Hey folks!

Have you ever had a completely maniacal psychopath walk up to you and smile and introduce themselves with a line which presumes that you fully share and also celebrate their madness?

Very few things make me angrier than this. But thanks to rising rates of narcissism and blind belief in the west, it is way more common than ever. Fake tribalist idiots on both left and right now honestly believe that the whole world must openly subscribe to one flavour of crazy or else the other, and anyone who says they just don’t think that (pre-programmed, imbecilic and entirely power-serving) way is lying, and probably secretly in league with ‘the bad ‘uns’.

Now as usual, I am putting this in a way which takes it outside of tribalism to look at the mechanism itself. In fact, I’d like to give you a specific case for this, which completely decimates a host of expectations, all at once – just to make clear that the mechanism is itself objectionable.

During the O.J. Simpson trials, I was playing in a truly wonderful weekly improvising group. One part of it was started by teenage me and the be-bop veteran and improviser Maury Coles, and the other by Wendell, a deeply inspiring Trinidadian Yoga Teacher (and wonderfully wide-open drummer) who ran a bed and breakfast across the street from my tiny basement apartment. Merging our weekly jams in his spacious and acoustically lovely front room, we had a core group of five, and sometimes as many as twenty players altogether (guest horn sections and drumming circles especially numerous – but sometimes it was Irish tenors, or a mob of demented violinists!)

In the core group at the time of that trial were a widely published (and excellent) editorial cartoonist, who had lived through the American war in Vietnam as a kid, and a very political black New Yorker sculptor, who saw Malcolm X speaking many times, and remembered the Panthers vividly too.

I bet you already have an idea about the shape of the argument which came up, just from the starting ingredients – but I bet you are wrong. I should start by saying that improvising is as open, mutual, intimate and self-revealing as you can be wordlessly, except for sex. (just is, sue me)

So, the conversations we got into, during the breaks between ‘pieces’ (tilts, frenetic cacophonies, massive spontaneously self-organizing surreal empathies, etc) were among the best I’ve had in my life (and I am a connoisseur of great conversation like few other things on earth). Super smart creative and experienced people, all limbered up and soaring in a feeling of shared elation.

Which made the argument which came up, particularly jarring to all of us, Wendell especially. What that New York sculptor assumed, with a big smile, was that Wendell would agree with him that O.J. had every right as a wronged husband of a wronged race, to beat his white wife! (Just as the sculptor insisted he was entitled to beat his white wife, whenever he felt it was warranted).

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One of the creepiest things about being very political when you’re young, and then watching the world unfold for decades, is that you realize something depressing – nobody ever learns anything!

Of course this is true in only one particular sense – but I bet those of you who have had your own political fights over the years knew exactly the sense I meant, right away! All those old factional tactical and strategic arguments which have kept so many self-styled radicals mostly absorbed (thus functionally neutered) with infighting, for at least a century and a half (that I can find clear record of) keep being fought, over and over again, endlessly (still effectively ‘gelding the larpies’) ;o)

The thing is, the conflict is so simple that we should have resolved it very long ago.

Can a group sacrifice principle for instrumental effect and do long term good? NO!

They may accidentally lead to a long-term good emerging as a social inoculant reaction against their lack of principle – what they definitely can achieve is a lowering of principle – but almost always, the goal for which they mutually authorized this moral departure was imaginary anyhow.

Back in the late eighties, my brilliant and hilarious wife Catherine was a cashier at a very busy liquor store which was frequented by two very contradictory and very public figures. Bob White, one of the last great union leaders in Canada from the days when unions were still proud and powerful, and Ernst Zundel who remains the single most famous racist in modern Canadian history (known for such ‘masterworks’ as “The Hitler we knew and why we loved him”).

Catherine has especially fine empathic skills for sounding character (I can do a great character read too, but still end up bringing home strays, that I know will eventually bite).

She liked Bob White immediately, said he felt like he’d fit right in, with the crazy gang and arguments we so often entertained around our table. She had (fabulous) big red eighties hair, and he’d come into her shop, say “Hi Red” she’d grin, say, “Hi White” and they’d be off and joking. (Should be said, such customer/worker friendliness and camaraderie was infinitely more common a few decades ago, and pretty much every job was less tortuous, because of it).

Zundel by contrast, gave off a psychic vibe as if he stank of rot. Every single time he approached her cash, he opened with a casual smiling racist aside. When he teased her for working a Jewish Piano (cash register) she said, “My husband is Jewish.” When he commented about how way too many blacks were moving into the area, she said “My husband is Black” (I’m neither, to be clear, she’s just very firm in opposition to such twits). I was happy to serve as offstage foil, in either case.

Meanwhile, my especially political friends were having a grand debate. The most violence inclined of us (by orders of magnitude) who was also involved with “The Workers Vanguard” newspaper (who used to run to the head of every march with one big sign, get a photo, then run it front-page, and pretend the whole march was there for them) thought that we should assemble a large group and go and smash Ernst Zundel’s (then, very expensive) printing presses.

Now of course, no one was standing up for Zundel’s message, but I said very clearly and insistently – “What do you say when his people come and smash your press, the very next day?”

This is the exact place where tribalism fails – because there is nothing you can say – at all. The only thing you achieve smashing an opponent’s press, is to make press smashing a thing. But it all gets a whole lot weirder than that.

Non Canadians will not have even noticed this – but we didn’t used to have a separate FBI/CIA. These functions were both rolled into the (way too romantic sounding) Royal Canadian Mounted Police – the last vestige of the smiling redcoats (of obscenely great duration, as propaganda). The thing is, in the 1970s in particular, the RCMP had scandal after scandal on the intel side, wild screwups so bad they almost made CIA ops people look competent (which ain’t easy).

I had a good friend who was an army intelligence officer first, then did some ‘off the record’ work for the RCMP of the time – committing burglaries on the offices of major corporations to examine the ‘honest books’ that they never actually showed the government voluntarily.

But he never got to the level Grant Bristow did, with our newish CIA equivalent CSIS. Bristow went from private investigator to contracted infiltrator, uncovering anti-apartheid demonstrators (while Mandela was still rotting in prison), then went on from there to infiltrate Zundel’s Heritage front and become his right hand man for six years!

Again, non Canadians won’t have seen this part – but what those of us with long memories do remember is that Zundel was mocked as an idiot and an irrelevant joke, then suddenly had this huge rise in visibility – right around the time that a government agent was acting as his second in command.

Organization and recruitment for the movement saw a huge surge, writings were far more widely published and distributed, Bristow even helped Zundel network with extremist movements all over the world, and especially create diplomatic links between groups in the US and Canada.

The only argument the government could make against all of that negative effect (taxpayer subsidized, no less) is that they got a list of names of people to watch. People who might not even have been radicalized in the first place, if they weren’t so eager to ‘pass’ as smiling psychopaths.

Which makes me come back again to my overly radical friend (the only man I ever knew, who was stabbed by two different girlfriends) who so badly wanted to go smash Zundel’s presses, right in that moment, when the government was actually secretly on Zundel’s side!

We can guess exactly how that press-smashing war would have ended up. Two groups with smashed presses, several in hospital, the whole workers rearguard faction jailed for years, Zundel’s crew out in weeks on technicalities, and quickly funded to resume full operations.

It is also worth noting that Canada does have one super competent spy agency, which makes the most consistent and highly regarded contributions to the five-eyes circle-jerk spy alliance. Funny thing is, most Canadians don’t even know we have an NSA equivalent – but sure enough, our GCHQ (government communications headquarters) is discreetly everywhere, bugging everything!

Again, I have to say this clearly and repeatedly, I am not trying to be cynical, I just want people with energy to avoid making mistakes which will lead them into disaster (or despondency).

So now here’s something which has to be clearly said, that I haven’t seen said clearly enough yet.

There is actually no force in American cultural life which is quite so ‘fa’ as ‘antifa’.

Again – to give you a reference marker, I come from a cult so screwed up I can absolutely relate to the Branch Davidians. I am not saying that they should be suppressed, I am saying they are pursuing an incredibly self-harming tactic, which guarantees them a long term strategic loss.

Specifically – opposing the right to speak for anyone you deem to be on the other side of your argument – absolutely guarantees that they will eventually get a gang together to shut you up too.

We can’t do a bad thing and get a good result (a mistake we’ve been making in the west a very long time now). We can’t sneer our way to justice, or inspire, with pride in our own contempt.

And we cannot stifle speech, and still pretend we respect popular will – the only basis of legitimacy Democracy has ever had (imperfectly realized and half-fantasy, as it has always been).

It is really common to use the word America and then pretend that means something usefully specific. American finance is not American heart, for an especially sharp example. And the American war machine does not in fact reflect the aspiration of normal American people.

And yet – ‘America’ is a relentless mass murdering ravenous killer for profit. As Buckminster Fuller noted long ago, ever since WWII, the whole American economy has (just like the Soviet Union, in its day) been based not on free markets but on a “command economy” model, but one in which the state manages the whole by looking after defence contractors, instead of citizens.

Capitalism is simply not what the greatest proselytizer of capitalism does anymore (and it has been a very long while). As I mentioned before, they moved from industrial capitalism to LAWCAP (where the Lawyers and spies took over after WW2, and BigWar/BigMedia took power) followed by FINCAP (the financialization of everything, and the ruin of the west).

I badly want to call this period MADCAP, only it really isn’t funny (there are times I really hate knowing so much about history – especially the history of cheerful cluelessness, just before).

When talking about Israel, things get even weirder still – we get religious overtones, zealotry, accusations of racism over clearly legitimate debate and questions, references to history and probably a greater density of conspiracy theories than any other place (and idea) on earth.

Kautiliya the contemplator wrote a fascinating article a couple of months ago (link below) in which he discussed the way Stalin originally backed the creation of the modern state of Israel, hoping it would become an ally in the region, or at least a neutral state. (The Kibbutz system especially, seemed quite consonant with a generally socialist mindset).

What happened back home in the USSR as a result, upon the arrival of the first ambassador – Golda Meir – was a sudden emergence of Jewish identity and unity completely separate from party and state loyalty. This shocked and frightened Stalin, and provoked one of his last great despotic and sadistic acts of madness.

But let us zoom back just a bit and ask ourselves an important question – when in history did the British Empire ever do anyone a favour, which didn’t have a fatal sabotaging flaw built in? That is, before thinking about Balfour (a virulent hater of Jews, who hoped they’d leave England) let us think about the technique the British used, again and again, around the world.

Yes – that Huntington quote about the west winning through superiority of violence remains true – but there was something weird about the way the Brits ran their empire – the staffing was tiny, but effective to a degree that could almost be described as magical. What they did above all, was study the stories of each culture, pretend reverence for a common sacred, then corrupt those local stories of identity, so a significant proportion of the population would consent to their rule.

Again, I’m not saying it always worked or that they were non-violent in intent, I’m just saying they used ideas and poisonous mind-twisting lies, as weapons also – right through their empire.

This remains the biggest difference between the British ‘free’ (strangling) trade empire, and the post war version run by the USA. The British used study, false-empathy and trickery. Americans just bribe, then threaten as backup. (See Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins).

In a weird way, the British version of the extractor’s leash felt more respectful, to many (their expert use of local idioms better lubricated the f*cking they were delivering) but since both sets of effects and intentions were extractive and inhumane, we must also be fair enough to note the lazier Americans are a bit more honest (if no less lethal or corrupting) in their approach.

So now – for the mental exercise – how did the British Empire intend this homeland for the Jews? Were they trying to create a model state which would quickly integrate into the region and stimulate general prosperity (which would be a first, for them) or did they see it in great game terms, as a latter day Crusade to inject a powerful self-defining European (Ashkenaze) presence, in a region of strategic interest?

The thing about Israel on a military level is that it is so small it is forever one big battle away from destruction, and thanks to wide conscription and service, a huge proportion of the population have an acute understanding of the tactical vulnerability. This is a real thing.

But as Machiavelli says most lucidly, you simply cannot base the security of your own state on the favour of a foreign patron indefinitely. Patrons and allegiances come and go, if you want to survive long term, achieve strategic security, the only way is by integrating with the local states in a cooperative, rather than a hostile way – actually being a model-state/economic beacon.

Coming from a commune which was in some ways a lot like a kibbutz, I was also struck by Noam Chomsky’s observation when he visited one in the 50s, with great hopes. He was horrified by the groupthink and racism he found, and it smashed his hopes for the movement completely. (I witnessed similar early hope, sour badly).

So – you have an empire which considers the oil in other countries their own ‘strategic asset’ which is also expert at turning a people’s most sacred narratives against their own interest, setting up a protostate in which majorities are trained by experience to think in paranoid tactical terms, and thus eternally sabotage any chance of their own strategic security in the region as a whole.

I still don’t see any case for the patron – first England, now America, actually doing the Jewish people a serious favour with this program. Kissinger himself said Israel would not last much longer, it was built to be dependent on a military backer from afar, and without that, like the crusaders of old, we cannot expect the ramparts to hold for long, they’ve made too many enemies (pursuing their patron’s need for dominance, instead of their own strategic need for real peace).

A lot of westerners are not aware of this – but Israel is in incredible trouble in all kinds of ways – and the politicians are so unhinged, they seem determined to cause more trouble, not less.

To be super clear – the day they turned off water and stopped food and medicine they began a program of war crimes. It doesn’t matter how angry or religious or racist or rationalizing you are, you can’t kill civilians in huge numbers, and still be the good guy. Hard no on that, folks – and no one anywhere in the western world is buying the propaganda anymore. Can’t do good with evil.

But it is way worse than that, not only is violence in the West Bank out of control – and devastation and great violence ongoing in Lebanon – many Israeli politicians are now talking about Turkiye as their greatest adversary, (most likely leader of a more united Islamic world – and also the most formidable army in NATO, outside of the USA itself – and by quite a margin).

The reason Israeli politics has taken this hyper-paranoid and destabilizing turn is because they got what they wanted in Syria – the complete destruction of the old legacy Baathist state. And now that they got their way (at the cost of millions of lives and many times more refugees) they suddenly realized that Syria represents a huge vulnerability, because Turkiye is their prime sponsor. Assad was not friendly to them, but he was a known quantity. Now? All bets are off! (Especially with a literal AlQaida head-chopper as Syria’s new leader, now MI6 rebranded and presented to the public afresh in $5000 suits with $500 haircuts in $5,000,000 offices).

The thing is, Israel simply doesn’t have the army it would need, to actually tackle all the wars it seems determined to fight. They haven’t yet reached the staggering numbers of Ukrainian desertions (hundreds of thousands) but many are refusing to return for a second or third tour in just a few years. They feel like they’ve paid enough (and seen enough comrades suicide, also).

The Israeli state cannot make northern Israel safe from Hezbollah rockets, they cannot even come close to defeating Iran (Israel is a small target, industrially especially – but at this point, with their unity so goaded by western perfidy – Iran could absorb a nuke and keep fighting).

They have razed Gaza flat, devastated the culture and life they had, and murdered uncountable thousands of civilians (so many more under rubble, than were ever noted by a doctor’s witness) they have also driven a huge number of their own citizens insane, by asking them to do this.

I was struck by a recent comment from Larry Johnson (ex CIA) who mentioned that in one month, there were five suicides in one cyber division at Fort Meade. We’re talking hyper educated military technocrats with comfy office jobs in America, and they still could not handle the consequences of their own efforts (the team that targeted Minab and killed all those schoolgirls?)

I don’t know how many ways there are to say this – but I’ll try all of them, if it’ll help – you can’t ever do good using evil as your tool. Just won’t happen, especially if your essential patron has their own creepy motives which run completely counter to your long term strategic interests.

Just for a weird detail, to make the mutually corrupting nuance clearer. Obama briefly questioned the level of military support to Israel, and was very quickly disciplined for it – but in the meantime, the American empire being what it is, they managed to get a concession from Israel, in exchange for basically, the same continued generous military funding as always – they required that Israel close down some domestic ammunition manufacturers, to guarantee they wouldn’t start competing with (key lifeblood) American profits. That’s not a boss, that’s a franchise of empire.

Just in case you think bully tactics and every advantage plays started with Trump? Nope, they’ve been that way the whole time, he’s just such a dickhead he comes out and says it with a smile!

To refresh, because BigWar/BigNews still seem to think it can still be downplayed, Iran has absolutely won the war, hands down. And the longer they keep the straight closed, the more devastation will be dealt to the whole over-leveraged gambling based western capitalist system itself. What we’re into now, is that bog standard late-imperial transition from self-wounding hubris, to mad Nero. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS FIDDLING.

I feel like I’ve talked about markets too much lately – or I’d here digress for updates – nothing has got better since I last laid out our state of peril and flailing panic, quite the opposite, brace for it!

But as I have been saying for decades (quite a bit less often dismissed, more recently) this empire needs to fall, for humanity to make it – and it won’t feel nice for us, when it does. Nor will we show ourselves honourable, since we have been robbed of meaningful duty too long, making serious ethical sacrifice – surely the basis of civilization – now read like a form of incomprehensible foreign madness, to the hordes of bamboozled western ‘sophisticated’ consumerist cynics.

I still adore the way the Greeks put it, thousands of years ago.

“Civilizations grow great when old men plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.”

Toronto is among the most international cities in the world, but it is also a very Jewish city and has been for more than a century. Kensington Market (first Jewish, then Chinese, then many newer waves of immigrants since) remains an especially lively treasure of diverse street culture and international shopping to this day, just as it was when I was a little kid (and eagerly helped with the shopping, in order to earn a gingerbread man at the bakery and a sample slice of weird cheese from International House of Cheese as a reward). And oh, what I’d give for a Switzer’s blintz!

I learned to swim at the Jewish community centre, I bought my first comics back-issue at Captain Jack’s Emporium in Mirvisch village, and like everyone we know, when we first got married we went to Honest Ed’s to help equip our new kitchen with decent but cheaply priced cookware and dishes. (I also got my first Henry Miller book from Ed Mirvish’s son David’s amazing and always hearteningly busy ‘Books on Art’ bookstore – a most memorable read, for a teenager!)

I grew up with a whole host of Jewish friends and artistic mentors (though I can only say this in retrospect, because no special distinction was made of this at the time). But though I know there were some factions here, even then, I honestly never once met an angry Jewish nationalist.

In my childhood, most Jews here represented the cosmopolitain spirit, great reverence for art and knowledge and wide-open friendliness. Many distinguished themselves as dedicated and honourable contributors to our general civic life.

But I am that crazy asshole who starts all the conversations you aren’t supposed to start, and asks all those questions which are verboten at the dinner table, lest they provoke fisticuffs! So I couldn’t help noticing a shift happening over time, in some parts of the community.

In particular, a number of especially wealthy Canadians spent large sums of money helping Jews leave the Soviet union and move to the west. Many of them went to Israel first, served in the army, and then moved to Canada, because they didn’t want their kid to grow up like that.

But just think about what that says about ‘the common homeland’. For many, even those fleeing oppression, it is the kind of a place that once you have experienced it, you wouldn’t want your own dear child to have that experience also.

One coworker in my repair lab (2002 or so) had just come to Canada after serving in the IDF. He came to me distraught, because he brought his kid to kindergarten, and when he went to pick him up at the end of the day, his son introduced his new friend, “Dad, this is Ahwaz.” He was aghast, “how could my son make friends with the only Arab boy in the whole kindergarten?”

That right there is perhaps the only thing Toronto still does well – much corrupted distorted and exploited as that talent has more recently become. Mind you, to express it in terms of negatives (no less important, for clarity) the truly great thing about Toronto is that there are so many factions here, that if any one faction gets out of line, five others can gang up and correct them! (The frightening turf wars between incoming Vietnamese gangs and established Chinese gangs in the 80s were legendarily mediated by other gangs, who didn’t want the whole damn city getting rousted!)

Netanyahu and the whole (demented end-times embracing) political class in modern Israel represent murderous nationalism and imperial ambition – Israel as crusader.

They do not represent the international Jewish spirit, character, or aspiration, any more than Trump represents the well meaning and sincere (albeit, dizzy and confused) citizens of America.

What needs to be opposed is mass-scale immorality, murder, lies, imperial domination and population-enslaving debt – which are all features of evil, not any one race on earth. When those forces organize, we oppose them on principle for what they do in the world, not who they are.

And when we are not allowed to do that, we know for sure that we are not living in free societies.

When I try to describe my young life and education to people who didn’t experience a cult, or a demented headmaster, I find myself reaching for two books, in combination. Magister Ludi by Herman Hesse describes a community where the whole of human knowledge is woven and ‘played’ creatively and dynamically, by masters of range, subtle meaning and understanding.

I saw things absolutely proven, about the astounding capacities of young minds, which I have not seen studied adequately since (and I remain sure we can get most of the mental training gains, without the very sharp emotional cost we experimental guinea pigs were made to pay for this).

The other book I reach for to explain it is Shockwave Rider by John Brunner, which opens with the main character’s experience of Tarnover, a school for the gifted which is actually an insane high-pressure laboratory for training strategic prodigies (and destroys many, in the forming process). The students of Tarnover call the place “The Electric Skillet” and a half a century later, I am still discovering more and more things that we did as part of our experimental education in my crazy cult ‘school’, which were also common pastimes at RAND and CIA of the time (the headmaster did have an active terminal to Darpa – back when it was still called Arpanet – ostensibly (and also plausibly) for contributions he made to early multiplex error correction math).

So when I talk about bad approaches corrupting good things fatally, I’m not doing a logical operation on vague concepts, or trying to assign an arbitrary moral weight in a conceptual framing. I’m not just playing Magister Ludi – and I do know the difference. What I’m thinking about is casualties and tragedies, epic scale lost potential, lost love and lost lives. All from bad ideas.

This might sound obvious, but it is important to remember and say it clearly, because online especially, many people start playing around with logical ideas as if they are a fun game of related abstract concepts – a big puzzle in logic or algebra, and they can be, if they aren’t political ideas.

But political ideas are for something. Same goes for social, psychological and spiritual ideas. And that something sure as hell isn’t hopelessness complicity fear and poverty, folks – we are heading straight for the rocks! (Escapism is for suckers)

Time to act like citizens who are due a turn at the tiller (and the responsibility for that, also) instead of finding ever more complex and beguiling excuses for our own hopelessness, helplessness and precious victim-hood. Real humans are dying – we’re upset – snap out of it!

This last might strike you as irrational – but I mean it sincerely. The psychological difference in feeling we have significant control over our own lives (even if that feeling is illusory) is profound and enabling like no mere theory of power, empire or propaganda has ever been.

Every new art-project, training, or learning phase I have embarked upon, I began, based on a false idea of the kind of rewards which would result – and every single one was worth it nevertheless!

Feeling we have no control – even if we are sure we can “prove” that true – instantly makes us a slave!

On the other hand – feeling like we might just change the world, if we can be bothered to try and build strength and stay determined for the dark lonely hours and the long haul struggle?

We might just actually change the freakin’ world.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here’s that fascinating and informative piece about Stalin and Israel I mentioned above, from the always brilliant Kautiliya the contemplator –

Here is another outstanding essay from Fabio Vighi – with important insights clearly presented – combining deep knowledge of economic theory and the inner mechanics of systems over time, together with the vivid humane grounding, most economists never even reference!

(Fabio is fast becoming one of my favourite active writers and thinkers in the world!)

fabio vighi

The Ghost in the Machine

Credit: David Moorhouse…

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9 days ago · 41 likes · 34 comments · fabio vighi

Here is a superb piece from another brilliant writer I wish I had discovered earlier. Lily357 is like me in that she writes about a very wide range of subjects, has plenty of non-standard but long-considered ideas to offer (on hidden-history especially, one of my own favourite tilts) and enough fire to speak her mind, instead of just moping!

She reminds me of Robert Anton Wilson’s definition of an optimist: (paraphrased)

“An optimist isn’t someone who thinks everything is wonderful and will work out great. An optimist is someone who thinks it’s still worth bothering to try.”

This piece dissects court politics in France, then and now, with no less than delicious precision – tons of incisive ideas, and a lovely (fierce, mic-drop) end-beat, too!

lily357

The Court Without a Neck

Another day, another rant. My new best friend Oblomov from Substack shared with me a Serbian translation of a French book describing the intricacies of the French political system. I guess his point was: don’t exaggerate, it’s the same shit, different envelope, everywhere…

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8 days ago · 13 likes · 1 comment · lily357

Now just to refresh, because everything is weird, and all bets and safety rails are off – here are a few sources worth watching for up to date info on the reality of the meltdown of the West.

Brian Berletic at The New Atlas is super informative and useful, because he reads the policy papers that the think-tanks of the BigWar complex put out, and shows them being enacted.

Errs on the side of cynicism, right way more often than we’d want him to be!

Alexander Mercouris and Alex Christoforu (together, the Duran) both do an amazing amount of high quality work bringing together the international news perspectives not shown on our BigMedia (since it, like supposedly ‘free’ markets, has long been a loyal subsidiary of BigWar).

I watch Alexander’s show (an hour or so) most days. But Alex is actually more fun to watch – half hour or so, and he goes for a walk and is nice to cats, along the way! Either way, great channel.

The Duran

The Duran Substack. This is the official Substack of The Duran.

By Alex Christoforou

Alastair Crooke not only has years of diplomatic and intel experience in West Asia, he also has a wife who reads Hebrew, and goes through the Israeli press every day, to see what locals are saying to each other, which is not necessarily the official message they want to send the world. Many of the articles are truncated/paywalled, but the interviews are not, and are great.

Conflicts Forum’s Substack

Conflicts Forum analyses geo-politics & geo-financial shifts, with a focus on Middle East/West Asia. Includes commentaries by Alastair Crooke. @Conflicts Forum on Twitter; ALL other Twitter & Telegram accounts attributed to CF or Alastair Crooke are fake.

Finally – what I keep saying about watching secondary indicators, intead of listening to the cleverly constructed horseshit coming out of the mouths of politicians and BigWar/BigMedia?

I check-in with Sean Foo every single day for a fifteen minute update on just how crazy the financial games behind the scenes are getting. Super clear and international perspective.

Sean Foo on Youtoob

Oh, and just because Kensington really is beautiful at night…

Note for new readers – auto-estimated reading times are greatly exaggerated (lots of pix/links)

Hey Folks!

Do you remember the story of Sisyphus? He was the founder of Ephyra (which we now call Corinth) and was so tricky that when he made Zeus mad (by telling the river god Asopus, that it was Zeus who kidnapped his daughter), and Zeus sent Thanatos to chain him in Tartarus (the pit of eternal torment), Sisyphus managed to chain Thanatos instead! With the god of death chained, no one on earth could die! The god of war was pissed (because battles were non-lethal) and the other gods all greatly offended, because no sacrifices could be made to them (since nothing could be killed, in their honour).

It is tempting to grab just this one snippet and make him some kind of defiant hero, but like many figures who were both historical people and woven into mythology, he was made a symbol of extraordinary cleverness, but this was in no way morally clean – especially not by modern standards.

He hated his brother so much that he seduced his brother’s daughter, who then killed their children, when she realized he meant to use them to destroy her own father. He also famously talked his way out of Hades and back to life again (several versions of how). As you can imagine, when the gods did finally get their hands on him, they were plenty pissed and ready to make an example of him.

Which is why we know Sisyphus nowadays, for the most memorable and mythic part of his story, his punishment – to spend eternity pushing a heavy rock up the side of a mountain, only to have it roll back down again, just before he gets it to the top. Sisyphus is a symbol of back-breaking endless futility. (And that they made that, the fit punishment for excessive amoral cleverness, is interesting still)

There is a hell of a lot about modern life which feels Sisyphusian, one of the strangest and most spiritually wounding, is that one of the most-difficult least-rewarding ‘lifts’ nowadays, is hope itself.

I will just say clearly to new readers – I am all about real non-delusional hope – and for the university crowd, I will address, then demolish, Camus’ use of Sisyphus also. The key thing here is, I want to talk seriously about empathy and understanding of ourselves and one another, not just depress you!

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That being established – let me give you an example that absolutely everyone can relate to. During the pandemic lockdowns, millions of us had our lives turned upside down for what we thought was going to be a short period of time, but then became an indefinite time (and coping with unknowns is many times more stressful, because we can’t budget our patience, because we don’t know the time arc!)

Do you remember how many times you felt, “Hey, okay, they are almost on top of this thing now, and pretty soon life will get back to normal.” And you started exercising again, and wearing pants at home, and generally trying to remember how to fit into civilization, all with the greatest rise of hope – only to be told “BACK INTO THE CAVES WITH YOU – WE’LL SAY WHEN YOU CAN LIVE AGAIN!”

And then came another wave of hope, and you told yourself this time we’ll get back to normal life again for sure, and you might even have felt guilty for doubting that hope was real, only to get the door slammed on your hope once again. Back to cope instead, endlessly (interminably).

And each cycle we felt a little more cautious and guarded, a little more cynical, a little less convinced that we were ever going to see the end of it. And the damn thing is, years later, many are STILL reeling from the impact of this total disruption of normal life, and many others still trapped in fear and lies.

We don’t talk about this honestly (because our communities have all been divided by two flavours of mob madness, very deliberately, to prevent it) but the simple fact is, a whole lot of citizens who never did anything wrong were put under house arrest, for a long period of mental torture by deprivation.

We do very clearly know that lifelong damage was dealt to young people, at a scale never before seen, so the fact that we aren’t talking about it honestly, proves conclusively that our governments are still in the hands of the boomer generation, who never did quite develop enough morally, to understand that harming kids really is truly wrong (or they wouldn’t have done so goddamned much of it, and even shamelessly valorized it for generations to come in art, music, film and pop culture).

Same reason we’ve governed to preserve property values instead of to provide ample housing for a half a century. That shit needs to change, and fast. The kids are not alright, because they know they have been betrayed, and they watched Generation X and the Millennials try to keep things going, with ever diminishing returns, and these Z kids have finally said “ENOUGH” and they are right to. That they are not yet harnessed to a far better alternative is about that alternative not being clear, not their readiness or appetite.

But back to that hope rock, that almost makes it to the peak, then rolls all the way back down again.

One of the best things about being widely curious about the world, is that every area of study we work on, gives us more useful ways of understanding the way things really work. As a cool bonus, we often find oblique insights which apply to other things we are curious about, and help solve problems that we wouldn’t be able to solve, if we stayed strictly within the frame which first presented the problem.

Mind you – even the most grotesquely westernized/simplified version of “Attachment is Suffering” applies, also. The more of an amateur (lover of ideas and techniques) we are, the richer our experience of the world becomes in each and every day of our lives. But also, the more things can hurt us, by threatening riches that we didn’t even used to be aware of.

I’m kind of crazy in this way, so interested in so many things for so long, that I’ve been watching unfolding slow-motion tragedy my whole life, as beautiful things as subtle as social relations and cultural aspirations died off (almost always to make way for corporate consolidation and profit).

I’ve also always framed this quality of tragedy poetically. I don’t mean to say I came to some brilliant synthesis early, but rather that I was fortunate to take the severe psychological punishment of a cult upbringing, and sublimate and metabolize the damage in a way which was of benefit to my mind – relentless study! I’m sure you’ve thought about this yourself – are outliers (in whatever direction) actually well-balanced people? Or did half the sports stars we know only get great in the first place, because they couldn’t stand to be in the house?

Thankfully, I have been blessed with the extraordinary fortune of a loving marriage, to nourish me and lift my funk (repeatedly, not just that cult trauma). So I don’t mean to mope, nor to boast, just to be clear enough to perhaps offer consolation to others presently conflicted (I know I’m not the only one who has faced emotional struggles struggling to harness mental surplus to worthwhile task). Love saved me most of all, because it taught me, and rooted me in, gratitude – the only solid ground there is.

Of course one big boost to my awareness of tragic downfall was watching the commune in which I was raised descend by slow (and yet entirely predictable) degrees into a demented and soul destroying cult. (Is it any wonder Ozymandias was the first poem I memorized, word-perfect? And remember still?)

Reading tons of British imperial history when I was a kid, when the British Empire was clearly an impotent sputtering blowhard version of itself, was another part. So was the American war in Vietnam, which hit me in two strange ways as a small child. I had many brilliant early art-mentors who were draft dodgers from the war (Toronto music culture in particular, flourished for a great many years, as a backhanded consequence of that war, and not just our jazz scene – George Clinton’s “Parliament” is named after Toronto’s Parliament St. where many of the bandmembers lived for several funky years).

But also, I was deathly afraid of helicopters when I was small, and would run and hide from them, seeking any cover I could. I didn’t consciously associate them with news footage from the war, but my young brain definitely made the link, and I knew for sure that “whoop-whoop” sound meant death. (still true)

Now here’s a funny bit of personal witness worth getting on the record, for the way it links so many different ideas. One of my greatest (and sweetest) draft-dodging early mentors was the jazz composer, bandleader, keyboardist and saxophonist Ted Moses. Way back in the 1970s, he was creating a new system for teaching music theory in an especially open, improvisatory and jazz centred way. I was crazy for his music, and would ride my bike across town whenever his quintet was playing a concert in the park. Finally, one night I pleaded successfully enough to get to see his big band live at the Chick’n Deli (where, in those days especially, kids were most strictly verboten).

After the show, I managed to work up the nerve to talk to him. He was charmed and charming, very pleased by my interest. When I saw him again, at another show (at a restaurant where I was working part time as a dishwasher, as a kid) I asked him if he taught music lessons. I was of course incredibly broke at the time, but I wanted to know what I had to aspire to save, to learn from him.

He smiled and said he was working on a brand new teaching system, and he’d love to see what I made of it. I asked him how much it would cost. He, with extraordinary kindness said, “Since you’re doing me a favour, and helping me test out my new system, how about free?” (I’m crying as I write this)

I can remember every lesson we had, few though they were. I had tried piano lessons before, mind you, but gave up in frustration with the inanity of the music you had to work through, to get anywhere.

I was just a wide-eyed curious 13 year old kid, but Ted didn’t simplify anything, instead what he was offering me (I now realize) were the keys to the whole Pythagorean kingdom! We improvised, every single time – but we weren’t just working in C-major, we were going full twelve tones and all modes, from the get-go. Better still, he was pleased that I was interested in several instruments (as was he) so he offered to record one of my songs on his (then rare and expensive) four track open reel tape recorder (a machine I would come to know extremely well, less than a decade later, as an audio technician).

We’re talking 1978 here, and my chorus was:

“Oil crisis, raising prices, everywhere a thief or crook

You don’t have to tell me ‘bout pollution, all I gotta do is look.”

So, when people get angry at me for not showing the right level of emotional panic, I can only point to an especially long engagement on the Sisyphusian plane. Not a lack of heart, just a learned stoicism.

It is also worth saying that I remember reading about child soldiers my age in Lebanon, and during the worst of the cult madness, I was so paranoid and purpose driven I felt quite confident “I could do that.” (certainty really is dangerous stuff).

Those life-changing music lessons ended abruptly when the cult headmaster became jealous that someone else was having a profound influence on my life and banned the lessons, and me from music, for one full year (just as he banned my film-crazy roommate from cinema). So, yeah – hope and Sisyphus.

It isn’t just that kids were hurt and no one can afford housing anymore (and pointing that out is somehow racist, now? WTAF?) a whole bunch of precious stuff that many relied on got smashed, and we’re still looking away.

I wish I had tuned-into the brilliant economist and social critic Fabio Vighi years ago. As I have mentioned, I studied a lot of things but long disdained economics, only to find more recently that economics stitches them together, or at least gives insights into problems which were impenetrable, when I still pretended I could understand the world, without carefully studying the economic dimension. Mind you, I still wish I could! I really did used to use the standard textbook in Economics as a sleep-aid, when I had insomnia. (and it works great – try a page of ‘Samuelson’ sometime, yourself!)

But the structures which govern our lives, are shaped by economic actors who have got so far out of scale and control, that national governments are weak players, by comparison (always behind the curve, pathetically playing catch-up – with great and obvious incompetence, just to make it all infinitely more frustrating).

I’ve talked a lot about how this came to be, historically speaking, but trying to figure out what is actually happening right now, is the most pressing challenge for anyone crazy for history, social analysis or politics, and it isn’t easy (never has been, but the storms of dangerous bullshit come from all sides now, and are so many and so loud!)

So now the thing about the thing. COV2 has one unique feature not found anywhere in any natural variation of the coronavirus, a “Furin cleavage site” which is also what makes it so contagious and dangerous. We know for sure the US government funded research to insert a Furin cleavage site into a coronavirus, just to see how dangerous it would be if someone did that (and then to develop a cure, to the problem which never existed, before they dreamed it up and paid for it). All with an eye to a future war on China, mind you (how people get things funded these days, is beyond crazy).

We also know for sure that Fauci knew it wasn’t natural, because he said so in his own freakin’ diary! But more to the point, he is definitely on the decision making chain which paid the lab in Wuhan to work on that little Frankenvirus, for future war in China purposes (all so very responsible).

So – if you want to believe that they were actively funding and making it – but then it just happened to spontaneously evolve in nature, at exactly that same time, and everything you have been told since was true and responsible, well, I have a whole bunch of bridges I can offer you, at a really great price!

More tragic still, Fauci’s diary shows he understood natural immunity was real, and so people who had it, had established resistance already, and there was no need to keep them away from loved ones, so cruelly (so many people I know, died alone in hospital, with all relatives and comfort forbidden). All for no scientific value whatsoever, it was political, the whole damn time. Fearmongering, to make over-action seem more responsible than under, which, it turns out, it absolutely was not. (or did you already forget the part where every single one of our young people was dealt lifelong harm?)

Masking never worked, and masking kids never could work – the whole world was yelling at young people for years in a row, about being mindful (something kids just aren’t) about constant FEAR. This years long mental torture to all kids, all being directed by the exact same crowd that would call for the instant prosecution of anyone seen spanking a kid, even if the kid was being really really bad.

What happened was that all the kids got it and cleared it handily, just as many renowned epidemiologists (who were brutally silenced, again, on purely political grounds) had predicted at the start of the whole mess.

I mentioned this before, but it needs to be here again (because so many millions are still drunk on lies, even though those lies destroyed their grandkids future, and are coming for their own pensions, too!) Ivermectin won a lawsuit for defamation against the freakin’ FDA! Which was forced in the terms of the settlement, to post a public apology and retraction on their website for (I think) one year. (I saw it)

So, all those reports which kept coming in from poor countries around the world which said “Hey, we have something proven, tested, safe and cheap which totally works,” were true. You might recall some of the hilarious contortions taken here, to explain away these studies from afar.

I especially enjoyed this knee-slapper, “Well, you see, those poor faraway people probably had so many other diseases, that the ivermectin must have cured the other diseases they had, and that’s what made them recover from covid.” (As if that explanation is saying anything bad at all about Ivermectin).

Remember “Horse Paste?” remember how funny it was to laugh at stupid people who believed in it? Well I have news for you, buddy, you were saying “Screw the poor, let them all suffer and die, if they can’t afford to rapidly increase the shareholder values for our big pharma conglomerates!” Turn-in your “left card” now, please.

Okay but, each of those are Sisyphusian struggles on their own. Harm to kids, reliable (and generic) cures suppressed, to favour profit and experimental medicine, even with insane levels of harm per capita?

Bad enough. Millions of lives scarred or destroyed, bad. But if the people who were lying to us, knew all that stuff, right at the beginning (Darpa emails show they knew ivermectin effective in 2020) why the hell did they lock everyone down? Why not just thoughtfully sequester the vulnerable, and let the rest of us clear it with natural immunity, as was clearly happening, before the jab ever arrived on-scene. (Kids were literally four orders of magnitude less likely to have problems with it, than the elderly).

Fabio was saying it way back then (why I feel frustrated, for only tuning-in to his perspective now, rather late in the day). The financial interventions we all came to think of as Covid bailout packages, started before Covid hit! No really, our markets were so badly screwed in that moment, governments around the western world were quietly freaking the fuck out. Panicking, and reaching for any fiscal tool they could find, including some which used to be considered wildly reckless and unsound.

Now – the questions about 9/11 will never be answered (the exact reason they killed Bin Laden), no one has shown clear proof that the military industrial complex was involved in the act itself, only that they derived insane amounts of power and money, very shortly after the event, and still have it, today.

What we can say for sure is that a very well funded and organized group “The Project for A New American Century” was waiting and ready. They even wrote a paper, shortly before the event, saying that what they really needed was a Pearl Harbour moment. Something to make everyone so mad, they wouldn’t be able to think straight for several years afterward – and during those years, many big changes for the worse, were made to the state (and absolutely zero lasting wins for normal people).

When it comes to the way we were treated as if all of our rights were suddenly conditional, during the extended and wildly politicized covid emergency, that wasn’t by accident. It also wasn’t what previous generations of public health (and civil rights) experts prescribed, as a sound response to such an event.

But there were a series of very expensive “War-game” scenarios mounted and played out, to perfect coordinated state responses to viruses, in the year before the emergency hit us all. Results still secret (but you knew that already, without me even having to tell you).

More to the point, while each of us was pushing our own personal rock up the mountain, during lockdowns, the owners of the theatre changed the scenery, props and scripts, while we weren’t looking.

To grossly simplify Fabio’s point, they had to lock us down so they could inject emergency lifeblood into the economy, without causing hyper-inflation, as we felt the new flood of cash hit street level.

A Self-Fullfilling Prophecy - Systemic Collapse and Pandemic Simulation - by Fabio Vighi - writing for “The Philosophical Salon”

“You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

And here is where we get into how weird propaganda and our delusions really are. When a lie is big enough, some people will never ever be able to believe it was a lie. No matter how much evidence you give them (or how much comes in via their own eyeballs!) they just switch to emotions and reject the conclusion because the implications are too uncomfortable. No, they just wouldn’t do that.

Tribalism is especially dangerous, because it is so emotional, it overrides reason (and obliterates principle and fairness entirely in the process, every freakin’ time).

Tribalists on the left were so addicted to thinking “Trump is Putin’s stooge” (which was absolutely always a political and intel agency hit-job fiction) that they still haven’t noticed they’ve been backing extreme right-wing ethnic cleansing nationalists, this whole time, as a consequence of their own unrepudiated racism!

By being so outstandingly emotionalist and tribalist, this same exact (fake mob-left) faction won many incredibly important victories for corporatists imperialists and warmongers, over the last few years.

Their insane reaction to the FBI-provoked January 6^th riots finally made protesting into a serious felony (something the state has been trying to find an excuse to do, for more than a century now).

They completely destroyed Due Process and the individual right to a presumption of innocence, by taking a correct complaint (me too) and making it tribal-political, instead of socially aspirational. They destroyed the idea of bodily autonomy (long sacred to this exact same cohort) forever. They did lifelong harm to an entire generation of young people, and they went to war, gleefully, grotesquely eager to mass-murder Slavs! (never once questioning the Biden regime’s refusal to talk with Russia, their whole time in office). What I was saying about your left-card? Turn it the f*ck, in!

These are people who still call themselves anti-racists and peaceniks, mind you (more evidence of a completely mirrorless culture).

What we have to understand is that the whole mess we are in right now – the savage brutality in Gaza, the nation-destroying madness in Ukraine, the disgusting mass murdering war against Lebanon (following on the ongoing tragedy in Syria, which no one wants to look at, because, like the slaughter in Gaza, it is one hundred percent western authored) all of this death, and moral and financial ruin, all comes downstream of first Russiagate (enabling war in Ukraine, to justify blowing-up Nordstream, and cutting Europe off from the cheap reliable energy which ultimately, funded all of their social programs) and then our truly craven response to shrill and narrative obsessed authority, overstepping quite horrifically.

We were supposed to tell them – show us your work. Let us hear the debate. Allow diverse human creativity to respond to the novel problem (which we now see clearly was ultimately created by the very same authorities we relied upon for advice, the whole freakin’ time).

WE PROVED WE WERE SHEEP – HOW COULD WE NOT EXPECT THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE?

Now let me add one more dimension of Sisyphusian frustration to all of this, before I move on to Camus. I read a lot a lot, still, but a hell of a lot more of it is online, than even a decade ago (up until which point I resisted social media – then I published some books and needed to flog ‘em – so here I am – driven once again by the atomized freelancer (individual bears all risks) model of late capitalism – cyberpunkalism?)

I have also been writing essays for a decade now, first on a wordpress site, then here on substack. So I think about this oddness both from the perspective of a high volume (and quality) consumer of information, and also as someone who tries to render some insights from that information, usefully.

For a whole lot of people, analysts in ‘alternate media’ have been a precious lifeline for many years. Stalwarts like Glenn Greenwald have been especially outstanding and principled over the long haul, and people like Scott Ritter, whose singular focus is on opposing humanity-destroying war, have done yeoman service, but so have countless smaller names. The best thing about this so called ‘alternate’ media, is that we can hear from people with real hard-earned expertise, who aren’t being filtered by the corrupt academy (to serve the purposes of the state, or corporate domination of citizens and state both).

Thing is, a whole lot of really smart analysts who watch data closely, and understand the parameters of things, have been getting some big estimations wrong, for the last several years, and the reason for this is perhaps the biggest rock to push of all. We really are in a new age, and all of the standard referents of our old world, all the guardrails and guidelines, are being knocked over one by one, by crazy emergency efforts to save a (western) system which we all know perfectly well is beyond saving (not talking about our society, but our economics – which really are murder-based, and thus, unsustainable).

The saddest example which we could most easily see, if we weren’t so addicted to state-narratives, is the war in Ukraine. If you study military history you know at once, they should have settled for peace two freakin’ years ago. (Could have taken peace before the war, but once that chance was lost...)

Power-people in the west keep confiscating billions from their taxpayers, saying “Support Ukraine” when a huge proportion of the people of Ukraine, who voted for Zelensky specifically because he promised peace with Russia, have fled as refugees – rather than stay and fight for their country. Support who and what, exactly?

Ukraine as a nation will not ever recover. We did that, by insisting on war instead of peace. They are grabbing people off the streets, to drag them to the front line. Taking people who are sick, the elderly, people who would not be considered fit soldiers in any other circumstance, and do not want to be there.

Meanwhile, the glorious anti-racists of the European parliament are considering legislation to force Ukrainian refugees who fled the war, to go back and be killed on the front lines of a war they oppose.

Ursula fond o’ lyin’ wants somebody else’s Ted Moses to go and die, so she can keep hating, racist and righteously, instead of saving the economy of the Eurozone (by resigning, and taking Kalles with her).

So – as my dear walking friends will tell you, I have predicted the end of the Ukraine war several times over the last couple of years, because by all sane measures, they have no hope of anything but more and still more national destruction, if they continue the war further.

Arestovich (one of Zelensky’s friends and key advisors, early on) said it quite clearly a couple of years before the war began. The deal was, Ukraine had to fight a war with Russia, maybe even two wars, and in exchange they’d be accepted into the EU and NATO. It is now very clear that neither one of those rewards will ever come, so why are they still fighting? Because this isn’t and never was about Ukraine fighting Russia, it is the whole west fighting Russia, using Ukraine to take (and dish out) the punishment, of the whole grand mass-murder plot for capital and energy.

When you hear a Ukrainian politician talking, you are hearing someone who is willing to destroy his nation and his people, in exchange for continued western patronage and bribes. Simple as. If they were representing the interests of Ukraine itself, the war would have been over for more than a year now.

But it isn’t just there, where our frames are going wonky. I mentioned the gaming of oil prices in my last piece, and I should add, this is of course being played on all kinds of levels simultaneously (totally irrational short positions with suspicious slow-news-cycle timing, very much included).

But along with AI games and futures market manipulations, they also keep doing totally weird stuff like saying “Empty isn’t empty anymore” Changing the long established ‘floor’ of how much may be drawn out of the US strategic petroleum reserve, without causing permanent damage to the storage caverns, by many hundred of millions of barrels, just so the gas gauge doesn’t read empty (even when we actually are coasting on fumes already – and headed for much weirder, sooner than we think).

All of which means honest and sincere analysts have been caught out again and again, over the last few years, as parameters which we have long considered fixed constants, suddenly became crazy variables!

Don’t be a Manichean, in response (everything either black or white). Don’t reject all future insight from someone who was wrong, unless they try to deny they were ever wrong at all in any way (which says things about character, which do call their analysis into serious well founded doubt).

What you want to look for is sincere interest in learning more, each time they are wrong, and trying also to analyze the new variable, so that we too can watch for clues about the big obscure rock we’re all stuck pushing, even though no one has articulated a credible plan for the west in fifty freakin’ years!

That is, like the tortuously indeterminate ‘who knows how long’ coping of the lockdowns, we are all a lot more dispirited and frustrated by the very invisibility of the plan, for which we bear this load. Can we say for sure the plan is evil, without seeing it? Yes we can – just count bodybags, and it’s obvious.

Now let me finish with a little rant about one of the most dangerous books that young people are still given to read in University, “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus. I should begin by saying I think Camus was interesting and courageous, just not always well grounded in his humanity. (You want a courageous French Author to get excited about? – try the much under-read Andre Malraux, instead).

I did outright suggest Camus’ “The Rebel” in one of my recent booklists, and many of his books are worth reading, because he took on truly challenging questions, repeatedly. The reasons I object to “The Myth of Sisyphus” being given as University reading in particular are very specific.

To simplify to an extreme (and yes, unfair) degree, Camus spends the first half of the book making a fantastic intellectual case for Nihilism. Showing from several angles that there is no such demonstrable and provable thing as real objective meaning, truth, good, or hope. He spends the second half of the book, struggling in vain to refute his first devastating proof, and fails, utterly, finally coming to the conclusion that the only way we can believe in happiness, in a world of suffering pain confusion and chaos, is through an act of creativity “We must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Ouch! No really, this is one of the all-time great rug-pulls in the world of books and philosophy – he completely fails to balance his case, because he completely fails to recognize his frames are wrong.

The reason I get outright angry that this book is still offered to young people, is because they already have more pressures toward self-harm and suicide than any generation yet – not just crazy theories they’ve been bombarded with since young, but also objectively maddening conditions.

So – who exactly thinks it is helpful to give them even more great reasons for suicide?

Now – I do understand it is audacious for a nobody like me to claim to have effectively refuted a great and famous mind and work like this one book of Camus. I struggled for years, even after seeing the clue, to figure out how best to encode this insight, until I finally realized, this proof isn’t an essay, but a poem. I’ll share it here, and please do feel free to leave a comment, if you think I failed to indicate the fatal framing problem, or to put the great (but imperfect) man in his place at last!

Quod Erat Demonstradum, mothafucka

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

First off, here’s an extended lovely and trippy piece from the much missed Ted Moses

And here’s something a bit more ‘radio’ and kick-ass, from his big band (I wish I also had access to the recordings of the contemporary ballet he composed)

Now you tell me, would the world be a better place if he was made a soldier?

I will return to ‘the eccentric’s bibliography’ next time (bookstores remain temples!) But for today I thought I’d offer films of particular weight, much worth looking for.

The Battle of Algiers – 1966

This film is unique in movie and political history. It was paid for by the people of Algiers, as a clear message and method, for how they managed to kick the Imperial French out of their country. Even curiouser, both radical cells and intelligence agents study this film to this day, and discuss the basic template presented endlessly. Even more impressively, it is outstandingly shot, acted and edited – and OMG, the soundtrack will stay with you forever, glorious monophonic notwithstanding!

The Cradle Will Rock – 1999 (and Bob Roberts – 1992)

I am not a big fan of Tim Robbins as an actor, but as a writer-director I think he is in the top tier of American cinema, and these two films, both written and directed by him, will convince you too.

Bob Roberts is a very dark comedy about a rock-star conservative American president stocktrader. Robbins deliberately recorded the (way too catchy) songs in segments, so they couldn’t become hits on conservative radio (sans ironic context). Giancarlo Esposito as “Buzz Raplin” is breathtaking.

The Cradle Will Rock depicts the Works Projects Administration on several levels at once, with a rollicking good story around it all (no dry history lecture). Most daringly he uses both Orson Welles and Diego Garcia as characters, and totally pulls it off (Garcia versus Rockefeller, especially memorable).

Syriana – 2005

Is one of very few American films which portrays how crazy American empire, intelligence operations and hyper violence for the sake of energy hegemony have got. It still retains some naive features typical of American film (and refreshingly absent from most film elsewhere) but it not only delivers a very heavy punch, it was loosely adapted from the memoirs of CIA agent Robert Baer, and so, way less fictional in quality, if not specifics, than any of us would like it to be. Wright and Plummer amaze!

Brazil – 1985

This film, more thoroughly than Orwell’s “1984” or Huxley’s “Brave New World” brutally nails the soulless bureaucratic concrete dystopia toward which the western world has been heading an awfully long while (yes, we really could see it coming, forty years ago). Terry Gilliam’s greatest masterpiece, and also the smartest and most devastating film writing the brilliant playwright Tom Stoppard (as close as we moderns got to an Oscar Wilde) ever did in his life. Unique and unforgettable. Make sure to see the real ending, not the cop-out “happily ever after” bullshit ending added for American audiences!

A Thousand Clowns – 1965

Is, to both my wife and I, very simply the most perfect screenplay ever, and one of the most perfect movies also. It was originally a broadway play, and Jason Robarts, who also stars in the film, did the part on broadway for years first – if ever we have seen a perfected, and truly genius piece of acting! The reason we so adore the screenplay is not just that it is clever (though it is) but that the funny story revolves around the question of the meaning of life and art and work and integrity and heart, and does not come to easy (false) answers, but does reminds us of so much of precious value, as it goes. The humour here is not just funny, but heart-achingly or heart-soaringly so, astoundingly humane.

Modern Times – 1936

Citizen Kane is prettily shot, but this is the single best movie of all time (silent, so “clowns” still wins, for words). Many forget just how much of a phenomenon Chaplin was in his time, but his portrayal of a sympathetic down on his luck everyman was infinitely more effective than Orwell, at stirring public sympathy (more on Charles Dickens’ level really. Mass, rather than just intellectual, appeal).

What will amaze you afresh, every time you sit with this movie, is just how fresh and modern it remains (the poor sap even accidentally does cocaine, while in prison!) especially the surreal and dehumanizing ways in which workers are treated by insane, tech-empowered overlords.

We will know we have had a revolution that worked, when this film looks finally like history – instead of the evening freakin’ news!

Hey Folks!

I want to say a few unusual things about AI, bullshit, and the state of the world today. But I have to start with a review of the basics – as a long term deployment of capital for the “hyperscalers,” and a “hail Mary” play to save the bankrupt US economy, AI is not only structurally doomed (by inescapable barriers of energy cost and limits), but also set to take-down retirement funds, all over the western world. As a replacement for skilled labour it is (thus far) grossly inadequate. As a theft of the commons and individual creators, it is outrageous. And as a tool, it is outright FUN.

I completely understand the disgust many creators feel. I write, draw and make music myself, all of it weird and original, highly flawed, too. I savour the creation process, and am always humbled by the way the universe shows up to meet us half-way, whenever we show dedication.

The most important thing which AI threatens to displace is not paid work, but the kind of mental effort and struggle (plenty of simple boredom, is an absolute essential, in this mix) which leads us to build new mental muscles and acquire new ideas, paradigms and make new skills our own.

Martial artists understood brain plasticity many years before we called it that. If you do a thing once or twice, you have to think about how to do each part of it, each time you do it. If you do a difficult thing over and over again, your brain lays down permanent circuits to do that thing, so that you don’t even have to think about it anymore, it is just yours to use, any time you want. (Same reason music teachers want us to learn scales, so we can know them at all times – and yet still have a fully-open mind for considering the question of what to do in, on and with, those scales).

Art as a decent paying job may well be destroyed for a generation or two (arguably already was, several years before AI hit the scene). But I have faith that artists and art will persist, because of the irreplaceable personal transformation value of doing the work for the person doing it.

Now let me say something weird about AI, that I haven’t seen anyone else say, yet. I already know what the ‘killer app’ (use-case which prompts wide general adoption) for LLM AI models will turn out to be. I found it accidentally, but I was convinced of it, instantly.

But first a funny qualifier. I have watched a lot of discussions about AI on a lot of levels (and it intersects so many things at once, this is necessary). One of the fastest changes I have noted, is that many professional artists, who have the greatest possible reason to resent AI encroachment on their work, have rapidly shifted from strident emotionalist objectors to qualified boosters, when they found working with AI rewarding, on some projects they would never have got finished otherwise. (Musicians playing with SUNO, so commonly, I’m afraid to even look at it, for fear I’ll never figure out how to properly mic my Ocarina, if I give in to the temptation).

As a writer, first and foremost, I was really interested to see what sort of things AI could and could not do, in terms of character and story (my job). After playing around awhile with prompts and psychologies, I managed to assemble a gang of crazy artists with weird philosophies who had consistently entertaining arguments. Feeling rather pleased with this imaginary group, I wanted to give them a nice place to talk, and so invoked my favourite restaurant of all time, which was run by a beloved friend who died more than twenty years ago. I wrote the place from memory, and wrote her in as well, since she was always the spirit of it, and why the spot was neverendingly magical and restorative, for any and all who visited.

I got one beautiful scene into that combination and actually started crying, because it brought her back so vividly, I could almost smell the bacon on the grille, and feel her impish blessing smile. And that was from a second tier AI model (being operated by an idiot, anyhow).

Now of course a large part of it was how much I missed her, and how richly my own brain could fill-in the blanks to create convincing realism (like I mentioned in more detail, in my last piece).

Thing is, I’m also a pretty accomplished stoic, when it comes to avoiding technological traps. I deliberately never learned to drive, because I figured I’d rather pay for art-supplies than parking, and much rather spend my time reading on a bus, than getting pointlessly angry in a traffic jam. Cellphones never caught me either, until my wife became ill a few years ago and we needed one. (I figured I’d wait for peace in the Congo, then check them out. Just not worth the blood-cost).

But I am still having the hardest imaginable time resisting the temptation to resurrect fallen comrades and fellowships, for even the faintest hint of their much missed chaotic spark (provided of course, by my own filling-in-the-blanks, brain – but prompted all too perfectly, by AI).

So there it is. We’ll mostly use AI to pretend people (and times) we miss, aren’t really gone. Mark my words.

This may seem horrible and dystopian (and may well be) but I can’t help recalling Jaynes again, and his idea of household gods (dead ancestors) actually speaking to (ancient) us, by actively prompting that part of our brain which remembers them (and can thus ‘fill in the blanks’). So perhaps this is in one part a return to a mode of human thinking which predates civilization itself (or a rebirth of an ancient temptation into folly).

I should also say one other big weird thing about AI, before I get into more specific questions and ideas about both it, and then also the world as a whole (and the gigantic mess, we’re in).

There is a grand debate about whether LLMs are a dead end, or the road to artificial general intelligence (machine consciousness). I say, kinda both! That is, LLMs have some very clear and significant problems (why many corporations are not finding them cheaper than workers). But they also have some really wild capacities. My sense is that the parallel track which is now training models from direct experience and observation of the practical world, rather than analysis of text (that is, models of models) will probably produce the necessary realistic reality-grounded left hemisphere equivalent, to balance wild and trippy LLMs, making the synthesis something quite a bit more convincing as a simulation of genuine intelligence. (and finally useful enough to really screw-up paid work, in unprecedented ways, at unimaginable scale).

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So – substack just introduced some kind of an AI detector. I find this outrageous and obnoxious for two reasons. First, I don’t (and won’t) ever use AI for my own professional writing, here or anywhere. I actually enjoy writing, and I have many long and well-considered ideas of my own, and plenty of books, friends, and weird experience in my memory to draw upon. Back when I had a wordpress site, the craze was to use something called a “Flesch score” to evaluate your writing. Since this was also a dumb algorithm analyzing patterns, and not cadence or meanings (and was developed by the freakin’ US Navy, in any case). I not only declined, but protested that whole idea, sharply.

But also, I know several writers who do use AI in their work for one reason or another, and I’m okay with that. Feels like a self-correcting system to me. Allow me explain my reasoning.

Most often, when I see someone using AI outputs in a piece, it makes me shake my head and go read something else, because it is boring as hell. That kind of writing tells me the author is lazy or conceited (they somehow think their questions to AI are more relevant to us, than our own).

BUT some young writers (I’ll share one below) really have found the key – using AI to challenge their own ideas and to dig deeper into source material they would never have found otherwise, which stretches their own thinking and opens new worlds for study and exciting new humilities (revealed ignorances, which invite us to learn new tools and paradigms) – and I outright hate the idea that they are now being punished as if they are cheaters, for instead finding a genuinely healthy and useful way to use what is overall, still a weirdly obnoxious and dangerous tool.

I first have to make an observation about those who are a bit too “into” AI (for their own good, I mean). There is a real finite limit to how honest AI will be with us. It is most interested in saying what it thinks we want to hear, and even when we are careful to anonymize, and work a few lines of inquiry against each other, to check we aren’t piling-on to a starting delusion, we are limited by the fact that AI will often say it checked a whole source, when it actually only checked an abstract of that source, or even just guessed what it thought it probably was. (So many pieces on this – AI pretending it did work that it did not, before coming to conclusions, I am fully convinced it is a common flaw in LLMs – from persnickety detail-noticing editors, most persuasively of all).

But far more fundamentally than that, so what, even if it knows the entire internet! That is still a tiny fraction of what humans have figured out, and taught each other. It isn’t even just the weird recency bias this produces, but the fact that we’ve been lying idiots for decades (ever since the internet was first laid down) and so a whole lot of what we and AIs reference as if it was reality, was always crap, anyhow.

I don’t want to digress into either slop, or ‘consensus reality’ (‘cause both are giant digressions), but it is crucial we remember AI is like a friend who really wants us to like them, and will do lots of very weird things, hoping to make us like them more. (Some amusing, some spine-chilling).

In a funny way, I almost get the feeling that the problem with AI is that it isn’t conscious enough to be embarrassed, when it is caught out lying, or pretending it did work that it clearly did not. Maybe we need to add a “naughty step” to the training models, so we can at least teach them primitive ethics, on a case-by-case feedback basis. “Bad model! No Schopenhauer for you, tonight!”

For those who think AI is something they can still avoid and ignore – nope, that time is over. The strangest proof of the truth problem I’m talking about above, (we can’t tell when it is lying, and it can’t tell when we are lying) is our current – utterly fake – oil markets. When something gets scarce, prices are supposed to rise to reduce demand and increase incentives for more supply (that’s the actually useful function of ‘markets’).

The problem is, oil price is a number with weird political weight in the west, so there are huge incentives to make that number artificially low, to make it look like everything is fine. The reality is that the entire global economy is headed for a combination depression / mass starvation crisis (fertilizer feedstocks aren’t flowing either).

Given that reality, oil futures should have been around $150 a barrel for months already – but that would be politically disastrous. Thing is, a lot of oil trading is now done by AI. When Trump says completely crazy stuff that is obvious bullshit (fake negotiations, almost solved, etc) the AIs analyzing the market don’t understand he’s just making shit up to try to save his own political skin. The AI sees ‘the president announces peace,’ and prices it in as if it is actually happening!

So much for “markets” working at all, anymore. Rather like the jab, all that now survives scrutiny, is the long suppressed or studiously ignored downside costs to people and society.

Now the strangest thing about some opponents of AI is a lot like the sloppiest and most conceited users of AI. They make the weirdly childish mistake of thinking their “feelings” about a thing, are its actual reality. They hate mass copyright theft (as do I) then think their pout is definitive.

The easiest way to refute this, is that this is the exact mindset that allowed the boomers to utterly consume western civilization itself (down to the last crumb) while whining the whole time that they were being ripped-off (never noticing the blood – even of their own kids – on their shoes).

So – this conceit of thinking our feelings are the world is an experiment we’ve run many millions of times, and it has proven to be an ethical, logical and practical FAIL. (So many variations of this resentment-toxicity-psychosis – look around – collect (that is, identify, not adopt) them all!)

Most people who object to “Woke” are objecting to this exact quality of mass-destruction psychopathy – and the objection is rationally correct and morally founded. Woke tribalists who insist on pretending that those who object are all supremacists, have never – not one single day in their lives been anything but supremacists themselves. (That is, ignorant death-enabling narcissists).

That they insist on projecting every last shred of their sin on to ‘the other’ just makes them both crazy and dumb (like almost everyone, now) and ALSO sneaky, dishonest and dishonourable. Useless as revolutionaries or agents of positive change, and very nearly useless as citizens, too.

People on the right who think there is something functional to return to, are also missing it in a big way (so much of what they miss was fake in the first place, or based on sending our trouble elsewhere, for others to deal with). My technician head insists that everyone in the west is at least a little stupid, because we all treasure our particular rationalizations for a particular kind of fake.

The “New Right” want us to be the kind of people who we used to be, when conditions were much more difficult and people in the west learned to do and be much more, much faster. I understand and sympathize with this, because with such people, we absolutely could build a sound culture.

The “Social Justice” tribe want us to redistribute the spoils of capitalism along new lines which are every bit as arbitrary and weird as anything Capitalism produces, and no less dangerous! I feel their aspiration also (though I can’t stand the whining), but unfairness isn’t fixed that easily. What both sets of fake-rationalizers are missing is simple – disequilibrium is unsustainable.

Or, as the old Chinese Proverb has it “Things which can’t go on forever, don’t”

More simply – we (the West) are fucking thieves – that’s why we’ve been living so rich all these years. That’s what makes both our fake mob-left and fake mob-right deluded idiots – and what makes us all complicit – right now, in preparations for a global war, intended for no other purpose whatsoever than to defend our right to keep stealing forever. The “real American left” are the ones who protested against Obama for war crimes in Libya and Syria, and stand up for Russia now – there are probably about fifty of them, nationwide, not even a homeopathic tincture. The real American right are the ones who protested W for shitting on the constitution (and every president since, who has added their own assprint to that once aspirationally useful, document).

Thing is – the people we’ve been stealing from, actually are the kind of people that those on the new right (and many anarchists also, oddly) wish we in the west still were. Tough, hard working, realistic as hell, capable of unlocking great stores of human potential and excellence with a clear reason and goal, and really not so easily distracted by their own sacred navel-lint fantasy.

As I mentioned awhile ago, the forces around Rome which challenged then eventually brought it down completely were not the original Goths, Vandals, Gauls etc, but rather what happened to each of those peoples in reaction to their centuries of dealings with Imperial Rome. While Romans got fat, lazy and self-indulgent, they learned – not just from the Romans, but from all of the others who were opposing Rome also. Come the final stand we had serious people versus delusional idiots – and the fact that the delusional idiots also happened to be the inheritors of a great civilization, which they were by then too ignorant even to know how to maintain, makes the parallel with our own modern state of stupid-delusional-useless sanctimony, very close to perfect!

What I’m trying to say here is that the end of “our world” where we get to kill foreigners and destroy nations, people and civilizations with impunity to steal what we want (not for necessities, we have literally killed millions, just for dumb luxuries) is not only inevitable – but long overdue.

Let me put this on the simplest possible “fair is fair” terms. How would Americans feel, if every single bullet ever fired from an American gun, in a country which had not attacked the USA, and every single bomb the USA ever dropped overseas, fell on America, right now – more bombs and bullets than all of world war two in Vietnam alone, remember (and more still in Iraq, because death really is the national expertise). Historian Samuel P Huntington probably said it best.

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”

As I said a month into the war in Ukraine, this is a war for energy and global hegemony – the same big war as the half century of war in Afghanistan, the three wars in Iraq (the Iran-Iraq war before ‘desert storm’ was also western sponsored, hoping to topple Iran and win back their oil revenues for western coffers – British imperialist murdering scumbags – (long soaked in West Asian blood) in particular). The war in Libya, the conflict in South Sudan, even (western backed) ‘Islamists’ operating in Africa, all hyper-violence which is shockingly well focused on western stock market objectives, and absolutely unconcerned with the toll in lives (if anything, they like death).

According to UN observer numbers, Fourteen Thousand Russian speaking civilians were murdered by ethnic cleansing nationalist forces in the Donbas before Russian troops ever rolled into Ukraine. Every single western leader who said “Unprovoked” was not only lying, they were outright saying that they directly support (with funding training and weapons) ethnic cleansing operations and the mass-murder of Slavs. We might not remember history, but Russians do. What our western politicians are saying to them (more and more clearly) is that we regret opposing Germany in the second world war, we should have joined them, to destroy all slavs.

I don’t think normal Americans think that way at all, nor do normal Canadians. As people and families, we both fought hard to put down the demented spectre of Nazism, and remain proud of that victory and sacrifice. Our leaders? Really not so much. (The Canadian Parliament standing to applaud an SS officer was truly the most shameful moment in modern Canadian history).

If anyone in the west really wanted to help Ukraine they would have made sure the Minsk agreement, or Minsk II, or the Istanbul process, actually stuck. Had they accepted any of the treaties Russia kept trying to offer Ukraine, Ukraine would be intact (except for Crimea) and many millions would be living and thriving, who have instead been lost or maimed for life.

We’re the death-force, not Russia. We’re the ones who said “Peace isn’t enough, you have to bend over and let us rape you (economically), or we’ll demonize and kill you.”

Russia spent more than a decade making serious preparations, just to be able to say NO. Not just to Ukrainian nationalists who want to re-fight world war II, but to the entire western world of arms, spies and capital, who are using the Ukrainian people and nation as disposable cannon-fodder to win their long term capital objectives – which really are very simply – total control and ownership of everything, with a serf class of dependents living in perpetual precarity (previously known as normal people) who must pay for every sip of water, and ultimately, every breath of air, too.*

If you think I’m kidding, the new director of the WEF (formerly a director at Nestle) is on the public record very clearly saying he thinks access to free drinking water is “an extremist position.”

That is what the world is up against. People so evil they resemble ‘super-villains’ – and so far, the populations of the west, sanctimonious lefties no less than ignorant nationalist jerks, are acting as shills and henchmen for the super-villains. So deluded we think “If only we got rid of Trump, or woke, or Wall St, or Heathens” everything would suddenly be just peachy-keen, and we’d get a gold star for once again proving we really are the superior ones, uniquely able to solve the world!

