Point of order regarding Sheldon Adelson: the correct term for someone who spent his whole life being an asshole and then died is “dead asshole”, not “philanthropist”.
❖
The Capitol riot wasn’t the worst thing a US president has done.
It’s not even the worst thing this current president has done.
It doesn’t even come near his top ten.
It’s not even the worst thing he’s done this month.
This is clear to anyone who thinks non-American lives matter.
Imagine a world where ordering the butchery of human beings in other countries would elicit the kind of outraged backlash we’re seeing over a riot that was quantifiably far, far less destructive. Imagine a world where the US saw those victims as human beings. It would be good.
If your response to being told the US empire constantly does far worse things than the Capitol riot is to shriek “STOP MINIMIZING THIS!”, then it is you who is trying to minimize the horrors of US imperialism. Obviously the Capitol riot was bad. Now look at US military slaughter.
❖
I wonder if we’re close to finding out how aggressively a civilization can be propagandized before it snaps?
❖
The time to be critical of new authoritarian escalations is precisely the time that consent is being manufactured for them, not when it’s safe and makes you look cool in front of your friends.
I see people bleating the “if you’re choosing this time to take a stand on free speech you’re a fash” line a lot, and it’s fallacious because (A) it pretends opponents of internet censorship just started doing it four days ago, and (B) times of intense emotion are when the most dangerous measures are rolled out.
❖
The online left isn’t as worried about creeping internet censorship as it should be because it hasn’t been experiencing anywhere near the degree of censorship it will encounter if it becomes a real threat to power. And, if we’re serious about this, threatening power is the goal.
“The left is already being censored Caitlin.”
Not compared to what’s coming if we become a threat to power. Institutional censorship of our political speech is very different than being mass-reported by the KHive for saying mean things to a shitlib. It can get much, much worse.
❖
A sane person standing against the mainstream consensus of a society that is bat shit insane will necessarily frequently look like a “contrarian”.
❖
The Saudi-led mass atrocity in Yemen, the worst atrocity on our planet right now, could not take place without the blessing and support of the US and its allies. Right now the best thing anyone can do to help end it is pressure Biden to immediately honor his promise to do so.
I will say again that there is no valid reason for Biden not to be grilled about his Yemen campaign promise and how he plans to implement it any time he’s in front of a member of the press. To my knowledge he’s never been asked one question about Yemen since the election.
❖
Yemen is one of those things that gets more and more horrifying the more you look at it, but if you don’t look it just hangs out in the back burner of your consciousness as an ugly but unacknowledged reality like repressed childhood trauma.
That’s why I’ve been writing about Yemen more and more often over the years. It’s not that it was any less horrifying a few years ago, my consciousness of it just wasn’t there yet. I should’ve been writing about it with extreme urgency this entire time but it wasn’t clearly seen.
The empire couldn’t function without widespread psychological compartmentalization.
❖
It’s so crazy how Israel’s constant airstrikes on Syria are just background noise that hardly anyone is aware of. Imagine a country in western Europe routinely bombing its neighbor and killing large numbers of people and the public being generally unaware that it’s happening because the press barely reports it.
❖
As a gentle reminder, you can be manipulated, and so can I. We must keep this in our awareness if we want to form a clear picture of what’s going on in our world.
❖
I haven’t done psychedelics in years but whenever I did I had a little ritual of sincerely saying to the substance, “Please show me whatever it is I need to see.” And it always did. Highly recommend.
❖
Just because the system is stacked against you doesn’t mean the universe is. We’re up against the ephemeral agendas of a few mortals whose lives are tiny specks in a yawning infinity. There are mysterious forces at work in our species. Life is not against you. Don’t give up hope.
__________________________
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Poems For Rebels (you can also download a PDF for five bucks) or my old book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2
76 responses to “It’s Spelled ‘Dead Asshole’, Not ‘Philanthropist’: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix”
um. you’re talking to a bot.
Obviously, the powers behind the curtain are using Biden’s executive orders and position to fulfil their own agenda – the bombing of Syria was 100 times worse that the fake riot at the white house. Biden is now not in a position to remain as President as his mind has become inconsistent and erratic with the needs of commander in chief. Though Harris is a terrible thought if she takes over the reins of the White House as she is a war monger and will go along with the MIC. Heaven help us……..
“Just because the system is stacked against you doesn’t mean the universe is. We’re up against the ephemeral agendas of a few mortals whose lives are tiny specks in a yawning infinity. There are mysterious forces at work in our species. Life is not against you. Don’t give up hope.”
Very nice turn of phrase. I read it and re-read it because it is so balanced syntactically and profound without being overly-elaborated. Impressive.
I quit working at shoprite to work online and with a little effort I easily bring in around $45 to 85 per/h.GHJ Without a doubt, this is the easiest and most financially rewarding job I’ve ever had. I actually started 6 months ago and this has totally
changed my life….
My way of phrasing the riot at the Capitol is this: Why don’t you think the same thugs you installed in Chile, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Bolivia, Venezuela, Haiti, on and on and on, aren’t good enough for us?
Second, I appreciate what Roger McNamee had to say about Facebook and other social media: it’s not about free speech, it’s about business profits. And the reason they have deplatformed Trump is that they are worried about civil liability. Of course if the left ever became a threat in the U.S. it would be more violently censored than it currently is. That does not mean that speech threatening others is okay. It is not protected by the First Amendment and it has no place in any society. But I’ve watched women censored by WordPress and Twitter and seen ZERO RESPONSE on the part of people now protesting Trump’s Twitter ban. Once again, ho hum.
