D Benton Smith
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@JohnDay “The universe in space-time is fatter than it is long. Got it.”
[with acknowledgment to the late Richard Pryor for his stand up routine of two studs peeing into a creek behind the roadhouse/bar]
“This creek is COLD!”
“Yeah. And it DEEP, too.”@zerosum “The 5 Stages of Acceptance of Reality.
(If you don’t have dementia)”And for those who DO have dementia, let us not forget that there are stages BELOW the stages that start at “Denial” and count upwards.
Counting DOWNWARDS from Denial (in descending order) there are:
-1 Overwhelmed (problem too enormous to even attempt solution)
-2 Anxiety (chronic feeling that it is probably already too late)
-3 Dread (expectation of total catastrophic failure)
-4 Horror (inaccessibly vague and “unattached” sense of impending unimaginable badness)
-5 Oblivious (actual or emulated death and nonexistence of self)That emotion is part of the natural and healthy progression that is sometimes called The 5 Stages of Grief, which could just as easily and accurately be called the 5 Stages of Acceptance of Reality. Hang tough, stick with it, and eventually one can accept that there are certain realities that have been SO bad that we chose and preferred not to believe that they are , simply, real.
Definition of truss : a medical appliance for the treatment of rupture or hernia.
Seems about right, then.
Thank Murphy we Americans are as incompetent at war and Empire as we seem to be at everything else. Can you imagine if Yankee “Powers That Be” had the staying power of the long haulers that kept springing up from Asia/Eurasia (average 2,000 years @)?
You are aware of course that the openly self professed purpose of the channel “Russian Media Matters” is to counter what its originators consider to be Russian state propaganda? Just click the “About” tab on their You Tube Channel.
I give them top marks for such “Full Disclosure” of their position and purpose, and pretty high marks for content quality, but they ARE propagandist in nature.
If you feel that your personal sense of irony and grip on reality are strong enough to withstand frontal assault upon the very core concept of reason itself, then I recommend paying a visit to https://www.eeas.europa.eu/_en , pet project of it’s nominal boss, Josep Borrel.
Brace yourself.
Question: When did the term “conspiracy theory” enter the lexicon as a common pejorative?
Answer: When the theory was the truth.
With all due respect to Schopenhauer, his famously quotable observation would better read, “All truth passes through five stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second it violently opposed. Third it is Fact Checked. Fourth it is declared to be conspiracy theory. Lastly it is admitted into evidence at the War Crimes Trials.”
When time and necessity are of the essence, however, all five stages can be satisfactorily substituted with the single stage of justifiable homicide by reason of self defense.
I just wish Sir Walter Scott were alive to witness on the world stage just how right he was in writing , “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” [side note: I originally thought that it was Shakespeare who had written that, too, but Google set me straight.]
The shucking and jiving is so MAGNIFICENTLTLY over the top that in order to avoid being convicted for one major felony, leading bad guys must publicly confess to a different major felony.
The irony of proving to a bot that I am a human sends my thought processes into a combination tailspin/endless loop.
There are lessons to be learned from an armed mugging. The remorseless criminal, for example, learns that by simply sticking a gun into somebody’s face they can boldly take pretty much anything that they want, nine times out of ten, and the victims learn that there is almost nothing people won’t do to say alive.
Another lesson is that it works on the grand scale very much the same as it does on the small.
The entire world was just mugged (crime in progress) like never before in human history because multiple new ultra-high technologies . . . coupled with ‘nothing-new-here’ bad old fashioned psychopathy . . . . gave the criminals overwhelming advantages such as never before known in human history either.
Yet another big lesson (and there are many lessons in this tragic debacle) is that life is largely a numbers game. Most violent crime does not end in immediate death. Many do die, of course, but most do not. Some victims escape physical injury altogether, while many others are merely wounded, and everyone who doesn’t get killed immediately finds themselves in a new situation that is so unprecedented and almost incomprehensibly complicated that they remain stunned for a very long time.
Ultimately, as the fog of war clears to some degree (and it does gradually clear as the surviving combatants become battle hardened) there are choices to be made. And those choices shall be made, as well as implemented, in ways that have never before played out at this scale either.
The species of which each and every one of us is a working part, is seriously flawed. This fact is utterly undeniable (although our capacity for denial is monumentally robust).
