[D Benton Smith]

Please allow me to make my thinking and position absolutely clear. I am officially and publicly pulling the Emergency Brake/ Panic Alert cord on this choo choo.

Here’s my most recent email to a friend, in which I just say it straight. Might as well say it straight to you, as well.

My adrenals will not allow me to give a flying fuck about the denizens of TAE arguing vehemently and in great detail about a disaster that was OVER WITH months ago.  They are just too gawd damned far back from the ongoing real time events for me to give the tiniest little shit about what they think.  Whatever it is they think, they should have thunk it 4 years ago.  Why blather about it now ?   They are worse than a mere distraction.  They are a threat to your physical survival because they would have you blather instead of think and act in response to a real and present danger.  
We are days,  a few weeks at the most,  from the most stunning Blitzkrieg of draconically authoritarian lawfare in human history.  I suggest that it’s a pretty good time to be thinking about that  instead of Twitter and Bitcoin.  Laws are about to be swiftly imposed and enforced which will restrict your movement and participation in such fundamental aspects of your daily life as leaving your house, buying groceries or emailing a friend.  You are about to be forced by law ( and the need to eat, shelter and move around)  to accept an mRNA vaccine that will change the entire human genome, forever,  despite the complete and utter absence of knowledge about possible undesirable consequences. Your knowledge, opinion and vote have just been proved to mean absolutely nothing . mRNA has never been used on humans, and there are ZERO long term studies of effects in either the short or long term . Extreme violence on a large scale is unavoidable .  Large numbers of people will resist the government forcing them to isolate,  lock-down, wear a mask, take a risky vaccine, cross a state line, get on an airplane, or buy groceries  without an “vaccine passport” .  Nothing ( except perhaps by Divine intervention . . . and I am not being facetious) stands in the way of the authority to make and impose those laws , , ,   and yet those are the laws which the Pence administration has already promised that it will implement immediately upon his inauguration.
It is well past the time to confront , like an adult,  precisely how you are going to respond to each of these challenging developments ,  because they are happening.
This ain’t America no more, Boz.  The America we think of when the word comes up is, is going underground.  Topsiders and slowpokes are about to be rubbed out.

[D Benton Smith]

It is sinking in very slowly (very very VERY slowly, in fact) that the events of the past few weeks have culminated in the fall of the United States as both a nation and as a world power. The Republic of the Unite Sates of America now holds even less meaning than those also meaningless (and annoying) little US flag-lets that flutter inanely from one Coast to the other. The republic for which it stood is factually gone. I do not mean this rhetorically, or in some other semi-abstract sense. I mean it in the literal, pragmatic and prosaic sense. All three branches of government have now been highly publicly demonstrated to be totally feckless and powerless ( except by simple obstruction.) Nothing that any of them say or do at this point means a damned thing to over half of the country. The final indignity, in which the Office of The President of the United States of America ( arguably the most powerful empire of all time) was denied access to the protections of the First Amendment and due process . . . was just a mean spirited flourish at the end.

Making the rules up as one goes along to accomplish the agenda of the moment is now the official operating basis of the USA, and by extension the World, which pivots upon the actions of the USA, These “no rules” rules will of course also apply to the morons who are doing it . . . but that hasn’t occurred to them yet. They’re riding too high to hear that the death knell of the Trump administration will soon be tolling for them, as well.

There are now no rules other than the rules of raw power. Civilization has taken a backward stumble of a thousand years.

And by the way. I do hope you are paying attention to the fact that a significant number of high testosterone young males are about to start shooting the joint up. I know that you personally eschew violence, but just in case you’ve lived this long without noticing, there are one hell of a lot a people who don’t feel or think that way at all. They like violence just fine. It’s just part of daily life. Some do it for the fucking fun of it. Who’s going to stop ’em now , eh ? Who is going to risk their life protecting assholes from harm? Nobody, that’s who. When there are no rules and no country then friends and allies protect their friends and allies. The rest of you assholes are on your own . . . present company excepted, of course. I’m just using the vernacular for stylistic purposes)

[D Benton Smith]

January 6, 2021 . Supposed to be a real big day. Will it be ?

If Team Trump feeds its supporters nothing but another nothing burger on the much hyped January 6 Wild Times Rally in DC , then I think a lot of them are going to puke him out. At the very least there must be the release of heretofore hush-hush information about the so-called Black Hats. Deeds must be exposed, names must be spoken, the fucking details must be detailed.
If that doesn’t happen, after four years of promises to drain the swamp, and at a crucial moment when the eyes of the world are laser focused on that singular event in Washington . . . then that’s that. Between now and the day when the Trump Presidency constitutionally ends (Jan 20) there is no better time to present his case to the world and capture public opinion. No better venue for staging an end-run around media censorship, and delivering the truth directly to the people of the world (and America in particular) about how the cheaters are cheating them, and who the cheaters really are (by name).
Can we the people fix this mess with that information ? Maybe, maybe not. But one things is certain : that without that information (and/or with a Black Hat controlled White House, Senate and House of Representatives) the people of the United States are headed straight into a bloody civil war, which can only or ever spill round the world.