Wow. Hard to understand what the hell you are actually trying to say.
~
My advice to you Susan Siens would be to try to capture your thoughts more succinctly so that what you type would make a damn bit of sense.
~
You make no sense to me – just jumping from point A to point B with no real coherence in your thoughts. Seems that way to me, but prove me wrong if you want to……….
~
Oh, and when it comes to “thugs”, well, if you know me, then you know I think this: you get what you deserve. So, as a country, if you have been a “thug” to so many others, then don’t be surprised when little miss Karma turns that shit back in your face!
~
After that happens, which it will, then let the chips fall where they may.
~
I got my plan. I hope you have yours.
:
BK
Go Bills!
Since I started fre+lancing I’ve been bringing in (((($)))90 bucks/h… I sit at home and i am doing my work from my laptop. Th℮ best thing is that i get more time to spent with my family and with my kids and in the same time i can earn enough to support them… You can do it too.
Start here—— > > > Home Profit System
HA HA HA according to Republicans, White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis and Trump supporters – the LEFT is already a threat to EVERYTHING!!!
The FAUX-Left is a threat to everyone, even itself.
The etymology of the word ‘psychedelic’ is from two Greek words: “psyche” (mind) and “delos” (manifesting). Entheogenic is a term that means “generating the divine within” in Greek and it is used to refer to the same group of substances as ‘psychedelic’.
I don’t know about other drugs, Never made it past the gateway drug. After 20 plus years, Cannabis is not a psychedelic to me, but a nerve settling calm. Never have I had any kind of divine within. Smoking Cannabis pretty much ensures no divine within. Thank God!
I quit working at shoprite to work online and with a little effort I easily bring in around $45 to 85 per/h. Without a doubt, this is the easiest and most financially rewarding job I’ve ever had. I actually started 6 months ago and this has totally changed my life.
for more details visit………Home Profit System
Lexa – take your bullshit elsewhere please.
~
It is like talking to a robot for Christ’s sake.
:
2021 is the year of RECKONING!
um. you’re talking to a bot.
Please another network market scam like Amway?
Herve’ – this was interesting. Thanks.
~
What you have to do I suppose is open your mind to let thoughts from others flow in…..sometimes others try to take control, so you have to hold onto your integrity to kick their ass(es) out of your mind when their time is up. Still, if you let them in, then you get a better sense of where they are coming from. For me personally, and perhaps it is in my DNA a bit, I happily let them get in my head and do their thing. I don’t mind cause I know eventually, I will give them the boot!
~
Peace,
Ken
Really Caitlin: What the hell kind of trope is “online left”? Or are they what keyboard revolutionaries throw at Dead Assholes?
Left is nostalgia for a time when doctor and nurse were metonymic for male and female. Women are doctors. Men are nurses. Left is gone. Cope. The only way forward is through.
You see this is why we are going to survive. Because we can come up with words like “metonymic”. Here is the definition if you give a flip:
: a figure of speech consisting of the use of the name of one thing for that of another of which it is an attribute or with which it is associated (such as “crown” in “lands belonging to the crown”)
Can you figure that out? Now, here is another song to listen too especially at this time when the other mafia group is fixing to go to court in Italy – the last time was in 80’s I think – as long as all the judges don’t wimp out. But some of them already have. Anyhow, here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-jdl9hcCeg
I wonder how long this is all going to go on? Not much longer I suspect.
The ‘left’ is a real thing and will always remains so, no matter if is has been largely expunged from current common experience by way of the toxic clouds of mutagenic narrative let loose across the planet to devolve al real meaning into false and readily manipulable binaries. Regardless of this miasma, real concepts and practical understanding such as ‘The Left’ persevere, as does a seed bed that might lie dormant for weeks years, or even decades before the basic conditions arrive to flush the landscape ablaze with its native code.
In essence The Left is the function and organisation of collectivism. It is as old as humanity, indeed it is the heart and the soul of humanity. It will only die when humanity dies. It has no native congruence with ‘progressivism’. Many, if not most collectivist indigenous societies were/are very socially conservative. ‘Progressivism’ per se is a war vehicle of the Faux Left. It is a linear concept borne of the enlightenment and it’s bastard child, the Industrial Revolution.
Well said brother!
Who you talking to?
The system is oppressive, stacked against the common man and enforced by the elite. But we have the solution: Disinvest from their system. Do not use their banks, money, services, courts, and advice. Do not contribute and enable them to continue perpetrating violence, deception financial fraud and slavery. Refuse to cooperate. This is our greatest challenge but this is the only effective solution, as many great revolutionaries of the past declared. Read more of this here: http://www.wisdompage.com/2013%20Articles/Molyneaux%20essay.pdf
As awesome as that idea is, the facts are the facts and it is an old idea that is tired and will no longer work as you must know.
~
But take solace in this, a similar idea, born of the one you mention is the one that will make the difference in the end.
~
So, even though, it didn’t happen in your time, if not for the ideas of your time, it would have never happened, and it never could of happened. That is why we all need tired and no longer active revolutionaries to shed light and wisdom upon current events.
~
It is out of your hands old man, but it is happening nonetheless. So, I say to you: sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labor. They were well earned and they are appreciated!
~
Peace,
BK
“I wonder if we’re close to finding out how aggressively a civilization can be propagandized before it snaps?”
.
There’s a Far Eastern nation that’s also busily testing the waters on this. Who breaks first, Western or Eastern propagandized people? See if Vegas has a line set yet. The race is on!