The “soft robot” (homo sapiens) which we more or less compulsively (and erroneously!) identify with as our “selves” is proven capable of acquiring sufficient power to maim or destroy itself, at the same time that it is NOT YET PROVEN WISE ENOUGH to manage that power sufficiently well enough to avoid permanently maiming or extincting the species itself. Nuclear cataclysm and genetic meddling are but two of many other ways that humankind can off itself.
It is the “sapiens” part of the genomic nomenclature that seems to be the problem. I would be interested in hearing your personal take on that question. Are we sapient enough to make the cut? Or is the on-board “organically based artificial intelligence computer [brain]” we haul around in our noggins doomed to fuck it up every time unless managed by external (NOT organically built-in & NOT materialistically on-board) spirit based intervention?
My personal opinion (borne out by the current level of violent idiocy extant) is that we have slightly exceeded the limit on how “smart” an organically based “AI” can get before Artificial Intelligence’s innate LACK of spirit based value judgment predictably results in catastrophically terminal “bad judgments” which inevitably and invariably end in biological extinction . . . one way or the other.
Thankfully, conclusion of the experiment is not merely close at hand. It is literally in its final stages as we speak.
Homo Sap shall either evolve, or end. Those who learn the important lessons from that event shall have moved closer to God, and those who do not shall continue on their Express Route to the other place.
All aboard!
Tulsi Tattles, but not enough to get in trouble.
She said (and I quote), “I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness (etc.) ”
I have waited a full day for Tulsi’s proclamation to be “translated” from political rhetoric into plain -speak by the few remaining Americans still capable of thinking their way out of a wet paper bag.
So far, the silence is so profound that flea fart might waken the dead.
What she said . . . . in a politically dramatic but otherwise useless manner . . . . is that the currently ruling Hegemonic Imperial United States of America is in charge of NOTHING. It’s just another tool of a “ an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness….” .
Well tools, are themselves in charge of approximately fuck-all, so please notice that her noble proclamation tells us NOTHING actionable or new about any specific person or entity who would need to be shot, hung or revolutioned OUT of being in charge . In fact, she didn’t say actually ANYTHING that we haven’t known since Dwight Eisenhower’s Farewell Address in 1961.
Sure would have been nice if she had sorta penciled in a few of the missing pieces of the Organizational Chart , but that would make her a tattle tale . . . and deader than Kennedy . . . so don’t hold your breath waiting for any “big reveal” in that department. I don’t blame her for being scared, I’m just saying that she IS scared . . . . too scared to be effective.
Long story short: bad guys are in charge and will remain in charge until somebody MAKES them NOT in charge. Jawboning about making that happen with yet ANOTHER bogus “election” bores me beyond tears.
Like George Carlin said, “If voting made a difference they wouldn’t let you do it”, so PUH-LEEZ give my eyeballs a break from the wasted exercise. The bad guys have the officially legal institutional power of the misnomered democratic republic of the United States, sewed up tighter than a banker’s anus. To change that is going to require a change of gambit, not more rigged “elections”.
I like Tulsi a bunch, but in terms of meaningfully changing anything she’s just decoration on somebody else’s game board.
Well it’s round-about and indirect, but if it gets the job done then what the Hell, right?
For a mere 2 or 3 three grand ($US equivalent) per month per head, NATO is vacuuming up the terrorist dregs from the Middle East and depositing them in the front lines of Ukraine as cannon fodder, where the Russians send them on to their final destination with heavy artillery.
Diabolical humor at its darkest. Only Satan could laugh.
@V.Arnold
In my long life I have probably know dozens of military people (men and women) who would qualify to be called heroes in the sense that they had voluntarily placed their own lives at extreme risk in violent, mortally dangerous combat situations in order to defend the lives of others, but only two of them are known to me personally, by name, and for certain. One was my uncle, Carl Martin, and the other was my Dad, G.W.Smith.
I won’t regale anyone with their stories, but Uncle Carl served as a Navy Corpsman to Marine combat troops in Vietnam for early 7 years. Dad was a USAF pilot in WW2 flying out of Northern Australia who was shot down and severely wounded on three occasions, one of which involved close quarter hand-to-hand combat in order to survive.
Both men were gregarious, cheerful, sociable, funny, tolerant and peaceful almost to the extreme. They both knew what violence was, and they absolutely hated it. It was their LAST resort
VietnamVet posted the following situation summary at the very end of yesterday’s stuff, and it occurred to me that many readers might miss it for that reason. The easy fix is for me to just do this. . . .