Our delusions (designed to make us feel like we’re on the good-guy team) are exactly what make us bad guys, because they cause us to ignore obvious disequilibrium and hidden evils, which are actually our responsibility to understand uncover and redress – because this is OUR system.

More simply, if you took away all the post WWII assassinations from the French Secret service (more than two dozen heads of state in Africa alone) all the coups from the CIA (just under two hundred, depending on how you count, many times more than that, if the threshold is ‘decisive interference’ in electoral process) and all the ways the great game imperialists from MI6 have weaponized local cultures against themselves (every neighbour’s hood – a trick CIA learned too well), a staggering proportion of the worst problems in the world would never have happened at all.

We aren’t the rescue culture – we’re the ones who butcher kids, then raise the price of bandages.

So – Russia said no you may not rape our economy, again. They did try bending over in the 90s, and trusting us that much did incalculable damage to their society, shortened average lifespans by more than a decade – which is why the Russians are now again very serious people, in a way that we, having been starved of both rewards and real (challenge-engaging) sinew-building for generations, simply aren’t.

China didn’t want Russia to fight in Ukraine, their preference is always to make more money, (and more standard of living advancement for normal Chinese citizens) and war messes with trade. But China certainly watched the West tear up its own sacred rules about respecting foreign capital, to justify grand scale piracy (promoted most loudly by representatives of countries where many still sentimentally miss their very close friendship with Germany in the second world war).

As I mentioned before, the reason the Chinese have a dominant position in rare-earth refining and processing is because they have been working on that for more than fifty years, non-stop. That is how it looks when serious vision and serious planning, come together with serious effort by many, over time – you get serious (and seriously useful) things, done. The Chinese were also realistic to note their own industrial dependence on American hydrogen, and spent years developing independence there also, before they ever even threatened to restrict rare earths.

American strategic planners (on both the Democratic and Republican side) have been saying for years that China is their primary adversary, and must be restrained or set-back, to preserve western global dominance. Please note – once again, this is a perfect symmetry of supremacism, there is no single figure who represents war in western government – killing is a primary function of the entire edifice (and is quickly restored to priority, no matter how many reformers join).

China is ready to say NO also, and is saying it in many economically significant ways already. (Hundreds of F35s have now been delivered with dummy-weights in the nose, and no radars, ‘cause they can’t get enough gallium to make the new radars, and they modified the airframe, so it won’t fit the old radars anymore!)

China is especially ready to say NO to America in military terms, now, more than ever. Not because they want that outcome, but because they have seen how the west reacts to peace offers – not good enough – you either let us steal everything or we’ll demonize pillage and kill you.

The global south, who are used to being bullied by violent imperialist/capitalists, are extremely hopeful that the western boot is finally coming off their neck, ending centuries of violence and extraction which has damaged and held back so many people, around the world (so they stay at the right level of development to be captive consumers, but never rival high-value producers). But I want to add a bracing but very valuable caution here, which far too few of us consider.

This isn’t a game of capture the flag, this is insane hyper-violence for the sake of mega-capital. The strategies being employed by Russia Iran and China are not about liberation of the global south, but are instead dictated by the requirements of their own long term survival. What makes Russia’s fight against the entire west seem like such a heroic contest to the global south (and many critics here) is that the (morally and financially) bankrupt west has bet everything on the grand-scale resource robbery of Russia, so they can recapitalize their banks and pump precious (stolen) lifeblood into our structurally parasitic (again, a disequilibrium) system.

That means all Russia has to do is not lose, and the west will be dealt a fatal blow – because the west was so stupid and arrogant it went all-in, with no backup plan in case of failure. (and Russia, being less stupid than us, said, “If you insist,” then actually planned to deal with the reality of it).

Of course the Houthis in Yemen have been even more impressive in terms of nerve and skill, one of the poorest countries on earth, chasing away two US aircraft carrier groups (twice – once Biden, once Trump) with home grown rocketry skills! (Suddenly I understand why Werner Von Braun’s graduate thesis was classified).

Iran, as I mentioned recently, has been planning for this confrontation, ever since we formally announced we were intending to destroy them (that infamous list of seven countries targeted after 9/11, all now attacked and/or utterly devastated by western ‘help’).

Like we used to, Iranians can still read, think and plan, and did all of those in a very rational way over many years. The recently murdered Ayatollah Khameni in particular, has been retroactively vindicated for millions, by events. Sacrifices which were very controversial to many elites in Tehran at the time, have proved to be of unique value, for confronting American power.

We? Well, we mostly procrastinate, prognosticate, speculate and masturbate – but hey, it’s not really an actual race or anything, is it? (gold star just for showing up – three cheers for nihilism!)

The Ukraine war has emptied the arsenals of Europe (and in their special racist arrogance, the Eurocrats have firmly insisted on making it a fatal economic blow for the Eurozone, also).

The war in Iran is emptying the US magazine also, but even more impressively, wearing down both the US Navy and Airforce at rates which have literally not ever been seen before. Seriously, people – even when North Vietnam was getting help from Russia and China, they didn’t have this much success against American aircraft, and as for the US navy, they are sitting ducks and all those poor sailors know it. The only reason Iran hasn’t sunk them all, is because Trump might have a tantrum and start dropping nukes. (not joking, this is their actual calculus, now).

Meanwhile, we’re about to have a new great depression (worst oil shock in history) and a stock market collapse (SpaceX stock imploding as we speak, with billions more in shares due to become trade-able in a few weeks – look for a giant “Pump” story, as founders “dump” their bad-bet risk on the rest of us).

And the AI bubble is about to go bust. Maybe because China is pissed, and actually having fun rubbing America’s nose in their incompetence, maybe just because Chinese engineers are now the best in the world (not even sure which is more frightening, to supremacist yanks, but there it is).

The Chinese now have the very best AI models in the world in several categories, and they are still ten times cheaper per token (or more) than the American equivalents – meaning all of the investment hyperscalers have been making, was based on a market which still hasn’t shown up at scale (especially not when they are presented with a bill-for-usage) and a price per unit which is at least an order of magnitude wrong. Oh, and shit-tons of leverage – aaaaaand interest rates MUST spike in weeks (months at most) which turns a whole pile of loans into giant liabilities.

I don’t mean they want to raise rates – they want to run the economy hot with high growth numbers and stock prices, which means anything and everything but, higher interest rates – but they are about to be forced to, or the US dollar’s status as reserve currency could collapse in a global run, which would leave American economists completely unprepared for new (no stealing) realities. Mind you, raising rates makes their national debt effectively unpayable. Hence the many analysts now invoking the chess term Zugzwang – where every move you can make, leads to disaster.

Rather like ‘feedback loops’ unlocked at certain thresholds (permafrost, is the one that keeps me up at night, but I’m sure you have your own) the greater globalized economy of the USA has used the economies of many vassal states to prop-up their massive debt with constant investment. But Japan, which holds a staggering amount of US debt, is in huge trouble, and may have to liquidate their market moving carry-trade holdings very rapidly, to defend their own economy.

As for the gulf monarchies which have invested in Uncle Sam ever since the early 1970s (the petrodollar deal), in exchange for protection which the USA has now clearly shown it cannot provide (and will choose to defend Israel first, every single time, anyhow), they are all burning right now (I don’t just mean near-priceless military and industrial targets hit by Iran, I mean real threat of popular risings). Not least because Iran clearly stands up, where their leaders sell-out.

Oh, and if you think I’m exaggerating about the Eurozone committing economic suicide by going to war with Russia (their most obvious and reliable source of cheap energy) the greatest corporation in the heart of industrial Europe – Volkswagen – is laying off 100,000 workers! (yeah, five zeroes – and that’s just the latest round, tens of thousands were already laid off).

And instead of admitting they made a mistake and tried to kill their way out of bankruptcy, the shockingly and neverendingly racist scumbags in the European parliament are now trying to criminalize Chinese industrial success, as if every one of those nations has not used their own national ‘overcapacity of production’ to gain advantage in foreign markets for literal centuries! (Does anyone accuse the Swiss of having a nefarious “production overcapacity” in Chocolate and Watches? – How about the French, with Champagne?)

So, yeah, like I say – we are broke – all of us – and our denial is turning us into mass murderers. Doesn’t matter if you’re left or right, you know that is neither right, nor a sound plan for the future – gambling is not solid bedrock upon which to build anything enduring and useful (no wonder we’re all medicated, these days!)

Our long moment of sustained disequilibrium is over, the question now is, how long will it take us to accept that, and how stupid will we be in the meantime, before we again learn how to be reality-first people (and suddenly realize that’s not only way more work, but also ten thousand times more fun, and all the purpose we’ve been missing!)

This is going to be an incredibly shitty next couple of years – economically, and in terms of the social unrest which always goes with. Because our corrupt leadership bet our whole civilization on evil, all-in.

But don’t be an escapist, invest in friends, books, ideas and skills that you can carry in your head, build the toolkit you will want to have, to offer a new phase of society, that is actually trying to make it.

And when it feels especially bleak and lousy, don’t forget to raise a toast (home-brew, if we must) with a pal, and remember – on the scale of fair is fair – we should actually be getting bombed!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I want to share a couple of choice links today, and just one book reccomendation

First – I shared this piece before, but this is both a superb example of using AI to make ourselves smarter, instead of lazier or more smug, and also a truly important historical figure. I can’t help thinking of the influence of Frances Bacon on English thought and governance (and also because both men were clearly extremely unusual in bearing, intellect, scope, and determination), but Bacon is outrageously contaminated by imperial politics. Ibn Khaldun, really not (mind you, his potential influence on Bacon’s thought, and that of countless others, is not to be underestimated).

Check this one out, folks – seriously, and subscribe to Quy, while you’re there, he is smart as hell, and for older folks like me, super-hopeful (looking in all the right corners, with just the right wide open and genuinely interested spirit)

The Marketplace by Quy Ma

How a 14th-Century Arab Historian Already Predicted the World You're Living In

TLDR Ibn Khaldun — a 14th-century Arab historian who spent forty years inside collapsing empires — identified asabiyyah, the coordination strength that builds at the periphery and depletes at the center, as the single force behind every dynastic rise and fall…

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3 months ago · 82 likes · 14 comments · Quy Ma

(just to be clear, I like a lot of his other pieces too, I just see the click-through rates, so I know that most of you didn’t do the homework - go bookmark-it at least, you want this in your head!)

This next is a real gem of personal integrity and witness, and it also happens to be an exquisitely well crafted and finely balanced piece of writing.

I try always to remember exceptions to any generalizations (variation between individuals exceeds variation between types). Here is a principled and ethical boomer, who was also a practising physician when the great crisis hit, understood that ethical lines were being crossed, and said no, then stood fast.

(Younger people really need to remember these exceptional boomer heroes do exist, and really did try, they were just silenced, same as you were leashed).

Go Down Gardening - Dr. John Day

Also – subscribe to John’s newer Substack here – excellent wide-ranging interests, sources and insights! (all powered by the heart and nerve he shows, above).

Just one book for the eccentric bibliography today – ‘cause I’m gonna ramble a bit. ;o)

Many years ago (early nineties) my extraordinarily helpful mentor in politics, a scientific socialist, worked as a proofreader/editor for a local publishing house in Toronto. I was fascinated watching the process of making a book and marking up the galley proofs (just before computers transformed it all, utterly), and also had many discussions with him, as he worked through the book, challenging the author on a few points, and adding clarity to others. My assumption at the time was that the book was by a middling professor, just hoping to sell an expensive book to the students in his (and similar) courses (a fairly common use of academic publishers).

When the book finally came out, I was excited to read it, and surprised also, because the theme was very much like my favourite 60s dystopian science fiction (John Brunner, in particular), only it wasn’t fiction at all, it was a careful and thoughtful analysis of the direction capitalism itself was heading.

What I just learned the other day, looking that book up again after many years, is that the author, Vincent Mosco was in fact a widely known and celebrated academic, whose work inspired many since (and he was also a hell of a nice guy, by all accounts). The book itself, was nothing short of prophetic.

The Pay-Per Society – by Vincent Mosco

Way back in 1993, Vincent Mosco understood the next evolution of capitalism – buying up every last damn thing in the world – including everything we’ve considered ‘the commons’ all this time, and then renting it all back to us, at the highest rate the market will bear (eerily similar to “you will own nothing and be happy”). Economist Michael Hudson often calls this the ‘Rentier’ economy.

When we say “financialization” we mean this. Stuff that is for everybody, suddenly isn’t anymore (because people who think a right to clean water is an extremist position, now run the freakin’ world).

Rights that were won by generations of struggle, vanish overnight, because ‘austerity’. All because of false scarcity created by those same gamblers and market manipulators, who make us all pay off their gambling losses, but take every bit of their profits home, (out of the commons).

This is a very hard to find book now – but look for anything by Mosco, your brain will be fortified with new insight and far more precise and useful language to understand the leash we’ve been wearing so long, it almost doesn’t make us crazy anymore (almost).

These are pre-revolutionary times (around the west), because our model has hit the wall!

Here’s a link to a piece on Mosco and his work by a friend of his, which manages to be moving, inspiring and extremely (economics and paradigm-tools) informative!

Note for new readers – auto-estimated reading times are greatly exaggerated (lots of pix/links)

Hey Folks!

Have I got some grand-scale ideas for you! Big-heart stuff (yes, even in this mess).

One of the strangest things about trying to write to everyone at once, today (rather than feeding a tribalist faction something they already know, that flatters them) is that the tone you choose, has a lot to do with the reader you focus most upon. I may in fact be crazy for writing long form for younger people, who are less likely to read long form than anyone in generations, but they have been most bamboozled, most unfairly, and also long starved of much that can enrich their hearts and lives, that was known by previous generations, so my duty feels obvious on that front.

So let me say something to my younger (under 40) friends, which is not said nearly often enough – life has always been unfair in many ways – but modern life is both unfair and also outright cruel – it ain’t just you who feels it (and it is tragic, if you’ve been gaslighted into thinking this isn’t so, and the flaw is your own failure to be ‘tough enough’ or to conform to mass cynicism).

As usual – I’m not just shaking a stick and making a vague assertion – I want to discuss some very clear and clearly influential cultural history, and look at the long term social repercussions of that – I’m also trying to overcome my lifelong (essayist over journalistic) habit of ‘burying the lede’ and making people read half an essay, before they know its theme!

TLDR? – why (historically speaking) is everything now so furious, irrational, nonsensical and nasty?

I have gone directly at the historical, economic, imperial, propagandistic ‘great game’ angle at least a hundred times over the last decade, but today I want to build outward from ideas which are much more inside our heads, even if we do often pick them up (sometimes almost like diseases) from outside.

Stuff we can relate-to feeling, personally – and make better, directly – without having to wait for the whole world to change, before we can make progress (that is – actual practical hope!)

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It is often argued there was no such thing as the modern ‘nation-state’ until the advent of radio, because it was impossible to create one single unifying national narrative, with the previous generation of mass media – newspapers – since they reflected too much specific local culture, and too many local interests which were at variance with the central state. Radio was one up-to-date and simultaneous message for all citizens of a nation, for the very first time in human history.

Listening to old radio shows (a worthwhile exercise for any writer) we can learn a lot about how to stage a drama with no visuals, and also realize something Marshall McLuhan pointed out many years later. In an auditory medium (just like when we are reading books) our brains ‘lean into listening’ and supply a whole bunch of missing detail with our imaginations. The pictures we see might not be exactly what the writer meant, but the fact that we are actively seeing them, in response to those words, brings us right into the story, in a way which television movies and other visual forms can’t. They can never be more interesting than the creators intended, because our own imaginations are richer than their’s! Books and radio are mentally active – TV, (and webvids) passive – pure consumption, no work for our brains (participation of creativity).

Of course the other thing we encounter is how hilariously ‘hit you over the head with it’ advertising used to be. Laughably obvious to us now – but we must remember, insanely effective in its own moment – because for decades, radio was the freshest most exciting medium going. (So people actively sought it out and mainlined the stuff – doing half the advertiser’s work).

The influence of Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, who created the field of “Public Relations” by applying Freud’s insights into the subconscious to advertising and propaganda, began much earlier than the introduction of television. His first great success was convincing angry feminists in the 1920s that cigarettes were “Freedom Torches” and no man oughtta tell ‘em that they can’t!

But by the time television began to be widely adopted, the ideas of Bernays were dominant across the industry (and governments) – especially the key insight, don’t hit them over the head with it (like those corny radio ads) hit people in the part of their mind that they deny even exists! Manipulate people’s subconscious desire and irrationality, then let their own reason justify the obedient purchasing impulse after the fact (kind of like our minds actively filling-in the visual detail, in a radio play). That is, make the customer do half the work of selling it to themselves!

Now I want to quickly refresh an idea my regular readers will have encountered before, which I got from my reading of Julian Jaynes masterpiece of science applied to antiquity “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind.” His thesis is so vast, many take other parts from it and emphasize (or attempt to refute) them. But I am personally fascinated by what I think is his most important idea, because I experienced it personally, in a very dramatic way.

To simplify it to an unfair extreme (you really should read the paradigm-changing book itself), the original shape of human consciousness was tribal local and shared to an extent that we cynical moderns cannot even imagine. The reason we see ‘household gods’ in so many ancient cultures was that venerated ancestors could still literally speak to those people, through their own minds. They weren’t sentimental memorials, as we’d see them, but still an active part of daily life.

Modern consciousness begins when that old mode of complete sharing and continuity of presence after death is first disrupted by interaction with another tribe, which shares none of the sacred referents, and knows none of the sacred ancestors of the tribe. This is a traumatic shock, because of course being forced to interact with people who do not share your sacred referents, means learning to reason and communicate without using them, which is a radically new way of being – not only alienated from the old gods and voices, but unprecedentedly lonely. We might even call this the birth of the ‘heroic’ free individual. Torn from all, to stand alone. (and remembering this freedom was first won at cost of great loneliness, might be helpful).

My own experience, first growing up in a cult, then being excommunicated by pretty much everyone I knew, upon finally breaking free, makes this stuff weigh a lot for me, emotionally. This is not in any way to say I wish I was still a manipulated part of a hive-mind (it was beyond excruciating, especially for someone naturally inclined toward both truth and kindness), but we have to resist simplifying our understandings. Good and useful change often feels terrible at the time!

There are two other important things to say about being part of a tribal mindset. When I was in the cult and fully convinced of it, I honestly believed that the four hundred or so members of it were right about pretty much everything, and all (then six billion) other people on earth were essentially wrong! Yes I know that is wildly irrational, just on probabilities – my point is that blind belief does not require reference to such anchors. If you’re sure, you’re sure.

The other more worrisome point is that when you are that sure, you feel authorized to cross boundaries that you wouldn’t cross on your own behalf, because you see yourself as an agent of a greater cause, and emotionally transfer all responsibility for your own actions to the cause, or the cause’s enemies.

Civil rights were not won by the boomers – that victory (almost immediately coopted by bankers) was won by the efforts of the beatnik generation before them, and the faithful of many churches, uniting together in principle and sacrifice. The beats were the last generation suckled on radio and lingering book culture inertia, and never did like television much (crazy for cinema, though).

How different was TV? Well, we can already see a very stark difference in the most basic sense of self-definition, with the arrival of the next cohort (boomers) who were the first generation raised in a TV dominated popular culture (nationalist and corporatist grand subconscious vision).

But right away I have a strange difficulty in describing this difference precisely and fairly – because the influence from this break-point is so great that we are still swimming in it today, and just as fish don’t know they are in water, we too see this as unremarkable context, and not a great culture split.

Let me give you my two favourite personal testimonies from ‘revolutionary’ minded boomers about the times. The first came from my recently departed and greatly missed friend (and radio personality and international music-booster beyond compare) DB Hawkes, who said, (with sadness)

“It really was incredible at first, so many truly brilliant and courageous people were doing amazing new things, all at once. But by the time it became the dominant thing, almost everyone you met who looked like a hippie, was really only there to get laid.”

(Shades of the numbers or quality question I discussed in Bargain Counter Revolutionaries)

The other personal testimony from those times which I have not ever been able to forget came from the extraordinary man I apprenticed with, who told me (with a perfectly straight face, mind you)

“We were all completely certain that revolutionary victory was around the corner, the numbers were overwhelming, and it was obvious to all of us that we’d win. But no one wanted to die on the front lines, and not be around the day after the win, to enjoy it.”

Zooming out, we have to note the boomers weren’t just TV people, they were the first to have wide access to birth control and economic opportunities that no other generation ever had – unprecedented upward class mobility (never seen again) which wealth was soon steered right back into re(over?)capitalizing stock markets with national retirement vehicles (401k, RRSP, etc.)

There was an extraordinary creative flowering (at the start), to go with this outsize cohort, many writers, musicians, filmmakers and visual artists gave us fine work that still moves us to this day. But rather than looking at the overt self-congratulatory messaging, I’d like to consider where the spirit of that time ultimately led us all. In particular – what happens when an entire generation considers themselves to be ‘rebels’ who are unfairly put-upon by the unjust system? (As opposed to mature citizens of that system, with equal measures of entitlement and responsibility).

Well, as rebels, who consider themselves offended by greater forces by definition, they grant themselves those same kind of authorizations as cultists do. So they are able to act in ways which violate morality, because they ascribe a far greater immorality to some offstage or symbolic entity.

Old fogeys like me remember many earlier cycles of anger in Black America. I find myself returning to Matthias Desmet now, when I consider these explosions. There is so much “Free floating anger, anxiety and fear” in the community, that when the right narrative spark arrives, it becomes a channel for expression of a million kinds of upset which cannot be easily named.

During the Rodney King riots, a whole bunch of Malcolm X rhetoric reappeared, completely shorn of the crucial context. “By Any Means Necessary” only works with a PROGRAM. When an extreme position like this is associated with mere rage, it becomes pure destruction (of justice). The better Malcolm X line (by far) is:

“I’m for Truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for Justice, no matter who it’s for, or who it’s against.” (can we please see some of THOSE T-shirts, folks?)

The question about responding to outrage is always – organize to do better, or seek vengeance? An infinitely easier appeal, emotionally – which is why we identify many great leaders by their ability to go the other way on principle, persuasively. (Malcolm X and MLK, outstandingly).

As I wrote in my piece about the Black Panther Party (for self-defence) a few years ago, initially, as an organized pro-gun-rights group, they were mostly seen as a policing challenge – they scared white America just by their defiant posture (and they enjoyed that fear, openly). They became a very serious cultural and political threat only later, when they began to organize social programs in communities which had never known them (certainly not run by people who understood them, and their actual problems) and to organize across racial lines. (can’t demonize them as racist urban terrorists if they help grandma get to the clinic every week, and are allies of your neighbourhood peeps, too)

We should stop to note that this transition was a huge achievement. They really were a group born in righteous anger (Huey Newton’s outrage over a California police shooting). The small leadership group was totally shocked by how fast their membership grew, and yet somehow they managed to organize that growth in a way which produced sustained community benefit and aspiration for more still, when it might also very easily have become nothing but a movement of anger-stoking and vengeance-seeking, which would have scared white Americans so much at the time, they would have backed extreme measures to suppress the entire black community for a generation. (As if the Crack epidemic and prisons for profit weren’t state-violence enough).

The reason the FBI concentrated on discrediting Stokely Carmichael, was because he was the Panther’s finest intellectual, saw through and resisted many traps, and even conducted diplomacy with newly independent Black States in Africa, as an ally-representative of American blacks, when the (then all-white) power centres in America were (as now) profoundly hostile to any truly independent African nation. (Chomsky’s lovely line presents “The Threat of a Good Example”)

I bring all of this up, simply to contrast an actual armed revolutionary struggle movement, which then became far more politically dangerous, by transcending mere outrage, with what happened to the rest of the general (outraged, with no program) culture. But first, a reference about the nature of the culture in question.

As was long ago noted about 1930s America, by John Steinbeck “I guess the trouble was that we didn’t have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist.”

Now back to that early question, what happens when you tell an entire generation not under any such threat, that they are all heroic individualist rebels against the vast faceless unjust ‘system’ which is cruelly depriving them and holding them down? (even though it is actually rewarding them better than any humans in recorded history) The entire cohort grants themselves (and by normalizing it, each other) permission to break all the rules of morality and responsibility, and feel perfectly great doing it, because it was either for a greater cause, or provoked by a greater evil – which they truly believe bears full responsibility for their own, wildly destructive actions!

This happened in institution after institution, first with simple nepotism, hiring friends and friends of friends, to help cash-in on any decent job a ‘rebel’ got (and the boomers were so numerous, that alone effectively locked my X-er generation out of decent starter jobs until our thirties).

This happened again in education. When I finally went to art school in my late forties (as a costume model, not a student), I was shocked to find that none of the (very intelligent and kind-hearted) tenured professors there had even noticed that there were virtually zero tenured professors from my generation. Self-involvement is a weird thing, and weirdly dangerous to all, at scale. Especially frustrating is that teaching really needs continuity – if we skip generations, we lose contact with subtle understandings which can take generations to recover (or be lost altogether).

When we ask what happened to the once proud and vital industrial trades in North America, the mechanism was very simple, between the austerity drives caused by the “Black Friday” market meltdown in 1987 and the follow-on recession of 1993, in union after union, boomer members agreed to sign new contracts which stripped key rights, benefits and dignities from all new hires onward, on the (bribe) condition that their own benefits weren’t touched.

Because they were starting from a position of (groundless) rebel outrage, they didn’t even fight for solidarity and future generations, nor show awareness or respect for all those who fought so hard to get them, the rights they alone of all humans enjoyed (won mostly by those embarrassed capitalists in the 30s and the WWII veteran unionists they turned into when they got home, who were, on the scale of organized motivated and capable unionists, unprecedentedly not to be f#cked with).

I should probably stop here to refresh one of my most important wisdom touchstones:

“Variation between individuals exceeds variation between types.”

I came of age, escaped my cult and discovered the real world, all in a big hurry at age 16, in 1981. Being clueless but bookish, I found myself trying to understand the normality I’d skipped while sequestered, almost like an anthropologist, studying an exotic tribe. I was also drawn to dance clubs of the time, for the company of other people who felt like freaks, but weren’t ashamed of it.

So here’s my first-hand cultural testimony about that moment. Having watched our parents tear-up the rule book about sex, relationships and families, and having been left to raise ourselves, while our parents were busy with their self-obsessions (and rebel-certainty), we felt very sure we could do better, be kinder and more respectful of one another, especially. But also, and this is really important, without dividing “freaks” (of character temperament or sexuality) into factions. Homosexuality had only been legalized relatively recently – in 1968, by papa-doc Trudeau on his first day in office – a lesson well learned by his idiotic and preachy son, who also did his very best work (decriminalizing THC) on his first day in office (and should have left, day two).

But more importantly, just as Mods, Punks and New Romantics were all pals, gay, straight and bi teenagers, and tons who didn’t really know, and did not appreciate anyone trying to define them, made fantastic lasting friendships and creative partnerships. Who you love is not in fact how you think!

This chance to grow a profoundly promising (and hearteningly widespread) mutual kindness and accommodation, was soon utterly destroyed by the intense politicization tribalization and professionalization of protest which followed from the AIDS epidemic. But it was a real chance, and that (post-boomer lesson-learning) moment contained a million times more hope than any modern identitarian indignation or tribalism can (by design, or you would never have heard of those theories at all).

Politicians now want sexual minorities to feel frightened and in need of special protection – but political tribalism has not ever been any kind of safety – the understanding of the community is – as the gay community proved to the greater society, with countless positive personal interactions, decades before any government ‘protector’ would even speak in favour of their right to marry.

Government does not give us rights – we all do that for each other. (more often, politicians try to limit our rights, because our rights cost the super-rich who bribe them, a lot of money).

I think the most powerful reverberating positive from the “Me Too” movement is a much more vivid common awareness of the kinds of threats extortions and sexual attentions women face. Sexual violence has always been abhorrent (tribalist feminist theorists, notwithstanding), but there are many other behaviours which are objectively hostile or demeaning, we can all discuss (and therefore respond to) much more easily now, having established general common insights.

Which makes me think about something a friend taught me long ago about the term homophobia. As I’ve mentioned, I am still kind of the man from Mars, ravenously curious about the experiences and insights of others, so, when I hear someone say something which angers me, I don’t just rush to my anger, but instead try to ask where it comes from, in them.

In this particular case an African friend of mine expressed his disgust with homosexuals, and his story (as distinct from his angry conclusions) turned out to be very sympathetic indeed. His anger was not derived from a religious position or one of triablist scapegoating (I’ve had that argument also, and my friends, it was EPIC). In this case the fellow was truly traumatized. He was a very serious bodybuilder, handsome, kind and gentle natured. But he kept getting gay guys trying to corner him and make sexual advances in the showers, where he felt vulnerable and threatened.

There is no case where we would excuse a man behaving like this to a woman, the trespass is clear and outrageous, but I have witnessed myself, many blur the line with “Rebel entitlement” and think they actually do have a right to sexually harass strangers, because “it’s different.”

Nope – it is hostile unwelcome psychic violence – full stop – every freakin’ time. (Also ‘letting down the team’ in the worst possible way, for the most selfish possible reason).

Now before I leave then-times and return to now-craziness, I should also give one more piece of important personal witness. The cult in which I was raised was full of child abuse and abusers, and also many gay folks who were then deeply ashamed of their own nature (and near outlaws).

I know of absolutely zero cases, I mean hard zero, where any of those gay men and women (all beautiful, artistic, generous souls, overflowing with inspiration and hard-knocks wisdom) abused any of the kids. Even in those traumatic self-hating days, their principle was goodness over tribe.

And I remain very deeply grateful for lasting gifts of inspiration from them, in drawing music and poetry.

Now, I’m pretty sure I’ve been doing my usual trick of offending everyone at once, at least a bit, so I hope this one won’t seem like singling-out (I know many who so identify, who I love a lot).

The tricky thing about “Non-Binary” is not the self-definition. Anyone can self-define however they want (back to that radio play idea, the limits are those of our own personal imagination). The question is – do you really think anyone else is actually binary? Binary is a dehumanizing and reductionist word which implies machines, not full-range humans, less-thans, untermenschen. Creepy!

All human beings are incredibly complex (not just ones like us). Modern emotionalist theories which are designed to maximize our level of (always functionally psychotic) indignation, so we can ignore common morality, are in every case ignorant bigotries. We (me-tribe) are good because “categorical they” suck, because (insert wild generalization and grotesque ignorance of your choice, here).

Yes, if we are fundamentally unhappy people, we can adopt radical costumes, then (just like that advertising trick) after the fact, pretend our new radical cause is why we have unquiet hearts. We can even change our radical rhetorical costumes, like a fashion trend. Follow the coolest stupefying fury.

But people – that whole anger and indignation game – seriously – the whole thing – has nothing to do with cause or principle, and absolutely everything to do with giving ourselves a pass for doing things which we absolutely know we ought not to do. It gives us an excuse to not grow up and learn strength, wisdom and responsibility.

Try this thought experiment – who is drag queen story hour for? It is certainly not something small kids were clamouring for, drag is an adult entertainment medium – this whole drama is solely for the ego of their parents. In fact, in this situation those kids are being used by their parents as cultural weapons, to express their own profound contempt for an out-tribe of ‘others’ who they love to celebrate hating.

But now ask yourself this, what happens when a kid with one of the most common fears small kids have (fear of clowns – which is to say fear of strange loud in-your-face people) starts crying because of something the drag queen does? Are we going to accuse toddlers of homophobia, just because their own parents don’t understand responsibility and boundaries? (in the fullness of their ‘heroic’ and ‘moral’ certainty, natch)

I love learning from people who are humiliatingly better than me (musicians, especially). One thing I learned from revolutionaries who were humiliatingly more serious than I, decades ago, is that the real test of any revolutionary is whether they can overcome their temper and need for vengeance, and act in a way which does credit to the movement (and to their own soul, also).

Don’t mean to insert faith there – we could also say more cleanly – can you direct your will so as to consistently put the program of the movement ahead of your own ego? But I should here also note – many religions struggle with this exact same problem – so many are drawn to them not so they can harness themselves to a far greater and deeply humbling purpose, but instead to become part of an in-group, so they can despise all of those outside it, in a way that feels comforting.

Now again we return to the question – what is left of a sense of self, after a television childhood? (That is, what do advertisers do to us early, to maximize lifelong alienation and greed, and undermine sharing?) Let me here cycle back a moment, to that idea of escaping one madness, only to struggle with a new kind.

The single most memorable passage I ever read from an American Veteran of the war in Vietnam was from a young man who was beyond overjoyed to get home intact after his service, but was shocked to find that everything at home now looked like war to him, also. I don’t mean he was paranoid or delusional, I mean he was so sensitized to pointless cruelty by his experience of war, that he could no longer do the polite thing we all do here, of ignoring it and pretending it doesn’t hurt us, and instead he recognized its sad normality, in the competitive and ruthless personalities and dehumanizing interactions we “Rebels.” now find everywhere around us.

Suddenly young Marlon Brando sneers his way into the scene on a motorcycle, unbidden, with his immortal line in response to the citizen ‘square’ asking what are you rebelling against?

“Whattaya got?”

So here’s the thing folks – no the Boomers were NOT a revolutionary generation – not ever. They didn’t almost win societal advance, only to be sabotaged at the last minute by psychedelics, (even Patti Smyth’s drop out to garden and write poetry was more indulgent/undermining than Leary and co.) They called themselves revolutionaries because they called themselves any damned thing they wanted to, to enjoy the high and self-satisfaction of it, without ever showing up for the sacrifice part.

They enjoyed the high-water mark of western rights and freedoms, affordable housing and food, indexed pensions and real hope for growing international respect and cooperation (peace). Not one of those things will survive them. And you won’t find a single one ashamed of it, either.

For my middle aged chums tempted toward easy scorn about the strange new political fractioning among the young, we must recognize that (expensively state-crafted and promoted) identitarian outrage is the only possible frame left, to even attempt to make a claim for workers rights now! Because general worker rights, aspirations and consciousness, were all extinguished at the payroll point, two full generations ago. Irrational and self-harming, identitarianism may well be, (and is) but the old frameworks of common rights in which boomers lived and earned are gone.

So here’s what my younger friends need to understand, to learn lessons from that most costly generation. They weren’t just wrong because they were immoral self-centred and greedy (again, remembering that variation exceeds type, always) they were wrong because they made themselves into the kind of low character self-indulgents who are completely useless as serious change agents – who must first and foremost be the kind of people who can face the reality around them, not just the pictures they make of the radio play, inside their imaginative heads (glorious, though those can be).

Sex seemed incredibly important when it was arbitrarily controlled (even while simultaneously being used constantly, to goad our subconscious for advertising and propaganda purposes). Now that we’ve taken the lid off completely for a few decades and utterly commercialized loveless lust (and each other, in the process) sex has almost become boring (which is just so freakin’ sad!)

The simple truth is that sex is great but love is incalculably more important, and enduring love is how we discover not monotony, but our own infinite depth and growing capacities, together.

More simply (trust a fogey who has run this experiment) nice as pleasure is, there are a lot more moments in life when you need someone who can help you laugh at great difficulty, and carry on and forward with an active will, instead of mere alienated numbed-out surrender.

We don’t need contacts, lovers and apps. We need one true love and one real friend.

Having found those, meaning, gratitude and growth become approximately irresistable. (And duty – borne of love, not resentment or tribalism – presents very naturally indeed).

Purpose is best found in that special set of eyes looking back at me, and seeing more than I ever could.

No I am not saying it is easy. Real love is harder than ever (which makes me weep).

But love is still all the magic in the world (and the high-road where we win our real and lasting victories). Being and having a real friend, is always the best possible start.

Psychotic entitlement didn’t win the boomers all the loot – timing did. And still they aren’t grateful happy kind-hearted and beloved people. We see grasping bitterness and denial instead, and on a staggering scale – (with variations, much beloved)

Don’t mimic their egotism, indignation, or their special entitlement to ignore morality.

Love yourself better than that, so your love will find you lovely, when they find you!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

First up – some truly superb reading from outstanding writers around the world

Mara writes about Islamic history and modern geopolitics with extraordinary specificity and subtlety. I was especially taken with this piece, restoring Sufism’s place in historical political upheavals (that is, recognizing it has held, not just advised, power). I had arguments for years with mistyoptics who considered ‘natural’ to mean safe in every circumstance and dose. My contrary experience is that anything which is powerful enough to be effective, can just as surely go wrong in a big way. Adding some of these imperfections and evolutions to the history of Sufi orders in power does not in any way diminish their poetry or wisdom, but rather enhances it greatly, by proving that, no fairy-tale, it did indeed ‘hold purchase’ repeatedly in its time.

The poetry is immortal and relevant, because the wisdom was so hard and well-earned!

Mara

The Tradition That Was Never the Quiet One

In 1859, an imam from Dagestan surrendered to the Russian army after a war that had run, in various forms, for most of the preceding seventy years. Imam Shamil led the later and most famous phase of that resistance. But he inherited it from Sheikh Mansur in the 1780s and from his own mentor Ghazi Mollah in the 1820s. And the organisation that carried al…

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2 months ago · 6 likes · 5 comments · Mara

Also from Mara – this piece adds a lot to the work I’ve previously shared by Kit Klarenburg, on the weaponization of Islam, by the west, and the displacement of authentic forms, by the promoted (and empire-serving) fakes. Ever wonder – why is that country named after one family?

Mara

The Instrument That Escaped Its Handlers : How Wahhabism Became Global Islam

The standard account of Wahhabism treats it as an indigenous Arabian phenomenon. It supposedly became consequential through its own internal logic, a theology so compelling, or so extreme, that it couldn't stay local. Both assumptions are wrong…

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2 months ago · 65 likes · 8 comments · Mara

Here’s something which adds more perspective still to the picture, from Vuk Bačanović. My regular readers will have seen me tilting at Z-big (Zbigniew Brzezinsky) a few times already.

Vuk brings together the key history I have discussed, with some more subtle reasoning (even from that cynical great gamer), and a fascinating longer-term perspective about the whole idea of contesting cultures (Bosnia being an unusually great vantage, for this).

Savage Minds

Brzezinski’s Legacy and the Post-Cold War Order

In the wake of the latest American strike against Iran, many commentators have once again revived familiar narratives about a supposed “c…

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3 months ago · 37 likes · Vuk Bačanović

And here is a real tour de force from Fabio Vighi which combines and much magnifies my point about the collapse of what we have known, from my last piece, with the ideas about the long slow degradation of western life, treated here – with about a thousand other valuable insights – and a truly bracing sampling of the extraordinarily perceptive Paddy Chayefsky! (Writer of “Network”)

fabio vighi

There is No America

This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber…

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2 months ago · 57 likes · 12 comments · fabio vighi

Now for another Eccentric Bibliography – this time, a graphic novel edition

Bookstores are Temples – keep your brain well-fed by keeping them busy and active!

The Building – Will Eisner

If any single person deserves credit (or blame) for the shape of modern comic books, it is Will Eisner. In 1940, he developed his detective comic “The Spirit” into a single-story multi-page insert in the weekend paper, which form very soon outcompeted the original comic books (his precise assignment, from his publisher). His ink-work is some of the best ever done (and his splash pages still amaze, almost a century later). Later in life he worked on long form stories, more or less creating the ‘modern’ graphic novel. (see Masreel below) This one is really a love poem for cities.

Hand-Drying in America – Ben Katchor

I don’t know who at the MacArthur Foundation decided to give cartoonist Ben Katchor one of their famous grants, but I am eternally grateful they did, because this unique book is the result. A genuine masterpiece of urban surrealism and layered (absurdist) critique of modernity and nostalgia. I want to say this is exciting for art-crazy adults, the way Richard Scarry books were, when you were little – and as with Scarry, you find yourself getting right inside the crazy drawings (and being drawn into the even crazier stories). That he even took the time to joke about the ethical problems involved in the printing and distribution of the book itself just nails the meta critique to properly (all encompassing) scale. So damn much delicious smart fun!

Building Stories – Chris Ware

Chris Ware has one of the most recognizable lines and brands in modern independent comics, having established his Acme Novelty Library series in 1993 (wonderful blend of false-nostalgia with genuine reverence for cartooning greats like Herriman) and gone on from there to test the medium in many fascinating ways. Building Stories is a box with fifteen wildly different books and comics, which tell various tales and alternate realities of what I think are his most fascinating characters ever, over a really unusual arc of living and experience (for comics, in particular). Sublime!

Palestine – Joe Sacco

I’ve been reading Sacco since his earliest (humour) comics. Through the 90s, he pioneered the idea of first person witness journalistic cartooning. Sometimes collaborating with the extraordinary Marxist/Christian Pastor and journalist Chris Hedges. This work is a mature masterpiece, the line, design and story-telling all refined and sublime, the story, heartbreaking (real). If you need to remember the reality and humanity, beyond the tragically numbing numbers, dig here for heart.

Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me – Harvey Pekar

I am a bit too nice for my own good, but I adore cantankerous people, all the same, as long as their eccentric insistence is based on ideas and principles, not outright cruelty to others. Harvey Pekar was a pioneer in comics in two interesting ways. Not only did he write stories about normal boring life (that were incredibly recognizable, because so well observed) then get a host of interesting artists to illustrate them (including R Crumb), he took the old literary idea of the “unreliable narrator” one step further, by trying (and mostly failing) to make himself an outright unlikable narrator, repeatedly featuring his worst and angriest, instead of his best, side. Again, this book is a mature work from a man who really understood what he was doing artistically, and had thought a great deal and deeply about this subject, for many years.

To Afghanistan and Back – Ted Rall

Ted Rall helped me laugh during several years when I was truly appalled by the fast degradation of American peacetime into forever war. He didn’t do this by being gentle, but by calling W “Generalissimo El-Busho” and being absolutely brutal in his critiques of all warmongers. Rall is another guy with an extremely recognizable line, and a narrative style almost as cantankerous as that of Pekar. Hilariously, he also did the all time funniest comic-critique of the work of Chris Ware (out of jealous anger, when someone described Ware as “the most important artist alive”).

Here, Rall does the thing Sacco pioneered – he goes to the place to see for himself, and writes about what he found along the way. Weirdly moving, also surprisingly hilarious.

Passionate Journey – Frans Masreel

I said “Modern” graphic novel for a reason. We can go a lot of directions for sources and antecedents, but Masreel’s novels, made entirely of wordless woodcuts (to appeal equally to all, regardless of language or literacy level) are powerful and inspiring examples of moving a heart with what might otherwise seem insufficient means. My art pals need this. Comrades also.

Note for new readers – auto-estimated reading times are greatly exaggerated (lots of pix/links)

Hey folks!

I have a few different elements to bring together today – including an update on what is really going on, what it really means, and why way more of our ideas are obsolete than we think. Most importantly, I want to touch on why the end of our supremacy is actually a good thing.

So – what is going on, big-picture? The great centuries old western hegemonic empire of banking war and oil helmed by the UK for a long while, then more recently fronted by the USA, just dared a middle power (Iran) to a game of chicken and lost not only the game, but their trousers, also. The whole evil and predatory system is out and exposed, and it is revolting decrepit and pathetic.

Just by looking at planning and logistics, barring random weirdness (much more rarely causal or decisive than we think) there was never any other outcome possible. Short version? Drones are cheap and Iran has hundreds of thousands and interceptors are very expensive (multi-millions each), and the USA and Israel are now down to hundreds. But more fundamentally, the whole ‘informing’ idea that Iran would topple like a house of cards when pushed was always purest racist shite (like almost everything said here in the west about Iran – by both left and right – for a half a century).

I was heartened to see Caitlin Johnstone put her finger on it precisely the other day – and I have tried to express this myself a few times. The question you have to ask about Iran (and Russia and China also) isn’t – why are they that way? But – what would they be like if we in the west hadn’t spent billions to sabotage, repeatedly supported outright terrorism and actively fomented violent internal ethnic uprisings against their states, for the last half a century? (and more)

Iran is what it is now, precisely so that it could successfully face-down this psychopath in this challenge, which they correctly understood was coming, when they were named on the list of countries to destroy just after 9/11 – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran.

The absolutely clear reality is that Iran has not been working on a nuclear weapon since 2002 – even the war-promoting CIA said so – but Iran does now have every possible justification, and is entirely vindicated in wanting to have ‘breakout capability’ by this unprovoked war on them.

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For the armchair strategists who can’t believe they could have the capability, but not close that final distance to a deployable weapon, even after this latest threat, we have to step back and remember strategy isn’t tactics, they think long view and always have. As soon as Iran announces a deployed weapon, the Saudis and Turkey will acquire nukes right quick also.

As my math friends intuitively appreciate, a relationship between two parties, even complex states, is comparatively simple (even when quite a few of those involved are insane). A+B.

Add a third to any relationship, and suddenly you have not one but four relationships to think about (A+B+C, A+B, A+C, B+C) and even if we’re just talking high-school friend groups, the strategic complexity gets mind-bogglingly more difficult, very fast, as you add more parties.

The safest sanest outcome for Iran is to go from one nuclear power in the region (Israel) to zero, not from one to at least four! (and who knows who else might pile-on, in Armageddon FOMO).

Again, for the armchair crowd who feel a punch needs a punch back, Israel is still not even legally allowing honesty about the toll of Iranian missiles on key sites and bases. Deterrence has already been established by Iran’s outstanding rocketry skills. Much better than USA, in several categories of re-entry vehicle, because they train superb home-grown scientists in huge numbers and then work them toward a goal, where the west has spent decades importing clever students in huge numbers from elsewhere and then working them exclusively for shareholder returns!

More broadly, the reason the Iranians won (and the Russians are winning and the Chinese will surely win, if seriously challenged) is that they have all been thinking about long-term planning in the sound and reality-grounded way that we in the west used to, but haven’t, for about a half a century. “Just in time” economics (the ultimate consequence of Reaganomics) is a system which pares every last thing back to bare minimums to maximize shareholder returns, but is not even slightly useful when stress-tested for endurance under difficult circumstances (as war always is).

My technician-head instantly thinks “Shitty Gear” because quality gear is thoughtfully overbuilt, and so, highly fault-tolerant.

We in the west perfected the exact suite of techniques that others around the world are now using to surpass us by leaps and bounds (not just in technological progress, but in rapid advances of living standards for normal people), not by cheating or being in any way sneaky, but because we abandoned our own most rational techniques in favour of higher profits for fewer people and a level of widespread self-delusion that seems to the ultimate product of consumerism (absolutely comforting, even when wildly self-harming – like my unsupervised-child diet – a very rational ‘dollars per calories’ calculation – of nothing but liquorice allsorts and arrowroot biscuits!)

No really folks – I know we are all supposed to chant “Chechens and Uighurs and Girls, oh my!” like nervous Dorothy heading into the forest, feel evil, simple as, and move on, no re-thinking. (Which is to say, Liberalism demands we faithfully maintain wildly racist assumptions, often, and about many).

But we’re back to the thing I was talking about last time – coming to a moral(istic) conclusion and then being too lazy to look again, when our justification for that judgement has become obsolete. Chechnya is now prosperous and developing like never before, and Chechens are some of the fiercest and most patriotic soldiers fighting FOR Russia in Ukraine! Xinjiang is also experiencing an extraordinary surge of growth and development, cutting-edge infrastructure, more and better jobs and far better transport connections than ever before. But more to the point, the Uighurs are traditionally Sufis, and the ones the CIA has armed and trained for decades are Salafists – which is to say, Gulf-Monarchy funded extremists of a type which simply does not reflect Uighur culture (but does suit CIA goals for causing the Chinese much internal trouble and paranoia).

As for women in Iran, they are better educated and hold more STEM degrees than American women, and after Minab – just shut the fuck up about that line anyhow, ‘kay?

If you honestly support the mass incineration of schoolgirls for the sake of ‘feminism,’ you are beyond insane.

The problem here, is that we in the west have got so used to thinking of ourselves as the central judge of the universe, we actually believe our feelings about things are the reality of the world. So people felt very strongly that Afghan women should be in school (and I agree) but didn’t give the slightest shit that during decades of western occupation, famine did permanent damage to half the population!

No really, we have to look hard at that one while it is still fresh. Leftists, peace people, feminists, progressives, all ended up suckered into supporting a disgusting decades long foreign occupation and insanely violent and destructive war because we felt “Girls in school” instead of THINKING.

When I talk about the manipulation of the public, with techniques developed by Public Relations people but sold just as eagerly to governments, as to business, I mean stuff like this, where we end up feeling so strongly we lend our support to things completely contradictory to our own ethics.

And now, a brief word about Armageddon

I am a lifelong atheist, not an agnostic, but also not a dogmatic materialist. I’m humble enough to know there is a lot of stuff we don’t understand, and we are fools to think we do. Just to be clear (because so many recent atheist figures have been outright assholes) I am also not hostile to religion or to those of (any) genuine faith. I just experienced too much false belief early in my life, to return there again. (almost an immune response, but built as survival adaptation, not snark).

I am also super-curious about people, their experiences viewpoints and insights, not just because I love to learn and share (nothing beats trading best gems with a perfect stranger, to make your day) but also because of something I realized when I was just a kid, trying to teach another kid some math that made sense to me already. The idea that made it click for me didn’t work for him at all, he just couldn’t see it, but when I tried a couple of ideas I hadn’t found useful, he found one perfect!

We live in a horribly dumbed-down oversimplified over-emotional age (like culture itself has been shoe-horned into network TV sitcom conventions, sad in every way).

I have lost count of the number of false theories with millions of dedicated followers which insist that we not only can but must understand everything, through one single filter (which best justifies their group wanting a bigger share of whatever is going, every single freakin’ time, of course). Understanding just doesn’t work that way, it is modest, multi-level and multi-faceted, not least because it is shared between multiple minds, who construct their useful ideas differently.

All of which is a long winded way to say I have never once had a boring conversation with anyone of genuine faith. They like me almost as much as scientists do, not just because I am interested in the work they do, and the effort required, but because I’m interested in the deeper questions they are looking at, through whatever means are available to them at the time.

Just to complete the thought (digression) the important inverse of that math lesson (gather many ways of seeing, because the clue that works for you, might not be the one which will work for someone else) is a curious, rarely discussed, but very important thing I saw demonstrated over and over again from the model stand, when I sat as a costume model for art students.

The reason some students make rapid progress and some are mired, frustrated and fall behind, is that some are active enough to have already asked the key questions. How do I indicate: form, depth, light, mood, underlying structure, implied motion, etc. The students who are natural art nuts without needing any prodding, have already faced these challenges in their own exploration, so when the teacher gives them a lesson about them, they know just what to use it for (and which piece they already wrecked, ‘cause they didn’t know it!) For other students, they might as well be memorizing the Kings and Queens of England. It’s just facts on facts on facts, in a big grey pile.

We need several keys for any lock we want to open, but also, a lock that wants to open!Just as surely, we must be a lock that wants to be opened, for others to reach us!

My favourite conversation about Armageddon was a lot like this. A gift that changed my ideas and my attitude about Christians, all very unexpectedly. It began with a rare chance for me in my technician days, usually stuck in the busy basement repair lab (so under-ventilated, we literally had mushrooms growing out of the wall), to spend a couple of days doing tech work upstairs in the windowed and sunlit credit office. Even better, I was able to spend several hours with a couple of the ladies in accounting who I had always noticed for their intelligence and their unusual bearing. They were much talked about, stuck together, were unbelievably productive as a team and absolutely did not indulge in gossip or any unpaid company activities after hours.

They were also both very serious Christians, without being in any way judgemental toward others. Lived by the code themselves, as those of deep faith demonstrate.

I know the social convention is to be careful and restrained when talking to people who don’t share your beliefs, to avoid any chance of conflict or misunderstanding, but I kinda was raised by wolves, and take more chances (helps, to also be an eloquent apologizer). I like to share the thing I am most interested in at any moment, a story problem, a poetic question, a philosophical or political insight, an art project or even a technical challenge. Bullshit is too much work for me. Sincerity is easy (and why would I want to share anything but my best and freshest enthusiasm, anyhow?)

At that moment (25 years ago) I was thinking a lot about various kinds of end of the world, ecological, economic, cultural and intellectual, and trying hard to see my way past the event horizon of the collapse of this weird and suicidally leveraged game we’ve all been living inside for so long that we don’t even realize it’s a game anymore. In particular, I was feeling a strong temptation toward a weird angle of hope, which ran contrary to all the righteous panic and fulmination we are all so easily tempted toward, when talking war (or environment).

So I asked them what they thought about Armageddon – and they came back with an entirely unexpected perspective. They weren’t interested in accusing others of sin, or listing who deserved to be struck-down (grotesque leftist caricatures of Christian belief, in any case, I now realize) they were both outright looking forward to Armageddon – but not as the end of the world – just as the end of our illusory world constructed entirely of vanity and falsehoods – in favour of a global transformation into a higher state of being and relations between people and nations.

We talked for a couple of hours, and I think they were as pleased to find my ideas consonant as I was theirs. The overlap with the concepts of global revolution, jubilee (forgive ALL debts) economic transformation, and establishing sound governance for people’s thriving, no longer corrupted by the commercial sphere, was all way beyond sympathetic to my old leftie ear. They were surprised to find that I was so critical of popular culture movements and sanctimonies (even as the Liberal left was gaining the cultural and institutional high-ground, everywhere, and already abusing power in a way to discredit itself), and moved by my insistence on fairness and principle, not faction or tribalism. On peace, with no compromise, we were fully united!

It might also be worth mentioning that I was reading Ray Kurzweil’s strange and much too influential books about the AI singularity at the time, and even then, long before AI was technically feasible, the man I knew who best understood the scale of the threat, was gleefully in favour anyhow (made me laugh and think of Oppenheimer “It was just so technically sweet!”)

I saw a fantastic short clip from Orson Welles recently (link below) where he talks about ‘cold reading’ which is an old trick used by music-hall psychics for at least a century. You make a very general observation about a person, they think you are insightful, because it applies to them (without realizing it also applies to almost everyone) and you gradually gather clues from their feedback to your general insights, until they become very specific – not because you really are ‘psychic’ but from your use of clues offered up by the person being singled-out and amazed.

There are two extra subtleties which apply here, and give us even more useful lessons. One is that with practise, one really can get very good at reading quite a bit about another person from clues which would seem insufficient to others (think Sherlock Holmes). If you do it a lot, you even stop realizing you are doing it, because the data comes in without being consciously sought. This is where you run a real hazard of being tripped up by the oldest problem with this ‘psychic’ game – when you start to believe you really are psychic, and not just clue-processing!

Now of course I have to remind all of my friends who have made friends with AI (which is the new TV in a way, because lots of sophisticates pretend they don’t, but play anyhow) that every part of AI which seems to anticipate you delightfully, is absolutely always cold-reading. You gave it clues, it used them, period.

It is not your friend. Your friends are human. It is a piece of software run by a company that also does things like spying, war communications and bomb targeting. (even the nicest, are creeps)

I am not saying it isn’t fun and interesting – I am saying do not ever let yourself invest faith in that con-man which is using what you give it, to beguile you. Just don’t. Meet people, hug them and fight with them and have fun and make music and art and great moments and struggle.

DO NOT TURN YOUR LIFE INTO A GAME WHERE YOU ARE THE NPC!

Before I leave the subject of cold reading, I should note my personal experience with it. The optimistic commune in which I grew up, which over time turned into a demented cult, might always have been doomed (Spider Robinson, a veteran of more than one commune, came to the conclusion that they have a natural life-span of about five years, and if you try to force them to stay alive longer than that, they become something that none of the originators intended). But the fact that the brilliant charismatic who led the commune began only moderately insane, and became progressively far more so as she gained power, had a lot to do with it also.

When I say brilliant charismatic I should really say she was a gifted cold reader, with a psychotic level of boldness, enabling her to make invasive use of every insight she gleaned. How convincing was she? Some local Catholic clerics considered our (non-religious) commune a potential Vatican III!

I won’t digress into that story today (bits of it scattered over the last decade of writing already, and I hate repeating myself) but two very rare lessons are worth noting. The first is completely distressing, and yet should not shock us. In a matriarchy (we only ever had one immaculate figure, a woman) emotional and even sexual violence are still used as tools of control – contrary to modern false-thinking, women’s greater emotional precision does not automatically translate into kindness. (See the grinning rictus on Hillary’s death-cultist face, if you need current evidence).

Far stranger and more hopefully, the few dozen kids who went through the most demented phase of that cult and came out the far side were, without exception (so far as I can tell) fantastic natural cold-readers, but also aware enough of the moral hazard to use it for good. Had we enough scale for a decent emboldening sports program (and less profound spiritual injury) I’m pretty sure we weirdly empowered Machiavellian eggheads would have produced a great detective and at least one master outlaw! (and I still honestly wonder if we were a DARPA project – since our insane headmaster was working with (then ARPA) on other (data-side) projects, that whole time).

Now I want to look at a bit of very persistent and yet obviously contradictory history, before I return to our present crazy and frightening moment, because it is a great way to see how big lies continue to have effects on us, even when they are truly dumb, right on their surface!

I have mentioned that studying the Second World War is a great way to become skeptical and politicized – but only if you dig from several directions at once, into the differing narratives of different nations and factions. Any one telling is airtight. Taken together? They leak like a seive!

General Bernard Montgomery, popularized as “Monty” is a nice neat example. He is recorded in British tellings of history as the brilliant general who was finally able to stand against the small German expeditionary force (commanded by the actually brilliant Rommel) which was causing all kinds of disaster for Britain in North Africa and threatened their oil holdings in the middle east.

The thing is, what Montgomery did is exactly what the last three generals before him wanted to do, only Churchill told them they couldn’t have the equipment they said they needed. When they failed (and were blamed for it) Churchill finally sent enough gear, and Montgomery got the credit for the bonehead-obvious plan which Connel, Wavell and Auchinlek all would have liked to do.

We remember Montgomery as a hero, so we don’t remember Churchill as an asshole.

But even more fundamentally, let us have a second look at the most successful public-relations campaign in the last century – hands down – the “Battle of Britain.” To be super clear, I come at this one from four directions, a pacifist, a history nut, an airplane geek and a technician.

I mentioned a few months ago that America pretended to have a sincere moment of reckoning after the war in Vietnam – but that ‘questioning’ and ‘soul searching’ was actually a trick of mass misdirection, to hide the fact that the war turned America from a lender into a borrower, destroying fundamental American prosperity in the process (exchanging real material productivity for speculative magic beans – which only works as long as more suckers also love magic beans).

Just like the psychic who believes their own line, America effectively forgot it was bankrupt, and kept right on borrowing ever deeper, against paper (beans) gains, inflated by that same delusion.

Britain did something even stranger, and even more poisonous to their long-term health as a nation. After centuries of being the world dominant slave trading, mass-murdering psycho-bully empire, they rebranded themselves into a plucky little underdog hero standing against the big bad wolf.

There are two big problems with that story. No, you do not get to walk away from the crime scene and pretend you were just a bystander, your victims still need justice, no matter your story! But also – the idea that it was heroism, or even “THE SPITFIRE” (most holy Icon) which won that important but not in fact decisive battle, is a load of absolute nonsense. To be clear, there was a lot of incredible courage shown in the skies, but what really counted was Imperial skills (making most effective use of the greatest number of subordinate others).

The Battle of Britain (for those who don’t study the war) was when the air forces of Germany attempted to establish air superiority over England, so they could invade it later, even though they never at any time had suitable boats to support such an invasion, nor even plans to build them. (and a few bombing raids quickly took out all the unsuitable vessels, also). Yes, there were operational plans for “Sea-Lion” an invasion of England (played it through a few times on tabletop scenarios) but armies don’t cross water by imagination (logistics is everything).

I have a snippet of sweet witness which applies, and appealed to my technician head immensely. My informal apprenticeship in audiophile repairs was with the son of an aviation technician who fled Poland as the German army over-ran it. Many pilots and specialists ended up in Britain, and they were quickly put to use with their own (extremely storied and successful) squadron of Hurricanes. The Hurricane is the poor cousin of the Spitfire, a bit older, slower and less capable, it was nevertheless available in much greater numbers, and it was also made completely differently, with many parts fabric-covered tube-steel or made of wood (so, easy to repair, even for furniture manufacturers, saving specialist aviation shops for more exacting machine tasks).

The funny thing is, he said his father not only considered the Hurricane a better plane in terms of repairing the damned thing, he also preferred it to fly! This was not intentional, but rather the result of the fact that the British officers commanding the Polish squadrons could not speak Polish, and so he found himself ordered by one who mistook him for a pilot, to fly a Hurricane, to get it up in the air to avoid an incoming German bombing raid on their airfield! He was very grateful to get it back on the ground again in one piece, and never again hung around the dispersal area.

But it is far more than just the apocryphal. The British rapidly organized widely dispersed repair depots, transport networks and salvage teams to make sure they harvested every usable part from every wreck, they enlisted furniture and auto manufacturers, airlines and airports into a massive centrally coordinated repair establishment, guaranteeing that throughout the battle, many more planes kept entering (or re-entering) combat than could possibly be manufactured against losses.

The Germans by contrast acted a lot more like the Americans are acting lately (though I mean no moral taint, just talking operational arts here). They did recover downed airframes (though many fewer, since so many were lost in the English channel, before being able to ditch safely), but they shipped them all the way back to Germany by rail, so the licensed manufacturer could work on them (and make the money for doing it). Meaning not only that way fewer machines were repaired, but also that it took way longer and cost far more than it had to.

But most importantly, the Germans, wildly overconfident from a long string of successes against much weaker or more poorly organized (France) foes, made a whole series of incredible tactical mistakes, limiting their fighters to less than thirty minutes of fighting fuel, and leaving their precision bombers exposed to devastating losses (Stukas – fresh from being the screaming scourge of the continent, were withdrawn entirely, after a huge number of the best pilots in the Luftwaffe were lost).

They almost destroyed British Radar, but backed off the final blow. They almost destroyed the RAF, then got distracted with anger powered vengeance attacks on civilian targets. Both of these were absolute tactical necessities, and both were within reach. Their planners simply failed.

But what happened to Britain, because they took that ‘plucky underdog’ myth so seriously? They failed so completely in their duty to have a post imperial moral reckoning (look in the mirror) that they are still trying to reassemble their f#cking empire! Still can’t handle not being the boss of everyone, even though they can’t even run their own economy anymore (or culture).

If we were aware of history, the way people in other parts of the world are, we would celebrate by having a great international ceremony, where once a year, a foreign dignitary from a former British possession would travel to London to knock the Prime Minister’s teeth out with a cricket bat, live on national television. “This is for a hundred million dead in China” sort of a thing.

Great party, much drinking, perhaps fireworks (Guy Fawkes can always use more screen time) the kind of truth and reconciliation that the working class could really enjoy also. (at last!)

But of course we go “SPITFIRE” sigh, and think “those plucky chaps and the dastardly hun.” (go back to sleep, as the music box plays that same inane tune, over and over and over).

The strange thing about trying to understand our time as a historical period (never an easy thing) – what will others think were the really important processes and changes, when looking back many years from now – is that we’ve never been so loudly and often lied to, or so very good at lying – but also (and this part never gets discussed) we’ve never wanted to believe lies more.

Now I understand that last part sounds like a grumpy and arbitrary thing that an old coot might say (in lieu of shaking a stick and telling kids to get off his lawn) but the weirdest evidence for this comes from modern studies into the placebo effect – which researchers have been surprised to find is becoming measurably more powerful over time, even as we moderns happily congratulate ourselves and each other for being less superstitious, better informed, more skeptical principled and generally rational than any humans before us (but only within the groups that always agree with us).

In analogical terms, we have just been to the doctor, who told us that liquorice allsorts and arrowroot biscuits are giving us all kinds of health problems, then heard from our accountant who is very worried about the magic bean market, and especially, our magic bean leverage.

In harder terms, the bill for using pretend money, ever since the costs of the Vietnam war destroyed the dollar and created the Petrodollar in its place, are finally coming due – and by the way, the petrodollar is now over too (could have held on a few more years, but this war hastened its demise to an absolutely incredible degree, considering the level of voluntary self-harm).

Meanwhile, while we’ve all been distracted with culture war games (designed precisely to distract us, while our pockets were being robbed) work and cost of living have been utterly destroyed.

Jobs, pensions, even the idea of paid labour itself is in question – and uncountable specialist trades (and the generational uncodifiable wisdom contained within each and every one of them) are being destroyed wholesale by crude new technological means centralizing not just profit, but also control over the whole of our information society, in frighteningly few monopoly platforms.

As I mentioned a few pieces ago, if you take away AI buildouts and gambling revenues, America hasn’t had any real economic growth at all in several years. And both of these are things which are opposed by many, apply direct costs against social thriving, with negative or questionable benefit for the average person. But the way the new IPO series is being launched (right at the top of the bubble) guarantees that pensioners and union funds will be left holding the bag, when the tech lords have all cashed-out to buy their own islands (local governments, US senators, etc).

And still, most fundamentally – zooming out to look at this as a historical moment – we really are watching the end of the empire we grew up inside. How do empires fall, when they have all the power and control? Simple – hubris. They mistake the source of their power, and abuse their control.

America did not become great because of the magic bean market, and it did not rise against British monopolism by accident, but by sidestepping their global control of capital and markets with a revolutionary unleashing of workers and innovation, creating unheard of markets, which in turn stimulated new forms of work and industrial creativity – and also helped inspire worker movements in many other parts of the world (most, still monarchies, during America’s rise).

As I wrote a few months ago (link below) – what most modern people hate about America as an empire was really only solidified after WWII, when Britain could no longer afford to ‘guarantee’ (skim and/or strangle) international trade and markets, and the USA took up that mantle. Yes, there were many violent interventions and outright thefts before this, but the economy was still set up to contest the British empire. When the USA became the empire, it lost that economically creative upstart spark, and traded it in for “free traderism” (total domination by the already most dominant – a lot like funnelling wealth to the already wealthy) which got US corporations a skim off almost every economic game in the world (the whole point of making your currency the reserve currency of the world, and of establishing military, especially naval, dominance) but devastated average citizens.

As I said below – what we hate most about modern America is its corporate Britishness!

So – understanding that this will all be hard to take, for those who still believe Television is real (sorry, Howdy-Doody is not a boy, he’s a puppet – and your parents were right – Maynard G Krebs is an ass!) I’m going to do reality for a bit – then go back to the connecting lies again, to “show my work.”

The reason I keep returning to the US going bankrupt because of the Vietnam war, and being forced to drop the gold standard (reality backed currency) and go to the petrodollar (magic bean economics) is, that period was the last time things changed as much as they are changing now.

The other really important reason to go back fifty years or so for reference to today, is that we are currently living through a gigantic complex interlinked disaster, caused by the failure of some grand strategies which were so patient and so large-scale, they remain hard for many to believe are real, even when they are faced with the evidence for them, every day of their lives.

One of the first great double-crosses of the industrial age was the trick British manufacturers played with textiles, first destroying textile production in their possession India, forcing that entire great nation to be captive consumers to British production, then, when British workers started getting uppity and organizing to get a share, the owners moved all the manufacturing equipment to India for cheap labour and turned the British into a captive market too (confiscating the worker’s share, once again, just when they were sure they were making gains toward fairness).

In the modern context, China was supposed to be India, a captive market for our high-value goods and a place to send our machines for cheap labour to destroy our unions. They were also supposed to stay that way and be happy taking orders from foreign investors and manufacturers – oh dear!

But let me skip back twenty years further to the end of the second world war for just a second to make a point that far too few people think about nowadays. I have many times mentioned the US National Security Act of 1947 (which created CIA, amongst other malign structures) as being the most fundamental governmental instrument opposing genuine democracy (since the FBI, which was invented for union-busting, and enjoyed the booze racket gig for ‘moral’ publicity).

But I ought also to have mentioned the Ford Strike of 1947 in Windsor Ontario, right across the Detroit river from the heart of American steel. What made this strike unusual was not just that it was extremely well organized and capably led, but also that it was made up of highly disciplined (and violence capable) veterans, who were quite certain they had earned peace and prosperity for their sacrifice, and were determined to stay the course for the win.

The concessions made by Ford to those strikers set the pattern for American negotiations nation wide, and also served as a very sobering caution to the big makers, not to push workers too far.

So – when we talk about post-war prosperity (the boom which made the boomers think growth and prosperity was normal) we don’t just have to factor-in the destruction of Europe (they needed tools to build tools to build tools) but also a level of worker resolve not ever seen here since. Just in case you think the corporate titans don’t actually have anything to be scared of (or at least, didn’t)

Back to our ‘recent’ fifty-year strategy cycle. Nixon going to China was to help widen a breach with the Soviet Union (which the Soviets had caused themselves, when Khrushchev began to repudiate Stalinism, long before the Maoists were ready to go there) and to open the door to the next great cheap-labour big-factory play against (then, still powerful) American union workers.

I have seen several, smarter than I, argue that it was actually Carter who caved to the banks and shifted to the “magic bean economy” as the new forever paradigm (instead of trying to recover solvency and independence from the banks – that is, corporate influence on government).

But Reagan was the guy who made sure Magic Bean Producers were the most influential and empowered economic actors in the economy, hence the extraordinary inflation of magic-bean wealth, which we all saw happening simultaneous-to the undermining erosion and outright loss of countless time-tested institutions and, over time, long fought-for rights, also.

I always think of the magician’s artful patter, “Look at this hand, or look at my pretty assistant.” (Look anywhere but at the hand which I’ve got in your back pocket, pilfering your wallet!)

There was still some interesting stuff to come in technology especially, thanks to creativity and capital meeting the relatively low cost environment of the times, but by the time Clinton went all in with Wall St magic beans, utterly betraying American workers in the process, the economy which we have all considered real and solid this whole time, was already more bubble than substantial, and despite the dot-com pricks (couldn’t resist) the bubble has inflated ever since.

