[D Benton Smith]

@Veracious Poet

ref : ” Would anyone here shed a tear if We were all dead tomorrow?”

Well I, for one, would be very VERY sad. I would shed a tear, if I could, but of course I would be dead and all that so literal tears might be a little difficult.

[D Benton Smith]

@laffin_boy

ref: ” “I understand that you can’t accept what i’ve said here because it implies a level of Evil that’s monstrous in scope. “

It’s not just the evil that is monstrous in scope, but the sheer magnitude of data that must be sifted through before the picture gradually comes into focus. To make a long story short, I very much do accept what you say, but I also understand fairly precisely why your observation falls so often on closed ears. Even smart people reject what they are emotionally incapable of experiencing.

Keep trying anyway. It won’t make anyone worse off than they are, and who knows . . . it might actually help a little bit.

[D Benton Smith]

@madamski

ref: ” . . . empirical logic concepts that are usually only apprehensible via spiritual/mystical . . .”

I reckon that there are not two Universes ( a Material and a Spiritual ) , but just one. Kinda what the word Universe means.

[D Benton Smith]

Well we can blame the psychos at the top until the cows come home to roost for all the good it will do us. When that doesn’t work maybe we could try howling at the moon or having a nice big global-civil-war that drapes corpses from one pole to the other.
The reason those things (or any thing) won’t work is that it is not just the TOP that is at fault.
What’s broken is the WHOLE (the entirety itself, the species) whose ingrained proclivities MADE the top, and then tolerated that top, and dutifully obeyed that top while the top and its sycophants methodically killed everyone lower than them on the totem pole.
So what is this “something” that is such a serious flaw ? It doesn’t matter what the flaw is. What matters is that a flaw demonstrably exists. Just look around. SOMETHING (some inadequacy of one kind or another) has caused this mess. There’s the effect. Causes caused it.
The fact that “the top” and its minions are also killing THEMSELVES in the process simply prooves the point that this is not just a problem of a few bad apples. It is some sort of systemic flaw, and we are living the undeniable consequences of it.
For lack of specific knowledge on its nature one might be tempted to call the shortcoming something like “Too Stupid To Live” , but that doesn’t fit all of the facts because abstract intelligence ( ” IQ” ?) does not seem to have all that much to do with it. Plenty of very high IQ people exist on both sides of the debacle, and plenty of simple folk and other wild creatures remain more or less unconcerned altogether. They might be on to something.
Personally, and to my way of thinking, “Too Unaware To See” far more accurately describes the problem , but that wording is clunky and lacks rythm and cadence.
Operatively, it doesn’t finally matter what it is called. What matters is that nature is being absolutely merciless in weeding it out. The so-called “evolutionary forces” are just doing their logical thing. Out with the failure and in with the next try.
In other words, if Homo Sapiens Sapiens is a failed experiment then this current and protracted act of collective suicide is just “evolutionary forces” forging a species better suited to holding its place at the top on this backwater dustmote on the edge of everywhere.
I’m placing my bet on one that is considerably more AWARE of what it needs to be aware of to survive the long haul. I postulate a species capable of knowing that there is more to this shell game than atoms bouncing around energetically for no discernable purpose. Kipling was a good and observant rhymer, but he was flat ass wrong about at least one thing. Ours IS to question why.

[D Benton Smith]

Day after day, year after year, I have come to these Hallowed Halls of The Automatic Earth to see how the world has been ending recently and read my fellow travellers’ estimates on when it will get the job done. It continues to be a very good and instructive experience which I value deeply . . . but it does become just an itsy bit repetitious at times. The same human frailties keep getting lamented over and over again.

So why not pile on while the piling is good? If there was ever a time when i could get away with such straight up phylosophizin’ this has gotta be it.

Bottom line of our problem as human beings is that our very short range physical senses and personal productivity, operating only in real-time , and saved as skewed memories (or short-shelf-life “stuff”), are just not sufficient to keep us alive for very long. To survive for more than a few hours or days we depend, we utterly DEPEND, upon information and help from others.