[D Benton Smith]

madamski

To quote an old witchy woman from the Ozarks,

“All solutions are experimental, and all results are information.”

[D Benton Smith]

mRNA vaccines are the biggest and riskiest genetic engineering experiment of all time.

Diamonds aren’t forever, genes are. So-called ‘Messenger RNA’ ( mRNA) based vaccines are designed to alter genetic code. So, put those two ideas together and see what you come up with . You got it . Forever is a long time. Anything introduced by that mRNA into the main code DNA of the cell is now part of that cell’s blue print. If it’s something good, hey, swell ! But if it’s not so good . . . or even deadly, tough luck.
So-called “messenger” RNA takes a bit of genetic code and places it in the cell’s DNA so that every time that cell replicates itself the “newly revised” DNA is replicated right along with it. Like, forever. Or at least until that line of cells dies out completely . As in “end of the line”. A typical vaccine delivers a few billion of those little makers in one go. Allowing an average of 7 days between human cell divisions, and just thumb-nail the arithmetic for how long it takes for the recipient to be a whole new and improved version of themselves, the version with permanently modified DNA throughout their organism..
No matter how great the odds are for only mostly good results , the odds for getting a bad result damned well better be absolute zero, or else you are toast. Think of it as playing Russian roulette with a really big revolver that holds millions upon millions of empty chambers and only a few dozen bullets ( the odds in your favor look GREAT!) . . . . . BUT you must now pull the trigger non-stop, over and over again, forever. Oops. Better call your bookie and cancel that bet because the odds just took a major U-Turn for the worse.
You get the picture.
So the Covid-19 mRNA vaccines might be just fine, or maybe not. Who knows ? That’s why it’s called an experiment. If it doesn’t work out, well then a few million (or a few hundred million) people might die prematurely, but if it does work (to their way of thinking at least) then the Gateway to the glorious future of injectable genetic engineering is thrown wide open. Wahoo ! Jillionaires would call that a ” Win-Win” situation.
It isn’t, of course. By which I mean to say clearly that it is not the imagined ” win-win” that they believe it is. Notice that I say they believe it is rather than think it is. If they were actually thinking they would see that the unstoppable chain of causal-effect events they’re setting in motion eventually includes them, too. Them as individual human creatures. It’s their DNA too, ya know?
They understand the science of it just well enough to support an unwarranted belief that the experiment will get them more of what they want. And they are simply too stupid to do the math which proves beyond shadow of doubt that the experiment (when carried out) will result in the exact opposite.
They will lose everything of value that they ever wanted, because, like I said, diamonds aren’t forever. Genes are.

[D Benton Smith]

Recently read (elsewhere) how Israel just offed another Iranian nuclear bomb “scientist” , by means of a remote controlled machine gun. Nice.

At first I thought, meh , they could have saved time and money using one Tesla and a hand grenade.

And then I thought Oh My Frigging Gawd. That’s right. It would be as cheap and easy as a US politician .

Self driving vehicles make door-to-door delivery of the “nasty item of your choice” way too cheap and easy .

Too-High Tech has only just begun to deliver its manifold gifts. The coming century should be exciting.

[D Benton Smith]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has to be the most visible aggressive proponent of this Modern Monetary Theory bullbuzz going around lately, and I gotta admit it does sound tempting at first blush.
I mean the filthy rich have been doing it for themselves like forever, right, so why not for the rest of us, too ?
Her sales pitch , boiled down to its basic goo goes like this :  It doesn’t matter how much “borrowed into existence” debt is created because we can just fire up the good ol’ counterfeit machine and print up as many Yankee Dollahs as we need to pay it all off . That’s what we’ve been doing for decades, and despite a few glitches (like the crash of ’08 !) its been working great for us back here in the USSA.
So far (as in,   “up til now” )  however, it looks like all of this free money has all gone to the rich. It goes to them as “loans” (low-to-no interest , by the way) who launder it by “investing” in worthless imaginary shit like Apple or Microsoft stock , or gazillion dollar palaces in the Hamptons that can ALWAYS and FOREVER  be bought today for 1 dollah and sold tomorrow for 2 (netting a nice profit, over and over again).  Any shortfall in that scam is made up for by flogging the peasants to work harder, or cutting their wages. 
The fantasy she is selling is to convince the peasants that they, too,  can get in on the free money long-con .   Of course anyone with a brain cell  intuitively  knows there’s something wrong with that picture, BUT  they sure would like some of that free money for themselves, too . Like , why should the rich get it all ?  AND  shit, we’ve gotten away with it this far, haven’t we?  Why not for a bit longer ?  And if the whole shebang IS all going to come crashing down anyway then why shouldn’t   WE   (poor folk) get in on some free buckets of honey  before they’re all gone ?
AOC presents a pretty compelling argument, insofar as the poor folk are concerned, but there are a few itsy bitsy little flaws (like mass starvation, world war and certain death) but , hey, nothing’s perfect right ? Here is what’s really wrong with her sales pitch :

