When science truly works

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2023/05/debt-rattle-may-30-2023/

and nature at it's finest

Open thread, have at it everyone

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snoopydawg's picture

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Memorial Service

An anxious silence falls over the land this Memorial Day as we discern increasingly that those we put in charge of this shape-shifting thing called the public interest are running out of trips to lay on the people. Something grotesque is revealing itself: a bankruptcy not just of money but of national purpose, meaning, and legitimacy. You realize this day, with a breaking heart, that your country has been stolen by psychopaths.

Brace for impact. We’re already off the road and now it’s only a matter of how this vehicle comes to a stop in the ditch. Then, it’s a question of how each of us emerges from the smoldering wreckage. The main thing, though, is clear to everyone: What we were riding in is no more. We’re out there stumbling around in the dark, in shock, trying desperately to assess our whereabouts and what has happened to us.

Now, the trouble with being ruled by psychopaths is that they don’t care about other people. They are actually incapable of imagining the lives of others, especially the fact that these others care about each other, and what happens to them. You may have noticed, for instance, that the psychopath Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) went to Ukraine last week and declared, “Russians are dying. We have never spent money so well.” Only a couple of months ago, he called for the assassination of Vladimir Putin. He stopped short of dissing Mr. Putin’s mother.

Ukraine, of course, is a lost cause, and it was never a good cause in the first place. Contrary to Lindsay Graham’s untoward utterance, American money has killed far more Ukrainians than Russians. He overlooked this unappetizing tidbit because he doesn’t care about the Ukrainians, for whose sake our “folks” in charge supposedly undertook this clusterfuck. Lindsay Graham also may not have noticed that our country is collapsing and Russia is not. That must be because Lindsay Graham does not care about Americans, either.

As for our money, it looks like most of the rest of the world — the nations that still produce things of value — are so turned-off by American pathocracy that they are seeking every way possible to stop using our money in international trade settlements. That money, our dollar, became the world’s reserve currency because our country ended up on top in the previous world war and for the better part of a century afterward dominated the planet militarily. Naturally, as our leadership turned more pathological and pathocratic, so did our military endeavors — until lately they amount to little more than just smashing up other countries to show we can do it.

These other countries must wonder which is the next place that America will try to smash up? Two of these other countries, Russia and China, are coming around to the realization that they are possibly better equipped to do the smashing than America is. There is no indication that our pathocracy recognizes that the next smash-up may be World War Three, and that we may not emerge from it victorious.

Hence, our anxiety this Memorial Day as we reflect on America’s military exploits generally, and must perforce contemplate our less-than-glorious prospects ahead. How will our pathocrat neo-con strategists greet the debacle of our failure in Ukraine? Denial and spin, for sure. But will they scramble to dream up yet another misadventure as reckless and absurd? You have good reason to be concerned

Finally an essay on Memorial Day that doesn’t involve rah, rah, rah to those who do the psychopath’s bidding in the many wars to steal resources and kill the civilian population.

Love the turtle story! The shark seeking help for it instead of eating it is the point Kunstler is making here.

Y’all hear that Kerry thinks that Americans should give up their farms for the good of the climate? What an effing hypocrite! He’s been flying non stop and causing more damage than cows expressing their excess air!

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“When out of fear you twist the lesser evil into the lie that it is something good, you eventually rob people of the capacity to distinguish between good and evil.”
~ Hannah Arendt

Ahh, not the kind dealing with home agriculture, think Rick Nelson.

A couple days ago I saw that George Maharis had died. Since it was in the MSM, I went no further than the headline. I have read so many of these "breaking news" reports that I don't bother because I can pretty much predict the thrust of the piece.

I have determined over the years that there are 3 kinds of intellects in the world. There are who people, what people and why people. The bulk of our current society are who people. In fact the wurlitzer works very, very hard to push the who as being the most important and if you wish to succeed in this environment you have to pick the side from those offered. A case in point is our current BS about the debt ceiling. 'nother year, 'nother bad guy/good guy, red team blue team. Nothing ever changes but we do have a rousing "debate" and someone to blame. SSDD.

