He wasn’t an artisan, a laborer, a politician or a soldier, nor did he have any material wealth to speak of . But he became possibly one of the most famous individuals in human history.

He was mentioned by the playwright Aristophanes in his play The Clouds. Plato spoke of Socrates as did Aristotle. Yet, could Socrates have been an amalgam of a number of philosophical thinkers at that time? It’s possible. But what an amalgam!

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I Don’t Know

Your brain isn’t designed to pursue truth. It’s designed for survival.

What do you really know that you don’t know? I happen to believe it’s one of our biggest problems in the United States at this very moment. It may turn out to be the biggest problem. Yes it could bring about our collapse.... But do I know this to be true?

I’ve mentioned the Dunning-Kruger Effect before. I know this. I know that the basic definition is that people that know the least about a topic have a real tendency to think or believe that they do know about the topic, because they cannot see their own errors.

Yes I know you have heard this before, at least some of you have. But watch this video about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a new one. It’s only 17 minutes. Agreed. Seventeen minutes might seem like a lifetime in 2026 as our attention span dwindles but I believe, to a large degree, that you may learn even more.

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You could even have questions after you watch it. The questions may be important and they may lead to some decent answers. If you think you know the answers already you may have identified a big problem. SEE: The Truth About Stupid People. Truth About Stupid

I Know More Than I Did Before

APORIA: the moment you realize your certainty is illusion

I, like many people across the globe, have seen Christopher Nolan’s movie, The Odyssey. I generally like the choices that Nolan made but some people do not. It has, however, created a debate. Ah, and Homer’s Odyssey, a 3-thousand year old poem is disappearing from bookshelves you say?

The young are now reading it as well as the old. Yes people are actually, er, reading a poem, a very long poem. Hm-m. Do you find this difficult to believe? Do you think actual reading will become popular again?

Ezra Klein a NYT columnist wrote an article entitled, Christopher Nolan’s Trojan Horse. I found the piece “enticing.” SEE Trojan Horse

“Christopher Nolan stared into Elon Musk’s soul,” Klein remarked. Perhaps more of us ought to, at least briefly, no matter how empty and dark it likely is. Klein’s article is about tricksters, those archetypes in various cultures.

A culture that cannot meet disruption with creativity cannot survive change. A culture that cannot protect its core values will be consumed by corruption. Too much order leads to paralysis; too much chaos invites collapse. (Ezra Klein)

Was Odysseus and his men quite possibly not actually fighting the barbarians, because they themselves were the real barbarians and creating more barbarity?

Emily Wilson, the British and American classicist and translator, speaking the opening lines of Homer’s The Odyssey in ancient Greek. SEE, The Odyssey as it sounded 3,000 years ago.

SPEAK, MEMORY—
Of the cunning hero,
The wanderer, blown off course time and again
After he plundered Troy’s sacred heights.

Speak
Of all the cities he saw, the minds he grasped,
The suffering deep in his heart at sea
As he struggled to survive and bring his men home
But could not save them, hard as he tried—
The fools—destroyed by their own recklessness
When they ate the oxen of Hyperion the Sun,
And that god snuffed out their day of return.

Yes we have a journey to undertake, on our own wine dark sea. Not a year from now or when the “tides” are favorable. But at this moment because the barbarians have surely installed themselves in our home. And these barbarians are dangerous, stupid and evil. How do I know you might well ask?

Who is the wisest person in the room?

READING

Country of Lords, a book by Kim Phillips-Fein. Those that fought against equality in America from our very beginning to the present day.

It wasn't a Civil War. It was the slaveholder's rebellion

Nolan's Odyssey shows what happens when a leader's violations are rewarded

We're reading less. And it's making us stupid

How one American couple ditched their lawn and created a wildlife haven

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool. (As You Like It, by William Shakespeare)

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Gone Fishing For A Week

Musings of a Member (from Sanctuary probably around 2012 originally, W. Winch)

Musings of a member

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I read recently that the average attention span on a screen was two-and-a-half minutes two decades ago, while five years ago it was 47 seconds! We might now claim that we are really living in a post-literate society.

Hanna Rosin, senior writer at The Atlantic, has written an excellent piece on reading, and how it likely shaped both the human mind and society in a general sense over several thousand years. I’ve included the article, Is the Age Of Reading Over?, at the end of this post.

Rosen’s piece as well referenced Walter J. Ong, the late American Jesuit priest, a professor of English literature as well as a cultural historian. Ong was, in particular, interested in how the transition from orality to literacy influenced both culture and changed human consciousness. How might human consciousness change in the next 100 years … and let’s be optimistic, the next 500 years?

A Priest From Etrepigny

(eh-tray-peen-yee)

I learned about, for the first time, an extraordinary Catholic village priest that spent his entire life in the Ardennes region of France in the early 18^th century. He died in 1729. His name was Jean Meslier. Meslier was in fact an atheist, Some researchers have even suggested that his atheism was established prior to his official ordination as a priest.

Atheism was not something one would publicly declare in the Ancien Regime of 18^th century France, and certainly not by a priest.

Meslier’s beliefs and ideas developed more than 300 years ago gives us today, in our own 21^st century, both an uncomfortable modernity but also perhaps a guiding recipe for change.

He was born at the time of the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV and died under the reign of LouisXV. Meslier’s world, along with the monarchy and church power, would be swept away in the French revolution 60 years later. For an excellent introduction and analysis of Jean Meslier see at end of post, The People’s Atheist.

Meslier remained a humble parish priest and stayed at the same rural parish for 40 years. He appeared outwardly to lead an ordinary, priestly life during the day, but at night he was writing down what he actually believed.

Power does not hold only by force, taxation or law. It holds because it gets itself blessed. It holds because it succeeds in passing off injustice as order, domination as hierarchy, suffering as something meritorious. (Nidal Taibi, explaining the core belief of Jean Meslier)

Meslier, in some ways, could be considered to represent the beginning of the 18^th century Enlightenment, the movement that spread across Europe and influenced the future United States.

The German philosopher, Immannuel Kant in 1784 explained the meaning of the word that gave the age its name: “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his nonage.” Kant meant that man had before lacked both the determination and courage to use his intelligence without another’s guidance. “Dare to know!”

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One of the most brilliant and well known spokespersons of the age was the writer Francois-Marie Arouet, best known by his pen name, Voltaire, after he was imprisoned briefly in the Bastille in 1718.

What is less well known is that while both Voltaire and and Jean Meslier were hostile to the Church as ‘a force of domination,’ Voltaire wanted to stop the church’s control but not give up the idea of God being morally useful to civil order!

Meslier, on the other hand, the lowly village priest from Etrepigny, saw the Christian religion as a means for governing conduct. He wanted to do much more than merely rid the church of its abuses.

He regarded all religions, to put it in 21^st century language, a grand and vicious con. Religion was nothing more than “illusions, errors, lies, fictions and impostures, first invented by shrewd and cunning politicians.”

Revising The Message

After Meslier’s death in 1729 his Memoire began circulating “secretly. ” It reached some of the wealthy as well as the curious. It also was now being read by a number of the Enlightenment philosophers like Diderot—and Voltaire, who ultimately published, in 1762, a watered down, expurgated version of Meslier’s long and difficult text. This is for me when it becomes genuinely contemporary for our times, especially in the United States.

Meslier’s true philosophy and political beliefs now became less radical and therefore “publishable.” Suddenly the village priest was less of a threat to the system and the rich and powerful that controlled it.

Jean Meslier was turned into a tidy and fit-to-be-seen Deist. ( Deism was popular among many of the Founding fathers in the United States). His striking criticism of religion and its connection to inequality now became noisy but acceptable “moralistic,” anticlerical irritation. Certainly Meslier’s belief in common ownership became only a history of tolerated, outlier thought.

Jean Meslier had been historically erased or, at the very least, reduced to a quaint historical anomaly. Ironically it had been brought about by those that championed enlightenment.

An order endures when it manages to enter the imagination of those it governs; when it ties domination to morality; when it makes enduring, waiting, keeping quiet or blaming oneself seem more reasonable than understanding, uniting and resisting.