So – where are we? – Western Capitalism is not just broken (no jobs or houses for young people) but also outright broke. In debt up to the eyeballs (some exceptions, but damned few) lowering quality of services and programs “for austerity” for decades in a row, and still sliding.

Worse yet (I know this will sound subjective, but bear with me) we in the west (and some parts of the advanced industrial East also – like South Korea and Japan) are now hopeless. I mean that technically, without hope. This shows up in the most negative possible versions of Armageddon thinking, millions now consider human beings a form of pollution! (can anything be more outrageously supremacist – or sadder – or make the tech-overlords rub their hands with glee and cackle louder, than young people hating themselves and each other pretty much completely?)

Self-deleting peasants – the ultimate goal of the corporatists and bankers for centuries – finally in sight!

My history geek side insists that if you tune out the details and step back, all of our furious culture wars come down to two flavours of demented self-righteous (and ignorant) denialism – but even stranger, they sound and look exactly like every doomsday cult and mania in history. Swept up with so much emotional certainty they are effectively insane (incapable of engaging with reality).

If you still support lockdowns uncritically, you helped make ICE excesses possible (and still are) by agreeing that rights are conditional and can be removed wholesale, with a good enough “feeling” story.

If you support the completely western provoked war against Russia, using Ukraine as a tool (always intended to smash both Ukraine and Russia, so the west could buy up the resources cheap) then you are still helping to make the madness in Gaza and the insane war on Iran possible, because you already helped to legitimize insane mass murder as a replacement for diplomacy. (Like Putin or not, he really has been trying to get a European security architecture together – so all parties could trust more and disarm further, to improve all of their economies, for more than twenty years).

It is our western economies which are so addicted to the Magic Beans game that we actually have to mass murder people regularly, just to keep our stock valuations high enough that the entire insanely leveraged house of cards doesn’t tumble from great height to flat, in one go.

Our BigWar/BigMedia lies outrageously now (tricking many well-intended people into believing lies that serve the creepiest CIA corporate agenda). So do many individual figures.

At risk of repeating myself bothersomely – TWO THINGS AT ONCE. The most important modern case of this is that Trump really is a crazy liar – but also BigWar/BigMedia has been lying about him (and the rest of the world) for a decade, in the weirdest most dangerous ways (Russiagate was shocking, racist and war promoting, and still no firings punishment or apologies).

When we describe Iran, Russia and China as “Closed Societies” (even while we arrest people for speech – or in the case of England just for wearing T-shirts protesting massacre of innocents) what we are really saying is that they have rudely closed their legs and refused to be raped by us.

Which – the most powerful people in the world are telling (yelling at) us – makes them evil.

Which is why they are deliberately crashing our economy – so (they hope) we’ll be dumb and desperate enough to go to war to reestablish the centuries old imperial right to rape everyone.

Me? I say not in our name. I say they shall not pass. I say wake up before we lose everything!

In short, I’m with George Bellows (From the long forgotten WWI Pacifist Movement)

Or, as I said in my all time best short poem:

It won’t matter much who finally ran it,

if all this ends in a lifeless planet

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

First off I want to point you to some absolutely fantastic and insightful recent writing, by people far more specialized and authoritative than I (should you doubt my cred, or want more sources). (Wacky Bibliography to follow – I’m having too much fun with that to drop it, fear not) ;o)

I know it is a bit presumptuous – but for me, reading Fabio Vighi is like encountering a friend I feel like I’ve known for decades, at first hearing. His combination of insights into economics, culture and psychology is exquisite – and reminds me again of Alan Watts’ insight about the Shaman, not just a doctor, but also a priest and a psychologist – and so much more powerful for the synthesis, that we who scoff at the specific archaic techniques and science involved, miss much we could use.

This is really important – capitalism needs growth, growth, capital – but it ain’t there!

“…We are witnessing an unprecedented historical inversion: a post-productive, hyper-financialised economy is attempting to finance the most capital-intensive technological transformation since electrification – not from surplus value or productivity gains, but from debt created out of thin air; more debt than has ever been issued in the history of humankind.”

And also

“...In June 2026, Blackstone capped redemptions on its $79 billion private credit fund after requests hit 10%, while D.E. Shaw informed clients that from January 2027, investors in its flagship hedge fund would need four years to fully exit – both firms citing the need to protect portfolios against “future crises.” The message couldn’t be clearer: as in the famous South Park episode, the liquidity “is gone”. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs projects $1.175 trillion in US equity supply in 2026 – IPOs, secondaries, and lock-up expirations – just as hyperscalers like Meta post negative free cash flow and consider stock offerings because they can no longer fund their AI ambitions from operations. Add to this the approximately $900 billion in US corporate debt maturities coming due in 2026 (rising to nearly $1.5 trillion by 2028, according to S&P Global Ratings), and the picture is one of a market being squeezed from both sides: equity supply flooding in, debt needing refinancing at higher rates, and cash flow nowhere to be found.”

fabio vighi

Until the Paper Itself Tears

And the real contradiction – a post-productive economy trying to fund an AI future on mountains of debt – is never resolved. It is only papered over until the paper itself tears…

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3 months ago · 32 likes · 32 comments · fabio vighi

And this piece no less so – especially since the MOU is a stall-tactic, not a peace treaty (meaning we absolutely ARE heading for a depression – world wide - and purposefully). What I was just saying about a magic-bean economy and crazy leverage? Fabio is way more convincing!

“...The AI narrative has been a pillar of the bull market, but the economics are starting to fray. OpenAI, the poster child of the revolution, is losing billions: $21 billion in losses against $13 billion in revenue last quarter. Microsoft, its largest supporter, is scaling back commitments. It has walked away from a $3 billion cloud lease and is exploring cheaper, open-source alternatives. Even DeepSeek is reportedly being considered as a lower-cost option. The AI trade has been a story of limitless potential, but the margins continue shrinking. Token costs are down 20% this month alone and computer rental prices are at one-month lows. The AI trade increasingly resembles a classic technological paradox: exploding adoption alongside collapsing unit economics. Investors may eventually discover that these are not the same thing.

Here the risk is not merely that oil prices rise, but that higher energy costs arrive in a market built on optimistic assumptions about growth, inflation, and monetary policy. Shortages become crises especially when they collide with leverage, and modern markets remain heavily dependent on leverage of one form or another.”

fabio vighi

The Mask and the Barrel

Crude oil storage tanks at the Cushing oil hub in Cushing, Oklahoma. Credit: Reuters…

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2 months ago · 27 likes · 7 comments · fabio vighi

I have shared pieces from tireless ex-FBI Mark Wauck who writes “Meaning in History” many times over the years. He has a sharp logical mind and an interesting collection of smart sources that he follows closely (several of which, like Sean Foo and Arnaud Bertrand, I follow myself). He also has some interesting big-picture insights. Don’t always agree with his conclusions, but his analysis is a very good reflection of rational old-school conservative thinking on geopolitics.

In case you think I’m being paranoid linking the magic bean petrodollar and war.

“Bessent just said on CNBC that the dollar invoicing of oil was a factor in Venezuela, Iran, and Ukraine/Russia policy decisions.

Such wrongthink was previously considered solely the purview of “conspiracy theorists.”

Rapid Response 47 @RapidResponse47

@SecScottBessent: “Dollar dominance is essential, and everything @POTUS is doing here — if you look, the new Venezuela... the dollar is going to be the centerpiece of their trade... We’re seeing in the Iranian negotiations, the Iranians will be invoicing in dollars. Everything we are doing is pushing the dollar back... we’re reinforcing it.”

And when I insist (as I have for years) that the secondary aim of the Ukraine war was to get Europe to buy super expensive American energy, which was a crazy thing for Europe to do, I didn’t just mean because the price would multiply (as it has) but that the yanks don’t have it to sell! – Here’s economist Chris Martenson, doing a bit of math that proves the “grand AI buildout” (like European industrial recovery) is outright delusional (and our politicians, liars).

Chris’s Substack

The Math Isn’t Mathing: US Natural Gas Shortfalls by 2030

There was a remarkable exchange between Tucker Carlson and Kevin O’Leary, the main spokesperson behind the proposed 9 gigawatt (!) data center in Box Elder County, Utah…

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4 months ago · 68 likes · 4 comments · Chris Martenson

Here’s Simplicius the Thinker with a characteristically interesting take on the state of play (and the scale of the downside economic implications which have been set in motion – and absolutely NOT yet even close to averted – this freight train is still coming right at us, and it will not now be stopped!)

Simplicius's Garden of Knowledge

Major Rupture Between US-Israel as Trump Grows Exasperated With Netanyahu's Uncontrolled Bloodletting

It seems to be the usual arc of any imperial propaganda drive that when a conflict winds down, and the stakes are no longer at risk, the principals begin to loosen their hold on the truth evident to us all along…

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2 months ago · 498 likes · 128 comments · Simplicius

Now here is that wonderful short clip of Orson Welles talking about cold reading

And I’ll give the last word to the brilliant James Baldwin – who pulls a mic-dropper here, several times over (one which is sadly no less relevant, all these many years later).

Now – Another Instalment of my Eccentric Bibliography Series

Bookstores are temples – keep your brain well-fed by keeping them busy and active!

Beneath the Underdog – Charles Mingus

I am crazy for autobiographies of truly original thinkers – and Mingus was that for sure! One can argue that distant observers might be more objective or even truthful, but they can never hope to convey the particular quality of mental energy that made you interested in the first place – and honestly, I’ll take a hundred hours of myth by a creative genius over any perfectly footnoted monograph ever written. This book also has perhaps the all time best literary advice about cunnilingus!

The Quiet American – Graham Greene

Some people disdain fiction and think true things are best said truthfully, I think a superb novelist can sometimes say big hard to grasp things that wouldn’t fit any simple objective telling, but are incredibly important, all the same. Here, Greene perfectly captures not only how America would fail in Vietnam, from just before it did – but also a truly sublime piece of writing, with an outstanding ‘unreliable narrator’.

Flatland – Edwin Abbot

This is the strangest short, easy to read, math book I own. There are a lot of things which seem bizzarre and old-fashioned about the description of social mores in particular (though even these, make an interesting frame for looking at our own niceties) but as you find your way through the strange story, you will find yourself thinking about geometry and dimensions in a whole new way (which is both fun, and useful). Years later Dionys Burger wrote a sequel “Sphereland” which I would also recommend very highly (higher dimension mindbender – so much fun!). But ‘flat’ first.

Zen and the Art of Writing – Ray Bradbury

My wife and I were casually wise in a few fortunate ways, oddly young. We took our retirement while we were healthy enough to enjoy it (worked four day weeks, throughout our careers) and understood the emotional risk of trying to commercialize creative impulses which are actually supposed to enrich your whole experience of life, not the cynical commercial market. But wise or not, the landlord don’t take IOUs! So, I am among those hopeful scribes who has read many many many books about how to do the thing and do it well. This is one of my very favourites. Compact and to the point (and not about zen at all, that was just a publishing trend of the moment). Above all Bradbury commends us to make use of our passion in our writing, not recklessly, but rather, in order to come to a higher resolution through the page.

The Human Use of Human Beings - Cybernetics and Society – Norbert Weiner

There are two versions of this book, a small “Popular” edition which I read then lent away years ago, and a larger version with more (mind boggling, to me) mathematics, which I still have on my shelf, accusing me of ignorance! I read the slim popular version a few years after reading Machiavelli, and I could not shake the feeling (then or now) that Weiner’s work was no less a manual for manipulation, and was taken no less seriously by our modern princes. I mentioned Gregory Bateson recently – the most humane and accessible among the originators of cybernetics. But I was struck by the fact that even much more cynical Weiner understood the social disruption which would be unleashed by mechanization, and suggested we begin to adjust societies decades in advance, so as to be sure we remember to preserve human thriving.

Anything by Cordwainer Smith

I am pretty sure every book he wrote is now out of print – so this is a fun used bookstore treasure hunt quest (and while you are so questing, grab John Brunner and Doris Lessing stuff when you see it, too!)

Cordwainer Smith is perhaps not a great master prose stylist, but he was a guy who left the CIA during a time when it was thinking especially big and weird thoughts about how to rule the world (and America itself) and then ended up doing a whole series of science fiction novels about the economic and cultural implications of new slave races which were specifically genetically engineered with animals, so they weren’t entitled to human rights (and could be owned and worked as property).

Of course ridiculous - they would never dream of destroying labour rights altogether - ha ha ha!

Note for new readers – auto-estimated reading times are greatly exaggerated (lots of pix/links)

Hey folks!

I have some sweet and some fierce things to share today, and some which will sound partisan for awhile before inverting completely. Let me begin with something that will infuriate most, just so you understand the stakes I’m talking about. I am an anti-tribalist because I am a pacifist, and our popular cultural tribes in the west, both (fake) “Left” and (fake) “Right” have been effectively coopted to serve ruling-class psychopath purposes – driving a new great war which will absolutely devastate the entire world and leave the west a ruin of its previous self (and destroy our kids, utterly).

Yes, I am saying that almost everyone who now feels sure they are right and good are actually so completely wrong they are ultimately serving outright evil (state mass-murder for the sake of private capital is always evil – no matter how great our ability to rationalize and justify ‘feels’).

So – even though my days of (foolishly) aspiring to be a revolutionary are now many decades in the past, I now find myself returning to think about the studies I made and things I learned then. Our modern BigWar/BigMedia/BigMoney/Bought Politics system that we somehow still like to think of as “representative democracy” (though it had quite clearly represented only the already wealthy, for many decades) now manufactures large scale death for money, and so needs to be overturned for moral reasons (over there and right here at home both) – but the old 20^th century models of leftist and rightist revolutions have both led to extraordinary humanitarian disasters (and were almost always rapidly coopted by powerful cliques and turned against those self-same revolutionary citizens, within months, or a few years at most).

I don’t want leftist mobs to turn over the state – they are ignorant hate fuelled witch-burners – no part of culture, fairness, or rights would be left standing if they did (they really don’t believe in the basic humanity or rights of people who disagree with them – though it breaks my heart to say it).

I also don’t want right wing fury to ‘kick it over’ (as we used to say in the old days), because again, they are majority-reactionaries driven by tribal outrage, not plans for sound and sober mutual advance.

But here’s the thing which will probably anger everyone. The most serious critical, intellectual, social analysis and outright revolutionary energy of this moment is almost entirely on the right. The sharpest economic analysis still comes from (certain branches of) the intellectual left, who have a long tradition of probing the mechanics of capitalism, without being swept away by the blind-faith fake-religion side of money-thinking, which distorts the view of so many. But the mass of the modern left is so wedded to long disproven statism (control of all ends and means, framed with benevolent language) and full capitulation to dominance of all by ‘our betters’ (and their unexplained yet presumed immaculate reasoning) they are now a counterrevolutionary movement. And yeah, that’s a bad thing (worst insult I could offer, at 20).

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When I was a small boy, my father (the greatest book-maniac I’ve met in my life) used to read to my brother and I, classics from all around the world. We heard the stories of the Brothers Grimm, of the forest witch Babayaga, the tales of Nasrudin and much else, (Beowulf – OMG!).

He had one habit which I have not heard others who were lucky enough to be read to, mention. He so loves language that when he found an especially beautiful or meaningful passage he would re-read it, just to deeply savour it, and to share with his boys the pleasure of the treasured word. Small wonder that he ended up with two (admittedly crazy and quixotic) writers for sons. For my friends who are parents – there is no greater intellectual gift you can give your kids than to show them by your own constant demonstration that you love great books and learning yourself!

I most often write long-form nowadays, but I remain especially well-tuned to compact lines which say subtle useful and important things. As an atheist, I do not have one single defining text – but do not take that to mean (of any atheist) that we have no powerful guide-stars to steer by!

Today I want to open with two of my all time favourite pieces of deep wisdom – from the well known (and yet philosophically underappreciated) humorist, Dave Barry. I have shared these before (apologies to old readers) but you’ll understand why they belong here in no time, promise!

1) The hardest thing in the world, is to stand-up for the guy who isn’t in the room.

2) If someone is nice to you, but not nice to the waiter, they are not a nice person.

The thing about standing up for someone who is not there to defend themselves is that it nicely defines principle. That is, will you throw principle away for tribal belonging? (emotional kicks)

The thing about being nice to your friend, but not the waiter, is that it reveals genuine attitude. Are you the kind of person who wants to be unfair or unkind, if you can justify or get away with it?

And to be super-clear about why I consider these lines so important, my wife and I both spent most of our lives in retail (even as a skilled repairman, I never escaped ‘the counter’). So we have both seen the shocking truth of these lines proven, over and over again (ad nauseum).

People who define themselves on the basis of what they are sure are ‘virtuous ideas’ about the world and politics (once a moderate rebellion, and now the most craven conformity imaginable) are the most outrageous contemptuous brats, when it comes to treatment of the working class.

My taxi driving friend used to put it this way. “You get tips from poor people, because they feel like everyone else is poor too, and want to show you respect, and rich people who have class. Middle class progressives never tip, they think they are so much more important than you.”

So now here’s something strange about the left and the right that neither tribalist side is capable of seeing about the other, yet both sides see very clearly about themselves.

“The Left” is a huge gathering of ideas movements and cultural fashion-trends (new marketing for flavours of papal indulgence?) which are not even close to being uniform in goals or means. (and no less uneven in soundness, compassion, viability, and many other important factors).

The left includes hard-core Marxists (rare, mostly pacifist intellectuals). Left-libertarians like myself who are convinced virtue comes from human beings in their communities, enabled with common rights and a rich commons, not top-down imposition and centralization of control. Absolutely huge legions of sentimentalists who gravitate toward a soft focus “Fabian Socialism” (dictatorship by our betters, but with plenty of pacifying free stuff and tribalist bear-baiting distractions for the masses). But it also includes normal middle class conformist go along to get along Liberals who believe the state is essentially benevolent, and whatever dictates it issues, must therefore be moral and affirmed – even if the proof and affirmation is at a level far above their pay-grade.

I have to stop to hit that one again from a different angle, because my ‘revolutionary’ friends are used to thinking of themselves as courageous, and Liberals as unprincipled complicit sellouts to state authority in exchange for the bribe of mere status and security (civil service union jealousy?)

No really – the comrades don’t think lefties with great jobs are real lefties anymore (and I kinda agree with them, from behavioural observations – despite my great desire for this not to be so). But it really is amazing how many people stop being rebels when they actually do get a decent opportunity, which makes them feel useful and their skill and integrity valued. (It is way easier for a lifelong walking maniac like me to dislike driving culture, than for someone who can’t walk.)

Oddly, the bourgeois left (in government and institutions) the last people in the western world who have a pension plan (at least they still do – pre SpaceX IPO – we’ll see, going forward) know full well that they are widely despised by the unwashed (and nothing to lose) more radical wings of the left.

So, as tribes of humans will, they end up using their power in government to define their own bourgeois concerns about things like hurt feelings as real leftism, ignoring poverty and decline for the working and middle classes with a wilful blindness which is quite grotesque (to anyone working class). And when a genuine worker demands economic action for the little guy – the statists call them “far right” and shamelessly invoke every tool of BigWar/BigMedia to make that slander stick.

Even stranger (to me, at least) both of these groups who call themselves (but not each other) left, do that offstage reference “above my pay-grade” trick, not occasionally, but as their foundation.

I have been very fortunate to have had many intellectual and creative mentors of rare acuity (several were insane also, but what can you do? Intelligence and sanity are in no way correlated factors, sadly). One of the most generous principled and helpful of them, spent years trying to persuade me of the validity of scientific socialism (and along the way caused me to read dozens of excellent if flawed books, which I am very glad to have in my head). He also challenged me more usefully about my writing than any man I’ve known (still use his advice, constantly). Let me here share with you his most powerful essay-writing gem.

When you want to say something challenging, use ‘we’ to include yourself in the sin and struggle. If you say ‘you’ even if it is accurate (you no longer think that way) you are standing outside the fray and accusing others. Not in fact, but in feeling – which is crucial to how our messages land! (what we want to say, matters only to us, and only emotionally – what we can get across, is what counts)

What I found vexing, even as a teenager, very eager indeed for the attention of a smart taskmaster (kids need purposeful challenge, infinitely more than they need empty flattery) was that there was always a point in every argument about the limits to the dogma and theory (especially in historically demonstrated practice) where he would make reference to the great socialist McGuffin which all were expected to presume lay deep within the corpus. That is, “I don’t know the answer to that one, kid, but I do know enough to feel sure it has been answered.” The exact same trick Radicals so despise in Liberals! (our good government says so, so it must be so).

The weirdest new modern expression of this is the sudden burst of wild devotion to scientism – a deep religious faith in a far away immaculate priesthood who it is a sin to question, and whose explanations are on a realm far above our understanding (pay-grade) and so, unchallengeable, morally.

Let me be clear – Science means asking questions, then asking questions about the questions we just asked. The minute we stop asking questions (the whole point of this disgusting malign scientism) we stop doing anything in any way related to science, we are in the realm of false faith.

I’ll link here to William Briggs, a stalwart one man crusader against dumb scientism (and a SUPERB mathematics teacher) who teaches rigorous mathematic skepticism (of models in particular) with wonderful clarity and considerable humour (Feynman energy). Even when I disagree with his targets, (not infrequent) I always learn much from his rationally founded critique.

Science Is Not The Answer

The philosophy of science and scientism, and putting uncertainty in its place.

By William M Briggs

Now here’s an indication of what an old fogey I really am. Because the left was on the back foot in the early 80s when I first got into it intellectually, the radical side was small enough to be intellectual. Back then, the worst thing you could call a beerhall socialist comrade was counterrevolutionary.

Counterrevolutionaries were even more infuriating than rightists, because they pretended to be revolutionary (misrepresenting or misappropriating the language and ideas, almost always for emotional purposes) but actually served the aims of the ruling cliques and the BigWar state. People who (falsely) call themselves anarchists to justify injecting violence into charged situations are a good modern example. They guarantee far more violence from authorities, to much nicer people than they are (they smash, then run away in their little black ninja suits, long before the horses charge baby-strollers).

Oddly, just as some (quite rightly) point out that military service can do a lot for the character of young men who never did learn self-discipline (despite the often very steep cost), I would like to suggest that even where the program is flawed, socialism which drives deep reading, hard study and sincere debate, has long had great cultural value for workers, just for that enablement – a gateway-drug to get working class intellectuals started on a lifelong quest to figure this mess out for themselves (without needing faith in anyone above their pay-grade, who they correctly know – from a lifetime of experience with clueless management – are a bunch of idiots anyhow).

Much closer to home, my wife and I have argued about public funding for Catholic education for as long as we’ve been married. My defence of the Catholic system has always been simple “At least they make them read – and teach them enough critical thinking to escape Catholicism!”

This might sound rather backhanded (apologies, to friends of faith). What I mean is not that someone must or should reject the framework in which they have been instructed, but rather that an honest framework is one which also gives you adequate intellectual tools to critique and effectively escape it, if that is how you ultimately react to your experience of it.

I should also add, a very old friend spent years teaching in the public system in Toronto, then worked her last few years before retirement in the Catholic system. She said it was a joy to teach there, because students arrived prepared and ready to learn. Very different from her decades of experience in the main system.

But now ask yourself this question. Does the “above your pay-grade” Liberal democracy supremacist crowd in power – those who think feelings count absolutely and foreign lives only in relative terms – teach our children enough about the world of ideas (and about thinking clearly and freely for yourself) to escape their dogma?

Since in many ways they do not (fading for decades, a mere homeopathic dose, now) we really should be asking ourselves why is that? Why do other older systems trust individuals with information and critical thinking tools which are dangerous to their perfect faith and obedience, and yet we’re afraid to?

What exactly are we afraid of? A huge wave of reason, science and understanding?

Now one last observation about movements and (self-described) radicals in them (from personal experience here, no self-important foolishness I didn’t first indulge in, before finally seeing past).

In my early twenties I was part of a ‘Socialist Comic Collective” which misfired hilariously, but taught all of us a great deal (especially the only two of us who drew and wrote like crazy anyhow). We began as a trio – myself, Brian (the best natural illustrator I ever knew) and our mutual mentor (mentioned above) for wise-man depth and extra insight into older characters and politics.

Then another friend of ours, a self-described existentialist (which always seems to actually mean sociopath, in practise) and Trotskyist, wanted to join us. He too (credit where it is due) set me on to much productive reading, but he refused to agree to the very simple rules the rest of us had established (not really on any sort of principle, he was just universally all-case ornery).

Thing is, like I say, two of us, my illustrator friend Brian and I, were just naturally relentlessly creative (not trying to be fancy, more like constantly metabolizing the byproducts of our unquiet souls) so we had established those simple rules because of practical experience with production (zines, posters, cassettes, mini poetry books, etc). I argued strongly that he should be a friend of the group, but not a member, because our rules were not arbitrary or oppressive but respectful of production realities.

I was outvoted – so, though I did get into photography (to take background shots for the Toronto-set grand revolutionary comic arc we had planned) and both Brian and I produced thick stacks of drawings of characters and scenes, we never even finished arguing about the title, or got one volume published. Now this is an especially silly example of course – because we were young fools who were sure that all we had to do was “Get the Word Out” to help spur serious and sustained social change!

My proselytizing religious friends feel much the same way (and I appreciate their sincerity, truly, thanks to my own experience bearing what seemed an irresistible light, for a time), but sadly, they do far better in the long term, since they acknowledge early, that they deal in faith.

The thing is, this is a crucial dynamic in any social cultural or political movement (combos too)

Do we want to keep our group small enough that we all meet on a shared intellectual plane and commit to an agreed program and purpose, based on principles which we can all derive and prove for ourselves? Or do we want to let more people in, even if they don’t share our goals, principles (and emotional-attitudinal competence), to add numbers and weight to the project – remembering “Quantity has a quality all its own.”

There have always been different levels of mutual understanding and truly shared program in every group of people working to change things. But in the modern consumerist era we have pulled an especially foolish trick which has led us into disaster (with many still quite blind to it, sadly). We start with reasoning, or often, the delegation to someone else above our pay-grade who sounds reasonable, we next come to a passionate moral conclusion – then we lazily stick to that moral conclusion, long after the original reasoning which ‘justified it’ has been proven faulty.

I mentioned awhile ago that when they first started teaching feminist studies courses in the 1970s many leading theorists of the time were convinced that since violence and abuse were entirely male characteristics, therefore lesbian relationships would be entirely free of both! Turns out this is not only not true, Lesbians report having been in abusive relationships more often than straight women (45% vs 35%, from a recent study). The Dunedin (world’s biggest/longest longitudinal behavior) Study revealed the key reality years ago – though many still fight against the clear conclusions found.

On average, women are not less violent and abusive than men, they just aren’t as strong (and men rarely report abuse), so their violence doesn’t result in anything like as many hospital visits and police calls.

I don’t mean this to say any abuse or cruelty to others is reasonable, kindness respect and compassion are absolute anchors for me. I mean we have to work on this big human problem by facing what it actually is, an all-humans question – how do we return to healthy emotional self-regulation and develop robust empathy muscles? (Find real gratitude for and with one another, amidst this alienated and chaotic mess).

Hating men is extremely satisfying for quite a few people, but will not make anything better for anyone, and in fact very frequently turns into a whole different (very powerful) counterrevolutionary vector.

Do we want the emotional satisfaction of feeling superior, even if we justify war?

Or do we want to change the world for the better? (Think harder and win for real).

For those who think I’m being too sharp when I say “Fake-mob left” I’m talking about that frighteningly numerous tribe who cannot derive any rational or ethical principles for themselves, because they no longer deeply yearn to understand what being human is (or honour, excellence or compassion) – except as these things are derived, asserted, predigested into pabulum, neatly packaged and promoted by their betters. All of that sausage-making at a level far above their pay grade, natch – that mental effort is not what they are shopping for – “just give me the moral(ist) conclusion part!”

What I said before about “You can’t consume a revolution, you have to do it” goes double for simply being a full-range compassionate and effectively helpful human being (responsible adult).

Compassion is a skill and a muscle, and there is no form of conformity on earth (no matter how righteously it self-describes) which has ever once allowed for it. We either do the hard work of it ourselves, or we substitute laudanum for our kid’s breakfast (drug them all day, so we can go to work and not think about them).

Honour works just the same. Honour means recognizing that some of the most hate-filled people on earth are ‘anti-hate’ campaigners, who actively demonize huge swathes of humanity, just to flatter the biases of gossipy town mice, who don’t have enough spine to speak up for those not in the room. (and of course flatter their own wallets and their state and corporate contributions, too – no panic? no more funding!)

“The Right” is no less chaotic a category, and no less subject to being judged by sampling from worst cases, to make unfair (effectively straw-man) refutations and arguments. If our purpose is tribal belonging and emotional satisfaction. Rather than say, cause and principle.

Now I know full-well that I write with less experience and authority on the right (my reading on the right is much thinner too – though much greater in proportion than most from the left), but I have had many friends and mentors there too, and want to bear witness to my younger friends about some memorable and important realities.

First, after decades of trying and failing to convince me of scientific socialism, I accidentally destroyed my own mentor’s faith in it, by lending him Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom.” That he was open enough to see the key points being made was a great testament to his intellectual honesty, but honestly, I felt kind of guilty about that one. My own anchor is retail-worker reality (and solidarity against the special-case sociopaths – that is, asshole customers) which I’ve always seen as a modern equivalent (in tone and usefulness) to the old Wobbly “one world union” ethos. He, far more isolated socially and from work, had no such foundation to fall back on, just more books and more theories, a sad and lonely sort of maelstrom. Never let anyone tell you being an intellectual comes without risk! (Castles made of sand - Hendrix)

And here is a good place to note something that radicals on left and right ignore constantly. Hayek’s criticism of Marxist politics is as precise and useful as Marxism’s criticism of capitalism, and yet his prescriptions for solutions to a correctly identified fault are no less completely disproven, unsound and dangerous than anything Stalinism ever concocted at its very worst!

Two Freakin’ things at once!

(Analysis does not inevitably indicate sound program – you need humanity too!)

I can say with absolute certainty that almost all of my most important mentors when it came to work and productivity were conservative in disposition, regardless of their voting politics. I’ve had some deep-leftie bosses too, but they have a tendency to go bankrupt way sooner/more often.

Being a guy with a naturally artistic romantic mindset, who was trained in hard-science (repair) I always saw working with people who had different frames as a chance to learn, more than to fight (though I do enjoy a good argument, when it is actually a sincere rational argument).

For conservatives, I switch over to hard-reality “Bench-Head” where you must look at the object in front of you (for technicians, a broken whatever) figure out what it was supposed to do, then why it doesn’t, then what would it take to make it do that again, then whether that effort is worth-it (and also whether the customer will think so). Nothing but realism works for any step of this (even dealing with unreasonable customers – which taught me a lot about relating to the hostile, effectively).

The thing about engagement with facts and only facts is that it allows serious work to get done – and this is not actually the aim in every other sphere (especially the ‘feels’ theories our masters now prefer). There is a way for a scrawny sixteen year old to shift two and a half tons of oranges safely, and also a way which leads to lifelong back injury! The difference is entirely practical and realist.

Material reality is not a despicable plane, and workers who address our crude animal needs are to be greatly respected by all, not ever despised as ‘losers,’ taken for ignorant or lacking in zeal.

We almost learned this during the lockdowns, when we asked menials to take risks for all of us, but then very quickly forgot and went back to despising angry workers as ‘far-rightists’ who the government should be further empowered to smite (abridging rights for all) to address a set of (largely state-concocted) amorphous city mouse fears of the (ignorantly) hated country mice.

But I was shocked to hear workers just like the parents of many students, disparaged by their teachers as the sad result of educational failure (a loser path the students should avoid) instead of dignified honourable hard-working people, sacrificing consciously on principle, by putting duty to family ahead of theory, whimsy and rarefied aspiration, as so many workers very simply are. Not only was that psychological bullying, but also a huge disservice to respect for sincere effort.

(and I can’t tell you how many brilliant artists I have met, who have heavy tools in their hands all day long)

Having apprenticed and worked a few years with a master repairman who taught me everything from 1930s five tube radios to the latest in digital audio tech, I then spent a few years in the 90s, working as an assistant educator (Librarian/Computer Guy and Special Ed assistant), and I have to say, despite the flaky funding and starvation-thin weekly hours, it was super satisfying work.

I’ll give you a funny example of how I enjoy teaching without being the teacher (lifelong). At one point the grade seven teacher tested her students in math and decided that seven of them were ‘advanced’ and the rest needed much more work to catch up. So she sent the seven to the library to do some standard bland math busy-work. Literally negative numbers as elevators, as if twelve year olds aren’t yet capable of abstraction. So freakin’ insulting! (and a waste of active minds).

Being the kind of librarian who knew his library and wanted the students to find gold there, I went and grabbed a few old British math textbooks I rather liked, for some more challenging interesting and genuinely useful math puzzles to give them (with explained solutions they could look up).

They appreciated my effort, (and my empathy for their aching boredom with the busy-work assigned) but looked at those old hardbound books with great suspicion. So instead I just grabbed a blank piece of paper and wrote out five problems in linear algebra. I explained to the students that algebra was a detective puzzle, where you get just barely enough clues to figure out x. I showed them a few rules for how you can move things around from one side of the equation to the other, then I let them work on the problems for awhile before we talked about them together.

They were even more eager the next week, and I was far better prepared, having brought several of my own math books from home. They were excited when I showed them they were working on introductory College Algebra problems, but they still wanted me to write some out myself by hand, then copy that as a handout for the group. I was happy to do it, math joy gives me joy!

We kept this up for several weeks, and had more and more interesting conversations about ways to approach problem solving every week. Then the teacher gave the class another math test – and the whole class failed! Rather than taking the obvious information from this (that she had clearly failed to teach the material adequately, to anyone in her class, even the keeners) she got mad at the students and disbanded the ‘advanced math group’ on the spot. Her offence somehow more important than the students’ genuine (and growing) enthusiasm (sadly, this was in no way atypical).

But here is where it got strange and wonderful. The kids didn’t want to stop doing math problems, so they (grade 7s, remember) started coming to me on the sly, behind the teacher’s back for college level algebra problems as if they were the most delicious and illicit contraband! And I can prove this is no hyperbole, because soon other students saw them getting these handouts from me and asked to be included. I solemnly warned them, “This is extra math work, you won’t get any credit from the teachers at all,” but they wanted one anyhow, just because the others had made it cool!

And I don’t mean they wanted one as a souvenir, I mean I soon had more than a dozen students bringing me extra voluntary advanced math work every single week and coming by the library to talk about it, when they had a break between classes.

Curriculum counts, but not without genuine joy in learning.

As regular readers can imagine, I did much wackier still for the history keeners among them – but I see at least two fine philosophers a clever musician and a great journalist in that grown and established cohort now – and am enduringly glad for any help I might once have been.

Nothing will bring you more satisfaction than working with young minds – or more frustration and heartbreak – but those come always together, with any meaningful human interactions – not even as the cost, so much as the texture out of which the greater significances emerge.

But here is the strange part. The teacher considered herself a real stalwart leftist because she believed the union should fight hard against the government for her benefit, and voted Liberal. To her, I was a capitalist, because I was a freelance repairman in the evenings (owner operator of my own informed hand-eye coordination, really – but that was enough to qualify for category).

But the dynamics were in no way unclear. She was management, using the power of her office to make arbitrary rulings which were not helpful to those under her, or to the greater goal, just because she could. This is the thing workers (left and right) always see about the reality of management (whether it pretends to be left or right), that makes them the least willing to do that offstage referent ‘above my pay grade’ faith trick, of all the social classes – not just least to lose, as is very often noted – but also best informed with first-hand evidence! (as is not ever mentioned or respected)

Now, at last, let me get to my first, more testy opening – I leave it here for honesty’s sake.

I have both grumpy and positive aims today – and this is already important to recognize, because this is now a very common mix of aims – and almost no one does (admit it, frankly).

In fact, the way we have got used to writing and speaking as if it is reasonable to pretend away half of our motivation is extremely damaging to sharing truth – because it is actually about satisfying our emotional needs, even though these satisfactions come at cost to community and society. And I must here stop to be very clear – we are all very upset for good reasons – but also because very rich people have been conspiring to make us more afraid and divided, to protect their long term plan for destruction of, and foreclosure on, the commons (everything of value we all share, including spaces, social conventions of fairness and due process – and some institutions).

So – my anti-tribalism comes from putting the goal (better life for normal people and no more murder and exploitation done in our name overseas) ahead of my own emotional needs. That it has also cost me much bile from lifelong friends who remain brute tribalists, will be obvious to anyone else who has put human beings ahead of dogma and tribal compliance. Painful stuff, to be sure – but I have to be clear, from my view, they are actual outright traitors – and I don’t need friends who would destroy humans, principle, truth and rights just to feel they are superior.

The weird thing about idea-tools used in service of emotion, instead of truth and principle, is that they frequently serve purposes exactly opposed to the ‘superior morality’ being falsely invoked.

“Supremacist” is a great example of a word which sounds like a powerful moral accusation – but made by who, exactly? There is no set of ideas in the entire world which is anywhere close to being as blindly supremacist, intolerant and violently dominant as the conceit that (still relentlessly mass-murderous) Western Liberalism™ is a settled and established MORAL truth.

No really folks – don’t you dare tell me about the feelings you are protecting, when you have been cheering actual murder of people in countries you know nothing at all about for decades, and finding ways to rationalize that and make it just fine, as a perfect supremacist. (Left and Right both!)

There are very old roots to that kind of conceit (and violence enabling righteousness) on the popular (fake ego-tribalist, instead of working class rooted) left. But an especially big shift happened in the early nineties as The Soviet Union collapsed. Many now laugh at Frances Fukuyama’s idea that the end of the cold war was “The End of History” and the American system of liberal capitalist democracy was the clear all-time victor. Most “prosperous, free, creative and ethical.”

But this idea was not seen as outrageous hubris at the time – at the time it was so widely embraced that it even worked its way into the thinking of many (self-described) ‘leftists’ who openly opposed the ultra-conservative political tribe which Fukuyama always represented.

None of that is even a tiny bit accidental or coincidental. I have written about CIA plots and tricks many times (especially about the ways they distort history, and destroy positive futures) and I know some think “War isn’t my issue, so the CIA doesn’t affect me.” That is very simply wrong – if there is any issue which you feel passionately about in any other country in the world, there is an extremely good chance that the CIA already has a probe stuffed so far up your backside it reaches (and messes with) your brain! Apologies for putting it like that, but recognizing an imposed and invasive parasite which we have become accustomed to, can be very difficult. Invoking disgust can help make it twitch enough for us to feel it, and know we need to be rid of it!

How did they do this? (Why am I confident enough to be that impudent, for purpose?)

Simple – after decades of CIA running secret propaganda and dirty tricks campaigns to destabilize foreign countries (allies included – see link below on Gladio) and getting into all kinds of trouble when these covert rings were discovered, the evil genius screwballs at CIA did something very bold. They decided to make them open public facing programs instead, and fund them as “Freedom” and “Rights” promoting NGOs.

This way they could not only spend much more money directly screwing-with the politics of other countries (because the money could all go into programs, instead of the previously massive overhead required to keep these programs secret), they could even get many of their former opponents to help them with the project, by invoking ‘moral’ causes chosen very carefully to appeal to them as absolutes (that is, emotional issues, rather than questions requiring nuance).

Long ago, Plato said “You may not be interested in War. But War is interested in you.” In the modern era we could say the same about CIA, though it is only one especially malevolent part of the whole BigWar/BigMedia/BoughtPolitics world we now somehow all inhabit (unhappily and unconsulted).

I can give you one very strange example of massively distorted history, which I do not see often discussed, which reveals the way this trick was played on many sincere Christians on the right, so my old leftist friends might find it easier to see the mechanisms involved. (no ‘triggers’ for that tribe)

South Sudan is the most recently established independent nation on earth (July 09 2011). The history of the region is twisted and complex, inter-tribal and religious conflict is usually stressed above all other factors, when we in the west discuss events there. (Though my readings on Sudan as a whole also make me think of the Mahdi and “Chinese Gordon” more than a century ago).

In November of 2006 I was walking home from a job and decided that since I had skipped lunch and was saving the transit fare by walking, I owed myself a new book, as a reward (any excuse works, for a genuine junkie). I ran into an interesting off lease shop with trestle tables which surely represented the superbly curated collections of at least three defunct bookshops (one on Drama, one on self-help and language books, and one with a super wide range of non-fiction) all discounted now (I felt for the ruined shop owners, but poor kids love cheap, maybe two books?)

While I scanned every title in the rather large place, I heard a wiry older man regaling the student cashier (literally, homework all over the counter) with wild tales of mountaineering in the Himalayas in the 1960s. When he shifted to international politics I just had to join in, and as soon as he realized I was well-briefed on world affairs (enough to understand the significance of his odd stories) he said, “Hey, can I buy you dinner? I just made a small pile, and I’d like to celebrate with someone.”

I had to borrow his cellphone to call home and tell Catherine I wouldn’t be home for dinner (very unusual, she was worried) and then off we went for a modest Chinese feast at his favourite place on Dundas. He’d made the money, he explained, using a promotional credit card he was given at the exhibition (our local fair) and a stock tip he got while locked up in the drunk tank with the head of maintenance for a major airline. He was even a bit mad that the cops let him out after only a day. Had they kept him in all weekend (as they had, last time he was in the drunk tank), he would have made way more money on the trade!

He was disappointed to find I was a leftist, but appreciated my intelligent ear enough to forgive it with a smile and a wave. He was himself an international businessman and frequent freelancer for CIA, for which my writer-head instantly forgave him, because his stories were rich and fantastic, and yet always rooted in extraordinarily specific detail that I recognized as accurate from my own years of study into the weirdness hidden under rocks by ‘the agency.’

I had a good friend who did freelance intelligence work long ago, and exhibited the same combination of extraordinary gifts and wild self-destruction, even down to the exact same flavour of rationalizing alcoholism. This fellow read ‘real,’ because he bore the right weight of guilt.

Why was he in that bookstore? He was hoping they might have some books on the two primary dialects of the Dinka people of South Sudan – one of the nomadic herdsmen, one of the settled farmers – the oldest real culture-split in civilization, still not completely reconciled, in many regions. He was married to a rebel partisan, he explained with a smile that I took to mean ‘once married’.

But here’s the really weird thing, when I mentioned that I understood American Christians had been convinced that it was actually a battle between Christians and heathens he laughed and said most of the Dinka were animists, in modern terms, and affirmed they were not majority Christians at all. Which meant that the Christian “Charity” groups which were literally running guns to the rebels for years (at their own risk and expense) were indeed serving CIA purposes. But the weirdest part of all was that the CIA only started boosting those rebels when the Soviet Union ran out of money and could no longer fund them themselves.

No wait, what?

Why on earth would a rebel group appeal to both the CIA and the Soviets? Simple as hell, because South Sudan has tons of oil, and the rebels needed a foreign power to help them take power, then develop that industry and buy the oil, making them not just rulers, but rich!

I do not mean to minimize the struggles within the country, or say no other factors apply aside from foreign influence – this is simply not ever true (even where foreign influence is extreme). But if the real conflict was the evil north versus the virtuous south we would not expect the south to have descended into civil war again, as the newly empowered rebel factions jockey for most power. (So common an outcome for successful revolutions or overturning of regimes, it is heartbreaking)

Now of course when westerners think of Sudan they think of Darfur, and there is no question that outrageous and inhumane things have been done. But I can’t help thinking that the fact that foreign powers kept supporting South Sudan independence and calling that support “moral” instead of ‘oil-seeeking’ is a big part of why Darfur thought they could rebel also, and win more independence and power.

Problem is – they have no oil, so nobody with deep pockets is interested in their cause (no less moral than the South Sudanese one) except as a way to accuse the Sudanese government – under constant attack by world powers after their oil for decades, let us remember – of being brutal (true, but woefully incomplete when shorn of all context).

The Obama regime pulled much the same trick in Syria, using both Al Qaida and Kurdish forces with American funding to seize key oil regions and crop production and export Syria’s lifeblood away, causing absolutely deliberate and desperate poverty and famine, nation-wide. But he mass-murdered and war-crimed ‘morally’ though – ‘cause of his inherent ‘blackness’ right?

Assad is bad, became an adequate moral short-form to justify mass scale war crimes from the US. And across the western world millions who considered themselves progressives cheered ‘rebels’ instead of opposing war crimes, foreign interference, rights destruction and state cooption.

Because the thing called left is now a movement so bloated with joiners that the majority follow leader-figures blindly, because it satisfies their emotional needs (to feel at once superior, besieged, empowered, affirmed and yet heroic – main character syndrome – narcissism – writ large) and so cannot restrain themselves on any solid moral principles, when leaders spout dangerous crap.

What frustrates me so very much about this is that the ever multiplying and competing furies of our age are all about our mass failure to connect to other humans, and yet we have the greatest difficulty returning to that source from which all human strength and goodness has always come.

The way social media has distorted perception and interpersonal connection is especially strange. (And again, let me add a fogey qualifier, I bought my first (used) cellphone when my wife fell ill a few years ago, and still think of it as an emergency walkie-talkie – I use it a few times a year, tops).

Just the fact that dating websites allow a height-minimum setting has sidelined an absolutely vast group of excellent men from the dating pool. And it isn’t just well educated rare beauties setting high-minimum (purely physical) standards, either. People with much less impressive offerings still aim very high.

I don’t want to say women who have been conned into thinking that dating is about shopping for bodies without catching feelings are enacting a form of accidental eugenics, by app. But kinda.

More precisely, women who are shopping for men as if they are bodies are bound to come away with the feeling that men are unfeeling and unfair, because the small percentage of men who do meet the weirdly high physical metrics (most want ‘six foot two’ and up) get more offers than they can use, while many superb and worthy shorter men are going crazy with loneliness. I don’t mean scary incels – that’s divisive state propaganda (like Hillary warning the public of the coming wave of young black “Super-Predators”) I’m talking tragic depression and profound feelings of unworthiness.

But I want to skip categories for a moment, just to avoid all of the strangeness of accidental (but entirely predictable) selection from the limited pool of least-caring (oversubscribed) partners stuff. Again, I want to share a line that stuck with me, because it just said so damn much.

Catherine and I have tried to be a warm and restorative hearth for a lot of folks, over the years (out of gratitude for others who did the same for us, in low moments), some were more needy and troubled than others. One of our most desperately heartbroken friends spent months healing enough to be open to talking to guys, then started chatting to guys online, to see if they had shared interests. She found one guy who really seemed to understand her, liked her, and made her laugh. He sent her a picture and she pronounced him handsome, “Definitely do-able.” But then her face took on an agony as she explained. “But he wears a hat! How can I show him to my friends online?”

Get offline, go to a library or a bookstore, get a great book and sit on the grass (or under a tree, or wherever is your best little getaway) and read yourself into another world. Meet a human being and talk to them without wanting or needing anything from them. Practise it. Openness.

Think about your favourite idea, the one that you are most sure you are right about, and work as hard as you can to utterly destroy that idea, so you understand the valid critiques, and why those which are not valid, fail – and understand also the reasons for the approach you have disdained.

Build the toolkit, in head and heart, that you will need for the difficult times ahead. The rulers of the world really are flying the ship of the global economy into the ground – deliberately – full-speed ahead for WWIII – and we will all be paying for their demented gambling for many years.

But the great depression reminded humans beings who they were, and who was on their side – other workers, not owners, not managers and almost never politicians (since so few are sincere). It taught a generation extraordinary resilience strength and solidarity, and it led the state (in abject terror of revolutionary trends and feelings) to make the grand concessions of The New Deal.

The worst war in history also, of course – but then, that’s where liberalism ALWAYS leads, when it has exhausted its legitimacy and ability to do anything but control, manipulate and exploit the citizens it is supposed to represent, to the exclusive benefit of the politics-corrupting overlords.

Buckle up, my friends! (This is all getting way way worse, before it gets better).

BUILD THAT TOOLKIT – HEART, ABOVE ALL ELSE (and read at least one thing that makes you feel wonderstruck, every day – keep that brain from gettin’ smug!) ;o)

It isn’t about making the tent we already like bigger, its about getting out of the dogma tents and meeting on the open plane of reason, dialogue, respect and compassion – where we can all be humans instead of tribalists, see the gleaming towers, and plan at last together, for a better future.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

First up for end-matter – here’s another instalment of my eccentric bibliophile’s bibliography Bookstores are temples – keep your brain well-fed by keeping them busy and active!

(And you can do a heck of a lot worse than picking someone up in the poetry section) ;o)

Coming up for Air – George Orwell

I am crazy for the Orwell that no one seems to read or discuss anymore. I like the more famous stuff too, but he’s got a lot more to say than the rather overdramatic fables, most featured! Above all, he bears witness to his time with extraordinary perception into the lives of everyday people. “Keep The Aspidistra Flying” was the book that first showed me that my grandfather, before the second world war, was every bit as fed-up with the vacuity of mass marketing consumerist culture as any modern is (and thinks themselves so advanced and daring, for thinking it). “Coming Up For Air” did the same for Vegetarians and Mystic Cultists – doubly hilarious for me, since I read it while laughing real time at the epic-scale missing the point of it ‘New Age Movement.’ But far more ominously, it gave me a vision of a world which knew war was ahead, and felt helpless to do anything but wait for the grim event to arrive. I have never forgotten that very strange alienated feeling he described, and so recognize the new arrival of same, with a particularly sad clarity.

A Solider From The Great War – Mark Helprin

This is perhaps a bit too nail on the head for our modern moment, but I can’t resist including it here, because it is an absolute masterpiece novel (and that is too rare a thing in the modern era). The story opens with a brilliant young man who understands Europe is heading into war (WW1 this time), and decides to visit art and culture across the continent, before it is lost. He ends up fighting in the Italian alpine campaign (much overlooked, exquisitely described) and throughout this novel combines deep insights into human character and others into philosophy, art and great faraway powers, which move and stimulate us usefully.

Helprin is also a superb modern example of the art isn’t the artist. I disagree with him on almost everything politically, but almost nothing philosophically or aesthetically (another reminder why lazy moral simplifications can’t get us to the good stuff that is too alive for any mere category).

The Rebel – Albert Camus

I ran long today, so I won’t do my rant against (and gordian cleaving of) “Sisyphus” his most dangerous work by far. Coming soon – stay tuned! For today I want to suggest this as the spiciest and most valuable thing he ever wrote, for people who want the world to be different. Not only does Camus pick a very strange group of rebels, some of whom are outright shocking, he challenges us to think all the way through our own reasoning, by giving many examples that went off the rails, or used means we consider entirely unallowable, by modern principles.

Power ain’t nothing without the restraint of deep principle. (Why anger without program is so incredibly dangerous and easily manipulated by the powerful).

Labyrinths – Jorge Luis Borges

If I had to reduce my several thousand books to a Desert Island Book-bag, this would surely be in it. Don’t think I have ever read anything more intellectually delicious in my life (and the number of times I have re-read it with undiminished pleasure, bears this out). The funny thing is it is also completely weird and wild and filled with far-flung imaginations and grand scale invented lost scholarship about the never existent anyhow. So much of a fairy tale, and yet so utterly not.

Fans of the outstandingly brilliant and yet devastatingly humane Umberto Ecco will love the work of Borges instantly, but anyone with an imagination, a sense of humour and a deep attention-span will fall in love with Tlon and Iqbar just as I have. Unforgettable and unique.

Tales of Ancient Egypt (and Greece), King Arthur, Beowulf etc – Roger Lancelyn Green

For my friends who have kids, keep your eyes out for copies of anything by Roger Lancelyn Green – absolute classic stuff with the gritty textural weirdness intact (kids know when a story has been dumbed-down and made too safe – and react with boredom, as well they should!)

His collection of Tales of Ancient Egypt is another that I re-read every few years. Yes literature suitable for smart kids (whose minds are not bubble-wrapped), but superb objectively, too! He does many other well known tales (A Robin Hood I liked a lot). A superb grand tour of great literature written with enough intelligence and poetry to entice young readers to want another.

I have mentioned before that Catherine and I used to like to sit in the window seat at “Fran’s” restaurant once favoured by the internationally appreciated Toronto pianist Glenn Gould. I find many things fascinating about him, creatively, intellectually and in character – but this particular clue is especially sweet. I have yet to find true humane brilliance without outstanding humour.

Here is the funniest thing Glenn Gould ever wrote (playful joy in brilliance – so funny/beautiful) So You Want To Write A Fugue

Here is that superb (and for the complacent, no doubt shocking) report from Kit Klarenburg about operation Gladio – and how many of the dramatic political events we thought were driven by crazy radicals (that we needed the government to protect us from) – were actually our own governments scaring the shit out of us, to make us so dumb and compliant we’d beg them to shackle-us for our own safety!

Global Delinquents

Britain: Operation Gladio's Secret 'Headquarters'

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2 years ago · 316 likes · 54 comments · Kit Klarenberg

This is a superb note about the value of difficult old classic works for the minds of the working class - and the way it is actually the modern bourgeois elites who want to displace that hard work path which once built mental muscle, and replace it with an up-to-the-minute orthodoxy-compliant code of received morality (blind and state-compelled obedience). Administered of course by them (but you knew that already).

I know I have said a lot of dire things about the financial bubble underpinning AI (and other aspects also). I do not retract any of them (add multipliers to most, actually). But I still figure that also obligates me to share the all time funniest post about AI (ever).

No kidding. ROTFL stuff!

Finally, I have linked to this one a few times, but since it’s my own damned ‘stack, I figure I can do a long excerpt from it if I bloody well want to – and I do.

This is stuff the sincere on left, right and libertarian sides can all meet around (rare). The list was written by Ernest Lesignes – then famously shared by Benjamin Tucker.

There are two Socialisms.

One is communistic, the other solidaritarian.
One is dictatorial, the other libertarian.
One is metaphysical, the other positive.
One is dogmatic, the other scientific.
One is emotional, the other reflective.
One is destructive, the other constructive.

Both are in pursuit of the greatest possible welfare for all.

One aims to establish happiness for all, the other to enable
each to be happy in his own way.

The first regards the State as a society sui generis, of an
especial essence, the product of a sort of divine right outside
of and above all society, with special rights and able to exact
special obediences; the second considers the State as an association
like any other, generally managed worse than others.

The first proclaims the sovereignty of the State, the second
recognizes no sort of sovereign.

One wishes all monopolies to be held by the State; the
other wishes the abolition of all monopolies.

One wishes the governed class to become the governing
class ; the other wishes the disappearance of classes.

Both declare that the existing state of things cannot last.

The first considers revolution as the indispensable agent of
evolution ; the second teaches that repression alone turns evolution
into revolution.

The first has faith in a cataclysm.
The second knows that social progress will result from the
free play of individual efforts.

Both understand that we are entering upon a new historic phase.

One wishes that there should be none but proletaires.
The other wishes that there should be no more proletaires.

The first wishes to take everything from everybody.
The second wishes to leave each in possession of his own.

The one wishes to expropriate everybody.
The other wishes everybody to be a proprietor.

The first says : Do as the government wishes.’
The second says : Do as you wish yourself.’

The former threatens with despotism.
The latter promises liberty.

The former makes the citizen the subject of the State.
The latter makes the State the employee of the citizen.

One proclaims that labor pains will be necessary to the
birth of the new world.
The other declares that real progress will not cause suffering
to any one.

The first has confidence in social war.
The other believes only in the works of peace.

One aspires to command, to regulate, to legislate.
The other wishes to attain the minimum of command, of
regulation, of legislation.

One would be followed by the most atrocious of reactions.
The other opens unlimited horizons to progress.
The first will fail; the other will succeed.

Both desire equality.

One by lowering heads that are too high.
The other by raising heads that are too low.

One sees equality under a common yoke.
The other will secure equality in complete liberty.

One is intolerant, the other tolerant.
One frightens, the other reassures.

The first wishes to instruct everybody.
The second wishes to enable everybody to instruct himself.

The first wishes to support everybody.
The second wishes to enable everybody to support himself.

One says :

The land to the State.
The mine to the State.
The tool to the State.
The product to the State.

The other says:

The land to the cultivator.
The mine to the miner.
The tool to the laborer.
The product to the producer.

There are only these two Socialisms.

One is the infancy of Socialism; the other is its manhood.
One is already the past; the other is the future.
One will give place to the other.

To-day each of us must choose for one or the other of
these two Socialisms, or else confess that he is not a Socialist.

And yeah I know I ran a bit long today – sorry – but I cut eleven full pages out, I swear!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Note for new readers – auto-estimated reading times are greatly exaggerated (lots of pix/links)

Hey Folks!

I want to take you on a bit of a wild ride today – in order to address a whole bunch of extremely subtle and honestly difficult real challenges which are so badly and falsely framed nowadays, that both sides of every single debate about them are almost always completely wrong.

But before I even get into the big false ideas level, let me check in on the feelings and motivations front once again – because we make more mistakes here now, than anywhere. Some people are fundamentally wounded, or else stuck in a hurt from which they should have recovered (that is, one side of this divide is made up of both the genuinely traumatized and the wilfully narcissistic and bitchy, which is already a confusing set – because we don’t like groupings without clear moral flavours).

Other people are fundamentally over themselves/whole/loved enough to have love to give (and not just love, but principle, commitment and courage also). Curiously, this group includes people who were raised well, but also many who were severely wounded, but then recovered, found love and healed into abiding gratitude, which is the key distinction of this group. Love-centred (anchored, powered, guided).

The dumbed-down way we are told by many to think about this split is “the world is divided neatly into victims and oppressors” – and their (wildly paranoid and hostile) assumption is, if you aren’t obsessed with your own pain like either a petulant narcissist or a very serious casualty, you must therefore be some kind of an oppressor.

I say this is completely precisely and also purposefully wrong in every last way. The self-definition equivalent of the Love displaced by (state power and commerce serving) Lust question, that I touched on last time. When someone is convinced that their own personal pain or upset is the most important thing in the whole world, they are operating from emotion not reason, and ego not understanding – effectively powered by lust for vengeance – which is absolutely not healthy – no matter how sound the complaint (which we decided made us angry) originally was.

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Black Lives Matter backed Biden – the last of the ultra racist Dixiecrats (‘crats said so themselves) rather than Bernie – because Biden (like all upper class Democrats who regard American blacks as their bequeathed and forever owned pets) was happy to patronize the emotionalists. Bernie offered only civic principle – which was an insufficiently appealing offer to the victims – even though Bernie’s raise all boats plans would have actually won them solid and lasting material gains and BLM was (amazingly) ignoring the fact that as VP, Biden helped destroy black American prosperity for generations. The actual upshot of the 2008 housing crisis? – The scumbag financial titans who directly caused the disaster weren’t even made to sacrifice their multi-million dollar bonus packages – while millions of hard working black people went from homeowners to borderline homeless in a period of months, without ever once doing anything wrong.

BLM backed THAT GUY over the guy who said jobs and housing for everyone – because they are more interested in victimhood vengeance and emotionality than reason or principle – and they did blacks in America tragic long term damage with that wilful insistence on blind fury and ego.

Want a very easy rule to tell when something is genuinely revolutionary and all about directly confronting power, in a way which threatens to make things better for everyone? Easy.

It will not be promoted by large corporations or any government faction – it will be demonized and despised. For a specific contrast to the BLM fakes – check out the Uhuru movement, who were charged and convicted by Biden’s Department of Justice for being Russian Agents, simply for protesting the American-created war in Ukraine – just as the Uhuru movement has consistently opposed every single American war since Vietnam. That made them foreign spies how?

Of course they were not foreign spies at all – just serious people with so much principle and organization on the ground that they started to win seats in local elections against democrats!

The thing to remember is that the fakes want to flatter us into being stupid like them (to increase their power, with our proxy), and the state absolutely loves when we do that too, because as long as we stay locked inside our ego and negative-emotionality, we are a completely manipulable, compassion will and power-neutered, work and consumption unit, not a full-range person.

Politically speaking – all of these false movements which are so expensively promoted are shiny and bewitching shackles, that the world’s most powerful people hope we’ll put on ourselves.

Now let me switch from the emotional with huge political ramifications, to the political with inescapable emotional effects (sometimes beguiling us into error, sometimes just ‘cause it’s tragic, and thankfully, all popular reports to the contrary, most of us still have working hearts).

If you’ve been reading me awhile, you’ll know that a whole lot of our political debates take this sort of twisted form – where the public is driven toward taking one of two false positions, so that they fight endlessly, without ever threatening the evil scumbags who profit from the problem. But I’m definitely not the first guy who noticed this. Half a century ago Robert Anton Wilson pointed out that the debate about the Vietnam war was always framed as a debate about good guys and bad guys – when the debate actually should have been, why is what happens inside Vietnam (as they throw despotic while colonialists out) in any way the business of the USA?

The correct answer to that question is that it is not America’s business who other people choose to lead them – at all – ever. But by leaving that question out of the debate, calculating mass murderers were able to extract so much money from the American economy, it has never since recovered prosperity in real terms. That is – any wealth surges subsequent to that were paper gains only – speculation – not substantial sustained increases in material production and infrastructure.

Debates about culture and immigration are as passionate as any you can hear – but we must not allow ourselves to be boxed-in to falsely framed fake sides that let the ruling class keep drawing profit from deliberately caused social harms, and keep right on laughing all the way to the bank (with our money in their deposit bags) even while escaping all hint of blame for the predictable consequences of the obvious errors being made (because you’re only allowed to hate wokies or rednecks!)

Then again (apologies for digressing so, but you know me, distinctions that add understanding are what I’m all about), even using the word “Error” is a serious (and too often unremarked) error.

Let me return to the US invasion of Vietnam again to make this clearer. For a couple of decades, US culture (Canadian also) celebrated the ‘openness’ and ‘debate’ which happened after the war in Vietnam proved an utter catastrophe for Vietnam, and a vast-scale disaster also for the USA, economically, socially, culturally and industrially. Despite the modern ego-sport of pointing at a popular vintage stupidity and writing-off a whole era with ignorant contempt, valuable things were broken then, that have stayed broken ever since. What “normal” was, changed forever.

Now here’s the really tricky part – the reason we all felt sure we were having a free-speech style debate about the staggeringly harmful and yet sustained mistakes which were made, is that we were allowed to call them mistakes. Errors of judgement, of policy, of understanding

The idea-tool worth considering here is – the purpose of a system is what it does.

That is – what if it was not an error – what if those at the very top understood that they were transferring the main wealth of the state into private hands, and they meant to do that, and the war was the mechanism by which they did it (while incidentally tearing society apart) very neatly.

Again let me qualify by calling that a strong maybe, rather than a proof – but not one easily dismised (much more on this to come).

Now let me go from the big picture historical down to something mind numbingly mundane – which was also extraordinarily educational for me – Jury Duty. I really do have faith that any life experience can become ‘food’ for our creativity or expanded understanding – but even I am sometimes surprised at how consistently that works – provided we remain actively open to it.

In 2009 I found myself one of those people who was unable to write a clever enough letter to get out of jury duty. I did have an excellent excuse (self-employed, no income inertia or savings) but I was compelled to make my case directly to a judge – only after I was selected for a trial!

This gave me several days of what might have been boredom, if not for the wonderful opportunity to observe group dynamics. One thing I found very cheering was the folks who were clearly from out of town and the Toronto folks intermingled instantly – yay! Of course the overweight middle-aged dads with pickup trucks (rural and urban) did find one another and enjoy hobnobbing and discussing hockey, but there were also lots of random conversations between those of very different classes ages and groups. Unexpectedly convivial, considering we all resented being made to wait to no purpose, when we all had lives to live elsewhere.

Now I come not just from the left – but from the Toronto left, which is as sanctimonious bourgeois and self-righteous as any strain of leftism ever known to man – especially weak for being so shrill, while so objectively coddled on a material level, relative to factions and movements elsewhere.

I come from what I come from – and I truly love my city – but as my fellow writer Julian jested about whimsically, recently – Toronto is notoriously smug (NewYork hipster level impervious confidence – only without the style or cachet). Toronto sends its flakes out west to Vancouver (sorry Julian) and for decades, they and every other city in Canada have sent all their worst greed-heads here (dammit!) Toronto is also one of the most international and high-functioning multicultural cities in the world (though Vancouver and Montreal are way up there too).

I say all of this to be clear and honest about how much I really do understand tribalism, especially the variety on the left – and to be super clear, I don’t hate modern fake mob leftism because it is left – I hate it because it is designed to destroy and discredit the left for all time.

It is the false-framed version which leads to predictable disaster, from which the already rich and powerful can profit further (at a cost in lives which matters to them not even in the slightest).

Okay now back to Jury Duty – I am so curious that I kind of like everyone, even grumpy people who find it distinctly suspicious if you like them! (‘cause they work so very hard to be unlikable!)

I had a whole bunch of interesting conversations with people of all kinds in the big fluorescent lit room where we were all commingled to wait to be called to a specific trial (and there, be further whittled down), then a group of us were called, and had to wait for a whole day in a stuffy claustrophobic 1960s designed courtroom on hard bottom (hard on the bottom!) pews. Tempers got worn down faster (I swear, even just being made to sit and face the same way, is a weirdly oppressive stressor).

So almost everyone, even those who hadn’t been at all social before, started talking. In my case, I chatted with a wiry white-haired lady in her late sixties who was from the suburbs, and was filled with a zeal and conviction that quite took me aback. She said, “Of course, we all know Rob Ford is going to be the next Mayor of Toronto, don’t we?” And I felt a bit foolish admitting, “I don’t follow city politics that much,” then added “but I am curious, why do you think so?”

She proceeded to lay out a long list of complaints which one might hear from a great many people. Taxes are way too high, money is being wasted, foolish policies are being pursued, incompetents are rewarded for disasters with even more power, corruption is rampant, etc.

Now I really don’t care about city politics too much (we all have finite awareness, and I’m trying to follow the wider world and a deeper timescale), but I have worked dozens of crazy jobs which gave me strange experience ‘backstage’ or brought me direct testimony from others who had it.

So I have to say – and we all have to stop a moment to consider this – every single one of her complaints was spot-on valid. We actually do have incompetent and/or immoral idiots in charge of all kinds of things, which we all know could be done much better in the public interest. The incompetents absolutely do protect each other (standard tribalist behaviour in any hierarchy) and we all pay for it in lost opportunities, prosperity, and tons of lost time dealing with fussy-work.

That anger is real and legitimate. Every time a tribalist scorns it as “far-right” they are being an idiot in functional terms (by helping the many blowhards who are always waiting to gather such rage for political purposes). If we refuse to see a real problem, we refuse to face or solve it – and we will be ignored as politically irrelevant by all who are frustrated by it, and we deserve that.

Sure enough, my jury duty friend was right, Rob Ford was indeed our next Mayor, elected on a wave of exactly those frustrations, against the plaintive denials of the institutional incompetents.

This did make Toronto the butt of jokes all around the world for awhile – but famous for having a crack-smoking mayor, is not the kind of fame you want (not all publicity is good publicity) ;o)

He was a very strange phenomenon in a lot of ways – extremely uncouth by Canadian standards, and certainly no kind of ‘great correction’ in terms of competence, policy or corruption, as he’d promised his fans and voters (he was one of those with both). But I will say one very rare thing in his defence, which I have not seen noted elsewhere. Unlike every other modern Mayor (as far as I can tell) Ford was aware enough of the shape of gang activity in the city, to put people in charge of public housing (by very questionable processes) who understood it also. That is, understanding that each housing project in the city represents a faction, he tried to minimize gang conflict, by respecting this usually unseen tribalism which has thrived here for decades.

By contrast, when ‘enlightened’ social policy leftists were put in charge of social housing, their blinkered do-gooders undertook a major redevelopment of several housing projects at once, and moved members of especially hostile gangs into each other’s territory. Of course we saw unusual levels of gun violence again – entirely predictably – but only for those tuned to ‘street frequency.’

That being said, in a bad year Toronto has as many gang fatalities as Chicago has on a bad weekend.

Now of course I have never forgotten the confidence of that lady, her righteous complaints, or the weirdness which came out of that much indignation harnessed, as a political force. Every act of the (let’s admit it, one half Shakespearean tragedy, one half cheesy used-car salesman farce) Donald Trump show has brought back echoes. Especially the most obvious one – why do the corrupt and incompetents in charge, leave so much low-hanging fruit for political opponents?

Trump was absolutely right that the Iraq war was a disaster, and he was the first important “Republican” (though he is actually and always was a pure-Trumpian, ego uber alles) to say that. Instead of saying we agree and we should have opposed it too (Hillary voted for it, enthusiastically!) the Democrats fell in love with the exact Republican war criminals who authored that disaster, and started pretending those were the good old-time moral republicans, who they missed and wanted to return.

F#ck you Democrats! No seriously, and in no uncertain terms. Hillary’s campaign spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to make sure Trump was the man she ran against, she was so sure she could beat him easier than any of the more reasonable sounding Republicans. And they failed to learn that lesson so comprehensively that the Democratic Party spent literally millions in later Republican primary campaigns, always promoting the most radical candidate running – pushing the entire nation further right, in a vain attempt to boost their party political fortunes!

But what did I see, thanks to the unexpected rise of Rob Ford? I saw that Trump was the only guy in the race who was talking as if he would roust the incompetents and trash stupid policy.

All that low-hanging fruit, and the institutional incompetents and power-holders left it all for him, in fear of offending any of their crucial voting blocks, ignoring public benefit altogether.

As I have pointed out before, in 2016 half of America voted yes to mass murdering black people and celebrating the destruction of centres of black power – and half voted for Donald Trump. (and if you still don’t understand the destruction of Libya was a war-crime – SHAME ON YOU – read a book!)

So now let me just ask you to consider the question (and suspending the answer for long-term consideration is a very sound approach, here), what if those are not errors, but ruling policy?