“A sane person standing against the mainstream consensus of a society that is bat shit insane will necessarily frequently look like a ‘contrarian’”.
.
Jesus. Gandhi. Martin Luther King, Jr. So many others through history. All “contrarians”. Will they be the last of their kind?
.
“As a gentle reminder, you can be manipulated, and so can I. We must keep this in our awareness if we want to form a clear picture of what’s going on in our world.”
.
And the most dangerous form of being manipulated? When we do this TO OURSELVES. And if one says – “I don’t do that!” – then you just proved the point.
.
“We’re up against the ephemeral agendas of a few mortals whose lives are tiny specks in a yawning infinity.”
.
But these mortals can and do a whole lot of damage and pain. What is the source of their delusion? They think that They are gods. And They set out to prove that. And by thinking and acting the way they do, They prove that They aren’t what They so desperately think They are. They try to be a god – and end up not even being a human.
You shaman you. Thank-you.
~
2021 is the year of reckoning.
~
Shaman or not, I hope you are ready.
~
Think about it…….will the People go down so easily. Nope. The ones who are fixing to get the reckoning can feel it coming and I say to them: Watch Out! It is coming!
:
Learn or Die
So, in regards to sanity.
~
I’ll offer up my place as a place to have the Constitutional Convention. Why not? What is the harm in that? I’m not kidding I have a sweet wrap-around deck with a view of the falls that generate hydroelectric power for an old mill that is no more. It is free for all.
~
The beauty of the US Constitution is that is what written with enough wisdom to recognize this potential need of modification. Check out Article V if you doubt me.
~
So, you can come to my place – assuming you are invited of course – and it will be neutral in all ways. A neutral place to talk across the table peacefully and share ideas about a better future.
~
That is a possibility as well even though it is mighty slim…..ha, ha.
~
Ken
:
Go Bills!
For your perusal Ms Johnstone!
~
What happened last Wednesday was the apotheosis of the Hate Inc. era, when this audience-first model became the primary means of communicating facts to the population. For a hundred reasons dating back to the mid-eighties, from the advent of the Internet to the development of the 24-hour news cycle to the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the Fox-led discovery that news can be sold as character-driven, episodic TV in the manner of soap operas, the concept of a “Just the facts” newscast designed to be consumed by everyone died out.
~
This article can be read here:
We Need a New Media System By Matt Taibbi
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/56177.htm
~
~
The United States may morph into two nations with the increasingly impoverished helot “deplorables” under the heel of the empowered social justice warriors.
~
This article can be read here:
No One Is Listening: A Country Divided Against Itself by Philip Giraldi!
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/01/14/no-one-is-listening-a-country-divided-against-itself/
What you throw out there in your second to last statement is no doubt a possibility. But there are many other possibilities.
~
Here is what I want for the goofy US of a…….(and for other countries – Ireland should unite first).
~
1. A constitutional convention (to be held in a neutral location).
2. Diminishment of federal authority (what good have they done for us lately – and I mean lately as in decades….- and moreover, we don’t need no federal gubment no more – understand? I hope so).
3. Establishment of a better government – the ideas are already out there.
4. One that cares about the People. Literally.
5. A man can dream can’t he? So can a lady obviously.
6. Dreaming together is when it is best….because
7. Those dreams have the highest likelihood of coming true!
~
Peace,
BK
~
Dream on and go Buffalo Bills!
How can you possibly expect to have an effective government “that cares about the people” yet would be founded on a “Diminishment of federal authority”? That would make it so weak that it could not possibly break the entrenched power of the one percenters. What we need is a strong government dedicated to protecting the rights of the people. The 1787 Constitution mandated a weak central government in order to preserve the local power and privilege of the aristocrats who drew it up. The Congress is functioning as it was intended, to be a roadblock to developing a coherent national policy for all, while at the same time providing an opportunity for ambitious local grifters to promote their own political welfare through special interest projects initiated for the benefit of the nation’s real owner class.
~
The endless nonsense about big bad gub’mint is hammered home to us day after day in the media owned by those special interests who would be most damaged if the Constitution’s imperative “to promote the common welfare” ever became more than empty words.
Historicvs – thanks for your feedback.
~
I basically disagree with what you put forth, but that is OK, we can still talk – correct?
~
To put it simply, I’m more of a “States-Rights” kind of guy, and when it comes to government I think the smaller the better.
~
BK
Really. Ya know those Randroids–they haven’t thought things through–like most religious fanatics. They haven’t REALLY read Rand either. She would look on 99.9% of those small government, states’ rights Libertarians as “Second-Handers.” Ergo, she’d look upon them as useless, parasitic flesh bags.
Joe Biden’s fraudulent campaign actually used the brand name for the central bankers’ Great Reset, “Build Back Better,” as his campaign slogan.
Under this slogan, the world’s financiers and central bankers intend to institute a New Dark Age in which their wealth is preserved after the bubble they built is put through a managed collapse at the expense of the world’s working and middle classes. The poor have already been redlined for extinction. In their scheme, central bankers, rather than politicians, will control the finances of nation-states, providing credit only to those who agree to the policies of the globalist regime.
And in their panic, those who are in on the game are using its tools prematurely—censorship and public ostracism, denial of credit and the means of existence to those who resist.
Of mice and men…
If the billions upon billions of non-elite human beings stand idly by and watch a tiny plutocratic elite diminish and marginalize them to the point where they can no longer lead meaningful lives, you know what? Then the plutocrats were right all along about them–about US–and we have no cause to complain as we crawl over each others’ backs to lick their boots.