My dearest friends, since I would not have been permitted-and since it would have brought consequences both dangerous and grievous-to say openly during my lifetime what I thought of the conduct and government of men, of their religions and their morals, I resolved to tell you after my death. (Memoire by Jean Meslier)

The Time We Currently Inhabit

Meslier repeats that the people need only a little more light to see the vanity of the errors imposed upon them; but they also need union, common intelligence, organization.

While Jean Meslier died in 1729 his insights, nevertheless, traveled to our 21^st century world and eventually arrived in the United States.

We here in the U.S. have managed to recreate a kind of a dark, Disney world facsimile of the old discredited Ancien Regime it seems to me, with possibly a dash of twisted Americanized vengeance, righteousness and deep delusion.

Meslier’s words are helpful in uncovering the same con. The question comes down to how many of us are actually willing to push back in concrete and tangible ways, beyond clucking disapproval of obscene inequality, widespread corruption within government and corporations and the steady spread of actual fascism.

While organized religion in all its endless iterations has ceased to hold any deep interest for me in a long time, it nevertheless is embedded and pervasive in some form in American culture. I’ve posted below an article entitled ‘Vertical Morality’ Might Describe Why MAGA Christians Seem So Unchristian.

The article is worth reading. Haven’t many of us found ourselves saying, “How can they call themselves Christians and do such awful things?” The “awfulness” it turns out to be relatively easy, especially if you adhere to much of the grade school sociopathy offered up in the Old Testament book of taradiddle.

It is about hierarchy, authoritarianism and unquestioned obedience to the “authority,” be it “God” or a flesh and blood ruler, some better than others. The upper echelon of the Catholic church in France in the 18^th century certainly thought they were doing “God’s work,” at least many of them did. As well, we’re doing it right here in River City, as Harold Hill sang in The Music Man.

Truth Telling In America

We all know that Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal.” Yet, John Adams, the second President of the United States, said that equality means little more than we are all of the same species.

The other half of the American coin, the ledger or whatever you choose to call it is that America is a history that is also about the enchantment with inequality and the continuous determination to make it the guiding principle of the American soul.

Kim Phillips-Fein, a historian of 20^th century American politics has written a book entitled COUNTRY OF LORDS: Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinist, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America.

Call it the history of reactionary beliefs from the very foundation of America, right up to the current bizarre collection of overindulged tech bros who, when not chasing Satan or seeking personal immortality, are denouncing democracy and encouraging the concentration of wealth.

Louis Hartz, the late political scientist and historian said some seventy-one years ago that, “American political thought, as we have seen it, is a veritable maze of polar contradictions, winding in and out of each other hopelessly: pragmatism and absolutism, historicism and rationalism, optimism and pessimism, materialism and idealism, individualism and conformism.”

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The Core Values

I have no idea if the “magnificent experiment” and the ideals of democracy, equality and opportunity in this country called the United States will survive the next 60 or 70 years. Will we end up like so many other civilizations in that proverbial ashcan of history and find ourselves in a world that the 17^th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes proclaimed, “the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” ?

But perhaps, after all, it’s only a matter of acquiring cheaper food and less expensive gasoline for our internal combustion engines that will hold the nation together? Naturally enough some people at some point will have to decide, and decide what precisely must survive.

Kim Phillips-Fein in her book Country Of Lords, points out in the introduction that the “stake for egalitarians in the era of hierarchy and inequality, and a belief that democratic government would only be truly possible in a society without extremes of wealth and poverty.”

On a more intimate scale and where we must devote far more attention, I would certainly look at my own two U.S. Senators for Missouri, Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt. Some may recall January 6, 2021 when a mob stormed the Capitol building in an attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 election result.

But United States senator Josh Hawley stood in front of the Capitol raising a clenched fist for the camera in support of a mob about to commit treason.

Certainly Hawley may have believed he was in the cast of Les Miserables, but I suspect he thought he might be on the winning side of traitors desirous of overthrowing the U.S. Government and our Constitution.

Since that time the good senator has declared he is a Christian nationalist and all that might entail, while ranting about those trans people “invading” women’s bathrooms.

My other U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt might be even more interesting. He has apparently appointed himself the “blood and soil” guy for the Senate. Who constitutes an authentic American? This comes right out of the white nationalist handbook, which goes back much further to a very dark period in both world history and our own.

No, no it’s so much more than cheaper food and less expensive gasoline. It as well goes way beyond political disagreements, morally bankrupt U.S. Senators or even a mentally challenged degenerate playing president of the U.S. It is about the Ancien Regime. Most definitely we ought to imagine the ashcan of history, one being filled to the brim.

“We are told that extreme inequality is the desired outcome and the inevitable result of the free play of the market and that ‘equality’ is no more than a sanctimonious fiction.” (Kim Phillips-Fein)

Is the age of reading over?

The people's atheist

Vertical morality might describe why MAGA Christians seem so unchristian

VIDEO

The first atheist

Walter Ong on orality and literacy

READING

Is this Fascism (Letters from America)

The Masculinity Scam

McCarthyism has returned to the U.S.

Gen Z wants significance

The purpose of the rule is fascism: scientists fight back

Democrats' ;climate hushing' prompts activists to get loud

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The Islamic Republic of Japan has broken the cease-fire agreement according to President Trump, who has resumed bombing something somewhere in Iran for no logical nor apparent reason, while seemingly now committing war crimes in the name of the American people.

Josh Hawley, the wily, Christian nationalist U.S. Senator from Missouri and enthusiastic supporter of treason against the United States in 2021, is claiming that trans people are invading female bathrooms throughout the United States. He finds this offensive and personally disturbing.

Some conservative news sources have claimed that deceased U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham was reportedly seen in a small bar on Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts three days ago, contrary to what President Trump said regarding the shocking explosion of Senator Graham’s chest, as described by the president himself.

Peat Hegseth, Secretary of War and Lethality, denies there is any homoerotic intent in requiring testosterone level tests for the young men in the military. Oorah-Hooah-Hooyah.

Proof Of Life

“All the news that’s fit to print” is the motto of the New York Times and has been since the paper’s beginning as far as I know. The question of course in America at the moment is just what is fit to print, especially as climate change now promises to challenge “fragile” minds with a very real and a very hot summer that consents to only getting worse and more unstable, regardless of what the decaying gruppenfuhrer in the White House might conjure up.

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I will likely go see Christopher Nolan’s film, The Odyssey, which is about to open. I recall trudging through parts of Homer’s epic poem in my freshman year of college, a poem written in the late 8th or early 7th century BCE.

By in large the reviews of The Odyssey have been excellent, with some exceptions, especially among some female film critics. Might not the movie have something to say to us in the “enlightened” 21st century?

Of course not unexpectedly, on cue, the internet trolls have appeared. These are the self-appointed defenders of western civilization, mainly know-nothings babbling about racial superiority and the Greek “heritage.” It’s worth reading the article, Why Stone-Faced Fascists Keep Getting Antiquity Wrong:

Stone-Faced Fascists

For those certain few interested in public policy and analysis I’d recommend a study by Johns Hopkins University, entitled Faith, Family, Freedom, Place: An Ethnographic Study of Conservative Americans.

See: Conservative Americans

That we are at the present time a deeply divided country is hardly a surprise to most people. We are most certainly and it remains to be seen if we are capable of coming together in some meaningful way in the nearest possible future.

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But we might stop asking, “What do those people want?” Do you know what you truly want … in addition of course besides cheap gasoline and another streaming service? Know thyself, as a famous Greek once said a long time ago.

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The American Myth Always Came At Someone's Expense

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One of the cage fighters, I learned, after beating the crap out of his opponent leaped over the edge of the “cage” and landed in front of Donald Trump. “This wouldn’t be possible without you!” the fighter exclaimed to the President of the United States. You betcha America. We’re back and best not forget.

The Atlantic had a good piece on the flimflam spectacle entitled, “The Theory That Explains Trump’s UFC Fight.” It was quintessential Donald Trump because it was about dominance and submission, as the article rightly states … and yet, there are thousands upon thousands that adore what this decaying psychopath is offering, which we undoubtedly ignore at our own peril if we truly want to work toward a vibrant and functioning democratic republic for America.