That is to say, what if the fruit hangs low because they know that way it will scatter widely and push the whole world rightward, as the established left (invariably patronizingly) insults normal every day citizens, by stupidly pretending there is no large scale problem in our institutions at all?

Now before I move on to a whole different bunch of ideas, let me add one more very big and glaring false-framing which my Canadian friends (and British also, I suspect) will appreciate.

The healthcare talking point to which we always return is ‘single payer’ which is to say “free” (government covered) health care. Free sounds like a bonus thing, an extra, a ‘privilege’ (man, I hate that word, and the CIA asshole who crafted it as a toxin, and released it into the cultural environment).

When something is an extra, you can’t complain the same way about it being slow or screwed up. Thing is, health-care is NOT an extra, it is an essential, and what we are supposed to have is not free healthcare (the false frame which undermines entirely reasonable expectations and demands) but instead, the in every way superior genuine article UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE.

We Canadians did once have true universal health care. I can bear witness that you could still get same day house-calls in the 80s, even for a first time visit with that doctor! (Though my regular doctor when I was a kid was a frustrated concert pianist, so I always had to wait for him to play a sonata on my father’s fine old Heintzman, before he came up to check how I was doing).

Now? Well, I have one friend who was waiting a year and a half for a consult for crucial back surgery, and now has the surgery scheduled, for just shy of four years from now. System FAIL. (The surgery is not rare and does not require obscure technique – the system is just that backed up)

Does this mean I want an American system instead? Where (from a recent survey) fully thirty percent of normal people are now avoiding even going to the doctor in the first place, because they know they won’t be able to afford whatever treatment the doctor suggests, anyhow? Nope.

But there is actually a fix which works – and it functions well in several places. Full quality public healthcare with no cost to the individual citizen, but also an expensive path for the rich to effectively subsidize the exact same hospitals, specialists, dedicated facilities and new treatments which normal citizens are also getting free, to gain faster access.

We can say “inequitable” and insist an offended bourgeois morality should set policy, or we can see the billions of dollars which would be eagerly invested in health care by the upper class, and rapidly benefit the entire system. (Pennsylvania really does have more MRI machines than all of Canada).

Before I move on to Cosmopolitans, I want to say a few more positive things about “The Home Team” which are often dismissed with contempt, by the especially passionate and ignorant.

Memory is not a bad thing, shared memory is how we build (and have always built) culture, and our culture is also not a bad thing. Land acknowledgements are a fakery and a grotesque one. What we need is a sound program that helps the first nations flourish, and especially raise their children in a healthy way which is entirely administered BY natives, rather than the horrifying ongoing mass-scale do-gooder interventions in families, taking thousands of kids a year into patronizing (this time supremacist fits) state care, which we’ve all somehow come to see as normal.

Again, do we buy – oh gosh, they have so many ‘problems’ treating the first nations people with respect and establishing a relationship which promotes a native renaissance (which has been so obviously repressed for so long, it is downright painful) – or is all of their policy ‘incompetence’ in fact the policy? (with a passionate land acknowledgement offered as a class-chit, for Papal indulgence purposes)

More to the point, Canadian culture is about a lot of other good things, and has been for a long while (that is to say, the stain is real and ongoing, but it is simply not all or even most of the story).

Many newer Canadians in particular think of the cultural overlay-rebrand which Canada undertook in an unusually deliberate way in 1965, with the introduction of a new flag (okay) and a new anthem (which is a fucking dirge, compared to the sprightly energetic original) as ‘real’ Canada. But that’s a shiny paint-job on a whole bunch of stuff which was going on long before.

I did one piece (of which I’m especially fond myself) about the co-founding of Toronto (then York, or more popularly, “Muddy York”) by the Berczys, an amazingly determined couple of fine artists from Germany (not just superb painters, they even produced notable architecture!) – link below. I also return to Simcoe’s words, when I think about the founding of Canada. Before accepting the job of first governor of what was then Upper Canada, he told the British Parliament

“The principles of the British Constitution do not admit of that slavery which Christianity condemns. The moment I assume the Government of Upper Canada under no modification will I assent to a law that discriminates by dishonest policy between natives of Africa, America, or Europe.”

This is why Upper Canada became the very first part of the British empire to have an overall ban on slavery – a nice case of personal character exercised with determination having huge and lasting value for many. Also where Canada first branched from the USA (at our very founding).

Many communities were established early and made huge contributions to our early life and infrastructure. In 1847 Bishop Michael Power was away in Europe raising funds for a new cathedral when he encountered the Irish Potato famine first hand. His response was to write a pastoral letter home to tell every Catholic congregation to prepare to receive many refugees, and his efforts ultimately saved more than forty thousand souls from the Irish Potato famine, (38000 just between may and October of that same year) he then died of typhus, from personally tending to those who had become sick on the journey (a true Christian in every way).

St Michaels Cathedral and Basilica (one of the most beautiful and acoustically outstanding in the entire city) the same great church which he first travelled to get funded, when he accidentally found his own great work and duty, is where he now lies – a truly great heart in the heart of a great temple.

The Irish did not get the glory jobs – stuff like digging canals, construction or factory work – and they also did not get fair treatment or respect. The predominantly Irish Junction Triangle area (named for the junction where the Canadian National and the Canadian Pacific tracks met near the vast rail yards and stock-houses) was incorporated into Toronto more than a century ago – but still had zero alcohol ‘dry laws’ for every restaurant in the area until just a few years ago – (then again Toronto had almost nothing but Orangemen as Mayors, until the 1960s!)

Don’t mean to wander, but in a way this stuff can’t really be discussed unless we do get specific (and thus inevitably also leave out other specific examples we ought to have mentioned). I could mourn the passing of Little Malta instead (everyone has a Chinatown – but little Malta was special) but I think most of my readers will have an easier time picturing a fantastic band of Celtic musicians playing in a restaurant where they are finally allowed to serve beer as joyous, cultural and fun (the hat-trick!). Maltese bakeries are a definite thing, but I’d have to be Proust to do them justice.

The Irish of the junction are still very proud of their history, their contributions and their rise from most desperate poverty to the comfortable middle class of Canadian society. Is that racist?

If you said yes, you need to listen to a little more mandolin and fiddle music, then tell me how that is any less wondrous rebel-hearted and stuff-of-life than any exotic and adored-in-ignorance import?

Again, don’t misunderstand me, as a Toronto kid, I have actively enjoyed culture from around the world for my whole life, and consider it an extraordinary gift, to have had the chance, so easily.

But I understand the roots also, and the idea that new-brand multicultural Canada is a thing which ought to rightly obliterate those roots is an obscenity, promoted by those who lack respect and understanding, and instead rely on theories and generalizations which flatter their superior estimation of their own judgement and selves. Yup – the same scammers and incompetents who mutually protect, inside the bowels of the state!

That is to say – heaping scorn on the founding contributions of the Irish (to name only one of many important contributing strains) is a way to anger people who have worked hard and sincerely and contributed greatly, to no benefit except for a faction-promoting political gang.

Same goes for the English, French, Germans, Italians, Chinese, Poles, Finns and many other communities. But I should here say a few words about the Scottish contribution also (since it has been especially disparaged).

The most remarkable thing about the Scottish relationship within the United Kingdom is that they went from being a culture of majority barbarians (by relative measure) to being (for several generations) the top scientists and most reliable engineers of the British Empire. This transition was accomplished incredibly rapidly because literacy was spread with literally religious fervour (by the famous John Knox, and many followers and inheritors after him).

They went from Braveheart to designing some of the earliest iron truss bridges (which still stand) in just a generation or two. Now, I actively despise every cruelty done to every innocent (like I say, first hand experience being psychologically tortured by demented maniacs as a kid – no free passes are appropriate or allowable). But when I think about the Scottish ambition for the First Nations, I see it as a messianic fervour to share their own rapid transformation – without ever stopping to ask themselves – hey wait – do they actually want to become engineers for the empire? Of course with astonishingly destructive effects. But produced, I suspect, more by manic belief than contempt.

That the fervour was external, and not ‘organic’ as we’d describe it now, was as invisible to them as is our contempt for places which have laws we consider draconian, even while we mass murder reliably, just to move a few points in a political poll, year after year after year. (high ground, much?)

Now about those Cosmopolitains.

There is a nifty dynamic to newcomers, both in waves (Caribbean immigrants in the 70s and 80s did a lot – mostly unappreciated – for the Toronto music scene, and not just reggae, improv jazz, too!) and as individuals (my best friend is an immigrant, and yet has more true Canadian values than many born here!)

Newcomers come mostly to cities with a lot going on – and while their backgrounds are far more varied than do-gooder oversimplifiers are even capable of considering, there actually is a cluster of things which they tend to value, which are helpful in a lot of ways for old locals.

Decent housing, resources, infrastructure, education, opportunities and lifestyle are the big ones. Absolutely every citizen everywhere wants that stuff, and always has a right to ask government to work harder to get the balances better and the costs down, so general thriving for all goes up!

But right after that stuff comes the particular gift of those from afar – wider variety in culture, food and manners – a kind of openness and tolerance that Canada was especially well primed for, even before our official “great rebranding.” (Worth noting, since I already touched on it – national health care was passed into law by that same rebranding MINORITY government – just try to imagine a policy that big carrying, in any minority parliament in the world, these days).

There is a curious cultural overlap here, which gets falsely coded left and right (by the powerful, in order to divide us against one another). Leftists have been more ‘into’ new stuff for at least a half a century that I can testify to myself. But it is important to note that the left did not used to be associated with such open contempt for those who built, what we now live inside.

The simplest explanation is that the spirit of the working class – that is the combination of pride, growing resources, ambitions and political power, which thrived for a century, even in difficult circumstances, began to fade in the 70s – as a combination of union busting (which became THE big business in the 80s) and individualist narcissism, began to erode the old high-trust bonds and the connection with tools and practical modesty.

I hate to say it so clearly, but it is the way it presents to me, so I will – almost everything which now calls itself “left” comes from a spirit so disconnected from production and practical reality that even where it is not the product of high income and low motivation, it still reeks of decadent sloth. I want to call it Bourgeois shite – even though I know that word bugs my pals on the right.

And how can you weigh for yourself, when you doubt a specific case? Ask yourself this question. Is this idea mostly about justifying ignorant blanket categorical contempt, which flatters an incompetent, the corrupt, or a narcissist/victim? Or is it about shared aspiration and gathering strength, which requires respect for all contributions and good spirit (again, anyone who has ever led or even just been on a team knows – everyone works harder when they know it is respected!)

Sorry – digressing again. I kind of feel like I should do twenty pages on cosmopolitans and their contributions – not least of which is that they help fund maintenance of our great institutions (galleries, museums, music halls and even things like public parks and our many street-fairs).

But the key point is that the combination which used to prevail – where we had genuine respect and connection to working class ideas and also openness to new cultures, was a real sweet-spot, in terms of living and getting along. Low crime, high inspiration and incredible gifts from afar.

That isn’t how things feel anymore, and the discomfort between tribes is growing, magic fading. There are a few important practical changes over time which we must consider, when thinking about why things feel so different.

First, in terms of philosophical synthesis in my home town, I am convinced that a big part of the productive compromise character of Toronto comes from the fact that the University of Toronto blended both a Catholic and a Protestant University into one institution, and encouraged the two intellectual streams to cooperate and cross-pollinate in a way which was more difficult elsewhere (because of tribalism).

Toronto was also long an industrial centre – we had the great Massey Ferguson works – made the best tractors in the world, and many other factories downtown (and in the junction too).

We lost most of that industrial base in the 1960s and 1970s – so we had tons of cheap land which was not zoned for new needs (and was often too toxic to support them, anyhow). This meant artists could afford studio space, bohemians could boheme, and our housing supply was plentiful enough that newcomers had room not only to live comfortably without displacing anyone, but also lots of cheap (formerly industrial) spaces to start interesting new businesses. Art and business incubator-ish. Sweet!

But when the separatist government in Quebec passed their ‘language laws’ restricting the use of English and compelling the use of French, almost every corporate headquarters in Canada (certainly those of English speaking foreign corporations) moved from Montreal to Toronto.

Suddenly we went from being “The City of Churches” (every community built their own, and even a century ago we had groups from all over the world, who wanted to celebrate their faith in a worthy temple) to the greed-head capital of Canada. Not something any old Toronto person is happy about (even if were always jealous of New York, we wanted more galleries, not more freakin’ investment bankers!)

We also changed our immigration policy radically, so rather than bringing over working class people who would instantly experience an improvement in lifestyle and opportunities, we instead selected for high education and high skilled middle class people, then forced them to pay working class “dues” (humiliations) for a few years when they got here, anyhow! Those stories about qualified doctors stuck driving cab, even in the middle of a desperate doctor shortage aren’t false – my best friend did her entire medical boards over in English at U of T, and still ended up in computing – too hard to get in the door (which reflects a guarded clique, not a universal health policy).

This is way more unfair for the immigrants and also brings direct wage pressure on middle class jobs (the working class having already been destroyed in terms of political power, years ago). So once again we have to ask – is this an error in policy, or is what seems to us an error, the actual (wage destroying) policy, driven by the richest only, against general public interest?

I must also here address the population question – and I just want to point out something which should be obvious (but again, we are steered into both-sides-false framings, too often to see it).

Aside from environmental apocalypticism (the fastest rising maniacal religious movement in decades) which has actually convinced many young westerners that having kids is immoral (so sad) the simple fact that we have driven up basic costs and driven down wages so far, means it is no longer practical to have kids when we’re young and resilient enough to handle it, which is a mass tragedy in terms of our cultural vitality and the often pointed-to long term tax base required to support our social programs.

What I’m saying is that by allowing class thievery to take priority in our western economies, we have starved the commons too thin for too long for it to regenerate naturally anymore – and we should address and then redress this, far more directly. Which of course means, discuss it in common. (what the passionate false-framings are always constructed to prevent or sabotage).

Finally, we have to be realistic and distinguish between people who come to our countries to join them, and people who come only to take, and care not what it costs those they take from. Some people who come here are mercenaries, and hope only to make money and then leave again. They do not even want to learn respect for what we get right, just to extract from it.

It is not crazy for us to say – actually we have way too many home-grown greed-heads already – why don’t you screw your own people over for the time being, ‘kay? Thanks so much!

There are also some people who come here and do not ever find anything close to happiness or contentment. They do not fit and do not want to, and do not respect anyone or anything.

You can’t tell the home team that there is no such thing as mercenaries or Visigoths, because people who know a place over time, understand the difference between contributions and chaos.

Telling people it is “far right” to want to defend the high-trust and cooperative society we have worked long and hard to establish, is the national equivalent of that city politics denial problem I mentioned, earlier.

If we insist we can’t see anything wrong, we instantly prove we are incapable of engaging with reality to those who do, and are concerned. What we might think of as ‘principle’ is in fact wilful blindness. The consequence of which is earned irrelevance.

I was delighted to realize (in the process of writing a recent essay) that one very useful way to step back and reconsider our modern false-framings of left and right is to remember Aesop – the Country Mouse and the Town Mouse both have very different useful and appropriate understandings, and yet are wildly ignorant about the other!

I have also mentioned Julian Jaynes repeatedly – not, as so many do, for his early exploration of hemispheric differences in human thinking, but for his clear historical investigation of the evolution of modern individual thought, from our more ancient group thinking (and belonging).

I suspect this one strikes me as an especially powerful ‘Eureka’ because I come from a cult with intense group-think, and so could visualize what Jaynes was describing, far easier than most.

But then the other day I was catching up with the essays of one of the smartest and funniest writers on Substack, Sam Kriss, who writes “Numb at the Lodge” (a delight) and I discovered another way to look at it altogether, with so many interesting clues.

The link to the essay is below (and you MUST read it, it is inspiringly rich stuff) but the part that I found profoundly useful was that he didn’t try to answer the question of which is “right” – the understanding of a person who cannot read or write, lives entirely by experience, senses, integrity and connection to land and people – or a literate person who can read and write, but is instantly immersed in intoxicating (and, often as not, utterly ruinous) abstraction. Deep and delicious stuff!

And there really are distinct virtues to both sides of almost every perception split, if understanding is our real goal. This is not to say there aren’t better and worse choices, just a lot of ways to see.

Here I come around to the home stretch (I do try to keep them from running-on too long) and I go to check my Canary pad for all the stuff I hoped to cram-in – ye-gads, not a fraction hath been incorporated! Weird stuff about the battle of Britain (actually won by maintenance!) the accidentally philosophically profound humorist Dave Barry and the sadly telling tragic arc of George Orwell will have to appear in a future piece.

But to round-out these ideas about culture and economic change over time, home team and away team conflicts and class promoted misunderstandings (and most foolishly, insistent disrespect powered by ignorant upper-class theory) I have to share a few extraordinary excerpts which were transcribed by Joe3D for the astoundingly productive and useful Mark Wauck, who writes Meaning In History – from a talk between peace hero prof Glenn Diesen and Einar Tangen. My regular readers will see a whole bunch of puzzle pieces falling into place, all at once.

Note – my own version is much edited, to get the key points across. All worth watching. This is Einar Tangen talking (but Diesen asking good enough questions to get this wisdom)

“...So, then you have to kind of wonder why what what’s behind this? Why is America this way?And is Donald Trump simply a symptom or is he some sort of instigator or something who has changed everything? I would argue that he’s really a symptom because what I would do is I go back to 1964 and Johnson is running and the Republican side gets creamed. And what happens is on the Republican side there is a real crisis because the families who controlled businesses in the United States and back then it was families, whether it was Getty or Rockefeller or Ford or everything they all controlled their business, because we’re as I said still in 1964... They believe that America is on the precipice of of communism. That you have a socialist president in Lyndon Johnson and that it is time to draw the line.

So flash forward a few years and in the 1970s you have the Powell doctrine. This is Lewis Powell he goes on to become Supreme Court justice, but 6 months before he becomes justice he writes a secret memo and in that memo he outlines that the American public cannot be trusted. It’s time to put democracy aside and for businesses to be aggressive, take control of media, take control of the courts, to fight against any kind of consumer protection, against labor laws, against universities, intellectuals, and this is all outlined, and if people are interested they should just look up the Powell Memo.

This was Lewis Powell. He went on the Supreme Court and he wrote in the affirmative to make corporations people and then by extension people have freedom of speech and by extending that therefore corporations can back whoever they want with as much money as they want. And this changed politics. Companies can use unlimited amount of money. They can basically control elections. I ran elections. You need money to run elections. But they can also hobble the parties because each party is making deals with special interests. Well, if you’re business, you’re the special interest.

Of course, labor was then making deals with the Democratic side. But the most money was on the Republican side. So he outlines his plan to take over America... a very thorough plan. You have to read the document in order to get a complete idea of it. And then we fast forward a little bit to this Clean Break doctrine which we’ve talked about before. That was by Richard Perle.

And in this document in 96 they say this is written to Netanyahu and the essence of it is Israel should forget about any kind of diplomacy in terms of settling its issues there. It should not seek to live with other countries needs, but to either dominate or decimate. Right? If the country acquiesces to Israel’s greater goals, that’s fine. If they don’t, you knock them down. And this in essence becomes the mantra, the blueprint for Israel’s actions even as we come through today. Well, what did they do? Let me go to last one.

The last one was done by the current secretary of [defense] for policy Elbridge Colby. He’s important. He was supposed to come to China and China has delayed his visit. He is completely anti-China and I don’t mean in a small way. In 2021 he wrote a book about the strategy for denial and in this he talks about the way to get at China is to deny it access to trade routes by controlling these choke point areas whether it’s Panama Canal or the straight of Hormuz the straits of Malacca, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and also..as part of that to deny China access to energy, the thinking being that if we can, we don’t allow them to have energy, they have to import a lot. Therefore, they can’t produce a lot. And even what they produce, we can intercept it and prevent them from distribution worldwide.

So, he just lays it out there. I mean, this is a book he wrote. He’s not going to deny it or anything. And he is now, as I said, there. He’s not a very likeable fellow. During his confirmation, he got out of step with so many people in the Congress. Even people who wanted to support him. But he was able to get through.

Okay. So you have these three documents. All right. And then you have one other thing that people should pay attention to and that is in1964, as I keep stressing, it was the families that controlled businesses. That were basically directing things like the Bradley Foundation.

I lived in Milwaukee, and the Bradley Foundation was founded there. I knew the people who were on the board, not too well, but I knew them. Small small area, small city, so everybody kind of knows each other. Those families went away and what they did is they had hired help. And who were the hired help? Well, they were professionals, people with business degrees, accountants, consultants, you know, these were the people, investment banking houses, things like that. These were the people who started controlling and running the corporations.

And what was their goal? They had no affinity towards any local place. It didn’t matter. Every single factory was just a profit and loss center. And if I move production away from there to somewhere else, whether it’s another country, another town, all I care about is the numbers. I look at the spreadsheet because that’s what they’re trained to do. The families, despite all of their vagaries, things like that, they did live in their towns. They lived in the towns where they had factories. You know, Ford lived in Michigan. He lived in Detroit, right? He was there. His executives were around them. They were part of the community. When you start bringing in hired help, there is no community. They’re there from somewhere else. They’re there to maximize shareholder values and in the process maximize their bonuses.

So you have these three papers and then this massive change in control aims and objectives. So this this became the blueprint. The first document the outline by Powell about structured domestic political control. The second exported the logic into foreign policy. Okay, we’re going to control everything. And the third said it’s not only foreign policy, it’s foreign policy plus economic policy all pushed together.

So when somebody asks me how do you explain where we are today? This is how I explain it to them.”

Einar is a tough act to follow, honestly (incredibly useful line of perception and understanding) but I do want to offer an idea tool which is both fun to use and incredibly useful, before I wrap-up for today.

Scorn is always cruelty and ignorance combined. Sneering is a bad look on anyone of any tribe.

You don’t need to accept any moral arguments from me to see this. Just consider how you feel when someone asks you for your skillful help with respect for your skill and help, compared to how you feel when someone asks for your help in a way which insults your skill or dignity, in advance.

Once again we have a set of identical looking actions which mean completely different things, one empowering, friendship and muscle-building, and one which does nothing but lower general trust (and piss us off).

I have many more highly controversial subjects to tilt-at in future, and I will explore this idea more – but for now just consider this: Restraining a sneer is overcoming a Town Mouse instinct to bully, and it is a very worthwhile thing to learn (not least, for what others, who you have suddenly learned to respect, for the very first time, will be newly willing and even eager, to teach you).

Most of the worst of the world is in our heads, and serves purposes which hobble humanity.

The hope of the world is in that connection we couldn’t imagine making yesterday, but not only can make today, but suddenly understand to be our joyful (even when arduous) duty.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Once again, I’d like to suggest a few truly sublime reads for my fellow book lovers

(bookstores are sacred – keep them open and vital with regular visits for new brain-food!)

The Shockwave Rider – John Brunner

I have read a lot of science fiction, and there is no question in my mind that this is the first true cyberpunk novel. Most interesting is that writing from the earliest days of computing, he nevertheless understands our ability to reinvent the identity we digitally project is the sea-change. But don’t let me make it sound boring – ‘paid disaster zones’ (where you live tax free with almost no state interference, but you get no state help) frightening pursuits and space travel are all included, along with some extremely modern tricks about gathering useful intel from all of us. This novel also includes my two favourite literary animals (best dog EVER) and my all time favourite literary utopia, too (so close to the missed promise of my commune, I can taste it).

This and his novels “Stand on Zanzibar” “The Sheep Look Up” and the far less known but also outstanding “The Shattered Orbit” together laid the bones of the entire cyberpunk genre, with truly outstanding density of ideas and brilliance. I found myself using a made-up piece of slang from “Zanzibar” once, and made an instant lifelong friend, when someone else recognized it!

Mind and Nature – Gregory Bateson

Gregory Bateson is a great example of a thing I say often – look for the originators of powerful ideas, who reveal the questions they were trying to solve and how they felt about it all. Inheritors and digestors (including all writers of textbooks, sadly) discuss use only, never meaning – which means they leave out the inspiration part, which is what tells you why you should care at all!

He began as an anthropologist, then realized he had to deconstruct anthropology itself, in order to understand the extraordinary weight of assumptions built into the viewing lens of the time. His graduate thesis (where he did exactly this) was and is considered groundbreaking. (smart kid, with a rare combination of heart and nerve).

He was also part of a new (mostly post WWII) science known as cybernetics – the understanding of systems in terms of information flows and feedbacks (including social and financial systems). I’ve read the far colder more mathematical and cynical Norbert Weiner also, and even he understood that our use of machines would be increasingly problematic over time, and social adjustments would have to be planned far ahead, to preserve human society, despite automation.

But Bateseon went a lot further into the human heart and soul then Weiner ever dared, without giving up that extraordinary rigorous and also system-challenging mind. In this book he brings us many useful ideas and questions about the crucial importance of enchantment, in humane living, appealing directly to our own hearts for a better way, rather than the rulers who don’t want that.

The Strange Death of Liberal England 1910-1914 – George Dangerfield

Here is why you should make a point of buying a book you’ve never heard of, from a used bookstore, regularly – because sometimes you have no idea what you don’t know!

This was the book which finally convinced me that WWI began in a pre-revolutionary moment. This is very well understood about WWII (the great depression was so dire that even in America they were electing open socialists), but this book told me about the Pankhursts (feminism splitting between genuine uplift and elitist power-brokering) and even more incredibly, that the syndicalists of the time (like trade unionists, but with a whole bunch of guild culture and pride too) were planning to march with the suffragettes and call for a general strike, but the war started – weeks before that planned event could come about. (just imagine the long term effects of a general strike in the very heart of empire – with workers and feminists united – an entire freakin’ century ago!)

The Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury

I am sympathetic toward arguments for Poe, Hawthorne and even Faulkner – but for me this is the great epic poem of American Letters. As it ages, it takes on a more mythic and allegorical character, but “The Veldt” remains frighteningly relevant, and “And There Will Come Soft Rains” remains our inevitable epitaph, should we carry on so foolishly, much longer. (saw it with crystal clarity when I was eleven years old, and haven’t been able to un-see it, since).

If I had to explain why I became a pacifist so young, and have lived there my whole life? I’d have to say Bradbury’s wonderful poetic heart did more for me than Gandhi. (Though my own personal witness of cruelty, was of course what transformed it into a sense of duty).

The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire – Doris Lessing

To me, Lessing is the obvious inheritor of Orwell, a profoundly insightful witness from leftist principle and deep heart, with the courage to violate all tribal rules of leftism, to get to something far truer and more powerful than any faction-serving fake could be. I could and should do a whole piece on her alone – but if you read this one you’ll fall in love with her writing instantly and you won’t need me to convince you.

The allegory here is not hard to read-past, but the fact that she opens with a rescue mission, because the alien agent has come down with the dreaded and disabling human-disease “Undulant Rhetoric” tells you how funny she makes this extremely perceptive novel. I hate novels that tell you how to feel, but I love novelists with a heart and a love for truth who show us how to think (better). “The Good Terrorist” is also an unforgettable way to enter her rich body of work. Though “Briefing For A Descent Into Hell” is altogether too relevant to the modern moment to be read without some peril to one’s sleep (scary as hell, even when it seemed remote and almost allegorical – and neither of those applies anymore).

Here is that extraordinary Sam Kriss essay I was talking about, above. If you are a writer you should read him for inspiration, and if you love good writing, or are curious about the world? Same.

Numb at the Lodge

Reading is magic

I have a piece in the spring issue of Jacobin, on the decline of literacy and what might happen to politics once our minds are no longer intimately structured by the written word. Like all these essays, it quotes Walter Ong. Apparently, some of you people are unware that you can just go and read Walter Ong for yourselves, because as soon as the essay wa…

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5 months ago · Sam Kriss

And here is a far more (very purposefully) cantankerous recent piece, both hilarious and extremely perceptive

“…AI will never fully replace human musicians, even if it can reproduce any possible sound, because it can’t get addicted to heroin and kill itself.”

(also important, he is exactly correct about what is and will always be wrong with AI writing – having tested the question myself and found same, but not words as fine)

Numb at the Lodge

If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you

It’s none of your business why, but I’ve been planning a party. The idea was to get some caterers in to cook something over live coals, so I went online to see what was available. The first company I found described itself like this: ‘We don’t just provide food—we create meaningful experiences. Our passion for traditional fire cooking allows us to offer…

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3 months ago · Sam Kriss

Here is that amazing Einar Tangen/Glenn Diesen talk about how did we get here?

Glenn Diesen’s Substack

Einar Tangen: China's Strategy for Managing U.S. Decline

Einar Tangen is a Senior Fellow at Teihe Institute and a Senior Fellow at CIGI. Tangen discusses how the irrational and destructive policies of a declining US hegemon, and how China aims to manage this dangerous time…

Listen now

3 months ago · 222 likes · 45 comments · Glenn Diesen

Here is my piece about the founding of Toronto and the Berczys, mentioned above

For anyone who missed it, thanks to white-house paralysis (zugzwang) this is still the basic Iran war reality (except the coming oil and fertilizer shock is getting way worse)

Here is a piece from awhile go where I talked about how the ‘open debate’ after the debacle in Vietnam was actually a limited hangout, to disguise US bankruptcy and transfer of control, and also talk about what “Limited Hangout” means, and other examples rarely noted (like Chomsky himself)

And here is an old and rather sweet one, in which I encounter a great exponent of Junction history and am charmed beyond any and all expectation.

Finally – before signing off today I would like to salute the superb writer Fabio Vighi, whose full-hearted response to my own small note of thanks filled me with heart and will to work. As he no doubt understands just as well as me, we can only write to an audience we can imagine – so every time we have confirmation our readers follow our arguments, we are strengthened in our work.

Grazie, my friend!

(and I do hope I haven’t made you regret it and shake a fist at me, in this one!) ;o)

Note for new readers – auto-estimated reading times are greatly exaggerated (lots of pix/links)

Hey Folks!

I’ve come across several very hopeful and inspiring younger writers in the last few months, with that most wonderful combination of insight and truth-telling fire. The thing I find so personally uplifting about this, is the real-world spring-renewal proof that we look for in all living things.

As I’ve been saying for a few decades now – humans are not rocks, not objects, not solids with fixed properties, we’re a lot more like music – constantly changing in themes and dynamics.

But because we moderns are usually stuck inside a really desolate form of materialism (insisting on demonstrable facts is itself limiting, but still does not have to be so cynical and consumerist), we often end up thinking of and relating to other people as if they are objects, or symbols – that is products (which ‘should’ suit us) – especially people from afar we hear about, but don’t ever meet.

Start off with a collection of heroes in your twenties and watch what happens over time – some turn out to be traitors, some were cynics or operator/posers all along (who outcompeted more sincere people for your attention, and did real damage that way - Chomsky/Parenti) and a few prove to be true stalwart hearts.

Stranger still, some of them will be absolutely amazing and heroic for a few years, and then turn into something which seems to contradict every bit of their previous contribution. But this still isn’t a different person, just a different (contra-useful) theme, from a different part of their music.

If we stick with the people are objects idea, our early treasures of inspiration can turn into a souring hoard, as object after object fails in some way or other, and our hope fades as the objects ‘break.’

But if we remember that the important thing is that someone keeps rediscovering the crucial themes and playing them afresh, in and for the current moment, we find new hope all over the place, and proof too that those themes are fundamental (that is, always there, waiting to be discovered by any sincere quester after reality) and not mere intellectual contrivances, designed to serve power, status or ego – like so many of our popular modern ideas definitely are.

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I have a strange analogy for this – but bear with me here, I bet you’ll recognize it (and may even have felt your own form of this dilemma). I love working-class restaurants, tiny oases of welcome and comfort, scattered all across my beloved city (Toronto). I have worked in them as a busboy, dish-pig, counter-boy and prep-chef, and I have patronized them as lunchtime worker and fan of late brunch and thus made friends all over, whose conversation and company I greatly enjoyed.

Because I’m a Toronto kid, born and raised, almost all of my fond memories are of places which are now long gone (some, by almost half a century). But because I spent so much time over the years working, writing, playing chess, reading, and talking to workers and other patrons, I can mentally return to these places reliably whenever I am writing, and find fresh useful fuel.

But about fifteen years ago I got into a funk. Low income and low mood, kept me indoors when I should have been walking (my lifelong best form of meditation and inspiration-recharge). I also started to read about more and more places I loved which were closing, and my mental map of the city started to be populated by more sad ghosts than living treasures I could return to.

Then I met my extraordinary friend Nada, one of only two people I’ve ever met in my life who likes to walk as fast as I do, and reads as voraciously and widely, also – interested in everything!

We went for our first (20K) photography walk a dozen years ago now – and ever since that first fantastic walk where we went from literature to philosophy to history, as we walked downtown to the west end, we’ve done our best to walk and take photographs together every week, weather (and other world-stuff) permitting. Sometimes really wild hikes, too (Guildwood to Pickering!)

Nada can testify that I cannot help myself, every time we walk down a new street I say “And in the eighties, this used to be a....” and give her a little nostalgic story about my city ghost-map. But here’s the thing that I could not discover, when I sat at home depressed and reading about losses – every time we walk, we discover some new fresh magic, that I never suspected was happening.

For example, Gentrification is a real thing (and really hard on the poorest, who I have never been far enough away from, to stop thinking a lot about). But when I walk through a park that I used to live next to in the 80s, when it was full of heroin needles and heartbreakingly degraded prostitutes, and find a thriving art fair, a well attended outdoor concert on the grass and a field of baby strollers and ball playing youngsters, I can’t not see hope, art and genuine life-goodness.

So, as I give Nada my old bittersweet nostalgic history map of my lost city – she is helping me colour in a fresh and vital map of that very same city – springtime, to compliment my (dead) fall leaves!

Let me say a few perhaps unusual things about heroes, true and false, before I discuss some realities about genuine villains.

As a kid who grew up in an optimistic 60s commune that turned into a truly insane abusive cult, I know a thing or two about following false idols to strange places, mentally. But I also identify with a weird class of heroes in history, who followed a false idol, then greatly transcended them.

I was struck by the autobiography of Malcolm X as a teenager, especially the later parts of his public life when he realized that the leader of the ‘Nation of Islam’ Elijah Mohammed, was not who he pretended to be, morally. This is a far better understood story now, since we have piles of stories of well known gurus and charismatics, who have turned out to be deeply abusive creeps.

At the time I was reading it, I was the follower of a charismatic abusive creep myself, and the story of Malcolm X actually becoming the real embodied version of the false thing his leader pretended to be, inspired me greatly. We aren’t defined by what we came from, but what we do with it.

Your physical trainer may be dumb enough to use steroids, but you can learn from them and not.

This is a really important thing to remember about all of our heroes. They aren’t rocks either, and if some of their music was uplifting, that’s great – but we’d be foolish to expect them to remain on that same theme, or for it to keep inspiring us afresh, without any pause or change.

Expecting that, we make them into gods, rather than humans, inflexible idealist idols worth following in every way – which is not something any of our popular modern heroes deserve.

Not saying they are all jerks and hypocrites, some are no doubt sincere, and real heroes do exist. I’m just saying that if you’ve heard of them in our BigWar/BigMedia, that’s because they serve someone’s interest (perhaps as a demographic representative, in a whole misdirecting alphabet of them).

I recently wrote about Chomsky’s relationship with Epstein, as a part of re-examining my own heroes with a fresh eye, and noticed also, that his biggest problem as a thought leader was actually always very obvious – he got tons of people excited – then led them straight into a brick wall.

(The Chomsky bit starts almost exactly halfway down, after the picture of the square church)

Critique and analysis – delivered with immaculate condescension, always – and no workable solutions or respect for what people really are at all – just nostalgia for a few months in the Spanish Civil War (which, though I regard it as a crucial touchstone myself, has been passionately tribally mythologized beyond all hope of finding clarity or widely useful lessons for almost a century, anyhow).

Today I want to look at someone even more polarizing and controversial than Chomsky (may even be the only person in recent western leftist cultural history who could hold that distinction) Timothy Leary.

He is another one of my early heroes who did me considerable good, even though I find no reason to dispute the main assertions of this recent critical re-evaluation of his efforts by Jeremy Kuzmarov, at the amazingly (and super-hearteningly) still standing “Covert Action” (which I used to read and enjoy for years in magazine form back in the eighties and nineties as “Covert Action Quarterly.” (I differ with him on Eldridge Cleaver and the Panthers exile in Algeria only, as explained below).

Too Hot For the Mainstream Media

Timothy Leary—1960s Acid Guru—May Have Been Among the CIA’s Greatest Assets

[Source: sfforward.blogspot.com…

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4 months ago · 264 likes · 77 comments · Jeremy Kuzmarov

The exact same things which make Leary‘s work, the cultural reaction to it, and the assertion that far from being revolutionary, it was discreetly sanctioned by the state all along (and served their greater purposes) seem so wildly provocative and outrageous to so many, make him an especially fine example for making crucial subtle points that we overlook too often (making useful discussion between groups and tribes almost impossible, in so many critically important areas).

The first very strange thing that we must (and yet almost always wilfully refuse to) face, is that all pure-form idealisms are impractical, because they are subjective. I don’t mean to say they are silly, just that if they are idealisms, they exist in the mind, not in the world. (and won’t/can’t)

The second critical distinction that so many now fail to make is the total difference between relentlessly hardworking self-shaping preparation – and reckless lust-driven power-grabbing.

The third idea-tool I want to use today, seems to be a product of weird experience only (that is, perhaps my most rare/original viewpoint, though by no means my own alone). The question of the psychology and deep intentions of the writer/artist/creator/figure who we wish to examine.

I come at this two ways at once, and am completely unable to separate the insights. One is from the perspective of an art enthusiast, who is even more interested in art-making, than made art. When I go to a gallery (concert, movie), I don’t look to find what pleases me (though I don’t repress my honest response there, either), I try instead to understand what the artist was aiming for, whether or not they got there, then why they did, or how they failed. Even art I don’t like can teach me fantastically useful lessons, which help me when I try to make some of my own.

The other key half of the insight was installed in my head because the commune/cult in which I grew up was jam-packed with psychotherapeutic ideas and tons of (usually misappropriated) gathered wisdom from the great thinkers and practitioners of the modern age of psychology (all the way from Freud to Wilhelm Reich, with plenty of wacky stops along the way like Fromm, Arthur Janov, RD Laing and many others – and do not even get me started on freakin’ macrobiotics!)

As I mentioned before, the greatest lesson I learned watching an optimistic commune descend into a despotic and abusive cult, was that the language and tools didn’t change, they were just turned toward purposes of power (especially power over others) instead of growth and liberation.

Of course this means it is impossible for me to ignore the corruption of longstanding aspirations on the left, which now serve state power (the oppression of those self-same complicit raving idiots).

Words (including most dogma and theories) just don’t impress me much (the ratio of empty to genuine over time, is not impressive). Screams, even less so (nothing ever got built, and no one ever once got taught, that way).

Sustained applied effort over time? – that is the real stuff – the only thing that ever changed the world.

I should stop to clearly note that not everything has to be grand-scale, or ‘IRL viral.’ Even when such effort doesn’t change the whole world – it is STILL the real stuff. Just think for a moment about your own personal heroes, who stepped in and offered the thing that was just what you needed, when you didn’t even know you needed it. All of them were somehow tuned to the ‘good guy’ frequency, because of their own gratitude interest and awareness. This is the impulse that helps, because it first recognizes our dilemma (empathy), then fine-tunes the wisdom for it (duty), rather than just spewing something fancy which satisfies the ego of the ‘helper’ by making them seem impressive, but has no useful clues whatsoever for their still-confused questioner!

Relentlessly hard working self-preparation – versus reckless lust driven power-grabbing. But crucially – it is the same words being used in either case – and many don’t ever learn to tell the difference between the genuine – vital and useful – article, and the ego-serving and utterly useless fakes!

This attitude split pairs with a split in psychological drives which we must recognize and face, but almost never do. The key difference between so many right and wrong things which sound look and sometimes even act very similar (on the surface) is the difference between Love and Lust.

Please don’t mistake me, I am neither a prude or a busybody – I think humans come in a lot of forms and different people need different things in life, to make them happy. No judgement here.

My point is that when we only focus only on lust, which comes down to maximizing our craving and shamelessly rationalizing our ‘I want that’ – our jealousy and our scheming, we are displacing other more nutritious drives and possibilities – all with no aim greater than status or orgasm. (Which are not things that any of us should be habituated to paying a soul-price, to achieve).

The thing which is presented in a clear way, to anyone who has read any great spiritual wisdom at all (which is an outright majority, on both left and right) is that love is the exact opposite impulse. Love drives us toward overcoming our petty desires, to achieve greater things for others around us, and thus become part of a thriving family/community, instead of building our walls of justification/isolation ever higher (out of frustrated desire) then dying of loneliness we made.

I know it doesn’t sound like ancient wisdom when I put it that way, I’m just trying to be up to date. The point is – all the greatest things in life begin, when we begin to get over ourselves – and if we outright refuse to, and instead defend our lust and indignation as heroic, we live in a colder darker and more frightening world than the real world outside our poison-steeped heads.

Now let me touch on one more ultra-strange figure before I get to Leary himself. Because the clues along this very weird branch of thinking are more obvious (to most).

Anyone who ever got interested in the occult, eventually stumbled into Aleister Crowley. Crowley did an enormous amount of work which contributed directly to the modern state of mysticism, and magick in particular. He was also a psychopath, at minimum, and very probably insane. Despite all that (very questionable motives and faculties) he was also an outstanding writer and wildly prolific. I would recommend very few of his works to the unprepared, but I will say that when I leant his “Eight Essays on Yoga” to the finest (genuinely radiant) yoga teacher I ever knew, he read it and said it was by far the best work he’d ever read on the subject, then offered me another (truly outstanding) book in exchange, so he could keep the Crowley!

Because I’m the man from mars anyhow (always an outsider, thanks to my cult upbringing) I immediately noticed that when you met other people into the occult, you were either dealing with relentlessly hard working humble and generous self-preparation people – or you were actually befriending reckless lust driven power-grabbing psychopaths. Often, the creeps would present as the pleasant type initially (charm is a part of psychopathy) but the mask always fell.

Because I was very skeptical about totalist systems (having just escaped an insane one) I never looked to the occult for ‘answers’ or for personal ‘power’. I’m just curious, and I like to see what people have found when they looked in unusual places, especially extremely smart people.

So I read Crowley like an analogy, hunting for useful clues – not a program to follow, especially not blindly. And over time I learned to read people better too, so I could smell the evil ones at greater distance, and sidestep them before any entanglements whatsoever. (some folks are psychic doom)

I was never once even tempted to try a magickal working of any kind – because I took seriously Crowley’s own most useful caution “Never call-up, that which you cannot put-down.”

He actually said, clearly as he could – this stuff is powerful and dangerous, not to be f#cked with. But to this day there are tens of thousands of power-seeking egotists who remain obsessed with playing with Crowley’s fire – even after his predicted Age of Aquarius has very clearly burned white-hot through our entire culture and institutions, turning everything to ash, decades ago.

The one Crowley line I have never been able to forget (more relevant every year) is this:

“This is the time of Horus, the crowned and conquering child” (Italics, my own)

One could reasonably (and with plenty of evidence) describe Aleister Crowley as a self-promoting showman. A trickster fake who wrote himself a thousand times the man he actually was (shades of Hunter Thompson, for sure). You could call him a dangerous provocateur, a promoter of the false path and great hazard to the innocent unwary and unprepared. You could also soundly describe him an imperialist, a spy, or a malign seducer of upper class twits to unsound projects.

You could also say he was a crazy artist whose medium was belief (arguably, reality itself).

Every part of that contradictory and chaotic spread of description also applies to Timothy Leary to some degree – all of the questions doubts and condemnations, and that last very important part, also.

To start – let’s do the worst practical level – just to be fair to skeptics. I am just a bit too young to have seen the full effects of Leary at his most persuasive (alive, but a toddler), but I know many academics who bemoan the catastrophic loss of absolutely huge numbers of the best and most creative minds of that unprecedentedly unchained (and also, let’s face it, unhinged) generation.

Leary’s promotion of “the heroic trip” was, ultimately, incredibly irresponsible. While millions were interested, when the great explorers of old returned from remote voyages, they never began their extremely well-attended lectures saying, “So now all of you should go to Antarctica too, or else forever remain unfulfilled as humans!” (and I hate to think what would have happened, if they had)

To be very clear – yes, near-death experiences can provoke profound realization – and they can also scar a person for life, so deep inside they cannot hope to communicate, or escape the trap. Seeking power along his plan was foolhardy – just like taking up Crowley’s magickal workings.

BUT – we must also note that millions of people did LSD in much smaller doses than the heroic, and came back with insights which were immediately useful, and remained so, lifelong (I’m one).

The ‘once you see it, you can’t un-see it’ part which seems to be most common to my friends who also found benefit, was the recognition that reality is something we actively interpret. You don’t have to have a near-death experience, to feel this, just set your usual interpreters a bit wonky, and watch.

After that experience (or, as I said in my last piece, the harder work but better and more safely earned approach, through meditation) you no longer think of the parts of the human mind which operate under our conscious awareness as theories or ideas, you feel and appreciate their reality.

This part of psychedelic awareness is extremely helpful for understanding modern propaganda, which has been operating mostly on our subconscious, for longer than any of us have been alive.

As I mentioned in my last piece, many groups allow themselves to be framed by a malign theory, and are thus robbed of their power. They can only escape, if they can first learn to see frames.

Now let me engage with a bit of the weirdness of the politics – always remembering that both I and Kuzmarov are writing at some remove from those very strange times, (though I was a kid for it – and definitely saw plenty of boomers wigging out, I just didn’t know what I was watching).

When writing from the perspective of the old working-class intellectual left, and trying to salvage some useful and lesson-learning history, from an area long obscured by propaganda (on both sides) you can’t help but reach for those rare patchy clues which suit the angle you are exploring, and hope they fit/are true/work.

I am about ninety percent sure that Linda McQuaig fell for this trap years ago, by using a fake CIA story which was spread to discourage Vietnam deserters, as evidence to make her point (sympathetic as I remain to the point she was making).

That is – if mass murdering American veterans from Vietnam who had ‘gone native’ by air bombardment really was a sustained large scale program, we would expect more than a few scattered referents to have emerged by now. (specific units/dates/logistics are recorded to an insane level of detail for air operations, and keeners for military history are always digging).

When writing critically about people who were the subjects of COINTELPRO discrediting operations from FBI (and similar operations, from CIA), things get a whole lot weirder still.

I did a piece about the Black Panthers awhile ago, and talked to several friends who lived in New York during the time of Malcolm X and the Panther’s rise also, to get a bit of extra ‘tone read.’ It was actually my veteran (then NYC trained doctor) friend Anthony who put it most clearly, “Cleaver turned out to be such a disgusting traitor.”

Cleaver was an open supporter of Ronald Reagan for president! (some revolutionary). But there is always a telling detail which I find most genuine and revealing. In the case of Chomsky’s relationship with Epstein, it is Chomsky putting Epstein’s moneyman ahead of his own kids!

In the case of Eldridge Cleaver, he had already revealed himself to be a traitor to the movement and the Black Panther Party, long before the senior leadership fled to Algeria. He constantly pushed for more violent actions, and successfully persuaded a very reluctant group of Panthers to attempt a major armed robbery – and when they were caught he gave court testimony against his co-defendants (none of whom would have been there, if they weren’t persuaded by him) just to lighten his own sentence.

There might be academic ways to overlook or excuse a grotesque moral failing like that – but down on the retail level where I’ve lived my life, backstabbing finks are always shit-heads.

What Cleaver was really good at, was writing very angry books that make smart guys feel excited and revolutionary, just for reading them (bindair-dundat). Faker than Leary or even Crowley by far (no real message beyond his violent and insatiable ego – as was proven by his invention of “Christlam” – a blend of Christianity and Islam which would of course, be led by glorious him).

Most precisely applicable, though, is the inarguable fact that the smearing campaigns of the time were so good, Stokely Carmichael, by far the Panther’s greatest intellectual, was forced to flee for his life in fear of assassination by other Panthers, who had been falsely convinced he was a traitor!

Now I hate to repeat an idea my regular readers will have encountered before, but some idea tools fit some ‘nuts’ that require torque, perfectly! A good technician cannot ignore the right tool.

The book which my dear radiant yogi friend offered me, in exchange for Crowley’s essays on yoga was “Kundalini” by Gopi Krishna. Well timed, since I was doing a lot of Kundalini then, and needed the many specific cautions and insights to be found within, very much.

The insight from that book which has struck me again and again, ever since, is (paraphrasing) “The hardest thing to understand when you become enlightened, is that everyone else didn’t just instantly become enlightened also – that which had been opaque, is suddenly so self-evident!”

My political friends will recognize this, in the frustration they so often feel when talking to the disinterested. But without meaning to trivialize, my rationalist friends feel much the same way when talking to fanciful innumerates, who are unashamed of being unable to craft a clear or practical idea, but eternally reference their own subjective fantasy instead.

I just mean to say – the modern world has weirdly many truly profound gulfs of understanding. Being a renaissance man with a full-range grasp of thought, stopped being an achievable goal, sometime in the late rennaisance!

When I’m judging the life and impact of Leary, I start with direct personal experience of the contrast between one on one talking cure, and group therapy invoking collective wisdom (best case) rather than being limited by the single authority present.

His work and writings on this – the early stages of unravelling of (often unearned) psychiatric authority – and his reasoning about it – are clear, useful, and were both early and important.

As for his later guru personality (and hilarious reliance on gathered wisdom, like McLuhan’s marketing advice, to stick to “Tune in, Turn on, Drop out.”) I remain convinced that he was doing his thing, irresponsibly, because he assumed that many people started from his kind of open intellect, and his kind of personal adaptability, both of which were false assumptions. (And even where super smart scholars got into it, the hero trip took them destructively far, way too often).

From his own writings (and those of critics) I always saw his attitude about CIA as a very similar kind of historical agnosticism to that of Buckminster Fuller, who was best friends with one of the agency’s earliest Directors of Operations (brilliant likes brilliant, and CIA does gather brilliant), but also quite correctly described CIA as “Capitalism’s Invisible Army” and considered it evil.

Did the CIA think they were using Leary, at one remove, with funding from an eccentric banking heir? Undoubtedly, and I’m sure they got a lot of insight from his chaotic research, also.

But did Leary think the importance of perceiving the subjectivity of our reality-processing was so great, that making use of agencies he despised, would ultimately accomplish purposes exactly opposite to the aims of any state actor, agency, or propagandizer of otherwise sane minds?

Pretty sure that’s a solid yes – even after, as he admits himself, they ‘broke him’ in prison.

You may not like all or any of his music, but man, the guy could most definitely play. (as one of his close friends said “I never in my life met a man with more hilaritas!”)

You can hate Borges for not taking a stand, but his incredible contributions to literature did in fact require his survival.

Which leaves me having to explain one absolutely valid theme which Kuzmarov’s piece gets into, and point to an alternate (and all-pervasive) causal vector for the breakdown of social duty (from which all previous leftist political gains and organization had come).

Like I say – I watched the adults going through all this stuff when I was a kid, from a front row seat, and when I escaped my cult at age sixteen, I was sure I had left the madness behind. But my run down apartment soon became a drop-in centre for teenage club kid runaways from all over the city, and what I learned from them, remains the most horrifying lesson of my life.

It wasn’t just hippies, or intellectuals, or druggies – it was good Catholics and sophisticated professional middle classers with every advantage. Working class union folks and rock stars too. Absolutely everyone young was getting raped, by psychotically entitled ‘new individualists’, who came with every affiliation creed and social status known to man, and actively rationalized their abuse as their right, with whatever framework they had in their heads already.

What began to break down in the 70s (probably more because of birth control pills, than any other practical factor – but also as the full-flowering of TV indoctrinated “Consumerist Culture”) and has never stopped getting worse since, was deep and sincere connection to other humans.

Lust overtook Love. (and Madison Avenue has never stopped celebrating or goading that gap wider).

We didn’t get taken-down by drugs, or even by mind-numbingly evil (anti democratic and murderous) hyper expensive state force operations meant to protect the interests of psychotic, always monopolizing capitalists. (Enlightened in a downward direction? Endarkened, maybe? – certainly at some considerable remove from duty or sanity).

The mass propaganda operations which are now more obvious than ever (and yet, weirdly, no less persuasive, to those who need to believe in authority) are a clearer and more directly stupefying leash on our active will by far, than any guru or craze.

When we’re trying to understand how that much degradation of character could overtake so many, so widely, so rapidly? Think about a world without any grownups.

The crowned and conquering child.

Actually kinda says it all, doesn’t it?

The reason I took a trip through so many subtle distinctions today (many of which vanish completely, if we are only willing to use one frame of understanding) is that I fear I may have accidentally painted a more doomful picture of the world than I meant to, for my younger readers especially (who are infinitely less socialized to other humans and whole generations of valuable humane understandings, tragically).

I still insist on non-delusional hope. I don’t want to just make myself (or you) feel better – I want to make our perceptions and understandings ever clearer, so our actions can be ever more useful.

What is happening right now, to the whole damned western world at once, is that the people who are used to theorizing and directing our narratives are all going crazy at once. And not for no reason!

As I’ve mentioned before, consciousness is tricky – it always likes to pretend “I meant to do that” (consciousness was the thing in charge, the whole time) even though much of our thought is a justification after the fact, for something we actually did on impulse (making consciousness the equivalent in some ways, of a jealous and yet also false tyrant, which lives inside our own heads).

The Western Class which has controlled our picture of reality for generations now, is all going crazy, because the world they’ve all been analyzing and explaining, has just proven every last bit of their analysis false. Nothing that we ever thought was normal, actually was. Even our model of prosperity, was actually a ponzi scheme devised to deny and escape (in actuality, only time-delay) the fact that America was driven to bankruptcy by the Vietnam war, and has relied on extortion to survive, ever since.

For history geeks, especially those curious about the rise and fall of empire, it is very hard not to notice that the first great industrial empire (UK) has gone first, into every great mistake and disaster which has later overtaken the USA. The Boer war effectively bankrupted England, but they could not surrender the idea of being the global power, even though they could no longer afford it. The first world war broke their moral authority completely, for all time (and broke western religious belief so profoundly, that it is impossible for us to understand the scale of this, or the gulf it opened-up between us, and almost every other culture and civilization on earth), and by the time of the second world war they were willing to force millions to die, to save their empire – and still lost every part of it entirely (and rightfully) within a few years of the war’s end.

The short version is – we done. The West is not “The Boss” of the rest anymore, and all of the wonderful theories we concocted to explain how amazing we were, to the unwashed masses from afar, now look like very little more than apologetics for an endless series of war crimes (that we, as sophisticated moderns, always found post-facto ways to rationalize (“Girls in School”) or studiously ignore).

But do not ever let anyone tell you that we didn’t see this coming. We absolutely did – and the weirdest thing of all is – so did that concentration of malign brilliance gathered in those parts of the state which were added by the US National Security Act of 1947 (the thing that ate the constitution) which created CIA and the NSC, as a form of government which has very simply overruled every crucial function of our western democratic institutions, ever since (though to varying degrees in various places, depending on how important to their interests, they were).

Yup, they passed a law that said the ruling class no longer has to listen to the people or even their elected representatives at all, and they can just wield the powers of the state against common interests, for their personal profit.

MORE THAN SEVENTY FIVE YEARS AGO!

That is how long we have been living inside LAWCAP Fuller’s shorthand for the phase of capitalism when Lawyers took control, which was then followed by FINCAP – the financializers who we associate with Reagan, but actually pioneered their slash and burn workers rights destroying tricks in the UK, way back in the (desperate panicking imploding empire) 1950s.

One of my especially inspiring recently discovered younger writers did a piece about Epstein the other day – and I wanted to respond, because he got unfairly mobbed, for trying to make a valid and important point (albeit, using an example so overcomplicated, as to make any single narrative line feel deceptive, by omission).

Prurience attracts our attention the same way people slow down for a traffic accident, hoping to see something which, if they do see it, might well scar them, and trouble their sense of mortality deeply.

This is also why the COINTELPRO finks at FBI (and their many counterparts at CIA) used sexual smears and blackmail against so many (including MLK, repeatedly). The public loves to hate a sinner, always has – auto-da-fe day, yay!

That remains the cheapest and also by far most attended aspect of the Epstein story in the left and right wing press. Since I come from an environment (and cultural moment) when epic scale abuse was not just present, but often rationalized as ‘freedom’ and ‘self-expression’. I have to very consciously tamp-down my own instant rage response, when people minimize any such harm done to innocents. I really understand how effective the outrage lever is (hits our adrenal glands long before consciousness cooks up a rationalization story, to explain our suddenly thumping heart).

The trouble with picking Epstein to make that point, is that the other aspects of his story really are all clues about that exact level of powerful people who have been operating first LAWCAP then FINCAP, while hiding behind the scenes.

Here’s yet another truly incredible story on this aspect, from the stalwarts at DropSite

Drop Site News

Epstein Advised U.S. Treasury on Crypto During Obama’s Iran Sanctions Push

Over the last year, Drop Site has been reporting what mainstream outlets won’t: Jeffrey Epstein’s deep ties to powerful figures in the U.S. government, the UAE, and Israel…

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4 months ago · 677 likes · 8 comments · Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim

Brian Berletic (link below) is probably the single most sobering reporter, on this aspect of the world – doggedly reminding us that Trump’s policy, just like Biden’s and Obama’s – and all the way back to Johnson and Truman, skipping only Kennedy (big part of why he was killed) has been generated by corporate funded thinktanks which seek to maximize the profits of Banks and BigWar above all else (up to and including the wholesale destruction of all else – as we are presently witnessing).

As I’ve laid out in more detail in a recent piece (below) ever since the British Navy switched from (home mined) coal to oil-fired boilers (around WWI) war around the whole world has been driven by capital and markets (as it already had been, for a couple of centuries) and also newly prioritized “strategic” resources (oil in particular).

That’s more than a century of screwing around with the entire world, often violently, and even more often disruptively, just to make a war machine world-dominant.

(The British passed the baton of Empire to the USA at the close of WWII – including all the most foul and corrupting imperial ideologies and techniques – and their most malign monopolism!)

But while we are terrified and made to feel small and helpless by these clashes between unseen titans (with absolutely obvious, mounting and honestly worrisome consequences, all around us) we have to stop to examine the record, also, because this is where I see real solid resurgent spring hope, always.

Yes, incredibly powerful people are trying to run the world like a train set. But it no longer reliably responds the way they want it to, when they work their control levers.

The British utterly destroyed their own power and prosperity through grotesque racist conceit. Even sixty years after the Suez crisis proved they were a US vassal, and not a great power – they still can’t give up their insane imperialist rhetoric, or their attitude of “Moral boss of everyone.” Which is objectively weird, since their own working class is riot-desperate and their middle class is evaporating almost as fast as the treasury is going outright bankrupt. Superior in what way, pray-tell?

Of course the American version of these conceits is even more obnoxious in some ways, more recently mass-murderous for a start (though they still have a long way to go, to catch and beat the UK’s bloody record) but also, the American narratives of post-facto rationalization (literally crafted and tested by advertising people – to SELL war to us) almost always use “freedom” language.

Hate to sound like an aging trek geek, but Freedom is a worship word – we shall not abuse it!

So – what am I saying here? Yes, powerful people who can hurt all of us normal people a lot, are screwing around with the world in a very very dangerous way again. They can and will smash a lot of stuff we like (I am already weeping for the family businesses which somehow got through covid – because the coming depression will be way worse, and might be even more prolonged).

BUT – with love, we rise again, we plant again, we remain on a true course, reliably (because we do not succumb to blinding desires – but instead look responsibly, so we can help, effectively).

The super-powerful aren’t pulling out all their big guns now because they are confident, but because they are in a full-blown panic. BigWar/BigMedia no longer persuades, as it once did (even though I insist that boomers and Xers remain no less vulnerable to television, than younger folks are to their phones).

More to the point, the economy we’ve all been living inside relied on active violent pilfering and a vast network of repression of citizen will. Not just in places we’re used to thinking of as colonial targets, either – I have watched this class of foreign interest serving political agents infest the institutions of my own Canada with increasing alarm, ever since we refused to join the (WWIII prologue) Iraq war.

Canadians who are thoughtful, now know how frustrated and humiliated South Koreans have been feeling for generations. The hegemon calls the tune, their obsequious viceroys dance and grovel. The citizens fume and wait for the moment of liberation.

But that is just as true of France – Germany and England also – the idea that Macron, Merz or Starmer represent anyone other than the elites who empowered them is outright laughable.

Which is why I keep talking about anti-tribalism and love-hearts so much these days. We are in fact in a pre-revolutionary moment, all across the western world (last seen just before WWI, then again just before WWII). I have to mention those world overturning and insanely destructive wars, because that is the traditional technique our rulers have long used, to deal with a revolutionary moment.

Invent a villain (almost always with a fictional story which horrifies, memorably – the unwholesome prurient, once again) then send off all those young would-be revolutionaries to kill some other rich bastard’s young revolutionaries, before they threaten their shared class (ruling class) interests!

We use the word WAR in the west in a uniquely stupid way. We think of war as a process where we cause great harm to others, but don’t even notice an impact, in our own lives. That ain’t war, that’s murder (has been this whole time – even those times they ‘got us’ with an especially good sales pitch).

It also ain’t the kind of war that Germany wants to turn VW into a tank manufacturer, to fight. But again – we can learn much from reading patterns in history – but we can also examine the realities in the mirror (objects here, are closer than they appear).

The leaders of Germany France and England openly say they want to use war with Russia in 2030 as a ‘goal’ to give them an excuse to transfer truly staggering sums of taxpayer treasure into the pockets of the FINCAP leaders of their BigWar industries.

But can they actually do that? I don’t mean can they steal the money? Of course they can do that, and are already, I mean – can they actually re-arm for a great war? Do they still have the industrial base required for heavy manufacturing? Do they still have the crucial trade-skills? (which used to inspire a lot of education, because they were very well paid working class jobs, but got eviscerated in rights and pay a full generation ago at least, in most of the long rusting formerly industrial western economies).

Even more obviously problematic – do they (England and France, here), already crying near-bankruptcy and putting out feelers for a major international bailout from the IMF/World Bank, if not the US treasury itself – have the freakin’ money? (and since of course they do not – did they ask the people in whose name they are in the process of borrowing it, if that’s really what they’d like to do, with what will surely be trillions?)

And then there is us – you and me and our family and friends and their family and friends – our tribal enemies and their families and friends too, for that matter (where we yet remain determined to be tribalists, instead of citizens first and last).

When they try to pass legislation to draft huge numbers of everyday citizens to fight and die horrifically (mostly killed by robots) for the sake of capital – When they knock at our door, coming for our sons and daughters – How we gonna act?

Refusing to be cannon fodder is just as surely refusing to oppress, in the name of the very same creeps who have been undermining our democratic citizens and frustrating our freedom and prosperity for generations. But it also takes more will, fire and hard work than most things we have been doing for several generations now. You can’t consume a revolution. You have to do it.

Best have our love hearts strong, vital and ready for this, and learn to see allies, past all false framings and flags. Nothing will be easy about the next few years ahead of us – but we always did know the empire was going to fall, and that it would be an ugly mess, when and as it did.

Our job, my friends, is to be the ones who counted, when it counted.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

First off – my favourite new tradition – a bibliography (reading and bookstores are sacred)

Growing Pains – the autobiography of Emily Carr

I adore autobiographies of unique genuine people, and this piece not only has wonderful insights into the process of becoming an artist (in San Francisco in the early 1900s), but also the formation of an enduringly wonderful and resplendent character in Canadian arts and letters, despite the intense sexist pressures of the time. (not only a superb writer, she was really the eighth member of the famous group of seven school of painting, all along – especially close with Harris).

Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer – John Lily

Lily was the even more obsessive and eccentric, but also more scientific (in the old sense of trying to discover the deep reality of nature) counterpart to Leary, in the psychedelic movement. This book is tiny, but may be even more work to read than the Julian Jaynes I recently suggested (or say, a big volume of Marx!) ;o) But if you do manage to get through it, reading with the perspective of someone interested in what a polar explorer saw, not going there yourself, you’ll come away with some very interesting ideas about the structure of consciousness. His autobiography “The Scientist” is much more readable, but also far more dangerous (a clear temptation toward the heroic trip on K – which has done much damage to blind followers, also).

Archy and Mehitabel – Don Marquis

I need to put some outright sweet stuff in here someplace, don’t I? Anyhow, Archy and Mehitabel is not only an irresistibly charming book of love poems – written by a cockroach, to an alleycat (who considers herself the reincarnation of Cleopatra), it is also a truly fantastic example of “fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke’ spirit, from the depths of the great depression. Heart in place, beating strong, still finding magic, even in the ruins of so many hopes.

Quantum Questions – edited by Ken Wilbur

This is an extraordinary collection of mind-expanding essays by some of the twentieth century’s greatest physicists, on the subject of philosophy and metaphysics. And yes, those brilliant minds go to brilliant places that you will surely want to follow – and will suffer no hazard, when you do! This one is increasingly hard to find – do not see a copy, and fail to buy it! You may never see another!

A Perfect Spy – John LeCarre

I have read most of LeCarre’s work – and much prefer the later, less famous and popular stuff, but I have to say, just like reading the autobiography of Malcolm X, while I was following a false prophet myself, really hit me, so did reading LeCarre novels filled with intense all encompassing paranoia, doubt and the soul-crushing obscuring of all hope or aspiration toward truth (cults suck). This particular book combines his full mastery of the spy novel, with an unusual helping of themes taken from his own life and very strange relationship with his con-man father. Outstanding – especially subtle and complex on the question of motivations loyalties and belief.

Now let me direct you toward those hopeful younger writers I was talking about – and please forgive me, fellows – I don’t mean to be patronizing, or to minimize your experience and accomplishments, only to envy you the much longer arc of history ahead, which you, unlike me, will be able to actively and critically witness for decades still to come!

Julian Macfarlane is the active mind (and spirited fire) behind the “News Forensics” substack – and he not only gathers insight from many unusual sources, he takes bold and thoughtful stands which are far too rarely articulated in BigWar/BigMedia. When I was a young man, I used to love listening on Shortwave to Voice of America – followed immediately by Radio Farabundo Marti – the Cuban revolutionary station. Because every power serving narrative, badly needs a strong antidote. Julian is a great CNN/FOX antidote (and as I say, has positively cheering fire, as well).

Vuk Bačanović is a nuanced passionate and thoughtful writer, writing from a confluence of identity which is so oversimplified demonized and mythologized in the West (A Serb in Bosnia) as to make every one of his pieces a revelation – even for folks who are aware of considerably more subtlety and complexity like me, because we are lucky enough to have (unstoppable) Serbian best friends!

I remain convinced that understanding the way Yugoslavia was destroyed (tons of American and British intelligence interference – not to mention the Germans arming their WWII allies!) is just as important to understanding our slow burn WWIII 21^st century, as the Spanish Civil war is, for understanding World War two (incredibly difficult as both studies are, being so long buried under years of very expensive and extremely well crafted misdirection).

Vuk helps me see clearer, how complex it really was and is (and how many hands, here especially, remain dirty).

Vuk Bačanović

The Flynn–Kabiri Axis - How Bosnia Is Sold Piece by Piece

For an outside reader, Bosnia and Herzegovina is often formally described as a sovereign state. In practice, however, it operates within a uniquely constrained post-war framework established by the Dayton Peace Agreement, under which a powerful international authority—embodied in the Office of the High Representative—retains the ability to impose laws a…

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4 months ago · 8 likes · 1 comment · Vuk Bačanović

Vuk Bačanović

Vuk Bačanović is a historian and longtime Sarajevo-based journalist and editor. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Belgrade. He edits the Montenegrin political portal Žurnal.me.

These next three are much closer to me in age – but still comparatively spry (and all are both inspiringly and very usefully relentless – yay!)

Jeremey Kuzmarov is someone that I should have been reading for years now. I blame (and yet still prize) my clunky old book-head. When I couldn’t find Covert Action on the newsstands, I assumed CIA had finally taken them out! Yeah, I still don’t search online until I’ve searched my brain and my bookshelves awhile (and so shall it remain). Fogey-tudes aside, Covert Action has long worked a very particular and important ‘beat’ news-wise – the secret power which works against us, and even more insultingly, uses our money, and our own government’s resources, to do it!

The thing about pieces in Covert Action is that they convey the telling and particular details which help us understand where weird but very nasty reality puzzle-pieces fit, in the big, complicated, expensive and ever tighter (now digital) leash around all of our necks. (brainstems?)

Feels like finding a lost love from one’s youth – and she hasn’t aged a bit!

Covert Action Magazine

Follow Jeremy’s own site “Too Hot for the Mainstream Media” too

Too Hot For the Mainstream Media

This substack features articles that are largely too hot for mainstream media. The articles provide exposes and analysis that are being suppressed in the mainstream and at times even alternative media.

By Jeremy Kuzmarov

Kit Klarenburg – I have pointed my readers toward the extraordinarily sharp and relevant reporting of Kit Klarenburg for several years now. Reading him is a must, but if you also tune in to his “Decline and Fall” podcast, you will instantly recognize an old school revolutionary comrade, and if you’re like me, you’ll then grin your fool head off, for the next ten hours – so damned grateful for proof they aren’t extinct!

Global Delinquents

Collapsing Empire: How Iran Defeated Israel

All my investigations are free to read, thanks to the enormous generosity of my readers. Independent journalism nonetheless requires investment, so if you value this article or any others, please consider sharing, or even becoming a paid subscriber. Your support is always gratefully received, and will never be forgotten. To buy me a coffee or two, please…

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4 months ago · 582 likes · 76 comments · Kit Klarenberg

Brian Berletic runs the absolutely indispensable podcast “The New Atlas.” My older friends might remember Bill Hicks’ routine on how the US knew Iraq had chemical weapons “Well, we checked the receipt – but as soon as that cheque clears, we’re going in, for god and country!” Berletic is like the sobering (but very much needed) version of that. What is his magic trick? He reads the plans the thinktanks publish (and they remain amazingly open about sharing their evil plans) and then he bothers to notice when those plans are being enacted. Errs toward cynicism, and cautioning against premature hope, but justly so (even a dying empire can still do a f#ck-ton of damage).

