with ‘wise investment.’
Rush Limbaugh made the point that these new ‘socialists’ might as well promise the moon, since all our money is printed anyway, and really, that’s the system. As he said, when people decide that anything can be printed up, what’s to stop them from guaranteeing whatever is desired? And it’s a remarkably functioning system. JHK keeps saying it will fall…year after year, decade after decade.
As for me, I’d say the best thing is at least get your debts paid off, avoid credit cards, although it’s getting to the point where we’re almost forced to use them.
I wasn’t a spendthrift, but just didn’t make a lot of money, and things got out of control. If anyone has ideas of what to do to prepare yourself for a crash, it would be helpful, but this system will not change itself. As for our economy, foreign policy, race and social tensions, we might say what was said in Austria before 1914: the ‘situation is hopeless but not serious.’
As for Seawolf, communism was remarkably effective in moblizing for war, but I don’t think it means it was a superior warmaking system. American capitalism was far superior in mobilizing resources and getting supplies and logistics out, which is what most of modern war is about.
The Nazis had a great economy, but terrible leadership and procurement policies. They didn’t organize well, and we (and the USSR) were much better at getting people in charge who knew what best to do.
The Luftwaffe had terrible leadership. They could have developed a long range bomber, but chose not to, settling for being a quick, Blitzkrieg like force, but unable to fight a long-range war. The Germans had excellent weapons and tanks, but as Seawolf noted, they took too long to develop, needed lots of maintenance, and while great, weren’t able to be mass-produced in numbers needed to win. The Germans, as an author noted, settled for futuristic 1950’s style weapons, while we and the USSR just improved on 30’s technology.
Also, losing whole armies at Stalingrad, Kursk, and Africa didn’t help.
When German industry was allowed to do what they were best at, they were far better then the Russians, but oddly, no one in Nazi Germany seemed to have an idea of how to fight a prolonged war.
Then, if the Nazis had come to Russia as liberators, Stalin probably would have collapsed. As it was, several hundred thousand Russians and ethnics joined the Nazis anyway.
Again, the Germans led the world in rockets, but it was too expensive and not effective. Had they developed their jets as fighters, it would have made a difference, but they didn’t do it, or Hitler saw the jet as a bomber, and so it didn’t get properly deployed, and by then 1944, the Luftwaffe had its hands full fighting off our B-17s.
Sure, Russia made good weapons, but the Germans were still better. The Ak-47 is essentially a copy of the German Sturmgewehr, the world’s first assault rifle.
The Russians also got some of our tanks in early lend-lease, but they hated them and preferred their own, but they loved our trucks, and you can’t fight modern war without trucks.
In many ways, the current western military systems go for expensive, overly technical weapons that are in the long run too hard to maintain or deploy in mass numbers, but it’s more a procurement/kickback game to any kind of real fighting ability.
I noticed the Russians just developed a cannon that has a longer range then ours.
see my most recent comment. The money is not printed.
“And was Jerusalem buried here”
Builded rather than buried. A bit of a difference!
It was my school hymn so I had to sing it an awful lot 🙂
“And did those feet, in ancient times…”
It was certainly rousing, lung-filling stuff, Epicur.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8VH0sbEU20
A few Union Jacks and St George’s flags here to warm the cockles of a nationalist’s heart.
Last night of the proms always gets ’em going 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKtKK2YXPDU
From Sliver doctors,
Everyone knows fiat curriencies are worthless, America is done once the masses catch on to the Central Bank fraud and all confidence is lost.
I’ve charted 2 parameters in 100 year cycles, gold and silver decline sharply when the stock markets crash quickly, due to leveraged and short traders needing quick cash to cover their positions and they always dump liquid commodities 1st.
As fiat declines in value, some shift out of cash to buy gold / silver / food / guns / ammo / real estate / collectibles / tangible items they can use or enjoy. Some people buy into the stock / bond markets because it’s the only thing they know and feel secure about. The panick due to inflation hitting their wallets, coupled with the massive influx of US cash flowing in from other countries trying to recoup their value, causes the stock market to be the last resort to store wealth.
Bad idea.
The Chinese & Russians & big money knows the world financial system is crashing and they’ve positioned themselves to be the top dog after the crash.
The communists used to have 5 year plans that always failed, where as America always looked 20-30 years down the road. Now that America has been overrun by ignorant leftists and Keynesian morons, our enemies look 100 years down the road, while the US govt has 5 year plans every year. I was always told to do what the smartest guys in the room were doing, everyone but America is buying physical gold for AFTER the reset and violence is over. Ugly times come
American leadership no longer even looks 5 years down the road my friend, they only look as far ahead as the next November.
“Nobody had ever seen anything like this industry before, or had to figure out some way to deal with it, and it was such an enormous force in everyday life thereafter that it shattered human relationships with nature and the planet nature rode in on”
Mr Kunstler,
You could use the above statement to reference our “information economy” and the internet.
“So it was then, and so it is now….”
A political skinner.
It should be possible to write some code that will find all places the word ‘socialist’ appears on this page and replace it with the word ‘republican’ or ‘GOP’ (depends on the kind of dog reading). Find mentions of ‘Lenin’ and change that name to ‘Reagan’ instead. Alternately change ‘Lenin’ to Pelosi and Socialist to ‘Democratic Party’ or D.O.C. or whatever you select in settings.
A red blue toggle slide can set mode Slide it left for left (blue side) and right for right (red side). As a browser plugin a tiny picture of Lenin can go up next to the bookmark star with a red verboten stop circle and line across his face. That can open a control panel to set different political persuasions. Another button and we can have a gay time or other kind of ‘transformative experience.
Just like you can change the desktop background you could be able to change the appearance of everything you read. It can be skinned to reflect only ideologies you respect in a positive light and it can kick any other ways of looking at the world to the curb.
No other dank and moldy points of view to ruin your days. But if you really need a two minute hate and want to feel really upset you can always put it in reverse mode or turn it off. Otherwise it is happy happy joy joy, true solidarity.
It could be all the rage.
Voting could be reduced to simply reading browser settings and nobody will actually have to vote or think about any issues at all. If that is not progress what is! You just would have voted the way you had your browser set anyway.
What do we say comrades? Should I get a Patreon Account going, quit my day job, and get to work?
A.I. can improve your life by putting virtual rose colored glasses between you and reality. I can take this beyond simple word substitutions. Since nobody actually is into any political action of any kind and has the blanket covers on the bed of reality pulled up high.
Then it is no foul and I get rich; and that works for me!
How much pork do you eat?
or do you prefer pork in house bills and get a cut?
I believe the expression is: I like it on the ‘barrelhead’, but that is so vintage. Now as long as the plastic card works when the bacon is on the checkout counter I’m happy. Can’t cook a house bill. Well, yes you can but not the way I mean. Dogs can’t eat paper any more than humans can.
Dogs will eat poop, paper -if meats wrapped in it.
Plenty of people eat shit too.
Janos say “Dog eat poop so he can lick master on face.”
I no say that but I understand this time. I no like you very much.
You post about the echo chamber of modern day mass social media.
There in lies the root of the problem people not being allowed to read the other side of the argument and accepting the debate.
Instead people are locked into meme de jour political diatribes and not using simple common sense.
Daniel 4 tells of a wealthy ruler controlling most powerful Civilization up to that time. He forgot his Spiritual underpinnings, and was reduced to
homelessness, living as a derelict without shelter. The kingdom was all but lost, but as the Scripture says in Daniel 4 V-15 “…held from complete destruction by bands of Iron and Brass”.
Abraham Lincoln was elected into a war, and was aware of Scripture. Lincoln had a mural on the ceiling of his travelling office railway car, depicting The “Valley Forge Vision of George Washington”. You can look it up; suffice to say the Vision tells of “Three Great Trials” for the Union of States. The Revolutionary War was trial #1 and a careful read of battle details etc., reveals how close and harrowing that conflict was. Sidebar: our first conflict with Germans… Lincoln understood Daniel 4 and cognizant of v-15 or not he was instrumental in bringing railway from a disconnected hodgepodge to a standard gauge and brought along rational timer zones: Standard Time. America had/has her “Bands Of Iron & Brass.
Jerry Brown is now Director of the BULLETIN OF ATOMIC SCIENTSTS organization. Brown promotes a High Speed Rail network; instead, should focus BULLETIN members on the rebuild of rail branch lines into food production corridors. Brown is keenly aware, as well as some Kunstler mavens, we earthlings are in greater peril now than at the worst period of the 20th Century “Cold War”. More moving parts, more Atomic Bomb Club players, more incentive for a rogue element military or political to do some “False Flag” detonations. Maybe in the Troposphere above fat dumb & happy America? Oh, I forgot the Mohammedans: Islam now holds their hands on advanced military technology including Nuclear bombs (Pakistan), meaning the most determined belief system on earth is now a first-string advanced player in the “Big Game.
Biblical record and obscure visions aside, America is without doubt heading into her Third and most deadly Era of Upheaval ; a combination of all manner of do-doo hitting the fan at the same time. “Time On Target”?, This grand junction of these things is called “The Long Emergency by some in these parts. Alas, the railway line mileage & reach in America, now hollowed out, ripped into a shadow of the rail matrix begun by Lincoln William Forstchen writes on a version of the long emergency in his “ONE SECOND AFTER”. And yes, railway helps save the day, almost as afterthought. The value in Forstchen is his narrative of America paying a heavy price, for coming into the Cyberattack/EMP events sans railway interconnectivity.
This writer has maintained rail mode technical library and map collection of ALL heritage and abandoned US railway corridor footprint. Sadly, few of USA 3000 County Planner/Disaster Recovery offices have done likewise. Food distribution is life sustaining. Breakdown of food distribution & water etc. means slow and uncomfortable death. US had many military RR units, see the Ft. Eustis VA template. Military moniker for railroads circa 1950 was:
“Second Dimension Surface Transport Logistics Platform” “Nuf Sed”
I came across this one only yesterday and it strikes me as apt:
2 Timothy 4:
3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
Chesterton said that some day saying, “Grass is green” would become a matter of drawing swords. That day has come.
Oh, Jim, where do I start?
I will grant you that socialism as a RE-distributive system is doomed to fail. Once the capitalists have what they believe is their share of the wealth it’s already too late. As the bankers control the credit of the nation, democracy is effectively quashed.
