Clusterfuck Nation
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The wheel of time rolls forward, never retracing its path, but because it is a wheel, and we are riding in it, a persistent illusion persuades us that the landscape is recognizably the same, and that our doings within the regular turning of the seasons seem comfortably normal. There is no normal.
There is for us, at this moment in history, an especially harsh turning (so Strauss and Howe would say) as our journey takes the exit ramp out of the high energy era into the next reality of a long emergency. The human hive-mind senses that something is different, but at the same moment we’re unable to imagine changing all our exquisitely tuned arrangements — especially the thinking class in charge of all that, self-enchanted with pixeled fantasies. The dissonance over this is driving America crazy.
The wheel hit a deep pothole in 2008 turning onto the off-ramp and has been wobbling badly ever since. 2008 was a warning that going through the motions isn’t enough to sustain a sense of purpose, either nationally or for individuals trying to keep their lives together ever more desperately. The cultural memory of the confident years, when we seemed to know what we were doing, and where we were going, dogs us and mocks us.
The young adults feel all that most acutely. The pain prompts them to want to deconstruct that memory. “No, it didn’t happen that way,” they are saying. All those stories about the founding of this society — of those Great Men with their powdered hair-doos writing the national charter, and the remarkable experience of the past 200-odd years — are wrong! There was nothing wonderful about it. The whole thing was a swindle!
They are feeling the wheel’s turning most painfully, since they know they will see many more turnings in the years ahead, and the direction of the wheel is vectoring downward for them. The bottom-line is less of everything, not more. That is a new ethos here in America and it’s hardly comforting: Less income, fewer comforts, more literal hardships, fewer consolations for the universal difficulty of being alive. No wonder they are angry.
It’s this simple. We landed in the New World five hundred years ago. It was full of good things that human beings had barely begun to exploit, laid out like a banquet. There was plenty of good virgin soil for growing food, the best timber in the world, clean rivers and great lakes, ores full of iron, gold, and silver, and down deep a bonanza of coal and oil to drive the wheel through very flush times. The past century was particularly supercharged, the oil years.
Imagine living through the very start of all that, the blinding, fantastic newness of modernity! Look back at the stories and images around Teddy Roosevelt and his times, and the confidence of that era just astonishes you, An emergent cavalcade of wonders: electricity, telephones, railroads, subways, skyscrapers! And in a few more years movies, cars, airplanes, radio. Even the backstage wonders of the day were astonishments: household plumbing for all, running hot water, municipal water and sewer systems, refrigeration, tractors! It’s hard to conceive how much these developments changed the human experience of daily life.
Even the traumas of the 20th century’s world wars did not crush that sense of amazing progress, at least not in North America, spared the wars’ mighty wreckage. The post-war confidence of American society achieved a level of in-your-face laughable hubris — see the USA in your Chevrolet! — until John Kennedy was shot down, and after that the delirious moonshot euphoria steadily gave way to corrosive skepticism, anxiety, acrimony, and enmity. My generation, booming into adulthood, naively thought they could fix all that with Earth Day, tofu, and computers, and keep the great wheel rolling down into an even more glorious cybernetic nirvana.
Fakeout. That’s not where the wheel is going. We borrowed all we possibly could from the future to pretend that the system was still working, and now the future is at the door like a re-po man come to take away both the car and the house. The financial scene is an excellent analog to our collective psychology. Its workings depend on the simple faith that its workings work. So, it is easy to imagine what happens when that faith wavers.
We’re on the verge of a lot of things coming apart: supply lines, revenue streams, international agreements, political assumptions, promises to do this and that. We have no idea how to keep it together on the downside. We don’t even want to think about it. The best we can do for the moment is pretend that the downside doesn’t exist. And meanwhile, fight both for social justice and to make America great again, two seemingly noble ideas, both exercises in futility. The wheel is still turning and the change of season soon upon us. What will you do?
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Our civilization has overspent itself with no plan for how to manage any sort of transition from a broken model to a working one. What happened to Rome and countless other civilizations is going to happen to ours for the same reason – inertia and a general unwillingness to make needed changes. Now, it’s just a matter of time before things explode in our country as people begin to become angry, then desperate.
Hey John of the West,
We are not like Rome. If you live in a small town that is well managed, you may never experience what they will in the large cities. Get out of debt, raise chickens, arm yourself. All will be well…..I hope.
“We’re on the verge of a lot of things coming apart”
No, we are not on the verge . . .
. . . we have arrived. Things are coming apart as we speak.
Some at higher rates of speed than others . . but everything is coming unglued right now.
What will you do?
Fight both for social justice and to make America great in ways that matter. Seemingly noble, yes it is, seeming futile most certainly it is. Futility is irrelevant.
Less income, fewer comforts, more literal hardships, fewer consolations for the universal difficulty of being alive. In some ways yes, but with health care guaranteed, and work security assured, then knowing the new system is committed to satisfy the needs of all citizens could make a world more worth having tomorrow than today.
With “work security guaranteed”, you are talking about adopting a system that creates universal poverty even in the absence of the resource scarcity which triggers the “long emergency”.
Enjoyed your post on The Greenland Purchase, K-Dog. Impeccable logic re Himself’s actual beliefs re CC.
Will listen to Hansen later on something with sound, thanks.
The post on Chasing the Squirrel, I mean.
“knowing the new system is committed to satisfy the needs of all citizens could make a world more worth having tomorrow than today.”
WWG, is that you? What the hell have you done with the dog? Have you turned him into a (sob) sheepdog?
Read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. That’s one version of how bad things could get and it’s plausible, given the state of the character of the American people today.
It would be nice if this were the case, but healthy and thriving small towns are vanishingly rare in my part of the ‘states. Typically, they are better off if they have a large industry nearby or perform some governmental function (county seat, etc). Otherwise, the economics that led them to be created in the first place generally aren’t there anymore. Drug use is a rampant in a lot of small towns, and violent crime is a possibility, particularly if drugs and crime are mixed.
The “small town refuge” is something I have always felt is a variation on the 4 B’s – “buy beans and build a bunker.” Any one-size-fits-all survival advice is like dropping a polar bear off in the Sahara. It is as likely that there will be well-regulated city states that provide refuge as it as likely there will be new settlements started or existing small towns which are managed as well. The trick is to stay flexible and be an asset, not a burden.
As for being like Rome, we are very much like Rome. People confused the appearance with the essence, but the core commonalities are striking. I’ll probably write a post on both of these topics soon, and feel free to comment on both when I do.
As an aside, I took a look at your site. Very interesting, and I’ll link to it whenever I finally put up a resources page.
Hi, John. When you mention the U.S. facing the same fate as Rome, it reminds me of what John Michael Greer the Archdruid calls Trump — Orange Julius. He considers Trump to be the manifestation of Caesarism replacing democracy and republicanism in the U.S. As someone who used to enjoy the eponymous drink in malls during my youth, I appreciate it for another reason — the Orange Julius mascot was a little devil.
Changing subjects, I always enjoy it when our host mentions Strauss and Howe and where we fit in their scheme of turnings. We’ve been in the Fourth Turning, the time of crisis, since either 2001 or 2008. As for when we’ll get out of it, S&H wrote about a “Crisis of 2020.” Looks like we’re on schedule for it, including the Retail Apocalypse and the climate crisis.
Neon, FYI, the American Dream Megamall is scheduled to open next month! It confused me but this mall is not in flyover country and is well placed to be the last dinosaur.
Megamallosaurus.
Which lends itself to all sorts of rhymes, but I’ll spare you.
That’s a good one! Thanks for the chuckle!
Yes, but Rome’s and our problems are not simply just problems of mismanaged resources and an economic system and model that needs rethinking and redoing. The problems are fundamental and go to the very core of who and what we are. Until that is addressed nothing else can be achieved. And to talk about such things in this current climate is considered heretical hate speech so it is doubtful any progress can be made in that regard.
Yes, the Romans could not keep the Germans out. Sometimes they killed them until their arms were tired, but there were always more. Other times they invited them – using them in the Legions. They dithered, much as we do. In any case, the barbarians got in more and more as time went on.
One big difference: They admired Rome and wanted to be part of it or take it over. Many of our immigrants do not admire us or or our Civilization at all. And for all their cultural differences, the Germans and the Romans were both White and shared some of the same ideals and ideas of Justice. None of that is true for America and our incomers.
And so our situation is even that much more dire. Dithering cannot be an option even though it seems to have been the main coping mechanism in play up to this point.
As Alexander Tytler said so eloquently 200 years ago:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”
Looks like the next stop is bondage.
The wheel is turning and yet we are not yet burning. It may go on for another several decades. When the national debt reached $1 trillion, I remember my Dad telling me that it was the end. Now look where we are!
Rome’s collapse was thermodynamic overreach and we are plowing down that same forlorn path.
I am seeing more and more articles, etc. on techno-fantasies – idiotic solutions to climate change, fusion power, on and on. Many from well-meaning types who have been told that the party was just getting started when they showed up and were dumb enough to believe it.
As always, leading the parade is the moronic trump suggesting we buy buy Greenland so it can be strip-mined and we can go back to partying like it’s 1955. He plants himself in front of screaming imbeciles in some God-forsaken place (never at home, you notice) and wallows in the sheer stupidity of the whole project.
Thermodynamic overreach and nihilism. No amount of wealth can provide any sense of meaning.
Right and there is no civilization without a shared sense of purpose which is more than simple materialism. Emperor Constantine realize this and that is why he invited Christianity to be the official religion. It simply provided what was lacking at the time and it worked for awhile. We have no purpose now but to consume and that is hardly sufficient for holding civilization together. We’ve even given up on the family, stupid people.
They called the purchase of Alaska, “Seward’s Folly”. How wrong they were! If Global Warming is real, Greenland will become a new frontier. If it is not, it will “only” be good for its vast mineral wealth. Oil too? Who can say? Trump isn’t talking about it for nothing I assume….
I agree. It doesn’t ever hurt to have a little extra land now does it.
What a SHAME Greenland is not for sale.
Eminent domain anyone??
Going ONCE!
TWICE!!!
SOLD TO THE GLOBAL SUPERPOWER!!!! (Cough, hack, PUKE!!!)
BTW, in answer to the question, “What are you doing?”
I am flying from my current home in Los Angeles to Mount Vernon, Ohio after Labor Day to look for a house to buy and to canoe on the Kokosing River AND to play some Euchre with the locals.
Most of my kids and grandkids are here, but I can buy a comparable house in Ohio for $70k/$800k here in Los Angeles.
THAT is the definition of INSANITY!
SAD.
Greenland is said to have 110B barrels of oil within its jurisdiction, thus the intent to get our hands on it. That, and the strategic location in the north Atlantic as shipping routes change due to melting sea ice. China and Russia are waiting in the wings, if we don’t get it they might, thus our oil dudes and DoD are keenly eyeing what happens.
Trump’s visit to a Shell Oil refinery last week was not a coincidence, it was a signal to the oil industry that it’s game on. Reminds me of Dick Cheney’s still-secret closed door session with oil barons in 2001 as they plotted taking Iraq — for the oil. Now, the plan is to get Greenland for the oil barons to plunder, free of pesky EPA regulations.
Regulations on methane the industry wants. It is expensive and the big players want to be on a level field or one that favors them. If methane leaks are not controlled methane loses its status as a clean fuel. That is bad PR.
You may think Trump is stupid, but he sure knows how to get your goat :
https://www.dailywire.com/news/50818/trump-tweets-hilarious-meme-greenland-leftists-ryan-saavedra
Please note the actual reason for trying to buy Greenland: to provide better distance warnings of an attack by China or the guy you say owns Trump, Putin. If Putin owns Trump, why is Trump attempting to stymie his supposed liege’s efforts to attack the US? Oh, right — because the Democrat Party says he’s an idiot.
In any case, I agree with JHK that we’re racing ruin as a society, and it’s largely due to our arrogance and the foolish belief of some of our alleged betters that man can be perfected under the right utopian system. We have countless examples of societies destroying themselves in order to meet the standards of lunatics. Even now, we’re watching Venezuela flail about in the aftermath of another experiment in socialism predictably gone awry. They just don’t get that imperfect people can’t create a perfect world, but they damn sure can destroy a functioning society through their misguided efforts at creating a utopia.
Well, JHK, what outcome should a sane person expect when we live in a time when “anything goes and nothing matters?”
Great work, Jim! Love the somber mood this morning, as you retrace the course of the American Industrial Growth Experiment. Reads like a wistful eulogy. And of course you can add to that list of wonders/ailments the magnificent human population growth all that industrialism demanded to service its needs and consume its output. That is the real fly in the ointment, now that the exponential growth paradigm has been exposed for the lie that it always was. What will a great many of those people be forced to do instead now that the resources are tight and the consumers too many? Well, that’s as obvious as it is unsavory, which is why no pol will ever dare say it. And that’s die, of course, at much greater than replacement rate. By a whole variety means, I’m sure, but many of which we’re seeing on display now daily.
We can’t even be bothered as a society to implement reasonable control of our borders and immigration so there will never be a possibility of any serious discussion of the overpopulation issue. What society that is serious about conserving natural habitat and resources at the same time embraces an agenda which could easily result in the arrival of millions of new people who will naturally consume resources and require habitat themselves? Well certainly not a society that truly cares about preserving natural habitat and resources clearly.
Excellent points. We’re running out of places to put them all. The west is growing more and more unsustainable, and the east coast cities can only hold so many. Crime and chaos ensues.
All the big Environmentalists, people like Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry, have sold out to the status quo, thus betraying their vocation. They should have been telling their Leftist followers, No, No, No, all these many years. But they caved and then pretended they didn’t – even to themselves. Such is ordinary Man. We needed and need some extraordinary Men to lead us and they just haven’t appeared. Any such are unable to rise up in the current climate. So they just tend their own gardens instead.
Hey Janos could you explain more about how McKibben and Berry have sold out to the status quo? I am interested in your take on this.
‘Deep ecology is an ecological and environmental philosophy promoting the inherent worth of living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, plus a radical restructuring of modern human societies in accordance with such ideas.
Janos is saying that Bill and Wendell have been dancing with the devil and suffer from too much techno-narcissism. Embedded in the system as activists are, bubble-gum environmentalism is ever a danger. Social forces are always fulling the environmentally ‘woke’ back to mediocrity.
This dog is deep green. Trying to change the system does not work and the system as is will not change without being compelled to do so and without deep systemic change we all die. The decision is not hard.
If I’m wrong Janos can speak for himself.
Social forces are always pulling the environmentally ‘woke’ back to mediocrity.
As you may know, the Sierra Club took a gigantic bribe from a guy named Goldbaum or something – meaning “money tree”. The condition: shut up about the environmental disaster to be caused by mass immigration. These two stooges have done the same in a less dramatic way – to keep with the crowd, keep their followers (instead of challenging them) and sure all that translates as money too. Enough to live on anyway and keep doing what they love – instead of what they should be have been doing which is telling the Truth.
In contrast, Ed Abbey said nothing else matters unless we stop the Mexicans. He also casually referred to them as an inferior race. Ecce Homo. That was a real Environmentalist.
Janos, Turns out Abbey and I have much in common.
‘Throughout his life the FBI took notes building a profile on Abbey, observing his movements and interviewing many people who knew him. Towards the later parts of his life Abbey learned of the FBI’s interest in him and said “I’d be insulted if they weren’t watching me”.
I’m insulted that they still are.
I’m insulted that they still are.
Is not part of the quote.
Continuation of last week discussion:
Brh: Russia is going whole hog into nuclear
Finca: When the West appears to be run by pedophiles, idolaters, Devil worshippers and Satanists, a reasonable thing to do, don’t you think?
SSL: Lol, as if pedophiles, idolaters, and Devil worshippers don’t have power in Russia. Perhaps their simply better behaved and not exhibitionists.
This topic is connected with the theme of the Black World Project in Russia, which is definitely present, in the most direct way, in particular with the role of sexual perversions in the promotion of public officials in office.
And this, in turn, requires additional investigation of the possibility of the ritual significance of these perversions, such as pedophilia, in connection with the newly discovered circumstances in the United States connected with Epstein’s “suicide”, which objectively became the center of international politics.
It’s amazing how quickly this story is moving out of the focus of the news cycles!
Not only does the center not hold: there is no center in America.
I never understood the importance of the center. One always seems to hear how candidates “must move to the center”. What if the center is rotten? Like the rotten core of an apple. Sometimes maybe the extremes must make up for what the center isn’t. And in the US today, the center is nothing but the status quo that everyone constantly complains about.
The context of “center” is the stable mass, or long-range, destabilizing elements. It is not a political reference per as.
After all, the political center is also relative. The current US left is Canada’s center-right. US political right is Canadian extremism. Etc.
Yes, we need a new Center. One of the “extremes” must conquer the Hill and establish themselves as such. Hopefully it will be ours. Or at least be ready to do so after the Fall. But in all probability, any America 2.0 will just be a tattered and tawdry version of the 1950’s, because the Civic Nationalists refuse to recognize race. Thus it will quickly dissolve into grievance mongering and riots. These people are bound and determined to build on sand and will be amazed when the tide takes away what they have built.
All dogs eat.
But all dogs do not eat together. Nor should they.
Comfort and convenience in the USA – Things we will be seeing a lot less of in the near future.
Perhaps you already are. Even if you are in the top 20% income
bracket and are still fairly comfortable, you probably have
begun to notice a bit more inconvenince in your day to day
activities. Those in the top 1% haven’t noticed and probably
won’t as long as they still have their handlers and arrangers
managing their lives.
For those in the bottom 50% bracket, you get to deal with more
discomfort and inconvenience with every passing year. That’s
why a large group of doomers hope for a fast collapse scenario:
they don’t want to or can’t deal with the slow steady grind.
For that shrinking group in the middle that still have jobs and
can afford a few of life’s perks along the way, the stress and fear
of falling off the ladder or even down a few rungs is taking its
toll. Most young people of working age already realize they are
not going to have the opportunities their parents had. And it only
took three generations to play out.
I took my chances several years ago and left the states to live in a place that had seen lots of hard times recently but was on the rebound so it hasn’t been so bad. I think most Americans alive today are just not psychologically prepared for whats ahead.
“. I think most Americans alive today are just not psychologically prepared for what’s ahead.”
LS,
So true, and a good number will not accept the inevitable without violence.
Agreed. Violence of the verbal, economic and physica types are becoming the first and only tool many in this this country use to get what they want. We have become a shoot first and ask questions later culture. That’s sure to make life interesting as things disintigrate.
What about all the social justice warrior vegans extolling the virtues of what is basically spiced up dog food..the Beyond Burger trading at nearly $12 billion market cap (for a short time) on roughly an easily copied $200 million in sales. One vegan I know keeps retorting we must end eating beef to save the planet. This person travels in a plane to vegan meetings, drives to a summer home each weekend. I guess the brain begins to falter with no cholesterol fatty acids.
we must end eating beef to save the planet
Stop fucking the little children would be a good start.
Now that’s something in which I totally agree with you.
Including by Catholic priests? How long has that been going on? A thousand years or more?
Perhaps if the U.N. AND all the countries pass a mandatory death penalty (or life in prison without possibility of parole) regarding the trafficking of children whether for sex or slavery, we would suddenly see a MAJOR SHIFT in the saddest and most deplorable human activity currently on-going that is UNIMAGINABLE to the average human being.
Just saying.
Jeffery Epstein said that taking underage girls (like the 12 year old triplets sent to him from a poor family in France or Italy? negotiated by one of his PERVERT FRIENDS for his birthday in 2000?), were just like so many “stolen bagels”.
I have been around lots and lots of bagels. But never did I consider stealing one.
Aren’t they wonderful? I once attended an event hosted by an institution offering an MBA in Sustainability. The keynote speaker was introduced as a ‘rock star’ in the field who had just flown in on his private jet.
I rose and pointed out the incredible hypocrisy of this and was roundly booed. All I could do was laugh as I got up and left.
Bravo for having the stones to do so. Our “solutions” reek of the same stench as the problems they are ostensibly trying to solve.
John Az believes in Global Warming. His “solution”? Keep monitoring the problem, as if monitoring is solving. It’s like Baseball. The Stats are more important than the Game.
Yes, sometimes the loudest virtue signalers are the biggest hypocrites. Sort of the like the Pharisees who prayed the loudest in public but were inwardly vipers and wolves.
Pot, kettle….
The way we are headed we’ll be eating anything. There are no atheists in fox holes and no vegans (by choice) in times of scarcity.
If you have a beef with them then it seems to me you should not follow their example and just not eat the cow.
“If you have a beef with them then it seems to me you should not follow their example and just not eat the cow.”
Dog,
First they came for the cow, and I did nothing…
Then they came for the pigs, and I did nothing…
Then they came for the…dogs, and….
You do know that the world is full of dog-munchers, do you not?
Forget dogs!!!
If I were left to either eat my precious kitty to survive or know she would probably eat me, I would much rather die with her in my arms than to eat her!
Rather she should eat my dead corpse! (Probably starting with my hands and wrists, which she already clearly favors).
(As a major aside….thank God they have come up with a vaccine against “cat allergies”! This will be for all the men who say, “I am allergic to cats!” when the truth is they just HATE them for their aloofness and independence).
I have a friend (with two cats) who jokes that they only sit on your lap so they can tell when you’ve gone cold. 🙂
I was fond of mine, but we can’t have another now because of the dog. Living in a Victorian flat, I noted her usefulness once she’d gone, as we get the occasional mouse visitor now, as you do in all Victorian buildings. I never saw one all the time we had her – just the smell of a cat (not noticeable to me) keeps the mice in their own territory.
It makes wonder whether or not mammoths and mastodons farted during the ice age. Don’t get me wrong, i believe the planet is warming but what can you do about farting.
Reptiles I am told do not fart but some may belch as do most birds.
How ever frogs fart as well as toads and salamanders.
All warm blooded critters expel methane in one form or another and some of our closest relatives dna wise might be some of the worst.
While we are at it many insects also expel waste methane!
Picking on COWS makes little sense when termites expel 20 million tons a day!
I just read feeding cows onions and garlic will help!
Here is to the humble garlic and onion farmers.
We landed in the New World five hundred years ago. It was full of good things that human beings had barely begun to exploit, laid out like a banquet. There was plenty of good virgin soil for growing food, the best timber in the world, clean rivers and great lakes, ores full of iron, gold, and silver, and down deep a bonanza of coal and oil to drive the wheel through very flush times.
You forgot to mention the smallpox and bubonic plague pathogens conveniently doing the heavy lifting of clearing off the land of it original inhabitants. 😀
So you’re sad about that or something? Give me a break. Take your virtue display and, and, well you know what you can do with it.
The Indians had to be dispossessed so Powigs did that. That’s why we’re here. It was us or them. We have to learn to choose US again. We matter. Others don’t. Or only after we get ours.
“We matter. Others don’t. Or only after we get ours.”
From Paul’s Letter to the Greedy F*ckers; 2:15-16.
Here endeth the lesson. May God bless this reading from his Holy Word.
Good to see that veneer’s almost all peeled away, though. Makes life simpler somehow.
“They sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith — the adventurers and settlers; kings ships and the ships of men on Change; captains, admirals, and dark ‘interlopers of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned Generals of the East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they had all gone out of that stream (the Thames) bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of the spark of that sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! … THE DREAMS OF MEN, THE SEEDS OF COMMONWEALTHS, THE GERMS OF EMPIRE! — Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Germs indeed, brh. Plus Guns and Steel, as per Jared D.
I rather think that your failure to understand how, “We matter. Others don’t. Or only after we get ours.” could ever possibly be a Biblically relevant idea then you probably didn’t understand the story of Exodus in the Sunday school class that you taught. I don’t recall the Lord telling Moses to concern himself with whether or not the Egyptians “had theirs”. But you may have some insider information that I missed.
You seem to be forgetting Janos claims to be ‘Christian’.
And you seem to be forgetting that I don’t get my morality from mythical stories about a vengeful ‘god’ who incites people to rape and murder. I’ll leave that to you.
I have some outsider information you missed. And will continue to miss.