But it’s not the “thousands” I find most interesting but a much smaller group of people of a certain persuasion that have both the influence and financial resources but certainly do not support anything that remotely resembles democracy, you know, that quaint, antique belief in liberty and justice for all.

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The Future That Is Imagined

We believe the techno-capital machine is not anti-human – in fact, it may be the most pro-human thing there is. It serves us. The techno-capital machine works for us. All the machines work for us. (“The Techno-Optimist Manifesto” by Mark Andreessen, venture capitalist, 2003)

It’s called accelerationism. It’s not my intention to get bogged down in some philosophical weeds; however, it is a term that references a particular belief system about how the world should be, a world that doesn’t truly require nor desires your input.

This is where the likes of a shuffling grifter such as Donald Trump becomes a useful tool, at least for the moment. He is meant to grease the wheels for a future utopia, created in the minds of people like Mark Andreessen for example but as well a number of billionaires and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs that have become true believers.

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Some may have heard the term accelerationism used, conceivably, by the likes of the disheveled Steve Bannon or similar fellow travelers. This definition refers to the dreary and traditional form of white nationalism or Neo-Nazi fantasy:

It’s about, in this case, speeding up the collapse of the present American system in order to install a white ethnostate, a country run by the “purest” white people—the real Americans. This is, however, not the accelerationism I’m speaking about.

The definition of accelerationism that is far more interesting and certainly more disturbing probably began taking shape some forty years ago in the world of cyberculture, perhaps speculative fiction and even the mystical and the occult.

This accelerationism today speaks about the inevitability of the death of humanity and the belief that none of our values will survive, and capitalism will be the effective means of ensuring our own demise.

Karl Marx, more than 150 years ago, told us that capitalism dehumanizes us and strips away our autonomy, while accelerationism today tells us it’s a waste of time being an anti-capitalist or angry about it for the simple reason our human demise is most likely assured regardless of what one might think.

If capitalism continually breaks things down and creates new desires, it also establishes new rules and prohibitions. Cybernetics and AI will “melt down” our most cherished values and beliefs.

As capitalism creates those desires for new goods and services, it will as well create new identities and cultures.

Land praises capitalism for the same reasons that anti-capitalists condemn it: it is racing straight towards our destruction. (Nick Land, philosopher, ideology of accelerationism)

For those interested in a more detailed discussion of accelerationism see the listings at end of this article.

The Future Belongs To?

1.A recent NYT piece brought together a group of economists, AI experts and people working in emerging technology. One of the central questions asked was how one should prepare for the AI future of work? – at an entry level or for those that have spent a number of years working.

The conclusion was that we simply don’t know at this point. We don’t know who or what will likely benefit and who will likely not benefit.

2.Another recent NYT article discusses the growing number of colleges and universities that have recently started new graduate and undergraduate programs in AI. It’s referred to as the artificial intelligence craze, perhaps like the mahjong craze in the 1920s.

3.Supposedly more than half a million tech workers have lost their jobs since ChatGPT was released in 2022 according to a recent article I read in the Guardian. Is the “apocalyptic future” what is being sold to us?

There is the hype of course. The message is that AI dominance is inevitable. You better get on the train before it leaves the station. What do we in fact know?

4. Can we imagine a “Chernobyl-scale disaster?” This was the musings of an AI CEO.

This tends to wake up the average politician and those members of the marginally aware citizenry. These four articles are below.

Does Fiction Interest You?

I wrote a novel in 2014 and one in 2013 that are currently published as ebooks. You can locate them on Applebooks, Barnes &Noble, BorrowBox, Fable, Gardners, Hoopla, Kobo, Overdrive, Smashwords, Tolino, Vivlio. There may be others as well.

A Genetic Abnormality

In 1993 Brian Stegner, a senior at St. Andrews School in northern Vermont, learns that his roommate, while researching a term paper, discovers that a former St Andrews student died under mysterious circumstances shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Frank Rollins, a teacher at the school and who had become almost like a surrogate father to Brian, learns about the student’s discovery. The three of them slowly uncover a conspiracy that underpins the very beginning of St. Andrews School, which ultimately changes their lives forever.

Twenty years go by and Brian is now a neuroscientist and living in Boston. The past has changed but the conspiracy has not vanished. Brian Stegner confronts that what was at one time science-fiction but may no longer be the case. He uncovers a number of influential people that believe humankind is now quite literally a “failed experiment.”

As he slowly peels away the layers of this very old conspiracy, Brian finds himself reliving the past and worries that his own family may now be very much in danger of some kind. Is this the real promise of Artificial Intelligence in 2026?

The Balkan Cross

Yance Adams, an American employed by a millionaire art collector in London in 1914, is sent to Egypt to pick up a religious icon that at one time was kept in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, Turkey, the city that was founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine in the 4th century. It is in Egypt however, that Yance is pulled into a vortex of conspiracy, murder and international intrigue.

In 1914, the rulers of Europe, many of them still believing they live in a 19th century world, are lurching toward World War One--the real beginning of the 20th century and all that followed. But are these monarchs and members of Europe’s political elite, in fact, being manipulated by dark, fanatical forces determined to plunge the continent into total war in order to bring about a dream that goes back hundreds of years?

The conspiracy, murder and international intrigue eventually takes him back to England and a confrontation with the malevolence hovering over Europe, as the world moves closer to world war.

READING

Accelerationism:

The No-Human Future

Video: Philosophy of Nick Land

World of AI:

Who will actually survive in AI-Human world

Want An AI Degree

Apocalyptic Future We're Being Sold

Will it take a Chernobyl-scale disaster

Other:

What liberals get wrong about the middle class

Are Americans Too Old

Over-Reliance On Chatbots Can Diminish Critical Thinking

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Thoreau spoke of living a life of conscience. That life of conscience in America has never been more important as it is right now in 2026 it seems to me, yet it remains elusive and so often difficult to make authentic and tangible to real people. We Americans stand at a crossroad right at this moment.

Ubermensch

It remains for me the classic, unpleasant image at the beginning of the Trump administration when the “richest” man in the world, Elon Musk, is seen waving a chain saw on a stage, symbolizing that he will slay waste-fraud-and abuse and save the United States … and maybe the entire planet while he’s at it.

But all I saw, however, was this squalid, narcissistic man-child selling space rockets and perhaps Musk patent medicine from the trunk of his car, in this case a shiny and expensive Tesla.

Surely another overindulged billionaire, on one level not having the faintest idea how government works or what it does or how it benefits so many Americans in so many different ways, yet on another level knowing full well what he wanted to do.

Why do I need these things? as Thoreau once said while living in a small, bare cabin beside Walden Pond in the 19^th century. Why indeed?

Ubermensch, a German word, was a key component in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who profoundly influenced generations of intellectuals, including the likes of Sigmund Freud, but also influenced non-intellectuals as well but in ways perhaps not so obvious. Nietzsche was interested in the entire spectrum of human potential and what it might ultimately achieve.

Nietzsche’s influence attracted a cross section of people, including in the 1920s and 1930s his ideas transfixed the Nazis, while today “superhuman” dreams and cyborg enhancements tickle the minds of assorted Silicon Valley types.

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Becoming A Jedi

Some of us over the past decade or so have been reading and hearing about such terms as transhumanism, longtermism, singularity, posthuman, master morality, effective accelerationist, Homo deus and yes, superhuman. This is very much the argot, the “word speak” of so many of our tech bros and self-proclaimed masters-of-the-universe.

The journalist Molly Jong-Fast recently wrote an interesting piece on some recent college commencement addresses, at least those given by the tech elite. They engendered many loud boos from the audience, you know, those students that paid thousands of dollars for a college education that would usher them into the comfortable middle class. Now they would be seeking their vanishing entry-level position, or possibly not.

Eric Schmidt, a former chief executive of Google told graduates that the “machines” are coming and then advised them to make the best of it.