1.   First and foremost : the rich guys who write the rules and make the laws will  never ever   let any more poor folk in on the racket to any greater degree than the poor folk are already in on the skim.  In other words, she can not get such legislation passed, and so the  temptation she dangles is just another politician-style lie to get herself elected.
2.   Unbeknownst to the poor starving masses in America (who sincerely do picture themselves as exploited victims)  America’s middle and lower and lowest classes are themselves beneficiaries of the scam already .  They’re just not “math aware” enough to see it. You see It is not America’s poor who are being ripped off. It is the people outside our borders who are being bled dry.  They are forced to borrow worthless dollars (fake money)  and pay it back with REAL money , REAL work, and REAL  products. 
Everybody in America ( including the poor) have been enjoying the benefits of this free ride ever since the US Dollar became  the World Reserve Currency in 1944 (treaty of Bretton Woods, ratified by the 44 largest countries, including the USSR). If you wonder what the “financial system” is, well that system (Bretton Woods) is the system. It made it a legally enforceable fact that international debt would be denominated in U.S. Dollars. It made the dollar King.
Don’t break your brain on this point. It’s way more simple than it’s made to appear. Basically, if I loan you dollars then you can’t pay me back in wampum. You must get your hands on dollars to pay me back if I say so. And the courts of the world will back me up it. No exceptions.
3.   No one knows the upper limit of just how far (or for how much longer)  this ridiculous ripoff can continue before the true victims  (i.e. the rest of the world) reach the end of their rope and declare  “No mas ! ” But there is one thing they all know and agree upon :  The world is teetering on the brink of that “system”  breaking under the load of too much real money is being demanded from real producers (i.e. the rest of the world)  to pay back too much fake money to counterfeiters  (i.e. the USA). 
In other words,  no way  will the powers that be hasten ‘The End Of The World As We Know’ It by giving freebies to ungrateful poor people. Those same poor people, however, might soon hit the end of their rope, and put an end to the world of the rich anyway. In other words, revolt.
4. THEREFORE AND ON THE OTHER HAND :   Rich folks might  be persuaded to pay poor folks not to revolt,  and that is the card that AOC is playing .   China would like to see this  because it will speed up dooms day for the USA’s hegemonic empire. That’s why China has been so enthusiastically bank rolling every Democrat, publisher and commie agitator they can get their hands on by any and ever means, fair or foul. Buy, bribe, blackmail, trick, persuade, fake, or do it themselves and pretend to be someone else. Makes no difference to the them, just as long as it works.
The Chinese Communist Party knows beyond the slightest shadow of any doubt that they cannot rule the world until the US Dollar Reserve Currency does NOT  rule the world.
5. So, probably yeah. We could all get free money for a while  (just not very much and not for very long ) . . . BUT it will trigger the true end of US hegemony and hand the world over to the CCP on a china platter. Pun intended.

 Conclusion :  If you get free money, use it to learn Mandarin.

[D Benton Smith]

@zerosum in reference, you wrote : “I believe that covid19 was around before test were around to identify why people were getting sick and dying. China should be given thanks for doing the work and telling us about the danger of covid19. ”

And I believe in the Tooth Fairy. At last you and I have something in common.

[D Benton Smith]

Why is China still getting an unprotested free pass for it’s (nonsense) Covid-19 statistics ?
The numbers the CCP is posting are nuttier than absurd. Crazier than insane. They are literally IMPOSSIBLE , and make no sense whatever no matter how hard one might try to make sense of them. Apparently, Covid-19 has vanished from China altogether.

Here are the possibilities :

1. They found the 100 % effective cure for Covid-19 in February of 2019 and administered the cure to their 1.4 billion people before March.
2. They secretly erected an invisible virus proof bubble over their country and deep cleaned everything under the bubble ( Including people )
3. They are telling the biggest and longest lie since Hitler asked “What Jews ?”

[D Benton Smith]

Why vaccinate a million Chinese against Covid-19 when according to the CCP China has been virtually free of the disease since March 2019 ?

Just askin’ is all.

[D Benton Smith]

Hi @Ilargi

reference : “They’re killing off your culture”

Well they’re certainly trying , that’s for sure. Big mistake, though, because it’s a fools errand. Ya can’t kill off a thing that does not exist. We Americans don’t have “a” culture , and we never did. Before Columbus there were literally thousands of tribes with at least hundreds of cultures , and soon after the first Europeans jacked up the total by a dozen or so then the floodgates opened to immigrants from every nook and cranny of the whole friggin planet ! Like it or not, for better or worse, the “culture” of the USA is a mind boggling mashup of every race, ever culture, every sane and crazy variety of human being that there is or has been since 1492. There are no exceptions. There are staggeringly huge numbers of people here from literally everywhere. That’s a done deal. It was baked into our tutti fruitti LONG ago, border wall or no.
So the Globalist bastards think they can homogenize , brainwash and pacify THAT kind of a pots puree of humanity ? Right. About as much chance as the Hubbardites have for “Clearing the Planet.” Hubris is a wonderful thing. It makes the insane feel good about themselves just before they commit suicide by delusional grandiosity.
There may be trouble. Hell, I’ll even stipulate that there IS going to be trouble. And in the end we will absorb it and them and anyone else who chooses to play. In the end we will be America, and just as crazy and mixed up as we have always been. New World Order implies some sort of “orderliness”, and no one has every been able to do that. Try herding cats.
If America can be said to have any kind of culture at all, then the chaos I just described is what it is. And we fucking love it.