To be of much use that information and help must be true and beneficial , but AT THE SAME TIME the same fundamental rule applies to those we must compete with for limited resources. If our competitor gets the true info and the good stuff then THEY will be the one’s who survive, not us. We lose. Too much losing results in death. And so at the same time that we REQUIRE truth, fairness and help, we MUST lie, cheat and steal. Ouch.

This is the ORIGINAL damned if you do and damned if you don’t dilemma, isn’t it ? It looks so hopeless just on its face that most folks simply avoid thinking about it at all. Too bad, because if you think about it long enough and honestly enough the way out of the trap becomes more and more obvious ( albeit gradually ) and the escape route is this : be as aware as you can. Be as truthfull as you can. Be as realistic as you can. And when faced with the choice of ignoring known consequences in order to obtain a trinket of only delusional transiet value, take a good hard look at those consequences again . . . and then choose to forego the trinket and the self-inflicted obliviousness that goes with it. Because the PRICE that you SHALL pay for ignoring WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW TO BE TRUTH (i.e. the known consequences) , is the very definition of stupidity. It is deliberate and self-inflicted UNawareness of truth.

So what is truth ? Aw c’mon ! Skip the disengenuous sophistry. You know damned well what the truth is. The truth is simply your most honestly realistic scientific wild ass GUESS of what it is.. That guess get’s updated as new information arrives. Hopefully that’s fairly often.

As mentioned earlier a LOT of that information is second hand (third hand, fourth, etc.) data, that is relayed to you from a host of outside sources and ultimately from other people . . . who are doing basically the same damn thing that you are. And what are YOU doing ? You are truthfully and faithfully helping ANDyou are lying, cheating and stealing . Which of those things, when to whom is based upon your currently best beliefs and assessment of reality.

Those beliefs are your map of the terrain. They may or may not be very accurate. Truth and consequences will tell. But the FACT is simply, that there IS terrain. And you are in that terrain whether you like it or not, and you have a map of some kind or another, so happy trails.

Now, we are told not to mistake the map for the terrain , and that’s pretty good advice , but the corollary to that advice is to recognize that maps can be very useful (almost necessary) things when passing into or through strange new territory that can’t be seen all at once with your own two eyes. Used properly, and for its intended purposes, a map can and frequently does save the traveler’s ass by revealing what is just over the horizon of their own limited senses. Where are the destinations, and which roads lead to them , and what obstacles or dangers exist along the way? Where is the treasure, and where be the dragons?

Informations in the form of words and pictures are a lot like maps. Think of their relayed, descrptive words , illustrations and advices as sense multipliers or perception extenders. . . and understand that they are only approximate. When (if) you do actually reach the represented places that you have been told are there (if they even truly exist in the first place!) that their actuality is going to be one hell of a lot different , in lived real experience, than the thin paper Travellers’ Guide to Life The Universe & Everything that helped or hindered your passsage. Whatever that destination turns out to be will be the real thing, not a more or less fictitious second or third hand description from other peoples’ viewpoints. Expect to revise or even change preconceived notions in a hurry.

And, by the way, please update that map for the next guy in line.

[D Benton Smith]

Elites view themselves rightly or wrongly as being at the top of the heap. Apex predators. Well I’ve got a message for those lions that they would be well advised to digest:

An apex anything that extincts the bottom of its own food chain ain’t gonna be apex for long. A wolf that eats sheep better keep in mind that sheep gotta eat, too. And same goes for the damned sheep, and the grass they gnaw on. Hell, take it right on down to the frigging microbes that feed the grass. Take it all the way down the line to quarks, preons . . . to infinity and beyond. Same rules apply.

There is a great big sign hanging over the entrance to awareness of reality. It reads : “You are entering a zero tolerance establishment. Get it wrong and you’re outta here.”

