Open Thread - 07-15-22 - The Rooster

I lived through what seemed like the idyllic mid to late 50s. Marched my way through the tumultuous 60s. Cruised through the raucous 70s and its political changes. Worked hard to make it through the the 80s. Watched the overton window lurch to the right in the 90s. Saw the result of that lurch to the right in the 2000s. Witnessed the financial robbery of the 2010s. I'm still here, alive and kicking, in the 2020s, so far.

Never, through all of those years, did I have an inkling of what it would be like in the here and now. Even if I had a possible clue I would have considered it a fevered dream. This is some crazy shit we're living through folks.

thesandsoftime.jpg

Oh, I know crazy shit has occurred down through history, but this, what we're witnessing right now has got to be the epitome of crazy shit.

I'm sure in the past we all have read futuristic accounts of life after peak oil, of climate change, of economic collapse, of world war, of famine, of world-wide pandemic, of nuclear exchanges. Here we stand at the convergence of all of these major hurdles to mankind, any one of them a potential existential event. Remember Nietzsche's abyss? Well, we are staring into it.

Are we as individuals, or we as a species, going to make it through to the other side? What will the other side look like? I think we'd all pretty much agree that it's not going to look anything like what we've experienced in the past.

There is one thing for certain though, I and we are still standing. I'm still sucking air and walking above the ground and if you're reading this, you are as well. In a world that seems to be trying to kill us off one way or another, it's a revolutionary act to stay alive.

I think it appropriate that we all pat ourselves on the back for making it this far.

Kudos folks, I'm proud to live through these interesting times with you all. And if we don't make it to the other side at least we shouted back into that abyss.

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free rangers.

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14 users have voted.

This reality is so obvious, it’s remarkable that we humans, both individually and collectively, give death such sparse attention.

Those who learn to live with death as the compass that points to that which is important and true, and who can discern lies from truth will have the advantage. Those who follow vacuous paths laid out by others of questionable intent will end up blindly walk into an abyss.

As interesting as this point in time is, the near future will be even more so. The possibility for harmony and peace may come too late for us oldsters. Perhaps for my grandchildren this will become possible. In the meantime, vigilant attention and adaptability to a rapidly changing ‘reality’ will be essential. There will be no return to the ‘normalcy’ we have taken for granted for generations. The even more ‘interesting’ times are yet to come.

“The times, they are a changing”……..let’s hope we can all “break on through” to the other side!

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“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024

@ovals49
to quote Thomas Paine:

“If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”

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enhydra lutris's picture

Some words about death to live by:

Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.

~~ Miyamoto Musashi

be well and have a good one

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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 --

@enhydra lutris
old buddy!

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dystopian's picture

from Don Juan (Teachings of - Carlos Castaneda)

Imma paraphrase... death is your constant partner, it is always by your side, it could call at any time. Therefore, make EVERY ACT as if it were YOUR LAST ACT for which you will be remembered into eternity.
edit to add: "Because it just might be". after thinking about it a bit... more came back... Wink
see ya! have a great day all!

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

@dystopian
fly like a brujo, my brother.

A brujo or bruja is a person who is in command of power. An accomplished raja yogi could be called a brujo — yet, as we’ll see, the comparison is approximate. Don Juan Matus was a great brujo and had many apprentices, both female and male. One of these was Carlos Castaneda, who wrote several books about his training by don Juan. The book we’ll draw on for this series is Journey to Ixtlan.

Castaneda wrote: “… I must first explain the (brujo’s) basic premise … as don Juan presented it to me. He said that for a brujo, the world of everyday life is not real, or out there, as we believe it is. For a brujo, reality, or the world we all know, is only a description … a description that had been pounded into me from the moment I was born. He pointed out that everyone who comes into contact with a child is a teacher who incessantly describes the world to him, until the moment when the child is capable of perceiving the world as it is described. … From that moment on … the child is a member. He knows the description of the world; and his membership becomes full-fledged … when he is capable of making all the proper perceptual interpretations which, by conforming to that description, validate it. For don Juan, then, the reality of our day-to-day life consists of an endless flow of perceptual interpretations which we …have learned to make in common.”

Don Juan taught his apprentices how to overcome the limitations of that description, how to free themselves from the entrapment of their inherited membership. He called this achievement “stopping the world.” This coming Sunday we’ll define and explore that idea, and the ways — some familiar and some new to us — by which Castaneda learned to “stop the world.”