[D Benton Smith]

@JohnDay
Think of Lord Brown as a quieter , modernized, version of Oswald Mosely. Same royalist aristocratic class , and deeply personal attraction to (real) German Nazis. Far less flamboyant. No Black Shirt thugs at his rallies or anything like that. But he sure do cleave closely to the sincere love of top down authority. Eloquent speaker, impeccably polite, and a total fucking narcissistic mad man . . . just like Mosely.
Brown worked many years for Bolivian President Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada , who more or less openly helped displaced Nazi’s assimilate, disappear and prosper in South America after WW2. Not very clear who was paying Brown’s salary, which strongly suggests MI6 or CIA or both. He sure wasn’t working for shits and giggles.

[D Benton Smith]

@JohnDay
Thank you for putting in the thought-work and the writing-work to articulate so clearly the big picture composite of what so many of us have been thinking and saying in small pieces. It is a very very good summary of where things presently stand, insofar as we are aware with a reasonable degree of certainty.

Obtaining more ( or better) information under current internet circumstances is unlikely because our sources and channels of communication are so compromised. There is so much lyin’, cheatin’ and stealin’ going on that is ( as we all know) very VERY difficult to winnow the wheat from the chaff.

My suggestion, therefore, is to process and reprocess the information that we already have, looking for new patterns, reaffirming (or changing) previous conclusions, and perhaps discovering those important details which we have certainly missed. Perhaps Battle Plans can be improved thereby. That’s what Generals do on the eve of battles. And in my opinion the fight of our lives is about to shake the earth.

For starters, I’m going to re-read your essay three or four times to see if there is more there than immediately meets the eye. I think it was Paul Dirac who said “My formula is smarter than I am.” Well, I can’t shake this feeling that there’s something in your essay that’s even righter than you thought it was.

[D Benton Smith]

@JohnDay

Thank you for the invite. I believe I’ll pop over there right now and have a look.

[D Benton Smith]

@vietnamvet

I read and reread your analysis three times over. It’s insightful, astute and accurate, but what really impressed me was how you said so much with so few words . That’s elegant on top of eloquent. Well done, man.

[D Benton Smith]

@ Mr.House

reference : ” What are you suggesting that is so deep it may blow our minds?”

Re-reading what I wrote to Geppetto , it does come across as a bit dramatically arcane, but that was not the contextual meaning, nor was it it my intent to convey mysterious allure. The truth of the matter is that many of the folks on TAE are long term professionals ( maybe even experts, who knows ?) in fields which are not within the purview or focus of the subjects TAE traditionally addresses ( and very successfully, I might add ). This platform covers a lot of ground, but it doesn’t cover everything. I simply do not want to distract the conversation from what has worked so well for quite a long time.

On top of that, The Automatic Earth is Raul’s intellectual property , not mine. He has curated it very very well, in my opinion, and I am grateful that he lets me have my say without censure. I sometimes include snippets and bits of wise observation or pithy commentary from my area of expertise, but that does give me any sort of right to turn his platform into my megaphone.

Having said all that, I do not mean to imply false modesty on my part. I’m very confident of my accomplishments in my field of endeavor, which, to be bluntly frank, is what most people would call “deep” . So, when knowledge from my working life seems pertinent and relevant to things that come up on TAE I sound off and contribute my two cents worth.. Otherwise not. No one cares (nor should they) about credentials. All that matters is the veracity of what is said.

[D Benton Smith]

@Geppetto

reference : ” Is DBS’s obvious knowledge of things you and I have not been privy to knowledge of the root or a result of the real root? ”

Both.

And you’re right, it’s way deeper. Too deep for a platform like TAE which already has an accepted focal range and exists due to the long and faithful work (for low pay) of it’s co-founder Raul . I would not be willing to lead us down some other garden path of discussion without his express request to do so.

[D Benton Smith]

@DaveNote

reference : ” The U.S. is looking like Germany in the 20’s ”

It sure is, and I don’t think that it’s entirely a coincidence. I think it’s because it’s the same opposed teams fighting the next round of the same damned war.

[D Benton Smith]

Let’s first stipulate upfront that we are in a number of related situations which pose significant threats to our lives and/or well being in one way or another.

In any disaster that’s serious enough to kill you (that is, result in your physical demise) there are just Two (and a half) Rules for Happy Living :

#1. Stay alive. Do whatever it takes to remain alive. If there is mortal danger, then don’t fall victim. In other words, Don’t get dead. Do what you have to do . If it’s a false alarm then make your call on whether it is false (or not) and proceed accordingly. In either case, you HAVE TO BE ALIVE in order to move on to ANY next step.

#2. Do whatever it takes to prevent this sort of shit from ever happening to you again.

Now there is one additional major point to make, which is also painfully simple (although not at all obvious until push comes to shove) and that is the plain fact that reality is one hell of a lot different than TALKING about what may or may not prove out to be reality.