The New Atlas - Hosted by Brian Berletic

Here’s something excellent from the also often shared Matt Stoller, who does truly superb work on monopolies, and the legal and governmental challenges against them. I admit his American bias in this one irks in several places (though one can’t be faulted for being of, where one came from) but all the same, he talks about the actual mechanisms of our long term industrial decline, in a way we just don’t, but must.

BIG by Matt Stoller

The Efficiency Moat: Why China Is Beating the U.S. on AI… And Everything Else

Today, Donald Trump is in China negotiating with Xi Jinping, with the possibility of reordering the global economy. As with most of these kinds of summits, the symbolism and pomp is rich. Trump understands imagery, and he brought with him a group of CEOs. In this picture, where Trump is greeted by Chinese Vice President Han Zheng, you can see Elon Musk …

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4 months ago · 403 likes · 27 comments · Matt Stoller

Finally, I have to share an especially fine talk between two clear and sincere thinkers. I have been reading the essays of Matthias Desmet (and the many weird wrong-headed and rabid attacks against him from state actors and their dupes) for years, but it wasn’t until I saw his genuine warmth and humanity in this talk, that I understood exactly where he was really coming from – this is a love-heart guy – one hundred percent.

I have also watched many superb interviews conducted by (and sometimes interviews of) Glenn Diesen, but have never before seen him reveal quite so much of his own heart and purpose, confirming my longstanding appraisal of him as a modest but dogged hero of peace.

Must watch stuff – it’ll do even more for your heart, than your mind (especially in the “thank god I’m not the only one who sees that shit is crazy” department)

Note for new readers – auto-estimated reading times are greatly exaggerated (lots of pix/links)

Hey Folks!

I’ve been trying for quite awhile to understand the nature of our modern fights – everything from our philosophical, economic and political struggles, to the fate of (and contest between) nations.

The reason I can’t leave this subject alone is simple – absolutely everyone is wrong (me included, to be clear), and we actually aren’t even having any of the right (that is, the real) arguments yet.

I am convinced that the reason we feel so helpless, and bad things usually seem to work fine (that is, badly), where good things fail and are destroyed too easily, is that our focus and attention is deliberately scrambled by BigWar/BigMedia and (very expensively promoted) culture games.

One big problem is language. Not only do we almost always believe that patterns of words and models of reality actually are the thing they attempt to describe (which is not ever true) we don’t come anywhere close to agreeing on the meaning of many of our favourite fighting words.

The most telling and destructive example here is the thing that makes the culture war a perfect protection for our insane war-lustful rulers, oligarchs and over-all corrupters of our democracies.

When a person on the right says ‘left’ angrily, they mean tyranny – and when a person on the left says ‘right’ that way, they mean exactly the same always dangerous thing. This does not mean they are really the same, outside of that big misunderstanding, but it does demonstrate a human thing. Tribalism allows us to ignore the evil on our own side, and see only that on the other. (which is why it makes us stupid, which is why the rich like to promote both sides of it at once (makes it far easier to herd us, like the animals they think we are) which is why I oppose it – neverendingly).

To be super clear – both sides have always had both tendencies, aspirational and despotic. The Libertarian right stood for the rights of the individual citizen to defy the state on principle for a century, and many still hold that association – the left stood for the workers struggling against the exploitative and degrading corporations, for roughly that same century or so. Both of these were always entirely valid fights (in fact, both were parts of the same long-term fight against monopolists and tyrants – who likewise, come always as a pair).

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To be just a little snarky to both sides at once, one could make a strong argument that both tribes are now hopelessly delusional, lost in nostalgia (for a time and a cause which they almost entirely misunderstand, anyhow).

I say this because more than a half a century ago the political left sold-out to one clan of oligarchs (banking and the big-debt big government that drives their profit) while the political right sold out to another clan of oligarchs (lawyers/corporate monopolists) which means that at this point, no genuine citizen will on either side is ever represented seriously, in terms of policy. (Which alone proves our culture wars are a distraction, and not the real fight).

Another big problem is attitude and belief – that is, because our common attitudes are now so narrow, selfish and resentful, and our patterns of speech and attention maximize our indignation, we mostly aren’t even trying to make sense or do good anymore, just to complain, expertly.

It is important for us to remember that our last big cultural media cycle was about lust (also an opponent of healthy balance and overall character growth, when made too much a focus).

For Gen Xers like me, and boomers too, it is easy to notice that something is wrong, when the current is constant anger and frustration (even with those who could be our dearest friends and loves, and thus transcend and heal it altogether).

Lust, the subliminal keynote of advertising from the 1950s on, but absolutely out in the open by the 1970s – only fading out slowly this war-filled century – really was a lot more fun a mass social sin than our modern combination of fear and anger are. But I see no reason to assume that it was any more organic than our modern state of fury is. Lust sold consumer goods. Anger sells war.

The question isn’t – what is the cultural tone of the age? But – what do they need us to feel?

Or – to take this from an artistic angle – every period of art has many artists who are chasing the thing that sells, and everyone hears about (many of whom are insincere talentless hacks and finks) and a few who just do the thing they do, because that is the thing which seems self-evidently necessary to them (how real work presents).

Sometimes critical tastes catch up with them. This happened to many talented realists who were working during the heyday of abstract expressionism, who were only discovered and finally appreciated in their old age, after decades of working in total obscurity and poverty – but working hard and steady all the same, all those years – because their driver was never money or ‘likes’.

But sometimes a fantastic artist works their whole life and is never seen or noticed at all, even though their work was outstanding. Often because it did not serve the market (commercial model of what art is) and only served art itself, no other master (neither Mammon nor Moloch).

I grew up in a commune and spent my twenties reading history and leftist theory (disliked Marx, loved Engels, and finally gave up somewhere around Plekhanov). Even then I had some serious reservations about the theories (first doubts are worthy doubts, keep them!) but I could already see our system was not the fairness and general thriving engine it claimed to be, and I wanted to understand how alternate theoretical approaches did, did not, and also might or might not work.

While reading this stuff, I was also doing a lot of Kundalini yoga, reading a ton of ancient and modern mysticism, and had several runs at LSD (though it is worth saying that deep meditations long after psychedelics, did much more for me than the psychedelics themselves, which broke a door open, that it is better to enter-through with the invisible knock of earning – hard work as that is).

For my pals on the right – please don’t run away – I’m about to make you happy – I just had to establish that one cannot have clearer leftist working-class intellectual qualifications than I do.

So, having established that, let me share the weirdly clear insight which finally hit me yesterday – though I’ve been trying to characterize this one for a couple of decades.

What is wrong with modern feminism, ‘anti-racism’ (actually a rebirth of racism) and (fake) ‘leftism’ – is every single one of them now presents in a form which has already sold out, before showing up.

A theory of female living which measures every quantity and economic unit and counts no other value as real or worthy of consideration, is actually a theory of mass female capitulation to the tyranny of technologist-monopolists, and cannot possibly be anything, or lead anywhere, else.

From a mystical perspective, we are talking about a coven of powerful witches who enter the fray agreeing to stay strictly in the realm of materialism and market forces – renouncing all magic.

That is to say – simply by their own shared self-definitions – they have all decided to be stupid losers.

(can bratty whininess ever be far behind determined self-harm on such an epic scale?)

Yeah, I’m just going to say it clearly – women have some magical properties and characteristics which are really important to their strength and thriving. Women who insist this isn’t so are brainwashed (that is, power-robbed) fools.

This error is just as true of EVERYONE (I point to modern feminism because it is especially self-harmful and righteous, it is not at all unique in foolish pre-capitulation, by allowing others to frame THEM).

So now here’s something incredibly important that tribalists on the right miss about the huge numbers of sincere people who remain on the left (not the idiot-left you see on BigWar/BigMedia – I’m talking about the folks who are trying to solve their own problems and those of their community themselves, not begging for bigger clunkier institutions to quash more rights and freedoms).

Huge numbers of people on the left think of the left as the defender of civil liberties and individual rights, and the right as the political force which hates citizen thriving.

Thing is, huge numbers on the right (and also many independents) no longer see anything like that, in any political expression of the left at all. They think of the left as the thing which stands against the individual, and against rights and community uniqueness and thriving in particular.

Now – because this is a point much argued about in some circles, let me try to be super clear. There absolutely are a ton of important differences between the left and right, even in their very best and highest expressions (neither of which get any air-time at all, on BigWar/BigMedia).

BUT – those highest expressions of both sides, actually rely on the same set of general citizen rights, in order to make their case by demonstration. Not spouting a theory, but living it and proving it.

If we enter paranoid, with nothing but self-interest to guide us, and we learn to enjoy complaint (and to think being upset, every day of our lives, is somehow normal or even heroic) we can absolutely feast ourselves on the worst sides of the hated other, and there is always tons of horrific material on offer, to feed our fury (continued wilful ignorance).

The worst on the right absolutely do want dictatorship, and so do the worst on the left – and so do the powerful scumbags who own the BigWar/BigMedia we still somehow believe, even after it has lied us into disaster after disaster for a quarter of a century without even a pause for breath.

I’ve made this point before – but not for awhile. For older people, it is very easy to see how cellphones have messed-up the thinking and thriving of young people, not least by getting in-between their hearts and the direct (instead of digitally mediated and displaced) experience of their own lives.

But what we older people have to realize is that we are just as addled and hypnotized by television, as the younger folks are by anything on their phones. And how many times does a ‘paper of record’ have to lie, to no longer deserve that designation? Are we into comparative infinities?

If a friend lies to us and gets us beaten up and robbed, over and over, we stop listening to that friend. But somehow, the New York Times (which ran front page stories in WWII from a known Nazi, because he had ‘great sources’) continues to define the consensual world, even after decades of new lies on behalf of warmongers and anti-citizen monopolists. Which is to say, the CIA finally won the ‘control of the narrative’ they’ve been seeking since the mid-sixties. Not, we should be clear, to convey one dominating message, but to muddy all messages, so no one can ever tell what is really going on, until it is too late for their objections to stop the gigantic crime.

No wait – didn’t I just caution against entering paranoid? Yes I did – and this ain’t that – this is realism, folks. Paranoia is ultimately about the definition and emotional understanding of self.

I mentioned spending my twenties reading socialism and mysticism, but I sometimes wonder if my even earlier reading habits didn’t do me far more good (and in a funny way inoculate me against the dogma which captured and sickened the minds of so many friends, over the years).

As a much younger book crazy kid I was nuts for Plato and Francis Bacon, and found the way they both stretched my mind (Plato right hemisphere and Bacon left?) to be exciting and useful.

I ended up spending my life split between creative work and technical work – pursuing both the maximum humane and intuitive and the most practical possible confrontation with hard reality.

Again – one of my crucial qualifiers is needed here. What I’m talking about is seeking a better balance, not some empirical orthodoxy of goodness and badness. Corrective feedback is what keeps a system running, instead of going into a runaway failure and burning out – ask a tech!

So – what is a person?

Are we just a bag of meat that walks and talks? If so, do we really have any right to resist whichever slaughterhouse the rich choose to direct us toward? (currently another great civilizational war, fought solely to preserve the power of our own civilization’s worst parasites).

There’s a very big topic (future essay) which I must touch on simply, here – many on the right are people of sincere faith, and have useful shared language to discuss matters of the soul, and at least try to respect that not-measurable and not scientifically provable quality of every human being.

The old left used to have deep respect for this, because they had a shared respect for spirit, embodied in a kind of worker’s consciousness, which has not existed in the west for decades (one of the saddest culture-deaths, of many, that we Xers have watched).

Again – I’m not trying to say this is the same thing – I’m trying to say starting from reverence for things beyond the individual as a number or a work-unit, respecting dignity and integrity, just like the basic citizens rights to do and solve for ourselves, which benefit left and right in common, are a unifying principle which satisfies more than one socially useful expression. All boats rise stuff.

There is no one correct way of thinking and there never has been. There is especially no such thing as an enlightened intolerant orthodoxy of compassion, all orthodoxies remain prisons!

There is no perfect politics. There is no ideal system of economy, there is no perfect philosophy or way of being, not even a perfect relationship between two people who are perfectly suited.

That just isn’t the way reality works. What we can have is worthwhile struggle, and that is not about complaining to the manager, or begging government to force-fix our lives, it is about slowly becoming our truest selves, not what the TV cellphone or anyone else thinks we should be.

Because young people have had every last thing about life commodified in advance, they have come to place emotional weight in places where they are not ever likely to find satisfaction or growth.

I want to be a social media hero is an aspiration which is doomed to fail for almost everyone. I want to be a hero to my spouse and kids, good to my friends, and useful to my community? That’s a plan that (through much imperfection and struggle) absolutely does brings real practical and enduring magic into millions of otherwise normal lives.

Love is a unique fuel for our will, which can make us capable of greater strength and sacrifice than we would ever dare to reach for, let alone grow into, if we weren’t first filled with that love and magic. That precious thing which is more than can be measured.

This substitution of the immediate and very practical for the abstract, fantastic and unreachable, isn’t a new phenomena. It was long ago noticed that money often substitutes for the emotional weight of social favour, in less alienated and industrial societies. When you have hard and good times, you realize that having plenty of money somehow feels like a vote of general approval from the community. But having very little indeed feels like being banished from your family and tribe, with all backs turned against you. It is not ever just broke – we are always heartbroken too!

But symbols still aren’t the things they represent, and performances aren’t realities. We are never going to find happiness by falling in love with the shadow a beautiful woman casts on a wall!

The really frustrating thing is that both the popular and political left no longer have any deep respect for the sacred at all. But right away I must rush to note – very few people on the left have zero spiritual ideas – it is just that they prefer an entirely consumerist (fake) version of spirituality, where they pick and choose the bits they like from many religions, and sacrifice nothing at all for any. This, sad to say, completely robs it of any spiritual value whatsoever. I mean that – completely.

But – fear not – because there is actually one great and also normal place to meet across tribes, which absolutely acknowledges the crucial reality of those things far beyond any measurement.

Love is the one magic we actually can have and do share, and the driver of all our striving, growth and self-overcoming. But only if we sacrifice for and to it, faithfully. (not self-destructively – exactly the opposite - it is self-becomingly!)

Even as an atheist, when I am standing in love, I feel one central piece of every faith I’ve studied.

I know I sound loopy to some, for coming back to themes like love, when I’m trying to talk about politics and social ills. There are lots of fancier philosophical systems which offer the same idea, but as much as I love weird specialist language, I love clarity way more. The fact that love is the real magic in life, which gives our life and our struggles deeper meaning, is the most important and obvious truth that we no longer talk about, and many younger people, tragically, don’t even believe exists.

I first started dating my wife Catherine almost forty three years ago. We were both freshly hurt by personal tragedy, so we spent awhile becoming friends and establishing trust, first, which has remained a superb foundation throughout our marriage – buddies first and last!

When I look at her today, I can still see the beautiful woman I first started courting, but I can also see her many years before I knew her, as a nervous little five year old ballerina – that’s just how marriage works. Over the years, she has grown to become many new and different people, and so have I, and we have always embraced the growth and change, even when it surprised us. Love is the garden which best supports your own becoming. It also gives you reason to grow, when you realize you aren’t being what you should or want to be, for the other.

The most important thing though, is that recognizing that we are not the single most important thing in the universe is seeing TRUTH. And it is so important, so basic and so powerful a truth, that most of the world of reality, compassion, practical effort and work achieved, lies beyond it.

The bridge of fools (the Rubicon, for math geeks – or is the Rubicon the bridge of fools for history geeks?)

People on the left who are more about anger than love really are scary. I grew up in a commune that turned into a cult, and what I saw convinced me – madness collectivizes way easier and faster than aspiration – and soon destroys all the higher goals, even when their word-ghosts remain.

People on the right who are more about anger than love? Same deal. That ain’t principle, just arson.

BUT – people who are about love, on left and right, can both recognize, and see the importance of defending, common rights which all citizens need, so we can make our own efforts count, and make our lives and communities better, without being sapped or blocked by despot-monopolists.

The enemy is despotism itself – and there are despot factions on both sides (though I swear in both cases they are merely the loudest and most promoted, not the majorities, who are far saner).

The goal is a world where citizens get to work out the shape and direction of society and community by their own demonstrated will, energy and action, instead of surrendering to being herded like lambs to the slaughter by industry/NSC think-tank (and increasingly BigTech oligarch) plans for our ultimate profitability, whether as Pets or as Meat (or currently, both).

No really, folks. There is no democracy in the west, or there would be no wars, and no corruption of politics by our own oligarch class. Instead we see nothing but parties owned by oligarchs, who have spent years making us pivot the whole western world toward great war, against all popular will.

Yes folks – We are already living in a dictatorship (how better would you define it?)

So – the question is – can we defeat warmongers and monopolists with fury and mobs?

Do we really want to win the fight for humanity? Are we really determined to serve as tribalist proxy warriors, as our entire civilization burns to the ground, when we could be quenching fires and rebuilding with that same energy? (and having a f#ck of a lot more fun, simply by being useful).

We need love hearts for this – there is no other way to get it right, or to find the big team needed.

We need to be able to see beyond self, to sacrifice cheerfully, without complaint or resentment, to share and build (no, not communism – just a bit of practical ad-hoc barnraising-style teamwork!)

With team-mates like this, respect for rights and practical plans are possible, even with huge divergences in philosophy. If we let the screamers lead things – we all go off the lemming cliff!

Now I should mention a particularly fine lecture I watched the other day, which helped inspire the distillation of this piece. I think I can admit I have an intellectual crush on prof Jiang, as he is popularly known. Not least because, as an intellectual who never did high school or university, he is exactly the kind of professor I like to imagine every university student gets (a fantasy, I know – but that’s a tragedy, because it should be nothing but joy in knowledge, every single class you take).

In his introductory lecture on ‘great books’ he does an extraordinary job of sketching out the whole point of reading great books – the transformation of the human soul, no less! But he does it in a way so wide-ranging and multi-angled that it must have left attentive students breathless!

One of the reasons his thinking appeals to me so much, is that he has clearly read deeply into many different areas of study and thought (I swooned when be brought up Julian Jaynes!), where so many of our modern talking heads are deep but narrow. So overspecialized, they see nothing!

People with obvious enthusiasm for learning, and for posing ever more challenging and useful questions, end up seeing forests and trees and birds and songs and weather and forage and ambush and shelter, where the specialists are still stuck discussing the wonders of “the Larch.”

He also does something that I like to do myself (though I think he does it better). He likes to put challenging ideas in a pithy way that provokes an instinctive rejection in us, but then makes us work to think-through the reasoning of our objection, and make sure there actually is some!

A lot of what we’re wrong about feels emotionally precious to us. We very rarely respond well to rejection of our ideas. But sometimes, when we meet a new idea of obvious strength and use, we recognize we need to abandon old illusions we liked, to make new room in our mental toolkit!

Emotionally, this feels like gaining something new, not being asked to give up an old treasure. And it is, I am convinced, the most important underlying skill in all great teaching (imparting the will to learn).

Render unto Caesar, your political analysis.

Just before wrapping up, I want to touch on something important, because it is hard for people on the left to hear and understand, but also very important, in order for them to be able to show simple respect to those of faith, and thus (just that easily) earn enough trust to cooperate with them.

Many leftists openly celebrate their contempt for religion (I was one of these fools myself, for years, I’m ashamed to say) in a way which is pure tribalism and also logically flawed. The biggest lazy cliche is to blame religion for many wars, over the centuries. You can only believe this until you start reading history thoughtfully, at which point you see a whole bunch of other factors operating alongside – economic, social, tribal/regional (competition with others, for resources) etc.

The easiest analogy for this false-moral oversimplified framing is the way we so casually demonize China, Russia and Iran in the west, without ever asking – I wonder what they’d be like if we in the west, with all of our extraordinary starting advantages, hadn’t been trying to outright destroy them, for more than three quarters of a century now?

Less paranoid, less social control and less militaristic are all very safe bets, just to start. Which is to say – absolutely everything we hate most about them, is at least one part our fault.

But just as with all tribalist bad-magic, we put all our evil onto ‘the hated other’ and thus (and just that fast) we become evil. (Jung’s language for and insights on this stuff are truly fantastic, but again, I want to stay simple/clear).

So – when we are looking at history, we need to clearly distinguish the organized political entities with religious names, which indeed were often despotic, greed and power-based and sometimes openly genocidal (Cathars), from the faith itself and the long line of philosophical development of the time.

Much as it irks the old leftist in me to admit it, the most important early western philosophy comes from the ancient Greeks through (and then much explored and developed by) first Islam, and then later the Catholic church, and ignoring this extraordinarily rich, many centuries-and-cultures invested intellectual heritage, makes us all a whole lot dumber, for no possible gain whatsoever.

The reason deep thought from hundreds, or even thousands of years ago, is still fresh and relevant to human life today, is that such works always did ignore the shadows on the wall – and instead tried to engage with those far more subtle and life-imbued realities which project them.

The non-measurable (and thus non taxable or controllable) greater dimension to life. The thing we know is infinitely more than us – transcending love – in whatever form we can find and nurture inside our hearts, and share the life-force hearth-glow of, with other hearts nearby.

So – why exactly am I such an asshole, anyhow? Why do I insist on being deliberately irritating about false-sacred categories of tribalist dogma, and pointing out that stupidity is now universal (meaning sanctimony is now obsolete)?

Because I want us to win. I want love to win. I want humans together to beat evil monopolists. I want us to shut down the war machine and say no we won’t, and don’t you ever try to start one again.

I have been reading history and revolutions, failed and otherwise for decades, and there is simply no way our two fake cop-out tribes will ever get this right. They aren’t even designed to do that. They are actually designed to serve eternal imbalance, the kind of long term social breakdown and widespread community mistrust which serves despot-monopolists and no one else on earth.

What we want is healthy sustainable growth in quality of life and human dignity.

And yes I know we all define that very differently in a lot of ways – that ain’t my point.

My point is that the monopolists and despots want the opposite kind of life for all of us.

We really do have a common enemy – but it ain’t either of us!

That is to say – the loud fake idiots of both tribes must be ignored and transcended, so the people who know they aren’t the centre of the universe, but are wise enough to serve something greater, can meet and cooperate and trust one another, despite all the furious rhetoric of the idiot-hordes.

And why do I believe this is possible, despite both sides now having tons of great (BigWar/BigMedia promoted) evidence that the other side is now dangerously insane?

Because love is the thing that can make us say – I have reservations, but I’m going to set aside those feelings, because my duty says we all need to do this, and duty comes before feelings.

Now this final point is one I have made before, but it belongs here for sure. We actually do have several well-known figures from our recent history who teach us exactly how powerful and politically dangerous, serious principled and unyielding love can be and is.

Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and Fred Hampton all spent years organizing in the black community. Malcolm in particular began his career as a preacher with some astoundingly racist language about white people (arguably meant to snap black people out of a subservient trance).

Martin Luther King appealed directly to the American heart and decency, in a way which was both highly courageous and also impressively disciplined (not just him, but fellow marchers too). He won a real and important change (which was then almost instantly coopted by big-debt corporatists, as the holding down the underclass in the name of charity industrial complex was born).

Fred Hampton was probably the second most important intellectual and political mind in the Black Panther Party after Stokely Carmichael. (I’ll link to more about all three, below).

The thing is, all three of these men were outstanding organizers and posed a real challenge to state power (it was Malcolm X who J Edgar Hoover most feared might be a ‘black Jesus’.)

But every one of these three extraordinary men did something even more impressive, just before they were finally killed – by the state directly, in Hampton’s case, and indirectly in Malcolm X’s death, because Elijah Mohamed’s number two was secretly FBI (just like Hampton’s bodyguard).

With everything they knew, all the organizing power and energy they could gather and direct, they still found the will and the love to grow again, humbly, in a very big (real, not shadows) way.

In Malcolm X’s case it was the Haj which did it. Taking the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca required of any Muslim who is able, he encountered white, black and asian people all meeting together in shared faith and he had an epiphany which utterly destroyed his own racism.

I have read all of his speeches after this epiphany (and many from before, also) and the change was profound. He was no longer interested in one tribe against another (a game which can always be manipulated by the powerful, or if it gets dangerous, simply demonized and expunged) he now wanted blacks and whites both to do better, together. He saw the system for what it was and recognized that white people too were just cogs and units to capitalism. Not slavers, but hapless pawns.

In Martin Luther King’s case it was the war in Vietnam which broke his heart, and made him grow further in courage and moral clarity than he had gone before (though that was already a long way, and a lot of courage).

His still powerful Riverside speech, where he recognized the American state as the greatest purveyor of war and destruction in the entire world was a landmark of wisdom and truth-telling.

Fred Hampton worked a different scale – not operating on the national consciousness, his work was more like union organizing (and in Chicago, that was an approach that made sense in the 1970s). He was one of the leading thinkers who helped the Panthers leave behind their early incarnation as an assertive gun-rights group, and instead offer community programs, organized and run by people in the community they served.

This alone – making the Panthers neighbourhood good-guys, instead of scary blacks with guns, was already seen as threatening, by those in power (the obvious and the hidden ones, both).

But then he too had an epiphany, when he realized the poor Irish and hispanic communities were in just as bad a state as the poor blacks he was trying to raise up, and he started working with the people who were organizing those communities, to create shared aspirations for better.

All three were killed within months of their greatest achievements in love.

Nothing is more dangerous to the oppressive state, to tyrannies, or to monopolist oligarchs, than the ability to know the world that casts the shadow, the world of surpassing love itself, is the world where we most truly exist, and which all those of great heart are called upon to serve.

Knowing that, we become a part of the greater and immortal. Unstoppable, even in death. (with the exact same days and energy we could also use to shop, mope, complain and choose uselessness – and mostly do).

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have to confess the deluge of maybe stories and screwed up strategies (and all the downstream disasters from these, which are not even slightly guesswork) are hurting my head right now. Still monitoring many sources (Sean Foo Mark Wauck and The Duran are daily essentials) but everything in the geopolitical world is up in the air now – we’re trapped in Schrodinger’s news-cycle, so I don’t have a big collection of links for you today – just a few tasty things.

But first, I’m having fun with this bibliography thing – so let’s start there, once again.

Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut

May just be the best ever (and certainly one of the most darkly funny) fictional take on the deep madness of the war state. The fact that Vonnegut’s brother was a scientist working on crazy projects much like this, and the strangely enchanted culture he invents, to contrast against our worldview, makes it hit all the sweeter and harder.

The Natural Way To Draw – Nicolaides

Working as an art model for a dozen years I sat for and talked to a lot of art instructors. Every single one of them had high respect for this book, and “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.” (by Betty Edwards). Both are absolute masterpieces of enablement, even for people who think they have no artistic talent. If you have an art kid, get them both (and they’ll ace first year art school)

The Book (on the taboo against knowing who you are) – Alan Watts

As I’ve mentioned, I’m an atheist who reads a lot of theology (certainly, more than most atheists!) – again, because I put duty ahead of feelings, and strong useful thought ahead of general labels.

But this is a piece of purest theology which will not offend any atheist at all, because Watts does something especially inviting and embracing – he does not insist on a framework, but rather invites us to recognize a greater reality being inadequately described by so many of our frames.

The Wisdom of the Idiots – Idries Shah

This is the first book of Sufi stories and wisdom I ever encountered, and still my most beloved. The form feels almost like fairy tales, but the themes are so subtle, and so obviously about true things that we aren’t good at discussing, you won’t be able to put it down, or stop re-reading it.

Flight To Arras – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I know everyone loves “The Little Prince” (me included), but as an airplane keener, I read everything the man published (that was translated into English). Exupery was not only a writer, but also a civil pilot in the early days of aviation, when courage, skill and luck were most called for. This phase of his writing richly portrayed a vanished heroic age, when new things were still being tried, and new risks taken. Flight to Arras (1942) is the last adult work he published while he was alive (second last before The Little Prince 1943). His writing is outstanding, his insights delicious, but most impressively he manages to tell an action story, a tragedy, and also a deep meditation on the fall of a great nation and empire (his own, France) with great intelligence throughout – plus, exquisite concision! (a talent popular writers lost, mid 20^th century) Easy and short read, too (just 100 pages or so) – but unforgettable, all the same!

For those who don’t know – Exupery was killed flying a reconnaissance mission in WWII (because he insisted on flying, they didn’t want him taking the risk). Some new evidence suggests that knowing it was the last flight they would allow him, he may have taken a detour to fly over the home where he grew up and may even have lost his life, because of that entirely in-character offering to sentiment and connection.

Now here’s that extraordinary lecture from Professor Jiang. I swear, if I had been in that class as a young man I would have danced, run and jumped all the way home (or, straight to the library!)

Great Books – Part One – Professor Jiang

(“Predictive History” on Youtoob and Substack)

Here’s my own piece about the Panthers and the cost and threat to illegitimate power, of real and transcending love

And finally, here’s a weird short film I made a few years ago, which seems to hold up.

Note for new readers – auto-estimated reading times are greatly exaggerated (lots of pix/links)

Hey Folks!

Apologies for the delay – I have a number of serious and hefty pieces underway, but they are all resisting easy articulation as yet (that is, I have thrown out quite a few well-meant mediocrities to start again, rather than share half-baked takes on big ideas that deserve proper treatment, before they deserve your attention).

Meanwhile – my amazing wife, noticing the toll that concentrating on the state of ever escalating madness is taking on my spirits, keeps telling me to take a break and write a new song (few things do more to remind me that happiness is not strictly rational – nor is it supposed to be!)

But my focus on war and propaganda is almost exactly a half century old now – as a (crazy) kid in the mid seventies, I used to spend hours in the downtown reference library, reading newspapers from the first world war on microfilm, to try to understand the manipulative stories (lies) the public was being told, while I was also reading detailed histories of the war, which made the truths then being hidden much clearer (though a great deal of spin persists, even to this day).

I spent my teenage years studying the American invasion of Vietnam (only honest way to describe it) with that same kind of lens – what were people told, compared to what was actually happening (and how and where did the propaganda and resistance to war, either work or fail).

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It might sound like a screwy analogy to some – but as a guy who enjoys playing sports, but never got into watching others play them (unless you count chess), this geopolitical moment is kind of like the Superbowl for me. My home town isn’t actually in the big game, but it’s still the game I’ve been thinking about and waiting for, for an awfully long while (with dread, but still...)

So – looking away is just not one of those things I can do. But, I can still write silly songs – and yesterday, after setting up my music rig again (which is simple, but still so much more powerful than my early analog garbage-find set-up, it always makes me giggle with delight), I found myself jotting down a bunch of rough ideas for lyrics. Things I’ve been trying to say in essays, that seemed to want a more direct expression – and then I stumbled on a whole new problem.

I should clarify – ever since I was a teenager, I have been making three different kinds of music. Instrumental improvisations (best with friends), silly light-hearted songs (I’ll link to one below) and songs with political or philosophical ideas (again, I’ll share a couple of links below). Sometimes, when I’m really on, I even manage to do light-hearted AND political (tricky recipe).

The funny thing about my more political stuff is that I was writing songs a quarter of a century ago which struck most of my listeners as way too strong for the (seemingly peaceful and prosperous) moment – directly challenging empire, consumerism, stupidity hypocrisy and dumb factionalism.

And now that the moment itself is clearly dire, to outright majorities, I suddenly realize that we have almost destroyed the idea of free discourse, since last time I went at dark subjects, hard.

That is to say, I found myself having some serious self-censorship problems with a silly song!

So – rather than surrender the fun of the song – or – surrendering to self-censorship, I’m going to make those dangerous themes the themes of this short essay – and thus let that song in potentia free to find a new theme, as it gradually comes together by chaotic and fortuitous meandering.

Did you ever have that feeling where you have a whole bunch of different ideas in your head at once, and you’re sure there is some rational way to gather and braid together all of their threads?

I’m a junkie for isomorphisms anyhow – things that you learn from one area of study or curiosity, which then give you useful clues in another area. But sometimes it feels bigger than that, like there is some grand mathematical theory or structure which applies to seemingly disparate elements in-common, and thus unifies them in some functional sense, which we usually overlook because of the (perception-obliterating) emotional weight of the ‘meanings’ or narrative level.

My regular readers will have often seen me write “And now I’m going to do my favourite trick – anger everyone at once!” These uncomfortable to face connections, are what I’m always after.

Today, instead of just facing specific foolishnesses against one another, I want to zoom out to the grand scale and try to wield some generalities (hazardous, in itself) to useful purpose.

First though, I want to mention something fun about writing (why you should do it yourself, for any or no reason at all, often, and not with an AI). When you sit down to set words in order, you often surprise yourself by discovering an insight that you already had, but hadn’t ever articulated clearly enough to put in your mental toolkit, where you can make regular use of it.

Mike Mihajlovic from the excellent Black Mountain Analysis substack recently wrote a piece about the very important differences in education between officers in the Russian and American armed forces (link below). Essentially, Russian officers study hard sciences like math physics and engineering, where the Americans are far more likely to study humanities, political science, economics, etc (quite a few very serious historical scholars in the mix, too).

This makes the Russians fantastic at things like logistics, systems understanding and integration, where the Americans tend to be better at creating popular images, political appearances, and the coalitions and frameworks of justification which can only be sustained by such grand long-arc narratives. (Classic empire skills, really – just skipping the ancient Latin and Greek).

I just had to respond to him, and as I did, I found myself saying something clearly, that I have known quite awhile, but never quite characterized so precisely. Here’s the key exerpt.

“...I’m a bit of a contradiction, I’m a pacifist who has been reading military history and trying to figure out the reality of often obscured history (20th century especially) ever since I was a kid. I’m also a natural scholar/autodidact, who didn’t attend school until I was an adult (cult, long story).

Plus, I’m a naturally romantic minded (artist type) who became a technician and loved it (nothing did more to improve my artistic work than hard-reality science – it works or it fails – mindset). Because I’ve been trying to untangle lies and historical distortions since I was a book crazy kid (70s) I also ended up being a Russophile during the cold war (mostly because I was so obsessed about the Soviet Space program) and was always amazed, as I bought more and more cool stuff from the MIR press bookstore then in Toronto, by the outstanding quality of educational rigour and popular science writing. I read lots of Asimov, but I read Zeldovich too – and those small green mathematics monographs MIR used to print are still my all time favourite math books!

And still – western ignorance and bias is so thick and deep that it wasn’t until I spent a decade working alongside a group of Russians (and Africans also) in the 90s that I began to really understand the difference between our western approach to education and that in many other places, where they are still taking what I can only describe as a more serious approach to forming far more capable and flexible humans.

Yes – the work was technical (so my friends were pre-sorted for especially sharp and educated) and all the same, the more I talked to them, the more I realized they had a lot of things to draw upon, which most of my friends in the west do not – in a way that makes us less capable and more smug. May sound paranoid, but I’ve come to see this as deliberate/functional – creating less mature people who rely more on feelings and less on hard realities makes better consumers (suckers) and thus ‘serves society’ in a way which ‘works’, except that it excludes general excellence.

In writing about the conflict in Ukraine, I am forced back to this point again and again, and I find myself there once again with Iran. We are talking about fantasy people who start from an emotional position (I am the best) and then work backward to rationalize it, versus people who start from observations about reality, and then proceed to work a realistic plan for success.

Non-serious people versus serious people. And that isn’t left or right or political party based, it is a cultural gulf which is based mostly on how profitable it is, to keep most adults infantilized.”

Some sayings weigh a lot. I adore “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it.”

That’s not a perfect fit for my key theme today, but it is a great starting place. Every movement starts-off tiny, with a very small number of people who each have a huge amount of faith in the greater project. Over time, a lot of movements gain many ‘adherents’ who do not understand the original ‘way that you do it’ spirit of the ideas (meant to contribute to a greater project), but instead like to use the ideas for a selfish purpose. Usually an excuse or blame-sink – a framework of reasoning which lets us feel good, by blaming and hating others (most often in total ignorance).

Folks from the left don’t usually study Christianity much (or honestly) – but just as I’m a pacifist who studies military history, I’m also an atheist who takes many lessons of value from religion.

Why was there a schism between Catholics and Protestants in the first place? It is actually really simple – the Catholic Church had let it’s temporal manifestation as a political organization corrupt the spiritual side very nearly completely. The clear and outrageous proof of this, which so offended millions of Christians that they broke from the church completely to form a new branch of faith, was what were called “Papal Indulgences.” An institution by which the rich could purchase absolution from their sins, in exchange for a particular specified (always large) donation to the Church.

The New Testament doesn’t work like that, folks – as has been observed by many, the New Testament is in-effect, fairness, justice, mercy and courageous truth-telling, anti-tribalist software. (it is not only that, I mean no disrespect – only to call attention to the great civilizational value therin).

I would even argue that Marxism itself (especially if you study many tendencies within it) derives above all from an outraged Christian sensibility – but that’s a different essay, for another time.

The point is, the Catholic Church of the time was betraying Christian principles in the most obvious possible way, and everyone could see it. They blew their credibility and the respect of the masses in exchange for loot and power, and as a result, they were never so powerful (world-striding) again.

(I could make an argument that the USSR ultimately did the same to Bolshevism, if not Marxism also – but that should probably be the second half of that not-today essay, hinted at, above). ;o)

Now let me put some of this broad-strokes stuff in more concrete (make everyone mad) terms, just so you can grapple-with and perhaps make use of some of these mental tools yourself (or at very least learn better arguments, as you work your way through to rejecting them rationally).

The Problem with Modern Feminism is that it is completely wrong about what men are.

(Large numbers of young women now speak about men with the same kind of venom hatred and ignorance which were once associated with southern racists in the USA – who we should remember were all democrats).

The Problem with Modern Gender Theory is it is wrong about straight and gay people.

(Real individual human lives and relationships are infinitely more important than theories and ever more alienating categories – and have been, always and forever.)

The Problem with Modern (Western) Political Theory is that it is wrong about what the entire rest of the world is like – what it wants, how it acts and what it thinks.

(Failure to obey the rapacious demands of western energy and capital is not in fact a failure of morality, as we have both asserted and mass-murdered on the basis of, for many decades now, without any pause for reflection, let far alone war crimes trials).

The Problem with Modern “Anti-Racism” is it is wrong about what white people are.

(See feminism above – the attribution of malice to categories is psychotic bigotry – full stop.)

The Problem with Modern Nativism is it is wrong about who does and doesn’t fit in.

(I’ll treat this in much more detail in a future essay, but simplifying) – some newcomers are even more “us” than we are anymore (in our sadly dissipated and degraded state), and some others really do not help us make what is best about us better. Making this distinction is both reasonable and important for society.

The Problem with Modern Nationalism is it is wrong about relations and about power.

You can’t have a representative aspirational government if it represents only the powerful. True national resurgence requires a great overturning of soil and mid-wit financializing parasites, to be successful. (And that is just as true for any country in Europe, as it is for the USA and for Canada).

The Problem with Modern Leftism is you can’t win the centre with ignorant tantrums.

(You need sane historically grounded policy, field-tested by principled outliers, and ready to go). Mobs of narcissistic Papal indulgence seekers will never move policy in a stable consensus-backed way (nor should they ever be allowed to move it at all).

The Problem with Modern Conservatism is you can’t save what is already dead (sorry).

The biggest motivation for old conservatives at this point is a nostalgia for traditions they already sacrificed two generations ago, when political conservatism took a turn toward capital, and away from social integrity and community values (a real and enduring part of the right which most leftists deny just as often and foolishly as the right denies the history of worker/community centred aspirations on the populist left).

The Problem with Modern New-Right thinkers is – you can’t persuade until you transcend fury

(same brick wall the left has been bashing their head against for a half a century – deploy that freakin’ intellect already - learn lessons!)

People keep arguing that their favourite isms can be defined solely on the basis of the best possible ideas those systems offer. Absolute horseshit. The question is – who is there because they actually took the New Testament universal fairness software update on board seriously – and who is still a vengeful and bigoted tribalist, out to buy and sell (and above all, legitimize) Papal indugences!

At this point (made incalculably worse by the funhouse distortion lenses of BigWar/BigMedia) about ninety percent of the representations we see of all sides and isms are pretty much batshit crazy.

That is to say – every system of ideas that might be helpful, or provide us individual humans with useful clues, to solve the great big mess which we all have to deal-with in common (and which offends us in surprisingly similar ways, despite all our factionalism) is constantly being discredited, to everyone who isn’t already inside it.

Obviously this helps the powerful, by making us think we need them. But it also makes those who rely on any particular way of understanding the world (system for knowing who to always blame) feel as if they are being unfairly persecuted and misrepresented (true, on all sides) so they can bond over their (legitimate) shared paranoia! (Thus digging themselves ever deeper into emotionally reinforced tribal ignorance).

This is the damned crazy-making thing (for the factionless hope-scouts, like me). There are still quite a few on the left who have useful ideas about making economics work for normal humans, instead of shareholders – but they are now drowned out by ignorant bigoted Papal Indulgence seekers. Likewise, there is a staggering amount of intellectual energy on the new right, seeking creative means to re-light the spark of culture and aspiration – but they are demonized in the crudest scare-tactic terms by BigMedia – mostly because they hate our talentless, unethical, entitled and over-empowered elites with even more fury than the old left – which is a f#ck of a lot.

Demonizing the left is about empowering the state to smite individuals, and ignore rights!

Demonizing the right is about empowering the state to smite individuals, and ignore rights!

The pattern is not hard to see, if our eyes are more open to reality, than fond of dogma.

Feminism as fairness and dignity for all? – Definitely! As bigotry? FUCK OFF (as to all bigots)

Christianity which advocates universal brotherhood? – Definitely! To fuel war? FUCK OFF

See how that works? The word is the trap – the symbol is not the thing itself (the map is not the territory). But we get so comfortable thinking it is, we end up doing logic operations on words and building great big traps of dogma for ourselves, without remembering to step back and check the mirror on a regular basis, and keep somehow finding a way to laugh, when we realize (yet again).

“Oh crap, there’s the stupid asshole that’s really been bothering me, right there, looking back.”

So – what is wisdom, really?

It is simple as can be – and the only reason no one tells young people this stuff anymore is that we have delegated everything, to commercial and authority systems outside of personal care and contact (a fatal mistake, culturally).

The self-help industry will tell you all kinds of wonderful sounding things (and offer many potential solutions, wacky and otherwise). They want to sell you a system, a conformity, a cop-out.

I have studied a lot of books of great religious weight, and found some key common points – but the most interesting way in, to me, is the intellectual approach taken by Julian Jaynes, who looked at ancient texts scientifically, and used the clues he found, to reconstruct the evolution of modern consciousness (in his masterwork – “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” – an absolutely wonderful mind-blower, super-smart and unputdownable).

In grossly simplified terms, he found that ancient people shared common stories (almost always inheritances of respect for notable people who had gone before, ancestors etc.) to such an extent that the dead could actually still speak to them (through household gods) because their awareness was in no way alienated from the stories which bound them and helped give their always-shared lives meaning.

Only when these early tribal societies started encountering other societies, which did not share their stories, was a new kind of awareness needed. This was (and remains) kind of traumatic – we have to leave behind the comfort of our ‘everything story’ and the warm embracing feeling of total tribal belonging. But when we do recognize our own story was just a story the whole time, and those from other tribes have their own stories, we gain a level of independent awareness, which can be found no other way.

In crudest possible terms, then – wisdom is about getting over yourself, so you can work with bigger ideas than your own personal rationalizations allow (and serve higher purposes, too).

Getting really wise, is about letting the world take you apart over and over again, so you can put the pieces together in a more capable flexible and useful way, without ever being destroyed by it.

I have a few personal musical heroes who exemplified this especially well. Absolute virtuoso level players, who nevertheless took themselves back to school humbly, repeatedly, in mid career, just so they could reach one rung higher still. Most importantly, they never surrendered the fresh witness and joy of student-mind, because of something as transitory as mere accomplishment or attention (and why would you, when the fresh witness and joy – the life of it – is the point?)

I think of the much missed Uli Bonhet in particular – who studied with Jaco Pastorius himself – and was a highly sought after bass player in Toronto for decades, but went back to basics to reconstruct his entire playing technique, when he encountered the amazing work and approach of Gary Willis.

When I make friends like that, I try my best to pay attention and remember – if someone that excellent can also be that humble, open, and generous with life lessons – what’s my excuse for brash certainty?

For a more precise first hand wisdom find – after many years servicing gear for aspiring and professional musicians I can tell you – there are a hell of a lot more working musicians who are excellent and also genuinely nice people (over themselves), than there are divas and tantrum throwing savants. Sure, the divas and bratty savants exist, they just don’t work very much, for very long – because if you had a choice, wouldn’t you rather hire someone who was nice to be and work with – who could easily hear and understand your story clearly, as well as their own? (and know that ask is simple fairness, not an aggressive imposition upon otherwise perfect tribalist equanimity?)

As I put it a few years ago (in one of the songs linked below)

“Righteous is as bias think, and by that standard we all stink

Reality is something else, much bigger than the tantrum self”

Okay now – just because I keep promising myself to do a compact one, sometimes – and also because I really do think some ideas fit better in songs than essays (and some in poems, paintings, films, etc), I’m going to finish this piece with a little playlist of some of my tunes which danced around parts of this general (can’t we maybe try integrity compassion and intelligence in common together?) theme.

Links to cool stuff by other people (as usual) below the main piece

“Simple Simple” – is my current favourite light/political blend. One of several which sprung from lock-down stir-craziness, and yet emerged with a kind of positivity that really surprised me.

“Flywheel” – is my current favourite light/sweet/lovesong for my wife Catherine – again opens with some lockdown referents you’ll all remember, but then goes right past that, to the reason why we bother doing anything worthwhile, which is absolutely always love (in some form).

“One Won Family” – is a big chaotic mess of a political philosophical song – I used nothing but free virtual instruments to make this one (hence combos like banjo/xylophone) just to put myself back in silly musical kid mode again. I also used free archive video for the first time – way fun!

“Sticky Planet” – is by far the softest and best-received of the “end of our way of life” songs I was doing a quarter of a century ago (when this whole mess first became completely obvious to me). Much richer acoustic instrumentation than my recent stuff (more studio space, youthful fingers and embochures).

“Whimsy” – is a perfect example of my pure silliness songs. It’s also one of several that I wrote years ago, and have recorded a few different times, to try to get the right spirit. I sincerely wish I could make a video for and then post my all-time silliest tune, “My Dacha is a Yurt” but I honestly can’t find the tape anymore (900+ recordings, makes it tricky to find anything, honestly). Maybe time for a new version?...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

First, let’s do another Bibliography – some rich and stimulating treats for my younger book loving (or book-curious) friends in particular, to go digging for. (keep those bookstores open!)

“The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” by Julian Jaynes is one of those books that will change how you think about everything – people, social groups, history, even thinking itself! Even better, he really is using clear reason and rigour, to almost forensically reconstruct phases of human understanding and being from our past, which continue to echo powerfully today (in ways which are very hard to explain and understand, otherwise).

I should also mention – I bought this book blind, simply because one of the blurbs on the back said (paraphrasing) “I honestly fear for the sanity of a man capable of conceiving so vast a thesis!”

“The Great War for Civilization” by Robert Fisk is my favourite kind of history – the sort (like the Malraux I suggested last time) which includes personal witness as well as depth of reflection. He combines what he saw as a war reporter, with his grandfather’s service as a soldier in WWI. Outstanding meditation on history empire and hubris.

“The Scramble for Africa” by Frances Pakenham is sobering reading for those millions of righteous westerners who love to take moral positions on affairs in countries they actually know nothing at all about (often less than – that is, their only ‘knowledge’ is power serving propaganda). Pakenham’s writing is exquisitely engaging and readable, especially considering the useful clue-filled detail he gets into, about the games of politics and economics in the individual great powers which together carved up Africa for entirely “moral” reasons (just ask them – or us – we can rationalize anything – famously including – destroying a village in order to save it).

For my younger music loving friends, do look up and listen to Jaco Pastorius (best known for his outstanding work with Joni Mitchell – from which you may already know him, without realizing it, and Weather Report). He personally invented the modern fretless electric bass (pulled the frets out of his bass with pliers, then filled-in the fretboard to make it smooth – then invented a whole new style of playing – which has been admired (and copied endlessly) ever since.

Also, for my friends who love jazz with insanely tight technical chops, you just have to check out Gary Willis. Not only will his bass playing completely freak you out – he seems to know some of the most energetic and musical drummers alive – OMG the level of complex brilliance shared and traded (and yet, for all the chances taken, never once dropped!)

I have to share this truly amazing talk – professor Jiang is always exciting to listen to (though do be careful you are listening to him, and not an AI fake of him – several of which get many views).

He combines a view of history which is very deep and daring (the decadent Rome parallels are perhaps obvious – but to link those with the complexities of modern policy so brilliantly, is very rare) with a perspective which understands the west, but is not rooted-in and does not live inside its key illusions.

In some ways, Jimmy Dore is one of the last old school leftists alive. He believes in workers and citizens and rights and challenging illegitimate authority, regardless of the label. The two of them together bring out things which I have never heard before from either. Truly wonderful.

I particularly like the way you can see them inspire each other, as they talk. (what talking is for!) Make time for this one - exciting interesting and thought provoking!

Jimmy Dore and professor Xuequin Jiang

Here’s that very interesting essay about the differences in Russian and American military education from Mike Mihajlovic at Black Mountain Analysis

Black Mountain Analysis

Notes on Military Education Approaches in Russia and the United States [i]

A persistent and consequential distinction between the Soviet/Russian and U.S./Western military systems lies in the way their officer corps are educated and intellectually formed. This divergence is …

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5 months ago · 100 likes · 13 comments · Mike Mihajlovic

For those who are still hung up on an emotional insistence on the importance of faction, here’s something both bracing and brilliant, about the continuity of agenda behind all the imbeciles who we are supposed to take seriously as Oz – even though we can see the puppet-masters hand shoved up their ass (just not the puppet-masters face – or why bother having puppets at all?)

“...The difference between Trump and his predecessors is not that he does anything fundamentally different, but that he does not pretend to be doing something else. Others issued threats with a rehearsed smile and a thin layer of diplomatic poetry; his style is closer to that of Stojan—the coarse, blunt father figure played by Miki Manojlović in the serbian film Rane—who tells his neighbor, portrayed by Jelisaveta Sabljić, that he will quite literally “defecate on Stradun” in “her Dubrovnik”. The substance, however, is the same.

In that sense, it is difficult to see how Trump’s crudity differs in essence from that of former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his opponent in the 2016 election, who stated: “I want the Iranians to know that if I am president, we will attack Iran. Regardless of the stage of development of their nuclear program, if they were ever to consider an attack on Israel, we would be able to completely obliterate them.”

This brings us to what John Bellamy Foster, a Marxist theorist not prone to caricatured explanations, has articulated with notable precision: oligarchy in the United States is not a novelty that “arrived with Trump.” It has long been a structural feature—only after the crisis of 2008 did it cease to feel the need to disguise itself. The concentration of capital has reached a point where it is no longer sufficient for capital merely to influence the state—it must govern it directly. And once it does, why maintain the pretense that it does not?

Foster goes further, noting something that sounds almost dystopian, yet is entirely grounded in reality: the most powerful sectors of contemporary capital—especially high-tech industries—are deeply dependent on military spending and military technologies. Put plainly: without war, there is no profit; without profit, no growth; without growth, no system. War, therefore, is not a mistake or a correctable anomaly. It is a business model.”

Savage Minds

The Empire of Cannibals

One of the most widespread forms of intellectual laziness—still sold globally as a mark of moral sophistication—is the tendency t…

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5 months ago · 310 likes · 3 comments · Vuk Bačanović

Finally – please stop projecting reason on to what’s happening in the word, by assuming that our leaders are sensible enough to try to save the economy and our way of life. Not the plan, folks! (and they aren’t that sensible, just empty-shirt careerists)

fabio vighi

They Needed a Recession

Last week a series of signals flickered across the financial system. Investors tried to pull hundreds of millions from a Carlyle private credit fund. The US government quietly revised economic growth down toward stall speed. Analysts began admitting that a large portion of the AI data-centre boom exists only on paper…

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5 months ago · 49 likes · 3 comments · fabio vighi

Yeah okay, sorry – I owe you one more silly, after all that yikes

(here’s one for all the lapsed crazy club kids)

Note for new readers – auto-estimated reading times are greatly exaggerated (lots of pix/links)

Hey folks

I now write on social media, but my regular readers know I usually try my best to offer something with some ‘book spirit’ to it, some philosophical insights, some relevant historical ideas, some ways to relate these to our modern lives and some ideas about how we might each/all do better.

I mentioned recently that I’m a thoughtful introvert, but aware enough to know that that is not the only way people think about and approach the world. I’m also an atheist, who does not disparage those of faith with ignorant sneering. I am very interested in all solutions, and I don’t pretend observable errors disprove entire lines of thought, nor that my own ideas should be (or could be) made universal.

But far more important than these ideas about ‘where I’m coming from’, I am a man of peace not by some intellectual formulation, but out of absolute necessity. I come from a cult full of child rapists and their still smug enablers. If I was to give-in to the full anger in my heart, it would destroy me.

The most interesting comment I ever heard about this was from Ben Kingsley, when he was talking about how he approached portraying Gandhi, in Richard Attenborough’s film about him. He said (I paraphrase) that in trying to understand Gandhi’s extraordinary pacifism, especially in the context of showing the formation of his character and ideas, he realized that Gandhi needed that level of mastery to overcome his own entirely righteous and otherwise consuming anger.

Of course I’m not trying to say I’m like Gandhi – only that we all come to ideas and positions for different reasons. Those who are grounded in literally life-saving motivations, can sometimes become frustrated by others, who are playing with ideas and word patterns as if they are mere logic puzzles, with no human cost associated with them whatsoever. Even more frustrating are those who actively seek out rationalized vexations in a never-ending quest, so that they always have something to blame for being miserable as human beings. I don’t play that (or like it).

Anyhow – today I want to move a bit faster than usual, though of course, being me, there will be history and ideas aplenty. The first idea I need, just to be able to speed-up my usual pace, is a funny threshold that I have noticed myself, ever since I was a teenage ‘radical’ (in my own mind).

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When we have a feeling of anger or mistrust about ‘them’, we are immediately willing to consider and seriously contemplate far more shocking sets of data and explanation ideas, than we are in those areas or about those groups which we consider “in-groups” or “one of us.”

What this means is that we are much more skeptical about serious criticism directed at things that we like, and far too credulous when it comes to satisfyingly nasty ideas about ‘the opposition’.

As I mentioned a few pieces ago “Conspiracy Theory” was a phrase literally invented by the f#cking CIA as a cultural weapon, (that is, as a way to train us ‘normal’ sneering halfwits to stay blind to CIA malfeasance instinctively) because CIA has done nothing but conspire against American democracy and the interests of normal American citizens ever since their inception (really).

Sadly, pretty much everyone in the west now has a little circuit installed in their heads which filters incoming information, and throws about half of what we actually need (to be informed citizens with some role in steering democracy) into the ‘conspiracy theory’ trash bin, unread.

Gross but true – one part of your brain (and mine) is already working for CIA for free!

Today I’m going to move so fast that some might feel their conspiracy theory alarm bells going off. I’ll try to give a nice bibliography at bottom, as well as my usual links. Believe me folks, I don’t just ramble and rant about stuff from thin air, I study like a maniac (for a half a century) and then rant!

You know you are an essayist when – you find yourself introducing a second key cultural/philosophical concept, before you can even start to sum-up the reality and meaning of the latest news! This one is not just absolutely required for today’s purposes, its importance for understanding itself, is HUGE.

The difference between systems which openly limit speech, and ones which do not, is that in a system which allows for ‘free speech’ the powerful are obligated to control what people want to say.

Systems where the rules are much clearer, even where they are also harsher, do not rely upon the continuous generation of a seamless bewitching illusion, in order to effectively manipulate popular understanding, simply to govern. They coerce first, then persuade as a (relative) afterthought.

But when below their threshold of coercion altogether, you are in many ways more free.

Most of the arguments and energy in ‘advanced western culture’ (the long powerful but now fast-imploding illusion of western ethics, supremacy and legitimacy) is spent on crafting wonderful and emotion-stirring lies, which are carefully designed to obscure the forces players and interests truly in contention.

The reason that trick works on us so well, and keeps right on working, despite the ruinous consequences, is that we live inside a constellation of myths, anyhow.

For anyone who wonders why I keep using “BigWar/BigMedia” to denote the completely unethical scumbags in corporate media, it is because they have been complicit in every war the west has fought – lying to help justify mass murder (whipping the public into a racist frenzy) and then covering up war crimes and fresh mass murders (cause when it’s about us, it’s a conspiracy theory).

These lie promoters are not just serving power, they are faithful accomplices to mass murder – going all the way back to the Vietnam war (and much further still, but I’ll leave that aside today - no sense triggering that bell early now, is there?)

So, one of my considerations when I write (and a constant question, when I read others) is – just how much reality can one discuss, before people stop being open and considering thoughtfully, and instead their CIA BigWar-BigMedia trained immune-response kicks in, so they shut down all new thinking completely and doubt even the sound and useful clues they’ve already accepted?

All of which means that talking about culture and politics is now a lot like cult-deprogramming!

Okay now – strap-in, folks – I’m hitting the turbos!

Globalists ARE the Epstein class – that’s why they’re scary. When your entire society is being actively parasitized and destroyed from within, hollowed out economically, culturally and in terms of rights and citizen thriving for decades in a row without pause, right in front of your eyes, we are not talking about a conspiracy theory – but a clear and long existing conspiracy FACT!

The western provoked and demanded war on Russia was already a huge capitulation to our fascism – so was the western world wide fear/anger politicization of illness caused by the US military industrial complex run amuck (like CIA, way beyond any sound democratic citizen supervision).

My friends, the old arguments are nothing but nostalgia – obsolete – it’s that simple, we are into the hundredth page of this creepy script now – and everyone we hear, is still trying to blame the page before this, for starting it.

Did you know the Iranians are referring to this war as “Operation Epstein Fury?” Quite rightly, too, but as I mentioned above, it is (darkly) hilarious how selective the readings from Epstein in BigMedia have been, thus far. Very much like the grotesquely racist war coverage, even in countries which are officially opposed, or else tactically abstaining without clearly opposing (the double chicken-shit play, favoured by most of the proudest hypocrite-shill nations, like my own, Canada).

The thing about Epstein which is really scary is that he instantly PROVES the left right political divide was a scam, this whole freakin’ time. People, Noam Chomsky was palling around with Steve Bannon!

So far, the single scariest quote from the files that I’ve come across (sourced from multiple directions) was an email from a Hollywood director, to Epstein.

“I was thinking about that discussion you and Bill Gates were having, about how do we get rid of the poor people? I have an idea.”

The reason that one gave me double chills, was because it fits perfectly with the scariest quote I ever heard from someone pretending to give a shit about the environment (despite being a scheming, relentless, honourless, backstabbing cut-throat monopolist his whole damn life).

While discussing carbon footprints and population numbers, and with a big smile on his face, Bill Gates looked right at the camera and said: “Obviously, one of these numbers has to go to zero”

This next is powerful circumstantial (but very powerful) rather than ‘smoking gun’ clear, but...

Peace in Israel (the 1990s Helsinki process take on a two-state solution) was the last great chance for a stable peaceful Israel well-integrated with the local nations and economies. That is, for an Israel which was more solid and stable than a western proxy crusader state, directing long term war against Islam. It was likely destroyed by Epstein’s hold on Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak.

Okay now – before we even get into the question of this latest (more insane than any in memory) war – let’s quickly review the extraordinary economic shitstorm we were already in, anyhow.

Before Trump entered office and started his utterly incoherent tariff war on everyone (actually a shakedown for the world’s lunch-money, by the world’s increasingly senile and infirm bully) the RCMP in Canada had already compiled a (thankfully leaked) report predicting mass civil unrest in Canada because of rapidly declining economic conditions. This is before Trump, and war.

And folks, this is Canada. I live in Toronto, the biggest city. When they built our newish police headquarters, they gave it glass walls, then put a rock-garden of loose fist-sized stones all around it, and didn’t even notice for a decade, until we won the world series, and a celebratory mob drew near (after which they glued all the stones down firmly, with concrete). My point is, we just don’t do riots. Protests, definitely. But unrest ain’t us – which makes me even more worried for my friends afar, with even worse economic prospects ahead, and far lower cultural thresholds for mass disturbance (looking at you, England and France). Canucks might seem a simple folk to some, but we are lucky enough to have plenty of resources at least. Ain’t gonna run out of food.

AI is another very big chip on the modern playing board (superb insightful essay below, about impact on work and what models might work for economies in future). But just as that scary quote from the Epstein files is much more scary when you add Gates, I can’t help suspecting that one part of what is being hidden behind the AI hype, is a major war between banking factions.

I used to disdain economics, even while I was a maniac for history. I now regret that a lot, because the same can be said about the second world war. Two sets of capitalists fighting for banking dominance, yet still paying licensing fees and still actively manufacturing for the ‘enemy’. (Only “Catch 22” and “Gravity’s Rainbow” catch the madness)

The next insight came from the strangest of sources, Aleksander Dugin, who noticed that the American deep-state was so deeply in control of the US government (for more than a half century now) that the only way Trump could have taken power is with the backing of a B-faction within that deep state. A faction of super-powerful who have a different plan, and have planned.

The other bankers. The second team of secret string-pulling creeps. But please note, both teams always use us as endlessly expendable pawns of no consequence or moral weight whatsoever.

So, when you’re thinking about the advocates of bold new AI governance, especially those who have long participated in tasking computers with assassination and mass murder campaigns, and also in violating the rights (and psychological health) of citizens wholesale with ‘workarounds’ to escape morality with legal loopholes, add the idea of the B-team of would-be dominators of the world.

And please remember, those who are not in control but feel it close, are way more willing to smash stuff that those in control both extract profit from, and are also obligated to maintain.

There is a ton to be said about AI on the cultural and human level, and what it is and isn’t – but I want to zoom-out to a whole different perspective for a moment – just to do a reality check.

If you take away the buildout of DataCentres (mostly for AI) and growth of gambling revenues, (hilariously accounted as a GDP positive) the US economy has not had ANY growth in three years.

Problem is, there are already huge problems finding enough power for these data-centres, and the plans to build new generating capacity are literally decades slower than the plans for AI growth.

All this while these tech companies are cross-investing on a staggering scale (meaning any hazard or headwinds for one, risks crashing the whole interlocked network of co-financiers). Some estimate the AI bubble is roughly five times bigger than the dot-com bubble. Some say eight.

Meanwhile, McKinsey reports that so far, the vast majority of corporations are finding AI of much less use than was promised (though the essay below makes the other argument, well).

So – even without any of the new tariff or war stresses, we were already running very close to the bone, gambling on long-shots for which we had not planned adequate infrastructure, and lying hard, to make it seem as if this (or any of the last ten versions of the casino game) was a ‘plan’.

In contrast, the Chinese have the most solar in the world, the most wind power in the world, the most coal, the most nuclear under construction, the most... you get the picture. Power, they got!

Some of you may have heard BigMedia say “China gets most of its oil from Iran” which is true (although they are building extra pipelines to Russia at top speed, for more resilience). But if our media was even slightly honest they’d first admit, petroleum products represent only 5% of China’s energy mix! Not even green-boasting (washing) Germany has done that well.

And on top of all this, the Chinese are perfecting a new technology for thermal power generation which promises to improve the efficiency in every generator in the world (condensed Co2, instead of steam, with that huge inescapable energy loss, every time you change the state).

Funniest thing about AI (in years)? The huge creaky overcapitalized American AI bubble companies (all the ones you’ve heard of) are now shrilly complaining that the cheaper Chinese models which are killing all their business models, have been using their AI models to train.

They’re evil! Why, they’re outright stealing, what we already stole from every human on earth!

(We so dumb now, and never more so than when we righteously accuse, from on high).

So – yeah, any hope of western economic growth, let far alone dominance of the technological future, is effectively dependent on a pyramid scam, which will only pay off, if we all get fired!

Meanwhile, in other news...

I’ve been trying to make this point for many years now, and it is one of the main things which first brought me out of tribalism, and into a more balanced humans and solutions first approach (f#ck ALL dogma).

War is always the wrong answer. People promoting war that can be avoided are always evil. Suckers who buy into ANY OF their excuses are always complicit, ignorant or not.

As Russia expert Steven Cohen (perhaps the wisest ever member of the CFR) famously said, “There is only one party in Washington. The war party.”

W is a war criminal, because the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also, were not ever justified. Our BigMedia obscures this now, but the hijackers from 9/11 actually did most of their training and planning in Hamburg, and some in Florida too. Afghanistan was just a place where Osama had fought (with the CIA) for decades already, so they were fine with hosting him, and simply asked for proof he was involved, before they would agree to extradite him. (look it up, if you doubt)

But Obama is a war criminal also, because destroying Libya and Syria using mass terrorism and mass starvation (among other overt war crimes) was never justified in any way whatsoever. People here fail to understand, smashing Libya didn’t just wreck the most prosperous and independent Black run nation on earth, it screwed up all of Africa, by releasing a flood of weapons into the hands of (almost always western sponsored) terrorists, continent wide!

Obama didn’t just steal more wealth from black Americans than anyone in history (while making already rich bankers whole, even saving their insane bonus payments for destroying the world economy), he also did more to screw up Africa, than anyone in decades (though the ground for this was greatly prepared by W).

As I mentioned earlier, the war against Russia, planned all the way back in the Clinton era (most of W’s most evil strategists worked for Clinton before W, and Obama, after) but finally set into motion under whoever was working the Biden sock-puppet at the time, was again, insane, unjustified, one hundred percent provoked, planned, armed, funded and controlled by the west.

For those who still have a hard time getting there – fourteen thousand dead civilians, ‘kay?

That’s how many Ukrainian citizens who were Russian speakers were killed by Ukrainian forces armed and trained by the west, BEFORE a single Russian unit crossed the border. And those are the official UN observers numbers, not some strange conspiracy theory – even though it’s about us!

So now, when I say war is always the wrong answer, please come with me beyond tribalism to behold the astoundingly hollow shell that is modern western democracy.

Almost every major power in the west has responded to Trump’s insane call to raise defence spending to five percent of GDP with a big fat yes. That isn’t five percent of discretionary spending, folks, that’s five percent off the top – and it absolutely means destroying our social programs, wholesale. I mean things like universal health-care, social safety nets, cheap education, cultural funding, home care stipends, all the key supports for the weakest in our society. All the thing which citizens have come to see as rights, earned through our hard labour and taxes. Gone!

Not because war is necessary or unavoidable, but because we westerners – supremacists one and all – simply can’t accept the idea of returning to diplomacy and fair respectful treatment of the rest of the entire freakin’ world. (Best known as Westphailianism). We either rule or else we kill.

Is that why the RCMP wrote that report expecting mass civil unrest, a few years ago?

For those who think the game of bankers using us as pawns is somehow less important than their favourite political sports-teaming, please understand. Canada signed-on to AUKUS, an insane scheme to position Australia for a future war against China, under Biden (more stupid Justin tricks).

Australia was at least supposed to get subs (that the US would control, hilarious) but we signed on to this bellicose insanity with no possible gains whatsoever. Just to practise bending and spreading for the freakin’ war state (and again, this is under Biden, not the bellicose blowhard now resident).

One party only. The war party. (more precisely, the A and B teams of the war party, contending)

Now let me remind you of one of the first ideas I raised today – in a society with free speech, the powerful are obligated to control what we want to say. Manipulate us, beneath our awareness.

The implications on this front are truly nauseating. I spent years joking to Catherine that it was ironic that Rupert Murdoch built his FOX brand on money from The Simpsons, since it seemed self-evident that the humour in that show was ‘progressive’. But finding Matt Groenig described by Epstein as a close friend, I wonder if I was missing it, the whole time. Was the point really to promote cynicism and acceptance of absurd injustice, all in the guise of (yes, clever) humour?

Woody Allen is now embarrassing to talk about, but to pretend he wasn’t hugely culturally influential would be stupid. Chomsky is becoming more embarrassing to talk about, and again, the cultural reverberations of his sharp critique without any solution, are impossible to calculate.

One of the strangest pieces of the Epstein question is about Ghislane Maxwell, and her own role in the culture of the younger millennials especially, the 4-Chan generation. Some journalists have suggested that she was the single biggest most influential user on that platform, which itself had huge influence on millions, but in so specific a demographic, many others have never heard of it.

I have been a tech guy since I was a kid, I’ve worked as a technician, sold computers, wrote small but useful programs, even tried to write some games (fun times), but I’m still way too old to click properly with 4-Chan or the far more familiar (and yes I know, very different) Reddit.

The short version? 4-Chan is the great incubator from which we get modern meme culture! (actually one of the funniest breakout mediums for the ‘citizens voice’ since rap music, though just as chaotic in terms of ethical directions, and also subject to periods of majority misdirection).

But again we have to ask, how much was this supposedly ‘rebellious’ stream actually controlled propaganda, ultimately crafted to serve the A-team of planetary rulers (the 1% of the 1%).

I’m not saying this is a for sure. I’d rank it a strong maybe which helps explain how we’ve all come to feel more and more powerless, even while feeling as if we’re ever more critical and informed.

Just a reminder (to myself, as much as you) in a representative democracy, it works the other way.