What to do then? We could turn to socialism as a distributive system. The difference being how the workplace is organized. We have examples of this in Spain under the Mondragon system of worker owned cooperative enterprises. Control of the means of production, what’s produced, how it’s produced, where it’s produced, and who get the profits of production happens right on the shop floor. The bosses and the workers are one in the same. And guess what? it works. There are no disparities in CEO pay because there are no CEO’s. There are no shareholders voting to move production to Vietnam because there are no shareholders sitting on their backsides collecting dividends for having done nothing to get product out the door and to the customers.
This is socialism. This is society having a say in how it sustains itself. This is not redistribution because the proceeds of production never make it to a parasitic class of owners in the first place. Putting a socialist veneer on top of a capitalist system is a non-starter anyway. The capitalists already have all the socialism they want or need. Privatize the profits and socialize the costs is their model.
To understand this we need to go back in history before the factory system. Back when individual workers acquired their raw materials, transformed them into commodities, and sold them to their customers. Some crafts were organized into guilds where the knowledge and skills were passed down through a system of apprentices, journeymen, and masters. Was this some idyllic era of everyone living the good life off the fruits of their labors? Not quite. Public sanitation was still centuries away. Society was still stratified. Remember all those kings and dukes and their hangers on?
What changed? How did we go from a system of producers in small enterprises to what we have now? Blame it on that wiseguy Thomas Newcomen and his atmospheric engine. He figured out how to get heat to do useful work. We usually associate James Watt with the steam engine for all his improvements, which were substantial. But, I digress. The steam engine was a huge improvement over the water wheel. It could deliver much more power much more quickly that falling water. With that came the demand for stronger metals, more precise gearing, better bearings, etc. The cam that started out on the waterwheel would have to be redesigned to cope with the power and loads available through steam. With that came a revolution in machine tools to get the precision necessary to fabricate machines that wouldn’t destroy themselves in the first few minutes of operation.
Two among many things followed from this. Machines are expensive compared to hand tools. The rich mercantilists now had a whole new economy of steam powered tools to invest in. The other thing that gets overlooked is how the skills of the craftsmen were translated into the motion of the machines by the use of cams, linkages, gearing, etc. In effect the new capitalists appropriated the intellectual property of the guilds and programmed it into their machines. Now instead of going to the local gadget maker for your gadget, you go to the gadget factory to get a gadget that has scarcely been touched by human workers. And for a modest price because, again, a machine had more to do with its fabrication than a human worker.
This new industrial process had the knock-on effect of deskilling the workforce and drastically reducing the value of their labor. It also flooded the markets with cheap commodities. One might guess that so what if your wages were lower, everything you buy is cheaper. But that’s not the case. Then tendency was for employers to pay as little as possible to maximize their profits. There was also a pool of chronically unemployed and underemployed works that tended to force wages even lower. The US of the 19th and early 20th century was an exception. US manufacturers were faced with a chronic labor shortage that kept industrial wages relatively high. This is one reason immigration was seen as a good thing. Not so much now.
So, here we are. We live in a system of industrial capitalism that constantly seeks higher returns on its capital. If that means moving to cheap overseas labor markets or dreaming up new financial scams, so be it. Ask yourself if the workers had direct control over the means of production would they shoot themselves in the foot? Would they voluntarily put themselves out of work or swindle themselves? Up until the mid-20th century gains in productivity were somewhat shared out among the workers. Now wages are stagnant and the 0.01% sees the gains. If that were up for a vote, how many workers would vote for that? There’s a long list of other inequities that I won’t trouble you with, but you get the point. In a socialist system there’s no need of redistribution because the social parasites are ruled out in the first place. Why don’t we in the US of A have socialism for everyone and not just the capitalists? Because the capitalists fight it tooth and nail. They’ve stacked the deck. The game is rigged. Their wealth has bought them the control of government and the national narrative.
However, there’s a time bomb ticking away. Besides capitalism’s big internal contradiction of selling cheap crap to their impoverished masses, the growth they so crave is becoming more difficult to come by. EROEI in the oil sector is creeping downward. There are no new cheap labor markets to exploit. Consumption financed by debt is limited by consumers ability to service their debts and they’re about tapped out. Henry Kissinger once said that in a crisis the solutions come from the ideas in discussion at the time. As much as I despise that monster, he’s right. The capitalists will tell you the solution is more capitalism just as if your stove is on fire the solution is gasoline. Heaven forbid there be a calm and informed discussion of socialism. That’s not in their interests. They’ve had their turn. Now maybe someone else should call the shots.
Oh, Jim, where do I start?
I d ask, where does it end?
Excellent observations!
Does everyone get a pony or don’t they? How does the story end?
Just a new collar and tags for you, K-Pup.
Assuming “pony” is a metaphor for “everything in the world you could possibly imagine”, probably never. Taken literally, I doubt there is enough room or fodder to keep 7.5 billion ponies, not to mention the vet bills. Back in the real world I’ve noticed that keeping horses, and presumably ponies, is mainly a hobby for the rich. Not all people who own and raise ponies are rich, but to whom would they sell the offspring of their ponies? And if not to a rich person, then to someone who in turn wants to pay for their operation by selling ponies. Again, to the rich. There are some exceptions. I know of two people who owned horses that were near their financial breaking point. Their hobby was ruining them. Before the age of mechanical traction horses were a necessity, albeit an expensive one. In a given horse drawn economy they consume about 1/4 of the agricultural produce. Their gains over human powered cultivation are great but the expense of keeping an idle horse was intolerable. Can’t pull a plow? Off to the knackers with you! In thermodynamic terms to keep an idle pony is a tremendous luxury most likely subsidized by, wait for it, cheap oil. So, by pony does one mean a life of luxury and ease? Not likely. Under socialism the worst off would be better off and those with a taste for the grift would be bitterly disappointed. Socialism isn’t meant to get you to heaven. It’s to keep you from hell.
I want a pony.
Yes, they cannot control themselves and will never do so. They must be controlled by better Men. Thus a strong, centralized but non-Marxist Government is called for. The two spheres cannot be separated. They must dance together and will do so, despite Libertarian fantasies. But one must lead and the other follow. By not choosing and constraining Government with the best of intentions (in some cases), we allowed the Private sphere to triumph – and that dooms us all.
We need an American National Socialism a la Eugene Debbs and Jack London. No Socialist past the mid Century is worthy paying attention to. Just slaves of the Soviet Union or later on, the new homegrown form of Cultural Marxism, also call Political Correctness.
Woody Guthrie was worthy of a Socialist moniker.
Henry David Thoreau?
Alan Ginsberg?
Yippies in Chicago?
Hippies in San Francisco?
Was Jim Hendrix a Capitalist?
How about Jim Morison?
How about Joplin?
How about John Lennon?
Was Sterling Haddon a Capitalist?
How about Will Gere?
RW
Green Alba, Bt, KD,
It is. A right silly right-wing meme.
Me–tell that to Lee Rigby. Or the granny arrested for complaining about his murder.
I’m more familiar with Eleanor Rigby. All the lonely people, where do they all come from? Your throwing that cum down for GA.
chum chum
I did not mean that. I legitimately forgot the h.
big paws
Freudian slip.
Go for the low hanging fruit why don’t you.
You said Muslims were living ‘high on the hog’ while pensioners were freezing. Lee Rigby’s murder was vile, but I don’t get the connection, sorry.
Sorry, meant that for Malthuss.
He hooked you. Think about his next move.
I’ve tried to unhook myself further up. Will see if it works.
to kiss and make up.
No problem. I sent you a love note later in thread.
Enjoy the gals tale of being mixed race.
If socialism is so ineffective, why does the US struggle so viciously to suppress it in countries where it has no reason to care.
If the roles were reversed and a super powerful socialist country worked as hard as the US has done to suppress any upstart capitalist country I dare say it would be even easier to assert that capitalism doesn’t work.
Not all capitalism is bad and not all socialism is bad. Unfortunately both are susceptible to forms of cancer caused by the greed of the humans who run things from the top. There is much good socialism embedded in our form of government but it is being continually underminded by cancerous capitalism (e.g. cheating and fraud in medicare, rapacious pharma companies, etc)
Two words: ‘profit margin‘.
The 1967 movie ‘The Graduate’, which showcased a guy who should be retired and collecting SS now ,notably reduced ‘profit margin‘ to the single word ‘plastics‘.
What went wrong in Venezuela? Im not trying to be provocative, Id really like to know?
Brh
Oil prices went down?
Socialism?
Population explosion. definitely.
Janos would say, ‘Browns never make great civilizations, always 3rd world.’
You don’t say!
And you are not alone. The world is very long and when people hear it they get brain freeze and can’t talk. That does not help.
word
They ran out of toilet paper, and the next thing you know, human nature was running the show.
Venezuela Is Falling Apart
Scenes from daily life in the failing state
Moisés NaímFrancisco Toro
May 12, 2016
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/05/venezuela-is-falling-apart/481755/
Another excellent post Jim. Thank you
Some Comrades are saying the Mexican drug cartels are embedded in the Democratic party, which is why Dems are balls to the wall for open borders, which permits easy criminal access into the US, and smuggling in of drugs and sex slaves with impunity. Big Dems get their cut and run flak for the Cartels. Everybody’s happy!
Brh
And how much did the cartels pay you to write that? Open borders mean competition. If anybody can smuggle then supply exceeds demand and price falls. The cartels want the best wall tax money can buy and they will be giving Trump a cut one way or another.
I think ‘some Comrades are saying‘ means you read the memo and are being clever.
Don’t know about the Dems now, but the cartels go all the way back to the 80’s with the Reagan Administration CIA and the whole Iran Contra caper, so credit the Rs with first mover status. When it comes to in your face corruption, you’ve got to give credit where credit is due. The R’s have historically been far more bold and creative than their copycat colleagues across the aisle.
No not even close nor could they anymore!
Considering the new narrative is a far left leaning media outs Republicans for everything and hides Democrat corruption even at the cost of unmasking their collusion.
College coach makes 9 million a year and a great pension plan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_ItX2KJY8U
Nice mention of Blake’s Dark Satanic Mills, incidentally,
Its those dark satanic mills that led a century later to mass slaughter on the WW1 battlefields of Western Europe.
Brh
Excuse me BRH – do you mean the mechanization of warfare? I’d like to know.
Do the denouncers of democratic socialism, in its’ many forms, realize that the alternative, in present day America, is not democratic free market capitalism? At this point in time, the corporations run the government, not the other way around. It is called “inverted totalitarianism”, folks! Corporate fascism or oligarchgal rule will also suffice. There are no Bill of Rights included in corporate charters.