No I am not forgetting at all. I am also not forgetting that what you call a “vengeful ‘god’ who incites people to rape and murder” was standard operating procedure for pretty much every society that existed at the time. You know better than me how violent human history has been. Are we aware of a higher path? Obviously. But we still live in a finite world with finite resources with many people who will naturally “get theirs” no matter what it takes. The point is that we are a people too and must be pepared to defend our place. My point is that if anything, the totality of the Bible supports Janos’ position on this from everything I can tell and so you are factually incorrect to suggest his assertion is un-Christian.
“My point is that if anything, the totality of the Bible supports Janos’ position on this from everything I can tell and so you are factually incorrect to suggest his assertion is un-Christian.”
Thank you for confirming that your mythology isn’t any kind of improvement on an actual thought-out human morality. That would be because it was created by humans, like every other religion.
Janos has more insight than you, by the way. He at least understands, even if he hangs on to his Christianist veneer by his fingernails. But you will always just be a parrot. It’s how your indoctrination works. He’s not hidebound by the protestant evangelical tradition that endlessly invokes ‘the Word’ because it can’t allow itself to think outside it, even if it thinks God gave it a mind to think (but not too much, please, or you’ll pay dearly).
A deity – if it existed – that says ‘do what I say’ rather than ‘do what is right’ – isn’t moral. It’s just authoritarian. And one that engages in mindfuckery with its chosen granddaddy by telling him to slit his own son’s throat as if he were a goat, isn’t just authoritarian, it’s sick. Only goat-gutting humans could have invented such a thing.
I wish I could say it was cute the way you jump in to defend The Master’s posts, though, as if you were his mum. But I don’t find it cute.
“No I am not forgetting at all. I am also not forgetting that what you call a “vengeful ‘god’ who incites people to rape and murder” was standard operating procedure for pretty much every society that existed at the time. “
Thank you for making my point so eloquently regarding your apparently timeless and unchanging god.
Although your sentence is twaddle. ‘Standard procedure’ for gods or ‘standard procedure’ for people? Your god should not be bound by standard procedure for people or he has no purpose. And you have to ask why he made them like that, given he presumably had a choice in the matter. I guess he just enjoyed mindfuckery and bloodlust.
Well please do inform what actual “thought-out” human morality has solved the world’s problems. As I see it, none. And only Christianity, or at least a civilization that was built upon a foundation of Christianity, was that civilization that went out into the world and actually did end up feeding the hungry and clothing the world. Though that civilization, being human, has faltered and had its faults through and through as any other would. And yes human suffering has always been and will be. I guess what I find interesting is that you often say that there can be no God or god simply because there is imperfection, suffering, hardship, etc., in the world. Yet you have not clearly identified that perfection, joy, and salvation don’t exist and the fact of the matter is that you can’t. Nor can I “prove” to you that God does indeed exist. I am not even sure you would believe what you see or hear anyway since the evidence is before all of us everyday and yet most sleep. So you live within a mythology just as you accuse me of living in a mythology. You just think you can live according to your own developed “wisdom”. Even though you also say that people are essentially inherently bloodthirsty and manipulative.
And your cute little comment also lends additional evidence to the notion that you have no clue what devotion is.
Please tell me you’re not referring to your ‘devotion’ to Janos? Do you think ‘devotion’ is an appropriate emotion to express towards an unidentified entity on a blog site? Really? What would you think, really, if Janos turned out to be, as some have suggested, a honeytrap in the pay of the people you don’t like, specifically to draw in people like yourself who allow yourselves to be groomed by him?
Let’s start at the end, since it’s nearer.
‘I didn’t say that people are essentially inherently bloodthirsty and manipulative’. You just said that. I know that I’m not inherently bloodthirsty and manipulative and neither is anyone I know. I’m aware though, that great suffering can produce great evil, probably more than it will produce great compassion. As Slugoon says, we’re just advanced primates, but we remain primates. And primates are predatory and aggressive, but we’ve come a long way in civilising ourselves, even if that civilisation is a vulnerable veneer.
Well please do inform what actual “thought-out” human morality has solved the world’s problems. As I see it, none. And only Christianity, or at least a civilization that was built upon a foundation of Christianity, was that civilization that went out into the world and actually did end up feeding the hungry and clothing the world.
Right, so now Christianity went out and fed the world. So that’s a different Christianity from the one that says “We matter. Others don’t. Or only after we get ours.”
I find you confused.
I see no contradiction between the best of Christianity and an ‘actual thought-out human morality’ because I believe they are one and the same. All religions are ‘thought-out’ human moralities because they are all created by humans.
Some are better than others, in my estimation. The better parts of Christianity are better than most, but others have good parts too. The problem arises when its adherents insist people blindly follow the bits that aren’t necessarily good, since, being created by humans, they include human prejudices and bigotries. And allowing them to be projected on to a deity lends them an authority they shouldn’t always have, to the detriment of the victims of those prejudices and bigotries.
I am not at all against the idea that Christianity, where it can be separated from the bloodthirsty OT stuff, has given us an awful lot. But in my view it was given to us by that same thinking out of human morality that philosophers before Christianity were already thinking out. And we should take the good and discard the bad from all sources, as the thinking, moral beings that we are.
“Do you think ‘devotion’ is an appropriate emotion to express towards an unidentified entity on a blog site? Really?”
No mom lol, it isn’t an appropriate emotion. I’ll think things through more in the future! But, I was actually referring to devotion in the sense that in fact I was drawn to respond because of the Biblical content of the discussion. You had taken that as me simply sweeping in to defend Janos. Which if that is my perogative I am sure you are ok with that. But I was genuinely asserting that I didn’t feel that what he said was un-Christian. Was it said in a finessed and refined way? No. And it doesn’t have to be.
As far as him being a honey trap I guess that if that is the case then it doesn’t really matter to me since I am just expressing how I feel. There isn’t anything wrong about that so I fail to see any concern. Most people who would be susceptable to a honey trap aren’t online anymore. You know how heavy handed the fist has come down on right wingers and White Nationalists. Repression only strengthens and refines those being repressed and eventually there will be a “Let My People Go” moment. But I don’t believe it and he’ll have to cuff me for me to believe :-).
So in essence, you don’t see an issue with taking Christianity and harmonizing it with another belief system such as Aryan Paganism? Now I realize you would be opposed to any ethnocentric ideas, etc., but in principle it is an acceptable practice yes? It sounds as if it would be if I understand you correctly.
“So in essence, you don’t see an issue with taking Christianity and harmonizing it with another belief system such as Aryan Paganism? “
I don’t see an issue with anyone attempting to harmonise whatever belief systems they choose to harmonise. Other societies have managed to paste Christianity on to an existing local voodoo culture, for example, but you might not consider their beliefs entirely Christian.
Discussing such things is entirely legitimate. Your mind is free to do whatever it wants. But others are free to point out, if they so choose, that some things just don’t seem to work together unless you bastardise one of them to fit the other, to the extent that it is no longer what most people understand it to be. Early Christians believed Jesus was going to return within their lifetimes (not least because that’s what Jesus, bizarrely, told them), so the long-term survival of their ‘tribe’ wasn’t an imperative.
“There isn’t anything wrong about that so I fail to see any concern. Most people who would be susceptable to a honey trap aren’t online anymore. You know how heavy handed the fist has come down on right wingers and White Nationalists.
It isn’t ‘wrong’ – you are free to do whatever you want. But I don’t know why they wouldn’t be online any more – Florid Jim has explicitly approved of your ‘martyrs’ taking out high-value targets, in the white fight, so I’m guessing that unless he’s part of the honeytrap, someone is keeping an eye on him. I presume they’re more interested in people who are likely to do something or genuinely incite others to do something than in those who just run their mouth, which is what most of us are doing.
You are an utter pig of the most lowest order.
Fuck you and all you hold dear.
May God have mercy on your soul.
What an interesting way of sending blessings and best wishes.
Not as bad as a deity that orders its chosen people to smite hundreds of thousands of their neighbours, along with their children, babes and sucklings, and rape their women, in order to take over their land. And then pretends it’s making them better people in the process. Why did the deity ‘put’ the other people in the land it wanted for its chosen people anyway? Why didn’t it just make its chosen people and no other annoying competitors that needed to be smitten? With maybe a system of totally renewable resources so that they’d never reach population overshoot like he must have known they would?
Did your god not make the American Indians? If so, what did he make them for?
I admire that you are hungry to solve all of the world’s problems and quandaries. That sort of energy and focus is desperately needed as you already clearly understand. Why are you asking me Alba? Do I appear to have a direct line to the Lord? I am flattered that you feel that I do. What I have understood since you are asking is that God didn’t create robots when he created humans. If we were to behave exactly and only as He wanted us to, then how would we understand actual human emotions like love and loyalty? You see because those things, when they are real, are by choice. Have you ever seen the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Life is a battle. Whether you are battling with other humans, with diseases, in the fields, etc. The definition of life is to eat and/or be eaten. Ultimately all energy is recycled. A life for a life. I didn’t create the framework. But because I am living within the framework I will obey its constraints. Is that too much to ask? And yes, God made the Indians. What is their purpose and destiny? Again, ask Him. At this time their descendants and enriching themselves with their land based casinos. Those casinos that White people go to to spend money. So one could argue that God also has an interesting sense of humor. But when it comes to God you only and always see the glass as half empty.
“I admire that you are hungry to solve all of the world’s problems and quandaries. “
I do not suffer from any such naivety or hubris. I can hardly solve my own problems and certainly can’t solve those of my family. But I believe in (a) doing the least harm possible, in relation to other people, and (b) attempting to solve problems to the extent that we can.
What if everyone had said, regarding the hole in the ozone layer, ‘let’s just leave it – attempts to fix it are utopian, arrogance, and anything global is inherently evil and socialist and will inevitably make matters worse, as things done by governments always do? And not only that, it’s a conspiracy to get more money out of me.’
We’d have a bigger ozone hole, that’s what. And more people would get skin cancer. But instead, countries co-operated and something was done. Good. A global good. It doesn’t happen often enough.
” I didn’t create the framework.
But you think ‘God’ did. So he must take responsibility for its results. He knew what he was creating. He knew what people would do with free will. He could foresee everything. Or else he isn’t god.
He knew many non-human animals in his creation could only feed themselves by inflicting horrible suffering on other animals and they have very little free will at all. And are not offered any afterlife as a reward for their horrible suffering within your system. Suffering to no purpose and with no redemption. And it doesn’t matter which tense I use, or what theories of time I co-opt.
Naturally I don’t believe any of this. I believe that life evolved the way it evolved. Hence the suffering and the imperfections.
And you are welcome to believe the opposite. It’s all fine.
What is their purpose and destiny? Again, ask Him.
This is the eternal religious cop -out. Don’t ask me, ask the guv’nor. It’s all a m-y-s-t-e-r-y and we’re not meant to know until we KNOW.
But because I am living within the framework I will obey its constraints. Is that too much to ask? And yes, God made the Indians. What is their purpose and destiny? Again, ask Him. At this time their descendants and enriching themselves with their land based casinos. Those casinos that White people go to to spend money. So one could argue that God also has an interestin
“utopian, arrogance” = utopian arrogance
Sorry, I’ve done the same as I did with Tate – left a pasted bit of your post on the bottom as it was out of sight.
Stops at ‘KNOW’, obviously…
You guys!! Great discussion, if only SSL wouldn’t keep falling into logical fallacies…
Anyway, SSL – here’s some advice from a near neighbor of yours (Arkansan singer-songwriter, Iris DeMent.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlaoR5m4L80
I love Iris and I appreciate the advice but I am a Louisiana girl and it’s difficult to reign in the fire, fervor and passion. Mysteries are too irresistible to be left alone. Are you certain you are quite so laid back? You seem to always want to know more too.
“and it’s difficult to reign in the fire, ”
It’s probably very difficult to reign – in the fire. The Queen would hate it. She prefers a temperate climate. I expect you meant ‘rein in’ the fire. Giddy up 🙂
Would appreciate knowing which ‘utter pig’ you’re referring to.
Okay, I’ll bite. Why, exactly, did the Native Americans have “to be dispossessed?” And WTF are “powigs”? (Yes, I googled it. That wasn’t helpful.)
Powdered wigs. As hunter gatherers, the Indians required lots of land. As farmers, the Whites couldn’t accommodate them. And the Indians couldn’t accommodate us either, but we didn’t ask, we took.
Don’t you feel silly for not understanding something so utterly basic? I know you’re a smart guy, it’s “just” that your mind isn’t working in this area. You’ve been “educated” (conditioned) to now understand this. One Race was going to dominate here, and the Founders naturally chose themselves. That that’s impossible for Whites (like you) now shows how deep the poz really is.
I really think it’s your understanding here that is lacking. The Natives had a thriving agricultural civilization on the Neolithic (“New Stone Age”) technological level. This meant that while they had settled agriculture, they did not have the technological advantage of the ability to fashion and use advanced metal tools, so that limited their ability to exploit the resources of the continent. (And while they also had the wheel, they did not have reliable beasts of burden the way the Europeans did, so they couldn’t really take advantage of that particular technology.) There were a few Native cultures that managed to reach the Chalcolithic level (the ability to fashion tools of limited usefulness from copper) such as Wisconsin’s “Copper Culture”, but at the time of contact with Europeans, such Native cultures were outliers.
It was exactly because contact with our diseases burned through their population like a wildfire that they had to revert to a simpler hunter-gatherer-herder existence.
We crushed them because of how primitive and disorganized they were. Nothing “native American” about them. America has always been “can do” and be all you can be. Too much so? Why, yes. Can we learn from the Indians? Yes. Can we become the Indians? No, no more than they can become us. Wanting the impossible is disordered, by definition.
You forgot to mention the smallpox and bubonic plague pathogens conveniently doing the heavy lifting of clearing off the land of it original inhabitants.
It was an accident of history, not an intentional act. He didn’t mention it because it’s irrelevant.
It was an accident of history that made much of what he was talking about possible, so I would hardly call that irrelevant.
Yes, but your comment carries the usual implication of how much guilt we should feel because of it.
Suppose it had been within the power of Europeans to say ‘play’ or ‘stay’ to the diseases they carried with them. That question would never have even occurred to any other people.
Did you ever read Mr. Kunstler’s “An Embarrassment of Riches”?
Such a delicious stew of the days when the Ohio River was clear (or clearER) and some flocks of birds flew so thick that they “blocked the sun”.
Fantastic escapades in nature with some humanity intermixed.
Words of wisdom is trying times.
Cheers to all:
The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down,
You can’t let go and you can’t hold on,
You can’t go back and you can’t stand still,
If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will.
Won’t you try just a little bit harder,
Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?
Won’t you try just a little bit harder,
Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?
Round, round robin run round, got to get back to where you belong,
Little bit harder, just a little bit more,
A little bit further than you gone before.
The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down,
You can’t let go and you can’t hold on,
You can’t go back and you can’t stand still,
If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will.
Small wheel turn by the fire and rod,
Big wheel turn by the grace of God,
Every time that wheel turn ’round,
Bound to cover just a little more ground.
The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down,
You can’t let go and you can’t hold on,
You can’t go back and you can’t stand still,
If the thunder don’t get you then the lightning will.
Won’t you try just a little bit harder,
Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?
Won’t you try just a little bit harder,
Couldn’t you try just a little bit more?
Words by Jerome J. Garcia / Robert C. Hunter / William Kreutzmann
The Wheel lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
…or existential angst:
Terry Allen/Lubbock on Everything
Well, I just left myself today
Hell, I couldn’t wait to get away
There’s still a smear
Across the mirror
That I have been
But it won’t reflect on me again
‘Cause I just left myself today
Yeah, I just packed me up and went away
I didn’t float, I didn’t fly
I did not transcend
No I just walked out on me again
Again
And he understood the ‘deplorables’ too!
FFA
Yeah
He never done too good
When he’s in high school
Ahhh
He never even talked
To a popular girl
Yeah
He just hung around
Down at the drive-in
Honkin on his horn
An drinkin Pearl
Beer
But he’s a Future Farmer of America
Yeah
Blue Jacket pride
Of the FFA
And
He’s the future father
Of some president
Who’ll be another pain-in-the-ass
For the U S of A
He’ll be another pain-in-the-ass
For the U S of A
As for me, I’ve got 7 chickens and a solid stockpile of ammo. I’m giving up on growing food as it is so work-intensive. I have proven over the last 7 years that I can grow food sustainably, so I can always start back if the SHTF.
Otherwise, I have learned how to brew beer and distill spirits. Those skills will be in high demand as the world gets poorer. I figure it’s good for bartering.
I’m also very good at catching fish without the use of a boat, so there’s another good bartering skill.
Lawfish
I was reading the other day that potatoes are the only crop worth growing in bulk if you actually had to live entirely off a garden. They’re the only thing calorie intensive enough to actually sustain you for the work involved, with chickens for eggs and some meat as protein being the best compliment. Grains are more problematic, while vegetables are mostly a luxury, as they’re just not calorie intensive enough for the work and resources required to be worthwhile as a main foodstuff.
That’s how Uncle Ted K saw it too. The Irish were strong on milk and potatoes. Pretty miserable but it is said they were a healthy people despite the lean diet. Until the crop failed….
That is right. Buttermilk and potatoes can sustain and on a two acre McMansion lot there is not room for much else.
And people can apparently survive on camel’s milk and dates too. Maybe something for those in the more arid parts of the US to try when turning deserts into gardens (and casinos) with vast amounts of fossil fuel inputs doesn’t work any more!
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/whatever-happened-wild-camels-american-west-180956176/
Yeah, they really should have had more than one variety of potato that they cultivated. Of course, peeps don’t think catastrophe will strike them until it actually does. :-/
“vegetables are mostly a luxury”
Bullshit.
There has been significant agricultural research on how many calories per square meter can be grown efficiently.
That is, how much can you grow of a specific crop in the amount of soil that can sustain the crop, and how much calories per given amount of space can be grown.
The winner, top of the charts, and unchallenged by potatoes . . .
Garlic.
Winner, hands down.
It’s hard to imagine eating garlic like you would eat potatoes.
Hard to imagine eating garlic alone three meals a day!
Roasted garlic is very heaven. Just cut it through like a grapefruit and drizzle a bit of oil on it. I could eat a dozen. Obviously it’s even better slow roasted along with a nice shoulder of lamb, but it can stand on its own merits too. Or with a bit of blue cheese melted on it.
Eating it three times a day, it would be oozing out of your pores. Seriously. But everyone else would smell the same so you wouldn’t notice. And it causes more of a pong if eaten raw.
Keeps vampires away too. What’s not to like?
It may not be so (can’t find proof of it online) but my grandmother told me that the garlic-breath (and/or pores) smell is not the garlic but the toxins in your system that are being purged by consuming it. If you eat some EVERY day (raw or otherwise), it cleans your blood and eventually, there’s no longer a smell attached. Sound plausible?
Who knows, Majella?
Just as any of those who are allergic to cats (to their spittle that they lick their fur with, in fact) will lose their allergy eventually if they stick with it (figuratively speaking!).
‘many’, not ‘any’…
“a solid stockpile of ammo”
” distill spirits”
Lawfish,
You can thank God that it’s just us ladies on this site. There are others that would take umbrage….
Guns and alcohol
Always a winning combination!!!!!
Is that why people drink shots?
When I lived on Haddam Reservoir in Connecticut ten years ago a guy frequently drove by my place with a large decal on the front window of his Jeep that said, “Guns, Ammo, Cash and Lawyers”.
I am in L.A. now but am still in “The Jeep’s Frame of Mind”.
I grew up in the ’80s, not the messy and seismic ’60s and certainly not in the big boom years of the early 20th century. The down slope of our times will not be fun, but I’m still thankful I got to be born into this part of the world–instead of into some gutter nation ruled by warlords–and in this era–instead of, say, Medieval times with its plagues and iron-jawed justice.
We’re just sailing through the void on a little blue ball. Considering the odds, it’s a miracle any of us were born at all. So what will I do? Try to practice gratitude, keep my eyes open and my hands ready.
>>> We’re just sailing through the void on a little blue ball. Considering the odds, it’s a miracle any of us were born at all. So what will I do? Try to practice gratitude, keep my eyes open and my hands ready.
jeff2002,
Very true and excellent / practical advice!
Stop!
Stop it!!!
????
I’m glad you brought plenty of your own question marks. As I’m supposed to figure out what you mean here.
John Michael Greer always has brought up the stair-step collapse, but I’m not too sure this is how it will go this time. For the first time, we are a highly connected global civilization, and incredibly past the carrying capacity of the planet (without fossil fuels). Every rise and fall of civilizations seems to have had a baseline of a working ecosystem; with the oncoming climate changes, it may take a long time before a civilization of our magnitude and reach rises again.
Instead of just wobbling to the side of the road after hitting that pothole, we might just wind up hitting a bridge abutment.
Damn, Jim, another batch of exquisitely fine writing!
“The human hive-mind senses that something is different…”
If that ain’t the truth — nearly everyone I talk to (and it’s a fair number of people) have the uneasy sense that things are going wrong, very wrong. Even those who tend toward some form of utopian minded-ness, like New Agers with their ‘co-creating’ the future by imagining and ‘visioning’ blah blah; or even those who are stone-cold ignorant about such things as resource depletion. The old boomers tend to want to ignore it and hope to continue partying until they drop. The youngsters just know that they are f**ked, even when they can’t explain why they know. It’s all quite literally dreadful.
“The cultural memory of the confident years, when we seemed to know what we were doing, and where we were going, dogs us and mocks us.”
Such an excellent turn of phrase! One of the important things that that memory fails to remember for most moderns is the terrific amount of very hard work — the volume and kind of work that most moderns would find inconceivable — that made those days so confident and even possible at all. Oh well, many will find themselves rediscovering that kind of work in the years to come. Or they will perish.
Thanks for another great essay, sir.
Yes, both pessimism and optimism can either serve or destroy depending on objective reality and whether they subjectively motivate the person or society in accordance with that. We’ve OD’ed on optimism here. Time for some Slavic pessimism.
Time to get rid of Janos.
that is the correct time.
>>> The old boomers tend to want to ignore it and hope to continue partying until they drop.
Farmer McGregor,
You are very perceptive! Our hope is, as it has mostly been, too avoid any “unpleasantness,” as it were.
sorry, rather “to” avoid. My bad.
There is a lot of very bad spiritual energy about these days as a result of the ongoing collapse, so much so that even a culture as perceptually blind and deaf as ours has a difficult time trying to ignore it.
As young adults face the obviously difficult future as James describes, the insane left is forcing them to regress and run headlong in to the future as incompetent, dependent children who need safe spaces and feel offended at every turn. They are being set up for certain failure in a time where mental and physical strength will be necessary requirements.
In addition, they will be forced to compete for the scraps with the hungry masses that are pouring across the border, intent on their share of what remains of the pie. They will not fare well.
” the hungry masses that are pouring across the border, intent on their share of what remains of the pie. They will not fare well..”
Jack,
They? THEY? Have you learned to sleep with one eye open?
This “insane left” of which you speak are really just pampered urban neoliberals who wear wokesterdom like it’s the latest fancy fashion from Paris. When TSHTF, all that over-weaning contrived ideology will be tossed into a ditch so fast, it won’t even be funny. Even less funny is how some worthwhile things might get tossed into that same ditch. C’est la vie!
Couldn’t agree more! This crazy obsession the ‘right, conservative’ faction is a waste of their time. The wokester left is vociferous but actually tiny as a cohort in the whole population. There should be laughter not incessant rage against them. A waste of energy.
Professor Emeritus Albert Einstein has already given us the definition of insanity which is characterized as repeating the same mistake over & over again whilst thinking erroneously that change will manifest by mere repetition instead of by logic.
Given that Debt-to-GDP is unsustainable throughout the Western Banking System, and that negative long bond yields are macroeconomic anathema to a logically run banking system, we can expect to further slide down the embankment of the all pervasive Hegelian Death Spiral into the financial abyss that awaits us all.