Source

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dystopian's picture

@JtC thank you dear leader, sir great one! I am honored and humbled to hear it from you.

Man what beautiful guitar that Jerry Douglas plays... wow!

much grass amigo!

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

@JtC

A Magical Journey with Carlos Castaneda by Margaret Runyan Castaneda (his wife of 13 years), and Sorcerer's apprentice- my life with Carlos Castaneda by Amy Wallace.

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"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin

Lookout's picture

I think it is best to try to enjoy the ride. I like to sing my troubles away...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbAECyEdN-8]
Met up with an old buddy and sang several this week including this one.

I've been cleaning up some broken tree tops that came down in a big storm last week. We'll have plenty of firewood for the party/camphouse. I've also accumulated a large brush pile to burn. We do what we can.

Find joy in what you can, and treasure every day! Thanks for the OT

PS hope you're feeling well this week!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout
I'm feeling great, thanks for asking my friend.

Lately I take great solace in picking my dobro and blowing my lungs out on my blues harps. I view it as a middle finger to the constant drone of fear pounding the airwaves.

If only I could play like that!

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@JtC if you practice.
Get after it, dude!

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

connects Uber to the WEF, exposes the pressure Uber has placed on world leaders, including macron, and Biden, among others.
The discussion of a shared economy now being pushed to be the world's economy by 2030, leads me to conclude a "shared economy", one where you own nothing, will only apply to anyone but that handful of the WEF elites. They won't be sharing. They will be owning it all.
No homes or cars for us!
https://2ndsmartestguyintheworld.substack.com/p/the-uber-files-and-their...

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

snoopydawg's picture

@on the cusp

There was a huge push and continues to be a huge push to get UBER into every city and country globally. The company has experienced phenomenal growth since its inception. UBER is funded by Blackrock, Google, Bezos, Gates and other WEF partners.
….
They are also supported by the WEF politicians ( as we have seen). The goal of the WEF is to destroy private car ownership and small taxi businesses. They tried to do this by buying the market fraudulently.

But how else would the World Economic Forum try to achieve this ?

Enter “The Shared Economy”

What exactly is the sharing economy? According to Google it is

Larry Fink who runs blackrock:

It would seem pretty obvious what the end goal is here. He spells it out in no uncertain terms when he says

“In another 5 years, car-sharing technologies could be replacing car ownership at a meaningful scale”

and

“Take driverless cars, for example: While it’s true that they will eliminate congestion and accidents, over time, they will also eliminate jobs for people like taxi and truck drivers”

Gee why would our government work with those who want to eliminate jobs? Oops I forgot they already voted for NAFTA that eliminated jobs here and sent them overseas. Silly me.

Biden is a long time member of WEF and has conflicting views on what is good for America and the WEF. It’s like the congress members who have dual citizenship with Israel. Where do their loyalty go?

More…

The real WEF Agenda is spelt out in a little watched WEF video from 2018 which has only been viewed 65,000 times. It is 6 minutes long but essential viewing. It’s called

What’s Next for the Sharing Economy?

It’s really hard to do justice to the video without watching it.

This sharing economy the WEF are so fond of doesn't work without a social credit score. The dark side of the sharing economy which the WEF neglect to mention is that if they get their way we will end up heading towards a world in which people have fewer assets and lower savings therefore we are actually decreasing our resilience as a society.

From the comments:

Patricia10 hr ago

I wonder if the lack of vehicles to purchase currently isn’t just a consequence of Covid, but also and maybe more importantly, the WEF’s plan to implement the shared economy, if there’s no cars to purchase, used or new, we are forced to “ride share.” Hmmm.

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Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?

@snoopydawg Owning cars is getting harder and harder.
Airbnb homes? No matter how many times they drill it into us the economy is "shared" in this scenario, you will be renting a car or home from an owner. And they don't share, they steal money from the poor and powerless. They want it all.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

ggersh's picture

empty suit given us universal healthcare instead of RomneyCare

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2022/07/debt-rattle-july-15-2022/

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Creosote.'s picture

@ggersh @ggersh

Beatifully done, really exceptional window with a view!

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It's a mean old world... by Little Walter

My household is celebrating making it through half of July. We have had bad summer weather before but this summer seems to be among the worst. So a celebration is in order. I'm not thinking about the other half or August or September... One day at a time.

Thanks for the OT!