Mark Andreessen, the venture capitalist, told Joe Rogan that a bot never gets drunk or files an H.R. complaint.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. (Friedrich Nietzsche )

I think if you were to make a generalization of the Silicon Valley archetype it would be more about the man wanting to escape and run away from his finite self. A choice indeed but one where little regard is given for anything or anyone left behind. After all, immortality beckons for the few. We continually hear about how human and artificial intelligence will be integrated, in the near future no less, and there will be “cybernetic symbiosis.” All is well in the cosmos.

We will make ourselves the technological superman. Of course, we are now approaching the divine powers of creation itself, because we will transcend humanity through technology. Bravo to all of us and give me the red pill.

But while our tech bros may have captured some of the snippets of Nietzsche’s philosophy they have completely missed the conclusion:

“The desire to escape from the pain of life was, for Nietzsche, the essence of nihilism. If the superman is to be the solution, then it will be by teaching us to renounce the desire for escape, the desire for a different life than the one we now live.” (Superman Fantasies, by Nicholas Low, Philosophy of Religion ,4/27/26)

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The Universe Of Nature

His name was Titus Lucretius Carus, who lived more than 2,000 years ago. He was a Roman poet and philosopher that lived probably between 99 BC and 55 BC. He wrote an astonishing poem entitled On The Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura) totaling 7,400 lines.

The poem was discovered in a remote German monastery in 1417 by Poggio Bracciolini. This poem had been lost to history for more than a thousand years when Bracciolini unearthed it, and it may be one of the most remarkable finds in human history.

Lucretius stated more than 2,000 years ago that everything was made of invisible particles and these particles were the foundation of everything. He went on to say that there was no end or purpose to existence, only ceaseless creation and destruction, governed entirely by chance.

He believed that the goal of human life is (or ought to be) the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain. But the greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain but delusion. Grasping the way things really are is the important step toward the possibility of happiness. Yes life is finite. “Unappeasable desire and the fear of death are the principal obstacles to human happiness,” so saith Friedrich Nietzsche.

Considering The Nature Of It All

Yes I support the study, the research and the “mindful” development of Artificial Intelligence as do many people. It is here. Yet I have absolutely no faith in this current American government being capable of ushering in something as potentially impactful as A.I.

Certainly I have even less faith in so many of these vapid Silicon Valley capitalists anymore than I would let an unsupervised 5-year old play with matches in a room with open gasoline cans. BUYER BE VERY AWARE OF WHAT IS BEING PROMISED.

When well educated scientists use AI for scientific breakthroughs science doesn’t stop. But when students use AI too much to learn, learning stops. (What 370,000 College Essays tell us About A.I.s Effects On Creativity, Rebecca Winthrop, 5/27/26, Director of the Center for Universal Education, Brookings Institution)

You can think of this Trump administration as a similar state of affairs . [Like the American Civil War] The American people broke something when they gave Trump a second chance in office. And there is no going back to the Union as it was. If Democrats hope to lead the nation to any kind of recovery, much less renewal, they must understand and internalize this fact of the matter. (“America Broke Something When It Gave Trump a Second Chance” Jamelle Bouie, NYT 6/3/26)

It is not a matter of hoping for the arrival of a new Mahatma Gandhi to lead us to the promised land or seeking a politician like FDR to drag us out of the morass of disaster or for that matter merely booing some clueless Silicon Valley capitalist at a commencement address.

It is about what the average American will ultimately decide to do. For you must decide, even if you decide not to. Living a life of conscience does not require one to be a Henry David Thoreau or a philosopher. But it most certainly does require something from us as individuals. On the other hand, however, you can continually choose to boo the speaker, remain angry or just wish for something different.

READING

Wandering in the world of the tech bros, language of the end of the homo sapiens and the ideas of Nietzsche:

Our Tech Overlords Planning For AI to Conquer the Cosmos

Superhuman Fantasies

You've Lived This Life Before

Thinking about what we do:

Writing is fundamental to how we think

America Broke Something

When I left Big Law I Learned This

So making it work:

Global Justice Project

Sweeping Vision For Planetary Survival

Merely interesting:

I'm trained to know when someone is dying

The breakneck AI boom fueling anti-tech extremism

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Oswald Spengler, a German philosopher who died in 1936, believed that civilization was like a living being: born, growing and maturing, and inevitably decaying and dying. In 1918, shortly before the end of World War One, Spengler published The Decline of the West. It became a cultural wonder and immensely popular across the globe but especially in both Europe and the United States.

He distinguished between the words culture vs civilization. For Spengler culture was youthful and creative while civilization was petrified and the late stage of existence....

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The Handmaid’s Tale As A Non-Fiction Best Seller

What the hell is wrong with the U.S.! is now a frequent refrain. You’ve got to organize and vote in huge numbers in this year’s mid-term, we’re likely to hear more frequently as we approach the November election. Uh, huh. Well, what if the Trump cult manages to gerrymander everything not tied down and then puts ICE officers at every polling station, especially the ones where the non-cultist tend to vote.

What if absolutely nothing changes for the better! What will you be prepared to do then? … nothing … something … everything. Many are called but few are chosen, as the Parable of the Wedding Feast in Matthew 22:14 reminds us.

While I personally never “dropped” any acid in my day, a number of my friends did, resulting in both good and bad trips. I’m of course speaking of LSD, a synthetic psychedelic drug, once very popular among the young, and not so young. Two recent articles I read conjured up for me an uncomfortable journey, one that I imagined in my worst nightmare I might never escape from.

In particular (but not exclusively), among a certain segment of middle age, middle and upper class white men and topped off with a dollop of acidic Christian nationalism comes a nostalgia of sorts, a mythical longing for a “better time and place.”

I think of it as a kind of bourgeois return to King Arthur and the nights of the round table, where a Lady Guinevere might feel safe and secure under the protection of her king, while Arthur and the boys ride off in search of the elusive “holy grail.”

The feverish mind of the Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank, keeps on giving with its Project 2025, a plan that promises to make the United States ever so different. Among its many projects is one entitled “Saving America By Saving the Family,” a 90-page tract on how to get the woman back into the house breeding and becoming part of the heroic feminine, as the Heritage guys refer to it.

It’s a plan, among other things, to strip a women’s right to vote, access contraception and so forth, as regressive as one could imagine. “Rhett, dear boy, I do need more laudanum for my ongoing womb disease.”

It should be no surprise as to why still so many people support a dull-witted degenerate like Donald Trump, no not the people that attend raucous rallies and wear red hats, but the ones in empty suits standing in the shadows stroking their wallets.

It becomes relatively easy to swallow one’s revulsion and dislike of the sap head when the larger goal is seen as the best of all possible magical worlds, especially if you envision yourself seated at the “round table” with the fellas.

A virulent form of misogyny has become the single most important force holding together the American right. ( “The Men Who Want Women To Be Quiet,” by Helen Lewis, The Atlantic)

What do you think about disenfranchising half of America? Do you think it best that women not hold political office? What about creating breeding gulags? I know it does seem harsh putting women in camps, but it’s all for the best you would be told by rabid apostles with dilated pupils: I imagine these are the guys that whip themselves into a frenzy in front of the mirror late at night. Men, be the first in your community to join the Masculinism movement, in order to fight the advances of feminism!

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I know, I know it’s surely hyperbolic gibberish and the rantings of a “handful” of disturbed and unhappy men-children. But did you not think it possible that a slim majority of Americans would put Donald Trump back in the White House in 2024? Did you believe it was unlikely that the Supreme Court would, for all practical purpose, gut the 1965 Voting Right Act? Could you have imagined that a U.S. Secretary of Health might undermine vaccine science?

A few of the general proposals offered up include: 1. Making gay sex illegal once again, 2. Divorce would become extremely difficult, and 3. Adultery and sex between unmarried consenting adults would be criminalized.

Now can you imagine what could happen next—to YOU? Ah, but perhaps you can’t. You may be comforted by the suggestion that keeping your nose clean and your head down is sufficient. This too will pass … right?

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Sickness Of The Century

Oh to be young and imagine that you alone experience “suffering,” real and imaginary. At the same time, however, it’s easy enough to understand the apprehension of GEN-Z, those born between 1997 and 2012, having lived with endless war in Iraq and Afghanistan, a global financial crash, COVID-19 pandemic, an attempted coup to overthrow the American government and the giddy promise that Artificial Intelligence will be your friend, companion and loyal mentor. I have two Gen-Z granddaughters that are part of this generation.