Here are the current urgent issues which, in my opinion, call for the application of the above two and a half rules :

Covid -19 PLUS how Covid-19 is being used by the authorities for purposes far beyond the scope of public health. These purposes may be nefarious and a threat to your life.

The rigged election which (if team Biden gets its way) will bring the Chinese Communist Party even more deeply into your lives than it already is. The CCP is demonstrably a threat to the life and well being of any population under its rule or influence.

World economic collapse ( The Reset , Fourth Turning, Great Depression 2.0 , whatever you care to call it. )

I don’t pretend to have all (or even a lot) of the answers to these issues. I just thought it would be useful and timely to say something to help us all stay focused.

[D Benton Smith]

@Dr D

Post Script

( I understand and fully accept in advance that you may not be interested in any of this stuff at all )

There is one more news clip that is a real time saver if you want to check this line of research in greater depth. It is from CNN of all places !! That’s a little chilling, in its own right. It means that Georg Friedrich has absolutely top notch public relations advisors. The sort that charge tens of $millions, not tens of $thousands for their services.

Here’s the link to the CNN article : https://www.cnn.com/videos/arts/2020/09/25/interview-with-georg-friedrich-prince-of-prussia-extended-tv.cnn

That’s the end of it. I will not be bothering you this kind of thing any further. Did so just this once because it looked like you MIGHT be interested.

[D Benton Smith]

@Dr D

You strike me as a man who does not tremble at the prospect of mountainous stacks of homework. Still, I should warn you that the hot lead I’m about to hand over is one of the deepest of rabbit holes. Luckily (or un-luckily ?) much of the research work is incontestably legitimate and certified true by the highest levels of whatever bastion of academic authority you choose to believe in (the United States Army Nuremberg Trials legal teams, for example)
Here is the tip : Klaus Schwab is a Nazi. By that I mean a Nazi of the old school goose stepping Heil Hitler jack boots and nifty uniforms variety. As in a real and actual Nazi Nazi . . . or at least his dear old Papa was.
Once you start down that rabbit hole you will almost immediately encounter the most recent avatar of the ancient Habsburg/Hohenzollern crowd and their present day Euro-dreams. Oh my. Such a mess.
Long story short : the Globalists / Davos Crowd / Fourth Industrial ( Fourth Reich ?) / European dynastic families / etc. etc. are pretty much the same bunch that gave us WW1, Hitler, WW2, and whatever the hell is going on now

I’m sure you don’t give a damn about the conspiracy theory aspects of such a deep dive ( and neither do I ) , but when it comes to understanding their present day “Organizing Board” and structure it is invaluable. For example, did you know that there is actually a current King of Prussia ? Well there is. His name is Georg Friedrich Ferdinand , he’s a gen-u-wine Hohenzollern, richer than Midas, and (seriously) dead set on returning to power. Judging from his wealth, activities and grasp of European legal procedures I would have to say that he’s got a pretty good shot at it. I kid you not.

Here is a good place to start , if you’re interested in preventing the the World Economic Forum from accomplishing its stated goals :

https://www.maneco64.net/post/the-origins-of-the-world-economic-forum-go-back-to-the-third-reich

[D Benton Smith]

@Susmarie108

How ( as in the step-by-step kind of “how”) could a scheme of such magnitude actually be executed is not a substantially useful question because It doesn’t matter if a specific crime is possible . It only matters if a specific crime was actually committed .Each of the examples you suggest are possible, because they have been done many many times in the past. As have numerous other scams ( such as ballot harvesting, false voter addresses, false registrations and simple theft.) With hundreds of thousands of employable criminals, and hundred of millions of dollars to pay them, the physical task is not particularly difficult. It’s not even a very big job, compared to moving and selling a 128 tons of heroine, 200 tons of pure cocaine, 500 tons of meth, and gawd only knows how many thousands of tons of weed). (about $150 billion each and every year, all told) . Compared to that job a few million bunko ballots is practically nothing. But that’s just ballots. We haven’t even mentioned computer hacking and software yet.

The forensic evidence of specific crimes is piling up like backlogs in Smithsonian warehouse. Listing each case (and its attendant evidence) is certainly possible. Just start web searching. But I think you’ll find it boring as hell, as sleep inducing as bookkeeping, and in the end not very useful at all to you personally. From what I’ve seen, the election fraud of 2020 has involved many many millions of fake votes for Biden. Perhaps tens of millions. The lion’s share was down with hacking and software.

The real problem is not the evidence. The problem is the Gatekeepers . They only have to say “Nope. We don’t see a prosecutable case here, and so we’re not going to prosecute.” Forcing a corrupt gatekeeper to allow scores of criminal cases into a corrupt court system is going to be tough. Ultimately it is all going to come down to the question of which side has the raw power to enforce its will upon the institutions we count on to enforce the laws.

I wish I could say I’m optimistic about that. In my personal opinion It very much remains to be seen.

[D Benton Smith]

I think I just realized what must be the big flaw in Democracy , and why democracy keeps getting abandoned and running off the rails like it does : Democracy just won’t stay put !

No sooner do we fix something but 10 minutes late it’s broken again. Don’t you just wish it would stay operational long enough for us to get some other important things done ? I mean, it would be really nice if I could go to work long enough to pay the mortgage and buy some food. Not to mention ball games, barbecues and the occasional beer at the pub.