[D Benton Smith]

Aye. To function at all requires some degree of belief, otherwise we could not act at all. We would be stuck in the paralysis of indecision. You have to believe the ground before you is solid else you could not take another step. It’s why we are prone to hypnosis, we must have the capacity to believe, so that we can act on that belief and hopefully survive. Some clever scoundrels have learned to “hack” that necessary flaw to persuade us to BELIEVE all sorts of weird and phoney stuff. Like most everything else in this Universe of nested delusions it is a balancing act.
Sometimes ( such as the present times, of Covid and vaxes and wall-to-wall propaganda) , though, it really gets out of hand. Methinks a little judicious disbelief would come in pretty handy right about now, starting with the hypnotic belief that Science is something other than a hypnotic belief system.
I love the scientific method, and think that logic and math and physics and shit like that is way cool . . . but I do not actually BELIEVE it. That materialistic crap is based on PROBABILITIES, and subject to new and improved and CHANGED estimates of probability at a moments notice. The only thing that I actually BELIEVE, with complete certainty, is that thee and me are aware.

[D Benton Smith]

There is comfort in belief. It offers relief from the discomforting anxiety of observing and thinking and deciding for oneself. There is comfort in slavery, too, and for the same reason. Freedom is the acceptance of full responsibility for choosing between the two modes.

[D Benton Smith]

Working for (and thereby empowering) people who are willing for you to be harmed or killed so that they can feel morally superior is probably not a good long range survival strategy. Even if you manage to slip past their neurosis on this one occassion, you would thereafter still be working for madmen. It is such a tough call that you are the only one who can make the decision of which strategy (the risk of the jab or the certainty of unemployment) is the correct choice.

[D Benton Smith]

@upstateNYer

ref : ” d benton: what’s your definition of “help”? ”

Oh, the usual : Help my virtuous tribe repel the wicked tribe. Help my local rich trod down upon the local poor. Help my local poor rise up and throw off the yoke of the local rich who trod upon them. Help my country be the witting or unwitting instrument in yet another proxy war. Help my corrupt government help your corrupt government.

In other words : now that the USA has pissed away the last remaining trace of trustworthiness it will now find NO ONE ( saints and demons alike ) dumb enough to to risk their lives by trusting the USA in any meaningful way. We are now isolated from everyone other than straight up mercenary war lords . . . and even they will want to be paid in advance.

[D Benton Smith]

Now that no one will trust America ,AT ALL , for a very long time, who do you suppose they will they turn to for help ?

[D Benton Smith]

@deflationista

you asked , ” I am not sure if I am missing something? ”

You can say that again.

[D Benton Smith]

Biden’s big announcement on Afghanistan :

“Submission Accomplished !”

[D Benton Smith]

One of the remarkable things about REAL calamity (as opposed to feared, imagined, hallucinated or predicted calamity) is that the participants tend to get real too . The bullshit goes away fast. Silly hooha like “Critical Race Theory”, or “Socialism vs Capitalism”, that fills the conversational vacuum of people with too much time on their hands disipates rather quickly when Mother Nature and Father Reality teach class.

What is going to happen? How will I respond if and when it does? How can I prepare for unpreparedness? Who’s lying and who ain’t? Well you can GUESS until the cows come home, but you won’t actually KNOW until something happens and you respond (or the other way ’round). Some fairly serious shit has ALREADY happened. How did you respond? That’s at least a hint.

One thing that I’m fairly sure of is that a lot more, seriouser, shit is coming down and we won’t have to wait long to find out what it is or how accurate our scientific wild ass guesses have been. High stakes and lousy odds. Ain’t it exciting?

Time to look around and do your damnedest to figure out what REALLY is, and what the hell is going on around us. I’m pretty sure that recess time is over, Reality School is in session, and today’s vocabulary word is AWARENESS.

[D Benton Smith]

Ya know what we have not seen in a long while ? A right proper Computer Model projecting how many folks are going to live or die if present trends continue. That would be fun. Can’t imagine any of those geeky computer quants in gov’t, medicine or academia have done that, though.

I’m also curious about how the math works out for a less than 100% effective vaccine administered (even serially administered every few months) to 90% of a population. Let’s be unrealistically generous and say that a 90% effective vax is given to 90 % of the people . . . but has to be REDONE over and over again. You could of course just keep doing this forever, but why bother because after doing that 90% of 90% thing for seven or eight go-arounds and you’re down to less than one person out of every 100.