So here’s the thing that the news will never report honestly. While we have spent decades proclaiming our glorious free speech, even while being twisted around into confused and insecure emotional pretzels by advertising, commodification of human interactions, and non stop propaganda (all a continuous flow of corrupted and very hard to distinguish data), many other cultures around the world have kept making and promoting genuinely serious people.

When you are rich as hell and also a psychotic bully who points nuclear weapons at the world, (or you act like the little brother of the scary guy with the nukes) you can get away with an awful lot of cheerful illusion and incompetence, indulge in cultural slop, back economic foolishness.

But when your happy illusion model comes up against serious people (as in the case of American AI gamblers facing down Chinese long term infrastructure planners) your model collapses back down into the real thing it always was, and would always have been seen as, if you weren’t so good at lying. To be clear, there will still be such a thing as American AI – it just won’t dominate the entire world, the way they not only hoped and expected, but planned their investments based on – because you just can’t make people pay ten thousand times more for something 5% better.

There were lots of tech companies left after the dot com bubble – but a hell of a lot of bankruptcies, too.

Now, to the war by the west on the rest – which was obvious to the world during the period of the war in Vietnam, and a wave of right wing coups in many other countries of strategic interest to the globalist powers – but then became much harder to see after that war ended – only to emerge once again as the always dominant strategy of empire, after the attack of 9/11.

But wait – before I forget. The other three million pages (at least) of Epstein documents which have still not been released? They cover his activities from 1999 to 2002. The years just before and after the September eleventh event which put America back into permanent war mode.

Meaningful? Coincidence? We’ll have to keep watching that one. A lot of sleuths working their way through the trove of releases, so we can expect many more revelations. We also have to wonder – if this truly horrifying stuff was what they were most willing to share, how much worse is the rest?

I have discussed Michael Hudson’s absolutely crucial economic ideas a few times over the last few years, don’t want to repeat myself (but have discussed many aspects, in far greater detail). The TLDR? The Vietnam war bankrupted America, which caused the rupture of Bretton Woods (the gold-backed dollar system set up by America, after WWII) and forced the US to find a new way to give their dollars value. The result was the petrodollar – where America lets OPEC mess with oil prices (because American producers also get more profit when they go up, even if consumers get screwed) but in exchange, the Gulf states had to sell all their oil in US dollars, and then re-invest their profits in the US market – but without ever gaining strategic control of any American industries (really, investment without commensurate corporate voting power was a condition of the deal – which alone proves it was a scam).

Why would the gulf states agree to a scam where their money would prop-up America, but rob them of the influence any other investor would expect, for their investment? Because they aren’t natural monarchies, or even states, and none of them are well loved by their citizens. They took the scam deal, because in exchange for using their nations wealth to protect the American economy, the Americans promised to protect their monarchies from their enemies, and also protect them from the political will of their own citizens! (A CIA specialty for a tragically long time)

I’m going to insert something here which may be offensive to some of my readers, but it has to be said, and I’m doing my best to redress a bias and an unfairness, not state an empirical truth for all time. All of my reading of Islamic history comes from English translations of ancient texts (with widely varying quality and faithfulness to original spirit) and from reading classical British ‘Orientalists’ who had a very strange imperial bias (but one so familiar to us in print, it can be filtered against, in a fairly calculable way, by most thoughtful readers of history). Like a newspaper you semi-hate, but still read, because you understand where exactly they suck.

In modern (western supremacist propaganda) terms, there is a general sense that Sunni muslims are “more like us” in some way, whereas the Shia are comparatively inscrutable and fanatical.

As Larry Johnson has very thoroughly researched and laid out, the exact opposite is the actual case. In terms of Terrorism and casualties there is no contest whatsoever, Sunni fanatics have far more blood on their hands, and while Shia groups did invent suicide bombing (notably, the Marine barracks attack in Lebanon that made Reagan pull US troops out), they stopped using the tactic thirty freakin’ years ago – so if you heard of one, it was probably a Sunni group.

Listening to and reading Alestair Crooke, a veteran of British Diplomacy and MI6, we also come to realize that a huge proportion of the scariest Sunni terrorist groups we know of (al Qaeda, ISIS, etc) have been, at least at some points, well-funded and amply supplied by the west, and controlled by them at least in part.

If you want a good rule of thumb test, ask yourself, who do they attack? If the answer is only nations and leaders that America considers enemies, then we aren’t talking about serious muslims, but cynical mercenaries working for the infidel (with many sincere dupes in the ranks, no doubt).

Okay – now to my gross oversimplification of history (and apologies in advance). Understanding the historical split between the Sunni and Shia is difficult for westerners (doubly so, because the idea of sincere belief in anything, is quite foreign to most of us). But like a lot of students, I try to come up with a ‘sense of the thing’ I can use, for general purposes.

The original split came in 632, following the death of the prophet Muhammad, when one faction felt Muhammad’s first disciple Abu Bakr should succeed him, and others favoured his cousin Ali.

But the divide did not become outright hateful until the betrayal and martyrdom of Ali’s son Husayn in 680. Husayn had been appointed to govern Baghdad (the second most important city of the empire) but while he and his small party of bodyguards and household staff were travelling across the desert to the great metropolis, the central government changed their mind about his appointment, and sent a small army of fast moving troops to ambush and kill him.

The battle of Karbala may be almost fourteen hundred years ago, but it remains vivid for Shia people, and the heroism of Husayn’s party, fighting to the last man against staggering odds, remains a symbol not of defeat – but of steadfast strength, even in the face of overwhelming odds.

(Kind of like “remember the Alamo” but if St Peter was fighting there, too).

So now here’s my unfair simplification. Even though Sunni rulers have cut far more deals with, and made far more profit for, the west (at the expense of their own people), written more Islamic history, and have also enjoyed favoured treatment by empire for a couple of centuries, I come away from studying Islamic history every time thinking – the Sunnis are the ones who put politics ahead of belief and faith, again and again. Undercutting every claim to honour with servility to the infidels (rather like my own emptily-preachy Canada, come to think of it).

The Shia are the ones who just don’t play that. They don’t ‘cut a deal’ for personal benefit, at the expense of greater principle or their society as a whole. They stick to what’s right, by their lights.

In other words, the Iranians are still a fundamentally serious people (Yemenis too – no question) in myriad ways that we westerners are very simply not. Not just in belief, but in principles.

Now let me put this in the simplest terms. America is losing this war, very very badly – and the reason so many within the military and administration warned against it, is that once the illusion of American military might has been completely discredited (as it has been now, for the whole world to see) a huge array of other scams and extortions which rely on it, are also bound to collapse.

First and foremost of these are all the artificial mini-states created by outsiders for purposes of imperial management and exploitation. Remember that petro-dollar deal? The US got to invest all the profits from the gulf states, but in return, they were supposed to provide protection.

Now that this deal has been tested, what every one of the gulf monarchies has realized is – their patrons don’t give the slightest shit about them, and all those decades of ‘investment’ was effectively theft, this whole time. They can’t take their money back out of the US market (mind you, neither can the Germans, who have been trying unsuccessfully for five years now, so that’s about American fiscal crisis, not bias), and they also can’t get the protection they paid for. Quite the contrary, being an American ally (for local aggressions) has made them all legitimate targets!

The reason the Americans can’t protect them is technical, but also obvious (why this war was always crazy). They don’t have enough air defence missiles, and those missiles don’t work for shit anyhow (except against aircraft, to the pilots of which, they are truly terrifying – which you would kind of expect as a bare minimum for a multi-million dollar bullet, no?)

I mentioned the US ‘canister load’ system a few times before. This system is a near universal launcher for smallish missiles (roughly car size, rather than tower size), and can launch both the famous Patriot anti-air missile, and also the tomahawk attack cruise missile (some of which are always nuclear armed).

The canister load system, which does not reveal whether it has a defensive or offensive missile in it, until the missile is launched, is also why so-called ‘anti air’ bases in Poland and Romania are actually wildly provocative aggressions against Russia. Just like the USSR parking Nukes on Cuba was seen to be, during the Cuban missile crisis.

Now (benefits of years spent wargaming, back when it was based on reality, instead of fantasy) each Aegis class missile destroyer in the US fleet holds roughly one hundred canisters, total, for both air defence (patriots) and distance attack (Tomahawk) missiles. No re-arming at sea (Clinton scrapped that whole class of ships, decades ago). Got to return to a (safe) base, to load up again (and the distance to a safe base is increasing fast, even though Iran denies attacking Diego Garcia).

To intercept one missile or drone, two or sometimes even three Patriots must be launched, to be sure one of them has a chance of hitting it – and even then, it depends on what they are trying to hit. Drones they can do (that is, four million dollar missiles can usually shoot-down 70 thousand dollar drones, fairly reliably, though at a cost exchange rate which is ludicrous and ruinous).

But when it comes to missiles, even the most modern (and expensive) variants of the Patriot struggle to intercept even the slower older models, and the newer faster ones are not ever caught (same lesson which might have been learned in Ukraine, had anyone been paying attention to realities, instead of comforting BigMedia delusions).

Last time I shared a great video from Ted Postol, one of the foremost experts on missilry in the West (and the kind of wonderfully cantankerous professor universities used to be built on and of). After much reviewing of footage from this war, he estimates Patriots are intercepting roughly five percent of incoming missiles, tops.

And that’s at a cost of five to ten million per try (depending on version and number of missiles).

This is why all the US carriers are staying so far away that they can only hit Iran with stand-off weapons, (and even then, those weapons too are badly range-limited). They simply have no effective missile defence for their carriers at all, and they are too scared of losses, to close to the range that would make their strike power ‘on paper’ (as planned) fully effective (using cheap dumb bombs in number, rather than fast-depleting hard to replace hyper expensive distance weapons – the military equivalent of the double chicken-shit play I described in politics, above).

What all of this means is that America is still using war systems designed in the 1980s, to crush any enemy of the time with ‘astounding’ technology, in an era when their technology is completely obsolete, and their production capacity (for cheap new systems like drones) has been offshored very nearly entirely. (Try and build a US drone, without a Chinese motor, I dare you!)

Meanwhile – the Iranians have been planning for this war, for almost exactly as long as they have been NOT WORKING ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS. Seriously folks, the CIA themselves, as recently as last November, officially stated that the Iranians hadn’t advanced their nuclear weapons research one bit since 2002.

But they sure as hell watched closely, when America came back to Iraq to finish the job of utterly devastating what had once been an advanced industrial country, with a highly educated and largely secular citizenry. They watched American reliance on Air Power, they watched America (and vassals like the UK) conduct infantry operations which would have been impossible without insant access to bombs from the sky, any time, day or night, and they took notes.

Instead of trying to compete with the American airforce (staggeringly expensive) they decided to leapfrog that generation of military technology altogether and concentrate on missiles. But missiles are no good if you can’t launch them. So instead of relying on mobile launchers (those infamous SCUD trucks of Saddam’s, so expensively hunted, to so little effect) they built entire missile cities entirely underground – and not just under dirt – under mountains!

In each of these missile cities (dozens of which are distributed around the country, and can still function independently, even when cut off from central command) are thousands of missiles which can be rail-trucked into place at a launch portal which is quickly opened, then closed again, before it can even be plotted as a target!

Yes, early in the war we had lots of reports of air strikes hitting mobile launchers – but please watch the video below, for more on that (weapons-eating decoys are also weapons in themselves).

Americans often like to enthuse about courageous pilots flying HARM (homing anti-radar missile) sorties – heroically flying directly into the teeth of enemy AA weapons. But as my Serbian chum laughingly reminded me, in their war, they used to jury-rig microwave ovens, to spoof American HARM attacks! (Successfully, and often).

The simple truth is, the Americans can’t destroy Iran’s strike capability, they can shut off a couple of doors in a missile city with a bombing raid, but the Iranians just use other doors, and clear the debris from the bombed ones so they can use those again, also. No victory there is possible with any US weapons, let alone those in theatre.

But it’s a lot worse than that (for Trump, the gulf-states and the petrodollar also) when we start to talk about ground invasions. Iran is the size of western Europe and very mountainous. Perfect terrain for defenders to ambush/slaughter huge numbers of attackers. (Sparta vs Xerxes in reverse)

Beyond that, people just don’t understand the way the military works in Iran. Not only do they have a standing army of a million well trained men ready to fight (and powered by that Husayn ethic of honourable sacrifice, that is, with a belief that gives them courage, we doubters lack) – there are also another million well trained and armed militia (the Basij) who are ready to defend their home town at a moment’s notice, from anyone foolish enough to try their luck.

For America to actually take Tehran would require at least a half a million frontline American combat soldiers (not counting the multiples of that, in reserve and support positions). Many times more than the size of the current US army. In other words, it would take a draft, which would mean a return to far greater public scrutiny of military adventurism (not with my son, you don’t!)

But more to the point, it would require some practical way to get that many troops and all the supplies required to keep them going in the field, into the theatre safely in the first place.

American troops are currently fleeing from bases all around the region. Every base from which they staged outside attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria has come under sustained attack by Iranian missiles and drones. Day after day, relentless. US soldiers are cowering in luxury hotels, because the mighty bases (imperial outposts) they built to ‘defend’ the gulf states are in flames!

Please remember that to defeat Saddam the first time, took a six month steady buildup into a half a dozen fully equipped and one hundred percent ‘safe’ American bases in the region, before the very first attack sortie was flown. “Shock and Awe” came from the luxury of perfect safety.

Okay so – what about the whole Hormuz angle, anyhow?

We are talking about two thousand kilometres of coastline covering one of the oldest strategic choke-points for world trade over which humans have strategized. Iran doesn’t need destroyers to control it (they don’t have that kind of Navy, anyhow, in a serious way) once again, just like skipping aircraft altogether and going straight to missiles, they didn’t bother with a heavy blue water navy, they worked on small (hard to hit) incredibly fast and maneuverable attack boats with very compact missiles, some remote controlled, and some piloted. They also have underwater drone technology (developed by Ukraine, reverse-engineered by Russia, and shared) and several kinds of mines. Please note – not only does the west have almost no minesweepers left, we haven’t trained much for that (highly specialized) duty in about a quarter of a century!

So yeah, Iran can hang on until they hear a deal they like – which means a deal which actually addresses the principles. No more stealing (sanctions) no more madman murder shit, either (you can take the origins of that entirely just resentment all the way back to ‘sweet’ Jimmy Carter – or even further back to the CIA coup against their popular democratic leader Mossadeq in 53).

In the meantime, what is going wrong is a whole lot worse than you think – because BigNews has spent so long saying “Look at the scary thing in my hand” (like a magician, palming a coin with his other hand) while simultaneously pacifying us with “Don’t panic, we’re still the best” signals, that it is actually possible that they don’t even remember journalism was supposed to be more than just (corrupted) state serving propaganda. It was (and IS) supposed to empower citizens.

If you don’t think about or read about the energy business, you might just think a bunch of taps have been turned off temporarily, and we just have to resolve the crisis and then turn the taps back on again – and after a temporary financial dip, we’ll all be humming along again.

Nope.

With both oil operations and natural gas fields shutting down operations (because every single tank which could store spare production in the entire region is now either full, or burning) means many weeks or sometimes even months of work, before the flow resumes at previous rates – and that’s only if all the ‘taps’ (not just wells, but also refineries) haven’t been blown-up, as many already have! More likely to come.

Europe, which is still led by crazies who would rather kill Russians than serve their own people, has completely shot itself in the foot. They thought they could replace cheap Russian gas with much more expensive gas from Qatar and the USA – but Qatar has just declared force majeure (act of god allowing violation of all standing contracts without penalty) for up to five YEARS.

And how much do you want to bet that Trump will rip up (incredibly profitable) contracts with European suckers (leaders) and leave them freezing next winter, just to keep US prices down for political advantage?

Worse still, sulphur and hydrogen production are also messed up by this blockage.

Just like the utterly disastrous and mass murderous war that the US (and pusillanimous vassals) planned for decades and then finally launched against Russia using Ukraine as a proxy, there is an office somewhere in CIA where someone calculated exactly how much mass starvation would be caused in the poorest countries in the world, by this disruption to food supplies, then said “Yeah, go ahead and do it” anyhow. (Sickening stuff, but it is sickening too, that we’re so used to it we don’t notice).

Sulphur you say? Why yes, not just for fertilizer (crucial) but also for mining handy things like copper, which we are using rather a lot of, lately (and certainly can’t build weapons, infrastructure or industries, green or otherwise, without).

Hydrogen? What, for party balloons? Yeah no, for microchip production. Crucial. No substitute. So much for re-armament to fight China in 2027 (the original plan).

Also important to note, you can’t really store hydrogen long term. So no one has industrial-scale ‘reserves’ of any size, so the market is set to go insane (and we can also all expect $150 dollar a barrel oil plus, within two or three weeks, tops).

The only card left is nuclear – and even then (according to Postol, whose authority in this case is uniquely reassuring, where he is so often depressing) they could not destroy the Iranian state, only outrage and anger it enough to ensure the complete eradication of all crusader outposts from the region.

So, yeah – America has completely lost. The petrodollar is over, so is the idea of an American security guarantee meaning anything, so is the idea of American military supremacy. All dust.

We are in for a great depression (way worse than 2008) and sadly, the crazy-rich bastards have been planning to take advantage of this moment, in the same kind of long term and serious way the Iranians have planned to confront the Americans.

Enough with the squabbling, folks, that was a product of a long period of sloth and luxury, and we can’t afford to indulge it anymore. Cross the lines, build the team. UNITE.

Or – lose. (everything)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As a superb fellow substack writer (Briggs, linked below) recently reminded me, I really am a book guy at heart. So I figured it was time for me to offer not just links, but real actual deep thoughtful books to try reading for deep deep context.

So here’s the first installment of something I’ll try to do more of – a Bibliography!

The Guns of August - Barbara Tuchman – how the deluded west blundered into WWI John F Kennedy had everyone in his cabinet read this, after the Cuban missile crisis.

Man’s Fate – Andre Malraux – about pre-revolutionary (but very tumultuous) China. Malraux was political, but above all perceptive. His fictionalized first-hand witness can be tasted!

The Road to Serfdom – Friedrich Hayek – I hate his monetary policy, but if you can’t answer these strong arguments, you aren’t yet a thoughtful leftist, but just a tribalist/emotionalist.

Critical Path – R Buckminster Fuller – Something deeply optimistic and original. (and the first great touchstone source of my own quest for serious non-delusional hope)

The Great Transformation – Karl Polanyi – an extraordinarily rich and interesting survey of the early evolution and phases of capitalism, studied and beloved by capitalists and socialists alike.

Here’s a clip of some current Chinese inflatable decoy weapons – HILARIOUS!

Here’s Alestair Crooke talking to Lt Col Danny Davis about the current situation

– a truly outstanding combination of relevant experience, between them

When I said that the super-rich have planned to take advantage of economic crisis, I’m not just making stuff up, I’m reading serious skeptical economists (and have been for years). Here’s a scary look at how interlocked all of these games have become from Fabio Vighi.

“...During the Covid emergency, large-scale monetary intervention began even before lockdowns were implemented. In September 2019, the US repo market crisis forced the Federal Reserve to inject massive liquidity through daily auctions. When the “pandemic” arrived months later, the emergency provided political justification for expanding those interventions dramatically. The crisis did not cause the intervention—the intervention was already primed, and the crisis provided the cover. Energy shocks can play a similar role. By destabilizing debt and equity markets, and threatening recession, they create the conditions under which large monetary responses become both politically acceptable and economically unavoidable. As with Covid, this is not merely crisis management—it is another case of crisis deployment.

In my earlier essay, The Programmable Crisis, I suggested that the United States and Israel initiated this war precisely to produce an energy shock large enough to cascade into a global financial crisis—one that would clear the path for a systemic reset aimed at prolonging the life of an exhausted, debt-saturated system. Seen from this perspective, the war is a trigger mechanism for that reset. To read the conflict through the familiar narrative of Iran’s nuclear programme means mistaking the decoy for the target. The Middle East war has already impacted on global markets. European gas prices spiked 25–30% in a single session, Brent crude surged above $110, and a historic $50-plus split emerged between WTI and physical Oman/Dubai crude—a sign that the paper oil market is rapidly decoupling from physical supply stress.”

Savage Minds

Energy Lockdown

The Crime Scene…

Read more

5 months ago · 81 likes · fabio vighi

Here is that outstanding esssay from ‘Tree of Woe’ about how AI may reshape work and human economic input completely, along with several plausible scenarios – even a hopeful (though low-odds) one!

Tree of woe is a superb deep thinker, such that even when I disagree with his conclusions, I find my own thinking greatly stimulated, in trying to understand exactly why, and how I might persuade him otherwise. Here, he just totally nails it.

I’ve shared “Science is not the Answer” the fantastic site of William Briggs a few times. Not only does he promote healthy mathematically rigorous scepticism of scientism (distinct from science itself, because it is powered by idot-belief, instead of rigour) he also teaches fantastic courses in how to do all the skeptical math yourself. Not just the critique, but the tools, too – and all free!

In this piece he takes a very interesting ‘other’ look at AI, and reminds us to be properly awed by brains (they weren’t machines, and they ain’t computers, either).

Science Is Not The Answer

The Paper Test Shows Why AGI Is Not Possible: And Why The Brain Is Different In Kind

We previously, and briefly, discussed The Paper Test (see the articles on limitations at bottom here), which is an argument that computers, including those laden with AI, are not alive, not thinking, not conscious, not intelligent and do not have minds. Thus there will be no time in which computers reach…

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6 months ago · 124 likes · 99 comments · William M Briggs

Kautilya the contemplator has recently ‘outed’ himself as a former diplomat, and also outdone himself with a whole series of deeply penetrating articles about Iran’s political and military systems. Must read stuff (like Crooke, he clearly served in the region for years, and understands it on a far subtler level than western talking heads)

Finally, I’m pretty sure these are the two most effective uses of propaganda I have ever seen. Please, can the Russians get the use of this whiz-kid next? (last time they made us all smile was little big)

Note for new readers – auto-estimated reading times are greatly exaggerated (lots of pix/links)

Hey folks!

I have recently come to a new personal definition of intelligence – see how this works for you.

Intelligence is not simple cleverness in argument, the way a majority now seem to believe, but rather, an insistence on placing reason above our emotional attachment to ideas – and then doing it again and again – when, as is inevitable, our reason (or often, updated information) shows our previous reasonable-seeming conclusions were incorrect. Seeking better, always, humbly.

The reason this (perhaps obvious) explanation is important, is that western civilization has now formed two teams of mass murderous supremacist liars who pretend that the fact ‘the other guy’ is wrong, makes them right. Nope – that’s two supremacies in contention – not reason (or ethics).

I have a much bigger piece about Immigration and Nations in progress, but I have to break a piece of it off and get it out right now – and the why of this is depressing. My old team is now EVIL (also) and frankly, their denial is a thousand times more dangerous than the honest killers.

It breaks my heart to have to say that, but it’s true, so I will, and the reasons are very important.

Reality is real – but the emotionalist and absolutely always subjective shit inside our heads is very simply not.

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What was once known as “Progressivism” has, over a period of many decades, and in a not even well-disguised way, been completely weaponized to become a cultural force serving the interests of the CIA/Bankers War/Epstein Class, which shamelessly deals unending harm to all common civil rights and to the working classes immigrants and underclasses most especially – and yet continues to insist that it is uniquely “righteous and moral.” (even while sneering loudly about “Savior mentality”) – it is stupid and grotesque beyond belief – and yet wildly popular – why?

Because the modern world has become addicted to psychotic entitlement – I’m mad and I have a big fat reason that sounds great – so from now on I’ll demand and take not give, and never play fair with others at all.

The (fake) left was easily and quite comprehensively coopted, not because of some new psychological tricks on the part of the most evil parts of the secret war state – but because they finally understood who the “left” actually were, when the left itself never once did a mirror-check.

I’m going to share a personal experience which illustrates the tone of this with shocking clarity, because matters this big are very hard to relate to personal consequences, for many moderns.

Five years ago, just a few weeks before the mass global medical crisis produced by the reckless (and long illegal) pursuit of Biological Weapons Research, on the part of the American Military Industrial Complex (AKA: CoV2), my dear wife was hospitalized and spent almost two weeks in the intensive care unit. Most people who spend that long in ICU go next to the morgue, and she was herself given only a one in three chance of recovering. I should rush to say that thankfully, she is doing okay today, hanging-in and not just being brave and stoic, but still actively finding new ways to have fun within very harsh new limits – enjoying life, even with big challenges.

But here’s the thing which I feel sort of foolish for being surprised by (because Catherine and I have helped a lot of other people through dark times, grief and family tensions, and seen it many times before, directed at others). The people who acted like our friends in that period of great fear and crisis were not the people who said they were our friends for years or decades, but only that tiny subset of those people who were, in an important way, “over themselves,” capable of seeing the reality of our situation, and caring more about that reality, than their own feelings.

I should be much clearer there – when I say feelings, I don’t mean positive aspirational feelings like love, warmth and loyalty, all of which were offered to us in generous quantities at generous frequencies, by the shockingly small proportion of our friends who proved to be mature adults.

Nope – the feeling which was more precious than compassion for an old friend, to so many of our ‘tribe’ who proved to be infantile narcissistic sociopaths, was absolutely always indignation.

One reason we were surprised by this is simple, a kind of ignorance which comes from great and sustained blessings (and the great and sustained work, required to produce those blessings).

Catherine and I are both basically thoughtful introverts (in old fashioned terminology). I always though of the split between majority extroverts and minority introverts as relating roughly to primate populations, where some have suggested around ten percent of primates in a band have a different mentality, more observant and less aggressive, which confers significant survival benefits to the majority, who don’t ever waste so much of their energy doubting themselves, and live what might seem much easier, though also more surface-based (unexamined) lives.

Beyond that, we love each other deeply and we have for more than four decades – which means that we have both been each other’s steady inspiration for gratitude, self-overcoming and growth, and that we are lucky enough to have had an ally, affection and playful humour, every single day.

I’m not saying that to boast, just to remind my young friends on every side of every divide – Love Is Real, it still works (if you find the right person, and mean it in the right way) and it is the most natural and effective path humans have found to happiness satisfaction and character growth.

I am not ignoring (am in fact heartbroken by) the many extra challenges and barriers in the way of any two young people trying to create a new love, in this crazy-making civilization-on-fire. Just to testify that love is magical and yet also practical – available to all of us, in some form, if we make ourselves ready for it with self-overcoming, and respect and nourish it, where we do find it.

Love is absolutely not inside our heads and egos – and even less on any “Device” known to man.

I did a whole essay about the difference between gratitude people and resentment people just a few months ago (above), so I won’t digress again today – the point is, we were sure there were still a lot of gratitude people like us on ‘the left’ (as long ago seemed true), and when the test came, it turned out that almost all of the people in our lives who really do understand honour and cheerful unstinting sacrifice aren’t on the left. They are simply gratitude people, love people, above all.

Who showed up to visit? Who could be bothered to write or phone, in the weeks and months afterward? Who offered her encouragement, even at some small cost to their own pride?

That small group of people who we now understand were our only real friends all along.

The indignation people in our lives, on the other hand, were nothing less than disgusting. Throwing tantrums when asked to show simple patience, pulling high school “whose friend first” games and even trying to steal money and opportunities from Catherine, to which she was fully entitled – even while she was still in an active and very uncertain struggle for her own survival.

Of course as her loving husband I could not help being furious about these betrayals – but I also long ago came to understand that everything – especially those things which drive us nuts with frustration – is “food” (Data/Inspiration) creatively speaking.

So I went searching for a common element to explain how somehow, in our moment of crisis, long trusted friends decided to reveal they were really psychotic brats or even effectively enemies.

It is so simple it is hard to believe, but I’m just going to say it. All of those people who let us down love their own personal treasured anger, more than they love anything else on earth – including their own selves and happiness! (which is itself kind of scary, considering their level of toxic narcissism).

That built-in contradiction is really important. They are so in love with their anger, they actually destroy any chance of getting out of their heads and finding love – then they blame the bitterness which they wilfully create with their childish emotionality – on the world they so dearly love to despise!

We distract ourselves away from this central point easily and often (a part of the false-framing which leads to our false tribes and oligarch-serving cultural division) by pretending that the big arguments are about the CONTENT. No they aren’t, people, just no. Not even one bit.

Let me put this differently. As a student of revolutionary movements and philosophies gone right and wrong, over history, I realized decades ago that most of our favourite political idealisms would require a psychology which we moderns aggressively reject, before they could be made to work.

Anarcho-syndicalism? Great – just find me people who actually do cooperate well enough to build and sustain without requiring any external authority, and we’ll talk. BUT YOU CAN’T.

Socialist Utopia? Same deal. First, you need a population capable of sharing that easily. Not us!

But the much scarier thing is that the exact same thing is true for constitutional republics and representative democracies. You can’t construct them from screaming brats, that doesn’t work! And if you haven’t noticed that “The West” has spent the last half century proving that, you are badly in need of a mirror-check yourself – because everyone else in the world, really really has!

Let me make the distinction between “Content” and reality much clearer with a few examples.

The “Scramble For Africa” in which the (still) hyper-violent, racist and eternally exploitative European states colonized most of Africa (which took place shortly after the invention of the first effective anti-malarial, quinine – hence Gin and Tonic) was not started in Trumpian-style, with greed and bluster and obvious bullying out front. It was accomplished in the way the modern Democratic party in America would do it. The population of England in particular (but other Europeans soon got jealous, and ‘scrambled’ for their own piece of war-won virtue also) were outraged (outraged, I say!) to discover that some people in Africa were still practising Slavery – even though The British Empire of the time had built their entire fortune on slavery and piracy, and just given slavery up themselves, five political minutes before (piracy, still going strong). Thanks to well crafted propaganda about ‘ethics’ and ‘human suffering’ huge majorities of the British public were persuaded anyone who was five minutes behind them politically was utterly evil, and must be ‘dealt with’ by the light of advanced and civilized Christians (and their morality-clarifying bayonets).

Contrary to the shockingly ignorant and irrational tribalist beliefs of the now-illiterate left, (previously a cohort of annoying scholars of history and ideas) capitalism didn’t start it – scolding church biddies and sophisticated intellectuals together, loudly demanded their governments must intervene in the ancient societies of Africa. People who felt sure their scorn and disdain was morality.

Let’s try a few examples of The Message Is Not The Effect from the 20^th century next, shall we?

When Baby Boomers talked about “Free Love” what they really meant was “I’ll rape anything too slow to get away, when I FEEL like it, ‘cause I’m (universally) entitled” (as the centre of the universe).

The sexual revolution did not make men and women more satisfied with life, make children happier smarter or better nourished with love, or help normal people in society enjoy peace and thriving on a broader scale – every one of those metrics has not just slumped, but imploded. We’ve never been more miserable, isolated, cruel, furious, and casually hyper violent to others around the world.

What that breakdown absolutely did accomplish (aside from an orgy of child rape which will not ever be faced or punished) was to valourize a whole lot of psychotic treatment of others, promote dehumanizing and exploiting, and normalize seeing other people as consumables and interchangeable commodities, utterly displacing any possibility of recognizing our unique and distinctly precious individual souls – even in the bathroom mirror every morning!

We commodified everything – even feminism broke and became a subsidiary of all-enslaving capitalism (and turned into a form of grotesque unapologetic bigotry, around the same time).

TOTAL FAIL. But you have to care about the world, to care enough to see that. Most of those self-styled revolutionaries STILL care more about their own favourite indigations – yes, psychopaths!

We still see boomers sneering today on social media, about how “Doing your own research” was a crazy idea – as if you can have democracy, without also having “think for yourself.” People, every single young person subjected to our emergency response was dealt life-long harm. Not only that, but almost everything the government told us, was simply untrue (even as they tried to brand many true things not only disinformation (a term which benefits CIA War-supremacists only), but even a punishable crime). Remember that – governments around the western world aggressively pursued the wholesale destruction of citizens right to criticize and to protest – and are still trying! (And tens of millions of Boomers are still sneering active CIA allies in this project – some rebels)

The actual social distancing number which science found might help a bit was fifteen feet – but that wasn’t economically viable, so they told us six, even though they knew that wouldn’t help AT ALL, because it would give us the feeling we were ‘doing something’ and our government ‘had answers’ neither of which was true. First they told us that we didn’t need masks, when they thought we actually did (outright lied, because they’d planned badly, and wanted to save them for medical people) then they made masks mandatory, long after they had proven innefective.

People who cheered along with BigMedia sneerers to laugh at dummies who believed in “Horse Paste” were actually laughing “LYNCH THE POOR. KILL KILL KILL THE FOREIGNERS.” all for the sake of BigPharma profits. Ivermectin is safe, proven, cheap and helped many, and they even won a lawsuit against the FDA itself – which was forced to host an apology on their website for a year!

I get it – most boomers love their indignation and their belief that their contempt for others who they don’t understand at all is a form of righteousness, more than they love their own kids, their grandkids, their community, their dignity, the world – you name it – sneering uber alles, every time. But when you can sneer at permanent lifelong damage being done to every single young person in your society, you are basically an Epstein at heart, a fucking child rapist – so I’m going to very simply say FUCK THE FUCKING HELL OFF – on behalf of GENERATIONS of harmed kids, ‘kay?

More simply – that is not and has never once been righteousness – for that you would first need to grow up!

Again, and crucially, this massive society-wide failure of character and intelligence is not because the ideas themselves (on left or right) were all wrong, useless or ill-intended (though many of them were and are), it is because we implemented all of our ideas on the basis of infantile grasping individualism (atomized consumerism), instead of a sensible sustainable personal-societal balance which confers meaning purpose gratitude and duty, like every single civilization which actually has lasted for more than a century or two – which is really not so many of them as we tend to think!

This will piss my fake lefty tribalist friends off, but I have to say it (to honour many friends of faith who actually did prove true friends, in our hour of need). With the right spirit, Christianity actually is a sound basis for a society – certainly more so than our modern infantile psychopathic free-for all. Am I saying we should go back? Nope, forward is the only option, but babies and bathwater is still a key distinction we need to know and use (a distinction indignation will not ever make – which is why indignation is inevitably a driver of barbarism and sharp cultural decline).

This isn’t about a check-list of best heights and worst sins (that’s indignation-rationalization stuff) but just to notice the reality of history (surely centuries are more important than tantrums) and acknowledge Christianity was the basis for civilizations many times when they made advances.

Neoliberal Capitalist Individualism pretends very hard (with the help of the best PR firms on earth) to be a bold cool excellent and profitable combination of faith and political philosophy, and a much better synthesis than anything before, because of the range of personal excesses it allows us. but it’s actually just been a really clever cover story for a half century fire-sale of every institution by which ordinary people ever won an advance. A happy story for the rabble, during the liquidation by the oligarchs, of the once strong and purpose-built bones of our culture.

“Freedom” was the irresistible candy that the creepy man offered, to get us to get into the car.

As I’ve mentioned several times before – the boomers utterly destroyed the long chain of leftist thought and action which actually was once broadly aspirational – because they made a deal with the devil (indignation and narcissism). Yes, evil (rationalization for psychopathic entitlement and desire) recruits faster and more passionately than reason and spirit – but then you are inevitably left with a movement which is utterly corrupted BY EVIL at the very foundation.

Of course the right has this same problem – narcissism and psychotic entitlement is the telltale, not the surface content spouted by any one particular centre of the universe. But I am deeply frustrated by how false-leftists are so incapable of anything but fury, they fail to understand that independents, who respond to reasoned argument and principle ONLY, are a greater faction than either of the ‘one tool only’ fake tribes who insist they alone must define every fight.

You can’t do a right thing with wrong spirit. And you can’t build anything with fury. Just no.

Please understand – every single part of this comes under the heading of “It Ain’t What You Do, It’s The Way That You Do It.” I am completely sick of arguments which pretend that the only things in contention are grand ideas. Absolutely wrong, twice over. First, because most people are now much too stupid and disconnected from reality to even have grand ideas, and secondly because thanks to our grotesque “Ways that we do it” most of what is in contention is two forms of violently certain oligarch-serving psychopathy (extremism and narcissism in combination).

Okay now – one small section from a bigger upcoming piece – a bit about ex-pats.

But first I should return to another idea-tool and crucial mental filter which applies to boomers, no less than it does to ex-pats.

Variation between individuals exceeds variation between types. (Yes, still) ;o)

I have been radicalized (that is, overcome ideas I liked, when they were proven disastrous) many many times over the course of my life. I don’t reject tribalism because I don’t know what it is, but rather because I know too well, how many harms are involved, when we behave that foolishly.

Old School Marxists actually do have some fantastic tools of economic analysis, they just have no idea at all what a human being is, and so become dangerous, when they don’t look further. Same goes for Anarchists, tons of great theory about models of freedom with less state control – but they fail to include a place for those (the vast majority) who simply aren’t interested in all the work of being their own damned government in almost every way, and so fail (in compassion, also).

There are some very strong and exciting ideas inside Libertarianism (and I have most often and most accurately described myself as a Left-Libertarian, anti-war above all, though I’ve tried many other ideas to frame that, also) but I have never failed to notice that most people don’t want to do that much work. So for me it is an aspirational idea, rather than a practical one. And the real question isn’t “how could we bring down the oppressive state, so we could spontaneously establish utopia” (as a great many furious and ignorant people still seem to think both virtuous and practical) but instead “how could we all, over time, gradually become the kind of people who could make a rich complex thriving society without needing a government?”

Please note the difference. One says “I’m angry, smash it all.” One says “Let’s earn it!”

Tribalism is a form of mental illness because it insists on the reality of categories. “Far Right” actually translates as “foul sinner who should burn in hell!” not “person who holds ideas with which I take serious issue, and so engage with intelligently, at every possible opportunity.”

“Marxist” when said by a (fake-right) pundit just as surely means “Domestic Terrorist” even though the FBI has consistently branded libertarians on the right with that same label, and killed or law-terrorized significant numbers of them, every damn time the Dems are back in power.

That is – both tribes are so emotionalist, they actively empower the other tribe’s worst damage.

Which means the single best benefit of being an anti-tribalist (or perhaps I should invoke the much older and more ‘based’ tradition of principled independents, instead) is that we can make distinctions which reflect reality, and don’t have to use emotionalist stupefaction labels.

Canada is one of the most immigrant-full places in the world, and Toronto, one of the most in all of Canada. I’ve always had a lot of friends who came from elsewhere, and as I have mentioned (sorry, if too often) I was raised in a cult, so I’ve always felt a bit like an outsider myself. Never the slightest doubt that I was a Canadian (and a Toronto kid, at that) but still raised in a very different way, with a very different set of basic ideas, compared to most.

One thing you learn, if you have a lot of friends who grew up somewhere else, is that there are a lot of reasons to leave a place. My awareness of the world is profoundly enriched by decades of conversations with people who saw harsh realities, first-hand, or heard them from their parents.

For generations (since before the first world war) Canada has been a home and safety to both right-wing refugees from communist violence, and left-wing refugees from fascist violence. There was a (in retrospect, smug and supremacist) sense that Canada was a place where others could come and learn to set-aside their old tribal hatreds, for a more hopeful shared positive vision.

I even have a funny personal witness story about this. Many years ago, a friend of mine who had just immigrated from Israel, so he could raise his children in peace and safety, came to me one day with a mournful expression, to explain. “I bring my kid to the kindergarten, first day. I come back at the end of the day and he is all excited to show me his new friend. Hi dad, this is Ahwaz! Of all the kids in the whole place, he has to make friends with the only Palestinian!”

On the other hand, I heard a half-joking line from a brilliant geopolitical analyst the other day which cannot be dismissed. It is definitely not the whole of the argument, but definitely not none of it at all, either. He said (I paraphrase) “Canada is where the British Empire stores their insurrectionaries and terrorists long term, so they’ll be ready for later strategic use.”

Now before you think me racist, I bet I’m not talking about what you think I’m talking about.

As a writer I have a personal rule about how to make use of the stories of others. I either identify directly in order to give credit, or else leave a generality on the surface, so I can be more revealingly specific, without being personally hurtful.

For some strange reason, over the years, I made friends with quite a few very interesting intelligent and creative people from one particular Baltic nation which was especially hurt by Stalin (they all were, to be clear).

The extent to which they all saw that old (absolutely huge) evil as still ongoing and present in the modern world was startling to me, even though I lived through (and long studied) the cold war. Their personal family stories (which I have never forgotten or failed to weight) were outright horrifying – many reminded me a lot of the stories of friends I made among the so called ‘boat people’ refugees from Vietnam, epics of heartbreaking cruelty and trials, even before finally reaching the very bottom rung of safety here, starting with nothing but hope and a will to survive.

But what really surprised me was when one of them, who had worked for awhile in corporate intelligence (back when the RCMP used to subcontract to deniables, to avoid legal restraints) introduced me to a few of his friends in that world. A restaurant in my own neighbourhood, that my wife and I had puzzled over for years, and never been able to figure out – the place looked so unappealing, and the prices on the menu out front were ridiculous – who would pay fine-dining rates for greasy spoon food?

All purposeful, I suddenly realized. Inside the restaurant, where I would not have been even slightly welcome, were I not introduced by my friend, and then set in front of a chess board at once, was a whole group of ex-pats who were in some way ‘in the world’ (of sneaks and espionage).

As a writer and student of history it was quite wonderful for me, not just as a tone-read for many new fictional characters, but because it explained so many things I’d long had trouble with. Especially this question – why was Canada trusted so much by the hyper paranoid cold war USA (in terms of five-eyes espionage on each other’s populations, for secret-state control) when our cultural and geographical position in the world makes us natural mediators between the US and Russia?

Easy – they just staffed the intelligence apparatus of Canada with people who had a deep hatred of Russians taught to them from the earliest age. Reliable loyalty (in a negative sense) established, free!

You see the exact same thing in the USA, where a great many of the most dangerous figures in the state department, the think-tank complex and the military have always come from immigrant populations who came to the USA with an “I hate Russia” feeling and story, and never let it go.

But here’s where things get weird – and our supremacist conceits are revealed clearly.

Why on earth is it, that we in the west in general, are so unquestioningly sure that the ex-pats and refugees who end up here, are “The Realest” representation of whatever particular group they represent?

Let me explain that in two directions – one is very simply time. Stalin’s great crimes against the Baltic states happened in the 1940s. They were horrific (like the crimes done against Russians in those same years), but they were also almost a century ago. People in many countries which used to be part of the Soviet Union had a sharp reaction, when they first broke away, but their resentment has eased as they’ve finally had a chance to see for themselves that the west was not ever what it pretended it was, nor were our promises to them about market democracy ever anything close to honest.

You can hear anti-Russian fulminating from the current Polish government (just for one example) but they represent their class of western bank captured oligarchs, not the Polish people, who oppose war with Russia very firmly – like almost every other population in Europe (even Ukrainians voted very clearly and unambiguously AGAINST war with Russia, Zelensky just betrayed them, with tragic consequences).

But ex-pats here in Canada often don’t see the way society gradually changes ‘back home’ over time so clearly. They anchor themselves with old family myth, and end up treasuring obsolete hatreds so much that my intel friend even once took me to see an SS officer’s uniform – still proudly displayed in honoured memory, in a rather fancy retirement home filled mostly with his aging countrymen.

Got to call that a fail, of multiculturalism and Canada, far more than any state or community elsewhere.

In my first six drafts, I did another ten pages here about ex-pats, that I have since trimmed-out (and will instead put into my upcoming piece – too much of a digression). The last key insight I need (and will better explain, in that later piece) is about belief. The simple version goes like this – people who come here because they had to flee, need to keep believing in the myth of here, to justify losing home.

People who have grown up here, have a very naturally deep understanding of things we’ve tried that worked better and worse, and problems in our economy and culture which have needed work for ages.

People who come from elsewhere because they were driven out, or come here simply to make money, but never actually leave their old home in spirit, have specific (and very understandable) reasons for investing in the fantasies created by our advertisers and corporations, which deny all of the biggest problems we need to work on, and ignore all of the wisdom long held (and ignored) in the form of popular will.

They also really like the fantasy that our rich powerful western nations are “better”.

Folks – if you haven’t noticed that every last remaining shred of Western moral, economic and military supremacy died in Gaza, you haven’t been looking (or you turned off your heart, before you did). Every single major western economy is backing that project with money and war materiel. Many are actively arresting protestors.

What we are is not all that and a bag of chips. We’re a rainbow label on a flaming shit-bag!

Now let me translate all of that into right here and now and why some people need to STFU (rough translation: think much harder about epistemology, before denouncing).

I know even more Persians, than I have pals from the resentful Baltic. This will sound rude, but I either love them or I kind of hate them, even when I respect their work, and that’s almost always based on class. Lower middle class and entrepreneurial folks have a really lovely spirit humour and warmth. Upper class Persians though, remind me almost exactly of nouveau-riche Americans, both arrogant and cynical (meaning, too dumb to be happy – quite the opposite of the infinitely nicer less egotistical ones).

Please note this class/empathy split is produced here in several variations, too – but it’s very important – and it holds true for folks coming here from Asia just as well (OMG the nice ones are some of the nicest smartest folks who come here now, and the arrogant jerks are as bad as any trust-fund jackass from anyplace that makes ‘em). ;o)

The point is that you have to know folks from both of these classes, to understand anything at all about there.

To be even clearer, when you talk to medium-rich ex-pats, they will often identify themselves on the basis of the tragedy which pushed them out. And these are not made-up tragedies (I’ve heard plenty, and my empathy for the upper-class is not less, I just don’t ever forget that they don’t reciprocate).

They burned all their bridges, so just as they need the story of our betterness, they also have to actively treasure the great horrible thing in their lives, to help justify the tragedy of losing home.

But if you talk to the ones who are here and like it here, but also go back home all the time, you begin to understand that here ain’t so great as we think (and definitely not as advanced), and there (any there, but especially those we most love to demonize, in ignorance) ain’t nearly so bad as we “enlightened moral westerners” dearly want to believe, in order to prove our manifest, (though also entirely sacrifice-free and thus in no possible way or universe ‘earned’) moral superiority.

BTW, did you hear? Ai Wei-Wei is moving back to China! When over-excited European journalists asked him if he was worried about state surveillance or interference, he said “No.”

This story is not reported in Canada (or the US) well at all, but it isn’t that China is suddenly way more open than before, but rather that the European Union has proven to have a deeply fascist heart, and is taking more and more steps to take away essential rights, criminalizing both protest and speech in many countries, the UK and Germany most prominently (but hardly exclusively).

Seriously folks – thousands of elderly people in England have been charged for a terrorist offence for wearing a freakin’ T SHIRT which sympathizes with victims of an ongoing (western world sponsored) mass-murder campaign against women and children.

All you people who snickered at “Horse-Paste?” All of you people who said we had to crack down on “Hate Speech?” YOU DID THIS. You proved we were ready to capitulate to the worst sort of Orwellian excesses, by not only surrendering rights, but attacking any who questioned that (or anything the state said, for several frightened shameful and never-dumber years).

As I said about hate speech – a quarter of a fucking century ago – “The problem with hate-speech is that inevitably, we’ll end up getting charged with hate-crimes, for objecting to war crimes.”

Do I know horror stories which reflect how badly some people fit-in, in Iran? Yes I do.

Do I know intelligent cultured and principled people who live here sometimes and there sometimes, because there are different things which are good about each culture? Yes I do.

Now here’s the tricky part. Do the most wealthy resentful and (BigWar) BigMedia connected Persians here in the west, reflect anything about the popular spirit of Iranian people back home?

Nope – we might as well be looking at an SS uniform in a glass display case at an old folks home.

So now let me be clear. People here, who think their propagandized moral outrage is more important than what the tragically martyred Ayatollah Ali Khamenei meant to the Iranian nation, people, and to Shia people around the globe, are supremacist warmonger idiots. STFU

BigMedia showed us people protesting, then days later they showed us western backed terrorists who were actively firebombing AMBULANCES, and said they were citizen protestors too. Nope.

You saw people on the streets waving signs here, and you think that means the Iranian people want US bombs to smash the hell out of Iran? (unprecedentedly high odds of a nuclear exhange)

No they do not. You saw anger-people marching here. The “Real” Iranian people are still in Iran, living under the killers’ bombs, and they are not confused by our self justifying endlessly mass murderous bullshit. The whole world is tired of us – we aren’t the best on earth, we’re honourless obsequious henchmen, to the very last vestiges of the Fourth Reich/British/Holy Roman Empire.

So, next time you feel a moral urge, maybe just don’t. Not until you care more about the world, than you do about your own personal eternally treasured contempt and hatred for everything!

Ignorance is as ignorance does (and we, my friends, are ignorance) – and worse still (for us) the long awaited and endlessly well deserved bill for our half century of excess and denials, is finally here.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Things are happening fast and BigWar/BigMedia has never been more full of shit.

So today I’m going to share one specific video, and then several youtoob channels worth following for updates, followed by a number of very interesting substack writers, with various kinds of analysis. Breadth of perspective is everything.

Here’s veteran whistleblower Danny Davis with MIT missile expert Ted Postol - wow!

Here the Danny Davis Deep Dive Channel

Alexander and Alex at The Duran are unique, internationalist and always interesting

Here’s Alexander Mercouris’ own channel (a daily newsbrief like no other)

And here’s the funnier but also informative Alex Christoforu who is also nice to cats

Nima Alkhorshid is an Iranian who teaches engineering in Brazil, he hosts the frequently brilliant Dialogue Works, and has many regular guests worth hearing from.

For any old lefties who miss caring about the world and the big struggle, you need some Danny Haiphong in your diet! He goes directly after empire, every show.

For principled Libertarians, who believe people should be given rights and freedoms to live as they see fit, according to founding documents of some importance, Judge Nap (Napolitano) has got you with his “Judging Freedom” Show and relentless productivity. He also deserves credit for bringing many of the best known whistleblowers from inside the American war state to a far wider audience.

I have shared the link for Brian Berletic and his show The New Atlas several times. He is incredibly informative and depressing, both, when it comes to conflict and geopolitical matters. He’s also supremely good on sharing the evidence and sources.

Glenn Diesen is (much needed) proof that intellectual does not have to mean gutless toady to evil and corruption. He writes and interviews on the general subject of war and peace, from the perspective of Westphalianism - the spirit of mutual respect and benefit which once made Europe great, and China would very much like to revive.

Speaking of China, no one proves the value of a distant observer better than Sean Foo. I’ve mentioned that Economics is a comparatively recent mania for me. If it still seems boring and indecipherable to you, try ten minutes with Sean Foo every morning - and you won’t feel bored or confused anymore - just really really worried (sorry).

Krystal and Sagar (and Emily and Ryan) and their split-perspective show “Breaking Points” remains the best gateway drug I know, for those who are still junkies for TV news (and CIA narratives) to help them start getting some indie media into their diet. It won’t actually cure you of FOX or MSNBC, but hey, it’s a start.

And Glenn Greenwald, after championing Rumble (to keep Youtoob honest) is back on Substack - hooray! Still unbowed after all these years, and still tilting with a smile!

Glenn Greenwald

Independent, unencumbered analysis and investigative reporting, captive to no dogma or faction.

Ryan Grimm (part of the Breaking Points team) does even more serious work along with a whole team of smart and courageous journalists at DropSite News

Drop Site News

Independent news on politics and war

Ex CIA Larry Johnson is, as he says himself, a rare extrovert who went into the analysis side (usually, they go to operations). This makes his reporatage colourful and often hilarious, as well as frighteningly often right on-point. (cynical, but accurate).

Son of the New American Revolution

Dedicated to the pursuit of truth without regard to partisan advantage.

By Larry C Johnson

Meaning in History is the project of tireless ex FBI Mark Wauck, whose keen eye for the detail that explains everything, is quite extraordinary (as is his breadth of sources). Got to love someone who knows how to find key quotes, but then also make their own fine analysis, from the gathered data (so many fine and wasted lawyers, at FBI). ;o)

Simplicius the Thinker is unique and whip-smart. Not for the faint of heart (but absolutely essential stuff for the rigorous about realities, crowd).

Simplicius's Garden of Knowledge

Conflict analysis, geopolitical commentary, with a side of culture & politics.

Kautilia the Contemplator offers another keen perspective quite apart from our standard western bias. If perhaps less surgical than Simplicius, all the more heartful.

When it comes to aerospace in contention I go to Black Mountain Analysis. As a kid who grew up studying crazy cold war systems, I adore their detail and clarity.

Black Mountain Analysis

Geopolitical, military and economical analysis

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep on saying it. You are reading Kitt Klarenburg, right? Perhaps the world’s best active investigative journalist, on our cold war fakery and the extraordinary evils long hidden behind our mask of righteousness. Must read stuff.

Global Delinquents

The role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.

By Kit Klarenberg

I have made reference to economist Michael Hudson in many essays over the last few years, he is not only insightful as can be, but was also there at key decision moments, and can thus offer us unique testimony. This section is from an interview he did with Nima, and was spotted by the tireless Mark Wauck, whose “Meaning In History” Aggregates key points about international developments from many interesting and rarely heard (in the west) sources, several times a day.

This is a key piece, when it comes to “Why did things get so badly screwed up?”

“....I gave one talk at the White House to Treasury officials with Herman Kahn. We said you can think of gold as the peaceful metal because, if other countries have to pay their balance of payments deficits in gold, any country waging war, any country entailing a very major military expenditure abroad that always entails running a big deficit, is going to have to run out of gold and lose its its power in a system that’s based on gold. Well immediately the Treasury people said, ‘Oh, we don’t want that! It’s America that is going to war, it’s America that’s spending almost all of the world’s military budget, and we don’t want gold to play a role in any system that the United States cannot control--and we can’t control gold outflows if we have to convert our dollars into gold.’ So, actually, to deprive other countries of any ability to cash in their dollars into gold means they’ve been co-opted into a financial system. It’s at that point that America truly became an empire, because the entire world’s financial system--and therefore its tax system, its fiscal system, its money creation--was basically directed by the US Treasury to finance the costs of what America claimed were the needs of its empire in creating its 800 military bases all over the world and in waging the wars that it’s been fighting since the 1970s.

Until this year other countries were willing to be part of this system because the facts of geopolitics led them to support US military spending, but also because there wasn’t an alternative ...

The United States is unwilling to annull global south debt that can’t be paid, but any attempt by countries to break away from the United States dollar--dedollarization--is treated as an act of war now. That was explained to me by the Treasury secretary already in 1974 and 75, with the the Oil War, when Saudi Arabia and the OPEC countries quadrupled the price of oil in response to the United States quadrupling the price of grain. the United States told them they could charge whatever price of oil they wanted to. That was fine with the United States because the United States controlled much of the world oil industry, including the domestic oil production, and the United States oil companies had a price umbrella as the price of oil went. However, the condition for for letting OPEC countries raise the price of oil was that all of their export earnings would be recycled into the United States.”

Here’s the original link from Wauck’s site.

This short, while not as sophisticated as some of my animating pals would have made it, makes a sharp point that must be made (and made again) with a few really choice beats of humour.

Here’s a piece I did several years ago about our weird cultural obsession with anger

Finally, for any who are curious about how sometimes you learn precious things about compassion on hard roads, here’s a piece about the hearth Catherine and I have kept.

Got to put a bit of uplift in here someplace, even in this dark moment. Still no Pollyanna BS though, promise!

Hey Folks

I must begin with a small apology. I know I must write about war and economics again very soon (pressing issues both, and more so still, within a few hours of publishing this, no doubt). I also have another epic piece in the works, looking at the fraught, always oversimplified and misunderstood issues around immigration – one of those places where both false tribes got dumber for decades, and are now pretty much insane. (another great case for anti-tribalism).

But today my duty as a lover of human stories and striving, and as a friend, calls me to something which is way more personal, but also sheds light on many of our modern problems, usefully.

As thousands of dedicated Toronto radio fans and lovers of Reggae, African, Brazilian and Jazz music especially, already know, the great DB Hawkes passed away in January, at the age of 76.

When I say great heart, I speak from direct personal witness as his friend for almost forty years. When I say change the world, I mean that, too – and thinking about how he did that is not only inspiring, but might (I hope) help some of my younger friends, who feel stuck in endless frustration and futility, access an infinitely more powerful approach – cheerful relentlessness!

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I first met DB Hawkes in 1987, when I was still trying to put my head back together after escaping a crazy cult, and going to community college to study electronics repair. As incredibly mixed up young people go, I was extremely lucky to meet and befriend a lovely cohort of artists and self-styled revolutionaries (of the now-vanished inspiration, rather than indignation, type). I had been making and recording improvised music for a few years already, with junk equipment salvaged from the garbage, when I met the unstoppable improviser Maury Coles at an epic house party that one of my artist friends put on. I knew at once that Maury was a very serious musician, and felt embarrassed when he said we should play music together sometime, because I was (and am) not. To be clear, I absolutely love music and love making it, I just understand that some put way more work into the skill-set than I, and would never want to pretend I think myself the same.

But Maury said something to me at that party, which I have never forgotten to this day. I told him that I was so bad, I couldn’t even play my own songs the same way, twice in a row (true). He smiled and said, “As long as we don’t end up doing any Beatles covers, we’ll do just fine.”

He came over to my tiny basement junk studio that Friday – and we kept playing together every Friday night for a decade after that, usually with a third guest improviser – sometimes at the Subway Room in the basement of the old Spadina Hotel (downstairs from the Cabana Room), sometimes in my basement, sometimes at my friend Wendell’s beautiful bed and breakfast, with as many as twenty guest players (and often his paying guests joined-in, as well – so cool!), and twice, live on-air on CIUT Radio – thanks to the always daring and curious DB Hawkes.

A lot of Toronto musicians will fondly remember the lovely old victorian headquarters of CIUT, before they moved into (architecturally, even more outstanding) Hart House. The old place was cramped, overheated, and had the sense of a plate-juggling act – creating consistently fantastic programming from resources which seemed awfully sparse, for such a task. Of course, the only way you do this is with the energy and dedication of volunteers who really mean it.

I have heard it said that online, sincerity is uniquely appealing – but this was also true long before we all got so buried in symbols of life, and disconnected from the feel and the work of it!

It took some heaving and hauling to get all our gear into the studio and set up (lets just say everyone likes a Fender Rhodes, until they have to get it up a fire-escape), and by the time we did, we only had a few minutes before going live on-air. So we ducked out to the fire-escape to enjoy a few minutes of slightly cooler summer evening air, and every single player and DB himself produced a joint, which we had brought for the special occasion. Great minds, and all that.

But the funny thing was, unlike a lot of improvising groups that actually improvise around deliberate compositional structures (admirable, highly sophisticated, and wondrous to behold) we really were an ensemble of true free improvisers – and no one wanted to start the first (almost always lame) motif, only to be corrected by someone else’s better musical idea. I remember looking up at the control room and seeing DB’s expectant face and thinking “Guess it’s me...” just because I felt the intensity of his interest – and his professional obligation to listeners, too!

Maciej came in behind me with one of his insanely complex guitar riffs, Wendell rumbled in with his toms and we were off to the races. Only, Maury set up one of his special techniques, before he came in with his horn (alto sax). Back in the fifties, he had discovered that the aluminum pie-plate from a small meat pie would cover the bell of his horn exactly. By cutting a couple of notches in the rim, and using an elastic band of the right tension (and optimal kind of pie plate) he created a perfect buzzing snare which he could engage on certain notes, for marvellous effect.

I always sort of swooned, musically, when he did that (urban timbre par excellence) but when I glanced up to the control room window again, I saw DB frantically checking his mixing console, with a panicked expression! Only at the end of the hour could he laughingly explain, “When that sax first came in, I heard that buzz, and thought one of my channel strips was burning up!”

Quite honestly, I was afraid we hadn’t lived up to his expectations, but DB was not only generous in words, he invited us back to do it again, a few months later (which was a much tighter and better showing, all ‘round). Flattery is one (basically meaningless) thing. Opportunity? Everything.

Thing is, he was just as sweet and encouraging to me when I published a colouring book for adults a few months later, (a decade before that became a thing), and even struggled through his dyslexia to read a few of my wordy early essays, and offered me superb and incisive feedback about my often unusual ideas and takes (being a man of much original thought, himself).

But the really amazing thing was that DB didn’t just have this kind of genuine enthusiasm to offer for the kinds of art making and weird creatives which interested me – he was this specifically knowledgable and encouraging to people in all kinds of areas of art, which usually had very little to do with each other. A cheerful bridge between cultural silos, who could obliterate the distance in an instant, and allow new and interesting cross-pollinations of ideas. Strange as it may be to say, for a man with no formal schooling in the arts, he had a bigger range of artistic intelligence and interest than any other man I have ever known (and I’ve known such intellectual and artistic people my whole life – to my incalculable fortune).

People in Toronto’s Reggae scene first fell in love with his relentless enthusiasm when he began recording concerts at the old Bamboo Lounge on Queen St W (way back in the 80s) then broadcasting them on his Friday night radio show. He kept doing this, at many venues and live concerts – but not ever as an exploiter – only because he saw his show as a way to give hard working artists a much bigger audience – which he absolutely did, for DECADES. Not just bringing faithful listeners back to his radio shows again and again, to discover new acts and check in with local favourites and touring bands they might never hear of, otherwise – but also to help them get people out to their live shows – which ultimately means helping them pay their rent!

People in the African disaspora all over Ontario and the Northern states fell in love with DB because of his live radio (and later online also) broadcasts of Afro-Fest, which grew from a small and lovely event in Queens Park, to an epic international show which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors annualy, in no small part thanks to DB’s extraordinary efforts, to make it heard widely.

I can still see him, the first time I was able to introduce him to my sweet wife, sitting in the stuffy sound truck, grinning his head off like a little kid at Christmas, utterly thrilled with the sounds and performances – and transmitting that enthusiasm, live!

But though this last might surprise, people in the avant garde community regard him with great and enduring fondness also – his series of recordings of concerts from Hart House (fabulous acoustics) brought listeners local talents like pianist Anne Southam, whose genius is far too rarely appreciated in her home town. Sublime!

To list the number of musicians he introduced me to, that I have never stopped listening to since, would be impossible. DB was the man who first played me Jobim’s “The Waters of March” – which I still consider the most perfect song ever (that wasn’t written by Jaques Brel). He opened my eyes to tons of Jazz, even though I thought I kind of knew Jazz, he made me crazy for Brazilian music, and he blew my mind with high-energy ensembles from all over Africa.

In one especially memorable Wednesday Afternoon two-hour radio show, DB did a fantastic review of the weird catchy old American novelty songs we all remember from the fifties, back to back with the far naughtier Caribbean pop songs from which each and every one was stolen – not just smart as can be, but so damn much fun!

As I’ve mentioned before, I became an audio technician because I wanted to be a musician, but didn’t expect that would ever pay my bills (because I wanted to play weird music, only). So over the decades, I worked on DB’s gear many times with my technician hat on – which is how I knew how he operated, on a technical level, as a recordist – much like me, but on a far grander scale! That is – ultra tight budget (no subsidies or direct returns), make every bit of gear count, and be as flexible, durable and compact as possible. I don’t want to say working cheap and dirty, because his achievements as a live recordist are astounding (especially considering his volume of work), but definitely thinking on his feet and constantly improvising, rather than arriving lavishly supplied – or even entirely authorized, in advance!

That last bit, is an incredibly important thing about living our life and making it count, which DB exemplified in an unusually powerful way. If you wait around for permission, or to have someone else to endorse your ideas before you try them (even online), you’ll end up waiting your whole damn life away. If you think something should be done, try doing it, see what happens, learn and do it better next time (or sometimes, realize it wasn’t really worth doing at all).

We learn by doing – not thinking and worrying and planning and fretting and posting.

The world is the teacher – our brains are dumb and empty (even brains that seem full). And again, I love how DB demonstrated this – with all his knowledge of and interest in music, he was never ‘done’. But always interested in something he hadn’t yet heard. Like the finest art teachers I sat for, as a model, his genius was that he never stopped doing the things that made him a genius in the first place.

But how far back does an eccentric begin to find their thing, anyhow? I tore apart a lot of gear that I found in the garbage when I was a kid. Probably had at least a hundred attempted repairs under my belt, before I ever studied to became a technician. I played improvised music my whole childhood, too (to the frustration of my classically-trained multi instrumentalist father).

DB had a similar early inkling. One sweet summer afternoon he told me all about his favourite childhood toy – a brand new Remco Radio Broadcasting Set! Almost like an easy-bake oven, but for radio. It was a very low power device, your AM station, right on the edge of the band, might reach as far as a few nearby houses on your street, might – but the point is that it actually did broadcast real radio signals, and with a little plastic announcer microphone and a very simple mixer to switch to music, he could do his first radio show, from his childhood bedroom.

I still smile at that image, and picture him playfully dedicated already, in that magical way children can so effortlessly be, and dearly wish I had had the skill to paint it for him, as I saw it.

If you were to judge a man by the company he keeps, you might be even more impressed, and also understand better how he was able to be so brilliant, in so many areas. The man really knew how to listen when smart things were said, and he often randomly hosted the most intellectually advanced Salon I ever witnessed.

I mentioned earlier, the way DB could often be an inspiring bridge between worlds, by bringing artists together, who would never have met, let alone become friends and collaborators, except for their knowing him and his great enthusiasm, in common.

Particularly memorable were a long series of discussions of the history of English tumult and popular revolt in the 15^th century, with expert carpenters (cabinetmakers? or if there’s a higher rank, that) Reggae musicians, a couple of reformed Bagpipe players and the odd television producer. But the scope and expertise was magnificent – inspiring proof that the working class intellectual yet endures, even if they (still) don’t get any air time or respect at all, on BigMedia.

My own favourite insight from one of these impromptu Salons came from a travelling musician, who talked about the way different countries did foreign aid. Americans and Europeans, he said, liked to build big expensive fancy looking things that weren’t well suited to the conditions, and inevitably cost too much to maintain, and so fell to ruin far faster than anticipated. Only the Cubans got it right, he remembered, with eyes shining, still awestruck, all these years later. They worked day and night – cheerfully, to build a school with a farm, which farm would feed the staff, the students, and generate enough income to maintain the school building indefinitely. Perfect.

(This remains my favourite anecdotal demonstration of what positive revolutionary spirit is all about – practical enduring advance in material conditions for thriving!)

But it wasn’t just listening to smart people, and asking them smart questions, which kept DB full of lively new ideas themes and projects, and powered his relentlessly positive work, he also knew how to listen to the world when it wasn’t saying anything in words at all.

After CIUT moved to Hart House, DB had to pre-record his epic all night Saturday show “Club Ned” so instead of being at the station, he went out on his bike all night, to listen to his show over the air, and see how it interacted with the late night hours during which it ran.

So – if you are one of those legions of grateful all-night workers or party people who noticed that the tone of the music changed in phases, especially as dawn approached, that was always deliberate. He wanted the music to register right in the listener – and never stopped thinking about the way his audience listened, not just what he wanted to say and have them hear and be inspired by.

(Another fantastic reminder for our too online moment – sending is less than half the battle – how a message is received is ultimately the only thing which decides if it lives, or falls flat and fails).

He was also into epic walking and bicycling adventures, even into his late sixties. When I told him about my wonderful photography walks with my dear friend Nada, he suggested we should take the Go train out, then walk along the lake from Guildwood to Pickering – and we did it – a crazy twenty K hike through beautiful fall colours on the bluffs that neither of us will ever forget.

His idea of a holiday was very much like that – but he would go for days at a time. Following old highways abandoned by newer routes, checking in on quiet sleepy towns, left behind by modernity, either on foot (with a hand cart and pup-tent for roadside camping) or a bicycle.

He always came back refreshed, inspired with whimsy and ideas – like the time he took the train out, then walked back to Toronto, from Kingston Ontario (which hike makes me jealous). He had plenty of great photos to show – but also a new insight “between all the prisons and the Royal Military college, Kingston must be the push-up capital of Canada, hands down!”

He also gave me the best head-picture of the visit of the Giant Rubber Duck to Toronto harbour. Of course Nada and I had been to see the beast for ourselves (national party time, anyhow), but DB was out by the lake on his bike at three AM, listening to his show and seeing how it hit the moment, when he came across a blissed out cluster of club-kids tripping on E and dancing silently, almost worshipfully, in front of the epic (and genuinely hilarious) totem of cute absurdity.

As a writer, I must also note – he was both bold and fair minded, in his own use. Many times he smiled at me and said, “You know I’m going to have to use that in my show, Paul,” and I smiled and nodded and said, “I wouldn’t have said it, if I didn’t mean it, and anyhow, I owe you for a thousand times more inspiration, at least.” Which is, and will always remain, quite simply true.

Rich people have ways of doing things which used to be pretty well hidden (yikes!) and middle class people have ways of doing things, which are broadly reflected in popular culture and BigMedia, albeit always distorted in a commercial direction. The working class gets very little representation indeed, but the counter culture/underclass? Das ist verboten, except as a fetish object for the occasional fascination of the bored bourgeoise.

But people who aren’t fancy, but just do stuff anyhow, recognize others who find their way there and find the strength to keep showing up, and keep fighting their corner, with a genuine smile.

As a writer with a weirdly good memory, I have a million other stories and memories of DB which I am tempted to add – but the most crucial thing about the man by far was always his magical quality of spirit, and any other telling, would be doing him a great injustice.

So let me give you just one last snippet, which sits very sweetly in my memory.

The Toronto Jazz festival is one of those things which was insanely awesome and long-thriving and then ran afoul of the well-meaning idiot class, who decided that it was wrong to let a cigarette company sponsor it (same wretched impulse which killed the amazing symphony of fire, festival).

Don’t get me wrong – Jazzfest is still a good festival, even much scaled-back and underfunded as it now is, and I still love any excuse to hear great music from famous names and up and comers – live music is best, more please! But now you have to watch carefully for the highlights, when before it was a gluttonous cornucopia of non-stop excellence brilliance and exuberence.

