I don't watch TV and haven't for years, except for when we travel and stay in hotels/motels. My motto is "if we paid for it let's use it". I immediately go for the old programs that I grew up watching, usually old westerns. But you can't escape the commercials. Also while running through the litany of channels in the search for the old programs I often come across the ludicrous propaganda platforms that are supposed to be news, whether local, national or international. I can't stand the lies so I move on quickly and leave the talking heads in chatter mode.

They are a grim reminder of the plastic society that we live in, if I may borrow a phrase from decades ago. The long sojourn from the noise heightens the awareness when one revisits it. It's like a slap in the face of reality. I imagine it as the abyss smiling back at me. A knowing, patient, come hither smile.

Note: I wrote the gist of this piece, below the fold, yesterday morning and left it untitled. When I came in from doing yard work around dinner time I found that Antony Blinken had made this shocking statement, and that lead me to the introduction and my title.

The King's Jester has spoken: King of the Mountain

Blinken says that Ukraine will be joining NATO. Under Article 5, this means that an attack on Ukraine will be considered an attack on the United States. If you want World War 3, vote Biden in November.

Source: X

Q: Who turned me against the Democratic Party?
A: The Democrats.

Q: Why don't I consider myself a Republican?
A: The Republicans.

They all suck.

I've considered myself a political nomad for many years now, a stranger in a strange land.

Sometimes I'm amazed at how the world just keeps rolling along.

I remember first learning about the end of the world. It was in the early 60s. Nuclear war was imminent. A president was killed in broad daylight for all the world to watch. There was a jungle war to prevent those damn dominoes from falling. "This is the end" filled the radio airwaves.

The Weekly Reader. Remember that? There was a heap of gloom and doom for a little boy to absorb. That's where I first heard about climate change, it was, back then, supposed to be the start of a new ice age. I also learned about the problem of finite cheap energy in the form of oil and what may happen when we run out. There was also whispers of global famine and other fear inducing articles.

Books and movies about dystopias and disasters and destruction made me think about survival. I thought about how I may survive certain catastrophes. I bet most of us have. We've all been taught to fear from a very early age, "Don't touch that hot stove"! "Don't look at the sun"! "Don't pet that bear"! Fear is needed to keep us alive. To a certain extent.

The Olduvai Theory was proposed originally in 1989 by Richard C. Duncan and was originally called The pulse-transient theory of industrial civilization. In 1996 Duncan published a paper The Olduvai theory: falling towards a post-industrial stone-age era and the theory was subsequently renamed The Olduvai Theory. Olduvai Gorge is considered the cradle of mankind because of the oldest human skeletal remains being discovered there, although that is controversial.

The Olduvai Theory is based primarily on peak oil theory and postulates that mankind progressed outward and upwards from its birthplace in the Olduvai Gorge and reached the apex of civilization brought on by cheap energy, and with the advent of collapse brought on by peak oil, will be on the march back to the metaphorical Gorge and the hunter-gatherer way of life.

The Olduvai Theory of Industrial Civilization

1. Pre-Industrial Phase [c. 3,000,000 BC to 1765]

• A = Tool making begins (c. 3,000,000 BC)
• B = Fire use begins (c. 1,000,000 BC)
• C = Neolithic Agricultural Revolution (c. 8,000 BC)
• D = Watt's steam engine, 1765

Interval D-E is a transition period.

2. Industrial Phase [1930 to 2025, estimated]

• E = Industrial Civilization is defined to begin in 1930 when the leading-edge value of energy-use per person reached 37% of its peak value.
• F = Peak of Industrial Civilization, c. 1978: confirmed by historic data published by BP, IEA, USCB, UN, etc.
• G = World average energy-use per person continues to fall, 1996
• H = Industrial Civilization is defined to end when energy-use per person shrinks to 37% of its peak value, forecast to occur by 2025. Life-expectancy (X) is estimated to be less than 100 years.

Interval H-I is a transition period.

3. Post-Industrial Phase [c. 2100 and beyond]

• J, K, and L = Recurring future attempts at industrialization fail.

Source & Image Attribution

It's agonizingly apparent that We the People are not our government's constituency. Corporations and the rich are the true constituents. Our leaders are selected for them, not you and I. All of the current campaign rhetoric is hot air rising, meant to fill the balloon of hope, until it bursts shortly after the election into a limp plastic dose of reality. We're being fooled again.

Both Biden and Trump, if either are elected, will be lame duck presidents. When their four years are over, then what? The winner won't have to worry about re-election, that is IF there will be another election. Hell, We the People, may not make it through this election. That would make us all lame ducks. Quack, quack.

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.

Does your mind feel like a pin cushion, similar to being stuck like a voodoo doll by invisible forces intent on stealing your free will? Does it feel like every day there's a new assault on your sanity, a new way to divide yourself against yourself and against each other? Do you feel confused about what is right and what is wrong, like old sociological taboos are now acceptable and what was once unthinkable is now subliminally admissible? Do you feel like you're being led down a menacing alleyway in the dead of night, in the midst of an archetypal dream where you need to run from some danger yet your legs don't work no matter how hard you try. Do you feel intimidated about saying the wrong thing to the point where you don't even want to think those thoughts? Do you feel like you have three legs of which only one can go forward but two will then step back? Do you pine for the old world order of just a few short years ago, that was chaotic in and of itself but now seems idyllic and much more manageable compared to the mass confusion of this nascent new world order being thrust upon us?

Do you feel helpless and hopeless? Do you want it all to just stop? If so that is exactly the raison d'etre for the incessant and ubiquitous propaganda and gaslighting we've been bombarded with by the media for many years now. It's been ever present in our lives since birth but has recently been taken to a whole new level of full spectrum mind control.

Why? Why have the societal paradigms shifted so much in the near term and what may the consequences be in the long term?

The following video was produced back in 2016 by c99 member, Ranting Rooster.

Its focus is climate change as evidenced by its title, Humanity is at Stake.