[D Benton Smith]

This Great Awakening gig was grossly misrepresented in the advertisements. The sales guy said it was gonna be a glorious resurgence of some kind, but so far it has been more like regaining pain filled consciousness in some place you don’t recognize, trying to assemble the fragments of what can only have been a drug soaked blackout bender of monumental proportions.

[D Benton Smith]

@those darned kids

You’re right, I know that you’re right, but every time reality hurts me again and I decide to leave the bastard, it says it only hit me because of how much it loves me, and I remember how much I love it, too.
I guess I’m just a sucker for love.

[D Benton Smith]

@Madamski

“When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez
When it’s Easter time too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don’t pull you through
Don’t put on any airs
When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outta you

[Verse 2]
Now if you see Saint Annie
Please tell her “Thanks a lot”
I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don’t have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won’t even say what it is I’ve got ” — Bob Dylan

[D Benton Smith]

@Oroboros

@madamski

It’s very difficult for me to trust Reality after all of the awful things it’s done to me.

[D Benton Smith]

@deflationista

You are projecting.

When you say you are “sad” you know that you are lying, because in truth you are not experiencing sadness, but it’s opposite : malice. You do wish good things for those who disagree with your fixed ideas, you wish bad things. You are not feeling grief. You’re feeling hate.

At the base of your malicious intent you are simply terrified, and with good reason.

To assure your own survival and success it is absolutely essential that you figure out what is true and what is not, and that quest consists of endlessly examining and questioning. As soon as you cling to a single, fixed, “unquestionable” position your ability to question and objectively examine . . . comes to a halt.

Now you are in the position of thinking and feeling that you must defend your answer by attacking all questioners. You have “bet the farm” that the answer you have arrived at so far (which depends upon your CURRENT knowledge of data and information) is the one true truth AND that the answer you’ve come up with will be magically made manifest in reality by making any and all other data and information silent. Anger, ridicule, selective censorship, lies, force . . . these are all tools of that trade.

That is simply not the way quests for truth work. True quests work on the basis of discovering reality. Reality is indifferent to your feelings and carved-in-stone beliefs. Figuring out the “answer” to what actually IS, and the “answer” to the question of what is going on around you is an ongoing and evolving process of questioning and inspecting and being willing to revise your best guess. If you are really and truly seeking truth then that best guess is going to refine and revise and and change and sometimes flip-flp over the course of time.

When that evolution stops, then that’s that. Quest ended. The only visible pathway from that position is down, because the pathway upward is blocked by your own decision to not question.

[D Benton Smith]

Just so’s ya know

It took less than five minutes of finger walking to finger Eric Feigl-Ding as a CCP operative, whose roots are as bare as the money trail leading from him to his Dad, to the Hang Lung Group (Investment Holding Company) that unsurprisingly just gave Harvard millions of dollars for no good reason. Hang Lung Group’s major holdings are all Mainland China via Hong Kong, and they are tasked with buying up U.S. real estate for the Chinese Communist Party.

Not very original, but hey , it sure has worked so far!

[D Benton Smith]

@upstateNYer

ref : “D Benton: did you find that even-handed? Interesting.”

Fuller’s word choices in several places did suggest beyond reasonable that his position is on what I personally consider to be the wrong side of the vaccine issue, but overall yeah, I would still give him a B+ as an even handed moderator. Basically didn’t he support letting the opposition ( us, in other words) have their say? In a fair debate, with us getting to have our say, the best facts win (usually) which in this case is our side of the moral and scientific argument. I don’t ask that he have no opinion, and I don’t ask that he shut up (nice as that might be .) All I ask is that an actual debate be allowed a platform.

[D Benton Smith]

My sense of humor seems to have darkened recently.

[D Benton Smith]

@upstateNYer

ref: ” How many people have to die? Seriously, how many deaths will it take before sanity is re-established? ”

100% should do the trick.

[D Benton Smith]

@madamski

ref: “Only thing to do is live well. Maybe even long and prosperously.”

Or, as my daughter advised, “Just go on living, until further notice.”

