Open Thread - 05-09-25 - Timelines
Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joseph Biden, Donald Trump.
These are the presidents I've lived through.
I don't remember anything about Eisenhower, I was too busy being a kid.
The same with JFK, except for the Cuban missile crisis and having to duck under our desks, and when he was assassinated. Oh boy, do I remember that.
Lyndon Johnson. I came of age in the 60s, especially politically, I remember that SOB very well.
Richard Nixon, the crook. Although recently there's been rumors he may have been a victim of the so called Deep State.
Gerald Ford, an attempt to heal the nation after Nixon, IMHO, it didn't succeed.
Jimmy Carter. His heart was in the right place, but he was eaten up by the system.
Ronald "Raygun" Reagan. The start of the celebrity presidents. I remember rough times at the start of his term, who knows who ran the country during his later years as president.
From there on I want to highlight a self conceived pattern. More below.
George H. W. Bush, William J. Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joseph Biden, Donald Trump. Just read through those names and see if a pattern doesn't jump out at you.
George H. W. Bush and his "New World Order" was the beginning of the current state of affairs we are still wading through. His election was thought to be an extension of Reagan's terms. His involvement with national affairs spans the gamut of my youth. "Poppy" has been rumored to be neck deep in the dark side of American politics.
Bill Clinton, took office upon rejection of Poppy Bush. I voted for him twice and was disappointed twice. We here at c99 are well aware of his character and legacy. It took a Democrat to accomplish a lot of his Republican center-right policies. He did that well. "The Big Dog" was slippery.
George W. Bush "The Lesser" was elected upon rejection of The Big Dog. He and the Patriot Act has done much to "catapult" the world as we now know it. His miss-accomplishments are too lengthy to enumerate, I'm sure you all can recall them as well as I can.
Barack Obama, took office upon rejection of George W. Bush. The electorate was sick and tired of the wars and the proclivity for the dark arts that GW seemed to inherit from his father, and the first black president seemed like a refreshing change. I caught on to Barack Obama very early in his first term, his cabinet picks were a dead give away. I voted for him the first time, the second time I voted Green.
Donald Trump, took office upon rejection of Barack Obama. His election was probably a reaction to eight years of liberal politics and a weak slate of Republican candidates. Conventional wisdom postulated that Jeb Bush was supposed to be the heir apparent, but Trump, being the operator that he is, steam rolled the Republican candidates, with the help of massive media coverage that amounted to free advertising. Trump was a master troll, as he still is. He probably did more to alienate the American electorate than any modern president, that is, except for his successor.
Joe Biden, took office upon rejection of Donald Trump's first term. He, Biden, turned the American political zeitgeist on its head. I think there's no need to list his miss-accomplishments, they are well ingrained in our recent memories. Much has been said about his mental acuity, and in retrospect, he should have never been president, in my opinion anyway. But, he did serve a purpose, a purpose that I'm trying to underscore in this piece.
I'm going to amend a sentence from my last paragraph about Donald Trump; "He (Biden) probably did more to alienate the American electorate than any modern president, that is, except for his successor." I think there's no doubt that Joe Biden did more to alienate the electorate than even Trump did during first term, that's inherent in my qualifier; "except for his successor".
Donald Trump V. 2.0, took office for the second time upon rejection of Joe Biden's policies. His proclivity for alienating the electorate has hit the ground running. I'm going to leave this timeline open because I think we ain't seen nothing yet, to invoke a double negative aphorism.
Now for the point to this piece.
Did you catch the common denominator in my recitation from George H. W. Bush to the present? We (the electorate) don't elect the most qualified candidates, we elect the next guy to get rid of the last guy (my apologies to the ladies out there). To me, anyway, since the election of Poppy Bush.
A larger point I wish to make is how that aspect (the alienated voting for the lesser evil) has been taken to a new level and is being used to usher in the new order, words that Poppy Bush first uttered in a speech back in the day. The presidents have been so unpalatable to at least half of the voting populace, especially the Trump-Biden-Trump succession, that it's made the slow walk into dystopia almost incrementally imperceptible.
To me, this is by design, and why we are given such terrible candidates to vote for every election. The "last administration was so bad, we need a new guy" conundrum is taking its toll on We the People and how we are governed.