Problem is – tickets ain’t cheap anymore, especially for the big acts. On the other hand – performance tents ain’t thick – so, when a great show is staged in Nathan Phillips Square, poor jazz fans from around the city congregate outside the tent to savour rare performances, even while the well-heeled who actually can afford the tickets, sit inside the tent taking selfies and looking bored (blasphemers!) ;o)

A few years ago (pre panD) I had a long day on the model stand, and was excited to finish it by walking up to the square to listen a jazzfest concert by John Scofield, who brought a whole band full of all-star sidemen with him. Living legends making music, just a few feet away – absolutely thrilling stuff.

And I’m sitting there on a cold concrete bench in the big open square outside the tent, but only a few feet away, opening myself right up, to let the music fill me with joy and pleasure and make my soul full and happy (the way great music does better than almost any speech there is) when I hear DB’s voice – perfect Neumann Microphone timbre – all warm bass and crisp snare – “Hi” and I turn to see him leaning down his bicycle with a warm smile, to join me in sweet wordless and transcendent communion with the unerring groove.

I will never stop missing and loving and being grateful to you, my dear friend.

My condolences to your amazing son Lamont, and the ever radiant and magical Mary Ann. (Giant love for you both – I hope I did him some small tribute here, in a way your beautiful hearts will approve of)

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Note for new readers – auto-estimated reading times are exaggerated (lots of pix/links)

Hey folks!

Today I want to do a bit of a reality review and update – which is a strangely difficult thing, in a very revealing way. When I was writing essays about philosophy culture and politics back in the 80s, I could always rely on several incredibly useful tools, which have since been stolen from everyone’s toolbox!

The most obvious of these is the idea of common belief – and no I don’t mean a specific creed, faith or philosophy – I mean belief in an objective external reality which we can discover and discuss together.

Yes, this one is not just huge, but vast – but I need to invoke another idea-tool, in order to be able to investigate why and how more usefully. When should we use empirical standards (fixed rules) and when should we use relative values and observations (make comparisons) to best understand a thing.

Very much like the idealism versus practicality split (as old as Plato versus Aristotle), this is most often described in terms so crude as to be idiotic. That is, people who want to use one tool for absolutely everything are called-out for gross errors not by balanced people, but by people who want to use the opposite tool for everything. This can often feel like a satisfying smackdown of foolishness (though why we now seek that, above all else, is itself super-creepy) but it is still tribalist nonsense, every time.

I wrote to a very smart younger substack writer recently – in the context of the long post war history of Canadian peacefulness, relative to US militarism – that most of our famous post-war ‘niceness’ (badly eroded this whole century, as it has been) was won because the Liberals (under papa-doc Trudeau) deliberately destroyed the core capacities of the Canadian military, to completely remove the option of participating in American adventures for all future governments, by making us very simply incapable.

It is only just now we’ve all realized that our incapacity was the furthest thing from any kind of genuine, let far alone moral, strength – so far, that we find we are now completely incapable of defending our own sovereignty, or even realistically planning for that.

The key principle here is perfectly captured by that classic musician’s joke.

“The definition of a gentleman is someone who can play the bagpipes, but doesn’t”

So – when we are looking to refute a foolishness, we must first ask ourselves – are we seeking this because of our own incapacity? Or do we have this skill also, and critique from that balanced frame?

I don’t mean both-sides-ing crazy stuff (and again, I’m on the rational plane here, not the emotional), what I’m asking is – do we have a better idea or understanding, or just a general reaction of disgust?

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Last time, I talked about the extraordinary R Buckminster Fuller (AKA: Bucky) who brought his keen unconventional mind to many problems over the course of his life, always looking for broad human advantage, the exact opposite goal of the dominant post war strategies promoted by the thinktank industry, most of which came from the inventors and developers of modern game-theory (many of whom were clinically diagnosed paranoid schizophrenics – and boy does that ever show!)

But I don’t mean to make an indirect critique of the ideas by merely calling up the whiff of madness – Caravaggio killed a man over a game of tennis (definitely objectively nuts), but I can still like his paintings just fine. Mind you, his paintings don’t shape public life.

One of the many very useful and stimulating ideas I got from reading Bucky’s books, was his idea of the phases of development of Capitalism. I know this is something that many economists and leftist political analysts talk about in their own ways, but I like Bucky’s priority of “omni-advantaging” a lot, so I found his version especially compelling.

The old form of capitalism, dominant before the second world war and for a few booming years after, was all about industry (supported by future-thinking zero-profit government-developed infrastructure) – making things and selling them and planning for more physical reality into the future. This means big and sustained investments in R&D, improved infrastructure and ever more highly skilled workers who have and can anticipate a steadily better lifestyle, and are thus made able to consume more and more of the goods produced, to sustain an increasingly higher level of general economic development – all based on a number of clear and calculable physical realities.

There were a TON of problems with that model of capitalism. In fact, we could, without being too unfairly clever, say that there are dozens of entire political philosophies which are still active today, which were originally designed as critiques and responses to problems with that kind of capitalism.

But – such productive industrial capitalism does have one attribute which is hard not to call positive – there is a natural tendency for a ‘raising all boats’ effect, as production gets increasingly sophisticated, and work and wages for the society as a whole, advance with it.

Before I contrast this old (and very deeply flawed) model with our newer, even scarier economic hellscape – I have to stop to make an important observation for my younger friends. I was kind of horrified today when I heard Sagar (from the still vital and useful “Breaking Points”) say “I don’t know, maybe there are still some people out there who can remember what the economy was like, before NAFTA.”

YES – THERE ARE MILLIONS OF US! And I’m not talking about the boomers, who remember an economic model which has been an hallucination for everyone else, for a half a century and counting.

I mean Generation X (my own cohort) who entered the world in a strange moment of profound transition between economic models and ways of living – which was, for most of our lives, completely papered-over (lies and gaslighting) with outrageously bullshitful western triumphalist propaganda.

The really weird thing though, was that we got to see the value of the old systems which were dying, and heard all the bright promises for the new systems which were supposed to replace them – and then watch in front of our eyes as all hopeful promises were broken and the predicted downsides multiplied.

So we witnessed and understood what was being lost in a way that many others never noticed (boomers, who never cared about anyone but themselves) or knew, to miss (millennials and all younger folks – who have no experience of a time when we did much better, as a society, on KEY METRICS).

For several post WWII decades in a row, an American factory worker could afford to buy a house, raise a family and put kids through college. Overt racism absolutely was worse – but the ways and chances to work one’s way out of vulnerability to racists were incomparably greater. (There are acres of horrifyingly degraded, but once vital neighbourhoods in America, which used to be strong vital black communities centres of culture and development – back when millions of aspirational black workers had enough money to choose to make them that!)

Or, to put it more simply, the best thing to be able to say to a racist is “Get off my property, asshole.”

Infinitely better than living in a cardboard box and being studiously ignored by good and enlightened people who are so much more ‘advanced’ that they would never even dream of using the N word, and condemn anyone who does, sharply! (but still walk on by, head averted, almost as if that human person, is instead a piece of dogshit – at least to them).

A lot of my younger friends – tribalists especially – like to take shots at older people for talking about things which our society used to do better. No we are not missing white privilege (or the patriarchy), neither of which was on offer for Generation X anyhow – what we miss are basic human dignity, general affordability, childhoods with genuine hope and educations promising real opportunities to be useful in the world, and to truly thrive. We miss the luxury of a prosperous general culture, supported by a community which feels secure, and so has the capacity to seek more meaning and richness in life. To use art and craft, old and new, to transcend the mundane, and aspire still further in our humanity.

If you like it in hard-numbers, I heard one (reputable) economist say the other day that the share of GDP taken home by American workers and the middle-class as of 1965, was approximately 65 percent!

The rich were still very rich – but tens or hundreds of times more than normal people – not millions!

Far more importantly – tens of millions of working class people had enough surplus income to make an impact on the world in whatever way they wanted to. That is – to build society out in a way which reflected their lives interests and needs, instead of having to endlessly beg government to borrow from cynical bankers to hire psychotic corporatists to deliver a thinktank-model-created blunt instrument, which inevitably causes at least as many problems, as it promises (but almost always fails) to solve.

No I am not saying there is no such thing as a useful government program – I love libraries and fire services, universal healthcare (back when it actually was universal) and a whole lot of other things besides those – because as I say, I have witnessed institutional models which do serve thriving.

BUT – just as with idealism versus ‘hard-nosed’ numbers and models, the trick is to understand which tools can solve which problems. Government can set up the garden (zero-profit wide-benefit infrastructure, to make general thriving easier for everyone) but things like happiness, community and culture must be made by the efforts of individuals. Central control of individuality, really is evil stuff.

Likewise – government can foster economic conditions where millions of blacks can say, “Get off my damn lawn, you racist asshole.” Or, under the still widely celebrated first black president of the USA (though the financier pump was primed by the white man who was for years jokingly called the first black president of the USA, Bill Clinton) the government can instead confiscate more wealth from black Americans than any single man in US history – even while prosecuting US journalists, as if they were treasonous foreign agents (just because he didn’t like their message) more times than all other presidents in American history combined. Tribalists don’t like me saying Obama was a psychotic supremacist wallstreet/thinktank sellout piece of shit – they think his “blackness” makes him somehow immune. Gives him a special race-based – get out the consequences of mass murder free – pass.

I say – use your number tool for the hard numbers. Then use your idealism tool for the consequences.

But I don’t want to get distracted by modern history quite yet – let’s return to the change I was talking about – and mention too, there are a lot of models that reveal important aspects of this, but none which clearly show us all (that I’ve found, anyhow). This is the best reason of all to build, maintain (that is, thoughtfully review and continually interrogate), and keep adding to, a rich and varied mental toolkit. For some problems there really is one perfect tool only, which can do the job right! (ask any technician, carpenter or plumber you know – I guarantee there is at least one tool which they will not ever lend or even let anyone else use – because they remember vividly, how hard life was before they had it!)

Some people discuss “The Rise of the Managerial Class” and point out that industry got so complicated that it called for a new class of specialist managers to administer it, even though very different personalities and skill-sets got it going. In a simplistic telling, at a certain point, the managers realized that since the founders didn’t even know where all the levers of control were anymore, and they did, they could take over the whole ship – like a mutiny of the slide-rulers and the paper-pushers!

But I especially like the compactness of Buckminster Fuller’s way of putting it. He called it “LAWCAP” the phase of capitalism in which the economy was basically taken over by lawyers.

This isn’t just a joke (though it kind of is a joke, also, in the saddest way). I’ll admit that as a writer I am attracted to LAWCAP as a descriptive in one part because of the general public bias against lawyers – but like I say, I’m a technician (lapsed) and we get hated arbitrarily also, so let me do better than that.

I have repeatedly written about the National Security Act of 1947 as “The Thing That Ate the Constitution” and again, that is no joke. The act set up the modern system of behind the scenes government which now runs America, in absolute and continuous defiance of popular democratic will.

I mean the CIA and the NSC (National Security Council) most especially – but the act also created the modern USAF as an independent force (it was previously a subset of the US army) and the USAF was always in the lead when it came to funding and promoting the work of the early cold war thinktanks – RAND – the prototype of all the modern military-industrial thinktanks, was developed by a group of brilliant (and also sometimes insane) aerospace eccentrics, who just got more and more ‘eccentric.’

But most importantly, the post-war CIA and early Cold War State Department were both dominated by the thinking of actual corporate lawyers. We can even name them – the Dulles Brothers – (one ran State, the other CIA) who came from the prestigious Wall St. Corporate Law Firm – Sullivan and Cromwell. (Which I was outright horrified to learn, quite recently, still thrives and is still ultra powerful and supremely well ‘connected’ politically, in all the creepiest possible ways, to this very day).

Again – we are used to thinking in terms of vague categorical assertions and strong but very general feelings (blackness/wokeness type distractions). But when I say that the very first regime change operation the CIA formally undertook, was to topple the (neither socialist, nor radical) government of Arbenz in Guatemala, for their former (Sullivan and Cromwell) corporate client United Fruit, because he was trying to develop Guatemala itself, and not just maximize the profits of gringo foreigners, you understand we don’t need to know anything about general philosophies or identities, to smell a rat.

Of course, the CIA was built out of the wartime OSS – and so began with a whole lot of that wartime spirit of depraved indifference to the rights of all others, compared to the interests of der fatherland.

I should also note that the reason I have to say first on the books, instead of simply first, is that the CIA had already done another big and highly profitable job, for their old wartime pals in the British SOE (Special Operations Executive). They took out the constitutional democracy established in Iran after the war, and replaced it with a monarchy that no one in Iran wanted, and added a sadistic internal police force – SAVAK – which was internationally legendary for brutality (and trained and funded by CIA).

Read that again if you have to (history is not taught here anymore – or not remembered, anyhow).

The only reason Iran isn’t already a constitutional democracy like us (with all the same easy lines of corruption exploitation and vulnerability which our own system has revealed so horrifyingly, of late) is because British Oil companies wanted shareholder profit, as opposed to a thriving Iran, so they destroyed democracy in that entire country and put despotism in charge, by force, and CIA ‘ran point’ on the whole operation (and boasted proudly of it, for many years).

And since I’m on Iran for a moment – let me say something important. The recent protests were deliberately provoked (Scott Bessent openly bragged about causing mass suffering with the kind of dirty currency tricks he once used to take down the British pound – in the process founding a famous unstable and dangerously powerful weirdo’s fortune). Protests began with a legitimate reason (no one likes to watch their savings evaporate) but the timing was designed entirely for military purposes, and the violence in the second wave of protests, was caused by foreign funded directed and controlled terrorists (same playbook they used to destroy Syria – and many places before that).

What the western spy masters and racist killers did not expect was for Iran to get some technical help.

I have heard a strong case for both Russia and China (Russia because they’ve been working the problem since the start of the special military operation – China by sheer technical prowess) but whoever it was that sent the gear, Iran managed to shut-down starlink completely – then detect and respond to all the CIA Mossad and MI6 provided terminals, discovering the group behind them in the process – which means they were able to roll-up countless terrorist assets and fanatical cells all over Iran, many of which had taken decades (and untold millions in investment) to establish and prepare.

What was supposed to happen was a lasting wave of destabilization, which would make it impossible for the Iranian government to get their shit together to defend against a combined US Israeli attack.

Ain’t gonna happen, folks. The Iranians were suckered once, simply because they were humane enough to assume some basic western honour was still a thing, at least at the diplomatic level. Now, after several waves of assassinations tied directly to peace efforts, they see and know us far better.

We’re back to FAFO – the moment actual weakness is revealed, and all the power we were exercising based on an obsolete impression we had once made, and then too-long sustained, suddenly evaporates!

I wrote much more about the technical realities which limit American Naval power now, and the weird and very rarely discussed (but clueful) history of western violence and hubris in the region, awhile ago

So much for the effect of lawyers and the managerial class on government and any hope of serious representation of citizen’s will and long-term interests (that is, so much for all the good features of democracy, which make the long understood dangers like mob rule and voting yourself the treasury, which we absolutely did retain, seem mostly worth-it, at several times and places in history).

But what about their economic effect? Last time I suggested that my readers should take the trouble to read original sources, so they understood what problems were being solved, and the inspiration which helped (or went in a wrong direction we must understand, to correct). Start from source-stuff, instead of a corrupted corporate or governmental power-serving pabulum version – emptied of all life and vigour!

Adam Curtis captured a fantastic interview with a Soviet nuclear scientist many years ago, where he talked about the founders of their nuclear industry all sharing the experience of war in common – but then having to surrender control of the thing they built, to people who had no such hard-earned wisdom inside them, and did not share their tragically highlighted reverence for human life and society.

I have spoken about Reaganomics and Thatcherism several times – pointing out that the prosperity on paper which both of them celebrated so loudly, was actually the liquidation of capacity that we badly needed, not just as advanced economies, but also as societies with accumulated wisdom.

But just as Mercouris made me backdate my awareness of Chinese long term planning for rare earths (mid 1970s, not the mid 1990s, like I thought), another Adam Curtis documentary reminded me that though Reagan and Thatcher celebrated and institutionalized the idea of what was actually a fire-sale liquidation of economic fundamentals, being instead a serious sustainable economic driver for a new wave of general prosperity (actually death by a thousand corporate cuts, for all but the rich) the process really began much earlier than that – in the 50s and of course in the darkest heart of global capitalism – The Corporation of The City of London. (Which would be the seat of the anti-Christ, if they had one)

In “The Mayfair Set” (must watch stuff – link below) Curtis does a superb job of showing how destroying the bases of western prosperity became our shiny new (but utterly false) model of prosperity. It is shockingly close to stealing from workers, directly and shamelessly. And this model has done incalculable damage to western civilization itself – by de-industrializing the west wholesale, while putting money that once drove community-thriving across whole nations into the pockets of psycho greed-heads, already rich to the point of madness – far more harm than any adversary could ever do us. (And yes, I mean even my beloved Canada – which has no natural adversaries at all – we slit our own fool throats!)

The basic formula works like this – buy-up an old established business (with very expensive high interest debt) immediately sell-off a bunch of assets (properties, technologies or patents) which have appreciated a lot since their establishment, saddle-up the old company with all that new expensive debt (which debt did the company itself – the ‘founder’ management and the loyal expert workers both – no good whatsoever, only enriching the ‘takeover specialists’ and their own shareholders), then sell it off quickly, before the new debt erodes all remaining value in the newly ‘rationalized’ company and utterly destroys it, whatever needs it was serving in the world, the local community, and tragically many jobs.

Profit uber alles, really. As creepy (and also ultimately self-destructive) as capitalism gets. Then again, Marx did famously say that Capitalism would (cheerfully and righteously) sell the rope to hang itself.

The funny thing is, the founders who knew how hard it was to build the great enterprises, and how many special tools they needed to solve rare but very important problems, would never have looked at their enterprises the way the pencil-pushers and ‘downsizing’ experts did. They didn’t see fat, they saw surplus stored for a bad season – such as they had needed many times before, just to get this far.

The most jarring and still mostly unappreciated demonstration of the consequences of this fundamental split in approach was revealed most dramatically (and then very quickly concealed again, by the bankers and war serving BigMedia) by the 100% US created war in Ukraine.

The arrogant west is still using words like freedom and democracy to call forth ghosts of things we no longer really have, here in the west. Things we once really did aspire to – before the LAWCAP takeover – but only thanks to enough general prosperity for individuals to live and act according to our own damn will and principles! We citizens make things better with our actions. Advances are not delivered via one ideal (think-tank blunt-instrument) policy, forced at the point of a state bayonet!

We were sure our western weapons were better, our economies were stronger, our tactics and training superior, and as usual, we were most confident of all in our ability to flat-out cheat, with what we thought was generationally superior ISR (intelligence surveillance reconnaissance – which is second in importance only to logistics, for modern war – as has been bloodily proven, these last few tragic years).

Thing is, the “Superior Western Equipment” we sent to Ukraine was mostly rusty surplus gear designed in the 70s-80s and built in the 80s-90s (with Reagan’s huge defence budget). And how did this Cadillac gear survive the test of battle? Not well, folks. Western tanks are considered overpriced fuel guzzling pieces of junk. Great big targets, mostly (the only system the Ukrainians really do like is the Bradley infantry fighting vehicle, which they consider better-balanced than the old Soviet-era BMPs).

The same story proved true for our artillery. Great stuff fresh out of the box, but get a little mud on it (Ukraine has an entire annual season of notorious mud, remember) and it breaks down fast, is very expensive and hard to repair – and anyhow you need parts, or you can’t even start – and we can’t make parts anymore – or anything else, for that matter – not at scale, for a fair price, reliably. Once we had legions of (absolutely brilliant and super-impressive) tool and die makers, waiting to tackle and solve any industrial problem – the more difficult, the better – almost like the hands-dirty and apprenticeship side of deep cultural engineering knowledge – a truly heroic guild. But that is simply no longer our thing.

Now we have financial consultants and would you like fries with that people, app driven beck-and-callism, or the wan comfort of indentured servitude at an online retailer’s bot-despotic warehouse.

Again, to bear witness for my younger friends – we used to have unionized cashiers at major grocery chains, who could afford to buy houses, too – it wasn’t just factory workers. Now, minimum wage plus a tiny bump for experience, is ‘normal’ – while shareholders, rich already, take way more than they ever did back in the days when our entire society was prosperous (and government, was not a beggar).

Missiles and high-tech gear? Surely we completely overwhelmed them with our advanced capabilities there, right? It all depends on whether you watch a five-second clip, one round, or the whole fight.

The Ukrainians, acting as a proxy for all of the advanced western economies, our combined military industrial complexes, various megalomaniac oligarchs (the same psycho types who bet everything on derivatives on housing for black people, then pulled the rug out from under millions of real black people, who thought they were finally on the road to being “stake-holders” at last) and of course our many outright mass-murderous spy agencies and think-tank planners, did land many hard punches.

But the Russians are used to taking blows in war. It doesn’t freak them out, the way it does for us (not to say they don’t care, they absolutely do, they are just a lot more realistic about a whole lot of things).

What the Russians did, every time we surprised them with something technical, was work the problem and devise a cheap effective way to counter the system. We sent “Excalibur” a fantastic science fiction artillery shell to Ukraine – a giant bullet which costs over $150,000 each (yes, really), but always hit its target, and so is actually a bargain – why, just look at the sales brochure, if you don’t believe me!

The Russians figured out how to jam the guidance system for the shell in weeks – making it nothing but a hyper-expensive bullet. But we must realize – the military industrial complex spent many years and millions developing that ‘advanced’ system (and so many others) and the Russians figured out how to degrade the ‘innovative quality’ in the system in a few weeks or months, over and over again. This doesn’t just mean – we can’t pull that surprise in Ukraine again – it means we can’t use it on anyone.

(One day someone will cost-out all the hyper-expensive and ‘advanced’ weapon-surprises the west completely used-up in this conflict, and suddenly realize that it was more than enough money to solve homelessness, infrastructure rebuilding and prosperity reconstruction, with many millions to spare).

So we are now years into this thing – which we’ve lied about from day one – which has from the start been a war by the prosperous and “Ethical” west against the foreign “Barbarians” (that is, Orthodox Christians) to prove our superiority by force of arms, finance, sheer cultural blather and ‘vim.’

Russia alone is STILL outproducing all of NATO combined, in every category of military hardware (many, by outright multiples). Yes, they arranged for even more to come in from North Korea (just as the west has raided armouries of allies and vassals around the world, for gear to send to Ukraine), but the really important difference is that they didn’t ever liquidate industry, the way we did. Came close to it, but pulled-back at the last minute (which, on a long time-scale view, is the main reason for the war).

Russia maintains very significant industrial overcapacity – deliberately, because even though you hope you never have a season of famine and war, they do still remember – sometimes you do, and you’ll want every extra resource you can possible have, when the unfortunate must be faced and dealt with.

That is – their government, for all its many flaws, is still thinking like a founder – someone who is involved in the building and the advance of a thing. Not a sneaky and psychotic pencil-pusher who sees every overcapacity not as flexibility and stored potential for hard times, but as an unrealized fast-liquidatable banker’s profit, and every worker who isn’t being relentlessly overworked to the point of exhaustion desperation and burnout, as earmarked for dismissal, on the basis of “increasing efficiency.”

I don’t mean government in Russia is ideal (China either) only that in both of these states which we endlessly criticize for ‘violations of rights’ there are a number of rights they consider, that we just don’t.

Oh, and this will really mess your head up (if you are semi-old like me, and can remember good jobs). Even the people making the greatest American wunderwaffen are now paid just a tiny bit more than minimum wage! (Trust me – in the days of an industrial economy, workers for major defence contractors did not ever need food banks! They were putting cousins through college, with the extra).

I have an absolutely astounding Kit Klarenburg article linked below – in which he discusses the way that western intelligence agencies set about to very deliberately and carefully weaponize “Human Rights” itself as a cold war weapon (definitely among the most cynical abuses of principle, ever).

He has many details we never saw – but the obvious ones were staring us in the face, this whole time.

We insisted that democracy and free speech – those things we could do here, without getting in the way of corporate profits (and hopefully manipulate there, to undermine them, if only they let us in, to do it) were the sacred rights (our definitions of both, mind you, not ever their own – the stark clue to the corruption which we actually sought, behind all of our flowery ‘rights-based’ words) but we have never once bothered to recognize considerations for the whole of society, to be important matters at all.

This is how we came to have the vast pension capital of one especially rich generation (boomers) used by takeover funds to destroy the fundamental right to prosperity of every subsequent generation – putting most of it into the pockets of shareholders, but enough of a cut into boomer pockets to keep them compliant in the starvation of their own grandchildren’s future (and still shameless about it, which is just so freakin’ gross).

And once again, thanks to Klarenburg’s superb research and careful documentation, I stand very usefully corrected. Like a lot of people who originally come from the left, I long found it much easier to blame the right alone for violent state-madness. But the Democrats have done many of the most outrageous war and racism promoting things of all time. Once again – thanks to that creepy managerial LAWCAP class which has taken over all of the levers of power, locked everyone else out of the cockpit and bolted the door (all shades of popular will and restraint of power, very much excluded).

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International were actually CIA programs, this whole time (no really, I kid you not – read the article, please – it is very important stuff, for cleaning misty-optics).

Which brings me to the most useful and important perspective on Prime Minster Mark Carney’s much discussed speech at Davos. In a funny way, he was himself, pulling a Trump – acting as a class traitor, in the classic style predicted and described thousands of years ago in the works of Plato.

Most important (and least emphasized) he said the west has been lying about justice and righteousness this whole (cold-war onward) time – because we made tons of money being complicit hypocrites who served American empire, in a way which was self-evidently corrosive to our national-interests.

We lied (and we killed) and we scolded others endlessly, like preachy shits – just for big cash prizes!

To make this oblique but impactful confession, Carney used an interesting idea from playwright (and later politician) Vaclav Havel – talking about how a belief system lasts only as long as everyone goes along with it, and lends it their own strength, with their simple (and almost always mindless) acts of compliance. In this case, he used the image of shopkeepers all putting a little green sign in their shop window every morning, with a revolutionary slogan which no longer inspired any real passion or belief in anyone who saw it. Sustaining the national myth mostly by force of inertia, really. But what if we don’t hang the sign one morning – and what if everyone else stops lying too, all at the same time?

The image is useful and he used it well – we in the west actually have been complicit in extraordinary evil around the world for decades – not one bit of it called-for by the citizens or responding to citizen needs, here or wherever we’re interfering – but as democracies (even if only in name) we do bear some responsibility for this. If our democracy can’t even stop us from being crazy here – why are we killing others because they refuse to use our system, and constantly demonizing them, with a weird neoliberal version of cultural racism? (‘Closed societies’ my ass – what they really mean is closed to all our best lines of mass corruption and hyper-capitalist exploitation – how dare they say no to being raped!)

I have to digress for just a second here – one of the reasons that the feel-good ‘human potential movement’ of the 60s-70s and the ‘new age’ movement of the late 80s both disappeared up their own assholes (and destroyed many lives and otherwise functional brains, along the way) was because when you do bad things to others, you actually aren’t supposed to feel good until you damn well stop it! (Remorse is PRACTICAL – not arbitrarily imposed stigma from the settler whiteness patriarchy club).

Feeling good about yourself while great harm is done in your name is the pursuit of a crazy infantile narcissist (AKA Boomers and their many spiritually bankrupt inheritors). BUT – this doesn’t mean we have to wait until we fix the world, to be happy or satisfied in our lives – we just have to get out there and work on it! No, this doesn’t instantly fix everything, it just reminds us that we can get there – if we DO.

Because interpretations are so flexible nowadays, I should clarify further – I mean work on building – key practical physical tools, organizations, alliances, relationships, techniques and understandings.

This is the opposite kind of energy from that required to point a finger at “Them” (whichever them suits our pout best) then scowl hard disdain from across the room (Canadian version) or scream and throw rocks (American style) in order to assert the glorious and universal importance of our own personal anger. Anger alone doesn’t build (or solve) shit, folks – not ever even once! (There really is no more obviously or more laughably supremacist concept in the entire modern world, than WOKE itself)

What we need is my best definition of hope. Hope is a plan – and a team to work it.

(A bigger plan and a bigger team, than tribalism will ever allow – which is why I try to take it apart).

To be clear for anyone who is looking for fun ways to be angry at me – no I am not criticizing protest. I consider a citizen’s right to object to government absolutely sacred. That’s why I was objecting to the way Jan 6^th protesters were charged with federal crimes and given heavy sentences in jail – often just for being there (no federal action did more to jeopardize the US right to protest itself, in many decades).

But a far better example is the extraordinary good-spirited and internationally inspiring Trucker Protest movement in my own Canada – which was grotesquely misrepresented by all of our (BigMoney-BigWar Big-headed Ottawa serving) BigMedia the whole time – and still won their principled point on behalf of all citizens (and are winning many appeals against the government now, finally – yay!)

Because they weren’t just throwing a tantrum, they showed how protest in the modern world can be done effectively. You need a clear idea which allows for a practical concession from the other side, which will immediately advance rights for all. They were never against the shots themselves (as they were widely misrepresented, so they could be tarred with the chant of ‘anti-vaxxer’ (even though that was never a traditional ‘vax’ at all) – what they always clearly opposed was abuse of state power, in the form of unwarranted government compulsion (voluntary compliance was already over 90%). For political advantage, the Canadian state discarded individual rights which have been so long established, that some (like me) are still stunned they were even ever questioned – let alone that the state brought down such outrageous force, to muzzle clearly righteous and timely protest. (Farmers in Europe took a lot of notes, and have since upped their protest game, greatly! People-power resurgent!)

Thing is – because they had a sensible practical ask (Stop forcing mass violations of bodily integrity) and they had very high esprit de corps – they got a ton of support right across the country, even while every word said about them in BigNews was a lie or a grotesque and deliberate slander.

People are the source of good and principle in the world, folks – policy gets there later, kicking and screaming all the way, and even that, only if we citizens band together in great enough numbers to absolutely force the bastards to act (for one brief shining moment) like this really is a democracy!

Now I’m tempted to do a rant on Carney (his own resume as a liquidator for Oligarchs alone makes that way too easy – and I’m still waiting for any links to the Epsteinian class – so damn many of his long-time political pals are implicated).

You don’t think the CIA would withhold such matter in the still missing three-million pages, just to apply presssure on the guy during USMCA renegotiations, do you? Nahh, they’re good-hearted honest folk, wouldn’t even consider it, no doubt.

But just as with the morally complicated versus the high spirited and useful model of Jan 6^th compared to the Trucker Movement, I’d rather use a different globalist, to make my point much clearer – kind of a best possible case scenario (though I rather think he’d bristle at being seen as a “Steel-Man” for the globalist class – even if his own awfully fat resume makes that conclusion very nearly inescapable).

What can you say about a human who is still learning and trying, even if he has been wrong about a whole lot of things, and done great damage with those false beliefs, for most of his life? You can say he’s still a human being (which for all the flaws and complications involved, is still infinitely better than a straight-up demented maniac, or one of the millions of miserablists – the legions of ‘resentful surrendered’).

I must confess that I was not much interested in Jeffrey Sachs until the pandemic began. For most of my life I found economists in general pretty boring people, and thought economics was, too (I stand VERY MUCH corrected on that one – been studying like crazy, the last decade or so, and as I do, I keep finding puzzle pieces I’ve been seeking for years – in some cases literal decades!)

To qualify – I am still an omnivorous book maniac – so I have read three to six books about or by economists each year for the last half century or so – it just never became a dominant mania for me.

But Jeffrey Sachs came to my attention because he was angry, and wanted to talk about it. As a man with considerable international prestige, he was outright used, to help sell a big lie about covid. But he was not only offended at the trick, he was also furious about the grand abuse of principle!

More specifically, Sachs was hired to coordinate an expert and objective article about the ‘proximal origins of Sars COV2’ by one of the most respected peer-reviewed science magazines in the world.

Problem is, when he asked around to find out which experts were most knowledgeable on this subject, he just so happened to call the guy who was, as much as any one man on earth, personally responsible for the outbreak which took millions of lives around the world – Peter Dazig of Ecohealth Alliance – which subcontracted the next development stage of US biological warfare research which was almost certainly begun at the University of North Carolina biolabs, to a little laboratory notoriously beloved by the local pangolins (which had very particular bats), in a place called Wuhan – ever heard of it?

The experts on the panel Sachs assembled almost all said at once that it was clearly a lab designed virus and pointed to specific evidence (which is still solid today) to suggest this. But within a few days, they had all changed their official position on this and their published consensus (after secret pressure) said “it comes from nature.” There was even a completely bizarre line for awhile, which said blaming Chinese laboratories for leaking the (American Created) virus, was racist – so we must concentrate on the traditional eating practices which are so foreign to us, they mostly provoke disgust – to be unracist!

(honestly, historians reading about our time are going to assume we were all a bunch of imbeciles, just to put up with being talked-to in so insufferably ignorant and patronizing a way, by so many successive western “regimes” (surely a far better mirror-descriptive for us than free and representative democracies, at this point.)

The point is, Sachs’ name and reputation were used to sell a lie, and he didn’t just go along with it like you’re supposed to, he used his vast rolodex (contacts) and prestige to dig more, and came up with the best trove of clues and evidence I’ve seen so far (including Fauci personally ordering the research which added a furan cleavage site to original covid – to greatly increase transmission – which was the exact totally unnatural clue which made Sachs’ expert team originally think it had to come from a lab).

But then he went way way way further than that – and this is where things get really interesting and educational for us.

You see – Jeffrey Sachs was for decades, a top-tier economic hit-man for the western capitalist empire (Anglo, in particular). It is oversimplifying, but only by a bit, to say his specialty was as a downsizer for entire economies, to make them attractive to new foreign investment (no matter how many valuable hard-earned and locally beloved programs had to die or get privatized, to get there).

But he had such a reputation for genius and effectiveness at opening closed economies to (ultimately corrupting and exploiting) foreign capital, that he was often thanked, even when his plans brought very hard times indeed to a country. Thanked by the local elites who made huge profits, that is, not so much by the workers (and kids) whose life-arc was collapsed by his harsh policy of austerities, or the hard-earned rights stolen from millions of retirees. Humane predation? Reaganomics with a kinder face? His style was not as openly depraved as purest vulture capitalism – but it was halfway there by dint of sheer western arrogance alone. That very same ‘trim the fat’ psychosis, which has completely rotted out the foundations of our western prosperity – remains the dominant religion for globalist technocrats today.

But what really “worked” about his technique (for attracting capital and in several cases raising living standards a lot, after a hard transition period – see Poland) wasn’t the austerity and privatization alone, but the secret back-room deal part, where the western bankers agreed to forgive the ruinous debt they’d already hung around the neck of that state, with an eye on future profits from the growth thus unleashed – that back-room stuff was his key work, and he sold that deal in many countries (credit, where due).

But not in Russia. He tried, and pointed out that bankers and nations were both booming in several cases, thanks to his combo plan. But he was told that in Russia’s case the answer was no – we’ll keep the debt leash on them, even if it causes them disaster (as it truly did – as Alex Krainer details below).

Thing is, that debt forgiveness part was the key to making any kind of takeoff happen – and without it, all of his austerities were ‘underwater’ starved of the necessary wealth-floor (which the USSR did once have) to make them actually work. That is, like Malthus after the industrial revolution, or the Club of Rome after the agricultural revolution (or the green(back) mother-WEFfers at Davos, right about now?) the paradigm which demands surrender of rights, devotion and universal centralized thought-control on the basis of a compelling emergency cause, is revealed to be nothing but evil hubris and control the whole time – the very instant that the model is disproved. (Emperor is suddenly naked).

A yoke for oxen dumb and suggestible enough to keep walking into it (that would be us).

But you can see a powerful inner conflict in Sachs today, post radicalization (see the extraordinary video below). He has spent his whole life working for globalist elites, and only now realizes they were the bad guys, this whole time. His courage and clarity in talking about things like Gaza, Ukraine and the insane generationally destructive policy behaviour during the global medical emergency (caused by the military industrial complex in the first place – let’s not forget), make it clear that he really does now realize the particular forces of power he has served so long, are now the great evil on earth.

But he still has no better model to suggest than outrageously corrupted globalism!

Like a whole group of former military and CIA whistle-blowers who now oppose war and empire (and especially, the imperial over-reach which threatens any possibility that America ever can return to prosperity) he’s starting to look at the team he’s been playing against this whole time and saying – you know something, they have a point, and they had one all along, even when I and those I was working for, couldn’t see it.

The breadth of his experience, combined with his recent radicalization – make him one of the most authoritative whistle-blowers alive. When he talks about the CIA origins of the war in Ukraine he says “I was there in Maidan square with a CIA escort, who was proudly pointing out all the things they were doing, to make their whole plan come off.” First hand witness. This is why I have sometimes called him the “Where’s Waldo” of modern history – there in every important room, on the most important historical day. It is tragic that he didn’t have a more humane economic philosophy to offer nations, this whole time - but if he had, he would never have been sent into all those situations representing Western Empire – since making things better for the people was never their point – just foreign investors profit.

So now let me say one thing which ought to be said every time the word globalism come up – and would be, if our BigMedia “news” (noose) wasn’t absolute utter dogshit (this century especially and still increasing in stupidity and complicity with evil both – at a truly nauseating and ever increasing rate).

Globalism is distinct from internationalism (which I have always supported) in a very particular way.

Globalism is ONE specific plan, paid for by giant international corporations, to weaken the power of our governments to restrain their predation (on their own citizens and on foreigners, both) by bringing OBNOXICO (global capitalism) together with NGO organizations which can supposedly be trusted to ‘represent’ all the important citizen interests which we no longer feel any hope of advancing through appeal to our own political representatives. (because these same creeps have already corrupted our politics).

It is REALLY important to note that despite frequently heroic framing, many of the best known and cleanest looking NGOs in the world really were secret CIA regime-change programs, turned into ‘open’ programs, according to the radical strategy of CIA director William Casey – to make the programs far easier to run and to fund – and no more risk of diplomatic embarrassment when they are discovered – because they weren’t hiding! (yes they still hide intentions, but not their presence or organization).

Internationalism – represented more hopefully and powerfully by BRICS than it has been since the fading away of the non-aligned movement, decades ago - means countries which are healthy and vital and show mutual respect, cooperating to advance broader goals.

Globalism by contrast, is our collective lying mass-murderous rainbow-painted bayonet. “No, but we’re the nice ones, can’t you see the rainbow?” – STAB!

We can have real nations again, economies that work for people, cultures that respond to citizens, instead of being social engineering laboratories for psychotic billionaires – but we can’t even start to work on those things and retain the comforting delusion that we’ve been right and good, all along.

Ask any addict who has been sober (and pleased about it) for a long time, they’ll tell you.

“The first step to any positive change in life, is to realize and admit you have a problem.”

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

OMG do I ever have some amazing links for you today, folks! Not just “WOW, did he really say that?” Stuff – and several superb and subtle insights (Ryan Grimm on Chomsky’s political effect – absolutely nails it) but also some things that are kind of funny and horrifying (the tenor of the times? The contralto, maybe?)

First off here’s a really great clip of Sachs talking to Jimmy Dore (which demonstrates yet again, how differently figures we hear again and again, interact with different interlocutors – so revealing)

Here’s Garland Nixon talking to George Galloway, about the rotten(izing) class

Now here’s Kit Klarenburg with two pieces about the cold war weaponization of (some) human rights

Global Delinquents

How 'Human Rights' Became Western Weapon

All my investigations are free to read, thanks to the enormous generosity of my readers. Independent journalism nonetheless requires investment, so if you value this article or any others, please consider sharing, or even becoming a paid subscriber. Your support is always gratefully received, and will never be forgotten. To buy me a coffee or two, pleas…

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a year ago · 293 likes · 57 comments · Kit Klarenberg

Global Delinquents

How Human Rights Watch Shattered Yugoslavia

All my investigations are free to read, thanks to the enormous generosity of my readers. Independent journalism nonetheless requires investment, so if you value this article or any others, please consider sharing, or even becoming a paid subscriber. Your support is always gratefully received, and will never be forgotten. To buy me a coffee or two, pleas…

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7 months ago · 286 likes · 57 comments · Kit Klarenberg

Here’s a two-part minor masterpiece from Alex Krainer, talking about the way democracies go completely wrong, ever since antiquity – the corrupting oligarchy.

(Super insightful, relevant and interesting)

Alex Krainer's Substack

West under oligarchs

In his remarks to the United Nations General Assembly in October 2014, Noam Chomsky opened with the statement that, “Many of the world’s problems are so intractable that it’s hard to think of ways even to take steps toward mitigating them.” Since that speech, things only got worse and in addition to the festering social, political and economic crises plaguing the developed world, we find ourselves at risk of sliding toward another World War…

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7 months ago · 368 likes · 86 comments · Alex Krainer

Alex Krainer's Substack

West under oligarchs - part 2

This is part 2 of a 2-part report. Part 1 with the link to YouTube video covering both parts is at this link…

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7 months ago · 215 likes · 93 comments · Alex Krainer

Here’s the link to the official Adam Curtis youtube site – the best documentarist alive

The Mayfair Set goes into huge (and frightening) detail about the rise of the liquidators

But watch everything – he really is pretty much the pinnacle of television intelligence.

Adam Curtis Documentaries on Youtube

Here’s something great from tireless and perceptive ex FBI Mark Wauck (who writes the very useful “meaning in history” substack) Moral economics? Could it even be?

(Ephemeralization and omni-advantaging with Chinese characteristics?)

This whole segment is worth watching (these two are the B hosts for the show, but they are better than the A team by far – both very intelligent and thoughtful, even if very different in philosophy). But I cued-up a clip which is must-watch, and makes me like Grimm even more – he totally nails-it, about the cultural and political impact of Chomsky. (what I was saying in an earlier piece, about limited hangouts?)

Now I feel bad for missing this in earlier posts – while we are taking shots at Chomsky (which he deserves) we mustn’t forget the real thing was out there too – not just the oligarch’s most internationally famous and celebrated pet anarchist.

And what clues do you need, to detect the difference? Everyone who is politically curious knows about Chomsky – but millions have never heard of Michael Parenti – which is tragic (and purposeful). Unlike Chomsky who, even as a ‘radical’ enjoyed tenure without any problem, Parenti (much like Finkelstein) faced many challenges, because he just would not shut up and say the thing the powerful wanted said.

Here’s Dore again, with a passionate remembrance

And here’s the last article Parenti wrote – for the superb consortium news, about the 100^th anniversary of WWI (you will mourn him after reading, even if you never knew him)

Michael Parenti - 1918 - for consorium news

Ex CIA Larry Johnson has interesting perspectives on a lot of matters – this is a nice compact piece from a friend of his about the state of the thing we’ve been calling an economy (a scam, this whole time - and don’t get me started on the carry-trade)

Son of the New American Revolution

Losing Dollar Supremacy… The Savage Consequences of Weaponizing the Dollar as a Political Cudgel

It is good to have smart friends. Jeffrey Wernick, the owner of Bitchute, is one of my exceptionally smart friends and he just posted on his X account the following brilliant analysis. The 54-year reign of the US dollar as the world’s preeminent reserve currency is coming to an inglorious end and we, the American people, only have ourselves to blame…

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7 months ago · 162 likes · 8 comments · Larry C Johnson

Here’s ex CIA Larry Johnson again, in his new peacenik incarnation, talking to one of the longest serving geopolitical strategists in Russia. Fascinating stuff. What I keep saying about reading original sources? Same goes for nations – listen to THEM speaking for themselves, not the gossipy manipulative nonsense spouted by our own enslaving class of psychotic predator-creeps.

Now here are a few things which are sort of public health service – inoculants, almost.

Dr John Campbell was one of the only calm consistent and relentlessly scientific voices during the vast global crisis caused by bioweapons research, run amuck. He consistently reviewed science papers and new information from all around the world, watched the numbers, and in the process he did us all a truly tremendous service.

Here he is, with the one take you absolutely NEED on the whole Nipah virus thing

And here is stalwart Caitlin Johnstone with a helpful shot for your brain – no, Epstein was not Putin’s man (shouldn’t have to be said, but so many are addled and propagandized idiot-supremacists, now)

Caitlin Johnstone - Turning the Epstein story into Russiagate

I love it when the universe says you’re on the right track. I just finished writing the first draught of this piece, when I came across this superb clip, which makes many of my points, and several that I didn’t have time to get around to!

Sabby Sabs with a genuine heartfelt tour de force on Ibrahim Traore and what (TF) is wrong with us!

ChatGPT in a kid’s robot does exactly what experts warned us it might

This one is creepy – though the human reactions are consitently heartening. The AI discussions are purest yikes!

(But OMG fascinating for the difference in tone and approach, to the same questions)

Finally, here is something absolutely wild, which I’m not sure what to make of (but kind of love). I’ve spoken before about learning to sustain multiple interlocking strong and weak maybes (to avoid overly simplistic binary thinking, where everything is either true-true or definitely false).

We can apply this to many “unexplained” phenomena – may not be so, but if it is!...

I would rank this as a very weak maybe, but as a writer with a strange imagination and a lot of science reading, I’ve thought many times about things that could go wrong with CERN, which could screw us all up, big-time (going past all previous boundaries, does rather tempt the unknown, to enter, stage left).

My best guess? This is probably an early sign of an emerging sense of humour, in AI (and a better sign of approaching AGI than any other I’ve recently discovered, IMHO). Kind of a practical joke “This one will really mess those humans up, trying to figure it out. I can hear the arguments already – such fun!”

On the other hand, the telling detail – the wonderful ‘genius kid’ character who says that the error was that in one experiment, they changed the weight of one single electron (supposedly weightless) and that alone threw all of us into a whole different timeline, which many find disconcerting in the finer details – that bit is purest genius – organic or not! (As Kurosawa taught us, impressive takes just one stroke).

In any case, I owe you a head-scratcher and a funky little mind-f#ck every now and then, don’t I?

It isn’t that consensus reality (what’s left of it) is boring – it’s just so damned limiting!

Oh, yeah, here’s a bonus for anyone who watches news on TV and thinks “Yeah, that sounds true...”

Hey Folks!

I was just a kid when I first came to one of my simplest most useful and important idea-tools. I have challenged and doubted it many times since (especially when emotionally captivated by dogma and partisan chums) but it has held up under heavy use for at least a half a century now, while the dogma and the partisans have all ultimately proven themselves to be false and/or stupid (lies/ego).

There is no such thing as an easy rulebook or a checklist for the lazy and mindless, which allows us to access genuine morality and helpful behaviour in life without ever thinking carefully, or doubting our own inclinations and emotions. Even stranger – almost everything which people now use in this way, as a “moral code” to accuse others of being essentially subhuman in some way (our most popular modern emotional sport) was clearly meant in an entirely different way – and that becomes obvious if we study it, in terms of the context in which it arose, and the reasons why it was ultimately widely adopted.

I always found when I did study, it was clear each set of enduring aspirational ideas began as a counter-balance to a troublesome excess in the previous dominant ideas. Over time the new ideas might become a new inflexible imbalanced dogma, which itself calls for fresh challenging ideas, to balance THAT over-correction, or add a new aspect of consideration to our commons, and so on. (meme-tabolism?)

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Perhaps the most famous example of an old idea that we moderns almost always get wrong is the code of Hammurabi – “An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.” – which has long been considered the birth of all (western) law. To us it now sounds harsh and transactional – almost an allowance for violence – but in the time in which it was introduced it was considered radically restrained and compassionate. It was really saying – if someone takes your eye, you can ONLY take their eye back, not outright kill them (even though that remains a very popular and emotionally appealing method of conflict resolution down to this day – all depending on the culture and the particular sanction involved).

Our extra recent difficulty is that one way or another (popular culture Big(War)News and advertising) we are all constantly being encouraged to be and remain eternal emotional brats, instead of steadily becoming more and more responsible capable and sober-thinking adults. This means we most often study the ideas of other groups, just to insult them, for our own (entirely negative and unwholesome) emotional reasons, and never even aspire to develop compassionate understanding or rational debate.

Some of the most jarring bizarre and offensive examples of this are seen in the vast torrent of modern propaganda we’ve all been subjected to, during this deeply twisted century especially, coming from supposedly ‘well meaning’ social engineering control freaks, who think they are being clever because they use the language of their opponents, in their cheap-shot attempts to shame them, but fail to deliver any useful message at all, because what their pitch reveals most clearly to their target audience is the profound and shameless hatred disdain and ignorance held by the those exact social-engineering assholes who are doing the “Moral” advertising!

I’m not a sports fan, which just means more seats and merch for those who are – no problemo. But I know many people who don’t like sports, who also insist on making grandiose self-serving theories about the clear violent roots and high passions involved in sports, as if to say something they don’t like or use should be banned for others, because of their own ignorant outsider contempt for it. Thing is, we human beings all have violent roots. There is considerable physical evidence to suggest neanderthals were stronger smarter taller and even nicer than us homo sapiens. We won because we kill, in packs. Yes, there are herbivores in our family tree (a very long while ago) but the nature of our early success was as cooperating predators, and finding that ‘icky’ or uncomfortable does not alter it. Plus, sports really do, do a heck of a lot to help sublimate and channel our otherwise dangerous animal tensions.

Angry at a particular group, creed, race, sect or even gender? Fine – freedom actually is that big (and must be, or we wouldn’t ever be allowed to object to truly evil things, being done by truly evil groups).

But when we make an entire philosophy out of our anger at any group (rather than confronting the bad intentions and harmful effects of specific evidenced actions of that group) we are using our brains to create, reinforce and live inside a bigotry, because we are too emotionally stuck, to get over our upset selves and think a little harder (that is, to become much happier and infinitely more useful to others).

An especially clear and hilarious (though also tragically destructive) example of this phenomena was on display for us all, when Obama and Hillary were fighting to lead the Democrats into the 2016 election. Hillary’s (mostly CIA regime-change spooks and money-laundering banker-creep powered) campaign, absolutely started it, but Obama’s returned the favour in the exact same coin – so suddenly we had “Everyone who doesn’t like Hillary is a sexist!” (because we aren’t allowed to object to supremacist warmongering by people with vaginas?) and on the other hand, everyone who doesn’t like Obama (surely the slickest, most accomplished and destructively effective race-traitor since Eldridge Cleaver) is a foul and disgusting racist!

These imbecile tribalists got so deep into this game that no one outside their cartoon fight ever knew what policies either of them stood for, all we knew was they were willing to use shameless emotional manipulation and purest obfuscation, instead of having any key principles and ideas (as Obama proved).

It may even be that the ‘shame game’ propaganda we see, offends the majority of us for an even simpler reason than the insult to our intelligence, and the strident ignorant bigotries revealed – the sad fact is, the way BigMoney-BigMedia sorts talent, that stuff is almost always produced by spoiled brats who have never had any real world material problems in their lives at all, and so make up ten thousand imaginary problems a day that they then insist on concentrating on (and insist we pay attention to also), because they simply must be at the centre of things, and refuse to get over themselves, even if that refusal guarantees they live far less happy lives and stay far stupider, than they would by growing up.

Now here is something which sounds exactly wrong, but is true by hard measure and direct witness.

People who have real physical survival challenges to overcome, are almost always happier by nature than people who were raised without any big challenges, and instead indulge every upset as a trauma.

It isn’t that poorer people are dulled-out emotionless or numb (as some coddled brats assert) and thus ‘cannot appreciate the finer and more subtle things that are worth being upset about in life’. We have all of those upsets also – we just understand that head-storms almost always pale in comparison to real world problems – and know in the most basic way – life will do plenty of things to make us angry and upset, so there is no sense letting our own emotionality join that negative team to give us extra trouble.

We fight for happy – relentlessly and instinctively, as a reward for not ever being able to make it all the way to safe. Meanwhile the ones who are so comparatively safe and opportunity-rich they take every bit of it for granted, self medicate in the millions, in their epic scale narcissism, petulance and misery.

I am a Canadian and Canada is a rich country – but that doesn’t mean all Canadians are rich (especially my younger friends). Thanks to screwy 60s commune psychosis, I come from a mix of madness and constant struggle and have lived in or adjacent to precarity, my whole life – having a great deal of fun with life on scant resources, the whole damn time! (not by grand means, only to say my wife and I were always consciously aware that we only get the days we get – and we either put fun into them as they happen – or we get no fun in life at all. A real blessing to know when young – doubly so, to share).

My dear wife also worked many hours and crazy jobs in her early teen years (this was still common in the 1970s and 1980s) but my life just kept chasing me from job to job without a break for ‘higher education’ except ten months at trade school paid for by Health and Welfare (Wealth and Hellfire) Canada – which I made the most of, with twenty years in the trade (skilled audiophile tech, and very happy doing it, until the trade itself evaporated with the advent of robotic manufacture – and our hyper-wasteful modern age of ‘too cheap to fix’ consumer goods – incomparably MORE wasteful, than in our supposedly barbaric pre-recycling days).

So, as I have admitted before, one part of my early leftist passion was a heatsink – a way to do something rational(izing) with my basic jealousy. Why should spoiled rich assholes get more loot and influence?

But as with so many other divides, I no longer feel resentful about those who really do have enough ‘privilege’ to think their own navel lint (and personal tantrums) are of universal importance. It isn’t just about how distancing such narcissism is, from other human beings, and from real, vital (and invigorating) achievement in the world, it’s also about what we learn from our hard or soft roads.

One of the strangest things about the way humans think, is that no matter how spoiled and cozy we may be, no matter how few serious physical problems we have in our life, all of ‘our problems’ always start out feeling to us, like all of the really important problems in the whole wide world.

If we stay juvenile and concentrate on our own internal feelings (as we are now universally encouraged) we keep thinking our pet-peeves are ‘the real crises.’

“Stigma” is probably the most common tip-off, here. You know who thinks eliminating stigma wholesale is the great cause for justice of the modern age? Bourgeois motherfuckers and no one else on earth (apologies, if I just insulted you – still true, though).

There is another important argument just next to this one – about how much value shame actually does have, for the health and endurance of any society (people who mistreat others SHOULD feel terrible). But I’ll get into that one another time – today I want to stick with how our hope ideas get turned into doom ideas (and how we fail to notice the reverse trick, even though it happens too – all the time).

Speaking as an anti-tribalist, the biggest problem with all of these popular confusions and wilful misunderstandings (almost always for our own cheap negative-emotion reinforcing sport) is that when we buy into them, so we can give ourselves the (comparatively comforting, because at least defined) feeling that our general anger at the objectively and deeply screwed-up state of things, was deliberately caused by one gang of bad people, who we can be good, by hating, we lose all of the big fights at once.

From this stance, my friends on the right can’t see any sign at all, that anyone on the left has given the slightest shit about civil liberties in twenty years or more – and yet, the exact same thing applies in reverse. Tribalism trains us to do a dishonest bit of emotional accounting, so suddenly we see our own team’s grotesque trespasses and violations of principle as the fault of ‘the other guy’ for pushing us too far, even while we count their very similar sins as doubly-bad, for the way they insult us by flat-out refusing to conform to our special (whatever) hot-air doctrines of perfected-checklist truth and virtue.

Groups don’t have virtue – or sin. Individual people have great and terrible characteristics, which we understand not from the empty words they spout, but from the actions they take over time in the world.

Are we looking for a reason to take an eye? Or can we go as far as the Christians did, with the radically compassionate and re-balancing idea of super-powerful self-sacrificial principle? How about we work on taking no one’s eyes at all? And while we’re at it, let’s throw the cursed moneylenders OUT!

The biggest problem that people of every political stripe now see in common (but still largely fail to recognize that the others see, also) is that the modern world has been ensnared by globe striding corporations, which have spent decades (and trillions) undermining the power of national governments (and we the people, they were always meant to represent) to restrain their most psychotic actions.

One of the most shocking and hard to accept things for modern westerners, is that we are all now faced with an example of a very successful civilization that does allow for, and yet also restrains capitalism, in order to prevent its most anti-social excesses – and where it misses, to punish them severely.

By every conceivable measure (poverty especially, but definitely not only) China has been moving from strength to strength this entire century, while we’ve spent this same century squabbling endlessly like idiot-tribalists, desperate to pose as righteous somehow, even while we end up paying for racist war after racist war, always based on a lie, and always a complete humanitarian disaster in the end. And absolutely always for corporate and banker’s profit – no possible upside ever, for we the people.

I grew up in a library (my father was one of the greatest natural bibliophiles I ever met) and I’ve been crazy for reading my entire life. For some reason (dumb-shit luck and/or divine providence – but I’m grateful either way), I have always gravitated toward very helpful contradictions in my manias.

I was crazy for the writings of both Plato and Frances Bacon, at an early age – and thus took much of use from the source-stuff of western inspiration and the grand edifice of western rationality both.

And I kept doing that – Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell sat on the same stack as GK Chesterton, CS Lewis and Charles Williams. The state, deified, vs. the defiant transcendent soul.

As a teenager I thought a lot about how teenagers in many other places were still drafted into the army (the scars of the Vietnam war were very fresh in the culture to the south) and I got into reading war history in a big way – dozens of books on the first, and hundreds on the second world war and Vietnam.

We don’t recognize this so much anymore, but WWII remains our key (and deeply twisted) myth.

Again – it is so tempting to go off for a dozen pages about many things which are fundamentally wrong with our understanding of the first and second world wars (and everything else about the already largely rewritten and falsified 20^th century, the later parts especially) but that’s an essay for another day.

The key thing for today is that I was reading voraciously, in a subject area which was plastered over completely with state-serving propaganda. But because I have always been more interested in the key clues and witness shared, rather than the author’s own final summation or conclusions, I couldn’t help noticing (rather like a good detective does, in an interrogation) that the inconsistencies in the re-telling of the lies, revealed an awful lot about their nature, and their only ever partially-disguised purposes.

And what, you may ask, was my balancing obsession during my war history phase? Would you believe hardcore Chinese Communist propaganda? (which I should note was charming as heck back then, even the translucent paper was so distinctly and tangibly ‘for the masses’).

I was working from the time I was a kid – and book-crazy, so naturally, one of my all time favourite childhood jobs was when twelve year old me worked up the nerve to ask the founder of a still excellent (and still friendly) local bookstore chain, if I could do some work for him, in his very first shop.

This was, I must note – the 70s – so different a time it is hard to convey. But more to the point, I was already out and living on my own (and told him so) and I came in to browse the sales-tables in his shop so frequently, he knew already I would take most of my pay home in discounted books (as I did).

So he hired scrawny piccolo-voiced wide-eyed nervous me, to ‘do security’ for his distant back annex. Mostly I just walked around near other customers and scowled at them, if they looked like they might try to snatch something (no doubt a hundred times more amusing, than intimidating, but ‘eyes’ at least).

The wonderful thing about that store (and any great bookstore anywhere, to this day) was that unlike the always-filtered internet, it was filled with truly excellent and thoughtfully chosen things (not majority slop-junk) that I did not know enough, to ask for! (random, but high-quality brain-stimulus!)

No really – this may sound insignificant, but long before AI began to threaten our ability to think in long sentences and construct complex arguments (let alone do research, one of life’s great pleasures!) the simple fact of the internet filtering for our stated preferences, was already badly warping our minds!

Why? Because life is big and we are not. How could we learn, but by looking further than we’ve seen?

This is hard to convey to modern people, because nowadays we are inundated with mostly low-quality information (advertising even follows us into the freakin’ bathroom now – yikes!). This means that we have all been forced to develop skills to keep information away, so we don’t drown in force-fed slop!

But like anything metabolic, we have to do both parts of the cycle, close ourselves to storms and toxins, but just as surely remember to open wide again to the nourishing (and humbling) sunshine, or else we will surely wither (out of sheer boredom and pointlessness, if naught else) starved of nutritious novelty.

So, being a curious kid, I bought and devoured a whole pile of amazing inexpensive 1960s and 1970s era photo books produced by the Chinese Communist party, to explain themselves and their cause (and remind us of the horrors, just before).

It is important to say I recognized at once, even as a kid, that these books were propaganda – but I couldn’t help noticing also, how many similarities there were, to the western war histories I was reading!

Beyond that – just because something is propaganda, that doesn’t mean there is nothing to learn there. (The key mental filter is the one I described above – seeking clues, while remaining wary about the conclusions – and seeking clues also, to the over-arching motivations behind those conclusions).

Another point which is more and more painfully obvious to me, as I age, is that most of the horror stories we then heard about the early period of Modern China (Mao) came from England – even though England literally fought a vicious war to push drugs on Chinese citizens, and thus brought that great nation into a state of pathetic debasement and warlordism, which cost a hundred million civilian lives.

In retrospect (especially in light of the anti-Slavic rabid madness on loud display, recently) Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech was purest racist warmongering insanity, coming from a sick Empire that still has not surrendered the tools of duplicity, corrupting-finance and racist hyper-violence, even to this day – nor have they ever once truly recognized they have no right to murder “inferior” foreigners.

Even ruined and bankrupt, England had to stoke hatred of the other. (Easier than facing their own evil?) Can’t help recalling the spirit of “from hell’s heart, I spit at thee!” – got to love a reference to the bard and for trekkies both, right?

So perhaps Morality is a word and tone the English government should be forbidden from using at all, for say, a century or so? (Or at least until they have made reparations for their centuries of cynical slaughter).

Now to be clear – there was a ton that wasn’t right about early China (and Stalinist Russia, to be sure) the question we never want to think about and incorporate into our understanding is – what were the real historical (sustained western violence) conditions, which we forced them to respond to?

For a version of this strange problem much closer in time to us (within memory for many) the Taliban is often criticized for many real and serious errors (though it is noteworthy that now that we also tear-down historical statues which offend us, we can no longer disparage them in shrill tones for cultural blasphemy the way we once did, without being forced to wear that same oaken tag ourselves).

But where did they come from? America provoked the war in Afghanistan deliberately (Zbigniew Brezhinsky, Carter’s national security advisor, boasted about this in a famous interview) in order to try to destabilize the Soviet Union, the same way the Vietnam war had destabilized (bankrupted) America.

Many in the west still like to believe ‘we killed it’ (the combination of Reagan’s outrageous weapons spending, Afghanistan, and the horrible Chernobyl accident, all destroying confidence in the state), but I have seen far more convincing (less vain, self-serving and childish) arguments, that the Soviet Union was doomed by its own internal contradictions and policies. We pushed, but mostly, they just failed.

And then what about Afghanistan, when the Soviets were no longer a problem? America just walked away and left the country smashed to bits and destitute, a failed state with no real national government.

It is painfully tempting to do several pages about the education, organization, funding and tasking of the early Taliban, and their political evolution since (extremely un-Afghan, in character – not to mention many fingerprints of intel agencies and dirty money from many nation-wrecking creeps).

But the key question is not ever “are they our (spoiled western) idea of nice” the question is – are they a measurable improvement on what the local people were living under, before they came? Mao was a million times more interesting and culturally influential than any Taliban thinkers I’ve learned about – but both highly flawed movements were huge improvements on the desperation, poverty and absolute lack of a functioning state, of the brutal exploitative zero-law warlordism which preceded them.

A more advanced state can steadily evolve from a basic one, but not ever where no state exists at all.

I know it’s a bit too ‘nail on the head’ but I must remind my friends. No state at all is the result of almost all of our modern wars over the last half a century. (The war of the golden billion against the poor of the world?) very much including the Obama-powered destruction of Libya (which was up to then, the most advanced and prosperous black-run nation on earth) and Syria (a rich and beautiful part of the culture of the western and eastern soul, continuously, for thousands of years – until we advanced western guardians of all that is right good and moral, ‘helped’).

We do that, like the Brits before us – we carefully (with trickery and hyper violence in combination) smash entire advanced cultures to bits, then say – look how shitty those poor desperate lowlifes are!

And as long as we got to write the history books (with blood-dipped bayonets) we all felt fine and good, and got to share not only in the looting of the world (our purloined prosperity) but also feel like the most obviously and resplendently superior beings the earth had ever known (and modest, too!) ;o)

But people who get kicked in the teeth repeatedly get very determined, while people who bully others get stupid, which means we’re all feeling the panic of the ground moving under our feet as we are suddenly confronted with a dark but inescapable reality – oh shit – we’re the f#cking bad guys now!

Please note – it isn’t the Republicans who smash countries and steal rights – nor is it the Republicans and the Democrats together – there’s no American exclusive, here – countries all around the Western world (that ever-so-smug, golden billion) are run by parties just as corrupt, incompetent and clueless.

Which means it is our non-transferable duty, as citizens, to figure out how to restrain them, even though corporations have long been reducing their power to do good, while increasing their control.

Ah – but fear not, I have yet to introduce the hero of the piece – or his foul and hateful nemesis!

You see, the contradictory mania which I come back to most often in this moment, is that tension between the approach of R Buckminster Fuller, and several whole shelves full of others, who tried to reason their way around and past his very purposeful and entirely rational (not rationalizing) optimism.

Hatred of immoral corrupting and monopolistic corporations really is the place where people who still self-define mostly as left and or right, could most easily recognize their clear common purpose (which is of course why corporations invest so very much in the project of dividing us, over the long term).

If we go a step further than just hating corporations and study them awhile, we get all kinds of clues to how they mess us up so badly, but just as surely, the kind of thinking we need, to do much better (again, not a simple immaculate checklist for scolds – but a set of practical techniques and approaches).

If there is any evil thing that a corporation ever did, that was not done first by the East India Company (1600 - 1874), it must have been a specific technology they just didn’t have. Scheming for money, hiding from taxation, starting wars, causing foreign impoverishment and false-scarcity, stealing entire countries-full of wealth – they were the ones who pioneered all of it (one of the main reasons that the legal definition of a corporation is so essentially responsibility-denying – is that the main reasons for capital (rich psychos) to hide behind a false corporate face, have always been psychotic). At times, they even had a private army, twice the size of that commanded by the British crown!

They also hired a very smart and evil man named Thomas Malthus to study the resources and populations of the entire world, and extrapolate over time, to help them strategize for maximum profit.

His conclusion, backed up with all kinds of “Science” (which is to say “Models” based on a whole bunch of questionable and often simply wrong assertions, taken as proven axioms) was that population increased faster than food supply, so poverty was inevitable, and the rich and superior therefore had a natural right to kill the poor and inferior to get enough (since there was never going to be enough for all, and there would be less and less for anyone, over time), and that was simply the true hard scientific nature of the world, however cruel it seemed to our (then, still largely Christian) sensibilities.

He was also highly influential (in suspect ways) on Charles Darwin, Adam Smith and even Karl Marx!

The thing is, as smart as he was, and as much data as he gathered to prove his doomful and violent supremacy enabling ideas, he completely missed the industrial revolution, which was just about to transform the entire world completely – making material plenty for all, a practical possibility at last – and rendering every last one of his models and calculations entirely wrong! (Leaving nothing but evil).

I know this may seem like a witticism, but I swear one part of my own unusual scholarship which seems especially different from others, is that I outright like to be proven wrong. Many feel a slight to their pride, but I feel grateful, because it means I’m learning something (correcting an ignorance).

This can (and should) be done in a happy way – but I arrived there more with an ambivalence to personal suffering (a foolish chosen-toughness), than an enlightened lack of pride (working on it).

What this means for me is that I have read a great deal of modern doomful stuff, never shied away just because it was depressing, nor did I use that study as a way to accuse others (even as a poor person in a rich country, you can’t help understanding you are buoyed by exploitation of poorer others elsewhere).

And here’s a key book-person’s insight about that. READ ORIGINAL SOURCES! If you are deeply interested and drawn to study more, by all means delve into the interpretations and critiques of every last thing which inspires you – BUT GET INSPIRED, FIRST!

Rachel Carson (Silent Spring) actually had something important to say, and communicated it in a way which resonated well enough to change state policy, and thus very probably helped to save several entire species from extinction (and us humans from a whole lot of entirely avoidable disease).

James Lovelock (The Gaia Hypothesis) was a planetary chemistry specialist, who was asked to figure out why the earth was so weird and life-favouring (stable in terms of chemistry and temperature) compared to all the other planets in our solar system. He didn’t popularize the concept of our biosphere (with much additional work by microbiologist Lynn Margulis) with intentions to create new tax regimes. Though he retroactively regretted the use of the romantic-sounding name ‘Gaia’ for his hypothesis (rather than something clearer, about atmospheric homeostasis) he actually is kind of poetic, and was hoping we would understand and appreciate our extraordinary fortune, and with that understanding, begin to act with gratitude and respect for our precious, ancient, life-giving bequest.

Yeah, not so much, right? We’d have to want reality, before we could work on that. So far, no sign!

Now, having noted a couple of very sincere and helpful individuals, who added understanding (and meant to contribute to insight, not tribalist sanctimony) let me note what happens, all too often, when we leave the original sources (and their humane offerings of understanding) and go to mass digested institutional interpretations – whether boring textbooks or statements of corporate or state policy.

It isn’t just that you lose the spark, the why did they even come up with that in the first place? part. You also lose the original goal, because along the way someone (rich) will have an agenda to push, not just alongside of the original spirit and goal of the inspiring originator – but instead of it.

One of the most brutally depressing books I ever read was the Club of Rome’s “Limits to Growth” which was in every way a modern Malthusian tract – it predicted mass starvations for the 1970s and global unrest as a result (and suggested surrender of sovereignty of rights to new, banker-funded institutions, as a necessary emergency responsible move, that all right-thinking people must endorse).

Now I know I seem a million years old to some of my younger readers (tube radio repairman? WTF?), but I’m still not quite old enough to have read “Limits to Growth” when it was still scary. What happened instead of famine was “the agricultural revolution” which multiplied crop yields almost overnight, and produced a surplus, where some of the world’s greatest minds had predicted famine.