[D Benton Smith]

@deflationista
@Raul Ilargi Meijer

ref : ” On Bret Weinstein, Alternative Media, Ivermectin and Vaccine related controversies”

I went there and read that. It was encouraging to see the flickering flame of even handed “moderating” has not been fully extinguished.

I also bet that a lot of folks here on TAE will flash back at you in pure reflex ( just because it was YOU who posted it and said that the David Fuller article was well written, fair and insightful ). That’s the price you pay for being so snotty in earlier posts and commentary.

In my experience so far David Fuller is an honest broker who earnestly attempts to moderate discussions and does not shy away from even the hottest of topics , and is very good at questioning everything without rancor or ridicule .

I was particularly impressed with how well he interviewed Jordan Peterson , here : https://youtu.be/EjqXXengN1s

[D Benton Smith]

Are we unwashed masses a viral pathogen infecting the body poltic of the elite, or are they a fatally dangerous experimental vaccine in ours?

I’m not altogether sure, but the immune response sure is looking like a cytokine storm capable of killing either or both.

Of course there is always the third possibility : the disease settles into a bloody standoff where the sum total political body (humanity as a whole) struggles along a just little while longer, with a highly compromised (but not quite yet terminal) politicized immune system.

[D Benton Smith]

@Veracious Poet

ref : ” Some imagine the Infinite created his children for entertainment, as you propose, but I doubt the human mind can hardly fathom the purpose/intent of the Healing, Creative & Loving Power of the Universe ~ The EGO finds the very thought of the Infinite provocative due to the finite of its being.

I prefer to view this life as a spiritual being having a human experience, as some sort of amusement park/soul school, but you of course are empowered with free will to chose your own understanding & path… ”

I find myself reading and rerereading your post, and liking it more each time. You must be racking up pretty good marks in that soul school .

[D Benton Smith]

God ( Prime Cause, Yahwew, Allah, Awareness, the Great Spirit . . . the name of your choice) got bored and yearned for companionship. It must be lonely at the top, ya know ?

It started off simply enough. A push here, a pull there, something to look at, and then before you know it particles, atoms, spacetime and eventually life and intelligence. These things (and us) are all God’s sock puppets , with which he talks to himself, and the patterns they make produce a myriad of unpredicted consequence that not even omniscience could have imagined in advance. Very entertaining. And unlikely to stop any time soon, regardless of current events.

So is the above “phylosophic” rambling off topic ?

Not really.

Nevertheless, I apologize, and will refrain as hard as I can in future posts. It was Madamski’s post that set me off, so it’s his fault anyway.

[D Benton Smith]

@madamski

ref : ” Most people confuse themselves with their identitiy. ”

Hold it right there, Buster. Freeze !! Take one more step you and you run the almost certain risk of becoming enlightened.

[D Benton Smith]

@deflationista

Clinical trials require a control group of participants as a benchmark against which to measure whether the experiment reveals change in comparison to doing nothing at all.

Thank you for your service.

[D Benton Smith]

It is patently obvious that the stats contained in the interactive chart that Raul just embedded from OWID are evidence of SOMETHING, but it sure as hell isn’t evidence of legitimate information of about confirmed Covid-19 cases.

Examination of the numbers from any and every perspective ( medical, statistical, political, logical, etc ) returns the same result : IMPOSSIBILITY.

341 cases in one place and 15 cases right next door ? Consistently? North American case numbers in lockstep with HALF of Europe . . . and virtually reverse with the OTHER half of europe? I mean give me a fucking break. That is absurd.

Those 6 countries are NOT measuring the same thing using the same criteria within the same time frame. It is just not physically possible .

I can barely believe that OWID actually published this hogwash. Yet there it is. Stunning! OWID is so breathtakingly incompetent that they peddling bull shit and include the interactive PROOF of it at the same time.

Wow. I mean, just, WOW!

[D Benton Smith]

Messing about with DNA, in general
Messing about with the human genome, in general,
Deliberate creation of SARS CoV2 virus (and/or things intended to be very much like it)
The disease such a virus may or may not have caused
The pandemic which that disease may or may not have triggered
Unprecedented actions to control effected populations, obstensibly to curb the ostensible pandemic
More messing about with human genome with experimental genetic vaccines

Consequences of all of the above

There ya have it

The biggest Clinical Trials ever, of the most sophisticated genetic experiment ever : Homo Sapiens.