When the TBTF bankers came to Capitol Hill looking for a bailout during the 2008 financial crisis, they said they would gladly take the money but there would be no oversight allowed. In addition, they warned that any attempts at prosecution would be met with another financial crash. How’s that square with the good ol” Constituition!
I learned about Jim’s blog and writting from listening to a Warren Pollack’s podcast. Both have hit the nail on the head, when it comes to America now being a land of scams, frauds and rackets. Nothing in our culture is on the level. Liberals, conservatives and their bastions in the MSM push for more war and a bigger military-industrial-intelligence-complex. Now that’s socialism.
A country, where citizens die because they can’t get the healthcare or medicine they need, isn’t much of a country. The most devout libertarian, after being run over by a drunk driver while cycling for his cardiovascular health and thereby incurring a TBI, will likely agree due to an inability to work again. The jungle is a scary place to be, just don’t weaken. Survival of the fittest is only temorary, you know!
Evelyn’s
Your observations on the extremes is right on!
However, looking at extreme forms of both in the vernacular.
Socialism’s big problem is that after awhile, nobody gives a s—t about what happens because they do not get anything out of it. Communism is the extreme of this. Nobody cares, nothing progresses.
The people of Venezuela do not care, the people of Syria do not care, the people of the USSR did not care. Pure socialism is a dead end street. Something needs to light a fire underneath the Socialisr State.
Capitalism is the opposite. People getting advantage for their actions motivates activity. Profit is a powerful drug. The problem is what greed and corruption as the result of greed does. In addition to that is the natural result of Capitalism, that is, winners and losers. So two problems with Capitalism, how to control excesses of corruption, and what do you do with the losers?
The answer is both. One controls the problems of the other.
How to do the balance is what our politics is all about. Unfortunately, the folks in charge today are so politically divided and just plain stupid that not much is happening or will be happening.
Right, as if the Elite can tilt the pinball machine. As if they are just quanta or atomized individuals in your Newtonian Adam Smith machine. New flash: they attain class consciouness long before anyone else – and they’re smarter too. Such a greedy Elite (and greed ISN’T good) can only be taken down and controlled by a Good Elite. You don’t think the latter exist though. What an ultimately low view of humanity you have.
oops, should be “can’t tile the pinball machine”. Big hands over here.
Give up, Janos.
“Socialism’s big problem is that after awhile, nobody gives a s—t about what happens because they do not get anything out of it. Communism is the extreme of this. Nobody cares, nothing progresses.”
Is that so different than the life of minimum wage workers or even those with marginally higher wages stuck in a dying community or industry who has no realistic prospects for ever achieving a better life or job?
A lot of pie in the sky gets talked about here in our capitalistic wonderland but the reality is somewhat different.
What was the informational tidbit floated about during the recent gov’t shutdown…? Something horribly high percentage of American citizens do not have the means to come up with even $400 in an emergency.
And, all the while, we have an choir of soi disant intellectuals bellowing about fascism resurging. But, lest we forget, this beastly thing had roots in the same squalor, and those tootling that particular tune are as much on the wrong song-sheet as those singing about socialism.
If what’s afoot out there in Deplorable-land is an expression of the dire necessity of re-localization, that being the re-shaping of community and economy on a more geographically constrained level, this one thing would be the opposite to what the fascists of a life-time ago were fighting for. Hitler was all about lebensraum – “empire” to you and me – and so was Mussolini and so was Hirohito.
But fascistic expansionism isn’t what we’ve got taking shape now, at least, in my humble opinion. The daily brawls in Washington are in part the reflection of a large contingent in the American polity that want to reclaim control over what happens to them, opposing the borderless world of free movement of money and people that suits the upper economic strata.
But Washington is just show biz, the actors there at the beck and call of the donor class, that handful of people and businesses that coughed up a billion or so for the 2016 campaign to both Republican and Democrat.
And, as sure as we sit here, the agenda of the donor class ain’t the Deplorable agenda. The reconfiguration of life will either come with the founding of political parties not in the pockets of the Davos people, or it comes outside the political and institutional apparatus of the country altogether. The former might be preferable to the latter.
Is the object of the Davos crowd and the New World Order preservation of Their Wealth?
Yep, preservation and enhancement.
Any chance it is to reduce the disparity on a global level?
At some point, this reconciliation is going to have to take place.
Plenty of ‘Talent’ brought in from Asia to service Davos honchos.
Don’t discount that as a reason for flying in on your private jet. Good chow and expensive Wine, too. Why not go?
Brh
self-reorganizes back into something that resembles the old-time feudalism
When a Westerner hears that the Middle Ages are coming, he thinks: “Well, well, how marvelous, my grandchildren will be feudal lords living in their castle.”
My Russian compatriots at this news fall into a panic: “Oh brother, I will be made a serf and swapped for a greyhound puppy!”
People simply do not understand that the New Middle Ages will be much more technological than the Modern, and the new feudal lords will live surrounded by their home robots, and not living servants.
And those who do not become feudal lords will turn into gamers who never leave the magnificent virtual worlds. In a world where robots will work, it is much cheaper to provide plebs that have become unnecessary with games and shows than with work (at least, good people will not screw up the equipment and waste resources).
Or they could just kill us. It’s cheaper, and more fun.
Kind of messy, though. Will the robots be cleaning up afterwards?
(I love you guys. You’re a riot. Call the Riot Squad.)
A comment again on the Green New Deal and AOC.
Almost everything that is in the plan is going to happen by themselves over the next fifty years or so, caused by politics and AGW, and the depletion of resources.
Just like everything, this government and the public hates quick changes and AOC coming out and saying that we want it done in twelve years is ignorant.
The economic contraction will be enormous and the effect on folks’ lifestyles enormous. Human nature is that long change cycles enable adaptation and are more palatable. Step function changes cause wars.
If the 12 year plan miraculously got put in place, we would lose the human impact in 12 years instead of over fifty years.
Anybody want to sign up? Somebody must, America elected all these geniuses.
Chicago strikes again.
Rahm is going to give $1000 to 1000 people for 18 months. Sounds like a UBC experiment.
Another failure to put on the pile.
UBC reaction to Capitalism and AI will be a failure as it has been in its trials.
Wealth is man hours, inflation is printing money. Paying people to watch TV will collapse the economy.
I wonder how the pensioners in Chicago feel about their tax money being given to folks that did nothing to deserve it.
In Chi, free swag to be spent on malt liquor, Kool Cigarettes, ho’s, weed, ‘in de club’, and other necessary and sundry expenses. But really, how far will $1000 take you? I think this stipend is measley and should be increased, to at least $10,000 per month.
Brh
racist
In today’s NYT, there’s an excellent oped entitled “Your Grandchildren Are Already In Debt,” which dovetails quite nicely with James’ commentary today. (here’s a link: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/11/opinion/debt-tax-democrats-presidential-elections.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage)
The author correctly points out that all of the “socialistic” programs proposed today (Medicare for all, free-college, etc.) have to be paid for somehow. Expecting the rich to pay for it all is simply not possible. As with so many things, we need to think more carefully about the future. I believe that we could alter our national priorities and figure out how to better “socialize” programs to help Americans, but I’m afraid when it comes to anything that slightly resembles the dreaded “Socialism,” Americans reject them out-of-hand. (except, of course, when the giveaways go to the corporations and the wealthy.
Americans trust the business community much more than the government, except the urban gimmes.
Not THIS American. Of course the terms government and private sector are increasingly synonymous. They’re both extensions of the same entity.
Then they are fools. And of course you’re right and they are fools and tools.
If Americans are indeed forced to “pay for such programs” and the poor are the beneficiaries, then exactly who, if not the rich, would do the paying? The Government issues the money via the Fed, therefore it is the only entity that COULD pay for it. If balancing the budget becomes a concern, cut off the MICC and the corporate welfare, and dare I say it, increase taxes on the billionaires. Don’t worry, if the billionaires don’t like it they could leave if they wanted to, but I guarantee you they won’t. Where would they go if they could? Russia? China? They know the sweetest deal to be had is right here where they stole their riches in the first place.
South America some already have land and bunkers down there!
Switzerland!
Cayman Islands!
As I’ve pointed out before, Bush Crime Family has land in Paraguay. (Pretty fucking stupid choice I’d think but where else are puto yanquis going to be welcome?)
All Americans a free shitters with the elite .001% drinking straight from the Federal Reserve spigot and the rest on food stamps issued by Debit Cards that are owned by JPMorgan Chase.
Yes, Jamie Dimon is profiting off of the Food Stamp scheme that the US Government controls. Dimon is taking a BIG off of the downtrodden great unwashed masses & destitute in society.
The rich on Wall Street don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.
RW
I ran into a term that I thought was interesting awhile back. The term was Lemon Socialism: A pejorative term for a form of government intervention in which govt. subsidies go to weak or failing firms, with the effective result being that the govt. (and thus the taxpayer) absorbs part or all of the recipient’s losses. In other words, the company gets to keep it’s profits, but it’s losses are shifted to the taxpayer. Such payments may be made with the intent of preventing further, systemic damage to what otherwise might be considered a free marketplace. 2008 may be described as Lemon Socialism, the pejorative arises from the belief among free market economists that in a functional free market, failing companies will be replaced by better functioning companies in response to market demand. While receiving Government bailouts, companies such as Goldman Sachs and others, continued giving bonuses to their employees, and in fact had never halted the practice even during the panic. In Iceland, Lemon Socialism is known as “The Devil’s Socialism”, and was rejected by the citizens of Iceland after the collapse. I think there is food for thought here.
Thatcher [the old creep] may have coined it.
Or in other terms Socialize risk and privatize profit.
This is absolutely amazing!
After watching the four main Sunday’s political broadcasts of the week, for the first time I was unable to extract anything significant from them.
And this is after a week, during which the United States almost got itself into the new Bay of Pigs, maybe even new Vietnam, the Civil War 2.0 began to shoot a little on the streets of New York, and the President of the United States delivered his most significant speech on behalf of the union of his supporters (Red World Project) with the Bush clan (White World Project in black polka dots), that is, almost on behalf of the ideologically unified West, opposing the West, united by Clinton madness, as it turns out representing the very essence of the Black World Project.
And all I keep hearing is Clinton Madness.
White World Project in black polka dots
Hold on now just a minute there, Finc. Now we’re adding polka dots to the equation too? Have you perhaps gone PLAID?
Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini.