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earthling1's picture

the reptilians posing as TPTB are here to make sure home sapiens don't escape the planet.
Scorched earth is their last tool available.
It will probably be invoked before China colonizes the far side of the moon.
Their red line.
Of course, removing mankind from the environment completely would allow mother nature to rebound and return to the garden it once was.
Probably in as little as 500 years. When you stop and think about it, in the years since the industrial revolution began, when the destruction began in earnest, healing the blight could take such a short time.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

snoopydawg's picture

@earthling1

Of course, removing mankind from the environment completely would allow mother nature to rebound and return to the garden it once was.

Another 1,000 species are going to go extinct and that’s on top of the thousands that have already perished from this one planet that we can live on. Plus there are many thousands of people who go extinct every year from lack of…..food, money, health care, shelter and gawd only knows how many other things that should be plentiful in this day and age. All the things that once used to kill us have been conquered, but because of greed and psychopaths that have taken control over many governments those things are once again killing us.

WEF and the companies that own it such as Blackrock and the banks are making it impossible for people to live with their heads above water and many aren’t able to do that anymore. Just so they can have more of everything. IMO our government has committed treason against we the people by selling themselves out to the parasite class just so they can too can live in luxury. Obama and Biden and every member of congress ho were on board with the plans to give away our national sovereignty should be arrested, given a trial and if found guilty should be either locked up or executed for their crimes against us. Congress refusing to give us health care and other benefits that they have given themselves is another crime against humanity. Letting corporations write legislation that keeps people poor and living on the streets and oh so many, many other things is another crime against us. We watched them do it for over 5 decades if not longer and what did we do? We continued to vote them back in office so they could keep doing more heinous things against us.

I feel bad for the younger generations because what do they have to look forward to? Priced out of home ownership, ever increasing costs for health insurance, rents, food and just about everything else that once just one person could buy for their families whilst moms stayed home and raised the kids. And now they are dealing with decaying infrastructure and everything related to climate change. Wildfires are now a regular year long occurrences in many states instead of something unusual that only happened with weird weather events. Thousands of homes burn every year and where do people live while sorting out their insurance? Lack of water in the western states was a known problem for well over a decade, but nothing was done about it. The Great Salt Lake is setting new records monthly for its lowest levels. Vegas is living on borrowed time and yet the party keeps going on and on instead of planning for the day that the water runs out. And with Mead and Hoover dams at their lowest levels ever it’s not going to be much longer until that party is over.

I’m pissed about where we are heading because IT DIDN'T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY. Who doesn’t remember the Jackson’s living in a great future? Instead of using money to invest in life our country has spent ungawdly amounts of money on death and destruction so a few companies can steal other country’s resources making them and defense industries very fcking rich. And in a few months we’re all going to go through the motion of voting for people who promise that if we just give them our trust and vote they will turn everything around and we can all then finally be happy and secure. Bullshit. Anyone who believes that has lost their minds. I’ll stop here…but of course there is plenty more to be said.

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Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?

@snoopydawg n/t

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Sima's picture

@snoopydawg
Great Rant, thank you for it!

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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

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Of all the wonders I yet have seen, it seems to me most strange that men should fear seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come. Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant taste of death but once.
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Always look at the bright side of life . . .

Life's a piece of shit (hoo-hoo)
When you look at it (hoo-hoo)
Life's a laugh and death's a joke, it's true (hoo-hoo-hoo)
You'll see it's all a show (hoo-hoo)
Keep 'em laughin' as you go (hoo-hoo)
Just remember that the last laugh is on you (hoo-hoo-hoo)
.

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I had cancer surgery to remove a tumor from my colon in 2004. I confess that I had a bad night the first evening after I heard the dreaded C word, but between the wisdom of Shakespeare and Monty Python and what can only be described as blind luck, I am still kicking 18 years later. I appreciate the luck but I do not denigrate the power of positive thinking and the role it played in my experience.

I can now say along with a sizable chunk of humanity that I did look DEATH in the eye and can still breathe air.

My fear never was the end of my life -- it remains a fear of the miserable experience in life leading up to the Final Curtain. We are programmed to want to continue living and as the End approaches, I am not looking forward to the collision between that will to live and the inevitable. But like Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, I don't worry about it. Much.

I am afraid of spending my last weeks, months or years with an array of tubes and wires and random gizmos attached to my dying body. My father addressed that problem by taking his own life in 1989, cheating his stroke from making himself an object rather than a person.