What you are asking, in essence, is, how far can Stalin’s chicken be pushed before it pecks Stalin’s eye out?
The answer is, to the death because a chicken is a chicken.
The pursuant question is, how far toward chickens can the system devolve humanity as it drives them inexorably toward depravity and death?
“If the billions upon billions of non-elite human beings stand idly by and watch a tiny plutocratic elite diminish and marginalize them to the point where they can no longer lead meaningful lives…”
That happened many decades ago.
“I wonder if we’re close to finding out how aggressively a civilization can be propagandized before it snaps?” This is one of the most intriguing questions Caitlin has asked. Add in the pressures of the pandemic and the preexisting economic pressures, then throw in the unfolding consequences of whatever you want to call what happened at the Capitol, and you get the picture of an American society stretched and battered to the breaking point. Not a bad thing in the long run, at least for non-Americans, if its breakdown also snaps the strings of forever wars, unipolar oppression, and global ecocide.
Newton Finn,
~
I appreciated that statement as well. I honestly don’t think it is in the interest of the “powers that be” for there to be turmoil. How does that help them keep things the way they want them to be or from achieving their dreams? Change can happen quick and when the sequence of events “gets out of control” or you could say “energized”, then the likelihood of big changes increases substantially. That is just common sense.
~
If you realize that many of us already know who is the cause of the escalating turmoil, then perhaps you can understand why I think the psychopaths in power are getting scared. They have good reason to be and they deserve the fear they are starting to feel because – you get what you give.
~
Anyhow, I also appreciate this sentiment from the article:
:
A sane person standing against the mainstream consensus of a society that is bat shit insane will necessarily frequently look like a “contrarian”.
:
I can relate to that…..but maybe I’m just flattering myself thinking I’m sane! (ha, ha).
~
Let me close with this link:
:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaL75qLJyUc
~
(sorry for any ads there….)
~
All the best,
BK
The one and only thing that government has managed to demonstrate efficiency and effectiveness in is killing people. They are quite good at it. Given that their authority is based on holding a gun to people’s heads and forcing them to do this or not do that, what should one expect of them? They held a gun to the heads of Yemenis, and the Yemenis failed to comply. So they pulled the trigger. Just like Britain did during its imperial period. Just like the USSR did during theirs. We don’t really know how much China is doing amongst its own subjects, because they tend to pull the trigger on any they suspect might expose it, literally. Unlike Assange who is being slowly punished to death.
DEMONOCRACY
Thanks for the call-in and reminders. FWIW, they’d be far more valuable if you’d include an informative link or two.
Best, Christian
Clearly, in the long running battle of Shia vs Sunni whatever powers that be pulling the strings of Western plutocracy are happy to bear witness to and even support the slaughter of Muslims by other Muslims.
What a joke, this righteous indignation about the storming of the sacrosanct capital to show their patriotic fervor, our country built on the backs of slaves, over the graves of millions of indigenous people slaughtered, undermining democratic attempts in foreign countries, riding the tidal wave of hatred of Trump, trumping Trump to chump.
Democrats and most politicians are hideous caricatures masquerading as noble, dignified representatives, recipients of huge cash bribes by lobbyists, all conforming in their ties and business suits, proud capitalists imitating the hair style of JFK, similar to the conformity of the founding fathers with their pension for grey wigs, stockings, and pumps.
Trump is guilty of as many atrocities as any American president, his support of wars in Yemen, Iraq, Israel’s bombing of Syria, leaving Rojava, Syria at the mercy of Turkey’s air bombing, one of the only places in the world championing bottom up direct decentralized democracy, ecology, and women’s rights, completely ignored by NATO and the mainstream media. So many bad things that Trump has done that for the sake of brevity will not be enumerated.
On the other hand we get to vote for the perfect robot politician with his empty rhetoric, terrible past record, pension for fondling young girls, ignorance of the climate crises, fake nobility, etc. etc. Everyone is missing the point, we don’t have a democracy to protect. It is a joke when every 4 years the president, the preselected front man, the puppet of outside forces presents himself as a noble being. This makes a mockery of real democracy of which Americans are so proud. How pathetic and lame can we get?
Everything is a lie, it seems. We live in the age of misinformation, surveillance, manipulation, and censorship. And yet everyone is so appalled that some might think that there could have been election fraud. The media never considered this possibility for even a moment, but rather a scheme of Trump to hold onto the presidency, which it may have been, but was never tested. This possibility was immediately dismissed as preposterous and massively manipulated the easily gulled minds of the public.
They make the majority believe in the same thing, like the efficacy and need for everyone to be vaccinated, locked down, masked, distanced, tested, etc. while censoring any possibility of debate or contention, but instead hammering repeatedly over and over how we all need to be vaccinated. And the sheer fact that so many people believe something is true, confirms in their minds that the lie they believe in is irrefutable. This is how mind control works, it is a manipulation, and it is clearly effective.
The real lesson of this hideous debacle is completely overlooked, though it is blatantly obvious; the whole political system is a farce, is a failure, is fake, is irresponsible, leading us towards extinction and tyranny, permiting the continuous degradation of our biosphere in the name of profit, murdering millions in wars to steal resources from powerless countries, and endless atrocities that are blythely overlooked by the manipulated, brainwashed public.
It needs to be changed systematically, not by changing one shit for another, but by ridding humanity of the entire corruption once and for all.