Bikini was named after the island Bikini where the Atom Bomb was tested. A well rounded girl like Gidget in “How to Stuff a Wild Bikini” is a Bomb thrown at the masculine mind.
Damn those Gay fashion designers! And those tribal textile companies!
Sung by Neil Sedaka, said to be the biggest flamer in Vegas, once Liberace died.
Not it really a bikini but it is close:
https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/enhanced/web03/2012/7/6/16/enhanced-buzz-28835-1341607215-1.jpg?downsize=800:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto
She wasn’t a bad looking woman in her youth, but the more they have in the beginning, the worse they look in the end, much like tattoos. Maybe you’re right, maybe Satan is in charge down here. Not for nothing is he called King of the World. You pay now or play later; all enjoyment being merely on credit to be paid with interest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXSUEU7ISfQ
////////////////////////////////////////
Atom Bomb Baby: The Five Stars [1957]
.
.
.
Atom bomb baby, loaded with power
Radioactive as a TV tower
A nuclear fission in her soul
Loves with electronic control
////////////////////////////////////////
Down in the comments: “Let’s use Atomic bombs to solve world hunger?”
After watching the four main Sunday’s political broadcasts of the week, for the first time I was unable to extract anything significant from them.
This is a serious issue. I don’t care what happened this week this time. Being unable to extract anything significant from mainstream political broadcasts should be normal not an exception in any way. The fact that you had been getting messages previously indicates an aggressive course of medication may be in order. In other words. Your crazy!
You’re
Thanks for today’s big picture post, James.
In the blur of events and the outpourings of opinionators about those events I know I can rely on you to provide much-needed focus and perspective.
===============
If anyone reading this is not already supporting Jim through Patreon, I hope today’s post encourages them to sign up.
Jim, is that you?
C’mon guys.
It’s completely dishonest to pretend there are clear categorizations like ‘capitalist’, ‘communist’, ‘socialist’, etc.
Everyone here is guilty of gross reductionism, and in order to avoid being a total idiot by using these weasel words, it would be better to provide more light than heat by discussing subjects in terms of actual factuals.
Just try it. Thanks
Now, in respect to Russia in 1917, whatever Lenin proposed was popularly received as preferable to the existing arrangement, which could only be described as a feudal society overlaid on nascent industrialism where a concept of social mobility was a dream and a great many people lived in a continuous generational state indistinguishable from abject slavery. And Marx was a world class thinker and did not kill a single human being, ever. The intellectual dishonesty of his detractors is not surprising though.
What AOC/Markey propose are specific policy prescrpitions. Slandering them might feel good in the short term but any real political change will appear at first as apostacy. Social security was regarded the same way when it was first proposed. Or should I say, slandered.
‘gross reductionism’ is …. gross
Now, in respect to Russia in 1917, whatever Lenin proposed was popularly received as preferable to the existing arrangement, which could only be described as a feudal society overlaid on nascent industrialism where a
”
In 1917, out of a total of 822 delegates in the Constituent Assembly, the Mensheviks had 248 delegates – far more than the Bolsheviks. However, people sitting around discussing the way ahead, did not equate to getting things done – and getting things done was Lenin’s main quality. He got things done as a result of meticulous organisation. The Mensheviks were skilled philosophers but failed to carry things out at a grass roots level.
The Mensheviks also had a major internal weakness. Their openness allowed Mensheviks to hold differing views to other Mensheviks within the party. Therefore there was open disagreement in the party that was not only tolerated but, in the spirit of democracy, encouraged. If the Mensheviks had one belief, it was the support of pure Marxism as laid down by Karl Marx in his publications.
The Mensheviks also made a number of practical errors. While Lenin wanted to pull Russia out of World War One, the Mensheviks wanted Russia to continue fighting in this highly unpopular war.
As the Bolsheviks became more popular with the working class in the major cities of Russia, so the Mensheviks became less popular. As one rose, the other had to decline. The Mensheviks also suffered from people in the party joining the Bolsheviks when it became obvious that they were winning over the people.
”
In America, Russian history and Harry Potter are on the same shelf and it is not a top shelf.
I confess having a a cartoon of a pastiche of a concept of Historical Asia… in general
Yes, the second revolution is always the kill shot. Thomas Paine wanted a French terror for America after we won our independence from England.
And while the Jews were squabbling over who was going to take over after Lenin, Stalin, the “Wolfe of the Steppes” took it all. Take heart my brothers, they can be beaten. Putin did the same generations later.
Drop dead.
How many people did Alfred Rosenberg kill, or Julius Streicher? Still wound up on the gallows. Marxism is only a popular movement in people’s imaginations. It is pure authoritarianism in reality.
Great point. The Nuremberg Trials were the abdication of a thousand years of Western Jurisprudence. We were reverted to an Asiatic form of savagery and revenge under a tattered cloak of respectability.
Bolshevik show trials.
Adroit thinkers (with nothing to lose) like Göring managed to turn the tables on the hayseed lawyers the Americans brought in. Same thing in Tokyo: Indian jurist Radhabinod Pal pointed out the contradiction in the victors passing judgment on the vanquished, according to the rules of the victors.
Wholeheartedly agree.
RW
” And Marx was a world class thinker and did not kill a single human being, ever”
SnakPak,
You do know that Marx grew up in a family of means…even had servants. I once read that he “knocked up” one of the maids…refused to acknowledge the offspring….
“From each, according to his ability….”
Why are primates so weird and superstitious?
http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-family-tree
“Mark Taylor, author of the popular book “The Trump Prophecies,” says everyone needs to brace for the battles ahead. Taylor says, “God stepped in in 2016 and put Donald Trump in office to hold off the New World Order agenda, basically. They had an agenda with a timeline. It’s written right there down on the Georgia Guide Stones. They are trying to push the agenda because they know they are in trouble. This wasn’t supposed to happen for a while yet. So, now, they are panicking. This is why you are seeing this stuff with the wall. This is why you are seeing all these elites starting to panic, and the panic is starting to set in because their global agenda has been denied by the Most High God as far as the timing is concerned. God is holding it off right now. So, they are trying to push their agenda ahead.”
The ancient Persians also believed that the Cosmos was a battleground between the Forces of Light and Darkness….
“On the long talked about financial reset, Taylor says, “Is the debt connected to the abortion issue? I don’t know. . . . Trump has already come out and said he wants to ban late-term abortions. We are seeing this stuff playing out. He’s redoing the Supreme Court. Is there a connection? Yeah, I think there is, but the timing of that connection I don’t know. If God sees the heart of this nation and does away with the abortion issue, He’s going to say you know what, I see the heart of the people, and they are repenting on this and actively trying to get rid of Roe v. Wade. So, you know what, I am going to get rid of your debt.”
Is it an accident that God picked a master of bankruptcy to be the current President in the White House? Taylor says, “I think it is not an accident, and I’ll go ahead and release this on your show: This is not the only Trump that is going to be in the White House. I think there is another Trump coming.”
Taylor also continues to predict, “The mass arrests are coming. I wrote in November of 2015, ‘Time is up for those who are corrupt.’ It talked about how God was going to remove the Clintons. . . . You are going to see these people go to prison—period. You are going to see the mass arrests. How many arrests have taken place right now that we don’t even know about? It’s happening undercover right now. Are we fixing to go from a covert war to an overt war where you are now going to see it? . . . The point is, we have had thousands of arrests the mainstream media (MSM) has blacked out and we are not hearing about. People want to watch the fake news, and this is how they are getting their information and not listening to people on alternative media.”
In closing, Taylor says, “I want to encourage people and tell them there is good stuff coming. We are seeing good stuff happening in this country right now, but we have got to be patient and stay in prayer. We’ve got to stay together and, for goodness sakes, stop the backbiting. We are not all going to agree on everything, but we have a common goal and that is to move God and the Kingdom of Heaven’s agenda forward. I totally believe Trump is part of Heaven’s agenda. Trump is moving Heaven’s agenda forward for America and the entire earth. . . . People need to start looking for the good God is doing on the earth right now. We have to stay . . . focused on the mission. God is trying to rescue the spiritually oppressed people of the earth . . .”
Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with Mark Taylor, author of the popular book “The Trump Prophecies.””
Trump is just the shadow of the Coming King. At best his trumpeter. He will fulfill these prophecies, not Trump. Maranatha! Come quickly O Lord!
I always watch Greg Hunter. He is one of the few sources of information that I utilize including this place. I saw that interview as well as the other Mark Taylor interviews. I am not sure how much faith I put into what he “prophesizes”, though I would certainly not deride him as false, not yet. I am all too aware that God can do absolutely anything that He chooses to do, including working to bring America back from the edge, but I am not so sure that He is or will. There is that free will thing you know.
However I lack the ability to see the Big Picture enough to even guess if what I think about where the bulk of our nation is heading to make an educated opinion. The MSM has huge power over what we are allowed to perceive of what the majority feel, think and do. We are only allowed to see through a tiny slit and only in the direction that they choose. I understand there are many who are still decent and caring, but are there enough to make a difference and is there a way that they can act to implement change? I simply do not know.
America, without a doubt still has a HUGE drug, alcohol and consumption problem and that alone cannot be good. So many Americans are so stretched to their limits in debt and decay of income and overextension of their collection of “stuff” that I just do not know. I hope we can come back. I hope we can change, but only time will tell.
God, more than likely, cares less about countries, especially America, than he does the outcome of football games. Overlooking the fact, we were a one time slave state that committed genocide against our native inhabitants, we continue to kill innocent women and children with drone strikes and through our proxy, SA, in Yemen. Our illegal, phony war in Iraq killed hundreds of thousands. Prying babies from mothers who are fleeing murderous drug cartels and legally seeking asylum in our country is probably not something Our Savior would approve of. The Nazis thought God was on their side too. I once naively thought we were the good guys but now I don’t think we ever were.
Pack up your bags and leave the whore of Babylon for a better country.
You obviously loath the United States so leave.
On the face of it, shovelling snow is a pointless task.
For the average man (or woman, for that matter) “play” looks identical to abject labor of some kind or another.
Emotional, Physical, or Mental, “labor” is distinguished from “play” by the amount of “fun” one directly experiences from it.
It seems “fun” must be discounted entirely, if “play” is available, and the “labor” is not absolutely necessary.
One can only conclude that most people have lost the ability to “play” entirely.
Whatever else they are doing, clearly, its emisserating.
This is perhaps why humans are uselessly trying to find an excuse not to have fun- call ti capitalism, communism, fascism…. in reality all “fun” takes is spare time.