Don’t ya sorta yearn occasionally for the good old days ? When you could just wake up in the morning and know what was expected of you and what you had to do ? You did whatever the King damned well TOLD you do, right?

But now, with all this Democracy and everything. Sheesh ! They never told you that being the boss was such a thankless job. And not only that, but being your OWN boss was so much worse ! I mean NOBODY seems to like what you say or do. Everybody in the whole damned democracy seems to have a different opinion than you do, and INSISTS upon yelling it at you. I mean, gimme a break.

[D Benton Smith]

@Michael Reid (conversation carried over from preceding TAE post)

I really like your questions, and would like to take them up one at a time. Here goes :

reference : ” Today my worldview is no longer intact. Is yours?”

Well it sure has been majorly “de-illusioned” recently, but to be simply frank I would have to say that yes, it is very much intact. It seems to me that in a round-about sort of way you are saying the same thing, aren’t you ? Your old “world view” is no longer intact, you say. But does that not ALSO mean that your new view of the world is being formed ? You are more aware today (although maybe uncomfortably so) than you were a year ago, isn’t that so ? Stick with it and eventually your revised (and smarter) world view will feel much more intact than it does at the moment.

ref : ” I have spent most of my life developing weapons for the USA. At this point I am ashamed of that. The USA is the biggest bully in the school that wants to beat you up and steal your lunch money. Where have I gone wrong in my thought process?”

The most highly intelligent (and admirable) human being who I have ever associated with was in precisely the same situation you now find yourself in. Her name was Ann Cardinal. She had scored the highest marks ever recorded on IQ and aptitude tests for her employment in the GSA. During her 40 years long active career She had served as personal secretary to two separate 5 star general members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And would you like to know what she thought about that ? She thought that she had made the best decisions and performed the best actions of which she was capable at the time, based on the situations at that time, and information available to her (which was a hell of a lot of information !). NOW she thought that circumstances had changed, and new information was available and she was adjusting her opinions and actions accordingly. Sure sounds like good advice to me.

reference : ” Leave Venezuela alone and every other country for that matter is my current thinking. Military should only be used for defense and not extracting the wealth out of the rest of the world…which in my opinion is what sanctions are all about. What are your thoughts? ”

My thoughts are very very long and very very complicated . . . although they are founded on very very short and simple basic premises. Essentially , history provides what should be extremely convincing evidence that there are things about human nature, and perhaps the nature of nature itself, that leads to violence, armed conflict, full scale warfare, and the rise and fall of various forms of empire. Your choices are quite limited, in the sense that no matter what you choose to do about that situation you ARE going to be part of it. You can be perpetrators, victim, refugee , attempted reformer or some new solution of you own invention. Regardless of which strategy you choose, you SHALL be a participant ( even a suicide participates to the degree of removing a player from the board ).

There are LOTS of bullies who would like to steal your lunch money. What you choose to do about that is irrevocably up to you. My advice is to inform yourself and become as aware of the world you inhabit to the absolute pinnacle of which you are capable . . . and act accordingly.

[D Benton Smith]

@VietnamVet

reference : “Science that is divorced from the drive for profit has proven to be a useful tool to observe reality. ”

So true, but of late it looks like they married it instead. What happened ? You would probably enjoy what Eric Weinstein and his kid brother Bret Weinstein have to say on that topic. There is hope !

I think the main thing that happened was as an unintended consequence of the Google work model of communications. It is now true that without the full support of Google search results promotion then professionals of every kind ( which includes scientists and universities, as well as business) one becomes utterly invisible and inaccessible to others. If Google likes you (and thus promotes you) then you can thrive. If it does not like you ( and therefore buries or outright censors you) then you disappear from the marketplace and cannot long survive except as a hobbyist. This phenomenon made Google the ultimate and virtually omnipotent “gatekeeper” of pretty much everything that depends upon communications and/or commerce. That’s a lot of stuff, and that profit-driven choke-point obstructing the free and open communication of ideas may well crash our civilization and cost all of us a few thousand years of hard earned progress.

[D Benton Smith]

@Geppetto

Thank you for the David Bohm reference. Somehow or other I had missed him in my own work research, maybe because my early interest in the field (physics) leaned so heavily at first toward the materialist/deterministic school of thought. Based on your mention of him I did a quick scan of his work, and am delighted. Thanks again.

[D Benton Smith]

Apparently an addendum is needed in to remove any nascent doubts and make my position completely unambiguous. First of all, I don’t drink. Sober as a judge (although perhaps I give judges too much credit on that count.)
Secondly, I’m no cheerleader for Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but his sins and virtues are matters for another day. Today’s lesson was , and remains, that @arttua should be grateful that he got off so lightly for his idiocy, treasonous claptrap and covert propagandizing for the Chinese Communist Party.