Comments
Good morning Free Rangers...
what do you think?
Where am I right?
Where am I wrong?
You are not wrong.
It is no longer possible for a person of good conscience to vote for any of the minions of the Uniparty. That ship sailed when we realized how badly we were jobbed by Obama 1.0.
Now, you're exactly right that the electorate simply wants to get rid of the last bastard, and will flock to whoever the new bastard is, regardless of how bastardy we know that person to be. Voting accomplishes nothing, when all that is on offer are either red or blue shit sandwiches.
Not a fan. My inner Calvinist requires that I go through the motions to vote, but there's no way that I will vote for a Uniparty candidate at any level.
Douglas County, CO just had an off-off-off-year election. My ballot showed up after the election was held on the 6th, so I didn't get a chance to vote, but it didn't matter. There was only one race on the ballot (for a seat on the South Metro Denver fire/rescue board), and the single candidate was unopposed. And for this, they went through all the trappings of printing and mailing ballots...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Yep...
what's the sense in voting when we aren't given a real viable choice anyway That's how we've been conned into thinking that we have a say in our elections, yeah, right. Democracy has proven more and more to be a sham.
Despite that, I still feel it's my duty to vote, although I'm seriously reconsidering that option. I've voted Green most of the last few elections, to no avail.
As the most powerful and wealthy country in the world is it any wonder that the system has been rigged against the hoi polloi in favor of the monied class? Should we not expect anything more with all that wealth and power at stake?
At this point,
no. It isn't going to get any better without an Event occurring. I do not know what form said Event will take- it could be any of a number of undeniable cold-reset occurrences, from total financial collapse to either civil or nuclear war, but it is now baked into the system.
If I'm stuck here, I just want to assume room temperature either before it really gets going, or in the first milliseconds. I know that I for one have no interest in living through the anarchy to come, here in this country- I do not want to have owning a gun be a mandatory requirement for survival. Perhaps if I play my cards just right, I can be on the other side of a large body of salt water when it goes down. Being essentially asset-free, here's nothing of any real value left here in the US for my wife and I at this point.
And that is perhaps the most painful revelation of all.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
We're all...
in that boat together, got a pail to bail with?
I wonder which company
is making money off printing and sending those ballots? And it came late? That is insane!!!
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
Pretty much boiled it down
We're pretty much of the same era. Eisenhower I remember, for the heart attack, being called "Dopey Dwight" , golf, and Wm. Loeb calling him a pinko.
It felt like Bush2 was the tipping point. After that it stopped being a slow walk. The r's pushed the envelope, the d's dithered and practiced benign neglect. In any case, the destination is the same no matter who is in charge, and we're only a few steps away from it.
Bush2...
was definitely when the big push for a new order accelerated. The Rs and Ds take turns being the Washington Generals aginst the team in power, in reference to the Harlem Globe Trotters.
We are close to the end game, it's palpable. The cause of the drive to dystopia, be it economic collapse, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, over population, loss of fertile soil, magnetic pole shift, whatever, is overshadowed by the greed and lust for power so dominant in our so called leaders, both front and center and behind the curtains.
Even as a little kid, I picked up on a few things re Eisenhower
From a 1953 board game called “Meet the Presidents” (from the same company that made Scrabble), I learned he had been born in Denison, Texas.
https://www.nobleknight.com/P/2147746690/Meet-The-Presidents-1953-Edition
He liked to play golf at some club called Burning Tree.
https://midcenturypage.com/2022/11/23/1954-eisenhower-and-burning-tree/
And that in addition to his heart problems, he later had some kind of bowel operation.
He and the U.S. as a whole were caught in a bald-faced lie, when American pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union in a U-2 spy plane.
It looks like Trump's appetite for tariffs seems to be craving
for a delicious meal of Crow.
Brilliant!
The art of the kneel. He won't see it that way, of course, but there it is.
Someone on Reddit posted that dealing with Trump is like playing chess with a pigeon. No matter how good you are at chess, the pigeon is just going to knock over the pieces, take a dump on the board, and then strut around like it was victorious.