Therefore all work is theft; the most advanced stage of human societies is a cheerless adulthood.
Some prescribed LSD- certainly alcohol tobacco and sugar have not worked.
Perhaps PFOS will fortuitously be tuning up our brains, and not lodging inconveniently between two necessary brain cells.
Yes, Homo Faber (Man the Maker) destroyed the nascent Homo Ludens or Man the Player. Our Machines could set us free but alas we are in love with our chains; still monkeys wanting all the bananas, content to see our brother in chains while we are free. Content? Nay, loving it, such is our corruption. Thorstein Veblen said as much many decades ago. Marx is the lowest chakra, Freud the second or sexual charka but Adler was the Psychologist of the Third or Manipura, or the Desire for Power. That more than anything defines our Civilization. And to have Power to a Monkey Man means primarily having power over other Monkey Men.
Who can forget that scene from Metropolis where the young Buddha ventures into forbidden areas of the city and meets the young Goddess bringing the proles into the light of day. Astonished, he asks who are they? She replies, They are your brothers and sisters.
Jung-4th?
I guess so, that and up – though he gets confused after a while since he hasn’t experienced the higher stages. Maslow and his followers are better in some ways, along with the Transpersonalists. Woo Woo Wack Wack alert.
I prefer Young Holt myself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF4HUKczxgg
I recently went shopping for clothes with someone I promised to help. A rare occurrence, as I am a creature of habit.
What a huge amount of labor, human interaction, thinking and stress is the act of shopping. I had forgotten the tremendous investment of energy necessary to leave one’s work-space for three hours of doddering about a department store.
No wonder people prefer to buy on line.
In a way, you have to get dumber before you get smarter; they say failure is the way.
The ancient Greeks seemed to worship the Number 9. Alexander the Great sacrificed to Zeus for 9 days before attacking the Persians. What’s the Big Deal about the Number 9?
I sacrificed a hog to Zeus once for 1 day, and it paid off Big Time….
Do any of you fellow Trans-Doomer CFNers know where I can score a good Collapse “Coo Coo Clock” with instructions to set it to go off when the Shit-Hits-the-Fan? Thank you
“You can call me anything. Just don’t call me Late-for-Supper!”
I’ll look into it. I have a problem too: I need a helmet to go with my chain mail. Do you know any hat makers who could make a hat around a helmet, say like the kind the British soldiers wore in WW1? Perhaps something like Steed had in the Avengers, that can be thrown like a Frisbee to hurt people if one is in a “tight spot”.
Remember Alexandra? I callled her Emma Peel and she loved it. She was so much more fun than Green Alba. Things really are getting worse on all fronts. The Conqueror Worm is just another name for Entropy or vice versa.
“Perhaps something like Steed had in the Avengers, that can be thrown like a Frisbee to hurt people if one is in a “tight spot”.”
Perhaps you could speak to Oddjob. He might have something for you.
Perhaps you could speak to Oddjob. He might have something for you.–that sounds as cryptic as what Janos would post.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddjob
Wiki is your friend, for such trivia.
He could take yer ‘ead awf with one deft sidespin of ‘is titfer…
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/titfer
To save you further confusion.
********
“Oddjob’s hat
“The television show MythBusters tested out the capabilities of Oddjob’s hat, testing whether or not it would have been able to decapitate a stone statue. It failed to do so, and the Mythbusters ultimately labeled it ‘Busted’.
“Oddjob’s lethal hat was ranked tenth in a 2008 20th Century Fox poll for the most popular movie weapon, which surveyed approximately 2,000 films fans.”
You’re welcome.
I’m in whimsical mood today, but I really should do some work.
This site is a terrible work-avoidance pit of temptation for the weak willed.
It’s an iphone app.
Easy, just arrange an alarm clock on a grid-connected smart phone to go off a few years after your life expectancy, and then you’re pretty much off the hook for everything. Why even prep?
Party on Cheese Poof people
Australia had not had a recession in 27 years, because China has not had one in 29 years. America has not had one in 10 years, 8 Obama year and 2 Trump years. With a little luck we can endure 2 more Trump years and then elect a tax the rich liberal who wants the country green by 2030. Despite the pathetic job of HRC of promoting them, green jobs are the future and there’s no going back to coal. Obamacare was a good start. It taxed the rich to pay for healthcare for the rest of the country. But it was just a start. Starting in 2020, lower the Medicare age by 5 years. In ~12 years you would cover the entire population, with the most at risk getting help the soonest. This would gradually increase the load on Medicare and lower the load on private healthcare. Provide healthcare would have time to respond and paint government healthcare as one rung up from bleeding with leeches, allowing them to stay in their parasitic business. This would begin to reign in healthcare costs until a new system would emerge that would cover everybody. Tax the rich to the tune of double what it costs to cover the poor. That way when a Republican happens to cheat his way into office with the retarded electoral college, there is enough there to outlast him until Americans wake up again 4 years later. This would condition Americans to the benefits of government run healthcare and prevent Republicans taking us back to the Dark Ages every 4 – 8 years. Socialism works. I’ve never heard of it bankrupting the rich. I’ve never even heard of it coming close to doing that. All I ever hear is how it’s going to do that.
We’re gonna need Pecker Woods not Whigs or Wiggers.
Science, math and physics makes it easy to do things like creating new ways to kill people at a distance. But science, math, and physics also makes it easy to figure out how not to do that.
Blowback is something you never expect.
Its not like humanity didn’t understand that creating an indestructible molecule wouldn’t get into people’s bodies.
What happened was, our power structures were ready made to favor the production of it. The “Environment” didn’t exist as far as they were concerned.
Well, shit, now it does. But the open-ended laws are still in place in which Fluorinated compounds can be produced (with perfect knowledge where they will end up).
Theres STILL time for you lead-brained monkeys!
A global, regulatory agency: UN Environmental Protection Agency.
The only way PFOS levels will be suppressed is if their manufacture is suppressed.
We will need the state security apparatus of all the world’s jurisdictional mandates.
I honestly think it could reduce illegal production by 99%.
But what can replace “Plastics”? And Mrs Robinson is always lifting her dress high for a young Dustin Hoffman. He has aged but she has not. Her secret? Plastics.
What of the Nuremberg trials?
And an author explained the potlaches or whatever they were
as the Rich PW Indians arriving by canoe.
The slaves would lie on shore and be crushed by boat.
It was a ‘see how rich I am? I kill slaves as I make a grand entrance to the party.’ Rich indians, not whole tribes.
Do you agree the Whites freeze to death while Muslims live high on a pork free hog in UK?
https://fullfact.org/news/muslims-uk-viral-poster-factchecked/
Britain was undone by sausage, perfume, ale and coal smog
My hypothesis.
Small nations that use up all their resources, then over-project themselves, are simply undone by time. And our old friend entropy, which eventually undoes everyone.
Janos say “Free pork make voter very happy.”
Everyone else say ‘if God had meant us to be vegetarians, he wouldn’t have made bacon’.
There has to be the suggestion of sex to sell a movie ticket. The concept of plastics has been used to get laid, I have no doubt. Even the noted Native American actor Dustin Hoffman, in Little Big Man got some nookie.
Alas, in reality the general nookie is well past its due date, and everyone is screwed by other means
GreenAlba February 11, 2019 at 3:24 pm #
There shouldn’t have been any British colonialists in India, ninny. But there were.
/ I get that you are scottish or live in Scotland.
I dont blame you for the mess UK is in.
I agree w Janos comment about ‘muslims to the front of the line’
DO YOU DISPUTE WHAT HE POSTED?
My facts about Lee Rigby were just a pointer in the Whites to the back of the line, [or 6 feet under] mussies first. No direct connection.
ON TO MORE HUMOROUS THINGS–
You might get a kick out of this lass and her not White great grandma.
Her grand dad was born in India to a soldier and his Indian woman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjFxaH9Sdjo&t=397s
Malthuss, if you hear the distant sound of contented snoring, it’s me…
zzzzzzzzzzzzz………
And our old friend entropy, which eventually undoes everyone…
and you are living proof of that. The mummy lives.
Aw, nobody’s called me that since my kids were little 🙂
This site is a terrible work-avoidance pit of temptation for the weak willed.
aint that the truth.
Not exactly true. You are typing while thinking. That is always good practice, and considering some of the posts I’ve read here, people need more of it.
Its self-evident that America has the ability to market a brand of canned food, that with a few changes in ingredients from cat or dog food, make a cut-rate “Human Chow” that would create 1) Enormous profit and 2) Solve a problem vexing good will.
HUMAN CHOW
PORK, BEEF BROTH, TOMATOES, CALCIUM CHLORIDE, CITRIC ACID, KIDNEY BEANS, PINK BEANS, BEEF, RABBIT, DEHYDRATED ONIONS, CONTAINS 2% OR LESS OF FOLLOWING: SPICES, JALAPENO PEPPERS, SALT, FLAVOURING, CORNSTARCH, SUGAR, DEHYDRATED BELL PEPPERS, CHICKEN BROTH, DEHYDRATED CHILE DE ARBOL PEPPERS, PAPRIKA
All rights reserved. (c) 2019
The Saving The World by Making America Great Again, LLC.
Muncie, IN 47925
How about soylent green? I would like to see an ingredients list on it.
It’s called Spam. The Russians loved it during WW2. They would make a stew from it, eat it with bread and vodka.
My BIGGER (ahem) point was that, world hunger could be solved with a Manhattan project of canned food, and that since the US runs the UN we could essential finance become WORLD HEROES whilst simultaneously generating ENORMOUS PROFITS
The thing about Politics is that everyone is fooled that policy can’t be created without it
ARE YOU LISTENING DONALD TRUMP?!?!?
When US VP Henry Wallace toured the Kolyma Death Camp in Siberia in 1944 as a special guest of Comrade Stalin, he noted the guards were well fed on American spam, Campbells pork and beans, and canned hams from Iowa. Those Gulag guards were eating pretty good courtesy of Uncle Sam!
brh
Disgusting. Have you read, ‘With God in Russia’?
Are you kidding? The first ones into the breach when the wall came down were KFC, McDonalds and Pizza Hut and they were welcomed with legs spread wide open
To be saved from that diet of stale potatoes, vodka, and turnip soup!
Really????? Another reference to legs spread wide open. Good to know its always on your mind. I am gonna go hurl now onto the latest edition of NYT. Thanks!!!