“There is no doubt that WWIII between the Russian and Western Empires has started. The conflict is escalating and is probably approaching the “no holds barred” stage. There is no diplomacy. There is no way out. One side or the other will lose, or everybody loses in a global nuclear war including China that is the last functioning Empire left.
Ukraine is carrying the war to Russia now. Russia must mobilize and create a new Red Army to defend of the Motherland. The Western Empire is so wrapped up in money, individualism and profiteering that they simply do not see the energy shortages and the collapse of the financial debt pyramid coming this winter. The West has nothing to mobilize. Industry is gone or shutting down due to energy shortages/high prices. Westerners are overweight, sick, and broke. The only alternative to the looming use of tactical nuclear weapons is an armistice and DMZ. The current politicians who got us into this mess are not going to get us out of it. All I can do, personally, is vote against all incumbents in this November elections.
The Coronavirus & Monkeypox Pandemics, WWIII, and the Food and Energy Shortages all have the same root cause. A death cult that thinks that they will always be safe and wealthy are pulling the strings. Russia is the last source of cheap available energy and resources left. They cannot profit without it.
There are no governments remaining that are run by and for the people.”
Wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve been awakened from slumber by one thought or another which came to me, apparently on its own, with a sort of “address tag” attached to it that says, “This is something for [fill in blank with a person’s name].”
This one’s for you, so I hope it finds you as well as can be expected under the circumstances of your recent serious loss.
I want to encouragingly remind you that all of us (BIG number) are at all times and circumstances awash in a sea of proffered help from others but tend only to hear or be aware of that which arrives in expected forms or “pitched” (musical/communication sense of the word) in the manner that we are most ready, willing and able to receive.
Forms and notions that were fine for one set of circumstances ring hollow or pointless under more trying conditions. It’s not that they were wrong, it’s that they are not right for “now”.
That’s why it is so important that we all speak our best thoughts, and listen most attentively, because somebody out there is communicating at this very moment, precisely what will actually help you under your current, real, circumstances.
And it never hurts to remember that everybody around here (“here” being TAE) loves you to pieces.
The Jews again, huh?
So the only begotten Son of the singular Jewish God (and a devout rabbi, no less!) was what, then, a Presbyterian?
What makes Derren Brown such a wonderful mentalist is his conscience-free aptitude for telling whatever lie is necessary to persuade the “mark” that he’s telling the truth. Once the mark believes the lie, the con is complete, and in show-biz the audience is always the mark (and willing to pay good money to stay that way.)
@aspnaz asked , “What do you think of this?” [possibly missing people]
I think we should have a role call and count heads. Everyone who used to be here and is now (prematurely) not here, please raise their hands.
“Why does time go forwards and not backwards?”
Shucks, that’s an easy one. Time goes forwards because to have it run in re-wind mode would be insufferably boring. You would already know every single thing that had ever happened ever, but you would also know how the movie ended.
North Korea has every reason to place less than zero trust in the West. In the last serious encounter between Western forces and North Korea the West carpet bombed the entire country without the slightest regard for noncombatant deaths or attempting to limit bombs to military targets.
The West has done nothing in the intervening decades to suggest a change of heart ( change of heartlessness?).
North Korea is given the choice between colonial slavery or violent death, and has opted to risk death by putting up a fight. Good on them!
@JohnDay
The WEF & WHO could work that “accelerated-end-of-life-care” thing into a new slogan for hawking their wares:
“Lifetime care, fast!”
Any Cabal genuinely intent upon world domination would at least attempt to insinuate it’s tentacles of Power into the top levels of its major competitors. Otherwise it’s intent to dominate “the World” can’t really be taken seriously as genuine. I mean, after all, what kind of obsessive world dominator complacently settles for second or third place? The game is KING of the hill, not Second Banana of the hill.
For this patently obvious reason it is, in my opinion, a VERY safe bet that in any big fight there are representatives of BOTH (or more) sides placed as high as possible in the power structures of the OTHER side(s) . . . and keeping that more or less treasonous fact more or less top secret for damned good reasons.