Expectation guides us all, but what we expect here is a worldwide macroeconomic finance apocalypse that will not be ameliorated by purchasing Greenland as the new world center of American exceptionalism.
Frankly, we all know that American exceptionalism via the Chicago School & Strauss et al. was the fly in the ointment of civilization. Bottom line is that a USA centric political ethos means that the Western empire is careening towards the necropolis at a rate that surpasses the speed of sound which explains why none of the Central Banks or bankers can discern which grave to bury America in.
Amelioration of macro-finance worldwide is not workable by any stretch given the closed-looped cybernetic of interconnectivity that imploded the Western Banking System post-Lehman debacle. In brief, the Gorilla of Wall Street knew the Late Stage Ponzi was built upon asset inflation that could never be disrupted by any sort of deflationary environ.
As deflation knocks the shit out of the contrived Central Bank asset inflation Greenspan Put era we will all evidence the Secular Stagnation that Professor Summers has been warning us all about for approximately a decade now. In sum, we all knew that we are all Keynesians now way back in the Reagan era that ushered in the Greenspan Put era of elite largesse run amok.
Maestro Greenspan calculated incorrectly with limited understanding of the macroeconomic landscape.
America’s swan song will be a song of horror & mass death of life due to the exceptionalism espoused by the ignorance that emanated out of the Chicago School that gave us Neoliberalism & some pretty weird & nutty theorists that measured things with warped yardsticks & too silly econometrics.
Welcome to the New World Disorder & Long Emergency!
Take your shoes off & stay a while.
RW
Professor Emeritus Albert Einstein has already given us the definition of insanity which is characterized as repeating the same mistake over & over again whilst thinking erroneously that change will manifest by mere repetition instead of by logic.
No, Al never said ‘the definition of insanity etc’
And that is not a definition of insanity.
That’s the definition that is most often cited when referring to AE.
RW
I dont mean to belabor this,
urban legend?
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/03/23/same/
Look at malthuss going all academic today!
Bullshit! Belabor is as belabor does.
I dont like when people repeat that Urban legend..
Einstein said..
Insanity is not described by that and Albert didnt say that.
So in other words, not closing the borders is insanity, right Bob?
If the borders are closed-looped you will end up running down hill given that closed-looped cybernetics always run down over time.
Open systems cybernetics are the way to go, Janos.
Information wants to be free.
Closed-looped systems always fail miserably over time. The USA is based upon a closed-looped cybernetic system that was primarily derived via Systems Theory in the wrong hands of the Pentagon pre-Vietnam War & afterwards.
Nixon closed the gold window so that the entire world would be forced into the petrodollar supremacy and a closed-looped finance cybernetic that has topped out at zero bang for buck in 2019. By 2020 it will be all downhill from here.
RW
I for one am a bit disappointed. After all of that amazing scientific jargon and display of real knowledge you come down to supporting an open border! Information it seems doesn’t want anything since it is inanimate. But I understand what you mean, and in that manner I am sure viruses also want to be free. When it comes to viruses we probably want to be closed-looped systems right? Sorry, I probably should have avoided jumping into this one but I simply couldn’t help it or stop it.
Viruses only seek a host. Their programming is basic. Outside of a host viruses are dormant or dead.
RW
No, always jump in. “Information wants to be free” – what a blowhard. You popped his balloon but good.
Ok :-). And earth is pretty much a closed loop system too. I don’t imagine we would want the “boundaries” of the earth to be trangressed by an asteroid for instance. Just saying that an open system has its downsides it would seem.
Look up ‘cybernetics’ SSL…
“So in other words, not closing the borders is insanity, right Bob?”
Janos,
Depends upon the agenda…yours, or others?
People dismiss situations using words such as “insanity”, “stupidity”, etc. It is a mistake not to consider that the creators of those situations might not have the same goals as you.
Agree. Our credit is their debit. The question then becomes who the “their” is. BRH goes to sleep when this question arises, along with many others.
IF suicide is insane.
“IF suicide is insane.”
Malthuss,
…Circumstances determine….
No, Janos,
YOU are the definition of insanity
Read it and weep.
Are you doing this again? Let me pull out the coloring books so we can keep you busy and engaged in something constructive.
>>> It’s this simple. We landed in the New World five hundred years ago. It was full of good things that human beings had barely begun to exploit, laid out like a banquet. There was plenty of good virgin soil for growing food, the best timber in the world, clean rivers and great lakes, ores full of iron, gold, and silver, and down deep a bonanza of coal and oil to drive the wheel through very flush times.
There were also Native Americans. Lots of them. So it wasn’t quite ours for the taking. We took it anyway.
Speak for yourself. It was not YOURS for the taking. There I fixed it for you.
I will not take the blame for something I did not do. This in spite of the incessant leftist bleating to do so.
If you are White or even if you aren’t, you enjoy the fruits of the Conquest. Be honest with yourself. And as follows the night the day, you can not then be dishonest to other man (approximate Shakespeare).
Yikes. Polonius is turning in his grave. I don’t think Shakespeare has been mangled like that since you left your copy in the laundry.
Oh, I am very honest with myself. I had nothing to do with the conquest of the Native Americans. I enjoy the fruits of what came before me. I will certainly not waste my time hand-wringing over things I can not change. BTW, I had nothing to do with slavery, either.
@rackslope
That is a sane and honest answer.
Shame so many do not share in the guiltless reality that being white is not a crime nor a sin.
I’m not blaming you for anything. The “we” in my sentence corresponds to the “we” in JHK’s.
>>> It’s this simple. We landed in the New World five hundred years ago.
Did YOU land in the New World? No you did not. Clearly JHK’s use of “we” was not meant to refer—literally—to all his readers, and nor was my usage.
No, there were Indians who needed to conquered and dispossessed. We who founded this Nation are the Native Americans. By definition. Again, your conventionality leads you astray.
I accept your definition of ‘Native American’ Janos. It is a rational one. There were no ‘Americans’ before we came here. There were indigenes who didn’t even have one unifying term among the hundreds of tribes & languages for the land they inhabited. Therefore, America didn’t exist before Columbus.
“Native Americans” considered themselves to be inhabitants of Turtle Island.
Who cares? They were Skraelings or Screamers as the Vikings called them.
You took the fatal turn: you asked the question as Spengler said. The Founders never doubted themselves like this. You are a house divided despite your great knowledge. Who is like the Founders today? That’s right – the Tribe. Me firsters. A House united. And of course the Chinese. Great Will, IQ, and Racial and National Pride. We used to have all of it.
The name Turtle Island is used today by many Native American and First Nations cultures, and activists, especially since the 1970s when the term came into wider usage.[6]
Doubtful it was a widespread concept among most pre-Columbian indigenes. It came into widespread usage in the 1970s.
Ha! That figures.
Semantics. Call them what you want. They were here first.
And we won’t be here last if present trends continue.
So what? And they were always taking lands from each other in any case. America was Sword Land – as it will be again.
So might makes right? An alien species could look at the earth, note humans killing each other, kill us all, and morally justify it with: So what? They were killing each other.
Right makes might. If we believe in ourselves, we will be strong again.
You’re asking the fatal question. If the Sun were doubt, it would immediately go out. (William Blake).
Someone asked a centipede how he managed his hundred legs. He said he didn’t know. He tried to think about it and then not only could he not answer, he couldn’t even walk anymore. (Chuang Tzu).
The actual practice or attempt to practice Universal Morality by an entire Society is something new or emergent – and fraught with peril. Obviously, right? I mean we’ve already blown it by excluding OURSELVES from the Universal Morality and by setting Minorities over us. As if just because their ancestors were victimized by our ancestors that somehow makes them morally superior to us in the present.
It was immediately weaponized and/or hijacked by our Enemies, right from the get go. Or it was only created with the intention of so doing. I mean is anyone going to give Whites back the lands that we stolen from them? And is your Capitalism in line with Universal Morality? It is to laugh….
>>> Right makes might. If we believe in ourselves, we will be strong again.
Sophistry and diversion.
Admitting that “our” ancestors raped and pillaged doesn’t mean I’m laying the foundation for reparations or what have you. It is significant. It is not necessarily actionable.
I do hope you get gutted by a sword. From your poop hole to your throat. Yep. I hope someone cleans you like a fuckin catfish. You Nazi fuckhead.
Why do you have such a visceral hatred of “Nazis”? Are you Jewish or non-White? And would this be your exact sentiments for a Communist or an Islamist seeing as both ideologies have been quite genocidal and barbaric resulting in millions of deaths?
I challenged his picture of the world and he doesn’t like it because he doesn’t have an answer. The Nazi stuff is weird since he knows about the Tribe. This is human smallness indeed.
Ex: Good consistency. The Individual alone is the only significant reality. Thus? Thus we will lose everything to Peoples who think more clearly. The Founders would have thought you bizarre indeed. We could have never taken “Turtle Island” from the Skraelings with that ethos. They would have crushed us one by one or family by family with this kind of “get off my lawn nationalism”.
The ghost of Maggie Thatcher giggles at her work to see – from Hell.
Janos, it is not either/or. The Founders thoroughly understood the need for both individuality and society. E pluribus unum. Their balancing act was the Constitution. We can create and destroy associations as needed, but individuals are the indivisible building blocks.
Were you some kind of hive pollinator in another life? A honey bee, perhaps? Could you deal with a queen and not a king?
How could it have been different since there was no plan.Perhaps we could have gone by the Star Trek ,Prime Directive. Do not disturb native civilizations and wait until they advance technology. If we had waited for Native Americans to discover Europe, I suspect we would still be waiting. Or, maybe they would have conquered Europe, and we would be sitting on a reservation outside London (New Cherokee) getting drunk.
“two seemingly noble ideas, both exercises in futility”
Sure. In an absolute sense it’s all ultimately futile, because ultimately we all die. But there is a medium term. Working a bit to improve the aesthetic is not only possible, but improves one’s sense of worth. That is not futile.
Now and then, I just try to make things a little better, like when I walk the beach and pick up a few things that the louts left behind. Futile? Well, now there are fewer pieces of glass on that beach, which to me is a better aesthetic.
But if you want, work to made things worse. There is a word for that: lout.
Upvote.
40 years ago I looked really hard for “Normal” but failed to find it. Then I looked for “us” and “them” and “we”, no, nowhere to be found.
But of course all really important words for story-tellers.
The physics back then said collapse by 2010 if Plan B (fission) didn’t work out, it took me some time to realise everybody but me was a story-teller. No wonder I’ve had such a difficult life!!
“The young adults feel all that most acutely. The pain prompts them to want to deconstruct that memory. “No, it didn’t happen that way,” they are saying. All those stories about the founding of this society — of those Great Men with their powdered hair-doos writing the national charter, and the remarkable experience of the past 200-odd years — are wrong! There was nothing wonderful about it. The whole thing was a swindle!”
I don’t think many young adults think about this at all. However, as an older, retired, white male adult, I do!
I won’t say there’s NOTHING wonderful about the United States, at least for those of us of European descent (my family came here in 1742). Native Americans, slaves, current blacks, early Chinese, Japanese, Irish, etc. will feel different — and with justification.
As I became more informed, I concluded, yes, there is a lot of mythology about the founders, our actual government system, our actual history and behavior on the world stage (see William Blum’s Rogue State & Killing Hope), etc. that are completely at odds with official proclamations and propaganda.
Like the former Soviet Union, and other empires before, we are failing due to the growing chasm between what we Americans tell ourselves about our place in the world and how it works vs. REALITY.
By the way, I am tired of Jim’s constant harping about the horrible sins of the left (i.e., identity politics), while rarely mentioning the worse sins of the right (tax giveaways, demolishing environmental regulations, etc.) Jim is like an old stuck record groove in this regard. Boring and tiresome.
Not only does neither “party” care about workers who actually create things, they and their wealthy backers actively despise labor.
I agree with you about JHK’s disappointing focus these days. Much of what he criticizes about the left is the result of the left being forced to wrestle with pigs in the mud. The left tries to get money out of politics and the right does all it can to make sure it reigns supreme. What is left for the left to do, surrender, or play by the rules imposed? “Citizens United!”
The left tries to improve the health care system for all and the right works their hardest to insure that whatever solutions are hammered out insure the fat and greedy get to soak the gov’t in the process. How many people here take pills that cost more per pill than an expensive meal at a fancy restaurant?
We now have a pig in the whitehouse. Everyone knows it including the pig’s wife but all JHK does is complain about how much pig shit the left has on their shoes.
Wow. TDS must be worse than PTSD!
I hope your ObummerCare covers it.
The funniest part of all is that DJT is not a Republican and has been pretty left on social and some fiscal issues most of his life.
TDS, indeed.
Any healthy society needs healthy myths and legends, as well as real history of course. I would think that since Mr. K has said before that he was/is a Democrat that he is simply letting off steam at those who should have had his interests in mind. He has spoken out about the right many times and is no Trump fan.
My view is that Jim likes being a contrarian. As such, our current culture gives a steady diet of the left’s views and demonizing of all things right (which is now defined as anything right of Stalin). No need to pile on.
Also, when so much of the left’s agenda is contrary to reality (how many genders are we up to now) it is easy pickings.
We all have our sins…
“… I am tired of Jim’s constant harping about the horrible sins of the left (i.e., identity politics), while rarely mentioning the worse sins of the right”
Homo,
Why qualify actions in moral terms…you inject your prejudices. Actions are not sins to some, sins to others and egregious dirty god damned black sins to others.
The actions have consequences…some good, some bad depending upon perspective. Qualify them as such.
What do you think Jim means when he speaks of the long emergency? Who engineered it? (Hint…Republicans and Democrats). Plenty of “sins” to go around.
>>> I am tired of Jim’s constant harping about the horrible sins of the left (i.e., identity politics), while rarely mentioning the worse sins of the right (tax giveaways
How do you “give away” something that isn’t yours in the first place? Reminds me of the Left’s use of the term “buyback” when referring to gun confiscation.
I am tired of Jim’s harping about the horrible Left
Jim was Left until the Left betrayed America. Identity politics is not the main issue, socialism and Communism are. We belong to a generation that regards socialism as an anathema, so the current drive towards socialism is the enemy within.
Our entire society has lost the concept of what wealth is. Not either party, everyone. The idea that money flows from capital that flows from wealth creation is not understood by our society and as it grows less experienced by younger generations and yes, immigrants, the situation worsens. The Deep State, comprised of everyone in DC any more, pushes ignorance of money, capital and wealth as it stems their tax base and therefore power.
JohnAZ
Don’t conflate SOCIALISM, as practiced widely among many educated, peaceful and civilized western nations and COMMUNISM as it has been demonstrated by the USSR & China.
You also attribute ‘wealth’ as accruing to a few privileged & oftentimes ‘lucky’ families who have accumulated it over generations – ‘behind every great fortune is a crime’, as Balzac once wrote.
Where’s the virtue in a 3rd or 4th generation Rockefeller or Ford or even a Walton (‘new’ money’) living a ridiculously privileged life, and paying indecently little to the commonweal through taxes? Their profits come from the commonweal and all the services it provides. These are the ‘lucky sperm club’.
In an effective socialist system, they remain extremely wealthy but their good fortune is required to SUPPORT the State rather than draining it. The wealth of the whole population is a more effective way to growing & developing social homogeneity and that elusive of all human expectations, ‘the pursuit of happiness’.
If you gave been smart enough to accrue millions in assets and liquid wealth, good on you. But if you get to the point where you are ready to spent $1 million dollars on a clever accountant to avoid $1.1 million in taxes, what’s the decking point????
…’fecking’…
Name one Western nation that practices socialism.
I’ll wait.
One?
Try Denmark, Norway, Sweden, New Zealand, Australia (in essence), the UK, Ireland, USA (though it’s limited and mostly denied by those who don’t like it. The classic moment when the Teabaggers marched with signs saying “Get your government hands off my Social Security”
It’s easier to name some that do NOT.
False. You walked right into the trap. A mixed economy is not socialism.
It is shocking how little you know.
Hold on now. WH Economic adviser Larry Kudlow says to be optimistic, that there’s no recession coming soon.
Reminds me of the executives of Enron telling the employees to buy stock while they were selling theirs, right before Enron crashed.
“Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”
— Irving Fisher, October 16, 1929
Teddy Roosevelt recognized from the get go the nation was already in grave danger of being irreparably ruined because of the iron fisted grasp the venal and greedy few had on the vital resources of this country. The JP Morgans, the Rockefellers, et al who believed all wealth should be in the hands of the few and only they were fit to make the decisions about what was best for the masses.
Thanks to his efforts what we are seeing today was delayed but sadly not prevented in the long run for almost 100 years.
He was the first president to ever invite a black man (Booker Washington) to the white house for a private dinner with the President and the Southern newspapers exploded in a frenzy of hate and ugliness unrivaled in American history.
And only those who venerate the Black and the Brown are worthy of distinction and honor. Just as you say all of those who cross the border illegally are good, hard working and deserving people. Mexicans right? I thought good people follow laws, particularly of a society that they dearly want to be a part of? Or is this just convoluted and Southern thinking?
I thought venerating all people was embedded in the core teaching of the Jesus mythology. Am I mistaken in thinking that you participate in that particular cult belief system?
God is no respecter of persons. What person is worthy of veneration? To love someone is very different than venerating someone.
“I thought venerating all people was embedded in the core teaching of the Jesus mythology. ”
Is that why he called some a “generation of vipers?”
What you say is a widespread popular delusion, but a delusion just the same.
I wasn’t talking about Philip Wylie you idiot.
If you are after the biblical reference those regarded as the ‘vipers’ were those who fit this descripton…
“But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment.”
I’m guessing it would apply to the cagers of the children of good people.
SSL – you are the ditzy kook who brought the word into play.
Venerating is no more that paying deep respect so I guess you are defying the so called water walker’s assertion you should love your neighbor.
You are a tortured wretch living with a mind full of spider webs.
“Generation of Vipers,” Philip Wylie
Wylie was writing about American culture of the 1940s, I wonder if any of what he said holds true today?
Brh
Obviously you don’t understand much of what the “water walker” said. As if you really cared given your visibly deep disrespect. If one has to have deep respect for another in order to love them then the world would be an even more messed up place. Think about it and get back to me.
Evelyn
As I know from my own experience, quoting the core values & ‘facts’ of the Christ mythology to SSL will only lead to you being accused of ‘cherry-picking’.
She & Janos have some very weird views on the Jesus-character, not dissimilar to that displayed in the recent Netflix docudrama “The Family”, where this Christ-figure is used as a shield, from behind which all manner of evil can be deployed.
It sounds like you were never a fan of the notion that all humans rights have to be respected as a first principle.
You must hate the US constitution.
If you don’t love everybody you *Love* nobody,
including yourself.
Especially yourself.
Majella you are taking one instance in which I did tell you that you were cherry picking (because you were) and you are making that out as if it is the default attitude and it is simply untrue. My point to you at that time is that one verse does not overshadow the other. It’s one revelation.
But that isn’t what I said Evelyn. I said that if one has to have deep respect to love another then the world is in deep trouble. My whole point is that love shouldn’t simply manifest because there is deep respect, etc. If that were the case would you be merciful to those you have no respect for? I think you just misunderstood what I was saying.
The queen bee of putting words into people’s mouths that aren’t what the people said claiming one of her garbled attempts to say something meaningful was “misunderstood”. You show no evidence of understanding anything you say even your own self.
Take a memo: the world *is* in deep trouble. A lot of foggy brained people like you can share the credit for it.
@EvelynV
You seem to have nothing more than personal insults to offer. Maybe you should find another forum where your astonishingly low level of civility is welcome.
Sorry Jackstraw but I prefer to stay amongst right wing mutton heads where I can focus on doing the vitally important wet work.
You have an inner right winger waiting to come out so you come here to try to somehow lash out at those you perceive as right wing in order to keep the day of reconciliation at bay. But it’s just part of who you are Evelyn. You can’t run and hide forever.
@JACKSTRAW
You nailed it Evilyn is nothing but a leftist troll this is all a game to it that makes it feel better about it’s own miserable failures.
The failures of the left are constant and all they now have are identity politics and screams of racism.
Mix this toxic slurry together with a fair amount of the belief they are smarter and you have it the perfect conduit for shit stirring craven arm chair heathens with nothing good to say.
I knew the “mutton head” reference would bring bentover rushing to the scene 🙂
SSL:
“Majella you are taking one instance in which I did tell you that you were cherry-picking”
So, again you accuse me of cherry-picking! The irony…
If I recall correctly (though it’s pointless relitigating something with you, I know) my ‘cherry-picked’ principle was THE CORE VALUE of Christianity, the ‘Golden Rule’ – “do unto others as…”
That simply doesn’t suit your selective rationale, which is overtly racist and un-Christian, but you can’t look in a mirror and see yourself for what you are.
Instead, you play quasi-intellectual footsie with that evil asshole, Janos, and kid yourself into believing that you have some imagined high-flung level of ‘spirituality’ that we atheists simply don’t ‘get’.
Well I can’t help that it upsets you so Majella that the core principle of Christianity is not the Golden Rule. Yes, the Golden Rule per se is part of the revelation as it is with Confucius, Buddha and others. It is factually incorrect to say it is THE core principal. The core principals of Christianity are woven together from both the Old and New Testaments and have every thing to do with the nature of God, the universe, and humanity and the very purpose and meaning of time and space. You’re so jealous of our relationship. You need to stop it. But I understand. Sometimes he leaves me without words too.
SSL
Hahahaaahhaaaaha…..
Your decking e lost the plot.kidding me, right? I note you haven’t been able to express what IS the core value of your twisted demented corrupt ‘Christianity’
Also amusing is your (yet again) attempt to misconstrue what I have plainly stated, unambiguously.
Jealous of you & Janis? Whaaaat? You really have lost the plot.
“Yes, the Golden Rule per se is part of the revelation as it is with Confucius, Buddha and others.”
Quite so. You can almost see all those people in the world in different places and at different times figuring out for themselves that life is a lot nicer if you treat other people the way you like to be treated. And vice versa. Reciprocity -magic! An entirely human revelation. I expect quite a few families had figured it out for themselves a long time before it went big. If only some people hadn’t had the God-projection gene and had just left it there. There might not have been so much my-god’s-bigger-than-your-god fighting.
@evilyn
What can I say I like vinegar on my chips, fish and salad!
You seem to exude hate like vinegar but its toxic, full of venom, witless drivel and self assured nonsense almost like you have some form of penance to perform.
Attack the evil righties at all costs even when you have nothing of actual value to say pretty much ever.
As far as mutton headed what’s wrong with some well cooked mutton?
Almost a suggest of demonic fixation on eating human flesh! Are you the boards Pishachas fixated on devouring any pound of flesh you can find? Beware the weary wandering poster Evilyn is lurking.
I wonder if there is a virtual neem oil to gird ourselves from you virulent toxic posts.
“The JP Morgans, the Rockefellers, et al who believed all wealth should be in the hands of the few…”
Do something about it. If 20% of Americans would purchase a 1 ounce silver coin JPMore gain would be screwed.
I have a hundred oz’s of silver and it hasn’t helped a bit. Typical right wing thinking.
Lol! Maybe just ‘not yet’.
Lead is far more valuable with the lead I can get the silver and the food.
Silly Evilyn you remain clueless as ever and toxic to boot.
Tell me do you tarnish silver with your venom?
Certainly the young ones would be crazier than shithouse mice if they didn’t have social media to turn to each other. What better way to cope with the perfect idiocies of the 21st century than to bury one’s self in a gigantic echo chamber.
Makes sense to me.
A finely crafted article — almost a meditation for me.
It appears to me that obtaining the necessities of life as the descent continues is not a particularly vexing problem, at least not in the rural area where I live. I’m more concerned about social breakdown and the possible rise of roving gangs. Organizing local militias to guard against this might just exacerbate the problem, as rogue elements could sieze control of such militias and turn the militias themselves into well-organized predatory.
As usual, nature will provide. It’s mankind that’s always the problem.
But mankind is Nature so in essence Nature is the problem.
What a load of tripe, SSL.
Mankind is OF Nature, but most certainly ISN’T Nature.