What the socialists are seeing is unfettered greed and wealth accumulation sanctioned by the state. Leading to hollowed out industrial areas, decrepit small towns, dilapidated strip malls, rotting suburbs, and the armies of rotten toothed tweakers that inhabit them.
Certain cities have become nothing but playgrounds for the international superrich. In their $250 million apartments.
I won’t shed a tear.
You won’t shed a tear for what? Have you ever truly ran into a tweaker? They may make you shed a tear when they hold you up for a five dollar bill.
For a taxed-to-death 1%er
I moved to my new home in the city this weekend. So I’m trying to figure out the cardinal points and the best spot to put my plants. I ask 3 people in the building, one an old guy in his seventies. No one knew their cardinal points. Folks have become completely detached from the earth we live on at this point in our evolution, and are utterly at the mercy of a fabricated reality whose only value is tied to the money in one’s pocket and what can purchased with it. There is so much junk available that whatever is in the pocket cannot possibly cover wants, needs. Where to get more has become a higher priority than what direction the sun rises and sets.
It is going to be very scary when the crash occurs, and it’s coming.
You r iphone has a compass app.
True dat. Who needs to know where east and west are when most people don’t have the first clue about basic geography to begin with. Like, there is app for that.
I don’t know how to change a buggy wheel either. I don’t lose any sleep over it.
“I don’t know how to change a buggy wheel ”
Wolfie,
Then where the hell were you when they were teaching “buggery” in tech school?
Seawolf:
And that is what keeps you shackled to society’s illusionary realm. They will provide you with what they choose, which is not necessarily what you need. That’s how control works.
Its February and the orphans on the Border are shivering under their wet blankets in the Arroyo.
Will the Orthodox Church sell a few Gold and Emeralds from the Gilded High Chair to send a few metric tons of HUMAN CHOW and Authentic Siberian Firewood?
How about the Pope? Have they sent a Papal Barge of Pop up Campers, Olive oil, and Bushels of Pizza??
WHEN WILL WE BE EXPECTING THE MASSIVE EFFORT TO SAVE THE BORN AND UNBORN GOD’S CHILDREN, WIMMEN AND CHILLUN AT DE BORDER??????? ?
HOW DOES THE DEVIL HAVE SO MUCH POWERRRRR!!?
You seem to have mixed black dialect (chillun at de border), with California girl (so much powerrrrr) , I guess America really is the great melting pot.
Lol – Or maybe multiple personalities? Professional distractor for sure right Mr. Slim. I still hate your stupid paper!!!!!
blog–crimes of the times.
Perhaps ‘he’ is a black California girl?
The girls there are brown, yellow, black and white.
God,
You are all completely Nuts.
Totally completely fucked in the head.
The far left may bankrupt you, but you can recover from that. The problem with the far right is that they will kill you.
I guess if they starve you to death, it’s technically not a kill.
WTF. In America you gourd heads.
Is “far left” ideology different elsewhere? It’s all the same. Ideologies and their outcomes transcend and outlast nations.
A white kid stands his ground while some weirdo is beating a drum in his face. Into the wodchipper!! This is why we fight you idiots. Because you’re violent.
https://www.rt.com/usa/449368-disney-producer-threatens-maga-kids/
old news.
Now you know that is weak seawolf. Step up your game!!! I’m pretty sure the far left was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions in Russia and China. Mao and Stalin have never been called “far right” for a reason.
Oh please calling Stalin and Mao far left is like calling David
Duke a civil rights activist. You Trumptards will reach for anything, but you couldn’t find your ass with 2 hands and a flashlight.
Wow you are on a roll my friend ;-). David Duke is in fact a civil rights activist. But see, he is a civil rights activist for Whites. Which means he is nada in your book. Rather than flinging verbal feces all day you need to do some critical thinking. Put the cap on, meditate, and swallow that big pill of knowledge. It does hurt going down but feels so good when it gets into your system. Call me when you are truly woke, not fake woke.
That’s my point exactly. You made it yet failed to see the analogy. Yes Mao and Stalin are left, but they are not reflections on liberalism, nor are they progressives. To say they are is such a stretch as to call David Duke a civil rights activists, which he is, but for whites. I didn’t know I would have to sing it for you to get you to understand. Next time I’ll leave the chords and lyrics underneath the post.
Well maybe music is your calling? But you know Mao and Stalin were ultra-progressive. You just don’t want to accept it because it tarnishes the otherwise cutesy term “progressive”. Sounds so futuristic and exciting.
I feel like sub-par minds like seawolf can be completely seduced by nice words like progressivism. I like progress, therefore progressivism!! In my experience, progress is an illusion, or worse, the substitution of what worked with what sounded good (see Thomas Sowell). When society fails to reign in “progress,” you wind up with the Khmer Rouge.
Seawolf is very intelligent and savvy. He is dedicated to the progressive outlook in my opinion. He has his reasons for that allegiance. But I agree with you revilo that progress is just an idea and can really mean whatever the person holding that idea believes it is. My idea of progress is radically different from seawolf’s. And you are very correct that the push for certain forms of “progress” has been the death of many people.
After being unable to re-stock the Russian army with T-14, the new unstoppable main battle tank, Putin bought 70 T-34 from Laos and instead made the movie T-34.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tq55pi7KC64
The legend of the T-34 grows, even if the trailer is a bit much.
That was intense!
As the resident Grumpy Marxist I beg to differ on the fact that Marx hypothesized a Marxian Revolution which will manifest to be the precursor stage to worldwide Communism instead of faux Capitalism.
Once sovereign Debt-to-GDP blows the Central Bank Model to Hell on a handcart everyone will gladly accept my Marxist rule.
I will be a much nicer dictator than Joseph Stalin or George W. Bush.
I promise & swear to God!
RW
Not a problem when the central banks implode.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-11/one-trader-rants-its-time-central-bankers-stop-bullshitting-admit-they-failed
tick, tick, tick, tick….
Don’t forget the Debt Clock, eh.
RW
Lol ok. So do you really believe in God or is that tongue-in-cheek? Hmmm a spiritual Marxist is an interesting notion. Better yet, how about a Communist Warlock?
Grumpy Marxist shaman.
RW
Why so grump :-)?
His side lost and he is past 40?
A _Grumpy Marxist_ is a pissed off frustrated Marxist because of the lack of real Communist rule in the West.
Transnationalism & Casino Capitalism have impeded worldwide social growth of civilization. Man cannot live by bread alone. Civilization cannot live by lust for greed and debt accumulation that is never paid down. Central Banks cannot balance the balance sheet and neither can the lowly serf that caters to the Feudal Lords.
The .001% own the entirety of wealth throughout the world in aggregate. The poor lowly serfs have no cultural or spiritual meaningfulness in their lives due to the fact that the .001%
have misappropriated all the renewal that was supposed to be allocated to the serfs. Disposable Income Gains throughout the population are nil over the last 30 years. Discretionary Income Gains are less than nil over the last 30 years. People can no longer afford to buy automobiles as the auto manufacturers raise their prices beyond the Central Bank rate of Inflation that is purposely held low around 2% so that inflation does not become a problem for the Central Banks or their cronies.
The poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer still to this day. Soon we will have an entire world of poor people that are starving like the people in Venezuela.
As a Marxist I will strip mine the .001% for my monetary renewal that they appropriated over my lifetime.
My God is a God of war!
😐
RW
Ok, well that is sounding good to me. But do you believe in national identities or are you a believer in some sort of global system?
Hmmm, “My God is a God of war!” Life is war, whether we want it to be or not, so I feel you on that too.
Communist rule worldwide is the only chance mankind has left due to the up and coming transnationalist rule whereby companies like UBER continue strip mining the poor when the banks have abandoned them outright.
The company town model of serfdom never worked at all.
The company store has everyone in debt peonage via credit cards that charge 26% Interest Rates whilst the rich get free money from the spigot at the FED.
Worldwide central management of all governments & sovereigns is the only way to avoid thermonuclear hot war and thermonuclear winter.
The choice is stark between war & living in some semblance of peace. Peace to me is a dead banker!
RW
Also, it’s bad for one’s image when the French cops shoot peaceful Yellow Vest protestors in the head with rubber bullets.
“Most of us assume that the future will more or less resemble the present, but this is not necessarily so. In a long and eventful life, I have witnessed many periods of what I call radical disequilibrium. We are living in such a period today. The next inflection point will be the elections for the European Parliament in May 2019. Unfortunately, anti-European forces will enjoy a competitive advantage in the balloting. There are several reasons for this, including the outdated party system that prevails in most European countries, the practical impossibility of treaty change, and the lack of legal tools for disciplining member states that violate the principles on which the European Union was founded.
The EU can impose the acquis communautaire (the body of European Union law) on applicant countries, but lacks sufficient capacity to enforce member states’ compliance.
The antiquated party system hampers those who want to preserve the values on which the EU was founded, but helps those who want to replace those values with something radically different. This is true in individual countries and even more so in trans-European alliances.
The party system of individual states reflects the divisions that mattered in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as the conflict between capital and labor. But the cleavage that matters most today is between pro- and anti-European forces.”
George Soros
Soros in 7 minutes. Pretty astonishing profile.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SGWizajL7tA
An international criminal, psychopath, and Mammon worshipper.
There’s this one bit in the Green New Deal FAQ which really raises an eyebrow:
“economic security for all who are unable or *unwilling* to work”
So, if you are unwilling to work, you can still have economic security? How is that possible?
I understand wanting economic security as a right, but without a corresponding responsibility, this seems absurd.
The Man with Whom the US Civil War 2.0 Will Begin
Lately, the New York rumors for me personally are no longer rumors, but tips for searching in Google, and therefore I am wary of publishing them without checking, not only in Google, but also on the various forums.
Trump’s adviser Roger Stone was arrested just because he told another Trump adviser that he had heard rumors that Julian Assange had materials exposing Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee in counterfeiting the primaries before WikiLeaks actually published that. He happened to be exactly on target.
The arrest turned out to be very loud, and without looking at my notes from yesterday, I can recall at least three rumors related to this arrest.
But in this post I want to tell about the results of checking another rumor that the prosecutor’s office of Southern District of New York is furious with journalists, who filmed and uploaded to the Internet a video about the 33-year-old prosecutor Thomas McKay, who 5 days ago issued subpoenas for the entire inaugural committee of Donald Trump.
https://bloximages.newyork1.vip.townnews.com/thepenn.org/content/tncms/assets/v3/editorial/7/c9/7c931fe8-41da-11e8-bf63-ffdb483bd1b6/5ad546d6ac780.image.jpg?resize=750%2C579
I will not tell you the content of these rumors, I will only say that the name of the post is connected with this rumor and with the fact of the aforementioned rage of the Southern District of New York Prosecutor’s Office. The fact is that this is not an ordinary prosecutor’s office, as it supervises Wall Street with all the ensuing consequences, and it also has jurisdiction over all the affairs of Donald Trump, which took place before he became president, as before he was registered precisely in Southern New York.