So for THAT (see preceding paragraph) patently obvious reason I sincerely recommend that no one trust any ( repeat, ANY) hierarchical power structure, because there are only two possibilities. Either the structure is so ineffective and irrelevant that no one has bothered to infiltrate and subvert it, or the structure is so powerful and important that it has already been infiltrated and subverted six ways from Sunday. Good luck on figuring out all of the skullduggery.
This line of strategic reasoning invariably leads to a rather cynical, but nonetheless true, conclusion:
ultimately the battle in the shared arena is between institutional (structured) power of EVERY kind, and truly sovereign individuals.Big fight. Neither side can win without (by that very fact of victory) eliminating the other side and thus bringing the ENTIRE game to an ignominious end. If there is no “other side” then there is no game. It s very very VERY unlikely for that to happen any time soon.
The contest is authority vs sovereignty. I recommend striking some sort of acceptable balance between your personal sovereignty and all of those authority structures currently telling you what you absolutely have to do “or else”.
So, let the games begin (or continue, or whatever) if that’s what you think is the best thing do at this time.
Betting the continued survival of the species , which would of course include the gambler(s) , on an untested solution to an as yet unidentified problem of unproved origin has such an infinitesimally small probability of survival that even permitting it to be be substantially attempted is incontrovertible proof that those who allow it are as crazy as those who attempt it.
I would compare it to passengers in a lifeboat passively allowing one or more of the other occupants to take a fire ax to the bottom hull of the boat to drain the bilges.
Reality has an extremely harsh manner of responding to that level of crazy.
Has anyone else put this up yet? I grabbed it from Kunstler, but it has to be going hyper-viral as we speak. A U.S. patriot air traffic YouTuber going by the handle of “MonkeyWerx” lays out the irrefutable evidence that it was the US who blew up Nordtsream, and even draws nicely illustrated diagram of HOW.
It is a “must see”. Here’s the link : https://www.monkeywerxus.com/blog/the-nord-stream-2-pipeline-sabotage .
I have more to say about this event, but will put it in a fresh comment.
“They just don’t make cannon fodder like they used to.”
That is a one liner suitable for the Ages. It belongs in some kind of Hall of Fame and is now an official part of The English Language.
Notice that the countries who voted to let Ukraine into NATO are the MOST dependent on importing Russian natural gas (ranging from 59% to 99% !). Makes perfect sense, then, from a purely financial and utterly EVIL standpoint. Stealing Russia , lock , stock and barrel, would pay pretty well.
@AlexanderCarpenter
I recall a multi-panel-cartoon from some magazine back in the day. Panel #1 showed a door-to-door canvasser (clipboard and questionnaire at the ready) knocking on an apartment door. Panel #2 shows a slightly scruffy hippie/beatnik type answering the door, and the survey taker reciting his pitch, “Hello, I’m from the Acme Good-Cause Polling Company, and I wonder if you would take the time to answer a few questions.” Panel #3 shows the hippie laconically replying, “I’m sorry I can’t help you, man, but I don’t have any answers. All I’ve got is questions.”
Honest to goodness Scientists, if they’re being good and honest, are like the hippie in the doorway. All they’ve really got at the end of their quest for answers is just a bunch more questions.
@AFewKnowTheTruth regarding energy #117490
Excellent essay. That’s the most concise, cogent, accessible and communicative summery on the topic that I have read anywhere to date.
If I was exceptionally skilled at skullduggery (which I’m NOT) I think the way I would go about it is to look around for some fool who wanted to be “Boss” and then become that narcissistic idiot’s indispensable paymaster and adviser. I think the job is called “fall guy”, and although the pay and perks are awesome, the “fall” part of the job description can REALLY suck.
Remarkable!
People are just beginning to understand that there are no leaders this side of Russia except the official gaggle of elected/appointed ones now so exclusively intent upon their personal murder/suicide pact with the Devil in exchange for wealth, power and the immorality of the grave.
There is no cavalry about to save us, or perhaps I should more accurately say that WE are the only cavalry and practically NOBODY wants to admit it..
Anyone around here looking for a field promotion in the cavalry?