You’re right Majella and thank you for rescuing me from that moment. We are more than just nature. We are spirit too. And I am so glad that you can see that and that you corrected me. I always believed you would get here. Another awakening awaits you. One step at a time and all in good time.
Lol!
Semantic word games. This is a good example of why modern progs fall back on emotion.
You know what she meant here, and that she is right. But it upsets you.
SSL – if you go with that kind of thinking then there is no problem except in the minds of people who live in a dualistic world, which is just about the entire human race.
And we do have a dual nature. We are matter and spirit. So there is a constant struggle within us. To the extent that people are unaware of that struggle is the extent to which they are asleep at the wheel.
The Industrial Revolution was a Faustian bargain. Enough said. The Western World simply chose to sell Its soul to the Devil — and (alas) compel everyone else to do the same in the name of ‘Progress’.
The Devil pays well in the short run, no doubt about that. But the long run is now, and Ol’ Scratch is excitedly waiting to claim his due. What will you do?
The die has been cast. It’s all over but the cryin’ and gnashing of teeth now.
Don’t forget the girding of loins, Scratch.
We must always gird our loins if we are going to gnash our teeth, eh. I have it on good authority that gnashing of teeth is always accompanied by girding of loins too.
A grey haired old man told me that years ago.
RW
“A grey haired old man told me that years ago”
RW,
What the grey haired old man neglected to tell you is that the loins don’t gird so well with age….
This is the type of article that should be shown to every student in grade school because it’s happening right now before our eyes. Unfortunately for those students they are too busy being taught social justice and gender reassignment.
Beware the Gender Unicorn.
One must never play leap frog with a unicorn!
LOL yeah probably a smart decision!
As I dozed off last night I was thinking about what life must have been like at the turn of the 19th century and then at the turn of the 20th. I have too little history to recall what life at either of those points, but particularly the first of the two, would have been like. But it sure must have had little in common with our world of today.
Thanks, for a excellent broad picture post, Jim.
Probably only about 10% of the current population could have survived those times.
We are the society we have created, and we bring about its demise or its crowning at will. We have created the prevailing values that rule our lives, and we approve of them regardless of what we say to the contrary. In fact, precisely our rejection of some values validates them. If I am working against X, then X must be something that resonates with society. If it is so important for me to act on it, it must speak to me in some way.
Values hold sway as long as they serve a purpose and are definitively abandoned when useless. I assure you, ten years from now Muslim women living in Western countries will no longer be wearing burkas. We want to blame daddy; he’s responsible isn’t he for the unpleasant? Surely, somebody’s got to be in charge!
Who’s in charge, is the question we have no answer for. We seem on some level to be in charge of our direction and moving in an expansive way. If humans have a primary goal, beyond physical, emotional and psychological needs, it is a broadening of knowledge. Yet, this directive, is it ours? Has some intentionality of the universe imposed it on us? We are tumbleweeds blown thither and yon, for what purpose? What is the universe’s plan?
The mind cannot take on the complexity that we live in. How can our protagonist in her little life be aware that her thoughts and actions have an effect on the tsunami occurring on some island in the Pacific? She cannot, as she cannot grasp its significance in her life. The mind is not suited for the questions it poses. We are standing less than a foot away from the pointillist painting of our existence and can barely decipher what it’s all about, save for its emotional coloring and the size of its frame. But we soldier on calling out one reaction or another to what we are able to observe, to conjecture, to imagine.
“The mind cannot take on the complexity that we live in.”
The postmodern dilemma! The answer is not to ignore this complexity but rather to learn to live effectively within the bounds of ignorance.
History wars create casualties and Year Zero resets fatalities.
Powdered wigs? Yeah they did that for some reason. But they were bad asses too. George Washington was 6’4″ and could broad jump 20 feet. A superb rider and Indian fighter, it is said he could take off a man’s head with one swing of his sword.
Jefferson and Adams? Not physical fighters – they fought with their minds and pens. And they were just as deadly on that level.
We owe everything we have to these Conquerors. It would not be remiss to set up personal shrines to them in our homes – since their public worship has all but ceased.
no, Lewis and Clark were not led by Sacajawea. sometimes she acted like a guide but she was just trying to help Lewis and Clark find the best paths.
The site Ambrose Kane is gone. About 5-8 years ago there was a thread about a black man who went on that expedition.
https://blackthen.com/york-black-explorer-lewis-clark-expedition/
YORK. At Ambrose, the links to college teahers or whoever just rhapsodizing about York, the magical negro. It was so funny.
It would be so much better than the celebrity worship that is so common now. Celebrities that neither love the country or actually care about it’s future.
Sarah Bagel on You tube singing ‘I love U America’ was satire, parody, the funniest thing she ever did.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP81Je7APoQ
Sarah Bagel lol. I think it would have gone more viral if she would have been completely open and honest and titled the song, “I love you America and now I’m gonna kill ya”. Then she could spin it six ways to Sunday about how you have to make sacrifices for progress, etc.
HomoSapiensWannaBe and EvelynV, our host is a WORKING author. Our host also graciously provides this space with very light moderation.
I have come to view Mr. Kunstler’s essay’s here at CFN as questions that are asked to take stock of the body politic. The posts he provides us lately are more akin to late Picasso than a younger Picasso.
There Is No Normal presents quite an abstract view of that which is being described, see what you will.
Thank you Mr. K
Hear hear!
Jim can talk about what he wants to; it isn’t his job to provide a criticism of everything. The criticism of the right would be best done by people on the right. Jim has always characterized himself as a life-long Democrat, and it may be better that someone who leans left to speak up about the problems on the left.
Likewise, when folks on the right speak out about overspending, destruction of the environment (remember, TR was a Republican, and huge conservationist!), money printing, etc., it has a bit more heft.
TR was and was regarded as a “Progressive” republican and was hated by Wall Street and by much of his own party. If he had not ascended to the presidency due to Wall Street’s lap dog being assassinated he would have had no chance of ascending in his party. There was great resentment, fear, and hostility that he even got close to the presidency by getting the VP position. McKinley being killed was the conservative right’s worst nightmare come true. Nothing more fortunate ever happened for this nation.
Another thing is that many of the people on the right are “A Country Boy Can Survive” types that you have to respect, even if they are not always very refined, logical, or possessed of keen analytical skills.
Dominating the left you have a dissonant chorus of schemes to fix things that one knows won’t be fixed, especially by their schemes.
Kind of like that old Buddy Hackett joke about settling a duck hunting dispute “country style”.
Now that is classic JHK. The vision and syntax of LE and WMBH.
I credit James for the constant rhetorical pushing, shoving, and occasional body check in 2007 that shook the scales from my eyes so I could see the impending financial landscape. One major reason why we high tailed it back to Canada.
We’ve seen all the coverage about the bond market this past week. Is there more to it?
World War of the Roses by Bird Eye View. P 4
After watching yesterday’s Sunday’s political broadcasts, it became clear to me that I can’t succeed in completing this series with another post, because the events that are taking place force me to deepen the topic all the time, because it is becoming more and more important for understanding what is happening.
When I wrote the first post on this subject on August 9, I described the purely secular aspect of the World War of the Roses in it and therefore called it World Civil War by Bird Eye View, hoping in the next post to uncover the meta-realistic meaning of these events and to close the topic with this post.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/rude-awakening/#comment-434695
But still, I just had to give it a link to a post about Madonna’s performance at the Eurovision Song Contest in Israel, which I wrote on May 31, since it was the Israeli lobby a year ago that made a very tangible contribution to the fact that Hillary’s next attempt to topple Trump failed a year ago, which began with the downing of the Russian Il-20 in Syria with the participation of the Israeli Air Force.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/prelude-to-a-fiasco/#comment-419677
But if I’m right and on July 1, the American intelligence services committed a sabotage on Losharik in order to kill Vladimir Putin, then compared with this not only the Il-20 disaster, but also the 1962 Caribbean crisis, as a result of which the world was really on the brink of a nuclear war, seem like a child’s play in a sandbox
First, Epstein’s “suicide” made me think of the well-documented actions of another pedophile – Marshal Gilles de Rais, who killed more than 200 children after raping them in order to evoke a spirit very reminiscent of Baal = the Devil to whom human sacrifices were made in Carthage, Tire, Moab, and Jericho, which in fact became the reason for the Commandment from Above to the soldiers of Joshua to destroy everyone in Jericho “from man to cattle.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_de_Rais
And the soldiers of the Roman Republic, which for the same reasons destroyed Carthage, followed in the footsteps of Joshua, fighting against the same enemy.
But initially the reason for this association was that, according to Shakespeare, the War of the Roses began with the news of successes of a French witch named Joan of Arc, who the Catholic Church recently proclaimed a saint, despite the fact that her closest associate was the aforementioned pedophile Gilles de Rais. (She was canonized as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church on 16 May 1920 by Pope Benedict XV in his bull Divina disponente).
However, now the followers of Marshal Gilles de Rais are already trying their best to whitewash him, in order to twist their finger at anyone’s temple who believes that ritual pedophilia has a long history.
And then Trump’s reaction to Epstein’s suicide strengthened this association, as the U.S. president also hinted that Epstein’s pedophilia was of ritual nature, and this suppression is either an independent confirmation of this hypothesis, or Trump reads my posts at CFN every day.
Of course I threw away the second option, and the first made me re-visit the history of medieval France and the castle of Montmorency, in which Marshall de Rais was engaged in pedophilia. And I found not only the organizers of the War of the Roses of the 15th century among friends-comrades-in-arms of Marshal de Rais, but also the creators of the Knights Templar among his ancestors.
It was these ancestors during the First Crusade that occupied the famous Al-Aqsa mosque under the headquarters of the Order, which stands on the ruins of the Second Temple, rebuilt by King Herod so thoroughly that it contained three statues of the goddess Lilith, about whom Madonna sang at the Eurovision Song Contest in Israel.
Meanwhile, medieval historians are well aware that it was then that these ancestors of Marshal de Rais started digging something in the courtyard of their headquarters and they did dug something, and it seems that they knew well where to dig in order to find either the Ark of the Covenant, or the aforementioned statues of Lilith.
And the cult of the Black Madonna that suddenly appeared in Western Europe in the 11th century, about which Rammstein sings in the Deutschland video, makes the second option more likely.
This actually made me to write a post “War of the Roses by Bird Eye View. P 2″ about sects with many thousand years of history, using sex with minors and sacrificing them to call spirits that provide power to the Deep States of all kinds and varieties.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-yin-and-the-yang-of-it/#comment-436299
And yesterday I wrote a post “War of the Roses by Bird Eye View. P 3” about the meaning attached to these sects by the Holy Scriptures, and also explained the thesis about the providential significance of the forcible conversion of Amalek to Judaism, which made Herod king of Judea during the Christ’s earthly mission.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-yin-and-the-yang-of-it/#comment-436436
But the most interesting thing is that the aforementioned Madonna’s song at Eurovision in Israel was framed as a spell calling Lilith to help Netanyahu’s rival in the elections, and only the joint intervention of Trump and Putin ensured the victory of Netanyahu.
Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and Russia handed over to Israel the remains of a soldier who died in Syria many years ago, but Netanyahu won with such an insignificant advantage that he had to call a new election in September, and in this election he will have the same rival named Yaalon , who repeatedly condemned Trump while simultaneously publicly stating that ISIS in Syria is more preferable for Israel compared to Hezbollah and the Guards of the Iranian Revolution.
And now, in Israel, there is an election campaign again, on which all the same actors compete, and in the USA another attempt of a worldwide coup d’etat failed again, part of which was to be a fire on Losharik and the assassination of Vladimir Putin.
Moreover, the reaction of the media to Epstein’s “suicide” is fully consistent with my assumption that Epstein’s arrest is Trump’s reaction to the fire in Losharik and the threat that, due to CIA sabotage in Russia, Attorney General Barr and Federal Prosecutor Durham simply do not have time to complete the case about the start of Mueller’s investigation before out of control American “intelligence community” would succeed in provoking a nuclear war between US and Russia.
And a few days ago, Trump again intervenes in the Israeli elections, recommending via Twitter not to let in two Muslim women, members of the US House of Representatives, known for their anti-Israeli speeches, and he recommends that after the Israeli government, contrary to Netanyahu, has already decided to let them in.
And these women are not allowed in, which greatly increases the chances for Netanyahu to win in September and makes such an impression on the American evangelical community that I urgently need to write a post about female bishops in American churches and the law that practically prohibits Christianity in the USA, which quietly has already been adopted by the House of Representatives.
And this post will inevitably touch on the theme of the Apocalypse, to which the American evangelical voter, who largely ensured Trump’s victory in 2016, takes very seriously.
In addition, in connection with the strikingly cynical Russian TV show of Malakhov, I have already raised the topic of a girl who was most likely a supplier of sex slaves from Russia to Epstein and who was recently killed in connection with the arrest of Epstein.
And this topic is connected with the theme of the Black World Project in Russia in the most direct way, in particular with the role of sexual perversions in the promotion of public officials in the service.
And this, in turn, requires additional investigation of the possibility of the ritual significance of these perversions in connection with the newly discovered circumstances in the United States, which objectively became the center of international politics.
This once again proved the crypto-religious nature of the World War, of which we are witnesses. That is, once again proved that this is the World War of the Roses. And this post concludes this series, since even a large research institute cannot properly disclose this topic in the given circumstances.
And the best thing that I can do in these circumstances is to continue the theme of the post “War of the Roses by Bird Eye View P 1”, since a meta-realistic analysis of current politics, including the Orthodox policy and the politics of the Orthodox Church, as any scientific analysis speaks philosophical language created by Sir Isaac Newton.
Or this could have been just a honey pot operation to gather compromising dirt on influential people, Epstein was certainly a Deep State operative, as his wealth was almost entirely other peoples’. The whole “Billionaire Financier” shtick was just a thin veneer of a ruse. A cover story to support the larger cover story. There’s certainly more to the story than just that, but us mere peons will never be privy to it, not at least without a generous helping of disinformation served along side to muddy the truth. But for as long as this guy was in operation, I’m just surprised that a whole lot more famous names haven’t popped up off his clientele list by now.
OS
Where did the $575 million come from?
He listed an income of $14 million per year, and $56 million in the bank. That was in the NYPost today.
Brh
I think the simplest explanation is that he skimmed and reinvested diverted funds from ultra rich clients he had.
He was a school teacher before he was ‘discovered’ LOL
Hey Finca, What do you make of the painting of Clinton found in Epstein’s place?
It’s cruel to poke a wounded animal. Don’t poke Finca
I didn’t know.
Did anyone else see it, or the official painting of Obama?
What do they have in common?
I just read this article about a Chinese college student’s take on the US after being here for three years. I think several of his points serve as a commentary on our culture. Degraded culture, in my opinion…
https://www.businessinsider.com/disappointing-things-about-us-culture-china-2019-8
Here are his most important points for me:
–Substance abuse is prevalent on American college campuses
For young adults, using drugs almost seems like the norm if you want to be accepted or “cool.” It’s much harder to obtain drugs in China than in the US, and penalties for violating drug laws are more severe than they are in America.
Moreover, Chinese college campus culture is generally more academic-focused than party-focused, so drug use is less common among young people. I suspect many Chinese students wouldn’t be proud to admit it if they have done drugs.
–The smart kids aren’t usually the ‘cool’ kids
In Chinese schools, those who have good grades are more popular than those who don’t. Chinese parents and teachers like and trust those students because they are smart and disciplined enough to be academically successful.
In the US, often, the students who perform the best aren’t always the “cool” kids — for many of them, they’re stigmatized as “nerds.” It was shocking to learn that much of the time at American schools, students value street smarts more than book smarts.
–American families are not as close as Chinese families
In the US, I found that my peers are not especially close to their extended family members like their aunts, uncles, and cousins.
Sometimes, even the relationships between parents and children and siblings can be a little distant as everyone goes their separate ways in life.
In China, on the other hand, loyalty and commitment to your family is the No. 1 priority.
But Americans are generally more individually-minded, and they tend to rely more on themselves than on their families.
There are two kinds of Chinese: those that are stereotypically Chinese, and those that aren’t.
A lot of wealthy Chinese students can’t make the grade in China and do the next best thing: enroll and “slum it” in a USA university.
These students are the worst. They smoke, drink, party, and generally embrace the worst values America has to offer. They’re not serious students, and a far departure from the sterotypical values one associates with Asians.
Somehow, in China, the fact that you were educated in the USA overcomes the fact that your test scores suck and you couldn’t get into a top-tier Chinese university. Just as most stars tend to look the same from a distance, so too do most American universities. University of the District of Columbia? Wow, must be prestigious! It’s in DC—the nation’s capital…
I’m going to go with you don’t know what you’re talking about.
I live in a college town and it’s been my observation that the Chinese students most definitely do not “embrace the worst values America has to offer”. They are serious students who are not here to part.
>>> I’m going to go with you don’t know what you’re talking about.
I’m going to go with you have some reading comprehension issues.
I didn’t say all Chinese students; I specifically said wealthy Chinese students who did poorly on their placement exams in China.
Well you’ll actually get no argument from me on the reading comprehension issues. I admit that more and more it’s becoming a problem for me. Especially reading on the internet. Books, magazines and any other old fashioned hard copy is better for me.
Anyway, it’s all good man. If you say that fast it sounds like saul good man.
Or Saul Goodman.
Better Call Saul!
–American families are not as close as Chinese families..
says the people that murder their female babies, fetuses, etc.
That is too much.
They don’t do that anymore because the one child law has been rescinded. And from what I understand most Chinese people hated that law. They live under a totalitarian government, ya know.
@travis
Yea they are now allowed two children but still murder them if they are girls until they get that all important boy.
Money how ever allows dispensation from murdering all your children you are not allowed to have.
“These students are the worst. They smoke, drink, party, and generally embrace the worst values America has to offer.”
You mean, they have a good time?
🙂 ha ha
I left the US for Germany and its different here, too.
Have a kid here and have just been shocked at how kids grow up vs. in the States. Shocked at much they tend to respect their parents and elders on the whole, how polite they are (even teens/college kids), and how much trust still exists in this society despite recent issues with migration and politics.
I have had many moments over the years where I had to reevaluate my worldview and expectations, particularly as a dad.
Travis – I’ve used up the 10 minutes a day I allot myself to hang out in this sewer so didn’t read the article (yet?) but “drug abuse” is too nebulous a term. Some goofy folks regard smoking MJ as drug abuse when in fact it’s not.
My apologies to the forum. Just because there are a few turds floating around it doesn’t make this a sewer. Many here devote an insane percentage of their remaining lifetime to doing all in their power to have what they feel are their important to tell and necessary thoughts and words to a familiar to them likable if not lovable audience. I came up with a thought of the day several moons ago but never sent the email I put it in. I’ll use it here and pledge it as my final words for a long while (I hope).
“We love to hear ourselves talk about what we did or are doing.
We love it more than the listeners most of the time.
A good story teller can overcome that.”
“What will I do”?
Die. I’m old. By the time things get really nasty, I will be gone or at least close. Cancer or cardiac will be likely culprits with my demise. Or, a mass shooter. It doesn’t matter.
The question is what will my kids and grand kids do? No much. What can anyone do unless you are a well entrenched 1 per center. Anyone else is fodder for the machine which grinds up civilizations and defecates them into some slot in history. Yawn.
The Brexit news, that is, the latest regarding communications of folks who fear that things will get very bad very quickly for the UK. Shortages of drugs, chemicals, vital products needed for modern civilization. Imagine in this country if you really need a dental procedure done because of agonizing pain and the delivery of anesthetic did not occur because of shortages or delivery interruptions. Suppose the oxygen truck did not show to refill the medical center O2 tanks.
Our civilization is tenuous. That has been hammered on for decades now including by Mr. K. What will I do? There’s not much that can be done. It does take a village and I’ve not found one that works. The village relies on deliveries of products we take for granted. The solution then is be prepared to die.
Our civilization is tenuous.
Decades ago, I remember my father mentioning a quote about civilization being but a thin veneer. His reasoning back then carries more weight every day for me.
Cheers
“a quote about civilization being but a thin veneer.”
‘Nine meals deep’ is sometimes suggested. Or occasionally even three.
GA, have you seen the BBC drama “Years & Years” yet?
Is that the one with Emma Thompson? It’s on my mental list, so hope it’s still on iPlayer! Thanks for the reminder.
Yes, that’s it. Future history…and not unbelievable. I watched all (6 episodes) in one binge, it was so engaging.
If you’ve lost it on your recording device, you can find it at ‘dub dub dub putlocker dot style’ and search for it. not TOO many annoying pop-up ads…
Thanks, Majella.
I wasn’t sure if iPlayer was a thing over your way, but of course I assume it’s not. It’s just the BBC’s catch-up service, so in addition to any normal programme that’s there for a month (or however many now) there’s a big archive full of ‘box sets’ of series such as the one your describe (I just saw the trailers) and they’re there for a varying amount of time. But I expect they’re just accessible to Brits who pay the BBC license fee!
Something Brits and the Yanks have in common they know how to play trains. In GB they have revived the art & craft of building full size operating steam locomotives, several built/a-building including #60613, recently clocking 100mph+
In heartland America there are a growing number of mid 20th Century steam locomotives back to operation, including one specimen of the Union Pacific “BIG BOY”, world’s largest with over 6000 horse Power. These doings in Britain and the Colonies are beneath radar, but are indicators of ability to keep things moving on rails after the solid state rubber tire world has vaporized.
Kunstler Blog is replete with two kinds of people: the hopeless, and the independent pioneer types, patiently gaining hands-on skills for off grid living. The great mass of population, simply marking time. A course of action for consideration could be examination of particular periods of modern civilization affording adequate creature comforts, yet be sustainable at units of County size scale.
Railway based economics, manufacturing and food production/distribution, a lifestyle exemplified in North America about the time of Theodore Roosevelt into the late 1920’s. Social inequities notwithstanding, technical amenities such as water works, electric grid, organized food production linked to population with refrigerated/iced railcars. and radio/telephonic communications made life tolerable for the growing middle class.
European reach into Middle East oil prior to WWI was precursor to rubber tire mania in America and through efforts of Alfred P. Sloane, became the shape of built environment around the world. See “GMAC”… As seen on occasion from JHK, railways are still with us, and mentioned in several categories of “Solution Set”. Efficient railways were achieved and can continue, without aid of Silicone Valley hegemony.
Wise futurists in America will do well to be familiar with existing and dormant rail corridor, particularly graded surface still extant into agricultural districts.
World events will revolve to a large degree around Jerusalem. Believe it or don’t. Wars and preparations for wars are Middle East reality, and America should reorient itself around water and food and energy and transport and essential manufacturing not dependent on a World System about to collide with Jerusalem.. Or if you like, western law and culture head-on with Mohammedanism and Shariah law. For up to date read on these particulars, See Jay Sekulov’s book “JERUSALEM”,
Rail savvy population of early 20th Century USA took for granted steady food supply, knowing continental food distribution was a given regardless of drought or disaster areas. Try to think without trucking,& Aviation, because that will be life in the big disaster(s) we are not prepared for. What is “THE LONG EMERGENCY” all about if not famine and aftermath? Here is a baseline element of the rail based economy: “A Lending Not A Borrowing Nation”
A word to the wealthy might include adopting a branch rail line into farm country, in lieu of private militias and remote caches. A book for Kunstler’s library is William Forstchen’s “ONE SECOND AFTER”. Read twice, and if you are in the 1 per cent, get Mike Walker’s all-time US Rail Atlas Map Book for your locale and adopt a dormant rail corridor, Visit American Association of Short Line Regional Railroads and work with them for smooth process.
Very interesting. I have a friend who has worked at BNSF for almost all of his adult life. I think he’s at least semi-retired now. I’ll ask him about steam locomotives coming back into operation. I was not aware of this at all.
Yes, the postwar years were a time of giddy optimism and glowing idealism. Television was just hitting the consumer world in a big way.
An RCA hristmas promo 45rpm record foretold how enjoyable AND ennobling it would be.