The solution is relatively simple, slightly out of the box, that is, to restructure all governments from vertical to horizontal which is virtually incorruptible. It is very doable and needn’t be disruptive. This 7 minute animation explains it clearly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wywMhg604W8&feature&fbclid=IwAR13K_MvGI1HmXV4GIIlIL7fq6dAXa8SEm6E_zwsMNkypo6ZivOtX3Nb9GY
Shut up, put on your mask and stand quietly in line for your food fortified with insect protein.
Dear Caitlin,
again you wrote a great article. One question: why don’t you call the situation in Yemen plain as it is: a geneocide? More than 100,000 children died al ready and seen the violence at least 500,000 shiite people have been slaughtered by bombs, famine, cholera and diphtheria.
Thank you for your good work,
with kind regards.
Evidently it is all worth the price. The price of yemen oil.
A sample bag of immense conceptual quality and concision. Thanks. I probably should start paying for this exceptional extension service. It’s quite a bit like having an augmentation upon native brain resonances.
The “unknown unknown”, to evoke notorious neo-con Donald Rumsfeld, is whether the exasperated plebs will eventually reach for the pitchforks – and make the 0.0001% feudal hacienda ungovernable. And then there is a literally smoking element – those half a billion guns out there.
~
The 0.0001% knows for sure that Donal Trump, after all, was never a radical revolutionary change agent. Inchoately, he channeled Red Americas hopes and fears. But instead of the promised glitzy palace adorned with gold, what he delivered was a shack in the desert.
~
Meanwhile, Red America, intuitively, understood that Donald Trump at least was a useful conduit. He lay bare how the corrupt swamp actually moves. How these “institutions” are mere corporate puppets – and completely ignore the common man. How the Judiciary is utterly corrupt – when even POTUS cannot get a hearing. How Pharma and Tech actually expanded the MICIMATT (MICIMAPTT?) And most of all, how the two party paradigm is a monstrous lie.
~
So where will 75 million disenfranchised voters – or 88 million Twitter followers – go?
~
As it stands, we are deep into Hardcore Class War. The Top of the Scam Gang are in full control. The remains of “Democracy” have gelled into Mediacracy.
~
Ahead, there is nothing but ruthless purge, protracted crackdown, censorship, blanket surveillance, smashing of civil liberties, a single narrative, overarching cancel (in)culture. It gets worse: next week, this paranoid apparatus merges with the awesome machinery of the United States Government (USG).
~
So welcome to Full Spectrum Domestic Dominance. Germany 1933 on steroids. 1984 redux: no wonder the hashtag #1984 was banned by Twitter.
~
This great article can be read here:
9-11=01 Was the Prelude. 1-6-21 Is the Holy Grail by Pepe Escobar!
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/01/13/9-11-was-prelude-1-6-holy-grail/
DEMO-N-OCRACY
I’m sorry, but what mysterious forces are you talking about, or is this just the usual gibberish about and of spirituality with no real facts?
Life is not against me?
The life is, as for example the death and as for example the suffering. It is nonsense for me to personalize life (and the Universe) itself and to ascribe a will and an intention to it – neither a good nor an evil intention – whoever claims this must prove it or live with being criticized harshly under certain circumstances.
There is a narrative about rebirth and nirvana. If I would believe in it, then I would prefer the Nirvana, thus not to have to come here again – eternal peace in the eternal death. But I only have this one life, which I can shape as it is possible for me personally, without relying on these mysterious forces of which you speak, and you may believe me, I have already had contact with occult lodges or people who believe in magic and practice it – I do not make myself dependent on it and nothing else is it – an unnecessary superstition that makes you even more dependent.
Nevertheless, thank you for the kind words, but hope is an illusion for me. An illusion that an ordinary person needs, however, to be able to go on, to continue. Sometimes still, but rather more rarely, I also use this illusion.
Take care and be well!
What good is eternal peace if you are not around to experience it? That is aside from the cessation of all the torments that go with this existence which no living thing can avoid because they are simply baked into the laws of thermodynamics: everything alive feeds off death until its turn to enter oblivion arrives.
~
Even if you are reborn, what does that mean besides the universe repetitively creating more insular foci of consciousness, or islands of subjective experience sustained by the dissipation of Gibbs free energy coupled to the temporary maintenance of negative entropy seized from the residue of those lost? If you will recall from the memories of your earliest experiences, you arrive clueless and confused, without the recollection of a single lesson you might have gleaned in your supposed pre-existence. Seems futile if you are looking for the point of it all.
~
Well that’s discomforting and unsatisfying, so, it’s not surprising that many look for something “meaningful” behind the simple sine wave function of existence vs non-existence and of all elements in reality being defined and co-dependent upon their opposites elegantly depicted in the yin-yang symbol of the tao. I personally like this succinct model, which I consider as true as the world “true” means. It’s also very nice that all opposites balance each other out to the nothingness which characterises the vacuum of the quantum field wherein virtual particles come and go, are spontaneously created while others wink out within a Planck Time. Beautiful symmetry at both the ideational and sensible levels.
~
Like most of the Eastern philosophies, sometimes considered religions by those wanting to apply the same rules of behavior and nomenclature across all societies, what it mainly offers is the realisation (whether shocking or comforting to one personally) that this is simply the way things are. All you can do is accept that truth and go along for the ride until your ticket is finally punched. It’s a lot like what we call fatalism in the West, which is contrasted and fought against by indeterminism and supposed free will which leads to the fallacy that, if you believe strongly enough, you can make anything happen, break out of the perpetual cycles of the material world and attain heaven where you are both at rest (at peace) and in a dynamic, ergo conscious, state. But such a vision will always be ad hoc and transitory, at least if spawned in a material universe. If you think you are aware of more, and are pleased with your discovery, by all means consider yourself lucky…at least while you ride your intellectual high. Knowing it too will pass might only bring you down.