At best he’s an uneducated and ill informed fool. At worst he is literally a professional troll, and if that’s the case he isn’t the first that has tried to mess things up around here. TAE is one of the last, and best, bastions against the deliberate assault against logic, reason, free speech and human dignity. That onslaught has spewed from the covert intelligence operations of Red China and its sycophants for far too long. We should have shut that door in 1972, instead of opening it (Thanks again Tricky Dick)

So, just in case any one is left with any doubts about the sincerity for my vitriolic contempt for Arttua and his ilk, or who thinks propitiation is the correct response to evil , let me put those thoughts to rest. I meant every word of it, and then some.

[D Benton Smith]

@ Arttua

You are a very poor historian, and not much of a lexicographer either. The US oil embargo on Japan in July 1941 was an effort to stem Japan’s murderous, expansionist, unprovoked blitzkrieg across Asia that had already been running for three years (since 1938) before it’s treacherous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Japan had already invaded China, slaughtered millions of Chinese civilians en masse , and raped Nanking . They needed oil to do it, so FDR reckoned embargo was better than war.

Sanctions are not war. To equate them is simply stupid, so I guess that settles that. You’re stupid. Now, about that “provocations” thing . Building fake islands for the sole purpose of extending military reach, and forcing peaceful nations from their traditional (and international legally recognized ) waters is provocation. That’s what China is doing, and has been doing for years, and in its typical ham-fisted bullying way continues to do. Peacefully instructing them to stop that provocation is called LAW. I think you’ve got your definitions mixed up. Not too surprising , considering how dumb you are about everything else. Pack up and go back to Beijing, troll. Or perhaps I should say, consider yourself sanctioned, you lying provocative idiot.

[D Benton Smith]

It’s all so confusing. Reality is confusing. Except it isn’t, really. You have understood it well enough for quite some time now, you just don’t choose to get up off your fat (safe) arses to do anything about it. Just like me. And there’s is a perfectly rational explanation why that is.

The horrifying reality  ( and yes, it is horrifying, and yes it is also reality )  is that the economic system of the world is a single system.  A Muslim or Chinese or American billionaire is  . . . first and foremost . . .  simply a billionaire, and that billion has no loyalties. Money has no moral sense, nor patriotic fervor.  It’s just wampum.   The control of money ( and thus the ownership of all things, all salaries, all institutions, all possible interests.)  has no national boundaries. It respects no national values, and obeys no (ridiculously fictitious) “national elections.”  The United States Presidential Election is not an election.   It is a transnational “auction”  attended by all of the billionaires from all over the world.  It will be “won”  by the most powerful faction of players (i.e. has greater control of the money). Right now it looks like CCP and its stake holders have the advantage, but that could change . 
How could it not change ? Things are breaking, shrinking, disappearing (open communication of sensible thought being not the least of which.) The world is getting weaker as a result, and the value of peasant votes weakens right along with it.
In other words, the election and the votes themselves do not mean shit because everything that could possibly pertain to the election and to the votes  (e.g. who got the most votes,  or which votes were legal or illegal, or fraudulent etc.)  is for sale to the aforementioned billionaires.   Even the information about that information is for sale.  That’s why the Chinese Communist Party bought up the  mainstream media,  or suborned it with cash and blackmail as pregame warm-up step #1.  Just as they have also done with Academia,  and the “Uni-Party”. [ Uni-Party;  the financial elites of all stripe considered as a single, politically collaborative,  entity].

The volume , magnitude  and awe inspiring chutzpah of the lies being told (to the American electorate in particular, at the moment) is so overwhelmingly overwhelming that I’m losing interest in even talking about it any more.It would take a science fiction writer of considerable imaginative skill to even match the depth of deceit and betrayal  that is simply the day-to-day business of the folks who run our world,  and nearly impossible to exaggerate.
It’s all very confusing because deliberate confusion is the primary product of our times. It’s what they’re selling. Hell, they’re shoving it into your face whether you asked for it or not. Why ? Because confusion is better even than secrecy for hiding the dire fuckery they are up to.
No one thinks any of the proposed solutions are going to work. No one. Everyone knows the system is irreparably broken. Everyone. The only question is about what the hell is going to happen as a consequence? Theories abound. Here’s mine :
Some folks are going to get wiped out. Others will be rubbed out. And a precious few will bask in the drug-rush of temporary ( very temporary) and reduced power as the combined strength of failing shrinking illogical systems gets smaller and weaker and dumber.
Most of us , however, ( and here is the good news) are simply going to continue doing what we have always done, which is also the only thing we are able to do. And that is to go on living until further notice.

[D Benton Smith]

@zerosum

Yup. I’m with you on that 100% . ( I would have said 110% , but I’m not registered Democrat )

[D Benton Smith]

@zerosum

In an argument between probability and reality, reality wins every time. Dr, Grimes is arguing probabilities, using math, and good for him. But that doesn’t really speak to reality at all. He’s an ivory tower guy, with no real world experience on how real secrets play out in a real world. To believe something as factually true when both the probabilities and the forensically evidenced realities indicate otherwise, well that would be folly. BUT, so is the reverse. To DISbelieve while the probabilities and forensic evidence are still quite inconclusive, is equally silly, especially when the stakes are high.
Rather than do either of those ill-advised “jumps to conclusion” , why not just apply the Scientific Method? It has worked pretty well so far, and I reckon it will again.
In other words I say count the fucking ballots again because the current numbers and explanations are not statistically believable AND there is already (i.e. even before stringent detective work) forensic evidence of ballot mishandling of sufficient magnitude to change the outcome of a close election . No need to believe anything you can’t see with your own eyes at this point.