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=781I6b0WlZQ
1950 RCA sales promo: Mindy Carson – I Want A Television Christmas
the78prof
Published on May 23, 2019
This interesting bit of nostalgia, produced for in-store promotion of RCA Victor’s red-hot electronic device called ‘television,’ reveals an exciting new world of discovery for the American teenage girl.
Originally issued on RCA Custom EO-CB-2483 – I Want A Television Christmas (A World Of Magic All My Own) (Scott-Scott) by Mindy Carson, orchestra conducted by Charles Hale, recorded November 3, 1950
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Somehow it all devolved into an electronic slag heap of torture, zombies, and cannibalism. It’s who we are, it’s what we do, I guess.
Speaking of TV, after the markets close at 4PM I almost never watch TV. In the evenings I keep up on reading these CFN comments and I read the newspapers or a book (currently I’m reading the History of the Peloponnesian War on a Kindle device… my wife ordered a Kindle and they shipped two by accident so mine is free).
So, up until last night, I have literally NOT turned on the TV in the evening for months. But then having caught up on my reading, I wondered what might be on TV. I started my search at ch 2 (I have never understood why ch 1 is never used) and went right through to ch 99. Incredibly there was not one thing I found interesting enough to actually stay and watch. I twiddled my thumbs for a few minutes then gave up and went to bed.
@ qschtik
The channels correspond to frequencies and Channel 1 is a bad frequency for tv viewing.
Static and what not.
When it was all said and done they just never bothered to update everything as all the channels had been set by its corresponding frequency.
There’s a lot of big-picture arrangements that were designed to fail, not deliberately, but because the original big-thinkers tailored their assumptions not around reality but around their own interests which were directly contrary. But they couldn’t see past their self-interest and they deluded themselves and one another that all would be well, that while there are always risks, they are risk-takers by nature and so can manage such things.
While they’ve defied reality and kept the wheels on some business and economic arrangements with central banks helping them, you can’t defy it for ever.
And so, as JHK sez, there’s a lot of stuff destined to come apart based as they are on buy-now-pay-later forever and ever with no end in sight, or IOW, based not on trading goods-for-goods but rather on trading goods for paper. For ever.
But you can’t live on credit forever. So, watch supply-lines snap and shorten, revenue streams dry up, and a lot of businesses and banks go tits and a lot of very pissed-off people, deprived of their livelihoods, not least ordinary workers, demand redress for this treachery and an accounting for who fucked up.
I’m not so much talking workers in the US and western countries but rather those in China and Mexico and any other number of other places where life is lived close to the edge. Their take-home is paltry, enough for getting basic food and shelter and clothes and not much more. What happens when the paychecks stop? Because they will stop.
As it is now life is getting shittier and shittier in widely divergent places on this planet and so people are taking to the streets. In Hong Kong on the weekend, as we saw on the telly, there were a couple million out protesting for “democracy”, according to the msm.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t born yesterday, so when the msm shows me streets full of multitudes and news correspondents from different news orgs spout identical narratives, I get the idea that the moguls may have got their stories straight, but that the stories don’t remotely square with what’s real.
So, what’s happening? Are the gripes in HK really about an extradition treaty with China and about an abstraction like democracy? For eleven weeks running? With a million, two million protesters outdoors at a go? Does anyone seriously believe that? Or are they about material issues like the scarcity of living quarters and the cost of food and the increasing crappiness of everything in general and the utter don’t-give-a-shit-ness of those in charge?
The fellas running the show, no matter where, are not what you’d call altruists, humanitarian impulses few and far between in the world of the boardroom and mansion. That’s why things are at where they’re at.
What the mis-information processors in western media are doing is fake-news as the sophisticates like to call it, propounding accounts that are not remotely connected to events, as if lying about what’s happening changes what’s happening. It doesn’t.
I get the idea that the moguls may have got their stories straight, but that the stories don’t remotely square with what’s real.
The moguls boggle with their hornswoggle.
I think the basic problem is that the set-up is far too large-scale. Those running the show have zero connection with the people on the bottom. No personal connection, no accountability. Not a recipe for responsible behavior by the authorities.
Cheers
Those running the show have zero connection with the people on the bottom. No personal connection, no accountability. Not a recipe for responsible behavior by the authorities. – Montsegur
Indeed. That’s the idea of neo-liberalism, that business and finance finds its way unmolested, over the heads of the multitudes, above the mob in the town square, out of the hands of law-makers, way above at a supra-national level where national borders become imaginary lines without gated crossings or guards, where people with money go where they want and do what they want, untouchable, with an unaccountable technocracy at their beck and call.
And not only people with money but people without. If one side of the scheme is to move business to low-wage locales, the other side of the scheme is to move impoverished and desperate people in enough numbers to lower the wages in high wage locales.
Illogic is at the core of it, for while they undermine the nation-state, they require the nation-state to secure themselves and their property and interests. For the other consideration by the capitalist class is tax avoidance – or evasion – as I’m not always clear as to the distinction. Somebody has to pay for militaries and constabularies and courts and judges – but not the guys that need all this stuff the most and for sure not the guys with the funds to pay for it. If living wages are anathema to the capitalists then so are taxes. But if people don’t get living wages it’s hard to see who funds governments with the myriad of services that capitalists need.
This scheme is cockamamie top-to-bottom and it’s no wonder it’s coming apart.
At the end you asked, “What will you do?”. This comment section is a microcosm of the US in general since the answer seems to be ignore the question and quibble about politics. Sad. As for myself, I’ve been learning how to produce things that contain sugar, extract that sugar and then ferment it into alcohol. I shared some with a neighbor in my new neighborhood as we both sawed at large branches dropped by a freak storm. The power was out for 12 hours, but had a few solar lights and candles ready. The garden is doing well, but should get better as I build up the sandy soil with compost. Got some fine wood chips to use as a base from a local tree service. They pay to dump the stuff otherwise. The American made wire fence is helping keep the deer out until circumstances permit me to eat some of them. I could go on, but doing > talking/typing.
Nostalgia: “Nostalgia is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations. The word nostalgia is learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of, meaning “homecoming”, a Homeric word, and, meaning “pain” or “ache”, and was coined by a 17th-century medical student to describe the anxieties displayed by Swiss mercenaries fighting away from home. Described as a medical condition—a form of melancholy—in the Early Modern period, it became an important trope in Romanticism.”
“I think that the perception of stagnation in science – and in biology specifically – is basically fake news, driven by technological hedonic treadmill and nostalgia. We rapidly adapt to technological advances – however big they are – and we always idealize the past – however terrible it was.”
https://guzey.com/how-life-sciences-actually-work/
Nostalgia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be…
Simone Signoret
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nostalgia-Isnt-What-Used-be/dp/0140051813
… and never was!
Somehow, that makes me feel nostalgic.
Cheers
“We have no idea how to keep it together on the downside. We don’t even want to think about it.” — JHK
Some of us started thinking about it before the Club of Rome report in 1973. We founded food co-ops, practised organic gardening, opened farmers’ markets, community-sourced agriculture, permaculture, etc. We made recycling, sustainability, and downsizing into common touchstones for practice. I would venture to say the new normal. And we have not forgotten about social justice in the process. Not everyone can do great things, but we can all do small things with great love.
There is what is known as the reality gap. Once you exceed it then reality does what it does. Nature allows for a certain amount of bullshit behaviour then it kicks ass. When you’re young you can burn the candle at both ends , then you can’t.
Yes, and there are a lot of people clinging to unreal ideas at the moment because it gives them a spurious sense of being morally superior. The unwinding of all that will be an ugly affair for society.
Cheers
>>> The young adults feel all that most acutely. The pain prompts them to want to deconstruct that memory. “No, it didn’t happen that way,” they are saying. All those stories about the founding of this society — of those Great Men with their powdered hair-doos writing the national charter, and the remarkable experience of the past 200-odd years — are wrong! There was nothing wonderful about it. The whole thing was a swindle!
However, it happened and whatever the current perception is, the simple fact was and remains that the United States was founded by rich business interests, for rich business interests. It started as a “business colony” for England and remained open for business, under new management, after the revolution. It is still a “going concern,” but is in the maturation phase of the cycle, what BCG terms the “Dog” quadrant of the curve.
The business of America is business and “getting ahead;” this explains a lot. We, for the most part, have bought into the program. You too can achieve the American Dream and be a multi-millionaire! It is simply a matter of “hard work.” We have been selling the Horatio Alger story to ourselves and others since well before our founding.
So is there any surprise that that which is founded on such a commercial, sell-you-something foundation, is anything but a swindle. Of course, it’s a swindle; it always has been a swindle and fraud. Buy this potion and lose weight! This snake oil is good for what ails you! Get a master’s degree and become an executive! Join the army, travel the world, meet new people and kill them! Happiness is just a purchase away! Boo yah!
Yes, the doodads, gizmos and jet travel have been great, but they lose their shine very quickly. Television, the medium is the massage, was transformation as is social media, the internet, smart phones, etc. The problem is, it is transformational in the wrong direction, that is a downward slope, pretty much as nuclear energy has turned into a much bigger menace, than boon for humanity. We collectively put our faith in the quest for profit and growth and lied to ourselves that it was going to be great! Well, we are, soon going to reap what Mr. Kunstler writes about so well.
What can be done about it? There is nothing to be done about it, absolutely nothing. However we can be certain that many folks will attempt “SOMETHING,” but it is akin to an inexperienced stock trader, who insists on making trades when there are no profitable trades to be had. He/she wants to “take action,” so she or he settles for a losing trade instead. That’s about where action will get us.
On a personal level, I think the best course of action is to be concerned with the two primary pillars, which are Health and Wealth in the USA of 2019 and beyond. Hard to enjoy much of anything if you feel like shit. This being an economic world we live in, it behooves us to have our financial house in as stable a position as possible. That is much easier said than done, but nevertheless it is crucial, as there is only one thing worse than being old in the USA and that is old, poor and in ill health. Yikes! Even the thought is scary!
Enjoy your families and hobbies, read a bit and don’t worry too much as there is nothing anyone can do to change the downward trajectory. If you prefer, the Left or the Right, vote for them, but it won’t change the final end-point a wit, the trajectory may be slightly different, but will are still headed to ruin, enjoy the ride down and landing as best you can! Of course, it’s the Titanic all over again, we just don’t know when she slips the last waves, is all.
Cheers, JDH
NYPD officer involved in Eric Garner’s death fired
https://abcnews.go.com/US/nypd-officer-involved-eric-garners-death-untruthful-investigation/story?id=65054867&cid=clicksource_4380645_null_hero_image
“More than five years after the death of Eric Garner was captured on cell phone video, the officer responsible for causing his death was terminated from New York City’s Police Department.
“Since July 17, 2014, NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo has waited to learn whether he can remain on the force with the plainclothes anti-crime unit, lose vacations days or lose his job entirely.
“Months after a disciplinary trial in May and June this year, Deputy Commissioner of Trials Judge Rosemarie Maldonado recommended to Police Commissioner James O’Neill that Pantaleo be removed from the force.
“O’Neill announced Monday that Pantaleo was to be immediately terminated.
“‘It’s an extremely difficult decision,’ O’Neill said at a news conference Monday. ‘If I was still a cop, I’d probably be mad at me… [but] it’s my responsibility as police commissioner to look out for the city.’
“An emotional O’Neill noted he was a beat cop for 34 years, and said it could easily have been him in Pantaleo’s position. He said the officer used justifiable force when Garner resisted, but erred when he kept Garner in the chokehold once the two men tumbled to the ground. The administrative judge found the chokehold contributed to an asthma attack that led to Garner’s death, a consequence that O’Neill said required a consequence.”
—
In response, Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted the following: “This is the right decision, but we are still a very long way from achieving justice for Eric Garner’s family and countless others who have lost loved ones to police violence. We must fundamentally transform our criminal justice system at every level.”
When I screw up at work, I expect consequences. When a police officer screws up at work, people end up dead at their hands — yet too often there are no consequences. In my opinion, Mr. Pantaleo should thank his lucky stars for every day he spends outside a prison cell.
Elrond, a rare moment of agreement.
A LEO who disregards a departmentally prohibited tactic that directly contributes to an accidental homicide* is not a benefit to other LEOs. This is not a case for police to close ranks.
* Or what the rest of us would call (and be charged with): manslaughter.
I’m pleased to agree with you on this, Exscotticus. Police are the only civilian occupation entrusted with the power to use force and even lethal violence as part of their job. That level of trust needs to be earned, and shown to be earned, on a continuing basis.
I have a pet theory that police organizations can be broadly categorized in two types. One type protects the public; the other type protects itself, and oppressive power structures, from the public. I’m sorry to say that US police forces show themselves to be the second type to a distressing degree. Procedures and training emphasize police acting to protect themselves first. That’s another part of the cost of the gun-culture which is unique to the USA. It makes sense for cops to always be paranoid about people having guns to turn against them, because so many people do.
If you recall the Toronto van attack from last year, it shows what I think is a textbook example of a good, high-stakes arrest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBDt38jnfwo
Alek Minassian had just mowed down a couple of dozen people. He twice mimed pointing an object at the lone police officer who faced him, clearly trying to provoke martyrdom by cop. The officer kept his head and took Minassian into custody alive to face justice. A lot was demanded of that officer, and I’m impressed as hell at his performance. More like this, please.
Again I agree. One correction, though…
>>> Police are the only civilian occupation entrusted with the power to use force and even lethal violence as part of their job.
In the USA, many if not all government agencies have been militarized. For example, the IRS—which you typically don’t associate with policing—actually has its own SWAT team, and can raid your home for tax offenses.
Now one might reasonably ask why, if the IRS feels the need to raid someone, they don’t simply hand it off to the FBI? I’m guessing the reason is money. The IRS doesn’t want to share the loot they seize with the FBI.
Elrond, why are you telling us what Breadline Bernie tweeted about the NYPD? We don’t give a sh#t what Breadline says about it. Breadline Bernie travels with an armed personal security detail and owns 3 houses; what does he care about some anonymous police officer in NYC?
Brh
“We don’t give a sh#t what Breadline says about it.”
We? What’s all this about ‘we’ Kemosabe?
Majella
You got me there, Majella.
Should have said “I”.
‘Kemosabe’
“Why did the Lone Ranger shoot Tonto?”
“Why?”
“He found out Kemosabe meant Son of a bitch”
Haha
Jay Silverheels was from Montreal, Canada, his father was WW1 war hero.
Brh
Lone Ranger sees Tonto with a bin on his head and asks him where he’s taking it.
To the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump dump’…
Definition of a cultured person: one who can listen to the William Tell Overture without thinking of the Lone Ranger.
@brh
Include me in the we.
Since there are at least two of us that dislike anything Bernard Sanders says and sees him for the grifter he is.
So we is very correct.
Look back at the stories and images around Teddy Roosevelt and his times, and the confidence of that era just astonishes you, An emergent cavalcade of wonders: electricity, telephones, railroads, subways, skyscrapers! And in a few more years movies, cars, airplanes, radio.
One indicator of what JHK is illustrating is the evident lack of progress in the development of mechanical devices since the 1960s or so.
Aircraft and automobiles are today remarkably similar to what they were then, with one (misleading) exception. Vehicles today are full of electronics — a field of research and development that took off as the development of mechanical devices slowed dramatically. So, yes, one can watch videos on a screen mounted in the back of the airplane seat that is located to the front of your own seat. Yes, we have navigators in cars that have removed the distraction of consulting maps while driving. And electronic ignition is very nice. But the mechanical essentials of vehicles are the same as they were in 1960.
Other than the distraction of all the electronic goodies, we never made it to the future (as envisioned in the 1950s), did we? Looks like we’ll continue to burn oil products until we can’t …
Cheers
System International & ASCII machine code gave us a much higher degree of tolerance between machined parts so that engine life would last much longer today than in 1960. Pollution Control & Emissions Regulation started in Californication and spread to North America and beyond from there.
Manufacturing benefitted greatly by SI & ASCII code implementation industry wide so that parts interchangeability was universal across nations due to the measurement system utilized & tolerances operationalized between cultures that differ on language.
Once SI was introduced all of the global manufacturing just took off exponentially. Today, China has mastered the tech better than America did post-WW2.
RW
RW
How is it, before the manufacturing innovations you cite above, and before CNC, close tolerances were maintained and rather intricate devices were turned out, mostly from factories in New England. There are several museums I’ve visited here, Clock museum in Bristol, Ct, and museums featuring 19th and early 20th century machine tools in Kent, Ct and Windsor, Vt, they did some nice work with the machinery they had. For example, I’ve seen Sharps rifles made in the 1870s that fit together perfectly. Clocks, same thing. I also read about the Hells Gate Bridge in Queens, built 1912, 17000 feet long over the treacherous East River … there were two crews that started at opposite ends of the project and worked toward the middle, 4 years later when they met up they were within +/- 1/4″ of where they were supposed to be! How’d they do it? Just with slide rules? Its astonishing!
Brh
Germany had close tolerances as did the USA Military with Mil Spec. System International made the entire manufacturing sector worldwide conform to SI dictates, and thereby forced closer tolerances to be utilized globally allowing China to supply the world with standardized parts.
Clock manufacturing has always utilized ultra tight tolerances and clock makers utilize Optical Comparison & magnification to see their work. If clock tolerances were sloppy the time would suffer day-by-day until it was incorrect a week later.
Slide rulers worked until calculators replaced them via rendering them obsolete like the nerds that once used them.
My Chartered Accountant nerd father had one like all nerds of his day did.
I was not a nerd!
RW
You are personally ambitious – and thus NOT the new Marxist Man that was promised. In your person, (i will repeat that) IN YOUR VERY PERSON, you show that the two system (Capitalism and Communist), far from being separate, are actually ONE is essence.
Don’t knock nerd. Thet’re tge ones that built the world since Newcomen came up with the steam engine in the 1750s.
“Slide rulers worked until calculators replaced them via rendering them obsolete like the nerds that once used them.”
I’ve still got my dad’s one in the house (he was born in 1910).
We had to use log tables at school before calculators too.
Reminds me of a story about an English air plane buff who had a Messershmidt (probably didn’t spell that right, should have looked it up) fighter from WWII. He sent the engine to Rolls Royce to be rebuilt, restored. When the crated engine came back to him it supposedly was with a letter that said whatever you do, don’t damage the crankshaft as we cannot duplicate the tolerances. If true, it’s quite a statement on 40’s era German technology.
Just missed a ‘c’ – ‘Messerschmidt’ which incidentally translates as ‘knife maker’
So much negativity; sad. Janos is the only poster who correctly addresses the core construct:
All organisms compete for scarce resources without regard for ‘moral’ or ‘ethical’ precepts. Only the bald ape attempt to attach artificial meanings to natural impulses to live, survive and procreate.
Why is that – just another trick to put adversaries who swallow the lie at a disadvantage? Is that why the elite, with their child trafficking, pedophilia and blood sacrifice, command such thorough loyalty via various rites and pledges?
Strip away the artificial and focus on essential facts. Only a few genes and certain expressions create differences in skin tone, hair color, texture, eye color and other ‘superficial’ markers.
Does anyone care to take a guess what the market value will be for applied gene cosmetics? What about IQ? Perhaps a tougher nut to crack, but what if the end result is to move everyone 1 std deviation to the right?
Say good-bye to a host of inner city pathologies (lack of impulse control, discipline and reward deferral) and the religious dogma. Imagine a world comprised of agnostics and atheists, logically & rationally addressing the issues JHK presents in his weekly columns.
Should we once again summarize and repeat: resource depletion, population overshoot and environmental degradation.
How to solve, to separate the usurious money system from the requirement of inflationary, exponential growth.
Why must we consume? Why cannot mental stimulation be provided via artificial simulation, as we unlock the mysteries of the brain and connect processes directly to artificial realities?
The world isn’t ending, and one doesn’t need to be a pessimist to understand what is occurring. Again, refer to Janos – man is a competitive animal, and the winning populations will do exactly what is necessary – regardless of artificially imposed “morals” to survive, thrive and keep pushing the technology curve.
Why must we consume?
Because we watched our parents do it. Because Christmas exists. Because the internet lives on marketing stuff for us to buy. Because if we didn’t there would be no economy.
Everyone has a fascination with hi tech bells and whistles.
One of the things starting to limit expansion is that the population is aging and is not consuming as much.
Thanks but nothing unites a society like religion. Thus I both avow and disavow your avowal. The Sufis say that Jesus taught the Way to the other world but Mohammad taught the Way in this World AND the other world – thus his ruthlessness.
No bunch of atheists and agnostics could stand against people like this or our ancestors. Jefferson was a Deist and a doubter about much of Christianity. But he would have never dreamed of mocking the people’s faith. They need their Illusions – if illusions they be. This is part of the Art of Statecraft.
Obviously our Ancestors left aspects of Christ’s teachings alone – counsels of perfection they were called. Not for ordinary people who can’t afford to turn the other cheek. As Orwell said, Gandhi’s asceticism and non-violence simply passes the buck onto the shoulder’s of other people. If you want to have monks, then you need people who aren’t monks to defend and support them. It’s fine as long as you know that’s what is happening.
Seneca said it more succinctly, as you know.
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.
Benign Canine
Thanks for that incisive analysis!
However if Janos ‘gets it’, it’s co-incidental. He packages it up with so much nasty evil trash it’s impossible to swallow for me, at least.
Yet you have cut to the core of human instinct & drive. So where did the morality (egregiously lacking in Janos) arise from? Kinship broader than the close band/family/clan? The ability to empathize with strangers? The desire to control the base instinctive drives in favor of harmonious relationships?
Crazies like SSL will attribute it to ‘god’. Janos also claims ‘Christianity’ but displays nothing that resembles it.
Your thoughts?
Christianity boiled down is to be Christ like.
That how ever is almost impossible for the average human.
As someone above said we have needs, wants and our own damn egos to contend with.
Everyone has those little voices that suggest what we are doing is right or wrong the problem is that little voice whispering in the back is far more quiet then the one that tells you to do things because they might be more fun or easier.
The easier way is never the correct or true way.
Life after all is not the game Black and White.
Right, benr.
I was born into Catholicism, and educated through Catholic schools, where we were taught that we must ‘strive to be Christ-like’, but at the same time to recognize that this is actually impossible due to our imperfect nature.
Still, the desire or wish to be ‘Christ-like’, if genuinely held, will assist a mere mortal to live in a way that is filled with compassion for others, regardless of whether they are of ‘the same tribe’.
Our resident faux-Christians (particularly the nazis like Janos & SSL) miss this entirely and rant on about their racist agenda under the color of ‘Christianity’
Judge not lest ye be judged.
Almost impossible to live by now.
How on Gods green earth does one not look at this person and judge them to not be a disgusting fool?
http://tl.fanpop.com/clubs/tattoos/images/13049342/title/full-face-tattooed-pierced-up-photo
@JHK
I should cogitate before opening my face, but I seldom do.
MS Word reports that “There Is No Normal” consists of only 818 words.
It seems to me that you packed The Entire Summary of Industrial Human Society into just 818 words.
Honestly, I was spellbound. Naturally, I will borrow every word and spread all of them to every nook and cranny that I have access to [with appropriate credit, of course].
“IT” is so close that It is palpable. That the youngest among us have not already shredded this mess speaks volumes to the insidious passive control systems.
Surely, James, having spoken it all now, you can peacefully retire from this madness to some lifeboat hopeful that you have prepared. Or not, eh?
Anyway, I appreciate this gift of your composing mind and I will use it in an attempt to again get the attention of a few whom I constantly endeavor in my impotent ways to help to be among the infinite minority granted longer term survival.
I will get back here and scan the comments one of these days to see if any of the mindless air freshener, deodorant, and natural flavors crowd have figured out what that smell is on their shoes.
~toktomi~
Good and Mad.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QERlQDjFjnU
Another masterpiece, Jim!
It’s all in the math! (if the correct data is entered, of course)
Roughly$200 trillion +or – $10 or $20 trillion or more will have to be loaned into existence in the next 10 years in order to maintain our current standard of living. Urban sprawl, clogged freeways, underfunded pensions,failing infrastructure, species extinction, etc.doesn’t come cheap.