The term mal du siecle was coined in the 19^th century. This sickness of the century became the collective expression for the feeling of melancholy and ennui or simply dissatisfaction that spread among many of the young (the middle class and the wealthy primarily) more or less beginning in the 1830s. The age of revolution and Napoleon Bonaparte had vanished by 1815. Monarchies and anachronistic conservatism had returned to Europe with a vengeance.

The young men, especially, who had come of age in France around 1830 and ready to become the new generation of heroes, leaders and thinkers, believed that history may have run its course and there was nothing for them. “I believe in nothing, for I see nothing,” said Alfred de Musset, a French dramatist and poet in 1830.

Of interest, however, is that a lover of de Musset was George Sand, the pen name for Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, a French novelist and memoirist, and a very real supporter of women’s rights. She was perhaps one of the most remarkable writers of the European Romantic era. She was more than willing to confront the establishment of the time.

The obvious question one might ask is, what does any of this this have to do with us today in 2026, the 21^st century? Well, if nothing else, it’s important it seems to me to remind people that the angst, the malaise, the ennui are not the exclusive preserve of any one generation. What is important is what you might learn or glean from what came before you and then apply what makes sense in the present day.

Sure many of us, including the young, feel we are living in precarious times, with such things as growing inequality, the possibility of climate catastrophe, dim job opportunities, affordability, starting a family and so forth. Some may even believe that history has run its course and there is nothing left.

Clearly a lot of us today are attempting to retreat into nostalgic escapism, doomerism or even endless scrolling on social media. Does anyone like me or understand me? Some of us may even be proactive and do meditation for example, or take tai chi classes or become vegetarians, all individual efforts, all well and good.

But as the writer Emily Herring points out in her article entitled Gen Z But Two Centuries Ago, “They believed that the mal du siècle was shaped less by individual temperament than by far-reaching historical, political and cultural forces. Could we benefit from reframing our current malaise in similar terms? “

Herring goes on to suggest that perhaps what the G-Z generation of 200 years ago has to tell us is that assorted individual diversions, be it consuming or endless scrolling through social media will ultimately change very little. It just as easily can become the “bread & circus” of its day. Keep them docile and distracted in other words, for this has always been the default position for those that hold the power and are determined to not let go of it.

What Herring is pointing out is that taking control requires that we “embrace” any anger or sadness or even grief toward an unjust and corrupt system rather than considering it our personal failings, the assorted “shortcomings” we all have.

Of course there is so much more to consider in our own time. It’s only a first step to decide that the bread and circus awaits for all of us if we merely scroll through our lives.

While the zealots in expensive suits with soft hands attempt to rewrite America in their dark, anti-democratic image, their shock troops are gathering in the streets, like the two teenagers recently who entered a San Diego mosque carrying guns, dragging their ideological ashcans that included antisemitism, anti-Islam, racism, acceleralionism and the all purpose Neo-Nazism. By all means attend to your mindfulness but then get busy defending and strengthening real democracy for every damn one of us.

READING

The men who want women to be quiet

Women and what Republicans revealed

The billionaire plot to put women back in chains

Gen-Z but two centuries ago

Our Environment and Human Benightedness

Smuggled in syringes: black market in giant harvester ants

Salmon farm faces new cruelty claims

Why an immense heatwave off the U.S. west coast caused scientific alarm

Advocates decry Trump's plan to open 24 million acres of federal land to cattle

Video

Why every civilization collapses the same stupid way

6 signs you're living in a society that worships idiots

Other

The missing men of the American marriage market

The glorification of mass murder

Finally: What is our individual responsibility vs our collective responsibility? It matters a lot.

Stop Whining About Guardrails. Become One Yourself

Societies in decline have no use for visionaries. (Anais Nin)

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. (Vladimir Lenin)

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. (Adam Smith)

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In hindsight it might appear obvious to some; why couldn’t those people understand that there was a real possibility they were going to destroy themselves if they continued on the path they had chosen? Wasn’t it at all apparent? Clearly it was not for a great many....

In Thomas Cahill’s wonderful book How the Irish Saved Civilization published in 1995, Cahill mentions the Roman poet Ausonius, who was born in 310 AD and died around 395 AD. He spent most of his life on his country estate in the area of what is now Bordeaux, France.

Decimius Magnus Ausonius was both a teacher of rhetoric and at one time also the tutor to Gratian, son of Valentinian, at this time referred to as the “emperor of the West.” The Eastern Roman Empire was now controlled by Valentinian’s brother in Constantinople. Gratian, after his father’s death, was murdered in a military revolt in 383 AD. Ausonius lived out his remaining days on his estate tending to his vineyards.

For Cahill, Ausonius personified the typical upper class Roman of the time. When Ausonius died at the end of the 4^th century it would be only some 15 years later when the Visigoths sacked and plundered Rome, the “Eternal City,” for 3 days, the city that had been untouched since 390 BCE when the Celts of Gaul had invaded, 800 years before.

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Roman civilization by the late 4^th century was little more than a world of meaningless rituals, vague beliefs and tired ideas about the empire’s greatness that no one believed. The tax base had shrunk and large estates swallowed up smaller estates. The wealthy were exempt from any taxation, bribery was common, grain supplies (the ancient form of money in the bank for farmers) increasingly precarious and the rule of law largely ignored.

The military frequently revolted and the mass of the common people simply lost hope in virtually everything. At the same time, whether it was the small wealthy class or the peasants, the belief that Roman civilization would literally vanish was still an inconceivable proposition. In all fairness, however, Rome’s fall was gradual. Until the very end, Romans hardly noticed that their world was disintegrating right in front of them.

An able Goth wants to be like a Roman; only a poor Roman would want to be like a Goth. (Theodoric, King of the Ostrogoths, c. 480 AD)

The poetical fame of Ausonius condemns the taste of his age. (The History of the Decline and Fall Of The Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, historian, 1737-1794)

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The Becoming Of Who We Were To Become

I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns … as at the inadequate securities which one finds there against tyranny. (Democracy In America, Alexis De Tocqueville , 1835)

A growing sense of unease presently pervades the American consciousness. Americans are no longer as confident in their nation and self-assured as they once were. ( Dead Toad Scrolls, by Kilroy J. Oldster, 2015)

Probably more than two million people have died in horrible agony, from disease, war and outright barbarism. We are all responsible for this and can’t blame others. (Marta De Vega, Commander of Western Region of North America, 2065)

Historians may disagree as to all the myriad reasons for the collapse of the United States of America, but there is a universal agreement that the period from 2016 until 2028 was a seminal moment, where the fissures became obvious and unlikely to be easily repaired.

One hundred years ago there was considerable debate about who was responsible for the state of affairs in the United States. Today the general consensus is that a large proportion of the people in the former United States, regardless of political beliefs, turned increasingly inward and readily accepted the bigotry, corruption and narrow mindedness offered up by those in power, in both the public and private sector.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted. (Ralph Waldo Emerson, philosopher, attributed to his journals, 1838)

READING

Video: Why western civilization is collapsing

Video: Donald Trump is a drug for white people

Christofascism is here: inside the slow demolition of U.S. public health

The World of AI

Video: M.I.T. explains the 12 possible endings for AI

Video: An AI takeover scenario

Video: Eric Schmidt, you have no idea what's coming in 2027

Ordinary people fear AI, while tech leaders working to create a permanent underclass

Silicon Valley is bracing for a permanent underclass

Thinking About You

Rich people didn't used to look like this

Global human population is pushing Earth past its breaking point

We need to talk about population overshoot

Why so few babies: We might have overlooked the biggest reason of all

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT, FINANCIAL AND OTHERWISE.

From the late Woody Guthrie, the video “All you fascists bound to lose.” All you fascists bound to lose

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By 2030 global climate scientists had reached an ominous but near unanimous conclusion that the AMOC was weakening, possibly now at its weakest in 1,600 years. Would that have been important?

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or AMOC was an extensive system of ocean currents, like a conveyor belt bringing warm, salty water northwards at the surface and cold dense water southwards in the deep ocean, creating a steady climate equilibrium.

