How are we divided? Let me count the ways.

Race, gender, economic class, religion, ethnicity, age, education, language, profession, geographic location, medical status, on and on and on. We have become so pigeon-holed and compartmentalized that a certain group wants to divide us further into human and trans-human entities. One is no longer able to just be "me", you must be labeled and categorized, many times over. Have we ever been so divided as we are now?

I purposely left out a big one on my list, politics, that which I think of as building "interpersonal walls", divisions which to me are a mental construct designed as a control mechanism. It has served psychopaths and sociopaths for millennia.

Here in the US politics boils down to a republican/democrat, red/blue dichotomy. Oh. sure, there are other subsets, but for intents and purposes, it is boiled down to the two party system. The system is rigged as such.

We here at c99 are at least trying to open discourse between the two factions with our nonpartisan discussion policy. In my humble opinion, we don't stand a chance unless we stand together and find common ground. I'll iterate again, the struggle is not horizontal, it is vertical. It's a class struggle.

The current political zeitgeist could make a person feel a bit schizo, no?

Courage comes in many forms. I believe it is inherent in all of us. Fear is the great inhibitor that may push it to the side or the catalyst that may bring it front and center. It may lay dormant, sometimes forever suppressed or it may ooze from every pore. Some may bluster about their courage only to fold under duress, some may be as timid as a mouse but rise as a lion in the face of adversity. Courage is an attribute that may manifest itself in ways that are totally surprising to the individual.

My wife and I travel a lot around the country. We mostly stay at motels. It's at these temporary stop-overs that I turn on the TV, something that I haven't done for years at home. My usual refrain is; "Since it's paid for we will use it". It was at a recent stop-over that something caught my eye. I've oft wondered how it is that people are so susceptible to mind control. How it is that so many seem to have lost any semblance of critical thinking. And then I saw it.

While surfing for something to fill background noise I happened upon Fox News so I left it on for a few minutes. I can't remember exactly what the talking head was bleating about but I did take notice of the background imagery that accompanied the commentator. I saw subtle thought steering using symbolism and subliminal perceptive inferences. The commentator's words were enhanced by the imagery, a double splash of propaganda, verbally and visually, engaging both the conscious and subconscious mind.

We all know how the propaganda is catapulted. Movies, newspapers, radio, books, etc. It starts at a very young age and continues throughout our lives. I am now convinced that the television is the main mode of brainwashing, both in words and imagery, and I also suspect, by audio sensory.

Television has created the boobus americanus' modern reality. Thanks Obama. It's most noticeable if one doesn't watch TV at all, but if one were to quit watching for a few months and then turn it back on to the news it should pop out like a jack-in-the-box.

Then watch the commercials to see who is funding the propaganda.

How is this insidiousness negated? Shut the damn thing off.

As I sat on the porch the other night awash in an Iron Triangle Gold dream, the stars gazing back at me, my mind wandered back to promises of my youth. My memory was jogged by a jet plane out of Houston drifting northward slowly across the sky, reminding me of the flying car promise from days of yore, not really a promise but an aspiration of the good life prophesied for the future.

As the jet lurched forward enough to the point when the sound caught up, it jarred me back from my dream state, back to the reality of what seems like the present day anti-enlightenment. There are no flying cars and we still struggle for world peace, another broken dream of my youth. Instead of the fantastical flying car as a harbinger of the utopia that may have been, we get this:

Robot dog with machine gun hints of a dystopian future

While Boston Dynamics show off their robot’s dance moves, others turn similar-looking devices into dystopian killing machines.

Much like their flesh-made cousins, robot dogs do not lack attention on the internet. Many have seen the footage of Spot, a high-tech quadruped developed by the US-based company Boston Dynamics, flaunting its dance moves.

However, the latest addition to the robot dog content stream looks like something out of a science fiction movie. Twitter user Sean Chiplock shared a video of someone in Russia firing a gun from a quadruped robot.

Even though the post’s author discusses robots Boston Dynamics make, the one seen in the video is not made by the American company. As Sean Gallagher, a Senior Threat Researcher at Sophos points out, the robot dog is of Chinese origin.

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.

What is true and what is false? Do we even know anymore? Our reality is being formed right before our eyes in the guise of propaganda. That screen display in your hand, on your desk, on your wall is stealing your mind. The monied class is forming a new reality. They want you to know that there are many things other than themselves that are the cause of the maladies that are beset upon you. Don't fall for it. It is on them.

Our language is being transformed, words are mutable, in flux with the political wind. Bend the words and bend the mind, Orwell understood such. Your mind is in play. It is under assault. Our history is being rewritten.

There are distractions everywhere. How quickly the flags changed from Ukraine to Rainbow, from Johnny Depp to Amber Heard, from demand destruction to empty food shelves. One catastrophe after another. It is meant to make the head swim.

Chugga chugga, what's that sound? It's the American Dream leaving your house headed for DC. See that steam rising from the smokestack? That's your dollars burning, rolled up into logs, working for the man. See that caboose? That's you running like the dickens behind the train, but you'll never catch up. The dollar train left the switchyard long ago, when moneystreet decoupled from mainstreet. With abundant dollar logs to burn, hot off of the printing press, the train chugs onward. Until it derails. But maybe that IS the point.