The constitutional principles of separation of powers and a co-equal tripartite government are out of balance. The president has become too powerful. Congress has abrogated too much of its power to the executive branch. The president can unilaterally declare war and essentially allocate funding by edict (executive orders). Presidents can now ignore Supreme Court decisions with no consequence. It seems like each subsequent president grabs more power and then flaunts that power in the face of the people along with blatant in-your-face corruption, which now seems the norm.

Every once in awhile in my various diaries here at c99% you will see citations of the philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, born 1922, died 1997. One of Castoriadis' most important ideas is that of pseudo-rational pseudo-mastery. This came up when Castoriadis was discussing the future, in a quote which I think dates back to the Eighties:

Rick Roll:

To send someone a link to 80s pop star Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" video, making them believe that they're gonna see something completely different. The meme originated in 4chan's /v/ (videogame) board, when the official "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" trailer was coming out on the game's website but couldn't be watched due to heavy traffic. Playing a prank on everyone who was reading, an anonymous 4chaner said that the trailer was on YouTube and posted a link to Astley's song. Since then, the Rick Roll has been made countless times, not only on 4chan but on the whole of the Internet.

Source

Over the years there's been many forms of Rick Rolling on the internet, some fairly innocent like the example above and some downright nasty, which I refuse to entertain. I think the first and only time I was Rick Rolled was by the nasty variant. Believe me, you don't want to know, but some of you may already know, unfortunately. It took one time for me to learn my lesson. After that first disgusting example, I set the links to resolve in my browser's status bar when I mouse hover over the address and I haven't been Rick Rolled since.

Rick Rolling has become somewhat passé in modern terms, unless, of course, you're the US Government. There are a few examples of Governmental Rick Rolling below the fold.

This is the new version of "Look! Shiny object!" It's now all over Facebook. Here I'm going to try to connect the dots. Anyway, Project 2025. We are supposed to be deeply concerned, once again, about America becoming a theocracy, decades after Reagan put them into power and decades after the publication of Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale.

I watched the debate so you wouldn't have to. I was going to do a summary write up about it, but after watching it I don't want to sound biased, so I'm not going to make a judgement call on this one.

Except for this:

Watching this debate was like watching two schoolyard bullies pounding their chests about how great they are and daring the other to knock the proverbial chip off of their shoulders.

If you didn't watch it and I don't blame you if you didn't, surely, in the next few days, you all will see clip after clip of this melee, I'll leave it up to you to make your own judgement.

Whew, boy!

Man oh man, this whole end-of-empire show is sure getting suspenseful, wouldn't you say? Every day, it seems, another layer of FUD is unveiled. So many things are thrown at us from so many directions, repeatedly, it's mind boggling. Where does one begin to sort it all out?

Is it all by design? Yeah, probably.

What are the odds that so many world changing events could be stacked up at the same time, back to back, from let's say, about 2019 to 2024 or so, in just five short years?

I will concede that many, if not most, of the existential threats before us are man made, but what are the odds that the convergence of these events are organic? Oh, I guess it could happen, but with so much power and wealth at play, my hunch is human intervention is helping to compress a millennium's worth of cataclysm into just a few short years.

For the benefit of whom? The sponsors of these events, of course. It's pretty obvious.

But, just when things seem like they can't get any more fudistic, something like this, from Harvard University, pops up:

Note: I wrote the following essay yesterday before the Trump verdict. Will the verdict affect the campaign? I don't know, but I doubt it. All bets are off though if he goes to jail.

I was going to forgo publishing this piece in lieu of a trial verdict essay, but I'm going to post it anyway as the campaign promises are more than likely still valid.

Please use comments below if you wish to discuss the hush money trial.

It's that time again, folks.

Every four years our brains are subjected to massaged messages of mendacity and misinformation by those that would cast themselves as All Things to All Men.

I wont call them silver tongued devils, for that, they are not. I wont call them paragons of principle either, for that, they are certainly not. They will delude, dissemble, dissimulate, distort and dupe you with perjurious promises and prevarications. They'll twist words, obfuscate meanings and lie their butts off while they promise you the world, until elected anyway.

Like any good traveling salesman, they need to first get a foot in the door to sell their product. That's what campaigns are for.

Let's take a look at what snake oil they're selling this time around. But first, let me ask you, "Would you buy a used car from this man?

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.

Appararently, if you took Biden’s Philadelphia speech seriously, and thought, perhaps, you were hearing a totalitarian doctrine scripted by his Neocon handlers and advisors, then you missed the practical joke.

If you saw Biden’s lips reading the telepromptor and it sounded like a right-wing Democratic President delivering threats to silence or criminalize dissenters and truthtellers, who object to the Presidential empowerment of neoliberal economic policies, or international war-mongering provocations against nuclear enabled superpowers — well, you missed the clever trick.

Enter desk-bound journalist, David Frum, who has jotted a few paragraphs at the Atlantic, that completely explain how Biden’s speech wasn’t what you thought it was. Biden’s speech, according to Frum, was actually an elaborate sting operation. It was designed to trap Donald Trump into an angry response — and at the same time prove to the world that he is an important member of the Republican Party!