The snooze report no doubt would expound on the life of the man and how he as an celebrity made such a splash. My first thought wasn't the man. His identity faded into Route 66. I was slapped by the what and what that time meant to me personally. The series was set at the end of the '50s. As a teen for whom any car like that would be far and away what I could afford, I didn't identify with the concept of the series. I was saving up to buy an old chevy, budget limited to $125. I had lied about my age to get the job to pay for it. The boss didn't care cause I was helping his wallet with my $.78 an hour and non existent tips. Anyway, add on a couple of guys who could do their gap years before taking their PMC job and I didn't follow the series at all. I did stop by Winslow AZ a few years ago, tho.

Which is where the why comes in. Why did the series have an affect on our culture and what was the result? It was a tween time, Cuba more of an annoyance in our policies, anti-red fading into the optimism of jfk. There were some very bad times looming on the horizon but so many of us had no idea.

Then a decade later a series was released which did have a profound affect on me. Then Came Bronson. Not a lot of violence, not a lot of gratuitous romance, but a lot of cerebral discussions dealing with people and how they were dealing with the turbulence. That was the year I married.

The series lasted one season. I guess it was too cerebral for a society which was trying so hard to cope with so much happening all at once. The premise of the series was complex and draws a visage that many would find distressing. (Personal aside, pretty tough for screenwriting also). Bronson had a good friend who committed suicide and he was trying to deal with that trauma and a boss who cared only about compliance, not condolence. So Bronson chucked it all and started on a personal journey to find himself. The Bob Seger song, Roll Me Away, is the opening episode. Bob said the inspiration was a trip he made but I'm not so sure that there wasn't a subliminal memory. In my family I'm not permitted to say I like Bob's music, too maga. Hmm, that says a lot also.

Anyway, that's how I spent my memorial day, thinking about what might have been and where and why I went where I went.

And no, Indy did NOT pay any attention to the spectacle in my old home. I can count on one hand the number of times I was in that speedway and I would have some fingers left over.

Maybe later I'll recount my joys of joining the Win 11 borg and how the chromium model won't let me go. As a teaser, I replaced all of my systems but did manage to salvage my notebook PC and a couple hard drives.

Interesting times.

Thank you.

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usefewersyllables's picture

@exindy

What a fabulous show. Heavily underrated.

I grew up in a family printing business- I was the offset pressman, my dad was the letterpress/hand-set-type guy, and my mother was the Linotype operator that did all the hot-metal, non-hand-set typography for the business. We had a Model 14 Mergenthaler Linotype that was the absolute bane of her existence.

Those machines are cantankerous when tuned up well, and after they have worn out for 50-60 years, they become positively belligerent. It squirted molten type metal up her leg literally hundreds of times over the years. It was a true hate-hate relationship: she hated that machine with the flaming passion of a thousand suns, and then some. When they closed the business after I went off to college, she broke her foot kicking it one last time.

The purpose of this story? There was one episode of Then Came Bronson wherein he befriended a retired Linotype operator who had a Model 14 Mergenthaler Linotype identical to ours sitting out in the rain beside his house, and Bronson helped him disassemble it and bury it, one piece at a time, in a big hole his backyard. They also had a wide-ranging philosophical discussion on some topic or another, as the show usually did. I couldn't hear much of it, though, over my mother's cheers and maniacal laughter.

My mother was enthralled. I ripped a VHS video of it for her years later, and she literally wore it out, crying real tears as each little bit of that infernal engine went one at a time into that big pit in his fictional yard. She watched that tape weekly until she passed, and I think that that gave her more pleasure than just about anything in her life...

It amazes me to think that there were maybe 100 people in the world who would appreciate that as a plot element: but that sure landed with her. They used to do the Congressional Record via Linotype, so some of those operators could probably equal her for hate of that machine... Anyway, so now you know where Etaoin Shrdlu came from.

On edit: I actually found the video, but the site won't let me embed dailymotion videos... https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6d1zj2 And yes, that is Woody Guthrie's old buddy Will Geer. And sharp-eyed watchers will also see Iron Eyes Cody (the most successful Italian pretend Native American evah!) in there.

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

@usefewersyllables I'm sure she was very thrilled for so many days.

There might have been only a hundred or so who would appreciate the experience with that machine but I have no doubt the thought resonated with thousands. We have all had feelings like that.

That series came at a time most appropriate for me.

Thank you.

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