In North America alone, a collapse of the AMOC would likely cause extreme, possibly irreversible climate disruptions, rapid sea-level rise along the East coast, intense and dangerous storm activity and major and quite probable catastrophic agricultural disruptions.

Had planet Earth in 2030 finally reached that proverbial “tipping point” more people now asked, that had been talked about for decades? Were we at a point of no return, a self-reinforcing climate feedback loop as the planet continued to get warmer because of a failure to significantly reduce fossil fuel emissions and pollution levels when we had the chance.

Possibilities were put forward. A minority of climate scientists believed there was a 42 percent probability of AMOC collapse before 2050. A larger group thought it likely that a possible collapse wouldn’t occur before 2100. But in 2030 it was a crap-shoot, the scientific kind.

It was of course a complex subject with so many variables and numerous possibilities, But so much was dependent on the fact that humankind might not seriously address global warming, again those variables and possibilities. Would it be too late to prevent the AMOC disaster... leading to what?

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Monetizing The Coming Of Jesus and Assorted Human Endeavors

As the 21^st century began to unravel and come apart, seemingly unrelated events and occurrences began to interact, at times connecting and creating new symbiotic relationships of one kind or another, but so often difficult to recognize with a high degree of confidence. This had become especially true as expertise was disparaged and in short supply, or so it appeared.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” as Charles Dickens said in A Tale of Two Cities. Uncertainty and nervousness now permeated the global community. This malaise, perhaps surprisingly, became more pronounced in the developed world, and most strikingly in the United States of America, at that time the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet.

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A 2025 government report indicated that the U.S. had a falling fertility rate, hitting a record low of 1.57. We’d need 2.1 children per woman if we were to maintain a stable population. Fertility rates, however, were falling across the globe. By 2030 China had one of the lowest fertility rate in the world, followed by Japan and parts of Europe.

By 2035 this had obvious, dark and serious implications for rising public debt and lowering GDP, along with expanding health care needs and pension costs as the global population aged.

For younger people in general optimism was crashing across all levels of society. What was my place in the world, especially if I was young? Where were the promised jobs going to come from? How could I succeed if I didn’t know the right people? How were we “working class” people going to make it? What about that better world of Artificial Intelligence? I don’t see it. Everyone of course wanted to know who was to blame.

In 2025, as though on cue, the prediction market exploded onto the scene. You could now place a bet on anything and make some money, and the House couldn’t take it away from you, it was fervently proclaimed by those companies that made up the so called “prediction market.”

On social media sites and flashing billboard signs you were told it was going to be the democratization of finance and the wisdom of crowds. All you had to do was, uh, maybe, locate the insiders who knew what was going to happen in the future. But go ahead and place your bet; it was your chance to be a player on the world stage, or just get out from under it all.

Sure, everybody wanted to know who was going to win the NBA final or the World Cup. All of this was harmless good fun and familiar to all, assuming of course that you had the money to bet, for fun. But then some new questions were asked.

What would be the price of oil at the pump in one month in your state? What would be the cost of Brent Crude two weeks from now? Now this was for the folks that were serious about the prediction market.

But eventually someone wanted to know about when the United States would bomb Iran’s infrastructure or invade this or that particular country. How many soldiers would be killed? Give me a number. How many would lose a limb? How many civilians would make up collateral damage? There’s money to be made on this bro.

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Oh yeah, the pot is growing. Will Jerry, who has pancreatic cancer, be alive in one month? The minimum bet is $50. What percentage of Sudan’s population will die from starvation within six months? You could even make a prediction on the number of water wells that might be poisoned in a given area. Put your money down and make a prediction! Will Jesus be wearing sandals when he lands?

Something like 0.04 percent of traders captured more than 70 percent of the market was the reality.

The Rot Of Smoked-Filled Rooms and Air Conditioned Suites

In 2026 one person made $550,000 when he or she predicted that Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would be killed by the Israeli military only a few minutes before he was in fact killed. You see the temptation of course. It’s how our world works.

On the day before the United States and Israel started to bomb Iran, something like 150 accounts in one prediction market company placed nearly a million dollars that the war with Iran would begin the next day. Sixteen accounts made more than $100,000 each. Of course it pays to know the “right” people.

By 2029 rumors were widespread. Supposedly two people split 4 million dollars by predicting that a small village in northern Iraq would be destroyed. Half the village did die from a poison gas attack we later learned. But no one knew who had dropped the poison gas? Pictures of dead children were posted on several social media sites.

Events did occur and individuals did make money predicting correctly that death, mayhem and wars would happen and when. Of course there was talk of “insider trading” and the demand for investigations. But the talk faded away.

At the time something like 0.04 percent of the traders captured more than 70 percent of the market we eventually learned.

Prediction markets exploded under the presidency of Donald J. Trump, which most historians have concluded was probably the most corrupt and incompetent in the history of the former United States. Donald Trump Jr, one of the president’s sons, was on the board of a major prediction market company in 2026.

By 2030 the prediction markets collapsed. The former American president was institutionalized because of insanity brought on by long-term damage to the brain and soon died. Donald Trump Jr. had moved to Eastern Europe and continued to fight extradition to the United States. Three billionaires were assassinated, two Americans and one Russian, but the assassins were never discovered. The United States continued to unravel, optimism vanished and civil unrest increased.

The sustainability of a fossil fuel-based food system was now questioned by virtually everyone across the planet. A UN report indicated that 10 million people in Asia had fallen into poverty and famine spread around the globe. Yes, yes but what would replace the old food system and how soon could it occur?

Literally millions of people from Bangladesh began to migrate as rising sea levels flooded the coastal regions. Where were we going to put all the the decomposing bodies people wanted to know. Some coastal regions in South Florida were soon under evacuation orders as sea levels kept rising and city budgets faced bankruptcy.

Happy New Year 2036!

It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. (A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens, 1859)

READING

Atlantic Circulation Collapse

Critical Atlantic current more likely to collapse than thought

Why an Atlantic circulation collapse could spell disaster

Are we heading for Super El Nino

Prediction Markets

Video: John Oliver explains the hustle of prediction markets

The inside story of gamblers betting millions on war

Traders placed bets in perfectly timed bets on the Iran war

US soldier charged after winning $400,000 on removal of Maduro

The Reality Of It All

There is no planet B. This is it

Falling fertility, debt and AI. Is US headed toward a population crisis

The film that explains contemporary America

Video: Opinion, psychology of Trump supporters

The forces of scarcity hitting Asia may soon spread across the world

The psychology of scarcity

US Gambling addiction 'out of control'

“When a society begins to break, the fault lines aren’t new.” ( The film That Explains Contemporary America, by David A. Graham, The Atlantic.

IT’S NOT GLOOM. BELLA CIAO IN PARIS!

Bella Ciao

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The Curtain Rises

On February 28, 2026 the former United States as well as the state of Israel started a war with Iran and began to bomb a country with a population of 93 million people, 636 thousand square miles, which made it larger than France, Germany, Spain and the UK combined. The war quickly impacted the region and shortly the entire world. All this occurred some one hundred years ago.

While we couldn’t have known it at the time, a seismic civilization shift was slowly beginning to unfold. It would be 218 years later, from the time of the discovery of oil in Iran in 1908, to when the New Republic, approximately 7,000 miles from Iran, celebrated its 15^th anniversary as a functioning nation, in a world that had, not long before, plunged itself into darkness, with economic devastation, a global pandemic, civil wars and the demise of at least five nation-states.

Maseratis Borrowed and Golden Visas Bestowed

Historical accounts have told us that a woman in her early 30s, possibly from the UK, fell to her death from a balcony at a luxury hotel in Dubai. Rumors quickly circulated that she was murdered, supposedly because she was offering for sale information of a “highly sensitive nature,” which may have involved influential and powerful individuals in Dubai and well beyond the Persian Gulf.

She was, by all accounts, a fairly well known influencer, part of a peculiar class of people that first began to appear in the United States and Europe shortly near the end of the global COVID-19 pandemic in late 2022. By mid-2027 the influencers resided across the globe.