I disagreed with his decision, and he could have conceivably had an interesting life while paralyzed and unable to speak normally or walk or use his right hand. But I respected his decision.

I always knew that my "senior" years would be a social catastrophe. As a career union representative, I was there at the bargaining table when the idea of a pension was denigrated and eventually destroyed. The reason was simple math. Baby boomers would start to be a financial burden around the year 2020, so as of 1980 the employers and their bankers replaced the pension (defined benefit) with the lump sum (defined contribution). As the decades rolled by, the absurdity of this social strategy of protecting money from longevity became the unquestioned status quo. This meant that any Boomer who lives past 80 had better figure out some way to supplement their "income" or else starve.

But I did not expect THIS.

In order to go down swinging or, what an optimistic thought, actually take part in successful resistance to THIS, we have to answer the question of the hour, what the fuck is THIS?

Is it the random yet inevitable result of monopoly capitalism? The pandemic was yet another opportunity for profit a la disaster capitalism? The trade war against Russia is the floundering madness of capitalist ownership of government trying to subjugate the former Communist states of Russia and China?

If this take is accurate, there is an obvious focus for resistance -- induce the American government to re-assert its sovereignty over the corporate power bloc.

But if this take is not accurate, and we are not looking at greed inducing stupidity and then running amok, what the fuck is going on? Here is my speculation:
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Long before I became a Lunatic Conspiracy Theorist, I came to agree with the folk wisdom I heard from several mid-level government bureaucrats I did business with at the Local, State and Federal levels over the four decades of my career: "Politicians Don't Run the Government."

That is pretty much the first premise of revolutionary socialism as well.

It is now archived behind a paywall, but there was a classic John Kenneth Galbraith article in Harper's Magazine many decades ago, called "The Day Khrushchev Visited The Establishment."

Galbraith had been given a semi-clandestine task by the [Edited to replace JFK with:] "IKE" White House. On a visit to the US, Khrushchev wanted to meet with the people who really run America. He had scoffed at the idea of parleying with the temporary crew in Washington reporting to President Kennedy. Ditto for anybody in Congress. They were all just the Executive Committee of the State -- serving at the behest of capitalists.

It was the capitalists who hired and fired those front men for Monopoly Capital that he wanted to meet.

Galbraith tells the hilarious tale of the ticklish and satire-worthy aspects of the effort to line up a room full of what would today be called, "Billionaires." Of course, they all scoffed right back at the Ruskie's premise about their own supposed Power. Several professed their own "fear" of the Federal Government. But Galbraith gleefully describes the unmistakable pride these pricks were taking at making the invite list.

Nobody involved in setting the meeting up even thought of using the term, Oligarch, in those more innocent times. There was a minimum boodle requirement -- some number of hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't recall how many.

The climax of the story is the badinage between our Zillionaires and Marx's Last Shot. He was not to last much longer as the head of the Communist Executive Committee, but at that stage of his career he cut quite a jolly figure and his sarcastic but truly funny answers to the questions from Stuffed Shirts like David Sarnoff are recounted with Galbraith's fine touch. I was really sorry to see the pay wall show up the last time I looked it up.

For now, I share Nikita's disdain for the current executive committee in Washington.

Meanwhile, in Russia and China. They ain't Red no more. Capitalists rule everywhere now.
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I do not necessarily believe this interpretation. It is an hypothesis that truly deserves consideration and debunking, if it can be debunked.

That would be comforting at this point -- knowing for sure that all the capitalists of the world were still at each other's throats fighting over the planet. My fear is that the guys running nuclear armed societies are at least as smart as Tony Soprano. "There's enough garbage for everybody."
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A message board operates on enemy territory, the internet. To the internet, THIS is the new normal. If that doesn't scare you, it should.

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I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.

@fire with fire Khrushchev never visited the US when JFK was in office. They met only once in Vienna in 1961. NK made his only visit to the US in 1959 during Ike, the famous visit where he was not allowed to go to Disneyland due to supposed security concerns.

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@wokkamile @wokkamile
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You correctly pointed out that my old man's memory stymied my recollection of the Galbraith article. It ran in 1971, and I did not recall that it was the Eisenhower White House that asked for him to arrange that meeting I described above which took place in New York City in 1959.

I corrected that error in the text above. Thank you for pointing it out, while ignoring the substance of the post. But I gotta admit, an error is an error.

Factoid patrol! What would the internet be without it?

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6 users have voted.

I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.