[D Benton Smith]

Addendum:
The individuals and organizations of the World Economic Forum may, indeed sound like space alien elitest power intoxicated hubristic wack jobs, but I would remind everyone that they do represent the vast VAST majority of the world’s money and insitutional authority. Why in the world would anyone NOT believe that they are sincere in their what they have said they intend to do? Have their actions aligned with their stated intentions or not ?

That’s a rhetorical question, of course. We all know why because we are the one’s refusing to believe plain text, looking away from the body bags, and waffling turning the bodies of helpless children into little spike protein factories.

[D Benton Smith]

A note to and about our favorite professional pundits and opinion leaders.

To not believe in explicit conspiracy is to not believe in the human activity of planning as a means of getting what you want. To actually dismis a possibility merely because it offends one’s sensitivities is a good way to find things out the hard way and too late to do much about it.

Sifting through the hypotheses is not easy, and made more difficult still by our own filters (which can be faulty) and the literary style of the source material.

Just stick to the actual FACTS (even skimpy or weird ones) and the scientific method. While you’re at it, also remember the wisdom of Arthur Conan Doyle. When you have eliminated the impossible then what remains (regardless of how improbable) is the best answer you’re going to come up with. Act accordingly if you’ve got the nerve, stomach and need to.

[D Benton Smith]

That which does not kill us
becomes The New Normal

[D Benton Smith]

@ Dr. D
“JMG’s synopsis of CV is totally objective, passionless, and correct as usual. We disagree only in that although the LOWER levels of bureaucracy, incompetence, and graft all are accidental and don’t know, yet my perception is there remains a higher level that is well aware and exploits these weakness while fighting tirelessly to keep these failures not reformed and well-entrenched year after year to exploit them again after.”

Perfectly summarized. I was going to make similar comment but with easily 10 times more words. Thankyou.

[D Benton Smith]

@ Absolute Galore

re : Fauci warns more severe COVID-19 variant could emerge as cases rise: US ‘could really be in trouble’

I have a line to an individual in charge of a hospital Covid Ward on the Northwest Coast and early indications are that the predicted pathogen has already arrived, about 2-3 weeks ago in their neck of the woods. Serious cases increased from single digits per week during the last few months and is now all-beds-filled over the course of the 3 weeks. This applied firstly to the approx 60 beds , all told, in the smaller/rural surrounding facilities that the Regional hospital was using to hide the problem, but over the weekend Regional filled up too.
Patients are vaxxed and unvaxxed in equal proportion, tending to be younger and much healthier than previous norms, but the most alarming trend is that many do not to treatment with antibodies. There have been several rapid onsets and deaths of otherwise very healthy patients. Staff at that unit have over a year on the ‘Front Lines’ , so to speak , and are seeing it as a significant and serious change from what they were dealing with compared to last year.

[D Benton Smith]

Just took one for the team by suffering through the entire Sam Harris / Eric Topol podcast of shame. Oh my gaawd ! It was SO bad, so thinly veiled insult and malice that this no time to be inappropriately polite it. No one should buy the hype that either of these smarmy jerks is actually smart. I mean , seriously. They are so transparently FAKE .

The only way Topol could have published anything legitimately scientific is if he coercively stole it AND (and I hope Tony isn’t offended by the comparison) he is like Fauci’s dim-witted evil twin, complete with mafioso dialect. Harris’ touted “genius” (despite purchased praise to the contrary ) is simply divorced from reality. He is an actor playing the role of smart and humble, reading a juvenile bullshit script to wax eloquently about complete fantasy as though abstract nonsense is equal to fact. Totally mistaking the map for the terrain, and about as conscious as the SciFi superdupercomputer he wants to plug us into.

I’m serious. They’re both as phoney as a whoopie cushion, just not as funny.

[D Benton Smith]

Suggested sign at all points of entry to places of manadtory masking, testing, vaccination, censorship and general holliganism :

STAY SAFE
NOT HERE

[Author]

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