Toxic narcissism writ large, that one.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
That's mean to pigeons!
But so true about Trump
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
My question is...
and leads into this open thread, is the potential economic crash that may be caused by the tariffs, by design? And if so, to what end? My guess would be, a CBDC and even more authoritarianism.
A global economic crash in 2025
is inevitable, due to irresponsible stewardship of our taxes, dollar devaluation AND the currying of favor with the globalists, who need a big push to induce acceptance of CBDC and their penchant for global governance.
This globalist mania was earlier targeting 2050 as its consummation date, recently moved up to 2025-2030.
Hmmm. I wonder what the big hurry is. Perhaps signs of the likely failure of Japanese banks and the carry trading of their Yen (which has been propping up another tenuous tech bubble and our US dollars).
Behind all these globalist machinations is a real fear of and need to control us rabble. The ‘hurry up’ may have been spurred by the curious anomalies such as the recent auroras in the Caribbean and the footloose meandering of our North Pole. Hopefully the Pole will stay at home, where it belongs, and not be taking a long southern vacation.
P.S. Do you know Obama’s film company is named “Higher Ground Productions” Noah, is that you?
“The story around the world gives a silent testimony:
— The Beresovka mammoth, frozen in mud, with buttercups in his mouth…..”
The Adam and Eve Story, Chan Thomas 1963
I agree...
on all counts. Another hurrying factor may be the protests and disobedience breaking out around the globe (that we don't hear about from the mainstream media).
If they can implement CBDCs along with a digital ID then they'd have it all locked up. They gotta be sweating at least just a little bit.
Ahhh, I was borned during the reign of Harry S Truman
but recall nada. Ike I remember some. At first I thought he was a do nothing guy and therefore did no harm, but soon figured out that i was way wrong. Ike was responsible for the interstate highway network, for better or worse, a very mixed blessing. Ike had the charisma and credentials to take down Joe McCarthy, but didn't try. Ike let the Dulles Boys pretty much run the show and that sucked as we'll go to. Ike made "In God we Trust" our official motto, put it pon all our coinage and added "under god" to the pledge of allegiance. Vary bad, almost evil, and for fallacious stupid reasons (to show we are anticommie - Hi Joe McC). Truman had opposed the overthrow of Mossadegh, but Ike say to it that it happened and we installed the Shah. Ike got us into Viet Nam. He and Dulles were the founding fathers of the US mindset that We should do everything we can to keep "socialism" from taking root anywhere in the world, overthrowing any socialist governments that arose and stopping them from arising. The operational effect was that we loved fascist dictators and, to an extent preferred dictators because democracies might elect lefties, and opposed any government, movement or project/program that ws to the left of Mussolini.
Kennedy came to power as a breath of fresh air who also wanted to rein in the CIA and other bad actors and was killed for it. Johnson minded his ps and qs and even invaded Santo Domingo to forestall humanitarian reforms, and amped up viet nam and let the cops of various types and levels run roughshod over pacifists, lefties and unionists, but he did pass serious civil rights legislation.
GHWB, our first CIA president, also invaded Panama solely to become a war President (the Panamanians tried to hand over Noreiga, but GHWB wanted to invade to show the US citizenry that he was a bad ass). He thought he'd get a ratings boost out of it. This type of thinking played a large role in US international policies and actions ever since.
You are right, CArter might have been the last president that people voted for, after which voting was always voting against somebody rather than for somebody with the possible exception of Obama.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
Thanks old buddy...
for the detailed jog through your memories.
Ike did seem to let a lot of it slip through and then warned us about it later. He passed the buck from himself to the next president who then paid the ultimate price for it.
It seems like every subsequent administration that got booted out because of the good cop/bad cop dichotomy was worse than the preceding administration, and here we are today, in a mess up to our eyeballs.
Encouraging, if true:
The US has apparently brought one of the B-2s back from forward deployment at Diego Garcia to its home at Whiteman AFB.
https://archive.ph/yNIRt
Now, there's a finite chance that rather than this being a skilled geopolitical action, the damned thing is just broken and requires heavy depot maintenance. My money is on that, rather than the orange pigeon having made a real chess move. We'll need to watch the satellite imagery to see if they replace it with another one, or if they really did draw down the deployment...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I got all my...
fingers and toes crossed that it's the former, my friend.