Hey Realist.
Life is meaningless, it has no meaning except the meaning we give it ourselves.
I do not believe in rebirth, that should have become clear.
If you really think yin-yang describes something opposite, then you have understood neither yin-yang, nor Zen, nor Tao. That is dualism, stereotypical thinking. yin-yang rather describes energies that are in continuous mutual relationship to each other.
But who am I to say anything to anyone here that doesn’t fit into their neural matrix.
Take care!
Was not implying that YOU believed in rebirth, and I certainly do not. It’s for anyone else who would like to play that card.
~
The fallacy of dualism (mind as something distinct from matter) has nothing to do with it, at least not in the way I employ the symbol as a didactic device.
~
Determinism on the macro level, yes, (on the quantum level…who can say for sure?) is represented by it. The taoists go much farther than I would in actually believing that the toss of a coin or the dropping of sticks is so tied to everything else in the universe that it is predictive of the future. I am not co-opting their philosophy, just their symbol to make my point.
~
The point is anyone’s imaginary “free will” cannot really change fate in a strictly deterministic world, so sit back and enjoy the show… there’ll be another one, and another one, and another one like the seasons or the sine wave in any event, whether your personal trip was good or bad. We keep making the same mistakes (and sometimes successes) as our forebears did, and as our successors will do after us. You can adopt acceptance of events or rage against them, as you think you like, but neither will change a thing.
~
I know, some people will say, but I did it MY way and have thereby validated my agency. Try tracing the origin of YOUR way and proving that you could have acted or thought any differently, that they weren’t, in fact, a fixed part of some pre-existing matrix in which this all plays out. Maybe every possibility plays out somewhere at some time if the proponents of a quantum theory-based multiverse are correct. (Read Paul DiFilippo’s novel “Fuzzy Dice” for an entertaining exposition of that model.)
~
I’m so old I used to listen to Alan Watts give weekly lectures on Zen Buddhism over the radio, I think on Radio Pacifica in Cali. According to him, you, I and everyone else, as well as humanity’s greatest feats and most shameful embarrassments, are just the musings of a bored stiff deity. So, essentially, just chill and enjoy the ride. I think Watts unnecessarily complicated his message with the construct he calls “god,” but it’s another common fallacy that the objective cannot come into being without a pre-existing subjective. Why not the subjective being an emergent property of the objective? Or more likely, the two being opposites co-dependent on each other for existence from the first tick of Planck time?
~
But I digress from the assigned topic of “dead assholes.”
Speaking of Assholes. They are like opinions, everybody has one , and they All Stink!
‘Mysterious’ simply means dimensions of process and detail beyond our capacity to perceive with any sufficient understanding. Those who do not or cannot perceive mystery and dismiss its true wonder are variously the cocksure and the complacent.
But then, beyond just perceiving mystery, and possibly letting it generate uncertainty, fear or neurosis, lies the capacity to actually feel comfortable with it, even excited by it. That latter realm is the one Caitlin alludes to. Knowing that there’s nothing systematic within the natural unknown that is after you.
You might be in the wrong place at the wrong time and suffer as a consequence, but that is just chance. Nothing systemically is actually working against you… EXCEPT the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. That’s a genuine bitch. The function of life, maybe even indeed its purpose, is to stare that dissipating banshee down and make it wait. By definition that’s a slow game, and it needs to be a clever one, not a fast and furious linear calamity of nonsense.
Who’d have thought that a droolingly insane cohort of humans, unhinged by excessive power and working in covert groups to access even more of it, would strive so hard to tip the scales against humanity and in favour of the 2nd Law? Maybe such concerted betrayal is a fair definition of evil?
Perhaps contemplate the difference between gibberish and a language you’ve not yet let yourself begin to understand.
Hello Greg.
I didn’t ask you, so in that respect your answer is worthless to me and anyway just further babble about unknowns in the realm of your feelings.
But thank you for pointing it out. I really seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time here and I’m going to change that by really staying away from here now – it doesn’t matter at all whether I read here or not and it doesn’t matter at all whether I comment here or not. My ego is not so big that I think I am so important and believe my acting would change the world significantly – certainly not here and now in the time of the civilized middle ages, of a species of naked monkeys, ugly bags filled mainly with water HaHa!
Oh and just by the way. Who can read is clearly at an advantage. I don’t believe at all that the system works against me, neither the system, nor the universe, neither against me, nor for me. But as already mentioned, I did not address you at all and therefore I will not discuss this fully with you.
Anyway – take care.
Sorry for breaking and entering upon your consciousness. Perhaps you should post a caveat to your posts to open forums making it clear that you will only accept communication from people whom you have chosen by communicating with them first. That would help you to more reliably get what you want and also enable everyone else to avoid the risks inherit within agitating your self-satisfaction..
Hey Greg – I’m a chemical engineer or at least that was my first degree, and I won’t lie to you, I think maybe in a small way I fell in love with my thermodynamics teacher and her family cause that lady had passion about the subject matter. Man she was incredible. Dr. Hall was her name at NC State if you want to look it up, but please don’t trouble her due to my rambling.