The prosecutors of this office were the former head of the FBI Comey and the famous mayor of New York, who led the rescue after 911 and now is the chief legal adviser to President Trump Rudi Giuliani.
And the difference between Rudy Giuliani and the director of the FBI Comey, who came from the same prosecutor’s office, is due to the fact that in 2001, Hillary Clinton became the senator from New York for eight years.
And the rumor, which I don’t talk about, displaying it in the title of the post, is important because apparently Hillary Clinton in the power struggle no longer relies on Special Prosecutor Mueller, who, after the appointment of William Barr, will be accountable to him completely and fully, and all of her bets now is on the Southern District of New York Prosecutor’s Office and particularly Thomas McKay.
A senate vote for the candidacy of the US Attorney General William Barr should be this week, and if today Republican congressmen do not agree with Congress Democrats about financing the construction of the Great American Wall on the border with Mexico, then on Friday the federal government will again stop being financed and then next Monday Trump is likely to declare a state of emergency, and William Barr will be the Attorney General of the United States.
God,
You are all completely Nuts.
Totally completely fucked in the head.
LOL – well you are here too so I am thinking you have some screws loose as well. And hey, sometimes crazy motherf*ckers are really fun to hang with.
The average per capita, time spent daily, online, has now reached a full 6 hours, 49 minutes
No signs of stopping, either.
How much time did you spend online today :-)? Seems like you have had some decent screen time so far.
It’s the only place free speech exists anymore.
It’s par, for sure. I’m trying to compete in the global e-conomy.
I occasionally have spontaneous urges to buy more ways to stay connected for no other reason than I was heavily programmed to favor that feeling of immanent technological prosthetic enhancement. Those feelings are real, and in a world where all communication between humans is mediated through the internet, an important aspect of life.
For instance consider the profile portrait. You can gaze at it for a full 5 seconds. Try holding that gaze with a stranger you’ve never met. Impossible.
The vestigial hominoid reactions of aggression and threat are too unmediated an emotion
I guess I am missing something because it seems like the US is already a socialist country. But it’s a weird and perverted socialism where only the very poor and very rich receive handouts and freebies and the middle subsidizes those handouts and freebies. And for their trouble, the middle gets social security and medicare. But from what I have heard you never get back what you put in. And since corporations are rich “people” too, they get welfare. And don’t the corporations seem to be doing really well? They get to hire foreign workers so they can pay them less, all the while neglecting any pretense of responsibility to society. So no wonder the middle is disappearing. And the very rich who are well represented in “Congress” are totally cool with the middle vanishing. Then it will just be a world of overlords and slaves. Perfect for business!!! A beautiful patchwork of opulent palaces and luxurious enclaves surrounded by thick and tall WALLS patroled by armed private security mixed with expanses of sqalid, dilapidated, and very dangerous shanty towns. A Brasil do Norte. But there are always curve balls, black swans, and Robin Hoods with armies of guerilla fighters so you craven rich bastards may not want to get your hopes too high.
There’s also Judas Goats that will make sure you go to the slaughter quietly. if I had to put money on Donald Trump being a black swan or a Judas Goat, well’s let’s just say Bahh! He he! Bahhh! He he!
And you believe that you would escape such a fate? Ah hah!!!! Then the joke is on you. From the sum of your posts I can see you are a true believer in the Democrat Party, and thus the “system”. Good luck with that. When will you open your eyes. I have been trying to wake you up for like three months and you won’t get your lazy butt out of bed!!!! I guess Nancy shot you with a stun gun or something.
At least I wasn’t stupid enough to put my faith in a known con man. That ‘s when I realized my fellow Americans would believe anything, shit for brains assholes that they are.
LOL dude you are so lost. They are all cons. But your attitude proves my point. We aren’t fellow citizens. Our interests don’t even overlap. You want what you want and I want what I want so there isn’t a point to pretend we are one anymore. Let’s make our breakup official :-).
https://www.amren.com/features/2019/02/trump-betrays-his-base/
One of my favorite White Nationalists writers shares the bad news.
I am so disgusted with what he has done recently. And to think that I was so devoted to him and his ideas. I am glad you checked me on that a while back. What happened? Did he lie to us or was it that he meant what he said at the time and once he got into office, like most politicians, he decided to go in the opposite direction?
He is in WH for 2 years.
G5
chemtrails
Imperialism
I love your cryptic messages :-). But I want you to tell me more. Are you saying he is only in the WH for two years because of the people who are behind 5G, chemtrails, imperialism?
I dont know what he/ DT knows about Pizzagate, The Clintons and Haiti, G5 etc.
And if he does know facts, he isnt making good changes.
What’s that Bible verse, The Heart speaks out of its fullness or something like that? Spontaneously – it wasn’t in the written speech he was reading on the teleprompter – he said he wanted the level of legal immigration higher than ever before. He’s not our guy and never was. Legal immigration is deadly. Once he seemed to wish for more oversight into it or even setting up a standard like Canada had and Australia has. But then he goes and says he wants “these” people – meaning uneducated, fast breeding Central Americans, to come in record numbers. So he’s all over the place on the issue – but he’s clear that he wanted IT and he wants it greatly expanded, probably because that’s what the Plutocrats want. Not our guy. Our hopes were in vain.
There is no Deep State in Russia, it is all in plain sight, but the “deepness” is seated in the Russian people.
The “Deep Russian people” are always in their minds, inaccessible to sociological polls, campaigning, threats, and other methods of direct study and influence.
Understanding who they are, what they think and what they want, often comes suddenly and late, and not to those who can do something about it.
A year and a half ago, I made a repost of an article that struck me not only with the wonderful performance of melodramatic song by a 8-year-old girl, not only with the amazing prediction of the Ukrainian tragedy, which only now began to unfold before our eyes, but also with the remarkable intersection of the words of hereditary European predator’s , that “Russia does not know its boundaries (borders)” with the words of the Vladimir Putin, who has not yet allowed the predator’s scenario to come true, but said: The Russia’s borders do not end anywhere.
Meanwhile, these words expressed the author’s amazing assumption about the essence of the ideological confrontation between Fascism and Nazism, which is likely to become the main engine of the historical process in the 21st century and has already become the engine of the Cold Civil War in the United States.
That is, cold for now.
That is why I am publishing this song in a separate post, so that my readers could listen to her separately and think about what this girl sings and why it affects the deep strings of Western European consciousness.
In the end, it only seems that art is something that has no direct relation to life, what rich women do in their salons, while their predatory husbands impose order (or rather, ordnung) in the surrounding world, of which we are all members.
I highly recommend listening to the song at the end and thinking about what kind of culture this song could appear in and why the “natives” react to it like this when an 8-year-old girl sings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D0e0miMSI0
Bang-bang will be heard over Ukraine for a long time. So far, only the first chords of this tune have been sounded. Girls in white wreaths it’s time to start learning the tune.
Hereditary European predator accompanied by girls in white wreaths:
https://imgprx.livejournal.net/2027867b86f8d538c014e9f587c567696a51cf39/JBDxf6Eo4sAPtYLu6_XLKa–w78dYqrp417lPuJSFxdlAHJkJJhNxDEDLjf1_uxhbadjxcqBCXWfDSZ6SWEPTKkbA3rXcxWo45Ol4D_Cx8U
I am waiting for Putin to put forward demands for reparations to “European Predators” for a couple of trillion euros, so that they , bitches, would choke on their greed.
Are you posting from the Kremlin or from Tel Aviv?
I am posting from Finca, which is high on the Mountain.
A challenge for all CFNers.
I have started a book called “In the Shadows of a Presidency” by Daniel Estulin. He is researcher and foreign policy advisor to various groups including the foreign affairs ministry of Russia.
It is a total eye opener along the same lines as The Long Emergency and puts a light on the workings of Trump against the global interests. It identifies the villains of the current world vs. USA situation and that the worst enemy of the American people is domestic.
It has shocked me at the extent of the conspiracies. Finca, you especially would be interested. Or maybe you are Daniel Estulin?
The first statement is that the financial elite of the world have been feeding their international leverage problem by using the US Federal Reserve to “roll the presses”. The taxpayers of the US are financing the foibles of the global finance idiots. The people of the US are losing their economy as dollars flow overseas. The leaders in the US of the policies promoting this capital movement are, surprise, HRC and her dupes in the Democratic Party. If these policies are slowed or stopped, the global bankers start running into bankruptcy problems. Hence the near panic caused by the election of Trump over their poster child, HRC.
The Deep State has formulated an anti Russia and China propaganda campaign in the US utilizing the intelligence community because?
Russia, China and lately Japan are fighting the internationalist finance racketeers that the US Leftists are supporting. So we have sides now. The Deep State of the US and the neo Liberal, his word, globalist financial groups, yep George Soros et al, against Putin, China Maybe Japan and yes, Trump. Putin, because he has forces in Russia aligned with the globalists that were set up by, you guessed it, HRC and her dupe, Obama.
Sound Interesting? Read the book.
”
The world is witnessing the end of the financial model we have been living with since the end of World War II. Estulin contends, “Now, it’s over, and you have nowhere to expand because we have reached the limits to growth. It’s not only in the United States. You see it in Canada. You see it in Latin America. You see it in Central America. You see it in Europe. . . . You see it in Russia. You see it in China. You see it in the Middle East. . . . Anywhere on the planet, you are seeing the collapse of the global order. The Bretton Woods model is now dead. . . . Today, there is not enough for everybody. It is like the film “The Highlander”– only one can survive. What we are seeing right now is the fight to the death. . . . We are seeing the fight for the control of emission of the U.S. dollar. Unless the liberal bankers get their hands on the printing machine, they are toast, and toast today means probably dead.”
WTF are you talking about? Where is this fight to the death? You know you hear the collapse arguments, you buy into them, hell I own 100 lbs of silver down 50% no less. Even when it did in 2000 and 2008, it came back. We’re not going to destroy ourselves. It’s a Catholic fantasy, like SSL proselytizes. It’s a result of propaganda fed since birth that they are unable or unwilling to shake.