When you are led by losers
Nobody wins at this game.
Control of finance is the latest ploy.
Only the zillionaires stand to gain.
We watch and worry as our future
dissolves.
Good essay, thanks JtC.
Zionism is a social disease
That zillionaire game...
works until it doesn't. I think that keeps them up at night. But digital technology has the ability to change all that, which may be what the Stargate rush is all about.
I first noticed the hidden hand
when the 2016 election featured the hosing of Sanders followed by the Russiagate fairy tale, echoing the GOP mantra of "lock her up!" Both "sides" accusing each other of fundamental illegitimacy while the War Forever Juggernaut rolls along with nobody in public life offering so much as a hint of opposition to the campaign. Chaos Squared.
Somebody with the Big Stick wants to reset the human adventure. Easy to see why someone would want to do something about the Big Picture. If I had a hundred billion clams, I'd try my own hand at Fixing Everything.
This does not mean I like what is coming. It is a night mare.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
Good observation...
about Sanders and Russia, Russia, Russia and the chaos.
If you had a big stick you would be thinking of benevolence, I hesitate to say that those wielding the big sticks now have anything like that in mind.
It is a potential nightmare.
Project 2025
I don't have the time...
now to watch, but I'll check it out later. Thanks, g.
I would disagree that the electorate “rejected” Obama in 2016
Not that I am trying to suggest that his presidency was anything better than a tragically squandered opportunity on pretty much all fronts, but his calm and articulate demeanor, lack of personal scandals, and aversion to recklessness was pretty agreeable to the average (not rabidly racist) voter.
If he hadn’t gone out of his way to break faith with progressives at every juncture of his two terms, then a significant number of us MIGHT have taken a gamble on HRC.
Good point...
but I would posit that the Republicans after 8 years of Obama and with a potential Hillary win, came out in droves to vote against the "other guy", or gal in this instance, most probably both. I think, because of that, even if Obama hadn't crossed so many progressives, Hillary would have still lost.
But that's just like my opinion, man (as a big salute to The Big Lebowski), so take it with a grain of salt.
The pendulum
swings further and further towards the extremes with each passing cycle.
I remember when I was a child, and I tried to swing too high- the whole damned swingset would eventually pull up two legs and tip over. Lost a baby tooth that way, back in the day.
This time, I think we all may lose more than teeth.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Perhaps.
Potayto, potahto, tomayto, tomahto- let's call the whole thing off.... (;-)
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I'm hip to your trip...
which, of course,
begs the eternal question:
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
Let me try to answer the question...
the hip is right above the thigh, and is made for shakin'.
My favourite Maceo
I think you're spot on with this...
I never could figure out why we always got 'bleh' choices for president. Or even worse. This is a good answer to that question. Voting for the lesser evil is still voting for evil, isn't it?
There has never been a presidential choice I voted for eagerly, at least not one from the main two parties. My first vote was for Carter. Heh. Reagan won and thus started the tradition of me never being able to vote for a winner. Clinton won, but I voted Green then, in part because I didn't like Clinton at all. Voted Green again against Obama. I saw through him from the start. Refused to vote for Biden. Go Greens! So I've never voted Republican, but seldom, if ever, have I voted Democrat either, at least in presidential elections.
If you're poor now, my friend, then you'll stay poor.
These days, only the rich get given more. -- Martial book 5:81, c. AD 100 or so
Nothing ever changes -- Sima, c. AD 2020 or so
I hear you, sister...
you have good intuition. It seems like evil is always on the ticket.
My Dad
a had a firm belief that no military officer of high rank was qualified to be President.
He was a soldier in WWII, who had joined the Army in 1935, and he explained that the longer you are in the military, the more conditioned you become to saying "Yes, Sir!". His best example was Eisenhower who warned us about the dangers of the MIC after he got us into Viet Nam, with my mail carrier Dad delivering the notices to families on his rural route that yet another farm boy had died in the fields and jungle. I think he did a no vote that year.
Reagan might not have pranced in on the red carpet without Carter, so this might have been the plan all long.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981