"I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell".

~ Bruce Dickinson aka Christopher Walken

Four more days. Four more days of the overtly loud and incessant drone of cowbell in our ears.

Imagine, if you will:

An overweight American media, gut hanging out over a strained belt line, with disregard for the consequences of their ululations and stomach jiggling gyrations, calls out in multi point harmony for a more divergent version of a well known sound track. A track about "The Reaper", replete with fear of "the other", and with overtones of cataclysmic repercussions of a miscast vote in the most important election of all time, immemorial.

A "fevered" uniparty studio producer driven by an expedient need to subvert the arrangement of a score laid down long ago, from a different time and a different place, proclaims with a wink and a nod to the duopoly: "Don't be burdened by what has been, let us make cowbell great again" as his lips flutter and twist while talking from both sides of his mouth. His job, besides his bank account's bottom line, is choreographing your thoughts into a leitmotif of fascist and nazi symbolism. Like a conductor he points his baton to the left and then to the right which results in a discordant cacophony of noise that rises above the signal as it crescendos into a chorus of hatred towards one another.

The American polity, divided by a classic standard gone awry, are split into camps that want to leave the song as they remember it and those that want to embellish its rhythmic aspects, in an oppositional dichotomy of status quo versus change. The cowbell represents a new normal, an instrument of change. It's a producer's tool. Its purpose is not so much to change the song as it is to bend the will of the listener. And to keep the listeners divided, like a two channel stereo output, ultimately, combined into a singular monophonic output source.

And the cowbell drones on.

Tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink.

The Edge of Extinction?

All week I've awoken wondering if nuclear war has broken out yet. Fortunately it hasn't, thanks to Iran's restraint. But it's not just humanity and the biota at risk of extinction, it is many things...the US empire and its U$D, the nations of Ukraine and Israel may not survive, NATO and the EU sit on the brink of extinction as do our civil liberties, especially freedom of speech. Let's dive into these stories and more below the fold...

Back on 12/30/22 I wrote a piece titled Normalizing the New Normal about Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter and the subsequent revelations about the US government's collusion in censoring content on the platform, especially during the 2020 election. The article's basic premise was this:

Let's suppose that freedom of speech may not be Musk's ultimate goal in buying Twitter. Let's suppose that normalizing the new normal is actually the goal. What do I mean by that?

Musk is bringing front and center the alphabet agencies hand in censoring Twitter users. He is exposing that which many of us have suspected for a long time, that is, the government is colluding with big tech to catapult their narrative and to shut down oppositional view points. Exposing that is a good thing, right? My immediate reaction was, "Sure is". But, wait a minute.

Since I've been going on about normalizing the new normal, let me try to explain. The behind the scenes collusion of big tech and the state is being exposed with the intent to normalize that unholy marriage. To put it out there for all to see. It's shocking, right? But after a while the shock wears off and people begin to accept it. There's nothing that can be done about it, so we have to live with it, right? There's no hope citizen, accept your medicine and let Big Daddy Government handle this. Accept this fact and prepare yourself for CBDCs and digital slavery. Go back to sleep.

People are and will be outraged. "My Constitution" is crying out across the land. Folks will ululate, throw up their hands, shake their heads, call out for reform. But slowly, over time, the short attention span majority will move on to the next big thing and the tech/state collusion will be normalized and we the people have lost another right. Perhaps the most important right of all. And it's out there for all to see.

The new normal has been normalized.

From John Prine's song Angel from Montgomery
We're all caught in the ebb and flow of time as the years come and go. The month of January is named for the Roman God Janus who looks forward toward the future and back at the past. His image often appeared on doorways, arches, and gates. This time of year is a good opportunity to look at what has happened, and think about what will come.

The history of mankind is basically a timeline of war, from the first empires to the present. Many great civilizations, cultures, histories and knowledge down through the centuries have been lost to war. There are many examples of the victors erasing a peoples existence and replacing it with their concept of national identity. For example, The Old Testament is full of war, genocide and slaughter. History books are chronicles of war with intermittent smatterings of peace and prosperity. How much knowledge has been lost to the scourge of war? We will never know what the world has missed or how different it may have been because of the antiquities that were conquered and lost forever.

If the victor rewrites history in its favor, how can we trust anything that has been handed down to us, considering the possibility that the other side of the story may have been lost or altered for all of posterity? How much knowledge has been lost due to war, and the rewriting of history. The Library of Alexandria is just one example of ancient histories and knowledge lost to conflict. What knowledge and wisdom was lost forever in that fire of conflict? We'll never know.

Empires are parasites.

Impirium Parasitus (U.S. Empire) lives upon two hosts, the internal host and the external host. The citizens as the internal hosts and the victim as the external host country or state. Sometimes the relationship is symbiotic, but most times it's only beneficial for the parasite. In end stages when the host/s are no longer to be found or have been depleted, the Impirium Parasitus may turn exclusively on its citizens.

Impirium Parasitus has learned and adapted from past hosts. The Vietnam War or The War in Southeast Asian taught the parasite many valuable lessons that are presently applied to contemporary conflicts.

• The hoi polloi (common people, the masses) must not discern caskets draped in American flags.
• The hoi polloi must not hear anti-empirical words that emanate from the popular music of the day.
• Protest must be hidden from the citizens as much as possible.
• The use of censorship and propaganda to obfuscate the motivation for parasitical exploitation.
• The use of political intimidation to keep the hoi polloi in line.
• The use of a proxy army.

Is we learning yet?

Occasionally while surfing the internet I'll run across this hair on fire exclamation: "I'll see you in the re-education camp". Re-education? I thought that's what schools were for? Take that as you may, or not. I believe there is an effort afoot to thoughtscape your mind for you, as though you aren't intelligent enough to think for yourself.

To my mind, there's no need for a re-education camp, the camp has already been built, it's all around us. Like an ubiquitous schoolmarm, everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Like an insidious rehabilitation program, not of the physical world, but of the mental realm. Fences built around the mind are as effective as a barrier of razor edged concertina wire, maybe more so, because once the fences are accepted then there's no need for escape.

My wife seized control of the TV remote control and tuned into the Oscars. Then the friendly folks at MSN put an article about the emcee's jokes about last year's violence between The Fresh Prince and Chris Rock, which included this poll:

NEWS POLL

Do you think there should or should not be jokes made about the 2022 incident where Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars?

• There should be
• There should not be
• I'm not sure
• Other / No opinion

Why does almost no one on the YouTube "Left" (Joe Rogan, Jimmy Dore, etc.)talk about this stuff?