The fiat dollar as the world’s reserve currency has a finite shelf life and appears to have run its course. Most of the world yearns for a new reserve currency backed by something other than decree. Like the Mob, we point our big guns at the rest of the world’s head and they comply, for now. In the near future, a new reserve currency will come into existence or a war wil ensue.
We’ve had a long mild fall but to get back to the warmth and blooms of spring, we will have to survive a harsh winter. (The Fourth Turning)
“In the near future, a new reserve currency will come into existence or a war wil ensue.”
Perhaps both, first one then the other.
As you said, another $10-$20 trillion will be ‘loaned’ into existence over the next 10 years. Given that the creation of ‘money’ is through the issuance of debt, surely it both means nothing and everything, simultaneously.
Just like a center to the universe, there is no normal. What passes for normal is a sort of running average. It’s running in slo-mo relative to our current velocity. One might be forgiven for not recognizing it is not a straight line, but a curve. It gives us a comfortable illusion that what you experienced in your childhood will continue. Of course not everyone’s childhood started at the same point in time. Neither is everyone’s boat equally seaworthy, for that matter. The tide flows out and we discover who is naked. The tide flows in and we see whose boat still rests on the bottom. As the running average trundles along we find more people scantily dressed and fewer with sound hulls. The normal of prosperity rolls over from a positive slope to slope of zero and down a negative slope toward who-knows-what. I’m constantly reminded of that string of characters that spells doom for our oil dependency, namely EROEI, and how it might correlate with normal.
Alex Jones – A redneck version of FincaInTheMountains
The guy cuts the shit like it really is, without all that intelligentsia smearing fresh porridge over a clean tablecloth, like, I am sorry, the most of you guys here.
Nothing of historiosophical or philosophical finesse.
https://www.infowars.com/watch/?video=5d59ec3067403c00177ec59d
But he’s a guy I’d rather have behind my back in a battle!
The Warsawian
The enemy whirlwinds are flying over our heads
Dark forces are oppressing us
In the battle that we were destined for
Unknown fates are awaiting us.
But we will proudly and boldly raise
The banner of the workers’ struggle
The banner of the great battle of all the peoples
For a better world and the holy freedom.
To a battle bloody
Holy and just
March, march forward
Working people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaVCsIAyp4s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsGGH_iI5p8
I bet that’s you hitting the drum 🙂
“The guy cuts the shit like it really is, without all that intelligentsia smearing fresh porridge over a clean tablecloth, like, I am sorry, the most of you guys here.”
geez Finca ha ha
“The guy cuts the shit like it really is…”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/30/alex-jones-sandy-hook-claims-psychosis
That Alex Jones? The one who blamed his Sandy Hook lies on psychosis?
I hope his mental health is improving.
Finca…okay, I guess in the mental realm where you operate Alex Jones makes sense, but to accuse him of being as mad as you…? No, wait …he IS as mad as you, and admitted in court!
Mad no an entertainer that you do not get or understand yes.
He has for told much of what has come to pass often a decade before it happened.
Is he wrong oh yes as are most people who forecast the future.
He rants and raves at times but that is for show.
Good stuff. I enjoyed today’s topic after what seemed like a long run of Dem vs Rep warfare. I’ve been through Kaczynski’s manifest twice over recently and this segues nicely.
I feel mentally, although perhaps not physically, prepared to embrace the self-limitation and personal inconvenience of the return to ‘wild nature’ as Theodore put it.
For a good idea about what post TLE life might be like, read JHK World Made by Hand series. Or
Lucifer’s Hammer. A very dark story of mankind after a comet strike.
The story revolves around the settling of people into a small civilization in California. Then the attack by city dwellers as they erupted out of the cities looking to survive.
The best advice, Buy a gun!
Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven
Yes, superb. A lot of practical information as well as a great story. The Community had a competition as to which kid could catch the most rats to eat. One guy decided to go and help defend the nuclear power plant saying, I don’t want my kids to grow up competing about who can catch the most rats. Civilization began again there because of that plant. Nuke the whales!
Thanks you for the recommendations, JohnAZ. That’ll be my next ‘light reading’ on holiday.
I have a 2.2 air rifle somewhere in my attic. I’m not sure I could hit a moving rat with it! I probably won’t last long when everything turns feral but at least I’ll be doing my bit to reduce the population.
https://www.infowars.com/mom-of-3-arrested-jailed-for-putting-recycling-in-wrong-color-bag/
Unattributed = fake news. If true. Though. She would have been arrested for it showing up at Court. Double fake news.
.
‘…for NOT showing up in court’
Good synthesis.
It was indeed an insidiously fluid chain of events; and here we are ; unmistakably circling the drain…
Watchful waiting.
How can one be a courageous leader? What do we say to our seat mate on the plane or to our neighbor at our friend’s wedding? What would we have them do?
To do the most needful thing might be helpful – how do we advise the young about their career? Get an education? Expect less? Is it their problem or ours? We can talk about collapse but we don’t know whether to stick another support under the crumbling edifice or just go yank it down…
No one can be ready for a sudden re-arrangement of conditions and slow dissolution is almost intolerable….
If I talked to my neighbours about overshoot, EROEI, Ponzi schemes, etc. they would likely roll their eyes and go back to whatever they were doing on their ‘phone.
Most people will only learn the hard way what the implications of industrial collapse are and it’s going to necessarily involve a fair bit of pain.
When reality bites though I’m hopeful that the contraction can be somewhat managed. Not through government intervention, since global power structures will hopefully be overthrown, but from the bottom up through a return to a common purpose. This might be where homogeneous societies will cope better, like Russia or Hungary.
The Wheel spins what the Wheel wills… (paraphrasing Robert Jordan)
Just read this online: Jeffrey Epstein free to visit earth 6 days a week under sweetheart afterlife deal.
High schoolers giving the Roman salute/ Hail Victory
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/19/us/california-high-school-nazi-salute/index.html
What’s next?
Concentration camps?? 😉 smirks
Teenagers certainly know what buttons to push, my Radioactive friend.
https://nypost.com/2019/08/19/proud-boys-maxwell-hare-john-kinsman-convicted-for-ues-brawl-with-antifa/
” I don’t get my morality from mythical stories about a vengeful ‘god’ who incites people to rape and murder. I’ll leave that to you. ”
Hey , i don’t mind running with the , ” mythological ” – schtick .
Let’s do !
Hypothetically , or mythologically , we are talking about a being who is omnipresent.
” Omnipresent ” — fancy word , but which basically means a being who is present everywhere — and we do mean everywhere , and at the same time , all the time .
It gets a bit more involved than that though.
It means existing in a non- linear time.
Linear time — In simple terms , time as being like a river , moving from past , to present , to future.
In simple terms , not existing within linear time ads up to time as being more like a still lake.
That is , all time being the SAME time.
Not , strictly speaking , that there is no past , or no future , but rather , well , like I said , all present at the same time.
So an idea some priest pulled out of his ass ?
Maybe so , except quite a few physicists — err — ” believe ” — in such a concept of time.
well , I’m not even gonna bother to trot out any other differences .
Here we hypothetically or mythologically compare such a being to Joe the plumber…………
We compare TOTALLY UNLIKE THINGS HERE.
Like comparing an elephant to a hummingbird , but on the scale of a thousand times greater in disproportion .
And I’ll end our little story here because it is just plain silly.
What you said was just plain fucking stupid.
Isn’t it amazing how the geniuses who clamor against God are the exact same ones who can’t handle the laws of nature. And yet nature is the only thing they are left with to embrace. It appears to be a matter of projection. They in fact do get their morality exactly from a ‘god’ of war. What else is life, left to the devices of nature, but war? And of course we are the extremist for suggesting a divine order to the natural predations of war and conquest.
Blithering.
Omnipresent yet encountered nowhere. Omnipotent yet exerts nothing. Functionally equivalent to zero. I’m reminded of the dragon Carl Sagan kept in his garage. At what point do you accept that there’s just no such thing?
The concept of a supernatural entity seems to me, along with fate, one of the most pointless imaginings ever devised by Homo Sapiens.
We are mammals. An advanced form of primate. The same hard physical laws apply to us as to all other living organisms, which to their good do not waste time appealing to a supernatural being.
I’ve never been able reconcile the Americans’ religious fervour with the advanced nature of their civilisation. Janos, for example, clearly understands the selfish gene yet does not allow it to stand alone without a theological context. Most peculiar to me.
Thank you, Slugoon. Something we agree on exactly, Brexit being neither here not there!
I think Americans’ religious fervour is to some extent a result of their many varieties of religion and their many varieties of everything, because it becomes an identifier. Just as the Bretons, in decades past, were much more Catholic than their compatriots in the rest of France, as a result of their being a defensive minority.
Also because Americans, despite what they like to think about themselves, are very very conformist.
I don’t see much religious fervor in NE.
There’s is quite a bit of anti religious fervor, tho.
Fervour can be internal, brh. You don’t need to manifest it on the streets. But it’s fine it you do. 🙂
And what proof do you have that your worldview is rooted in any sort of reality? You don’t. After all, all of your science is nothing but theories and speculations. What is a mammal, other than the definition that was created in the minds of the finite humans who also speculated and theorized of deities. A primate is nothing more than a theoretical definition. Yes there is selfishness. There is also selflessness. We see examples of both in the world. Yes there is science, there is also spirituality. We see examples of both in the world but you argue that we must only see science. And how do you know exactly how other organisms perceive the world? And what real basis do you have to make a statement definitely one way or another about that?
“And what proof do you have that your worldview is rooted in any sort of reality? You don’t. After all, all of your science is nothing but theories and speculations. “
Those fairies at the bottom of my garden are rooted in unarguable reality, as I’ve told you before. Just because you’re sceptical about them doesn’t mean they’re not there.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Except when it comes to my fairies. Because I say so. That should be enough for you.
“And what real basis do you have to make a statement definitely one way or another about that?”
I can make whatever statements I choose, just as you can, even without a first amendment. Reality is whatever reality is. My opinion on it is my right to express. And I’ve had a heck of a lot longer to think about it.
SSL, if we take the modern view that reality is anything one believes it to be then I’m afraid I can’t argue against such irrationality. Everything we understand about existence is learned through our physical senses so I personally rely on those same senses to sift out the bullshit, to wit, the scientific method.
I’m sure there has been much murder committed by people who happen to be atheists but it has not been committed in the name of atheism since atheism is not a worldview as you state. It’s is a pure negative. Merely a rejection of supernatural belief, not an alternative belief system.
Surely you know what it is like to be an atheist since I presume you don’t believe in Allah, or Wotan, or Zeus, or any of the thousand other gods worshipped over the years? If you’d been born in Karachi I’m sure you’d believe in a different deity. Is that not all the evidence you need that it’s nothing more than a cultural meme?
I don’t have any problem with people believing. Much comfort can be derived from religion and I’m sure it bestowed a survival advantage in centuries gone by through strong common bonds. But if you’re waiting for some cosmic intervention to sort humanity I wouldn’t hold your breath. It’s nature red in tooth and claw.
Meantime, I have a few spare razors here at home made by Occam should you want one.
And thus whether you revere Nature or not it is therefore your god. And you have appointed yourself as a god. Trusting your perceptions and speculations. And I don’t say these things in disapproval, anger or whatever. That is what appears to be the case from my biased religious perspective and I am just sharing. I believe that you are correct that religion and the order it provides was to the advantage of past societies. As was homogeniety. These healthy advantages are rapidly dissipating in the modern age. And the general health of society is suffering in large part because of this.
“And thus whether you revere Nature or not it is therefore your god. “
Sorry but this is nonsense, although such defensive sophistry from religious apologists is par from the course. It merely shows a vulnerability to category errors through wishful, rather than critical thinking.
And regarding the other point, no-one argues against the points that (a) religious people are often happier or (b) a society where everyone believes the same thing has advantages.
But (a) is not that much different from saying that people who believe in the effectiveness of witches’ curses are more likely to be miserable and anxious because they are more stressed if they live among people they believe to be witches. It has no relevance whatever to the actual effectiveness of witches’ curses.
And I’m sure social cohesion was pretty effective in primitive societies where if someone stepped out of line their daughter might be the one sacrificed to an angry Rain God. Likewise that didn’t mean there was an actual Rain God.
Nobody argues about the potential social usefulness of religion. It worked the same in Rome but I’m guessing that doesn’t make you believe in any of the Roman deities.
There is no shortage of evidence for the usefulness of belief in God, but equally no evidence whatever for ‘his’ existence.
“And you have appointed yourself as a god. ”
Give me strength…
“After all, all of your science is nothing but theories and speculations. ”
That’ll be why you got your children vaccinated, obviously.
Well, some theories and speculations are correct. Or rhyme with nature and what appears to be the real world. And as you know, many are not correct at all.
That’s why scientists do science.To keep on refining what we know.
Vaccination isn’t a theory or a speculation. It’s a medical intervention based on observed cause and effect, infinitely repeatable anywhere.
“What you said was just plain fucking stupid.”
Well it won’t be the first time or the last. I can cope with that.
You can believe whatever you want. I can cope with that too.
The thing is, time does exist for me, whatever the theoretical physics says. Because before God ‘said’ go and smite whoever, kill their children and take their women for yourselves’ there were some people.
AFTER that, those people and their kiddies were jam spread across the grass, sand or rocks. That’s BEFORE and AFTER, as far as my humble brain is concerned. You can exercise yours at the quantum level if it pleases you.
And what of the murder of hundreds of millions committed by Atheists in the last century? Do you find that more acceptable because they didn’t succumb to believing in a deity? There must be something different in your mind about it since you never bring it up or mention it. You only and solely focus on the atrocities committed by religious people hundreds to thousands of years ago. I wonder if quantum physics comes into that picture somehow?
You could set your stopwatch by this nonsense from religious apologists every time religiously endorsed atrocities are mentioned.
If the best you’ve got is whataboutery and the claim that you’re no worse or even a tiny bit better than everyone else, it’s time to quit your argument.
Everything isn’t about arithmetic for me. And the 20th century is only one century. It happened to be an industrial one, so murder got a bit industrial too. And the British empire previously went out on its murderous, exploitative spree with God’s imagined blessing. Like the Spanish one.
“Do you find that more acceptable because they didn’t succumb to believing in a deity? There must be something different in your mind about it since you never bring it up or mention it. “
This is just utter tripe, sorry. Murder is murder. And as for ‘hundreds to thousands of years ago’, what about those Christian Rwandans?
Unlike you, I’m not racist enough to excuse them because they were black.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/21/rwanda-genocide-catholic-church-sorry-for-role-of-priests-and-nuns-in-killings
You keep bringing up this excuse that you’re just like everyone else, which is exactly my point. You’ve just pasted a deity on to your narrative. So have lots of other people in other places.
“Unlike you, I’m not racist enough to excuse them because they were black.”
Just to clarify, I obviously don’t mean you’d excuse them because they were black. I mean you’d excuse Christianity because they were black.
GA, I had to look up whataboutery. Nice word. I’m pleased that we can put Brexit aside until Hallowe’en!
I am not sure I see where Christianity is a primary factor in the Rwandan genocide. It appears to be characterized by the usual issues of race and ethnicity which of course blew up into a horrific event. This is why attempting to keep societies as homogenous as possible is so vital and important.
“I am not sure I see where Christianity is a primary factor in the Rwandan genocide. ”
Some more info. here regarding the Church’s part in things (both as an instigator and a reconciler):
https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/posts/catholic-perpetration-and-reconciliation-in-rwanda
Second para is interesting in terms of how it all started:
“It is commonly acknowledged that ethnic Hutus perpetrated the 1994 genocide against ethnic Tutsis. But these groups did not always exist as such in Rwanda. Prior to Western intervention, “Tutsi” and “Hutu” were socioeconomic classifiers, the former being pastoralists and the latter agriculturalists. There was mobility between the two groups. When the Church came to Rwanda, it brought with it the Hamitic Myth, which viewed Tutsis as superior descendants of Europeans and Hutus as their uncivilized counterparts. Thus began 70 years of pro-Tutsi discriminatory policy.
Oh yes, the foundational scriptures of Zionist Judaism. Murder, murder, murder. Rape, rape, rape. Because Yahweh the fuckhead says so.
Of course Yahweh is just a made up fuckhead god. Don’t tell Fincaln. He’ll poop in his Depends.
Don’t tell Fincaln. He’ll poop in his Depends.
Now that thar’s just funny!
So you hate Nazis and you hate Zionists. So whom do you love?
Travis
Back in the day, I read almost every Phillip K Dick novel I could get my hands on. The wrote a gnostic trilogy – Valis, The Divine Invasion & The Transmigration of Timothy Archer.
“The Divine Invasion is 1981 science fantasy novel by American writer Philip K. Dick. It is the second book in the gnostic VALIS trilogy, and takes place in the indeterminate future…
After the fall of Masada in 74 A. D., God, or “Yah”, is exiled from Earth and forced to take refuge in the CY30-CY30B star system. Although people of Earth are meanwhile ruled by Belial, the fallen Morning Star who serves as Yah’s principal Adversary, Yah is intent on reclaiming his creation.”
Brilliant. This Yah godhead is only one of several competing godheads, but they’re all basically psychotic.
https://www.amren.com/news/2019/08/germany-to-strip-asylum-status-of-refugees-who-go-home-on-holiday/
If it safe enough to go home, and pleasant enough to want to do so, just fucking stay there you worthless parasites and assholes. Thank God for this iota of commonsense, even if it’s just a fart in a hurricane. The White Race has largely lost its mind at the higher levels.
Alba is for strict immigration control and infinite refugees. She sees no contradiction. See the last sentence of the above paragraph. It’s our duty to be suckers, you see. Such morality is simply an illness of the soul.
“Alba is for strict immigration control and infinite refugees. She sees no contradiction. “
One day you’ll learn to read. Or stop lying. One or the other. Both would be great.
Alba is for strong borders and strict immigration control. She’s also for a humane asylum policy, by her own words. But a humane asylum policy doesn’t mean the US can take in every person whose life has been made shit even by the actions of the US. Sadly.
Perhaps you could help with giving some of them asylum in their own countries by (a) not bombing them, (b) not extracting wealth from their countries in an exploitative fashion, (c) where appropriate, helping with healthcare, both general and reproductive, if your Christian conscience prompts you to it, and (d) taking action to control the negative effects on them of climate change.
Under David Cameron, the UK took in a tiny fraction of the number of refugees from Syria, compared to the rest of the EU, and they didn’t come from Turkey, Greece or Italy – they were handpicked from Syria as those who most needed help and who could make a life for themselves, at least temporarily, in the UK (all refugees have their status revisited after five years and if their country is deemed safe for them to return to, they can be sent home). And most of the UK’s contribution was to set up safe spaces and temporary shelter and care in situ .
Now, I’m not endorsing or criticising that decision, I’m just saying it’s an asylum policy that doesn’t involve open borders or unlimited refugees in the receiving country.
And you, sonny, are a perpetual generator of terminological inexactitudes, as we used to call them. Or a slanderer, as we still say. Which kinda contradicts that thing about bearing false witness. Although thankfully I’m not too much of a neighbour.
Yes not many here realize that the US government, and mostly the CIA and the corporations it really serves, has created huge messes in central America. Made those countries very unstable. Now due to the rapidly changing climate their food production is collapsing along with the society and economy, which is a huge mess by itself. But our foreign policy for decades has created so much chaos. And here “we” are trying to do it again to a large country in Venezuela.
I can’t wait for the US financial empire to collapse. Enough already. I hope Russia moves tons and tons of military hardware down to Venezuela and dare’s “us” to keep it up like it did in Syria.
Marine General Smedley Butler’s words were largely ignored in the 1930s. They are even more relevant today. And even more ignored.
Lol, it’s sweet that you have a heart. China doesn’t and they will be more than eager to fill the void as others will as well. Once the US financial system does collapse we will all be enslaved if not starved. As if others play by the same self hating morality.
Travis
Yes. This “illegal immigrants crisis”, so obsessively condemned in these pages by the overtly racist (SSL,Janos) and by many others who are simply fearful, is simply the USA ‘reaping the whirlwind’.
One cannot blame the general American population – it’s the US Government/MIC that has quite consciously & callously spread misery & poverty for its own ends.
You approved of Merkel’s taking in over a million in order to “show that we’re sorry and are willing to show the world that we are going to try and do better” (approximate quote by Merkel or you or some such woman) or some such nonsense. Is that a rational asylum policy? Asylum law states that refugees must go to the nearest peaceful country. That would be Tunis is Africa – as opposed to Italy. And Turkey in the Middle East as opposed to Greece. Your Asylum Laws are just a flimsy cover for your passion for human traficking and the subsequent dispossession of White Europeans.
“You approved of Merkel’s taking in over a million in order to “show that we’re sorry and are willing to show the world that we are going to try and do better” (approximate quote by Merkel or you or some such woman) or some such nonsense. “
I neither approved it nor disproved it – I merely made a suggestion as to the motivation of those responsible (presumably not limited to Merkel) for the decision. And you have edited what I said to help your case into the bargain.
Really, Janos, if you can’t discipline yourself to read what people actually say and insist on reading between, above, below and beside the lines instead of reading the ruddy lines, you might have the grace not to comment on people’s posts.
“Asylum law states that refugees must go to the nearest peaceful country. That would be Tunis is Africa – as opposed to Italy.”
I think it is the nearest safe country (so for a persecuted gay person that might not be the nearest peaceful country). But I didn’t comment on the refugees who went to Italy, that was you.
“Your Asylum Laws are just a flimsy cover for your passion for human traficking and the subsequent dispossession of White Europeans.”
I don’t have an asylum law, so I have no idea how it could cover anything you wish to credit to me. Neither do I approve in the slightest of ‘human traficking’.
Basically, one of your most slanderous posts. But we all know what to expect from you.
Didn’t mean ‘disproved’ obviously. Condemned would to.
Read the article, Albie: the terrified and desperate refugees are taking vacations back in their countries of origin. With Welfare money, on the backs of their hosts, the European Workers.
The whole thing is an overt scam and the reason behind is beyond sinister.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/down-syndrome-drag-show-created-by-lgbt-activist-coming-to-michigan
Flagrant abuse of the most vulnerable. Yet those whose duty it is to protect them have either gone over to the Dark side or are afraid of those who have and thus do nothing. Just gotta wait until 5 O’Clock when they get to home. Gotta wait until Friday when you have two days as a free man. Gotta wait until you’re 65 and don’t have to do this shit anymore. Retire to Montana and grow potatoes fertilized with your own excrement. Like Ted did. In a tiny shack crouching down to read under a forty watt bulb, also not wanting to waste the valuable heat the bulb produced. Every bit is valuable against the killing cold without. Ted didn’t wait and was willing to pay the Price of not waiting.
It’s Ragnarok time, friends. Let loose the Wolves of Odin. The longer you wait the worse it’s going to be. Oaf Keepers didn’t attend the big Patriot Rally on Saturday because they didn’t want to be associated with “White Nationalists” – you know, like the Founding Fathers. Fat, stupid punks. The kind of fat guys who grow little moustaches. I know you know what I mean. And I know you hate them too.
No, it’s CivNat Time. USA!!
Not for these guys!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYwFGCYUBbM
Coyote howls with the wolves. It is music to the ears of Evil. The time is not normal.
It is not the time for ‘normal’, is it?
TS
Half the members are probably undercover police and agent provocatuers.
It’s the Circle of Life, folks. A story written by an obscure 20th-century s-f author and anthologized in The Omnibus of SCIENCE FICTION explained it all with admirable brevity:
“It is the old, old cycle of man–hardship, ingenuity, civilization, ease, degeneracy, hardship again.” — Heritage , by Robert Abernathy.
Forever and ever, amen.
That is an excuse. That is saying you have no power. Fuck amen.
Power?
What power. You are expecting people to act responsibly. You are going to have a long wait.
The first division is Thinkers and Feelers. Emotions stem from the reptilian part of the brain, rationality and control from the frontal lobe as a control function. Society is divided about 50/50% between these two groups. Emotional response to input occurs half the time no matter what. Take away frontal lobe control and folks are operating out of their emotional centers only. Violence in thought and action results. The cycle of life is built into humanity and even the influence of religiosity does not seem to be able to control it.