Sea wolf
Read the book and comment
K dog is quoting from the book’s introduction. The US taxpayer is financing the world’s lousy financial discipline. If you understand how close the global finance fiasco is to collapse, you might appreciate Trump’s desire to separate us from it. That is what IS happening.
And yes, the globalists are trying to tear down the US economy because a strong US economy means less dollars flowing to the globalists. Hopefully, a solution exists where both can exist together.
So at “Beto” O’Rourke’s “rally” last night in El Paso supporters waved MEXICAN flags while “Beto” gave his speech in a mix of English and Spanish. Why even pretend we are a united country anymore? We are not. Diversity, which is like a god of some kind to the Establishment has removed any semblance of a united national culture. Again, what is the point of the federal government? It doesn’t even fulfill it’s constitutional duty of enforcing our borders. And since we have no real border we aren’t even a real country. Even President Trump only cares about the welfare of non-White racial groups. Check his speeches. If every racial group can have everything they want I want a White president who talks to me in English and only caters to the needs of Whites. We need a country of our own. To hell with the fake and phony “United” States!
This Beto ORourke chap reminds me of the Canadian PM: down with anything wierd, foreign, bizarre, perverted, subversive, abstruse and anti Canadian. What’ he stand against: anything decent, Christian, white, traditional, dignified and conservative.
Brh
So spot on Brh!!! And isn’t it funny that our dear “Beto” is a very White man who plays psychological Brown face each and every day. I don’t even believe he does it because he has White Guilt Disease. I think he is doing it solely for power.
It could be a form of mental illness. Check the DSM.
Brh
LOL :-).
A White Barack Obama.
Donald Trump is the best we’re going to get in that regard I’m afraid, SSL.
After Trump, the deluge.
Brh
It is disheartening Brh. But my prayer is that Trump is just a shadowy harbinger of the real Ruler to come. One way or another he is coming whether people believe it or not.
Don the Baptist? 🙂
That is exactly right Alba. And when the real deal is here he is going to be totally amazing ;-).
That is too cool. I’m sure Jesus is waiting to emerge from the lagoon at Mar-a Lago.
And he is going to have women like me whispering in his ears telling him what we want and he is going to listen just like the real deal did. Girl power!
See? I brought a smile to your face, SSL 🙂
“And he is going to have women like me whispering in his ears telling him what we want ”
Was that not a Mel Gibson film?
Ohhh the dead will rise and the blind will see! I can’t wait. It’ll be like the Walking Dead episode I never watched.
You need to believe in miracles seawolf. Your worldview sounds so gray and sterile. You need some magic sweetheart. I still pray for you no matter how mean you can be and how hurtful your bites are.
You often make me smile Alba!
Seawolf
“That is too cool. I’m sure Jesus is waiting to emerge from the lagoon at Mar-a Lago.”
Just don’t invite Salome.
Are you kidding. She ‘s the guest of honor.
Tell her she’ll find Don in the desert living on locusts and wild money.
That sounds familiar (After – Deluge), got the original quote?
Trade you a painting: Elizabeth Butler’s “Remnants of an Army” showing one William Brydon as the sole survivor of 16,500 troops that evacuated Kabul.
https://westernrifleshooters.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/negotiating-the-surrender-in-afghanistan/
I mean the old Sea Chanty, One man left alive what put to sea with 75, is bad enough – but this is ridiculous. His body survived, but what of his mind and heart?
They waived MEXICAN flags huh? Not just Mexican flags. They pulled out the MEXICAN flags! Jesus what’s this world coming to? MEXICAN flag waving Americans. I’m gonna have to email Stephen King. What a horror novel that would make.
$10 an hour is a solid middle class wage in Mexico. They are asserting their right to be America’s insourced labor force. That also means enjoying the benefits of being able to afford the car and the house in Mexico.
This side of the border, why would you fly the US flag? For a wage earner of similar means without the ability to achieve anything like a middle class lifestyle, you don’t even own a flapole to raise it. If you are a member of the profit taking class, you’ll own a house in the suburbs. And since things are working or so well for you, you’ll fly the American flag.
Which flag are you waving?
And what would happen if people pulled out American flags in Mexico at a rally? As Alex Jones said, If I was caught as an American citizen trying to vote in Mexico, the men would take me out and stomp me real good.
SSL
““Beto” gave his speech in a mix of English and Spanish. Why even pretend we are a united country anymore? ”
You do know that the Swiss cope with French, German, Italian and a smattering of Romansch? It doesn’t cause them to worry about the unity of their country. Maybe you’re just too big and different languages are neither here nor there.
We don’t live in castles anymore, with big walls and huge moats around them. We don’t have kings and queens anymore. We have progressed to the point where we don’t want them, don’t need them, are disgusted by them and what they represent. The people who want to bring them back live in the past, yearn for the past, romanticize the past. The past is the past. These are the best of times. You want a wall, build it around your house, your head, your car, your children’s schools, anything but around my country. I can compete with anybody. If I can’t I’ll adapt. I won’t cry and whine and take opiods and kill myself cause I’m such a blithering pussy. Grow up conservatives.
The Big Hollywood Libs have walls around their houses, high ones.
How about Tom Steyer, is there a wall around his house, patrolled by armed security, video cameras pointed everywhere?
Brh
I thought that you loved all Jews.
You suck up to Bill, for instance.
malthuss
Allow me to Scotsplain it to you. If you know 100 really horrible Jews, it’s fine to hate them, if you find hate to be a useful emotion. If you hate them because they’re horrible then you’re just wasting your time on hate. If you hate them because they’re Jews, you’re wasting your time on antisemitism.
Hope that helps.
This guy…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Rachman
…was a really horrible Jew.
Only people of low insight were turned into antisemites because of him. People of high insight got on with passing decent housing legislation.
Bill is a fellow New Englander, a comrade like Ozone and Ripthunder.
Brh
So no assholes in New England? Ozone and Rip had a falling out. And do you and Ozone agree on everything? I think you disagree on much, so much that any conversation has to be very polite and constrained.
You’re a nice guy, and maybe even a hard guy when you have to be (which I admire), but your mind tends to be mushy. Your nice gets in the way – just like most Americans. And I’m afraid that tendency will be fatal. I don’t hate “nice” per se – it has its place. But we have given it a far greater place than it deserves. The Organization Man is obsessed with it. Ditto women. Thus men who would be free are put into ever smaller and smaller boxes of acceptable discourse.
It’s too bad, Malthuss, there’s no such thing as an anti-asshole pill. Then you’d have a chance to be a human being rather than a useless piece of shit. Oh, well, I can dream, I suppose.
“It’s too bad, Malthuss, there’s no such thing as an anti-asshole pill. ”
There’s no aap for that…
You actually mean you don’t live in a castle and have big walls. But all of the ultra-wealthy who have massive castle-like mansions surrounded by walls and armed security differ with you and laugh in your face. You may not believe in kings and queens but they still run your life baby. You just don’t realize you have an Elite running your life yet. LOL – your country?? What country??? There is no border so there is no country. Like KesaAnna says, it’s all just a map blob at this point. Super happy you adapt to the changing circumstances of the time. So do other people. “Conservatives” statistically do much better economically than “Liberals”. Too bad you have no heart for those who have issues in their lives and kill themselves with opioids. Easy to not have sympathy for others when you don’t have to see them on a daily basis. The addicts I have personally known in my life have all had liberal viewpoints. Again, when are you going to wake the fuck up????????
I said you could build walls around your house, trailer mansion, yatch, tent… anything you want to do. It’s a free country. Just don’t think for one second you get to determine the national policies of this country with your antiquated ideas. If you want a test of wills, well it just so happens Dems control the purse. Trump can hem and haw and look in his piggy bank if he want to. There ain’t gonna be no wall.
A very nice anti-American sentiment. Thank you.
It’s not anti-American. It is the most American of all sentiments. Check the Statue of Liberty. Trumptards don’t get to demonize Latin Americans for their problems. Natural gas killed coal. Trump can spout that El Paso lie all he wants. I’t s still a lie. Crime is fine. It’ll always be there, but it is manageable. Don’t blame it on brown people.
Hol’ up, hol’ up, hol’ up ok hol’ up Brown people deserve their countries too. But stay there. Don’t invade us just because you want to suck the well dry. Why do you support that? Is that because you prefer the Brown over everything else?
I want a world without walls. Isolationism does not work, has never worked, and will never work- with the possible exception of Japan, i’ll give you that one.
>>> Check the Statue of Liberty.
LOL. As with AOC, sea-jizz doesn’t understand the difference between a plaque on a statue and actual USA law.
Since America is about nothing but immigration, immigrants are the essence of America – and thus more American than “Americans”. In other words, what America is, it isn’t.
And into this gaping ideological Maw, they hope to slide all Nations and Peoples. Someday all nations will be in Mordor, and BE Mordor. Only once all life boats are capsized, will Sea, El, and Alb be “happy”.
“Resistance is futile. You will be absorbed” – Seaborg.
Point me to a comment of mine that says you shouldn’t have proper borders. Ta.
Right I know, you are happy with the invasion then I assume?
It’s not an invasion, it’s a marathon. You invoke my feelings for hillbilly heroin addicts, now I invoke your’s for refugees seeking asylum.
At least you admit your bias and racism.
Or like when the Liberal politicians rave against guns while surrounded by their gun thugs.
The Left isn’t anti-gun – it’s anti ordinary citizens having guns.
excellent point.
do as we say, not as we do.
Everything your internationalist neo liberals want is the feudallization of the world.
With lots of the castles and moats you bemoan
Your diatribes do not even make sense anymore.
The 2016 electoral map was straight out of Hunger Games. A handful of blue population centers in a sea of red. Then when it didn’t go their way, the inevitable call to end the electoral college. For the sake of progress, you see.
So true. My other self is both wise and possesses the gift of saying much with few words. Concision! Or is it conciseness? Both seem to be real words as I get no red lines. Men on battle fronts have advanced thru the ranks on the clarity of their dispatches.
In contrast, the great Theologian, Reginald Garriggou-LaGrange, said of his pupil, the future John Paul ll, writes much but says little.
When you realize that adaptation is the problem not the solution you’ll have graduated, c-wolf
While everybody can want what they want or prefer what they prefer, it defies all logic, at least to me why anyone would want to take all of the different diversities in the world and jumble them up into one big homogenous mess of a shit sandwich. A world without borders and free movement for anybody and everybody means that the problems and the problem peop