~
I think entropy is actually something that can be overcome, and like you say “it is the long game”…….I think it is the least of our worries, and as long as there are those who truly try to understand the dynamics of it all, then because of our god-given talent to communicate, I’m thinking we are gonna figure it out!
~
Entropy be damned!
~
Go Bills!
Thanks for your reply. Refreshing to get a response re ‘entropy’ as a fundamental consideration. The relatively temporary energy richness of our socio-economic structure seems to blind people to its significance and our precariousness within this significance. Ironically, this complacency aligns with our productive ‘needs’ and our identity expectations being dependent upon exponentially more energy than we, as a species, have ever before been.
There is no problem with energy on this planet until the sun begins to fade in 5 or so billions years time. We do though have an enormous imminent problem with it as a species. This problem is coming at us fast and incredibly hard, yet hidden in plain sight, as is most of our foolishness.
Putting aside the explicit atrocities wrought throughout the world by the empire, the current melodrama in Washington DC can be well characterised within this energy perspective as fiddling while Rome burns. Indeed fiddling furiously.
The best that can be said about rich assholes is that eventually they, too, will die. Congratulations, Sheldon, you made it.
Very briefly on the subject of psychedelics. I feel it is wrong to praise psychedelics, or the effect of these substances, as good and worthy to be recommended, without also pointing out the risks and dangers. Especially in a society in which a completely healthy and “normal” person can suffer from this society in such a way that he may seek psychiatric help and is then made really sick by this help.
Psychedelics are not only good, but also not only bad – it all depends. If you want to keep a clear head, you should keep your hands off drugs anyway.
Even Timothy Leary, called the guru of psychedelics by some, warned against the negative aspects of LSD.
First inform an then may choose. And ever be responsible and stay save!
Take care!
Sorry my humble English, it must read “safe” instead of “save”.
One thing they teach you about is how tenuous is the model of reality that you hold in your head. They are definitely not for everyone. I suspect that most people who have used them did so for purposes of exploring the limits of their conscious mind and not just for a thrill. At least a brief period of exposure to them was enough for me. Unless you are a shaman like Carlos Castanada’s Don Juan they will definitely affect your functioning in the real world, but feeling a visceral kinship with creatures who last shared a common ancestor with human beings is, well, a real trip! It can change your thinking for the better.
~
Actually, a short trip from a low dose of acid or mescaline is less mind blowing than the effects of some of the prescription medications they put you on in old age to control your blood pressure and other physiological functions. For example, metoprolol will persist in imposing your dream state upon the real world after your brain has already woken up! Your bedroom looks like your old office in your dream and leaving it seemingly takes you into a corridor where none of the rooms are any place you want to go. Your open bathroom door looks like an entry to a subway station. Those shadows on the wall and ceiling look like giant spiders, the ceiling fan is a giant bat and you swear there is a feral opposum hiding under your bed waiting to ambush you. It may take a couple of minutes for the old noodle to end the dream program. Funny stuff, no? Oh, the joys of growing old. Beats Covid all to hell though.
“…who last shared a common ancestor with human beings millions of years ago…”
~
Sheesh, left out the critical “millions of years ago”
~
Must be the drugs.
Hey again Realist.
I describe the psychedelic experience, among other things, with “back-stupiding” as in religion the back-binding, inspired by the film “Altered State”[1] and Tim Leary[2].
Take care!
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_States
[2]
Psychedelics may work for Caitlin, but she didn’t live through the times when I was coming of age, when the passion of so many young people for social justice and political change was diluted and diverted by infatuation with these drugs. Genuine prayer or meditation (depending on whether one leans West or East in one’s spirituality) is IMHO much more lifechanging, and thus much more dangerous to the status quo, than getting high or, to put it in more positively, being temporarily transcendentally disoriented.
Hi Newton Finn.
I can follow you and somewhat empathize.
Today it is even worse. Today, it’s mainly about function, so it’s no longer about “drop out”. People want to function better with microdosing and possibly become a “new Steve Jobs” who makes huge money with new inventions.
Take care!
It’s worth better specifying the relevant functions being expected from psychedelics. Psychedelics can very effectively illuminate dimensions or pathways that can readily seen due to being obscured by habituated frameworks of perception. They are very good at loosening the solidity of reality assumptions entrenched within the consciousness due to familiarity and dominant reinforcement. Loosening the firmness of that accepted matrix enables a view toward new details and relationships within surroundings and meaning. Even just the insight that ‘how things are’ is not necessarily how things are, is a crucially important insight. Enormously significant opportunities arise from such insights.
The error or problem you point to is the notion that taking psychedelics will serve to move us forward toward achieving those broader or better constructs that are identifiable. Indeed many have fallen for that lazy, ineffectual pathway to self-improvement. However many more by far simply fell away from idealism into a comfortable, readily accessible conformity with the gathering wealth and power craze that has enveloped the modern world apace since the 70’s.
Regarding this latter, much larger cohort, perhaps it is the case that the fluidity of perception promoted by psychedelics was not kept adequately and appropriately in place within their ritualised engagement of things. Maybe more of the right drugs, applied in a moderate and relevant way, is a thing that might help more people to see past the monolithic orthodoxy that now has everyone’s heads fatally in a vice.
You make some good points. Getting rich became the new high. That, for me, is the most simple and direct way to put what happened to so many in my generation.
Mike, read trump’s speech. He spent an hour inciting his group with dozens of lies, easily disproven.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/11/full-transcript-donald-trump-january-6-incendiary-speech
Save yourself time, and scroll all the way to the bottom then read the last four or five paragraphs.