[D Benton Smith]

I have a straightforward question for all Democrats and Trump haters everywhere.
If you could dump Trump FOREVER . . . would you ?
Well, obviously that depends on whether you like the Donald or you do not. If you don’t like him ( a lot ) and you could dump him ( forever ) then the answer to the question should be a no brainer, right ?
So why don’t they do it?
It would be so easy. Just call Trump’s bluff. Count the ballots and prove that not only did Joe Biden win the presidency fair and square , but also prove to the entire world (including his most ardent supporters) once and for all, that Donald Trump is both a loser and a god damned liar. It would take all of two days , max, to do that.
So why don’t they do it ?
I can think of a reason.
Can you ?

[D Benton Smith]

@ Ilargi

Great summarizing essay. It should be reprinted world wide but there is no chance whatsoever of that happening, is there? Such a dissemination of rationally beneficial and honestly well intended communication world wide might even calm things down a bit or save few thousand lives. But we all also know that such a sane and beneficial rationale has no bearing whatsoever on what gets printed (or suppressed) about the pandemic pretty much anywhere, don’t we?
Why, it’s almost as if what governments, companies and institutions do or say about the pandemic has nothing to do with the actual welfare of people, and everything to do with a dizzying array of other agendas so numerous and complicated that its impossible to even sort them out (much less choose one to agree with.)
Nevertheless I salute and appreciate your resolve. Hang in there.

[D Benton Smith]

Let’s get right to the point : So-called Universal Basic Income is not one bit crazier than the Universal Basic Outgo that we already have.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the critics of UBI ( all of them rich guys) say that giving people something for nothing will not only make us go broke, but also encourages laziness by paying people to be lazy. Maybe so. Just like slapping people with an unpayable debt the moment they’re born might be a bad thing because it turns more than half of the entire population of earth into slaves who can never escape from servitude to unelected undeserving uncontrolled unprincipled oligarchs who live off of the debt collection.

Really.

Should not sauce for the goose also be sauce for the gander?

Using physical force (or the enforceable threat of it) to make me pay a tax on food, shelter, clothing and the ground I sleep upon is not a logical extension of some fundamental truth or natural justice . It is a purely arbitrary , human-made rule devised by rulers ( all rich guys.) Maybe that’s a good thing and maybe it’s not, but one thing about it is for sure in either case: it’s “made-up” , invented, and artificial.

It’s just Universal Basic Outgo isn’t it?

How is that fair? How is that not crazy as bat shit?

If I am arbitrarily born into debt and servitude it seems to me both fair and logical that I also get a few “free chips” in compensation. That way I can at least stay alive (barely) on an ongoing basis so as to keep trying to dig my way out of the hole I got thrown into at the git-go.

[D Benton Smith]

zerosum

I like your poem. Sort of like Free Verse meets Haiku meets Banksy. Hope to see some more of it as the spirit moves you.

[D Benton Smith]

zerosum

That’s a funny term, “Life Expectancy”

I don’t don’t know how it’s been for others, but my life didn’t turn out anything even remotely like my expectancy.

But yeah, steer clear of those Rest (in peace) Homes.

[D Benton Smith]

Here’s a little background on me (and why I used ‘wearing clothes’ as an example in the above comment.) At age 12 I lived a year (along with only my family) isolated by hundreds of miles of empty tundra on the arctic coast of northern Alaska. Outside it was routinely 30 to 60 degrees (F) below zero. Dress wrong and you would simply die, within minutes, and there are no second chances) I wasn’t afraid. I loved being outside. But I DID dress properly.

[D Benton Smith]

People have learned how to do all sorts of extremely dangerous things with little or no sensation of fear (drive cars, run chain saws, fly airplanes, shoot guns, get married) It’s all a matter of knowing nature’s rules and following them to the letter ( adults have learned mama has no mercy and less tolerance.)
So that’s how we are going to have to handle this virus & pandemic thing. Can’t hole up forever. Gonna have to come out and do what living requires. That doesn’t mean being being brave or stupid.or pretending that the thing can’t kill us if given a chance, of course. It means don’t give the virus that chance. Get so fast and efficient at the checklist that it’s just another routine task no different than any of the other bothersome precautions that we treat as chores (like wearing clothes instead of running around naked.)
We humans adapt fast. It’s time to get started.

[D Benton Smith]

My Parents Said Know

That’s okay because we knew what you meant. Like my Dad used to say, “Take me by what I mean, not by what I misspell”.

Whitney is a world class world treasure investigator, and obviously ain’t skeered.

[D Benton Smith]

Karl Marx was doing just fine until he got to the part about proposing solutions. His solutions are hog wash just on the face of it, and truly insane if you care to drill down.
So, I guess you could say with some fairness that he was HALF right. He was only thinking about HALF of the paradigm, so it’s no surprise that he only came up with HALF the answer.

He was, in other words, not too much better or worse than the rest of us : a halfwit

[Author]

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