What power can control the cycling of civilization, K-dog, Man is incapable on his own. Even God threw a rainbow in the sky as a reminder that the final solution, extermination, is not in the cards. God will not destroy Man, he will do it to himself.
Fifty/Fifty? Where did you get that? Feelers dominate overwhelmingly in terms of numbers. Thus Democracy is contraindicated. Just like that? Jus like dat!
From a motivational class I took 30 years ago. The Briggs-Myer test was part of the class. Feelers and Thinkers!
To increase thinkers, educate the masses. To increase Feelers, don’t.
Nuff said? Today’s Feeler percentage may indeed be higher than then.
I wonder who might have encouraged that?
My friend is a Myers Briggs fanatics: the INTP and INTJ are by far the rarest types. Feelers and Extroverts are by far the majority. Someone should make a distorted square or based on the demographics of the system.
Or just forget the system: What’s your observation of humanity? C’mon guy, use your faculties. “I took a class years ago” – wow, what a cop out.
Uh oh….
https://news.yahoo.com/obamas-first-film-charts-life-us-factory-under-011448959.html
“I don’t talk about what needs changing or where. It’s up to the people themselves who decide to change.” – Gene Sharp
“Who are the people?”
— Bertold Brecht
Every voter in the US.
Eugen Berthold Friedrich “Bertolt”
K-dog
I would agree with you that individual responsibility was still the heart of our culture. Unfortunately, dependence is rapidly becoming dominant, spurred on the the Socialistic Left and RINOs ie the Deep State. With gimme dependence goes individual power. Today’s public is shaped by the political elite. Not vice versa.
Sidebar. The only political identity that is trying to counter this is in the White House. The people elected him in spite of every Deep State arrow being aimed at him. We need hundreds more just like him elected before power will start to shift back to the individual.
Alex Jones, Epstein as a Concierge and Very Strange Things
I really apologize, but I have to remind you that in the post World War of the Roses by Bird Eye View. P 4 I described the reason why I started digging the Internet, looking for traces of the existence of a sect with a millennia-old history that uses pedophilia as a ritual of initiation, and not as a way to enjoy sensual pleasure.
And this reason was the words of US President Trump at one of the rallies that he uttered in connection with the “suicide” of Jeffrey Epstein.
I repeat again:
I knew about pedophiles in world history – it’s enough to recall Gilles de Rais, Marshal of France and associate of Joan of Arc, but besides this, American justice, radio, television and all other disinformation media have been talking about them for 25 years now.
I knew about the cannibal sects in Western Europe – it’s enough to recall the main patron of Spinoza, the Grand Pensionary of Holland, Johan de Witt, who was killed and publicly eaten by such sect, which then elevated his rival to the British throne.
I knew about the sects that used the sacrifice of children to ensure success in trade and military affairs – just remember Carthage, which was supposed to be destroyed, and King Herod. – Amalekite, whom Rome made king over the Jews for the sole purpose of arranging the Bethlehem Massacre of the Innocents.
But Trump’s words made me suggest that sex with minors was a way of initiation upon entering a sect, and this assumption immediately changed the entire of World History, especially the history of the Church and the history of science, forcing me to search and finally read the interrogation materials of Joan of Arc and the interrogation materials of her associate Gilles de Rais.
And one of my friends sent me a link to this interview with Alex Jones, in which he talks about the fact that Epstein was a concierge at the entrance to the Clinton sect.
And that I was right when describing the Black World Project, and also that all this is the harsh reality of American life, since the Anglo-Saxons have been living under this sect since the invasion of William the Conqueror, which became the first anti-Christian war of the Fourth Crusade and the fight against the Black World Project became the basis of American identity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzsc2bCNeko
Initiation rite indeed! There’s no retrieving that lost innocence of youth once you’ve crossed the kiddie fucking (and God knows what else?) line and people have the goods on you. It’s the blood omerta that keeps the plutocrat servant class faithfully in line. Not just a Clinton thing either.
Plutocrat servant class or your true masters?
You have forgotten the face of your father!
You’ve got servants and master crossed up here, but I’ll allow it since I know you’re stoned out of your mind anyway. Party on Finc! By the way, necrophilia is the real frontier. I suppose beastility’s somewhere in there too for the ultimately deranged sect. Keep them ear’s perked up K-Pup!
Joan was a Saint. Surely you are not trying to conflate her with the de Rais? The Inquisition was out for her blood – murderous bastards.
De Wit was killed by a mob. That’s it. Spinoza tried to go out and denounce the mob but his landlord saved his life by blocking his path.
The Dutch were once passionate men, bad asses who kicked ass. Now they are peaceful punks, on their way to extinction. Dhimmis at best. Surely there is some middle ground? It is the province of Civilization to find it and abide there.
An attempt was made on Spinoza’s life, probably by another Jew. But he escaped and died peacefully, although fairly young. The glass filaments got into his lungs it is thought. He was a lens grinder. You are another kind of grinder.
Slugoon August 20, 2019 at 4:20 am #
Do I understand correctly that you are a proponent of Newtonian mechanics?
“The same hard physical laws apply to us as to all other living organisms”
True without question.
What is the stage that these immutable laws play out on? What is the consciousness that proclaims the existence of said laws?
A good guess among those who are curious is that the observation distills the reality from all possibilities existing simultaneously.
The attempt to describe our experience as clearly as possible would seem to fit within your codex of physical laws.
Either there is a Truth or there is not. On balance the written history of Sapiens Sapiens shows the ayes have it.
Intellectual apartheid sez no truth!
I think therefore I am. I cannot remember which of the Greats dreamed that up.
We as humans are the only species that are aware of something that is larger than ourselves, that we are going to die, that history existed before we did and will continue to exist after we die. The spiritual content of the universe is omnipresent and we are part of it, somehow.
Google mirror universe.
Why did God, fill in your word, give mankind the ability to reason, tell right from wrong, organize, dream, plan, hate, love, think, speak, and only Man. What a waste.
I am a materialist (in the philosophical sense). Whatever the mysteries of the universe may be (and there is much we do not understand and probably will never understand) the answer, in my opinion, is not to be found in a supernatural being that takes a personal interest in one’s life.
That’s nothing more than a god of the gaps. A futile exercise in wishful thinking with as much evidence for its existence as Santa Claus or leprechauns.
The Bible is one man’s Truth. The Koran is another man’s. Tree Lore another. So many options! I’ll go with ‘there is not a Truth’ for now but will try to keep an open mind.
P.S. to JohnAZ: Animals organise. They dream and plan. They think and communicate. They love and hate. We’re nothing special.
“P.S. to JohnAZ: Animals organise. They dream and plan. They think and communicate. They love and hate. We’re nothing special.
Sluggo,
Well, I would suggest that the human is the only sentient creature that can conceptualize death.
Hence existential angst,
Hence religion.
My proof? When was the last time you saw a ptarmigan in church?
I can’t argue with the premise that we might be the only species to ponder the past and future so deeply. I get why religion arose and why people cling on to it but that doesn’t make any of it true.
The ptarmigan has obviously got better things to do, as have I.
Having said that, many years ago our national football team manager, Glen Hoddle, brought in a faith healer to help the players’ performance. He was widely derided in the press and fan base alike but I thought differently:
If the act of meeting the faith healer resulted in improved performance then she would have done her job. It is irrelevant whether anything supernatural actually took place.
I see religion in the same way but ultimately the natural laws don’t change for believers vs non-believers so to me it’s a meaningless concept. You, me and the Pope will all shuffle off in the same manner.
“If the act of meeting the faith healer resulted in improved performance then she would have done her job. It is irrelevant whether anything supernatural actually took place.”
Placebo effect in action!
An interesting passage and not mine but many here will appreciate. Others absolutely will feel an itch to scratch something.
A great hope once existed in Central America. In 2006, Honduras elected a reformer named Manuel Zelaya to the presidency. He was not a fire-breathing socialist like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela or Lula in Brazil. He was a rancher who had been elected on a centrist platform, but as president, he switched to the left, increasing the minimum wage, making education free to all children, and providing some state aid to the poorest of the poor.
He was ousted in 2009. Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made no quibbles when the Honduran military removed him from office. Violence swept through Honduras, as she covered for the coup, and in 2014, when tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors arrived at the US-Mexican border, she callously called for the deportation. “We have to send a clear message that just because your child gets across the border doesn’t mean your child gets to stay,” she said then.
My question is: was the bitch so insensitive to the pain because she knew there was no rain? A rain on the plain of it. Any ideas?
Those people don’t even exist to HRC and her gang of thieves. They’re little more than human chattel to be exploited for profit. And sadly, a good many Americans agree with her. Our time’s coming.
Clowns to the left of me and jokers to the right. Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
On an island, as always. I’ve always preferred it that way.
You mean those clowns?
https://res.cloudinary.com/jerrick/image/upload/f_auto,fl_progressive,q_auto,c_fit,w_775/qcgfz6qrib9ihqc2glpx
Sequel to ‘Killer Clowns from Outer Space’ coming soon.
All questions will be answered and all truths will be revealed.
The eyes of an anxious nation will be riveted on the SciFi channel sometime in late fall, 2019.
Brh
…Lucky K-Dog…always in ze middle….
He didnt live that long [the singer of that].
Gerry Rafferty? Sixty three, which ain’t terrible.
She is a corrupt politician with her finger continuously in the air to see which direction the wind is blowing.
Everyone seems to like to predict what the Long Emergency apocalypse is going to be like. Just look west to see the beginnings. Look at the areas where fiscal and sociological control do not exist to see what happens when folks lose their ability to compete. Imagine what is going to happens when, say California loses its ability to support the homeless, tempest tossed people. Do what they do now, give them enough funding to feed them and drug them up to stay quiet. When that no longer is in place, the first thing that will happen is that the Statue of Liberty is going to be torn down. Then the cities erupt as the rurals consolidate. Then the real war starts.
Imagine what is going to happens when, say California loses its ability to support the homeless, tempest tossed people.
I guess they’ll fuck them before they’ll eat them.
LOL! Shockingly deranged, but sadly true.
Author of Report on Google Search Manipulation Corrects Hillary Clinton After Her False Tweet Slamming the President
There’s another Epstein in the news, Dr. Robert Epstein, who threatens to unlease his “first-ever twitter storm tomorrow.” Orange Man glowing with victory. Bastinda’s flying monkeys in full retreat.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/08/author-of-report-on-google-search-manipulation-corrects-hillary-clinton-after-her-false-tweet-slamming-the-president/
Opinions?
Is there enough power in the monetary regulatory systems to force recessions to happen? In other words, can the Fed et al put enough fiscal pressure on the markets to be weaponized politically? Is the Fed as corrupted politically as the intelligence community has been? I remember how everyone stayed the FBI was unbiased, we know how that has turned out. How much pressure can the global neo-Liberals put on our fiscal systems. If Estulin is right about the leverage the USA economy has on the globalists survival, anything is possible.
Absolutely, without question! Another interest rate bump or two right now would certainly do it. The global economy IS the US economy by any other name.
I’m just back from Wally World where I picked up my MGGA hat. “Make Greenland Green Again” We have a lot of work to do. I guess the “scientists” are “surprised” and they “think ” this is only temporary. Perhaps they should rethink their data sets.
https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/key-greenland-glacier-growing-again-after-shrinking-years-nasa-study-ncna987116
Trumps plans for Greenland after the purchase. Man does he know how to push the buttons!
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1163603361423351808/photo/1
..while Iceland mourns the loss of its glaciers:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49345912
“Perhaps they should rethink their data sets.”
That’s their job. Every unremarkable day.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2019/08/12/transgender-daughter-school-undermines-parents-column/1546527001/
Good student but had trouble making friends. Autism spectrum. She met another girl who was transitioning to being a boy and she promptly decided she was really a boy too.
In other words, awkward girl with few or no friends gets invited to join a cult. Now she has many friends who think she’s special – including very powerful ones who can put Dad in his place. Or anybody else.
This is a winning model and they’re running with it. What utterly inhuman ruthlessness. And they talk about “Nazis”….
Sex with minors? If the minor can change their sex over the will of their parents, sure, why not? That’s small compared to this victory. Review the UN’s Right of the Child. No doubt there is a clause or two already in place.
monkey see monkey do.
There is a book by B Olson on Hitlery. As the viet war cooled, HC needed a cause…she found it, The Year of the Child..
you know, the wife of the guy who okayed legal infanticide in the 1990s.
The democrat challenger will ultimately be Biden. The theme will be, “Do you remember (the Obama years)… ”
The democrats should act like a party and stop the car wreck that further debates are guaranteed to devolve into.
Fake News from the Future
On January 20, 2021, Joe Biden, without regaining consciousness, was sworn in as the 46 President of the United States.
Immediately after the ceremony, he was transferred to the White house, where he was successfully Epsteinized by hanging from the Lincoln bed, which for that occasion was gracefully returned by the Clintons who stole it in 2001 when vacating the premises.
During Epstenization process the head was accidentally separated from the lower body, which, to eliminate the needless suffering of the head, finished the process by shooting its own head 3 times in the back.
The White House on-duty coroner ruled the death “of natural causes”.
Yeah, Joe ‘truth-not-facts’ Biden. He should do okay if he remembers to keep his yap shut. roflol. Try to swing that.
“The whole thing is an overt scam and the reason behind is beyond sinister.” —victim mindset Janos
The reason? Whites reaping what they sowed. What goes around (genocide committed by white barbarians) comes around (immigration by non-whites). Karma.
An aside apropos of nothing: Did you see the picture of Trump, his wife, and young son Barron in yesterday’s NYT? They had just returned to DC from his golf resort in NJ and were walking across a lawn from the plane. I almost freaked out. Barron was unbelievably tall. First I Googled “How old is Barron Trump?” He is 13 years and 5 months old. Then I Googled “How tall is Barron Trump?” The article accompanying the picture says Barron “towers” over his 6’2″ father and 5’11” mother. Now, if he could just play basketball like LeBron. You’ve got to see this picture.
Big kid alright. Still doesn’t look like he’s hit puberty yet, either. Makes the Donald look even older walking next top him.
2018 Kill Count
50 … white supremacists
0 … antifa
White supremacists killed at least 50 people in the U.S. in 2018 alone, and have been tied to a long list of massacres, including those in Pittsburgh; Santa Fe, Texas; Poway, California; Tallahassee, Florida; Jeffersontown, Kentucky; and Aztec, New Mexico.
What’s the “kill count” in Chicago, St Louis, and Baltimore?
Over 1000 community members easy, Little Jane.
Brh
ANTIFA is an mob. Perhaps some from that mob have killed…but did not get caught.
List of suicides in Hillary Clinton immediate surroundings as a black comedy
Dudes just die of laughter, reading out a list of those who have committed suicide after falling into the inner circle of Hillary Clinton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cLdwfbVCIg
You do not need not know English – everything is self-evident.
Apparently, Hillary went too far, demonstrating contempt for public opinion in full confidence that she controls the mainstream media, and the fact that they will never be published in these media was an occasion for black humor.
list of people around Debbie who died suddenly.
Obama too.
Joan was a Saint. Surely you are not trying to conflate her with the de Rais? The Inquisition was out for her blood – murderous bastards.
Janos, you’ll have to take that issue up with Bill Shakespeare.
Well, well well. Greta’s coming to America for the New York City climate conference.
https://tracker.borisherrmannracing.com/
Meanwhile the climate change initiated by carbon dioxide pollution accelerates
The El Paso shooter: “The American lifestyle affords our citizens an incredible quality of life. However, our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heading the destruction of our environment by shamelessly overharvesting resources.”
I don’t think most people are radicalizable, but circumstances are going to reveal what the proportions are, because no one is stopping those circumstances.
At some point, our just-in-time food, water, and power delivery system will fail in some significant way. Maybe a war or weather event. Then the great population correction will begin. No need to rush it with pointless violence.
This is a facile analysis. I really hope you aren’t “investing” in buckets of Mountain House.
Oh no! I’m going to follow your example and just believe that a finite planet with finite resources can sustain an infinite amount of human units with careful socialist planning.
Hey KDog, I linked to the Dark Mountain Project from your site. Pretty impressive. Joseph Conrad and especially Robinson Jeffers, prophets of the great unravelling. Louis Ferdinand Celine probably should have been thrown into the mix too. There was a column in USA today last weekend condemning ‘Ecofacism’, the kind expressed by the shooter in El Paso in his manifesto. The author suggested that apocaylptic predictions by environmentalists (we have only 12 years left) is being adopted by ‘right wingers’, taken seriously, and driving them over the edge. I’ve noticed the emergence of ‘EcoMarxism’ too (blaming any and all environmental problems on ‘Capitalism’) but the author didn’t cite that as a concern.
Brh
“USA Today”?
Did I crash land in 1985? Doc get me out of here.
.
From the article:
“What we saw in the El Paso manifesto is a myopic, hateful, deadly ideology that has no place in the environmental movement,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club.
Echoing that was Andrew Rosenberg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists: “We need to speak out so that our members know that under no circumstances are we buying into this kind of philosophy.”
I’ll dissent and say Andrew Rosenberg goes too far. Enough with his virtue signaling, lets get to reality.
American shooters are tape recorders as are all sick mental defectives who act out unprovoked violent rage. They rage because their elevator does not go to the top floor. They rage because they have impaired thinking. An average citizen drone who gets all their opinions where he/she gets their corne-pone has genius creativity compared to a shooter even if they drool. All a shooter can do is ran’t out someone else’s words. They don’t have any of their own. If they had any of their own they would not be animals.
I apologize to all animals.
Doc—quick!—take us back to a time when USA Today didn’t sell twice as many papers as the NYT.
Glad you enjoyed it. Here is the manifesto in audio. 37 minutes. Earbuds and several circles around the dog park for this one. This print copy you have seen.
Condemning ‘Ecofacism’ by any means necessary will be how power plays it. There will be many such fouls and equating ecology with madness is truly foul.
Sumerian Lizard blood can tolerate much more heat than an average human. Don’t forget that. Humans came down from the frozen north and mixed with the alien spawn. They can take the heat and they can make their own cool long after you can’t. Don’t be fooled.
The accepted wisdom is that the English Settlers were forced to flee England because they were being persecuted for their religious beliefs, and that they arrived in the Americas with ideas of creating a new, just society.
I guess now we need a little clarification – who exactly they were fleeing from?
Was it what I call a Black World Project – an association, or anti-Christian conspiracy, of pedophiles, idolaters, Devil worshippers and Satanists? (e.g. Hillary Clinton and Flying Monkeys in our times).
And if I am right when describing the Black World Project, and also that all this is the harsh reality of American life, since the Anglo-Saxons have been living under this sect since the invasion of William the Conqueror, which became the first anti-Christian war of the Fourth Crusade then the fight against the Black World Project became the basis of American identity.
“Did the Puritans Tolerate Other Religions?
The answer, unfortunately, is no. Once settled in New England, the Puritan communities demanded complete unity of thought and behaviour from their members, and neglected those who did not meet their religious standards.”
https://owlcation.com/humanities/Why-Did-the-Puritans-Really-Leave-England-For-The-New-World
Ironic, isn’t it?
Yep. They left England voluntarily and set up a community where intolerance was the byword. SSL would thrive there and Janos would be plotting to be running the place inside a couple of weeks.
And you would thrive there too. You didnt think I would leave you to wolves did you? Once you realize that reasonable intolerance is a natural thing and quite healthy, especially for small vulnerable societies that can’t risk naively trusting outsiders, you’ll understand our path. And you’ll conform and you’ll look back on your days before you joined us in perplexity and bewilderment.
Gawd, SSL, that’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Or Stepford Wives.
C-r-e-e-p-y.
Hahahaaahhhaaa!!! More of the same old, same old, where I’m actually IN AGREEMENT with you & your ridiculous ideas but I just DON’T KNOW it yet!
Classic magical thinking. You’re probably a lovely person, but you’re still a dipstick.
Doesn’t the validity of a statement depend on the logical possibility of disproving it?
Half of SSL’s output consists of statements that are impossible to disprove and therefore without meaning or validity.
Like ‘you have made yourself into a god’. I mean what do you do with stuff like that?
I guess ignoring it would be smart, but it’s just so ” “FFS!” making’…
Janos
After our Myer Briggs discourse, my curiosity was prompted to explore the Extrovert and Feeler categories and I think I found some interesting items.
Looking at your EF combination, I looked at male and female percentages
Males are 22.4% EF, females are 40% EF
Feelers
Males are 43.4 F, females are 75.5% F
Total population Feelers. 59.9%
Interesting. Do you think that the rise of the independent female presence in the electorate might have affected the number of Feelers that are present today?
well, females from this household are out on the Cape, me and a nephew had to do the grocery shopping today, which is out of the ordinary.
I was confronted with 20 aisles of about every delicacy and foodstuff known to man, brightly lit. The nephew, who spent part of his younger years in France said “Jesus Christ, you got more cheeses in this one store than we had in all of Marseilles.”
We stocked up on beer and steaks. One thing I noticed is a gallon of whole milk, from a local dairy, was $1.99.
I know we are doomed but at he moment we still are the land of plenty.
Uh oh, just saw first leaf fall from oak tree out front. Could this glorious summer be coming to an end?
Brh
Do they have a Russian canned salted herring?
That’s what I miss most on the Island.
Here’s what I am talking about:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Aringa-marinato.jpg
not sure, looks good tho. I’ll look into that.
Picked up a slab of norway salmon, throw it onto the grill tomorrow.
Brh
Interesting question. I don’t know where Jung weighed in on the nature vs nurture debate. I think the rule of women is definitely distorting male development. The “anima” or feminine side of boys is promoted before he has even gotten a chance to individuate as a man. And this is ruinous…..
Was in bookstore just now. Jung was quite a visual artist, painting many of his visions.
The evidence continues to roll in… air pollution makes everyone dumb and crazy. Good thing we know exactly where it comes from (your chimney or tailpipe) so when the time comes to tax the shit out of you, it won’t be difficult. Polluters’ only hope is that they kill everyone off before that happens. What will Jim-Bob do when there’s no one left to sell cord wood to? What will happen to modern camping and bar-b-que without the ubiquitous smoke?
The answer, obvious in retrospect, is vaporizers with smoke flavoring for those of us who can’t kick the habit and can finally take all the harms unto themselves whilst sparing us all their second-hand smoke.
Monkeys typing could do better.
The largest source of emissions comes from power plants followed by industry. Jim-Bob’s woodburning stove isn’t on the list. It may interest you to know, however, that small propeller-driven planes are still permitted to use leaded avgas. Guess where the lead goes?
I think you need to qualify that by country, Exscotticus. In the UK the single largest CO2 emission source is now transport, even though emissions overall are falling.
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/air-pollution-uk-transport-most-polluting-sector-greenhouse-gas-emissions-drop-carbon-dioxide-a8196866.html
Also regarding transport, air pollution in the UK is now the leading environmental threat to health.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-matters-air-pollution/health-matters-air-pollution
And you have to be careful what kind of wood burning stove you use as well.
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/why-wood-burning-stoves-are-bad-for-you-and-the-environment_uk_5c3c5ce6e4b0e0baf53ef7f8
Air pollution is nothing new to humans, though:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/air-pollution-goes-back-way-further-you-think-180957716/
huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/why-wood-burning-stoves-are-bad-for-you-and-the-environment_uk_5c3c5ce6e4…
Fair enough, but it’s hard for me to take this article seriously when it states…
Wood burning stoves might not seem like one of the biggest culprits when it comes to air quality. Yet, having seen a rise in popularity in the last decade, a government survey in 2016 found that they were creating more than a third of all the particle pollution in London throughout the year.
Put simply, any heating method that requires the burning of a fossil fuel is going to be bad for the environment and the quality of the air you’re breathing.
The fact that HuffPo claims wood is a fossil fuel suggests an agenda is being pushed here.
I agree with about HuffPo’s bloomer, Exscotticus, but I don’t think it’s evidence of an agenda.