Apparently it doesn’t occur to his followers to crosscheck facts. 60 courts threw his baseless claims out, including many where the judge was appointed by Trump.
Most of those cases were summarily dismissed, on lack of standing – or lack of evidence presented in the initial complaint. While I have no proof that Trump was cheated – the sudden overnight swings in several key States were HIGHLY suspicious. There’s also the mens rea, and shady(illegal) behavior shown in one Georgia county – where observers were kicked out, under the pretense that they were done for the night… Witnesses thus excluded – the boxes of mail-in ballots were then pulled out from under the table, and fed into the machines. But it was all caught on camera.
One Judge issued an order (regarding Georgia) demanding that the State preserve all relevant evidence and computer files/software. And then he inexplicably reversed himself, shortly thereafter, without explanation. That leaves significant room for reasonable people to disagree with your “baseless claims” talking point.
It has been claimed repeatedly in some of the most propagandistic of Media outlets. Initially the claim was “no evidence of fraud”…and then they moved the goalposts to “no evidence of pervasive fraud” – and eventually it pushed onwards to “no evidence of ENOUGH fraud – to have changed the outcome”… Newsflash – good spies are trained – to NOT leave behind evidence, at lradt not evidence that they don’t WANT you to find (red herrings and misdirection).
There’s “No Evidence” – because Voting Machine companies and elections officials routinely refuse to provide access to the ‘Closed-Source’ “Proprietary” software, and systems logs – where much of the evidence would be found.
https://blackboxvoting.org/proof-of-fraud/
TDMSRESEARCH.COM
In California, a man named Raji Rab has an outstanding lawsuit against the LA County Registrar Recorder. His experts have found PROOF that the LACRR routinely violates State Election laws.
https://jonathanmayorca.medium.com/breaking-ca-superior-court-orders-sos-alex-padilla-to-preserve-evidence-in-election-fraud-case-65df80b4e0eb
https://jonathanmayorca.medium.com/lack-of-transparency-in-la-elections-the-1-manual-tally-white-vans-b7a5e4b6400f
So arguing that our Elections are sacred and inviolate – and attacking those who challenge that flawed premise – is not only insane – but dangerous for the future of the democratic process. Cori Bush’s motion seeking to remove Trump supporting Congresspersons – was filed BEFORE the day of the uprising on Capitol Hill.
For certain this wouldn’t have been the first stolen US Election… Not even the first stolen Election of 2020. Sanders and others were clearly the victims of shenanigans and election theft/vote flipping. In 2016 I suspect that “the steal” went in the other direction. And NO – I believe that no foreign power (aside from perhaps the UK or Israel) could get away with even significantly manipulating our vote – much less flipping an election. The NSA would have the evidence – if it happened. But on the other hand – the CIA, DHS, NSA, DIA – or even the machine makers themselves – could easily accomplish something like that, if they agreed to let it happen. Are those all considered “bad actors” by the DHS guy previously in charge of election security? Or did he just mean that safe from the meddling of Tommy Wiseau, Keanu Reeves, and “Russia”?
In 2004 – Pennsylvania was clearly stolen – as proven by discrepancies in the exit poll totals, vs. the reported results. Ohio, too – was likely stolen… And John Kerry, who’d promised to fight until the last vote was counted – folded at around midnight. I’m sure that being a member of the same Secret Society as his opponent had nothing to do with any of that.
Before that – the theft of 2000 was even more glaring. In 1960 – Nixon knew that Kennedy’s people had cheated in Chicago – but didn’t say anything, because he had cheated in the rural areas.
As for Trump and his conduct and actions… Hard to say what a jury would think. It was on the borderline, for certain. But I think you’d need to expand it to a Conspiracy case – and include the rest of his people, to make it stick… I saw the end of Trump’s speech live, on a DC newschannel’s YouTube feed. But the same feed had the events already occurring, over at the Capitol. So the audience at his speech, were too far away, to have been the primary instigators.
A real Investigation should be undertaken, in order to understand why the Capitol Police ALLOWED things to degenerate the way that they did. There’s clear evidence of them allowing the breaches to occur. I’m not excusing Trump or his supporters… But it appears that this was DELIBERATELY allowed to occur, in order to leverage fake and exgaggerated outrage – to jam through a second PATRIOT ACT, and to begin to further criminalize domestic dissent.
Au contraire, this also may have been an inside job with help from Trump sympathizers on the Capitol Police. I agree that a detailed and bipartisan investigation needs to be done.
Yep. He’s a dead fucking asshole–PERIOD. Fucking DEAD! =)
He is, but not especially because of this current punch and judy show. He is an arsehole because of what he has done categorically the same as every other US president preceding him. Focussing just on his behavioural style whilst he does these categorically normal Presidential atrocities is an obsession for defective minds. A lot of them about at the moment. I fear this plague it is not seasonal.
Practice non-violence!
What does that mean?
Start investigating what non-violence means!
🙂
Using the Brandenburg test, as established by the Supreme Court of the United States, it must be concluded that President Donald Trump’s speech did not rise to the criminal level of inciting. – Krisanne Hall JD
“We have come to demand that congress do the right thing and only count the Electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” – Trump Speech January 6th to supporters before March to U.S. Capitol building.
If one is going to unquestioningly repeat the narrative of the U.S. corporate controlled propaganda machine when it suits them, it may lead readers to question the validity of the other claims that a writer is making in the same article and elsewhere.