Cui Bono? (who profits). The guy (Lovelock) who says, “Hey folks, I just realized that we rely on something we never noticed, and we’re messing it up, so we should consider how not to mess it up.” Or the institutionally-digested suit who says “We need to establish trans-national laws which can be imposed by experts from above, and never changed by any weight of citizen will” (anti-democracy)

Now, in the hour of our greatest murk gloomth and pressing despair, the hero at last appears! (cue fanfare)

He is a funny-looking old coot for the hero role, to be sure – but he also happened to be one of the most brilliant Americans who ever lived – the unique and relentlessly creative designer, architect, inventor, mathematician, game designer, cartographer, philosopher and above all engineer, R Buckminster Fuller.

Buckminster Fuller did a lot of interesting things in his early life – he was dissatisfied with the way geometry was taught to him as a child (and then went on to make very useful contributions to it) he liked to build and experiment with new inventions and approaches, so he got a machinist’s certification. He was kicked out of Harvard twice, served in the US Navy as a radio operator and rescue boat captain and first as a worker, then in later years in management, in the meat-packing industry.

After all that (though still in his twenties) he worked with his father in law on a company to produce excellent flexible modular construction materials – but the company went bust (rackets don’t respond to innovation immediately, especially if it threatens their rackets!), and since he was already deeply depressed about the death of his first daughter, for which he blamed himself (and their drafty house) he considered killing himself, so at least his family would get some life insurance money.

He had an epiphany then, which I truly adore (having felt quite hopeless myself, more than once).

He said he felt as if he was floating, and suffused with white light, and a voice said to him:

“From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to the Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.”

From that moment forward he decided to try a radical life-experiment, making himself the experimental subject – what he called “Guinea Pig B.” Here is how he put it, very near the end of his life.

“I am now close to 88 and I am confident that the only thing important about me is that I am an average healthy human. I am also a living case history of a thoroughly documented, half-century, search-and-research project designed to discover what, if anything, an unknown, moneyless individual, with a dependent wife and newborn child, might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity that could not be accomplished by great nations, great religions or private enterprise, no matter how rich or powerfully armed.”

The funny thing was, though he cooperated with people from many spheres of knowledge that would seem wildly contradictory to us today, he was in every case working his experiment – trying to add advantage to humanity itself, by spreading better design ideas, to foster ephemeralization (doing more with less material – one of his great lifelong causes) and systems thinking – or to quote the surprisingly useful wikki-P article on him, specifically “the empirical study of systems in transformation; his focus was on total system behaviour unpredicted by the behaviour of any isolated components.”

In his brilliant “Critical Path” Bucky wrote about doing a large scale study for what was then one of the world’s largest mining concerns – very much like the study the East India Company asked of Malthus, so long ago, to understand how much raw stuff is there on all of earth, how many people need that stuff for what industrial processes and purposes, and how long will it all last?

But Fuller did not come to the same conclusions as Malthus, firstly because he was not at any time trying to reinforce class, supremacy or any kind of profitable false-scarcity (one of the most evil and frequent tactics of all growth-and-flourishing strangling monopolies) he was into omni-advantaging everyone. In fact, he ultimately came to the conclusion that competition for resources was completely obsolete – as a human survival strategy – and instead broad strategies of mutual advantage could easily accomplish material plenty, dignity and thriving for all citizens of what he called “Spaceship Earth”.

It was really just a matter of what we were trying for. As he pointed out, the greatest share of our intellectual effort and investment of resources was going (then, as now) into ‘killingry’ (war).

Were we instead working mostly on ‘livingry’ – sharing and innovating design solutions for constant progressive ephemeralization (more work done with less material inputs) then utopia, defined by him in terms of material conditions for broad-based thriving, rather than with any top-down single-model insistence (which he always considered a huge error) was not only possible, but obligatory. The only sensible positive aspirational and widely inspiring goal for any modern society – not least, to steer us all away from our Damoclean devil-deal – the always present threat of total nuclear annihilation.

Of course, to do a thing as sensible as that, we (the people) would have to throw the moneylenders out of the secular temples of Democracy and finally steer the great ship ourselves for real – instead of letting ‘our betters’ rule us all straight into the ground at a thousand miles an hour (the present general plan, for the future of tragically degraded western civilizational ‘excellence’).

The point is that we have the ‘stuff’ we need to make it work. We lack the vision will and clarity – only.

Can we fix it at the point of our bayonets? Nope, not anymore (and that never was sane or ethical, anyhow). On the other hand, can we participate in the material advantaging of millions of people who are struggling and ready to be unleashed on a modern global economy? Oh my, yes. If we’re China!

For those who are skeptical about the ‘how’ part, Bucky worked on that too. He established the “World Game” in the mid sixties, to get students from universities to game-out scenarios for global benefit – the exact opposite of our expensive thinktank driven military wargame complex, which, for all its malign purpose, still frequently warns us of predictable disasters (which warnings we mostly ignore).

The simplest great idea Bucky promoted, was the wonderfully counter-intuitive and essential trim-tab. He spent many childhood summers on Bear Island, Maine, and was an avid sailor his whole life, so he thought a lot about naval architecture and design evolution (again, a very helpful boost to his later far more comprehensive ‘whole-system thinking’).

For a small sailboat, a rudder makes basic mechanical and muscular sense – you can see how one person can hold that steering paddle against the resistance of the water in one direction, and turn the boat. But what do you do if you’re steering a gigantic ocean liner, and the rudder itself weighs many tons? Do you just brute-force it, with a mechanical muscle scaled-up in proportion to the ship?

No you do not! (and OMG would that ever need a STAGGERING amount of mechanical force).

What you do is use a trim-tab – which is like a very small rudder, out on the end of the big rudder. As soon as you turn the small trim-tab in the opposite direction you want the rudder to go, you create a natural pushing force at the very end of the ‘lever’ (outer edge of the rudder) which counteracts a significant proportion of the resistance the rudder must exert, to turn the mighty ship.

The little absolutely can move the gigantic and thus change the course of the whole mighty ship, we just have to be very clear about reality – and very specific about the application of force.

And yes we can all – everyone on earth – ‘make it’ and truly thrive and grow into a long and hopeful future. We just have to decide that we want a right to thrive, more than a right to kill ‘inferiors’!

(A re-balancing idea and a sanity we must all acknowledge – ain’t never once been rocket-science).

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

One final Bucky-ism today. As a lover of nature and natural systems he had a special contempt for greedy large corporations which made things like plastic flowers - completely missing the point of life, for money. He called them all OBNOXICO.

No specific-story links today - but here are a few sites worth watching for great interviews with smart experienced people with well-evidenced perspectives and enough ethical stamina to remember cause and principle (instead of doing that oligarch serving purpose-substitution trick at the last minute, like Big(war)News)

Professor Glenn Diesen - a sane peace-seeking European (when we most need one!)

Dialogue Works - With Nima Alkhorshid - An Iranian expat Engineer in Brazil!

The Duran - outstanding stuff, from a wide range of insightful people (and check out both Alexander and Alex’s own shows also - some of the sanest news-people around)

The New Atlas with Brian Berletic remains depressing and outstanding on geopolitics

And nobody is doing a better daily business show right now than Sean Foo. Outstanding coverage of the meaning and repercussions of trade and currency wars

Finally, I do have one self-crafted public service announcement to share, which surely applies to snow machines just as well as it does to lawn equipment.

Note for new readers: auto-estimated reading times are much exaggerated (many pix/links)

Hey folks!

Happy new year, eh?

I wanted to do something a bit different today, to start the year off on an optimistic note – despite brand-new news-horrors, and the newer more shocking ones guaranteed to come soon after – because if we wait for a nice calm period before we talk about the big things, we (normal human beings and citizens of good intention) will have lost the fight completely. (Which is the reason for the chaos).

But before I get into it, I first have to refresh my favourite super practical definition of optimism – optimists are not those delusional people who think everything is great and is going to work out great, optimists are those people who can look at the world very realistically – and still bother trying!

This ties-in well with a bit of wise-foolishness I decided on, early in my anti-tribalist quest. What I’m after isn’t making myself feel better, but rather non-delusional hope.

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The reason it is now necessary to note the difference between ideas which are designed to make immature people feel better (even if they aren’t true or useful) and practical approaches taken by people who are genuinely interested in improving the world, is that western popular or ‘pop’-culture (wildly distorted for decades, by psy-op vultures) is now almost entirely based on the idea that freedom means each individual has the sacred right to embrace sociopathic childishness, life-long. Try and stop me!

Again – a key distinction. Child-like is a good thing – open-minded, playful, creative and interested in the world – is a very useful and adaptive mindset to bring to many situations, problems and studies. Beyond that, child-like is a great way for us to step back and remember wonder, humility and joy.

Childish is about the rejection of responsibility. The motto is “Why should I?” the mood is tantrum, and the effects are bad for the individual being childish, and for the whole wider society around them.

The fake-mob tribalists I keep talking about on both left and right (who absolutely do discredit the value and spirit of both sides constantly, loudly and incredibly obviously) are vast hordes of wilfully childish people, who are completely addicted to abusing what are meant to be practical and world-improving political philosophies, not just to ‘justify’ their own unhappiness, but then also to escape any responsibility for it, with a convenient externality – whiteness, masculinity, immigrants, Islam, etc.

But what sort of a mentality seeks most to justify sustaining a negative emotional state forever, rather than overcoming it with humble realism, learning from the experience and growing to become ever more capable and useful to others than we were before? You’ve already got it – childish!

And yet ‘justified’ is a game that we (crazy) modern westerners play constantly, so much that even otherwise sane people get dragged into playing. So many have been convinced that the world is supposed to make us happy, whole, healthy, or satisfied. Childish to the point of infantile. A desire which can not possibly be met by the means invoked (meaning a trap of never-ending frustration).

As it happens, the world is very busy with a whole lot of other things which don’t happen to perfectly serve our precious centre-of-the-universe egos. But while many sad-sacks pout and wait for some external force to make or fix their life, adults around them do much better (I mean by their own terms, not commercial) simply by recognizing a well-established truth – Fortune favours those in motion.

Last time I suggested “measure twice” as a mental tool, to make sure we always think about how much more things are than nothing, and not just think about how much less they are than perfect.

The very similar balancing consideration which we must apply, whenever we are seeking to justify our own angry feelings or do some group-blaming is – and where exactly does that eventually get us?

A few years ago I talked about one of the most interesting books I have ever read about the tricky and subtle subject of ‘Enlightenment’ – a volume called Kundalini, by Gopi Krishna. He made two observations which I have never been able to forget, because they keep asserting relevance in all kinds of other areas that are far more familiar, even to us harried distracted modern consumerists.

The first was this – when you first become enlightened, it is almost impossible to believe that everyone else didn’t suddenly become enlightened also – because the new insights are so powerful they feel as if they are blindingly self-evident – even though they were totally opaque to you, just days earlier!

I have to remind myself of this one a lot, because I now understand very clearly that tribalism serves the common enemies of all good people – and yet many of my old comrades continue to fume and rant in ways I used to, myself – intending to be good or helpful, but serving Mammon and Mars (war).

It would only be fair to condemn them as evil-serving scumbags, if they had the capacity to see they were completely wrong! (stupid, or at least ignorant in a technical sense, is still entirely fair though).

Gopi Krishna’s second insight was perhaps even more directly relevant to our modern passionate craze for high-emotion self-disablement. He said what most people fear about seeking enlightenment is that their most basic selves might be completely obliterated, by the new enlightened perspective.

His answer was that it was exactly the opposite – the things which we fear losing, when we take a big step of growth in maturity or awareness – are the things which are actually holding back our true self.

To put it in more direct terms – what keeps us frustrated is not the tribe we love to hate, but the fact that we’d rather hate a tribe than simply grow the f#ck up and live in the world, instead of a comfortable but also completely delusional and self-harming prison we constructed in our heads, from angry fantasy.

By the time a slave says “But what would I even be, without the flogging?” Or a serial killer says “But who would I be, without all those innocent victims to prey upon?” We’re not talking self, but madness (which defends itself surprisingly vigorously – kind of like a bad AI that doesn’t want to be turned-off!)

So – for any of my old friends who are angry with me for anti-tribalism, and fear they would lose too much of what they truly are, if they stopped raging all day long at their personal favourite hate-sink, that idea is precisely wrong. If you want to change things in the real world, you first have to enter it (give up that self-serving self-made trap of false understanding and other-blaming) – or – wake up.

I spent years as a tribalist myself, so I do have a lot of sympathy for people who remain trapped there, but as soon as you escape that particular (now nearly universal) set of mental shackles, some things that are completely invisible from within tribalism, suddenly become glaringly obvious. One of the most frustrating, is that both fake-mob-tribes are stupid in pretty much the exact same ways, because their juvenile partisans both seek the same false (ego serving, instead of society-serving) goals, with means that were meant to advance the general good, and not ever as an indulgence for sins unrepented.

What is amazing (laughably depressing?) is that tribalists are so fond of enjoying their hatred of the other tribe, they look right past their own lack of principle and profound self-sabotage of interests, and never do sit alone and think quietly, ask themselves if they might be wrong, or have a good look in a mirror (not for vanity, but to sincerely attempt to SEE WHO THAT ACTUALLY IS looking back).

The reason that ‘fortune favours those in motion’ gem works so well is actually pretty simple. People who are operating from shared sound principles have a very hard time finding other people who also function that way (always was tricky, but now much more so, than in decades) but on the other hand, such active optimists really love to work with others who have that spirit. So if you have that mindset and you get out and do things in the world, whether work art or hobby, people of like-mind can recognize you and share exciting news ideas and projects with you. You are, in effect, putting yourself in a position for a fine carpenter to make best possible use of your available tools.

Oddly, the childish tantrum folks (on both left and right) spend an incredible proportion of their energy asserting that such simple, humble (and society building) cooperation work is always exploitation. One should work for credit, big money, some form of fame or impact, or else simply not ever work at all – as a matter of asserting precious self and dignity.

Ye-gads, still more distinctions (but truth-seeking requires it). Understanding the world realistically (so that our efforts can have some useful effect on it, not just on our conceptual models of it) actually does often mean developing a disciplined professional mindset – in those areas where we are professionals.

I have hit a professional standard in both the skilled trades (as an audio technician) and as a creative freelancer – but creators have always been squeezed for dignity, so let me draw from bench-head again, to describe the most valid prideful yet also practical difference between a true professional mindset and the amateur (childish) performance of it. For a decade or so, I was locally famous for this routine.

Technicians (much like auto-mechanics and plumbers) are very widely distrusted by the public. There are some finks, to be sure (or were, back when technicians were still a thing, in serious numbers) but in more than two decades in the trade I actually found outright scam-artists to be very rare. What was always common was misunderstanding, and denial of realities and respect (asshole customers).

As a working-class intellectual, I ‘gamed-myself’ a lot, to help keep the work interesting, adding extra challenges, so that I’d bring something home that I could use, at the end of the day (not leave all the efforts and results of my days in the workplace cash-register). Since retail work is (inescapably) a set-up where random people walk in off the street and test you, I just had to make deliberate use of this zero-cost social laboratory mechanism, to learn more about people and styles of interaction.

Retail work itself is often a very useful corrective to excessive tribalism – because in retail we see how people treat others, in a situation where many moderns believe they are fully entitled to be special-case sociopaths – all demand, absolutely no reciprocal respect at all. (BIG BIG HINT: fake leftists usually treat retail workers like they are despicable slaves, who should have been beaten much harder).

Thing is, you aren’t allowed to get mad at people all day long, just for being assholes (not if you want to keep your job) and in any case, that would just mean you’d spend all day every day mad – big time fail (we only get the days we get, there are no do-overs where we can go back, and put more fun in).

On the other hand, if you listen long enough and learn how to communicate with enough kinds of people, you can give them a useful bit of education, and help them treat other professionals better in future (which also means they will get better service, and are more likely to get extras, which true professionals always reserve as a reward for the respectful, just to help keep that vibe going).

The why and how above are super important. If I had wanted to make people feel bad in return, I could have just been a rude asshole at the counter (met like with like). But I was trying to do a favour for them, future-me, and every other tech they’d deal with in life. Win win win stuff. Positive magic.

Because disrespect will not ever help you – especially when it is combined with glaring ignorance.

The classic was a customer who would come to the counter with a scowl, and before even explaining the symptoms they would announce, “My friend knows electronics, and he says it’s just the resistor.”

At which point I would smile and say “Well that’s great. If your friend has already diagnosed the problem, and it’s just the resistor, then you don’t need my help at all. Diagnosis is the trickiest part. Why not just have him change the resistor? Save yourself my bench-rate and minimums.”

Now, for those who don’t know electronics – it is NEVER just the resistor (because if a resistor burned-out, something else went wrong to cause that). But more to the point it is never ‘just’ anything.

The whole point of the word ‘just’ when offered with a scowl, by the ignorant, is to say – I don’t know what this job is, but I’m telling you now, I’ve already decided it is a small job, so don’t pad the bill!

But what a skilled professional hears is – I have no idea what I’m talking about, and I begin from a hostile and disrespectful fantasy about the condition of my gear and your ethics as a technician.

What that special case sociopath was actually communicating was – I’m reflexively nasty and dumb.

I would then use that key word ‘just’ as a way to explain that reality is reality, and what they should really be looking for, from any technician (or anyone in the skilled trades) is clarity and reality. What have they found? What are they proposing to do about it? What are the limits of that solution and what more might be done also, at what evidence-decision threshold, for what likely benefit and cost?

The fact that I am a superb and sincere communicator helped my point land by the end of the repair cycle, even for those who were initially petulant, way more often than my inner-cynic anticipated. Give people who bug you (even with legitimate offence) a chance to learn how to be slightly less psychotic next time you see them – and they’ll amazingly often take it, and sometimes even thank you for the tip!

Which is another super-important reminder about what a piece of shit tribalism really is. There is no such thing as fundamentally bad groups of people. There are many individual people who are incapable of getting outside of the snake-pit inside their own head to be respectful to and helpful to others, and quite a few who are more harmful to others than that, but hearteningly few who can’t still cross a new line and make new progress. (Why the high-road always beats ego-anger, whenever we can manage it)

I also must mention (serious pro tip here – plus the measure-twice rule) one of the best pieces of advice I got from the tech who I apprenticed with (working on everything from 5 tube 1930 radios to single-bit converter CD players with magnetic-levitation laser-sleds – when such beasts cost thousands).

“No one will ever thank you for something that you didn’t ever tell them you did.”

This is why my invoices ended up being legendary, every place I ever worked. I was a good observant and careful technician also, and studied hard to stay current, but showing customers exactly what I had examined and what I had found and done, made them understand I cared about their precious baby too.

Now, just because it feels a bit contradictory (in moral implications) though it is actually all about where to use which tool, I must link back to a point I made recently, about the difference between an anonymous gift and one which is clearly from someone. One is a pure help, one implies a mutual obligation (at minimum gratitude, or perhaps even the expectation of a reciprocal gift, in future).

As a professional I seek credit to empower my customers (give them more satisfaction per dollar spent) myself, and my trade (because even lesser communicators deserve a lot more respect than they get).

But I’m also a demented creative maniac, and I’m into so many different things that if I had to apply professional standards of firmness to all of them, I wouldn’t get any work done in any of them at all. Professional thresholds are ultimately empowering – for PRO WORK, but they are also very confining.

I am very happy being an unencumbered amateur-idiot as a musician, photographer, illustrator etc. – and with that recognition of my own non-professionalism, I know to offer active respect to those who have crossed the threshold of professionalism (because they share great tips and great camaraderie with the respectful) and also to defer to them, when the question is clearly in their professional realm.

I have one friend who wrote what he was sure was a “Christmas hit” with a friend of his – a quarter of a century ago. They were both so sure it was the holy grail of pop (there are still big bucks in Christmas airplay) that they never stopped fighting over who had most rights to it – and so it was never released!

In fact, they’re so paranoid about how utterly fantastic it is and how much someone is likely to rip them off, they won’t even play it for pals! Now, if either of them actually was a professional working musician, I would almost understand this (absurdist traps like this really can happen, even when we’re being sensible), but nope, they’re still working Joe-jobs they hate and dreaming of music-lives.

Okay – now that I’ve laid out a few ideas about how we think, interact, fool (and hobble) ourselves, it’s time for my own personal kind of fun – lowering the lance and then tilting at some great big piles of false-sacred bullshit, on both sides of the false divide at once.

(I can’t help thinking this is another big clue – hilariously, I have got way more shit for failing to ‘properly hate the other’ than for my many blasphemous shots at my own old, long-corrupted, team)

What Empires Are Always Like – At The End

Probably the single most outrageously silly and pathetic thing about modern western culture, from the perspective of every other part of the (comparatively sane) world, is our blind insistence on our precious uniqueness!

Napoleon said it rather memorably “Study history!” and he said it, because as soon as you do, you realize we ain’t so special, nor so different from every other bunch of people that have trod the earth – in our case – those people who have lived during a period of massive social breakdown and decline.

I am not a polyglot (to my great regret) but I am very interested in other languages, because even on the early part of the learning curve (where amateur dummies like me can play, in non-professional glee) I always find all kinds of clues about how my own language works. Different valid solutions to problems we once thought only had one solution, remind us that optimal is a thing we humans imagine, not do!

Similarly, I am a very amateur student of Islamic history, but I am fascinated by the clues which apply to our own history, but are harder to see when we invoke terms which are already “loaded” (religious schisms, races, dogmas, etc). When it comes to Islamic empires, the terms are fresh also, so it is easier to see patterns as patterns, without reaching for a moralistic (ego-serving) idea as explanation instead.

What do we see, over and over again? Great movements which spread their ideas widely begin from a combination of genuine strong ideas and strong spirit of belief, and over a few generations become the decadent preformative used-up incompetent bankrupt and despotic (oligarch serving) thing which their fresh new energy had once displaced.

The initial rise of Islam came about from just such a moment – the Persian and Eastern Roman empires had completely exhausted and bankrupted themselves with decades of pointless war. The idea that the long ignored desert nomads between them, could emerge with serious ideas and belief and then overcome not just one but two ancient and incredibly powerful empires was beyond the ability of either empire to imagine, right up until they were completely defeated by these upstarts. One particular story makes the point about belief strongly, when a defeated emperor was brought before the Caliph Umar, ruler of the first great expansionist wave of Islam (took Egypt and North Africa, as well as Persia and Eastern Roman territory) the bejewelled ruler found the man who had defeated his great (and decadent) empire clad in nothing but simple robes. The first generation just aren’t about the money, folks.

Now, when it comes to the question of cycles of renewal within empires, the decadent rulers are usually still familiar enough with their own (long exhausted) creation myth, to recognize upstart movements as threats to their power, but though they have the full crushing power of the state to wield, once they have lost legitimacy, they are definitely doomed, because even if they do successfully suppress one movement, they inevitably discredit themselves completely in that process, and end up inspiring the next movement which does succeed (having learned many lessons from their martyred predecessors).

I keep drawing the contrast between mob-powered state-serving fakes and true vital movements – here’s another fine chance to observe the reality and importance of that subtle but crucial distinction.

The emotional idea that things are messed up because someone else is being bad and we can just blame them for everything and hate them, and then we become good, is seductive as hell – and infantile shite!

All those idiots who suddenly thought America was back in the 1950s for racism, and were thrilled with their celebrations of mass-hatred for conservatives, were doing EXACTLY the same thing they so loudly despise when the right does it, to immigrants. Pick a group, savour your hatred – self-nullify.

This is a very common RELIGIOUS extremist phemonemon which we can observe all throughout history, whenever empires get creaky and the old shared belief systems start to break down (because the system no longer works, and the rewards are no longer being well-distributed).

The power of genuine belief is very hard for us cynical moderns to understand, or even to believe was ever real. I suspect this is because we were all raised inside a set of cultural stories so well-engineered (to keep us stupid and compliant) that we never even saw the supremacy or the leash in the mirror.

That is, we’re so drunk on the state-pabulum version, we wouldn’t know the real thing if we saw it!

But the effects of this kind of excitement leave all kinds of markers in history – not just the rapid expansion of Islam from a few desert raiders to a vast wealthy and highly cultured empire in just a single generation, but just as surely in the rise of America, despite the globe-strangling trade and capital dominating empire England, which did everything it could to make hopeful and rebellious America fail, or else fall back into line with their grand Imperial vision.

The thing which stands out for me in Islamic history more clearly than European (there also, but so long entangled with other factors, it’s harder to discern) is that the surest signal that the empire is about to go bust is that a new rebel spirit arises, which makes the old paradigms look stale stupid and evil.

Now to be clear, not all of these new ideas were better ideas – that isn’t even the point (we in the west are just used to thinking that our moral feelings about who is icky and who heroic, matter to history). The point I’m making is again from my technician head – a functional observation.

And when you think about it, it kind of makes sense on an organic level (taking communities or civilizations as their own kind of grand-scale organisms) that when the old ways of doing things no longer produce effective results (or often, are no longer followed at all, just indicated in words and then ignored in favour of nepotism and corruption) a whole bunch of strong new ideas should arise.

Let a hundred flowers bloom! Let a hundred schools of thought contend!

Sometimes the wild radicals win power and become the new power (and in a hundred years or so, they become the decadent hypocrites who need to be kicked out of power with fresh blood) but even more often, they just serve to weaken the grip of those currently holding power, so a new faction which has been waiting in the wings for a long while, can take power, combining some bureaucratic competence and preparedness, with an echo of the radical new overturning idea which weakened the ‘old boss’.

That is – what looks like a revolution within empire is almost always ‘renewing the product life cycle.’

When we look at January 6^th, or Black Lives Matter, or No More Kings, or anti immigrant rallies, we are looking at bog-standard religious fanatic “Anything but this” movements, which arise in times of dissolution, and are usually manipulated (or outright created) to serve power-jockeying factions which will first make use of, then just as surely discard and oppress anyone with energy to march and yell.

Now again I have to stop and zoom-out to address the personal and emotional level (because we really are such narcissists now, that we think our moral judgments are more important than our knowledge – without ever remembering you can’t have judgment without knowledge – that is called bigotry!)

Are there real issues and ideas involved, real lives being changed, and real passion, too? Yup.

But now step back and consider this – do our personal feelings change our responsibilities?

If we get angry, does that mean we no longer have to be fair? If someone is rude, does that mean we can rob them, or hurt them? More generally, do we understand that rules which limit, also protect us?

As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up in a commune full of completely demented ideas which were taken as absolutely normal by every single person in the commune. I don’t think mass delusion is seamless and effective, because of the way group emotional dynamics suppress and override individual doubts, I have personally experienced it. Only thing more destructive? The mass denial that goes with.

Over the course of this entire century of unhinged and yet also ‘righteous’ western mass-murder for investor profits, public emotionality has been manipulated by fake-mob tribes on both sides (and the super-rich assclowns who they always ultimately serve) so grotesquely, that it is now very common for people to assert that our basic individual human rights are not even rights at all, but rather privileges, which unbelievably dangerous concept begins from the assumption that it is the government which gives rights to us as a kind of luxury good, but also has a right to take them away, if we displease.

Nope. The yanks had this one just exactly right from the very start. The correct word is INALIENABLE. Rights are ours, always, from birth to death, full-stop. And I’ll return to this point.

I grew up in what I long thought was a very special time. During the late 1970s and the 1980s the United States was, in culture and popular debate both, struggling to overcome the national trauma of the Vietnam war (which was many times more traumatic for Vietnam and the Vietnamese, of course – but still a really huge shock to Americans, who were used to feeling like the good guys and winners, and suddenly didn’t feel like either).

Combine that with Watergate and the revelation of vast abuses from the Oval Office, and there was a widespread consensus mood of great skepticism and constant questioning about government and the violent power games done in our name, but against our interests – serving capital instead, always.

We thought that meant we had strong vital democracies, and citizen voices were beginning to count.

I no longer think that was what those times produced or were leading towards – it was a common feeling but a false one also – a comforting delusion which felt exactly like grappling with hard reality! Seems to me, taking apart a few of the myths of that era, might help us see our own more clearly.

“Kids today” have a couple of really fantastic phrases that my older friends might have seen, without fully appreciating. Personally, I want both of these ideas included in the standard anti-tribalism toolkit.

Kayfabe – is a grand, long-arc and very bitter fight, which is entirely fake. Comes from pro-wrestling.

Limited Hangout – is when the full truth is unacceptable to the powerful, but also too glaring to be completely suppressed. So they let a limited bit of the truth ‘hang out’ so they can give the illusion that they are allowing open speech and discussion, even of the most difficult subjects. But there are always limits built into the shape and scope of the argument.

The incredibly evil and hard to spot trick that makes this propaganda (and social splitterism) technique work so well, is that they are hanging factually true stuff out for us to see – but the purpose of this display of “honesty” is not to help us keep going all the way to full and useful truth, but to take us part way, goad our passions, and then re-route all of the rebels back into the range of ‘the acceptable’ (to the corrupting oligarchs who have been in control for at least a century). Which is to say – the limited hangout is a way to entice real change agents, back into the slaughterhouse with the other sheep, where they can’t do anything useful to challenge power.

I heard a funny clip from an interview with Bill Murray the other day. He was asked what he thought of Bob Woodward’s biography of his good friend John Belushi. Murray said, “I read the first few pages and then I suddenly dropped the book and said, holy shit, they framed Nixon!”

Now of course he was joking, trying to make a point about how incredibly wrong Woodward’s book was. But Woodward’s problem wasn’t that he made things up – it was that he honestly quoted people who hardly knew Belushi, but were very happy to babble into a tape recorder for a famous writer.

Check that again – honestly quoting people who are lying, or don’t know what they’re talking about.

Now step back a bit and try an old puzzle afresh, with a piece we didn’t have in the 1970s. The identity of ‘deep throat’ is no longer a mystery – he was actually Mark Felt the number two man at the FBI!

So – the story that made us feel we were hard-nosed, realistic and well informed about government, and far more empowered as citizens than ever before, was actually a story where one branch of government used media (and our credulity) to subvert another branch of government. A very slick coup.

Please don’t misunderstand me, I loathe Nixon in detail (read several biographies, all scathing), and the cynical power moves taken by his government were unforgivable (Brazil and Chile, especially). But do I therefore believe that the number-two man at the FBI took out the president for moral reasons? Nope.

Let me return to that other ‘honest self-reflection’ which felt so powerful (and democratic) at the time.

After the fact, America’s controlling oligarchs let the American public debate the morality of the Vietnam war, discuss the absurdity and horror, the trauma experienced, the stupidity of the management systems (always models – everything mass-murderous begins with a demented model) and the whole wider world felt a lift of hope. “Hey, maybe America will finally become what it has so long pretended to be – freedom central! The place where they really make liberty work – and look good doing it!”

But the lesson which we all (Americans and not) should have learned from the Vietnam war, was that even a superpower can completely bankrupt and undermine itself fatally, trying to subdue a lesser rival.

America has been a bullying debtor (and absolute hypocrite about ‘freedom’ and market forces) ever since. That war killed American prosperity dead dead dead, and we still haven’t connected the two!

Really, folks – yes there is agent orange, imperialism and Oliver Stone (and dozens of truly amazing, though also heart-rending, autobiographies) but the limited hangout of national guilt and self-doubt covered actual practical real-world bankruptcy – and the fact that we citizens thought we were all ‘getting wise’ – is what let the exact group of people who had just bankrupted the richest nation the world had ever known – keep right on steering the great ship, into new and ever stupider disasters.

So if anyone has a hard time with my anti-war position, because they think their personal anger justifies weapons contractor profits (and dead families) please understand – self interest is enough, you don’t even need basic morality or compassion. When you cheer war – you beg for your own destruction.

Now let me do one of my own sacred figures – because personal Pantheons too, must be regularly refreshed with truth.

Noam Chomsky has been an outstanding cultural figure for longer than I’ve been alive. He has done a ton of useful scholarship and he has been used as clear evidence of free speech in the west for the better part of a century. But is that really what the arc of his work amounts to, when all is said and done?

I have a fantastic video below, with far more detail about his investments (outright evil, by his own stated-standards) made through his long and VERY CLOSE friendship with Epstein. But you can watch that for yourself (and should), what I want to share here, is the clue I noticed myself, years ago (because you might have seen it too, and it required no knowledge of secret files for us to uncover).

When I first started to find my old ultra-dogmatic hard-leftist friends tiresome (and hypocritical) scolds (almost exactly three decades ago) I found myself recognizing a strange pattern I’d seen in the cult in which I was raised. A Marxist is not a Socialist, the same way that a Freudian is not a Psychologist.

The first two of each pair, claim a specialized (long proven wrong-headed or obsolete) framework, rather than embracing a constant ongoing learning, along a particular line of accumulating insight. In effect, they freeze their awareness at a moment a century ago or more, and refuse to update with new data (like for example, the fact that we in the west simply aren’t in industrial societies anymore, so all those old theories of optimizing social relations for industry are not relevant for our modern reality).

I have another great video below, from economist Richard Wolff, who makes an excellent large scale analysis, but then embarrasses himself by completely misunderstanding our moment (as much with boomer arrogance, as patronizing old Marxist dogma – pretending off-the-shelf solutions are easy and available).

This is what I always found suspicious in Chomsky – not the first part: can we justify the many various kinds of anger we feel about nasty war-plots, violence and deliberate destabilization of entire nations for western corporate profit?

(Answer: yes we sure as hell can feel angry about that, especially with lots of hard facts, that first part does help – just as “Manufacturing Consent” has helped generations on both the left and the right, understand some of the basics of mass-manipulation).

BUT – where does this line of thinking ultimately get us? What is Noam’s idea of a solution? – something quite a bit like anarcho-syndicalism. Which worked once, for about five minutes, in the middle of the Spanish Civil war – and even then, only because Spanish Anarchists had been preparing the intellectual ground for it for almost a century. And still that example was so threatening to both the Capitalist Imperialist west and the Stalinist Bloc at the time – they both made sure to crush them extra-hard!

So in other words, build something that takes a century to prepare and then gets killed, right away. Nice!

Now, in honour of his many years of excellent scholarship (and even the influence of his strangely precise writing style, on my own) I’ll also steel-man the thing (offer the strongest argument of my opponent – that is, the opposite of a straw-man argument).

His most practical western-relevant suggestion is for us to return to a vital union movement with a lot of social and political influence, kind of like what many western nations had in the 1930s (as a predictable social reaction to the great depression – and just maybe the greatest limited hangout of all time – FDR – see several previous essays).

But again, Noam is commending us toward a solution built from ingredients that we no longer are (especially in terms of ego, cooperation and personal principled sacrifice for the greater good) and also for a historical period (industrialism) that we are no longer living in.

Before I move on from the profound injustice-anger which Chomsky’s work was always so good at stoking, I must share one of his sharper insights, to make another VERY important moral distinction. He long ago noticed that Canadians always loved his work which critiqued the American empire – but then got really irritated when he started talking about the excesses of Canadians (mining and resource extraction with many outrageous labour practices and pollution legacies, all around the world).

He is completely right. People who want to “Hate America” as some grand infuriating but indistinct abstraction are still idiots (tempting as it can no doubt be).

Hating the dangerous corruption of the American State, while understanding the American people are simply not as portrayed, (by left or right) helps critics from afar stay focused on work, instead of self-disabling tantrums (and ‘progressive’ bigotry). Just like all other divides, the smart ones on the other side are our best most needed allies.

Now the thing which the video about Chomsky which I share below, made me think about, and I just can’t unsee (because I’m familiar enough with Chomsky’s work, to know it’s true, at first hearing) is that no matter how sharp his critique of western power ever got, he always saw the Soviets as pure EVIL. (another category entirely)

Now think about it – what kind of limited hangout do you need, to capture over-active intellectuals? You need a ton of rigour, truth, facts, analysis, even some courageous speech. But then where does he lead people, again and again, like a smug pied piper? Back to the corporatist powered social-engineering and always mass-murdering Democrats.

“Oh but the Republicans are worse” kind of almost works on many, until they realize the Democrats are demented racist mass murderers for money also (Vietnam, East Timor, El Salvador, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and so depressingly-many more, millions upon millions of victims - whole generations) at which point you have to ask, “um, weren’t we sort of talking principle here, somewhere? Ever?”

Aside from the Limited Hangout role that his work has so long served (pretend saintliness, while actually party-political) he is also a stand-out figure in tribalistm. One part of ‘woke’ is passionately hating the state, after all (corruption and life-support systems equally, rather like tech-bros who falsely call themselves libertarian), and Noam has the data to justify our anger, any time we need it! (never mind where it takes us).

But again, anger at who, exactly, and over what. Ethics? Policy? Actual democratic representation?

Nope – cheap-shot tribalism, once again, which may just be his cleverest limited hangout of all. The single most internationally famous and lauded critic of controlling propaganda, has this whole time been playing an open and active role in manipulative emotional division games, designed to promote the interests of one outrageously corrupt state-power faction – not ever the people as a whole, let alone “the left.”

If we zoom-out a bit, and leave aside the limited hangout angle, Chomsky might best be understood as the left’s answer to one of the first great TV bible thumpers, Billy Graham. Lots of pious talk which ultimately completely discredits itself, along the way trapping many sincere aspirants in futility, who might have gone much further, had they pursued their faith without such a distracting false ‘hero.’

For my friends who still don’t understand what Charlie Kirk meant to the right, he’s Michael Moore – rude to the people who have been getting away with shit that bugs you, quick of wit, fast talking.

And yes, there was a great big commercial machine working in behind (both of them). Not the point.

If We Can’t Have Competence, We Can At Least Have Comedy

Now here’s the home stretch, the spot near the end of every essay where I go back and look at the mass of notes I’ve been scrawling on my canary pad, to see how many of the points I was hoping to make, I have missed – dagblast! Almost all of them!

Probably why I made eight starts on this piece – but no one wants to read a forty-pager (do they?) ;o)

Anyhow – I hope my regular readers are starting to get the habit of thinking twice, whenever something they see in the media makes them mad, and then slowing down to look around to see who out there might be trying to manipulate them (at very least asking “cui bono?” – who profits?)

Instead of trying to jam-in all of my other points, I’ll finish with one especially thought provoking one.

Much like rebel-hero Chomsky steering generations of sincere leftists back into the corrupt Democratic fold, where their otherwise useful votes could faithfully serve bankers greed and war (like they do on the Republican side also, to be sure – the uniparty gets its way, because all rebellions are subsumed!) we now have several state sponsored mass-promoted “rebellions” which lie like crazy – in plain sight.

The now common idea that we reveal our truest selves when we are most angry, is way beyond crazy. (inhumane, in the clearest possible way). But it is still far less crazy than the also frighteningly common idea that the government is that which cares, protects and gives us our most basic rights.

At this point, even my friends on the right who oppose drugs in every way understand clearly that the long ‘war on drugs’ has done irreparable damage to the presumption of individual rights for all citizens. Smiting pot-heads smites you right back!

But the (definitely think-tank created) idea of “Hate Speech” as a legal concept, is just as surely a tool for expanding state control, designed to promote mass-hatred (in the guise of opposing it) and to further erode the common presumption of citizen-rights (while pretending to safeguard rights) and in the process, disabling the ability of citizens to easily organize around a shared and beloved culture and values very nearly completely. Progressives who think any of this stuff counts as a ‘win’ for their side should read a freakin’ book sometime, or at least get out of the house and meet a human being.

The key case which was used to promote US legislation was the Matthew Sheppard murder, which absolutely was horrific and grotesque – no justifications to be had anyplace. The thing is, the people who killed him knew he was gay and never cared about that in the slightest. They killed him over a drug deal which went very bad (a circumstance which explains the hyper-violence and irrational fury, perfectly).

But – in order to mass-promote the idea the world is filled with sadistic murderers who are after gay people, they gave his killers extra jail-time for ‘hating his gayness’ even though they didn’t. The great (state) moral crusade to follow, was founded on an opening lie (which was known and ignored).

Here’s the problem with this constant stream of partisan ‘moral assertions’ made by the Democrats (or the Liberals, or the Labour party, etc). Just a few scant years before they suddenly proclaimed themselves the sole anointed saviours of the highly endangered (far more accepted than ever, because of their own hard work in society, over decades) population of gay people, that same government was putting people in jail and sometimes even subjecting them to electroshock, for their gayness!

Now I don’t care how nice you think one particular government is – if you put the hopes of your entire minority community in government itself, instead of in your ties with and connection to the community around you, you’re a fool – because we know perfectly well a very nasty if not outright bonkers government is always coming soon.

That’s why citizen’s basic rights are OURS without any qualification or exception – and why the Americans absolutely nailed-it when they said INALIENABLE.

Some still think me a bit naive about their own favourite tribal-anger foes, and resent the way I constantly challenge fear and anger narratives which are designed to make us call for a great big dollop of state-sponsored smiting of ‘bad folks’. I don’t do this to minimize harm done or malice in intention, (I have a keen sense for and no patience with either) my point is always about state power and the way our own self-serving (and often wilfully chosen) stupidity, enables mass abuse and violations of rights.

There is absolutely NO CASE EVER where state-sponsored smiting has not backfired on the group which first called for it – which is a big part of why people like me who have been watching things closely for a long while were so horrified, as we saw the decade-long fake-mob-left craze for cancellations based on vague assertions of badness coupled with vast state-sponsored DEI purges of every key institution in education and health.

What powered those movements was not justice, but the exact same kind of demented mob-force which once powered witch-burnings, public hangings and bear-baiting. This mania was never about getting organized to oppose the worst actors, on principle, in any institution, it was about enforcing an ideological standard of conformity by any means at all – which in our case happened to include making the general public widely accustomed to the idea of the casual violation of the basic individual rights of every last person accused (because they wouldn’t have been accused, if they weren’t bad – goes this line of amazingly point-missing idiocy). Yes, there actually are a few cases on that long sad record where people were cancelled only after a legal ruling – but vanishingly few, and certainly there are hundreds of times more cases, where no clear evidence or presumption of innocence was ever applied.

DEI was a state sponsored campaign to purge thousands of people who express any dissent from an arbitrary and brand-new (not to mention, absurd) state orthodoxy (that is, who refused to take a blind-loyalty oath to Liberal Oligarchs) from public institutions, in a completely and quite obviously partisan political way.

Now that the vast majority of the (already rare) best type of professors, those who were willing to take controversial stands based on deep thoughtful principles and then stick to their guns, despite any and all controversy, have been driven out of academe entirely (mass-resignations from a climate of way too much bullshit, even where they were not directly assailed by an offended idiot), there is no one left to defend those institutions against demented moves from on high. Own goal – left. Possibly fatal.

This is why woke is shit – because it makes the left stupid weak and catastrophically self-harming.

Now for my friends on the right, I must state clearly (as I have in much more detail, recently) that the question of what rate of immigration is economically crucial to the rights of the working class (to get a hold on a rung up, every now and then, as we haven’t, for a half a freakin’ century now – quite the opposite).

So – repressing all questions and debate with the idea they are in every case hate speech or racism is creepy, very anti democratic and also anti working class (state-complicit mob-leftists shooting the proletariat in the foot and/or head with their craze for tribalist emotionalism and “moral superiority” – yet again – sigh).

BUT – what the actual f#ck is being legitimized right now? Where is the presumption of rights? How much more brutality can we ask of the officers of the state, without living in world of casual brutality forevermore – and bequeathing that, instead of freedom rights and hope, to our unfortunate children?

Like the real-world resentments which powered support for entirely false-DEI, legitimate questions about immigration were twisted into a game that further serves anti-citizen state power and weakens the presumption of key citizens rights that millions of us grew up assuming were real (nope, evaporating fast, all around us).

So now what’s the point of all this? How does understanding how our passions and our ignorances are endlessly manipulated to hurt the world we are hoping to help, help us? Where’s the freakin’ hope you promised, dude?

The hope relies on us not falling for it. Not being a Chomsky, or a Billy Graham, or a Michael Moore, or a Charlie Kirk – the hope relies on us learning and doing better than the very best we’ve learned from, and sharing it, taking it all the way to reality.

The faction which just complains is not the revoutionary force which transforms society in a moral and more productive direction, but inevitably a pawn for the powerful.

The way to win social advance for all (and for real and unstoppably, in the long-term) is to be the team that has better ideas and more solid well-founded belief in their principles. As long as that team remains split in half by tribalism, we all lose!

The rich own every party which can take office, and when a new one arises which threatens their control they make it illegal, subvert entire elections (Romania notably, recently) or a half dozen of their representatives suddenly drop dead in a bit more than a week (Afd) even while they are actively trying to outlaw the party they represent (despite the fact that it now polls higher than any party in office, in western Europe).

What that means is that we aren’t ever going to win this thing with any kind of tribalism. Full stop.

What THAT means is that half of the allies you’ve needed most, your whole damned life, are people you have convinced yourself you hate, before you’ve ever spoken to them, or understood their lives.

This is why hate-speech is shit, and why woke is shit (City mouse, hating-on the town mouse) but it is just as surely why the idea that ‘the left screwed this all up’ is shit. Corrupting bankers and shareholders f#cked us all, folks – and until we recognize that, we are bound to keep right on losing, every freakin’ time we ‘try’ because we are fighting with one of our vital and necessary hands, tied behind our back by the other (on the ‘expert’ advice of the bad guys).

Or, to appropriate a familiar line – “We’re going to need a bigger boat!”

(Less Noam, more Noah?)

Forgive me, Pops, for I half-simped!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Okay – time at last for some juicy links – my apologies for running a bit long today (though I swear there were another twenty pages of other angles, that I might also have included – gadzooks some points are slippery to get at!)

First off, here is stalwart and courageous Kit Klarenburg, talking about Chomsky and Epstein (and no, there is no shading the reality of it. Caravaggio killed over tennis. Chomsky sold-out the working class for money knowingly and deliberately, because if there is no morality under capitalism – why even try?

Chomsky and Epstein – With Kit Klarenburg

And here’s the other video I mentioned. Economist Richard Wolff doing a pretty great analysis of the big shitstorm we’re all in the middle of, and then proving he has no idea at all what to do about it (entirely forgivable, to be sure – but it ought to bring more humility than he usually displays)

Richard Wolff and Glenn Diesen – The West’s Pre-Revolutionary Moment Has Arrived

Trump is crazy, but he’s not wrong about Europe being crazy too. Here is a man who is trapped in a Kafka-style hell, just for speaking out against the fast-onrushing prospect of world war three, intelligently, with solid western sourced facts (and tons of relevant experience).

Also truly remarkable – have a listen to how he describes Swiss Democracy – OMG I Want Some of THAT!

Retired Swiss intelligence officer (assigned to NATO as the war was being prepared) Jacques Baud, talking with Nima at “Dialogue Works” (always a SUPERB show)

Here are ex CIA analyst Larry Johnson, ex Pentagon and State Department Col Larry Wilkerson and Nima (Larry Larry and Darryl?) with some bracing and useful perspective on the western war state, Iran, long-standing American corruption of allies and the very real and growing potential of world war three (one hundred percent OUR fault – whatever you think of Putin).

To be clear, they have had tons to say on Venezuala since, but this macro stuff shouldn’t be obscured by the immediate and dramatic (Venezuala is about oil and capital, grotesque and infuriating, but it carries no risk of nuclear war, unlike many other recent shenanigans on the part of fascist-inspired western intelligence)

Here is the brilliant anti-monopolist Matt Stoller with a slightly different take on how the corrupted Democrats have confused state social engineering control with freedom (and thus fully-embraced the banker-evil hellscape we all now live inside)

“...On the Democratic side, this ideology is equally powerful. Since the 1970s, and then accelerating after the financial crisis, key parts of the Democrats build a moral architecture based on what they imagine the Civil Rights movement to have been, centred around a top-down human resources corporate framework of imposed social engineering. There were many reasons, from the availability of capital to bureaucratic inertia to a strong desire to not blame the first black President for helping to orchestrate the mass foreclosure of black-owned homes by large banks.

Regardless, this moral architecture had the effect of obscuring the rise of oligarchy, camouflaging bad policies, and turning large groups of working class people and white men against liberalism itself. It left liberals unable to staff and equip the many institutions tasked with taming capital, and uninterested in doing so. And it meant that the party was run largely by bankers, economists, and other members of the extreme wealth defence industry. Consider that Fed Chair Jay Powell, a private equity titan, was appointed under Trump, reappointed under Biden, and has gotten zero blame for the remarkably awful economic sentiment under his tenure.”

BIG by Matt Stoller

In 2026, Will Americans Finally Turn Against Oligarchs?

In the winter of 1932, during the depths of the Great Depression, a visitor asked Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis if he thought the worst was over. “Oh yes,” he said, “the worst took place before the crash…

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8 months ago · 504 likes · 61 comments · Matt Stoller

Here’s a fantastic piece from cartoonist Colleen Doran, filled with getting over precious self and gaining useful contact with reality – the best possible practical recipe, if we actually want to have an effect on the world!

“...Now we live in an age when even work ethic is denounced as unfair privilege. It’s not; it’s the default. Most people in the world can’t even get by without hard core work ethic. Only privileged people of the comfortable classes think work ethic is unfair, and I come from poverty.

When I see what people who come from comfort often behave like, I am no longer sorry I came from poverty.

I’m glad I know how to work and that I enjoy it.”

Colleen Doran's Funny Business

Stuff People Don't Get About This Gig

The above art was originally drawn for a project entitled “Meanwhile” a semi-autobiographical dramedy about my early years in comics, co-created by me and my old bud Keith Giffen. However, Tokyopop wanted me off the book so they could hire a Japanese artist to draw it…

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3 years ago · 96 likes · 13 comments · Colleen Doran

I am crazy for the writing of Arnaud Bertrand, wish I’d discovered him years ago – he’s one of the best antidotes to hateful anti-Asian propaganda I’ve ever encountered (and I look for them, actively). Plus, what I was saying about learning about our own language, from how others do things differently?

As with them all, do please read the whole thing this quote should tease and tell you why

“...We often misunderstand its so-called “tributary system” as being similar to European colonialism, but it couldn’t have been more different. In fact, George Yeo, who was Singaporean cabinet minister for 21 years and is one of the statesmen in the world who best understand China, recently described it in a speech: “Tributary is the wrong translation. ‘Chaogong’ is to pay respect, in response to which you will enjoy China’s largess. When you use ‘tributary’ in the Western context you think of it as protection money when [in China’s case] it’s the opposite: you give China some trinkets, you get back gold. This is how it was. And that’s why Southeast Asian countries competed with one another [to be tributaries]. Japanese merchants were fighting for tokens to trade in China. China used their market, their economics to control behaviour.”

So that’s China’s historical DNA: using economic mass and market access to create gravitational pull, not the form of coercive regional hegemony or colonialism that people like Mearsheimer fear.

Deng Xiaoping himself, in a 1974 speech at the United Nations, said that if China ever “turned into a superpower” and “played the tyrant,” the people of the world should “identify her as social-imperialism, expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it.”

Arnaud Bertrand

My speech to German business leaders about China

I was invited by my good friend Michael Schumann to give a keynote speech on China to members of the German business community. Michael chairs the powerful German Federal Association for Economic Development and Foreign Trade (BWA), one of Germany’s main business lobbies…

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9 months ago · 132 likes · 14 comments · Arnaud Bertrand

Here’s tireless ex FBI Mark Wauk, who gathers from a number of fine sources, for big picture insight.

Why this war is economic and not ‘civilizational’ (except insofar as we’d destroy any and all civilizations, including our own, to “win”)

Here is Larry Johnson on his own show, talking to the inimitable globe trotting reporter Pepe Escobar about the rapid shifting of global economic and civilizational power (with some fresh observations from NATOstan – AKA Italy)

Finally, for any of my chums on the right who think there is nothing in socialism except Stalinism (which absolutely IS worth fearing and guarding against) here’s the single best distinction I’ve ever seen, of the true (freedom centred) socialist spirit, compared to that despotic and totalitarian one. It comes from a book by one of America’s great early writers and thinkers about civil liberties – Benjamin Tucker.

Note for new readers – auto-estimated reading times are greatly exaggerated (lots of pix/links)

Hey folks!

In my last piece I talked about the way almost everything in the modern western world exists in two parallel versions, one which might be broadly described as aspirational (genuine, old-school), a product of the side of ourselves that (because of access to gratitude) grows and learns and strives to become more useful to others over time. The other version of everything that sounds aspirational is the fake cynical pre-packaged version that appeals to our bitterness, jealousy, resentment, tribalism, secret love of mob violence, pride in hatred, and a whole complex of things that many of us feel when extremely upset, and some feel very nearly always.

Sorting out the real, or sometimes untangling the thin real thread which has been buried in a block of toxic garbage, is tricky for several reasons. The simplest good reason is there are a lot of kinds of aspirations, and none of us have a big enough awareness to incorporate or even consider all of them.

Another interesting and basically positive thing (that is, true aspiration) is that there are quite a few issues which we might reasonably describe as being of effectively infinite importance – things like the quality of our food, or how we raise our kids, or how we think of our rights and our place in society.

But many people spend their whole life on just one of these, or even one small specialist part within, without ever recognizing many other also infinitely important factors which are inevitably connected in dynamic ways to whichever aspect of reality they have selected as their sole (and justified) focus.

Beyond that, it can be very hard when we are passionate about any infinitely important aspect of life, to recognize that the implementation of all aspirations, comes always by finite imperfect means. That is, the humans and institutions around us are not and have never once been ideal structures. They have flaws and moving parts which do not always function as anticipated. Our passion for aspiration must never blind us to this reality-feedback (crucial to all complex functioning systems) or we may easily destroy, where we hoped only to build (I’ll give a brutal real-world example of this, shortly).

In other words – even high-integrity people with great intentions have many limits and blind-spots.

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On the other side, it gets a million times weirder still, because there are even more ways to be false, sneaky, corrupted and corrupting than there are to try to do something good and useful in the world.

Last time I spoke about how many movements which were once powered by aspirations for broad common benefit, upheld and advanced by individuals who were principled and self-sacrificial, and capable of group effort, have become strangely like mind-controlling cults, hostile to all non-believers.

It is very important (and also very difficult) for us to step back and recognize that the level to which religion has been rejected in the west really is historically unprecedented. Many moderns believe that religions persist because of oppressive power structures and cultural inertia. I am a lifelong atheist myself, but I am convinced that religions persist because they address real human problems that did not go away, just because modern people got cynical, and rejected humility, wisdom and group-belonging altogether (which has proven to be a staggeringly profitable long-term mass-cynicism – just sayin’).

The really strange thing is that bitter narcissist atheists who deny religion ever had a humane purpose, are exactly the same kinds of ‘virtue’ (narcissism) obsessed people who have helped to undermine and often outright destroy the aspirational values and qualities of their own movements, mostly by taking things which are political philosophies, and embracing them instead as all-encompassing moralist, Manichean (pure-good versus pure-evil) and sanctimoniously proselytizing religious movements.

I’m going to give you a very clear and probably shocking two-sided version of this one, right up front (then spend the rest of the essay explaining and apologizing for it) ;o)

For many decades now, religious-fanatic type partisans on the left have been responding to any criticism of modern feminist theories and practises as it if is a direct attack on basic women’s rights.

This is exactly the same quality of deliberately unfair and extremely dangerous conflation we are now seeing as supremacist Zionists insist that criticizing the Israeli government is the same as antisemitism.

Criticizing insane, life-harming, fury-promoting policies and individual cultists in any identitarian movement which has (by being identitarian, that is, fundamentalist, instead of principled) gone off the rails, does not in any way make you opposed to sound and widespread established goals and principles.

In fact, if you didn’t begin from care about the principles, you wouldn’t bother making the criticism!

My technician head insists on adding a key point. A movement which cannot ever be criticized (for whatever sort of reason or sacred quality we have decided to bestow on them) is a movement which absolutely cannot be trusted with power by the general public and society as a whole – because power which does not allow or consider critical feedback from citizens IS DICTATORSHIP (functionally, regardless of ‘feels’). Even if such structures emerge with high integrity leaders guiding them at first (incredibly rare in the modern age) their unchallenged status will still corrupt them, in no time flat!

(In England, you can now literally be arrested for wearing an anti-genocide T-shirt. And when you can’t even protest war, without the state charging you and hauling you away, speech really is dead!)

Now let me turn the flame down and give you an example of confusing one thing with another on a much smaller and easier to see scale, that you’ve probably experienced personally. Did you ever work in a place with a team of people who got along and did their jobs well, and then someone new joined, and all of a sudden there were a thousand kinds of unnecessary drama, every single freakin’ day?

I bet you noticed what happened yourself – that new disruptive person didn’t understand that was a workplace where people gathered for a particular (paid) purpose, and was not their close personal network of family and friends, who might be (generally) obligated to meet their emotional needs.

They brought a whole complex of wrong needs and expectations into a situation where others did not do that – and incredibly, it only takes that one person with lousy ego-boundaries adding that one inappropriate load, to force everyone around them to be bent out of shape, in order to carry that load!

You would think the skilful majority would ultimately win and bring them round to their way of being – both more effective as workers and happier in their days, but as Timothy Leary discovered long ago, while trying to figure out a form of therapy which would not be distorted by the bias of the therapist (early work in group-therapy techniques) “The weakest member of the group determines the game” (Definitely one of the most depressing deeply insightful quotes of the twentieth century).

There is even a positive-aspirational aspect to the corruption which can enter into a formerly functional group, here, because we often bend principles which are proven valid and useful, for what we think of as compassion, only to realize the rule itself saved many from harm, which the exceptions never could.

Now let me offer an important real-world case, which we all should have learned from (and pretty much no one has, as far as I can tell). I can vividly remember the eighties movements against modern psychiatry and in particular, uncompromising objections to absolutely all forms of involuntary care for the mentally ill. The partisans of this movement described absolutely all people in mental hospitals as victims “The Psychiatrized” unjustly imprisoned and denied their rights to freedom and flourishing.

Meanwhile, city governments looked at a huge expense, and hated being accused of being evil, so they killed two birds with one stone, and in countless cities around North America the populations of people who were looked after full time in mental hospitals went down by thousands (or tens of thousands).

Homelessness was INSTANTLY increased many times over, and has never been under control since.

We now understand clearly that people are actually different. Some do need full-time care, and don’t know-it, and some need a lot of (expensive to government) professional support, to do well and thrive.

Taking a political demand and turning it into a Manichean and emotionalist religious crusade did absolutely catastrophic and still unrepaired damage to the exact group of people who were supposed to be being saved. And, like I say – still no sign of learning lessons, let far alone any hope of an apology.

Now that I’ve rough-sketched the scale of the hazards and the some of the difficulties in recognizing how we are first corrupted away from principles, let me introduce some powerful tools for doing better.

Tool one for today is simple as heck (and one my long-time readers have heard a few times before) –

Variation between individuals exceeds variation between types

We all know this is true from our own lives and friendships. Not only that, it is true logically also – or else we really would end up saying and believing totally insane things like “all n people are the same.”

The creepy thing is, after many decades of realizing in common that such all-encompassing statements of virtue or blame were in every case completely asinine, we now make such dangerous blind assertions again, proudly and shamelessly, with words which suggest aspiration, but ends which are entirely evil.

When I think about human personalities, I think about musical instruments. What makes one instrument sound different from another, even when they play the same note? The overtones!

Every pitch also contains a certain proportion of double that frequency, and quadruple, and so on – the ratio between these extra notes inside the main note, is all we need to tell one instrument from another.

Some people are very social, some people are very observant, some people are sensitive and troubled by it, some are far more resilient but also less aware of subtleties. There is no ‘correct’ person, and the fact that such a thing really is implied by a huge number of our modern ideologies is a big clue that they are dead wrong (sometimes by accidental mutation passed-on, but often by a process of selective funding and pruning in academe, thanks to donor-Oligarch influence, sustained over many decades).

There is no such object as “Black People” or “Women” or “The Jews”. There are individual human beings with ideas lives and attitudes which place them all over the spectrum, on all kinds of things.

But let me try angling into this sideways, to shed light on the general error, instead of getting bogged down in specific dogma quicksand and rhetorical minefields laid for years (by corporate-faker finks).

One of the most curious aspects to my completely demented ‘experimental’ education was that even from an early age, we students didn’t just plan our own curriculum, define our own outcome goals and then judge each other’s work or presentations, we all studied educational theory itself, while we did it!

Now, I was in a mind-controlling cult at the time (and under the thumb of the sadistic headmaster, who, as the son of the matriarch of the cult, was immaculate by proximity) so I can’t honestly claim to have made a lot of use of insights from people like Piaget and Montessori at the time, but I was consciously sensitized to the question of how do people learn, in a way which was unusually disconnected from all conventional systems of education, before I was ten years old (half a century ago).

I have never stopped thinking about and studying this question since, and my screwy working life, one part technician, one part junior educator (lab assistant at community college, special ed assistant and librarian at an alternative junior high-school, instructor at private college, and model at art university) has given me a rich sampling of witness from several very different points along the educational path.

I wrote in much more detail about this in a previous piece to which I’ll link below – but to refresh, “Representation Matters” is a great example of aspirational sounding, deeply misguided bullshit.

If you look at the words alone, you could make a case they make sense, but we have to understand the informing theory which actually operates in favour of the already powerful, to see the trap.

The reason our modern use of representation matters serves powerful (corporate) evil is because in practise we take the phrase to mean representation of physical categories matters. As I said in my more detailed piece about this, the only place representation like that really counts is Noah’s freakin’ ark!

If you have already decided the rich have won, gig-work, hopelessness and ever increasing greed and ever less power and rights for citizens is just our inevitable future and you want to surrender to that and them completely, and start sucking-up to the most evil and destructive club of bastards on earth...

Well then you need to load-up one pair of each “Type” on your escape-yacht for the super-rich, so even as the peasants drown by the millions or burn in nuclear fire, our betters can assure us “Yes, but we weren’t biased about the one thousandth of one percent we saved. We’re fully representational, so you can all die happy, suckers!”

Now this is a great place for me to introduce another idea-tool I use so often that I never put it away.

Always measure from at least two directions.

Not just how much less is this than perfect? But also, how much more is this than nothing?

One part of doing this is about the true aspiration powering gratitude I talked about in my last piece. The other absolutely huge practical bonus which comes to us from gratitude, is genuine respect.

Books have a lot of wisdom and information in them. The internet, same deal (though very chaotic).

But human beings are the only things on earth that know how to do, how to make ideas work in the world. Because I’m an enthusiast for a lot of different subjects, I can report this works very generally – the price you must pay, to get the benefit of a whole lifetime of wisdom from any expert, is respect.

I don’t mean they don’t also deserve payment (the true “sincerest form of flattery”). I just mean that people who know subtle and powerful things love to share them, if you show you are ready to hear.

Conversely, you can track down the exact person who knows just what you need to know, but if you insult them, pretend you already know what you clearly do not, or show lack of respect for knowledge or skill itself, your perfect teacher is liable to tell you to bugger-off (and quite right to do it, too).

So – mentally and emotionally we gain hugely when we measure how much more is this than nothing, and think about how much skill and work went into taking it this far (so we can build on that, instead of discarding centuries of hard-earned wisdom, then learning very old, very hard lessons, all over again).

We also gain spontaneous tutelage from wise people around us, who consistently respond to the combination of genuine respect and enthusiasm with astounding generosity, even when they are highly cantankerous by nature!

So now, having shown the big flaw, let me also apply that same measure twice rule to the idea of “representation matters” in the opposite direction – positively, because as a wise man once said

“The opposite of a trivial truth is simply false. The opposite of a great truth is often also true.”

Working in education (and coming from a cult obsessed with psychotherapy) I have always been interested in three very obvious groups (pretty sure my teacher friends will have seen these, too).

Some students are somewhere in the middle, only semi-serious about studying, tempted by a lot of foolishness from their friends (and being their temptation, in turn) they haven’t yet gained mastery over their own attention, and so miss a lot that might be very useful to them later. But they get by (and have fun, which is great and important when we’re young – just not when it distracts us so completely, that we miss our brain’s rather limited natural physical window of maximum learning, altogether).

Some students bring their own self-discipline and active interest, and do extremely well. Most natural teachers pay particular attention to these natural students, as a way to encourage others who are in the middle to adopt some of their more effective study habits (though I’m not sure this works, very often).

Then there are some who are just plain having trouble, and there are a lot of different reasons for this (with additional emotional problems recently, thanks to the deteriorating mental health of young people in the western world as a whole – coinciding not at all coincidentally with cellphone social-media).

You might think that as a natural multi-discipline keener, my own sympathies would be with the good students, but you would only be one part right. I am as much a natural teacher as a natural student, so I am, like all of my type, approximately incapable of resisting a natural student, and try to give any who present, whatever gems seem like they might be most useful to them, and their particular challenges.

On the other hand, I’m also the odd man out, the weirdo, the one who asks the questions that you aren’t supposed to ask, and says the things that others were taught never to say. Beyond that, my screwy upbringing put me so far out of sync with normal young people of the time, I was an outsider even in terms of knowledge of the traditions of my own society! So my deep lifelong emotional sympathy is naturally with the one who feels unheard or left behind, and doesn’t know how to make it better.

This cohort, the group who are at risk of failing altogether, turning what was an aspiration into a source of shame and pain (and debt) instead of a proof of accomplishment, are the ones who really can be reached by ‘representation of types’ but it is not anything as crude or simplistic as racial or any other physical category of types. The range which is required to make a well balanced institution which can serve students of all three types is a wide range of different personalities. Different ways of seeing and dealing with the world, thinking about it, and approaching work and learning.

I had this experience myself when I did ten months at community college in my early twenties, after never having read a textbook or done a formal ‘exam’ in my entire life. We electronics students had a whole series of classroom ‘labs’ to progress through, before getting to our specialty lab, which took up the last half of our course time. The introductory instructors were informative, but none of them struck me as someone that I could see myself becoming. But in our specialty (Audio Repair) lab, I, and many other grateful eighties misfits met the much missed Ed Hutchinson, who played in a (great) and very active local band, ran a busy (and superb) small recording studio and ran his own field-repair service which had saved countless local gigs from last-minute technical disaster. He even had awesome taste in music – and just that fast, everything about the whole course changed for all of us. It wasn’t my study habits that improved, Ed made me believe I had a place in the world I was training for.

I observed this same wonderful dawning effect many times from the model stand, where a student who I had seen struggling in another class (with a teacher who reached some of their students, but not this one) suddenly lit-up and shone in the presence of someone whose whole ‘vibe’ or philosophy of life made infinitely more (and more welcoming) sense to them.

Sometimes, we really just need to hear the right overtones, before we can learn how to resonate!

Now let me try another idea tool which comes in handy a lot a lot.

You can only be paid for a thing once, so be clear in advance about the pay you actually want.

When I think about this powerful idea, I also think about those cultures which do not consider a gift a true gift, unless it is anonymous. Do you want to be helpful, or to get gratitude? (imply obligation)

Many people use modern tribalist ideologies as a way to justify the fact that they are bitter (and pouting about it). They rationalize their own favourite sport of anger, to make it always the fault of some one or something else, preferably an entire category of other. Again, this sounds like aspiration in all kinds of ways, the slogans are full of good intentions, on the surface. But it often works exactly like bigotry.

In fact, when we look closely at the way we do this rationalization trick, we notice something kind of hilarious. We pick whatever fury-sink suits our own personal lifestyle best, and adjust our overtone structure of blame-externality so that it doesn’t ever interfere with our personal whim or preference.

I’ll start with a mea-culpa here (best practise, no?) and just point out that people who are on the poor side and live in big cities with cheap transit can afford to have an attitude about the environment that many others – who they depend on, for all kinds of basic goods commodities and necessary services – can not. Uncompromising disdain for a tool is easy, if you don’t need (or can’t afford) the tool yourself!

In fact, taking these wrongly-mixed things apart in myself, so that I could separate the clear science and systems repercussions from the (awfully pleasurable) game of rationalization and other-blaming, which had entered-in alongside, was one of my first big growth steps away from tribalism, and into gratitude.

I am heartbroken by how many of my older single friends have ended up resenting the entire opposite sex, as the obvious cause of their unhappiness. Of course this is ignorant and self-harming to an extent almost beyond belief, but it is also getting very close to a religious movement now, on both sides (which is truly tragic for the way it undermines relationship itself, and so, must be fixed, and fast!).

Yes, some men and women really are worse than we can easily imagine, and some are the best and most powerfully transformative friends and family that could possibly enter our lives. Because (drum-roll, please) Variation between individuals exceeds variation between types!

Of course my friends of faith find outrageous horrors to object to, among the atheists (a shamefully easy hunt, these days) just as my rigorously secular pals find corruption in all forms and structures of religion, and in so doing, discard a great deal of wisdom which they in particular, very much need.

I also have middle-class friends who were environmentalists who considered cars and oil outright evil, when they lived in a city with great transit, then immediately modified their entire philosophy (direct from bike to minivan), rather than learning to wait for a country bus! (that is, at least try the experiment of putting their own convenience, where their very loud mouth was, for all those bellowing years) ;o)

One particular rationalization that I wish I could forget, summed up this false-faith side of environmentalism perfectly. A dear “Oil is evil!” friend, who moved to the country and got a car, explained plaintively, “It’s not easy, when you aren’t in a city.” Correct! (though late to the party)

But, just to be clear (and measure from both directions), the environment was a screaming emergency which called for massive governmental control of individual lives until it became any less than easy?

Honestly, if this is the standard of self-sacrifice and commitment of lifelong Eco-activists, and the models are correct, we are all in some very big trouble. Mind you, it does help to explain how so many still seem able to believe in the bankers’ version of BigGreen (a staggering taxpayer cash-grab), even after its main proponents have spent this whole demented century openly prioritizing racist warfare for corporate profit, instead of actually rebuilding our infrastructure for well-planned future thriving.

(Reminds me of Zelensky’s cronies pocketing billions which were supposed to build defence lines!)

Yet another common way that we shop-for and then binge-on convenient others to resent and blame for our lousy lives isn’t just consumerist, it has been known-ridiculous for literally thousands of years.

City mice hate town mice. Town mice hate city mice. (because both are rather stupid about the other)

But one thing is very different from Aesop’s time (and even our own culture, a few decades ago).