I’ve seen ample other articles on the wood-burning fuel problem, with reference to particulates, in more scientifically worthy publications. Also, burning either fossil fuels OR biomass does release CO2 – and the corollary with regard to the biomass source is slightly more complicated than saying ‘yes, but growing more trees absorbs almost as much’.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/congress-says-biomass-is-carbon-neutral-but-scientists-disagree/
“Slow in. Fast out.”
I think this was just a case of the authors having a dumb moment.
with *you*
In the long run, of course, it may not matter. The air above mediaeval towns and cities was appalling, thanks to the burning of wood, but it was that or nothing, generally.
>>> I think this was just a case of the authors having a dumb moment.
HuffPo has a lot of “dumb moments”. And they all add up to the same: a Leftist agenda.
Not to change the topic, but here’s HuffPo defending white-hating racist, Sarah Jeong. No—her racist tweets should not count against her.
And here’s HuffPo demanding consequences for Trump’s “racist” tweets.
That there is what we call a double standard.
I’m no admirer of Sarah Jeong, Exscotticus – nor have I any ideological investment in HuffPo. I just picked the first relevant article and should have looked further down for one from e.g. New Scientist or Scientific American. The science re wood burning stoves still stands, being independent of HuffPo journalists.
>>> The science re wood burning stoves still stands, being independent of HuffPo journalists.
The science re wood burning stoves is that they’re significantly more efficient than traditional fireplaces, safer, and produce fewer particulates. And while they may produce more PM2.5s than autos, they produce magnitudes less than airports. Last I checked, Heathrow is expanding, yes?
Socialists are making these decisions, promulgated by your own fake news media. Your “royals” have the audacity to lecture the world on climate change and carbon footprints as they jet set around in the most polluting manner possible.
They want commoners to give up their wood burning stoves. But will Prince Harry give up his private jet?
Exscotticus
Saying that wood burning stoves are more efficient than ‘other traditional fireplaces’ is about as germane to my original point as mentioning that natural gas is cleaner than oil.
My original point, if you remember, was that ‘you have to be careful what kind of wood burning stove you use’, since some are worse than others in terms of the particulates they produce. Pointing this out is clearly offensive to you – I’m not obliging anyone to do anything, I’m merely making a point that you can read in any self-respecting scientific document on the subject. And it remains true that wood burning stoves, since they have become chic among the urban middle classes, account for a very significant percentage of London’s particulates, for example, despite the huge amount already produced by transport and other sources. I doubt JHK’s wood-burning stove presents much of a problem, given he doesn’t live in Marylebone.
“Last I checked, Heathrow is expanding, yes?”
You wouldn’t need to check – you will have noticed I mentioned it several times in relation to its being, in large part, a result of the anticipation of Brexit and its perception (by dopes unable to do joined-up thinking) as being vital to the new ‘Global Britain’ in order to fly stuff around the world that currently goes more efficiently to Europe.
Defending the UK’s royals is not part of my remit, any more than defending jet-setting film stars. That point qualifies as whataboutery, I’m afraid.
>>> Defending the UK’s royals is not part of my remit, any more than defending jet-setting film stars. That point qualifies as whataboutery, I’m afraid.
It’s not a whataboutery to point out relevant hypocrisy. The subject is “the largest source of emissions”. Well the largest source of personal emissions is air travel by far. Unless you start forest fires, nothing you do will create more CO2, NO2, SO2, or particulate matter than flying. And—yes—that includes using your wood burning stove.
For someone like Prince Harry, who obviously doesn’t fly coach, this air travel is significantly worse, as the emissions can’t by divided by hundreds of passengers, and he’s flying far more often than average.
When your government decides to start banning the scourge of wood burning stoves, you may want to ask your elected representatives why airplanes get a free pass. They’ll come back with economic arguments, utilitarian arguments, and ends-justify-means rationale. But even these excuses don’t apply to the private leisure jets of the wealthy. A plane carrying much needed produce for the UK is one thing; a plane carrying just Prince Harry is another.
I merely mean it’s not my argument – it’s one you’d need to take up with the royals or the government. I don’t defend them.
“When your government decides to start banning the scourge of wood burning stoves, you may want to ask your elected representatives why airplanes get a free pass. ”
They’re not ‘banning’ them – they’re regulating the production of new ones, as far as I’m aware, so that only the less harmful ones will be manufactured in future. Anyone who wants one will be able to get a wood burner.
And you know my views on aviation. The expansion of Heathrow and the implications for long-distance freight in general, are one of my biggest arguments against Brexit, as I’ve said many times.
You should know my views on the royals too. Doesn’t matter to me whether it’s Prince Harry’s private jet, Trump’s private jet, or Elton John’s private jet.
And aeroplanes have had a free pass since the second world war, when the US insisted they be able to use tax-free fuel.
GreenAlba, it’s the same in the USA; airplanes and airports are sacrosanct. Environmental laws don’t apply. Health and safety doesn’t apply. Quality of life doesn’t apply. Exceptions abound. Heck, some planes can even use leaded gas!—which rains down upon the populace like fallout. They’re basically crop-dusting the nation with lead, and wonder where all the autism is coming from.
There are so many significant bipartisan issues Dems could be focussing on besides bash Trump and hate whitey. They could be pushing to finally ban lead. They could be addressing the increasingly hard-to-dismiss organic food scams.
Did you know that “certified” organic produce in the USA doesn’t actually require any independent certification whatsoever? Predictably, organic food scams abound. Even worse, it touches nearly everything, since, for example, organic eggs come from organic chickens that eat organic feed, and if the feed is not in fact organic, then neither are the chickens or the eggs.
Dems could be focussing on these issues and more, but they prefer to do the same old, same old.
“Did you know that “certified” organic produce in the USA doesn’t actually require any independent certification whatsoever? Predictably, organic food scams abound. Even worse, it touches nearly everything, since, for example, organic eggs come from organic chickens that eat organic feed, and if the feed is not in fact organic, then neither are the chickens or the eggs.”
Thank you, Exscotticus! I’ll look into that and send the info. to my MP before negotiations get moving on that trade deal. 🙂
Well, ladies and germs;
The BBC, this PM, reports that the new James Bond movie will be named “No Time To Die”…and will star…Daniel Craig again as 007.
Who the hell was spreading the fake news that a black female would be the new Bond? Who read this somewhere and irresponsibly reposted the information? Who is the fuck-up?
…Uhhh, me….
…and I humbly apologize….
It will have the double ‘O’ no matter who plays it.
>>> and will star…Daniel Craig again as 007.
Really? Not a trannie? The Left will be furious.
Daniel Craig keeps saying he’s finished with it – looks down his nose at it and then puts a peg on it and takes the money.
I liked him better back when he was Geordie in Our Friends in the North.
Sez here, ““You would have to eat twice as much broccoli today to get the same nutrients as a generation ago.”
Is that true?
First you’d have to convince me people eat broccoli.
Delicious, especially with a bit of grated parmesan sprinkled on it. The long-stem varieties are even better.
I don’t mind the taste so much, but broccoli never satisfies my hunger. It’s like eating water, which it mostly is.
True, Scratch. Like salad, it makes you feel full for about half an hour. I guess you’d have to make a proper cheese sauce for it then!
Kinda defeats the purpose. I like it with sour cream though. Baked potatoes even more. The little Golden variety. Their high GI myth apparently doesn’t hold for me. Blood sugar stays nice and stable (~120 for an hour so after eating, then back down <100) eating a ton of potatoes.
What happened to our host’s capsule movie reviews?
Movies are out; “lived experiences” are in.
Patriot Prayer vs Antifa. Judge for yourself which one is the crazed hater. Humorous aspect: Antifa is far more White than the “racist” Patriot Prayer. This is good Civic Nationalism. And yeah, I’ll take it over what these maniacs and the Democrats (same thing at this point) have in store for us. The Indian and the Black say, “We’re proud of who we are. Why doesn’t this White guy get to be proud of who he is?”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wa3l7PhMfp0
I don’t know if there are enough non-Whites like this though. If there were, Whites who valued their race could focus on themselves and promote their own culture in peace within the larger order – one both benign and more or less Western in nature. And again, this future is far more likely than the one I and my Brothers in Asgard and Vanaheim desire.
Goes to show (though I’m not watching it) that Sumerian Lizard Blood has nothing to do with skin color.
I think there may be enough Conservative Blacks and Browns who would be allies to us and who actually believe Whites have a right to ethnic freedom and self determination that a potential political alliance could arise. That would be a huge step up from what’s going on now. And then we would gain the freedom to openly advocate for ourselves at all levels.
I wonder. The Hispanics in particular are playing the long game, and playing it very well. They fully intend to take the Southwest at the very least – and are well on their way to doing so. And Blacks have been ethnically cleansed from parts of Southern California by them. And of course, the fanaticism of Blacks against Whites is very well known.
Another factor: some of the Civic Nationalists hate us with a passion and the Movement is already well infiltrated by the Tribe. But Yes – the Crisis is upon Us and we alone simply don’t have the strength at this time. We actually need the Civic Nationalists. Whether they will tolerate us long term or even short is another question. As I said before, the Oath Keepers didn’t even show up because they didn’t want to be associated with possible White Nationalists at the event.
The Indian guy said, I’m glad that Whites came and killed and conquered us because that’s how we got Christianity. This is a very extreme viewpoint. You’re not going to find many Indians who talk this way. They don’t matter so much as their numbers are small. But their dispossesion is a potent weapon the Left uses against us. Btw, to the extent the early Europeans felt bad about what was happening to the Indians, to that extent they felt the debt could only be paid by converting the Indians to Christianity – the best thing that we had to give.
Agreed. The Hispanics are the most immediate threat to White demographic dominance and they are doing very well in terms of collective action and organization. They are much more of a threat than Blacks in this way. One thing I do want to point out is that the Hispanics and Blacks are also under the same attacks as Whites when it comes to issues like transgenderism, homosexuality, feminism, etc. At least in this culture. I am not sure if you have noticed this but they are making Black men more emasculated and much less “threatening” in newer shows, commercials, etc. In fact on YouTube just in the last several months I remember seeing a commercial where two Black football players (or maybe they are basketball players – I admit some ignorance in these matters) had a cupcake making business and they were wearing pink aprons in the commercial and making cupcakes with pink frosting. And if YouTube is any barometer of social trends I would say there are lots of Hispanic drag queens and just gays generally posting all sorts of videos lol. All of this just to say that the cultural rot that the Globalists are putting out there are having effects on all populations. Even Turkey and Saudi Arabia are promoting more women’s rights these days!!!!!!!
The other thing that comes to mind is that as much as we don’t see eye to eye with him on many things JohnAZ I think is on to something in regard to the diehard, unmovable White SJWs. They may very well be our worst enemies exactly because they are within the house and they are committed to destroying any opportunities for us to take collective action. They are the first ones to betray us. Who needs Black and Brown enemies if they are supposed to be our brothers, sisters, and friends? So I think your instinct is right in that we will have to make strategic alliances and will have to be flexible since the times are so dangerous and precarious.
Chinese?
australia reports–
Darling Harbor in Sydney is 90% owned by Chinese.
In fact, much better Chinese food there now then in Mainland!
My brother was transferred there and they put him in a condo in Darling Harbor and all of his neighbors are from Mainland and Singapore.
All pretty wealthy also. Nice 2-bedroom condos there sell for well over a million now he said.
Quite a few Hispanic drag queens and queers wiped out at the pulse nightclub in Orlando by a muzzy gunmen.
I cant remember did the left and their agit/prop media blame that one on whitey too?
Brh
The Chinese are colonizing the world. Thank you for bringing this threat up. There are tons of Chinese colonists on the West Coast and with things you have said before I can only conclude that many of them have expensive tastes. So as their numbers increase I suppose there will be that much more environmental damage done. And our government encouraged this country to grow like this? When was that on the ballot or was that a secret vote?
Brh – the media was for sure very disheartened that the Pulse Nightclub shooter was a Gay-confused Muslim. That’s why you never heard the outcry then like you did recently with the El Paso shooter. Even though the victims were LGBTQIA, the most sacred of the new officially sanctioned cults….
“The Indian guy said, I’m glad that Whites came and killed and conquered us because that’s how we got Christianity. This is a very extreme viewpoint. You’re not going to find many Indians who talk this way”
The key point is that ‘you’re not going to find many Indians who talk this way”. Precisely. One kook says something kooky and you quote it as indicative of..something…what exactly? Your point eluded me.
From the USA today flying skateboard:
President Donald Trump abruptly canceled a trip to Denmark on Tuesday after that country’s prime minister dismissed his offer to buy Greenland as “absurd.”
.
.
.
“Look at the King! Look at the the King! Look at the King, the King, the King!
The King is in the altogether, but altogether, the altogether
He’s altogether as naked as the day that he was born
The King is in the altogether, but altogether, the altogether
It’s altogether the very least the King has ever worn”
Summon the court physician! Call an intermission!
His majesty is wide open to ridicule and scorn.
We’ve had an airforce base in Greenland since 1942, the arctic landmass being very important strategically in WW2, and even moreso now.
Russia is launching major initiatives in the arctic, exploring the seabeds fir oil, natgas and rare earth minerals. Both Finca and I have mentioned the nuclear reactors being towed across the arctic ocean to power up seamining operations.
However, what promoted the President’s announcement concerning Greenland is China’s apparent interest in developing its own airbase in Greenland, as well as a seaport. As we are seeing in Africa and the Caribbean, once the Chinese move into a place and begin developing it, they tend to eventually own it. So it might be great fun for the Danes to mock Trump and tell him to go to hell, we’ll see if they can mock Xi and tell him to go to hell once the PLA gets into Greenland. Kenya is experiencing this exact thing right now with their main seaport, which the Chinese developed, then took over.
There’s an ongoing international competition over energy resources in the Arctic Ocean, a struggle for energy between China, Russia and the USA. I know, I know, we don’t need arctic oil, we have windmills and solar panels, we’ll just sit around staring at our bellybuttons, apologizing for our ‘imperialism’, and feeling guilty about racism. Meanwhile, the world moves on, and sane countries look after their own interests.
Brh
Actually, China is more interested in Greenland for its rare earth minerals, which they plan to exploit undercover of an Australian mining company they have controlling interest in. The MSM knows this, but they did not report it. (The WSJ did, as well as Forbes)
So KDog, all is not what it seems.
Brh
The Chinese have a symbol for crisis. It is a composite of the elements ‘danger’ and opportunity.
But I doubt the Chinese know rare earth minerals are in Greenland any more than you do. No cigar BRH and what is the truth?
The truth is the Emperor has no clothes and every vested business interest in the nation now pushes the WSJ and Forbes to cover Trumps butt and attempt to normalize his proof of insanity and duplicity in playing flyover america for fools.
We’re the fools. Dems who back Liz Warren –the most likely candidate — are the wise ones.
Is that about the size of it?
Brh
see what I posted north of this.
Unfortunately Denmark told Trump to go fuck himself. Maybe we should add them to the enemies list and invade?
Maybe we should follow their example?
Good luck with that with the Dems in opposition. Twixt a rock and hard place, we are.
We won’t. But certainly the Russian army could roll thru there as an afterthought. I wonder how we will respond when Denmark comes crawling to us for help. Something tells me it will be nothing like 1944.
Brh
You’re perpetually stuck in 1950. You need to update your memes.
Fucking the little children is not enough for American Devil worshippers and Satanists – now they’re trying to fuck the American economy using their “secret knowledge” of the workings of Western Financial System which they invented back at the times of the Templar Order.
USA? Israeli? UK? Belgian. hmmmm.
African billboards telling men to stop baby raping.
The secret factory in Utah allegedly making machines to scrub CO2 out of the air is really making Greenland Ice Melters to melt patches of ice down to the bear earth where drilling reveals goodies to take.
One of the things the drills will be looking for is soil.
Bare not bear.
If the Order of Hospitallers was a medical order, which later assumed the function of protecting pilgrims, the Templar Order was originally created by Hugues de Payens as an order of armed ascetics “carrying Christianity on the edge of the sword” and was a fundamentally new phenomenon in civilization Christianity, which turned theology into military discipline.
Naturally, this theology was inextricably linked with the Cistercian reform, if only because the main authors of the first Templar charter, which became the model and pattern for all subsequent charters of the military ascetic communities in the West, were Hugo de Payne and “saint” Bernard of Clairvaux.
http://www.templiers.org/regle1-eng.php
But the real birth of the Knights Templar should be considered the day of March 29, 1139, when Pope Innocent II, with his Papal bull “Omne Datum Optimum”, called the “Magna Carta of the Templars”, noted the death of his rival Antipope Anacletus II and thanked the followers of “saint” Bernard of Clairvaux for their assistance provided to him in the fight against a man of Jewish descent who occupied the throne of St. Peter.
In this bull, he granted the Order of the Templars many unusual privileges, including the right to free, that is, duty-free border crossing, exemption from paying tithing and from any church authority, except for the authority of the Pope – sounds a lot like some modern multi-national corporations, doesn’t it?
Thus, this bull made it possible for the Knights Templar to acquire a new quality, which made it not only the first supranational community, such as the European Union or the Comintern, but also, thanks to the check transfer system invented by the Templars, the first transnational corporation that created financial capitalism.
Getting a late start here folks as I just returned from three days in DC and was very, very busy there. Sorry to go against the flow of the deniers that just love to come here to grumble, but Jim is right and always has been. The future will have less for more, and more for less, and we had all better hope that the less never wake up to understand this or it will invert rapidly and quickly. What our host does here is to reach out to those that care to be at least a little bit prepared and better off once the bulk of the crowd wakes up. Yes the haves are still spending and enjoying the high times, but those of them that are wise are already stocked up on hard assets and safe places, at least as safe as they can be. Many also now possess the means to transport themselves to havens that they have prepared for the inevitable.
The problem is that when too many start saving and preparing, the already vapid economy will totally crap out if enough who consume cut back on consuming. This could happen whether those who now consume choose to stop and save or if they become tapped out while continuing to consume. This is one of the reasons that some in government want to hand out more cash and freebies, to keep the consuming hoards in business and why some want to hand out higher wages to the bottom dwelling wage earners. Surely they will continue to consume with higher wages, no?
In the end, those in power can never have an accurate enough handle on the overall state of decay to prevent collapse and so will consequently fail in keeping going what cannot continue to go on. The trigger will come from outside IMHO and it won’t take more than a few years to do this. Be patient, it will all play out as written. It just takes time.
Are you, Walter, talking about the “prepper” mentality of chicken coops and meals ready to eat?
What an utter nonsense!
Only preservation of the State based on Christian (or, in broader sense, Abrahamic) morality could save the civilization on this planet.
Actually I am not calling for that Finc, I advocate conservation of resources, reduction of personal consumption and saving by spending less than you make.
Just back from DC? Better have the local fire department hose you down under high pressure after a bleach bath and a good scrubbing with a very stiff brush, Ol’ Walt! Might need to take a layer of skin or two off just to be sure.
Quarantine!
Definitely warranted!
An aside on this, Walter:
“Yes the haves are still spending and enjoying the high times, but those of them that are wise are already stocked up on hard assets and safe places, at least as safe as they can be. Many also now possess the means to transport themselves to havens that they have prepared for the inevitable.”
I’ve mentioned this before, but have new information. The inflow of the wealthy (particularly Americans) to New Zealand as their post-collapse bolt-hole is heating up.
The NZ government runs the Overseas Investment Office which basically rubber-stamps the purchase of NZ land by non-citizens. The ones that gain public notice and media attention are those with the biggest chequebooks – Shania Twain, Peter Thiel & the like. However, if one is prepared to settle for a LESS than flashy showy huge estate, then it’s possible to get in ‘under the radar’.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/88705064/super-rich-americans-buying-land-in-new-zealand-as-bolthole-from-apocalypse
Hillary Clinton To Hold $50,000-Per-Plate Fundraiser For Democrats
https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/20/hillary-clinton-50000-plate-fundraiser-democrats-dnc-2020/
The Witch is laughing at everybody – she’s going to run.
Godzilla vs Mothra II, no doubt!
That analogy works well.
$50,000, that’s all?
They’re getting away cheap.
A few years ago at our State U she was paid $300,000 for a twenty minute speech, in which she said, basically “You go, girl”
The day she got here you woulda thought the Queen herself had arrived, motorcades, colorguard, wall to wall TV coverage, the Dem ass sucking was embarrasing.
Brh
One of the best clusterfuck blog entries ever: a sober assessment linking past, present and future.
“What will you do?”
What might we do (more so than we are already)?
For one thing: recognize that knowledge, candor and education existed, developed and spread long before fossil fuel based economies (and can survive past the “carbon bubble”), before ubiquitous 24/7 global communication/surveillance/misinformation/confusion, and despite trite boasting (“make America great again”) often upstaging better-informed politicking.
Homo sapiens has the capacity for sapience, including the ability to learn from past mistakes. Mistakes have been prolific across human society in recent times. Learning has been lagging, and that imbalance could be better addressed.
The problem is that it takes more and more to maintain the status quo as the economic system grows. That is a Ponzi scheme and all systems based on growth are Ponzi schemes. Good example is fracking, the ultimate Ponzi scheme. As the demand refuses to drop, it takes more and more drilling to keep up. Frack wells are based on diminishing returns with time, thus even more are needed. Eventually the resources required, money and loans runs out.
A great analogy for Ponzis is an expanding ripple in water. The circumference expands as a function of the diameter (3.14xdiameter). The resource to keep the ripple going is water. In economics, it is capital. A ripple will go on forever if the water is unlimited. So will economic Ponzis, if capital is unlimited. Unfortunately, it isn’t. When the capital, or the investment appeal, declines, the ripple stops and the bubble bursts. If you think of the economy as Ponzi building on Ponzi building on Ponzi, it is easy to see if one Ponzi dies, it takes the whole group of investments down with it. 2008 occurred because the mortgage CDO Ponzi ran out of “good” mortgages to feed the ripple expansion with. Capital runs out, the ripple stops expanding, investment appeal dries up, people realize they are not going to make money, panic and 2008.
Current Ponzis are fracking, student loans, the Feds trying to increase mortgages again, the Fed and quantitative easing, heck the entire economy right now is an inflation Ponzi using debt as the capital pool feeding the ripple. Same on the Global level. The global debt bubble needs the USA capital pool, especially the illicit goods markets, to keep the interest payments up. We are starting to see the global ripple falter as the capital generation is slowing down. Why? The illicit markets are starting to feel the pinch of increased surveillance and enforcement. Interesting phenomenon, Build the wall, slow the trades, and Germany, Italy, Greece, Spain, ie the EU goes bankrupt.
I am glad I do not have to ride this wild mustang. I am glad a businessman is running the show instead of another worthless politician.
By the way, the more you delay the stopping of the ripple, the more area is affected and the greater the collapse. Kicking the can down the road only makes bigger ripples and bigger collapses. The next one is going to be a doozy.
Interesting post John. I believe you are right. The growth economy is nothing more than a scheme with the wealthiest at the top being the ultimate winners. An economy is important to any society or nation. But the problem is that the economy and materialism in general have become the be all end all of American society for sure and mostly so for all of Western society as a whole. The imbalance is extreme and the associated damage the imbalance is causing is thus severe. The costs are racking up environmentally, socially and culturally. A balanced society needs an economy but also needs spirituality. A balanced society needs to be anchored in the material as well as the immaterial. I did see the conversation up thread regarding thinkers vs. feelers. And that is precisely where all of this leads. A balanced society needs to find a way to reconcile thinkers and feelers because both aspects are needed for a healthy approach. After all, don’t we all think and feel regardless of our overall personality characteristics? Growth for the sake of growth is destructive as is religion for the sake of religion. So that kinda also goes back to Mr. K’s previous post about the national matrimony. Our economy is dominated by thinkers and our culture is dominated by feelers and we are all out of balance. We need a new and better arrangement and ultimately a reconciliation of these opposing forces and I do believe it is very possible as long as the Will is there.
In ancient Rome, the basis of its strength and power was Roman morality, described in particular by Seneca.