(A quiet offer made recently to British Prime Minister Liz Truss and her trusty side kick “money genius”, Kwasi Kwarteng )
Hey there Liz, Kwasi. How’s it goin,? Say, how would you like to be rich, powerful and famous? Want to become millionaires and hold high political office? Yeah? Good choice! Here’s the deal. All ya gotta do to get all that wealth, power and fame is to hold this bag of English money (Pound Stirling, gilts, etc.) for a minute . . . . and I’ll get right back to you in a day or two with all the rewards. “
The Western Empire’s “money magic” has lost it’s mojo. It was doing its damnedest to apply the lessons contained in that hundred year old best selling re-hash of much older ideas, “The Richest Man In Babylon,” only to discover too late that the BIGGEST lesson in the book is NOT the idea of “making your gold work for you”. Nope. Gold does no work (duh!). The biggest lesson from “The Richest Man In Babylon,” is that by “making their money work for them” Babylon wiped itself from the face of the earth and today exists only in near myth as a fragment of people’s dimmest memory. I mean to say, Babylon is, indeed, “Gone, baby, gone!”
The so-called “magic” in “The Richest Man In Babylon” was based on the truly insane notion that it is possible to make a thing called “financial profit” by moving around an idea called “money” in clever interest-returning ways, and that by acquiring a lot of “money” in this “profitable” way a person could acquire STACKS of “money” and thereby have the “power” to tell everybody else what to do (regardless of what everybody else WANTED to do). This delusory (suicidal!) goal is called “Becoming Rich and Powerful”, and it was pumped and touted throughout the entire civilization as the best idea since sliced bread.
Well, step aside Babylon, because there is a new suicide-by-money-magic dead empire on its way to your corner of Hell. It has gone by many names, down through the ages, with a few of the most recent labels being The United States Government, and The British Crown, or the nasty “partnership” of its World Economic Forum. Names don’t matter. It is knowable by what it DOES. I call it “The Cabal” , others call it Globalist, whatever, but what it DOES is try by fair means and foul is to try to get something for nothing. It’s most recent manifestation, at any rate, along with its bastard offspring (US, UK, Aus/NZ/Oceania, etc.) is on it’s way to oblivion, so scootch over, Babylon and make a little room.
NOTE:
I’m not so naive as to think it isn’t going to start all over and happen again, starting now. After all, freebies and something-for-nothin and windfall profit are such TEMPTING LIES to believe in. No doubt we will err again, but this time PLEASE can’t we all try not to do anything QUITE that awful this time? Meanwhile, there’s a lot of real and actual WORK to do if we ever again want to have enough necessary and valuable products to go around, so that’s what I intend to concentrate on hence forward.To be chipped into yesterday’s brief discussion of ego:
And what is the EGO? Is it the soul? Or is it the bagged up collection of mostly fetid garbage that the soul drags along like some homeless “bag person” wandering the desolation of Los Angeles? I suppose the soul does this for lack of anything else that it can point to proudly and say, “That’s me! That’s all my STUFF. Pretty impressive, huh?”
A brief comment about, and condemnation of, about pomp and circumstance.
The practice has been with us for a VERY long time.
It was probably “invented” from the observation that small children still trust adults and are therefore unduly impressed by adult’s adding seriously unfathomable irrelevant and obfuscating nonsense to impress small children with the notion that what the adult is saying or doing is thereby made very very “truer” and “importanter” . The way I look at it is that adding irrelevant gestures and flashy decorations to bullshit does not magically purify the bullshit into truth. It simply refines it into PURE bullshit.
Romans, Brits and Nazis are past masters, but they certainly aren’t historically alone, and prettty much every government that ever was has given the practice a serious shot.
It REALLY pisses me off because it is meant to distract attention from what is ACTUALLY being said and REALLY being done, and is therefore PRIMARILY intended to deceive. Genuine expressions of spontaneous joy are better than fine, they are wonderful. Cold hearted pomp and circumstance is pure unadulterated evil.
Pomp and circumstance is NOT a nice thing, so don’t get distracted by the Burlesque theater. Filter out the bullshit and look and listen to what they are actually saying and doing.
That sweet little old lady the Limeys just deservedly consigned to Hell (Queen Elizabeth) during her much-too-lengthy life green lighted and signed off on the mercenary murder of MILLIONS of people at the hands of her Empire for the sole purpose of making more money and staying an empire. No excuses. And now her equally evil spawn Charles is gearing up to finish the job by willfully engineering the deaths of 90% of humanity. Pretend that isn’t so.
Pomp and circumstance be DAMNED! Where there is smoke it is wise to look out for fire, and where there is pomp and circumstance it is prudent to beware of premeditated cold blooded murder.