These “influencers” were content creators on social media and frequently found on platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Generally on the younger side and claiming expertise and offering opinions on everything from fashion to celebrities to restaurants—and gossip, the more successful had devoted followers, sometimes in the thousands.

Equally as important they were perceived as valuable to the monarchs that ran the Gulf States, in terms of selling a particular brand to the world; their imagined world being one of security, privacy and financial opportunity, along with promised opulence and pleasure, directed especially at the global wealthy and those craving the adornment of success. Scruples, not surprisingly, were of decidedly marginal interest to those involved.

What was expected, however, from the influencers was that they always told the story that the monarchies expected. The consequences were sometimes quite unpleasant and dangerous for those that did not adhere to the approved script.

This manufactured, fantasy world of the Gulf States was naturally enough built on the slippery foundation of oil, which unfortunately resided in a part of the world surrounded by poverty, exploitation, authoritarianism, theocracy and hatred, a region that the 19^th century British imperialists in the foreign office and the intelligent agencies referred to as The Great Game.

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The Cusp Of Alteration

“The skin of our teeth” was the title of the first chapter of the book Civilization, written by the late art historian Arthur Clark. The collapse of the Roman Empire in the West ended the world of ancient Greek and Roman civilization and culture and ushered in what was coined the “Dark Ages” beginning in 6th century Europe.

It was Clark’s contention that Western civilization barely survived the fall of antiquity. Clark suggested that it may have been the development of monasticism, when monks from the Mediterranean settled in small, isolated communities on Cornwall, Ireland or the Hebrides, who preserved the manuscripts from the ancient world.

No doubt we may owe much to a very few in Europe, but the Arab world at this time was preserving the knowledge and culture of antiquity and building upon it. Baghdad in the 8^th and 9^th century may have been the most powerful and richest city in the world and has been referred to by some as the Islamic Golden Age. This “golden age” came to an end when the Mongols invaded and sacked Baghdad in the mid-13^th century.

A Calamitous Unraveling

In 2026 the former United States was still the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world. But it was now a nation slowly rotting from the inside, as corruption became the chief currency of the day and the motivating force of not only a decaying and overindulged elite but the increasing disinterest and cynicism of the average citizen. Attempts were made to change the system, reform the government and encourage citizen participation but with only limited and temporary success.

Historical records tell us that the central government at the time may have been the most corrupt in its entire history and among one of the most incompetent ever assembled. Some today would say that it’s obvious that the United States was in serious decline, but for those that lived during this period it was no more obvious than the average literate Roman citizen in the late 4^th century trying to imagine that their world would collapse and vanish in another hundred years or so. It was inconceivable.

It remains unclear because of its opaqueness and the passage of nearly one hundred years, but it seems that the murdered influencer most likely was the secret lover of an influential sheikh in the UAE ruling monarchy.

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This Arab sheikh had close connections with certain high officials in the American government and several influential corporations, primarily in the areas of Artificial Intelligence and the American media/entertainment industry. This member of the UAR ruling class was privy to the financial transactions between the two governments, both official--and personal, involving the American president’s family and friends.

For a number of powerful Americans it had now become, not what was best for the United States, but what was most desired by unscrupulous and even traitorous Americans that had wrapped themselves in the cloak of religious bigotry and faux patriotism, while at the same time cultivating both frat-boy bravado and deliberate cruelty whenever possible.

The Vanishing World

Climate instability and famine increased across the globe, followed by growing uncertainty and xenophobia, especially in the United States and Eastern Europe, where Neo-Nazism shuffled mindlessly through the populous. In other places like India virulent Hinduism left momentous trails of blood among thousands.

Compassion and tolerance died by the road side in virtually every country. Polls and surveys demonstrated that literacy and educational standards were dropping in both the developed world and among the developing nations.

Sporadic civil unrest began increasing across the globe by 2045 and general corruption grew as governments faltered and failed to deliver basic services. By 2050 a severe water shortage in the American West and the Himalayas, between India and China, caused the collapse of many city and regional governments, while millions of people began leaving their homes in an attempt to find both water and food ... and security elsewhere.

By 2055 a global pandemic spread across the globe killing millions, while health resources began to falter and finally collapse. By 2060 it became a near civilization crash that continued for another 20 years.

The desert is an ocean in which no oar is dipped. (T.E. Lawrence, 1888-1935, “Lawrence of Arabia”)

A Small Pond In The Woods

Something quite unexpected in fact happened in 2085: A man and a woman were walking in what was once Walden Pond State Reservation in Concord, Massachusetts, 15 miles from Boston. They came across the remnants of a recreated cabin, similar to the actual one that the poet, philosopher and transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau lived in for two years, from July 4, 1845 until September 6, 1847. The woman pulled a small book from her pocket and opened it:

“It’s not what you look at that matters, Thoreau told us. It’s what you see.” The woman closed the book and glanced at the man beside her.

He nodded. “Thoreau still reminds us 200 years later.”

These small, seemingly insignificant moments began appearing across the globe randomly, perhaps over a period of twelve months. No one could have imagined or predicted this might occur.…

READING, FOR BOTH KNOWLEDGE AND PLEASURE. MAY IT REMAIN WITH US.

The Butterfly Effect

Worse than economic fallout from WWI

Expat influencers sold Dubai to the world

Far right Christians pushing Trump's war

How the Iran war cracked Dubai's liberal facade

The forgotten history of Walden Pond

Neo-Nazi clubs on Virginia compound

The workplace for women

Why maga men actually loathe tradwives

Wild chimpanzee war--and us

Piety and bloodlust from Crusader Pete Hegseth

The new GOP could be more extreme than MAGA

Thank you for your support, financial and otherwise.

CONGRATULATIONS IN SO MANY WAYS TO THE ARTEMIS CREW AND NASA!

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It’s hard to pinpoint exactly because it occurred over a long period of time. It was gradual, initially like the steady drip of a faucet requiring a new washer, but it was left in continued disrepair and overseen by mindless incompetency and eventually the entire nation’s plumbing system finally needed to be ripped out entirely.

Most likely the unnecessary war initiated by America in the country once called Iran probably sped up the collapse of the United States. Some historians believe it may have begun with something as seemingly “minor” as when fertilizer production was drastically curtailed on a global scale.

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Synthetic fertilizer at that time came from fossil fuels, primarily natural gas. Iran was a part of the world where possibly something like 30 to 50 percent of the world’s fertilizer was produced. But because of a blocked waterway cargo ship couldn’t carry the fertilizer out of the region and to the rest of the world. It was what some might have called back then a perfect storm….

The Long Road To Damascus

With more than 8 billion humans residing on the planet, farmers desperately needed to increase crop production on land that was under ever increasing stress. Prices were rising dramatically in developed nations. In many poorer countries the financial costs of fertilizer were beyond a country’s ability to pay and thus crop production was diminished. Hunger increased and in some areas led to massive starvation and eventually government destabilization, civil unrest and finally collapse.

At the same time, in the early 2030s, as climate disasters became more frequent and more severe, harvest failures rose across the globe. Unfortunately far too many people didn’t quite understand climate change even though in numerous cases they saw the environmental results where they lived.

Others, who perhaps should have known better, especially in the developed world, denied climate change and said it was essentially a fabrication or simply a dark conspiracy of some sort at work.

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Other people in the developed world simply were not willing to accept the “inconvenience,” refused to give up their standard of living, or simply claimed it had everything to do with their, er, freedoms. This was a fairly common refrain among those with more status and wealth and most definitely an unwarranted sense of entitlement.

By 2026 large private corporations had gained massive global power and influence, as consolidation increased rapidly, while national governments were steadily corrupted and compromised, especially true in the country once called the United States, at the time the wealthiest nation in the world.

Economists pointed out that the consolidation was both of a vertical and horizontal kind, meaning that fewer and fewer corporations controlled virtually everything pertaining to what was produced, how it was produced and who should produce it, be it a movie, a ballistic missile or a particular cereal grain.

It wasn’t so obvious in the beginning but increasingly there was less and less diversity in the types of plants grown and in general the kind of food produced. Growing meat production and land use demands were becoming unsustainable even though the human desire for meat consumption across the globe steadily increased and certainly encouraged by the producers and their various allies.