@fire with fire @fire with fire I read the entire post. Seems there are two themes you addressed, Death and Monopoly Capitalism in the US in the context of NK's US visit. At the time, as the one item stood out, it was only natural that I would want to comment, if for nothing else than to assure that MY memory hadn't badly failed me.

That said, I only would add a few things to the items you raise: I wasn't aware that JKG had any role at any time during Ike. He was no longer working in the govt, and was an Adlai guy in the 50s, so this is news to me. Re NK's US visit, my memory is that Nikita, being prevented from visiting Disneyland, was given a makeup with a visit with Hollywood studio heads and stars, or that the Hollywood experience, a chance to meet Sinatra, Shirley Maclaine and Cary Gooper, was considered a good enough substitute.

On death, I began studying the academic work of Ian Stevenson (Univ Virginia) several decades ago and am fairly well convinced reincarnation is a real thing. And so for me the only thing to fear is a long painful death, not death itself. I'll be back as most of us will. Many many times.

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snoopydawg's picture

@fire with fire

I can now say along with a sizable chunk of humanity that I did look DEATH in the eye and can still breathe air.

There really is something to say about knowing that one was close to death, faced it and now has a different outlook on life. I have always valued the fact that every year I’ve lived since age 18 has been a gift because I came ‘this close' to dying that year and even though it’s been a life of pain and challenges at least it’s life.

Baby boomers would start to be a financial burden around the year 2020, so as of 1980 the employers and their bankers replaced the pension

One of the guys I walk with is full of anger at baby boomers for screwing up the younger generations. He was spouting off about Big Macs and apple computers and saying that everything is the fault of the boomers. I couldn’t follow his line of reasoning, but told him that he should be blaming the government for making his life miserable. He talked about how there will be no pensions or social security for his generation, but still couldn’t follow why it was the boomer's fault. The only thing I thought they could be saddled with was voting for the old people in congress over and over even though they had been working against us.

But I did not expect THIS.

In order to go down swinging or, what an optimistic thought, actually take part in successful resistance to THIS, we have to answer the question of the hour, what the fuck is THIS?

Is it the random yet inevitable result of monopoly capitalism? The pandemic was yet another opportunity for profit a la disaster capitalism? The trade war against Russia is the floundering madness of capitalist ownership of government trying to subjugate the former Communist states of Russia and China?

If this take is accurate, there is an obvious focus for resistance -- induce the American government to re-assert its sovereignty over the corporate power bloc.

I think that is very accurate. Disaster capitalism has been the way of life since Reagan and Thatcher and others of their ilk and now we have the WEF bragging about how they have inserted their own people in governments all over the world and doing the bidding of the robber barons who have never actually gone away. The conflicts with Russia and China is for who runs the world and which system will be in place. I think a unipolar multipolar world would be more enjoyable than a world run by the psychopaths that are destroying America and Europe.

If this take is accurate, there is an obvious focus for resistance -- induce the American government to re-assert its sovereignty over the corporate power bloc.

The question is how? Almost every government agency has been captured by those who government is supposed to be regulating by people who we can never vote out because they have just appointed themselves to be in charge. Think tanks, banks and the people who are truly running the world. Davos, Bildiburg and the WEF..

Edited

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Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?

@fire with fire

Another I just found tonight …. at The Saker:

“The trouble is, you think you have time.”

– Buddha –

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“ …and when we destroy nature, we diminish our capacity to sense the divine,and understand who God is, and what our own potential is and duties are as human beings.- RFK jr. 8/26/2024

usefewersyllables's picture

always reminds me of the John Brunner quote from "Shockwave Rider":

It should always be remembered that, during all the years we spent studying bats, bats had a unique opportunity to study *us*.

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

when I was 14 or 15. I was with my dad at the doctor's office, and I told him on the drive home, not to tell Mom or my brother, the emotional messes of the family. Dad agreed. He and I kept that secret for many years.
I just wanted to read, read, read, learn. I couldn't live long, couldn't go anywhere, do anything, and I decided I wanted to die educated. I think I read most of the World Book Encyclopedia in 6 weeks while in a hospital in Cleveland, Texas.
Since I couldn't have kids to talk about their Mom, which is an automatic legacy, some proof you existed, I felt I should DO SOMETHING, create a legacy so my existence would be remarked.
I think i have done it a few very high profile cases in my law practice. If not, I am still going into those courtrooms, may do it yet.
"I will die trying" takes on a different meaning to a trial attorney.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981