We eventually created what came to be called globalized standard farms, in hindsight a recipe for disaster as global warming worsened and widespread crop failures directly affected huge populations that became unmanageable.

Arrival Of The Locusts

Finally, the “nudge” or more accurately the coup de grace enveloped all of us. Fungal storms arrived, the phrase beginning to be understood by the general public certainly by 2027. As global warming temperatures increased, environmental events called fungal storms became more frequent. High winds or rain disturbed soil and this in turn released massive amounts of microscopic fungal spores into the air.

What we believed happened at the time is that a particular mold species called Aspergillosis, more than 180 species but possibly fewer than 40 of them caused infections in humans, increased in potency and toxicity.

Farmers were spreading more and more fungicides on certain crops to “improve” harvests on depleted land and at some point Aspergillosis became drug resistant, similar to what happened with bacteria because of the overuse of antibiotics in both animals and humans.

At first it was people with compromised immune systems that developed dangerous infections, but eventually chronic lung conditions developed among the general public worldwide. Common symptoms were congestion, headaches and fatigue. In more serious cases people started coughing up blood and had difficulty breathing.

By the mid to late 2030s millions of people worldwide were suffering from serious health issues and mortality rates were quickly rising. It was a pandemic on a scale humankind had not seen before. Within a hundred years the global population had dropped from 8 billion to 4 billion, where it finally stabilized by 3027.

A Future?

Both of you understand that this happened some 100 years ago. I know that seems like a long time ago but it’s really not if we look at our human history. Yes, your grandfather is giving you a reason why school is important. But you need to know about your past. What really happened. I don’t think you want it to happen again. Right? You are now alive in 3027. A lot of boys and girls at one time never could imagine a world like you have now, not perfect but so much better than before.

Okay. Your grandfather needs to go to bed. So what are the three things you both have to do before you go to sleep? Uh, huh. You have to make sure the animals are in their houses and that they have fresh water. Number two? Yes. Tell your parents that you love them. And the last one? Yes. Be thankful that you live in the New Republic, where all people watch out for each other and care about and respect the world they live in. This is no small accomplishment, and both of you have to make sure it stays that way. Good night, to my two favorite people in the whole world.

MORE THAN 3,300 NO KINGS RALLIES TOOK PLACE ACROSS THE UNITED STATES YESTERDAY AND MILLIONS OF PEOPLE PARTICIPATED, IN PROBABLY ONE OF THE LARGEST PROTEST MOVEMENTS IN U.S. MODERN HISTORY. THOUSANDS OF RALLIES TOOK PLACE ACROSS THE GLOBE AS WELL. IT IS TIME TO STAND UP TO GANGSTERISM, WAR MONGERING, ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION AND FASCISM. IF NOT NOW—WHEN?

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But then it turns out not to to be the defining moment. We begin all over again—maybe the next day. It becomes a loop that never gets unstuck, a depressing groundhog day. That’s all folks, Porky Pig once advised us. But of course you know at some level it’s not all. Nevertheless you decide to wait, and wait some more.

The ‘Delusional Infestation’

This woman woke up in the middle of the night with a horrible itching sensation on her legs. She flung off the covers but discovered no insects whatsoever crawling on her. She washed the bedding and eventually called a pest control company. She thought about having her entire house fumigated. Eventually she went to urgent care because she knew it would be months before she’d be able to get an appointment with a dermatologist.

After approximately 10 minutes the doctor at urgent care said that he couldn’t find anything wrong with her. At some point this woman became convinced the insects were inside of her. Desperate, she found herself contacting an insect researcher, an entomologist. This is a true story.

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The National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine states that “most people” are going to experience at least one diagnostic error in their own lifetime, and the consequences in some cases could be terrible. Some researchers believe that more diagnosed cases like this occur in periods of uncertainty. You may have heard of Delusional Parasitosis and Ekbom Syndrome. You probably don’t want to experience this ever. SEE below.

A Delusion Inside An Illusion

This is the question raised: “Why then, does American political discourse remain fixated on a catastrophe that always seems imminent but never quite arrives.”

It could be that we’re not waiting for that democratic collapse at all, even though we think we are. For Eric Reinhart, political scientist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, writing in The Guardian, we’re actually living in its aftermath.

But Reinhart, like any good psychoanalyst, says, “When a patient confronts reality, a new direction becomes possible.” I smiled when I first read this. I had gone, many years ago, through 5 years of Freudian analyst on that proverbial couch, five days a week. Then is it a matter of confronting reality? Well, it may or may not be. But discovering reality is at least a considerable step in a likely positive direction.

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Did you ever see the movie, released in 1998, called The Truman Show? It was a clever and original satire 28 years ago. It let us imagine the surveillance culture and how easy it was for media to manipulate individuals, and most clearly it was about the commodification of life, where some product confronted you every minute of every day. Does it all seem less satirical today?

Reinhart reiterates more than once that, “As long as we imagine democratic collapse as something still to be prevented, we will remain politically paralyzed, clinging to norms, leaders and procedures whose authority has evaporated. We will fight to restore a pre-Trump order that provided the fertile ground out of which far-right politics continues to grow.”

Did you know that South African apartheid in the 20th century was inspired by Jim Crow laws in the American South. Did you know that Hitler’s racial theories were inspired by the American eugenics movement in the United States?

The change starts from below, not at the top, as we are beginning to see in certain places throughout the country. SEE below.

AI Once More

Speaking of delusional thinking and of course we shall, Lancet Psychiatry (UK) has reported how AI chatbots may encourage delusional thinking, but the “good” news is that it might be only people who are already vulnerable to psychotic symptoms. Hm-m. Remember that Artificial Intelligence should not replace “professional mental healthcare.” This is becoming a more common admonition.

Never forget that while AI has the capacity to assist in healthcare improvements, it also has the very real capacity of making the surveillance state far more effective and dangerous.

You can begin by deciding not to abandon one another.

They feel bugs inside of them. Doctors don't know why

Americans aren't facing a democratic collapse. We're living in its aftermath

SOME READING

The rise of Russian mercenary legion

FCC threatens to revoke broadcasters' licenses over war coverage

Hegseth condemns press for 'fake' coverage of Iran war'

TO BE CONTINUED

Did you know that the war with Iran is part of “God’s divine plan”? No, no don’t smirk. We know this to be true because the Book of Revelation says so. Apparently a U.S. military commander claimed that, President Trump has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has reported that some commanders are telling soldiers that the Iran war is all about “God’s” plan. SEE, God's Plan and MRFF Inundated With Complaints

Poof! Where Did It Go?

At some point during my lifetime—I am not sure when—the American republic as we know it began to die. Like most natural deaths, the causes are numerous and interwoven. (‘Clawed. Anthropic and the Department of War,’ by Dean W. Ball, 2/2/26, Hyperdimensional )

Yes, in the meantime, it’s another American clusterfuck, this one beginning on Saturday, February 28 when Trump decided to bomb Iran. Sure, I readily admit that a lot of people would have been more sanguine—regardless of the lack of planning, legal authorization, authentic justification, preparation with allies and the basic morality of bombing a country into oblivion if, after all, the theocratic, thug state of Iran that murders its own citizens was simply disappeared … without of course unpleasant consequences for any of us.

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The president had a feeling. (Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, discussing the president’s reason for bombing Iran.)

The, er, problem—hardly surprising—is that we Americans are being led by a barely literate sociopath, who has surrounded himself with some colossal mediocrities and incompetents. What could possibly go wrong, here in the U.S. and across the globe.

As an aside, you might be interested in how some of the beautiful, wealthy and privileged, who are now living in Dubai and the surrounding Gulf states, are being inconvenienced by war. This may be a sort of metaphor, which begins to move us to possibly the central point that could ultimately affect every damn one of us.

Yeah, definitely beyond why the citizenry voted for this especially clownish American government in the first place, which then ended up going to war with Iran. But of course never forget to always follow the money. SEE, Influencers sold the world a fantasy Dubai and Dubai influencers' lives of luxury interrupted

You can absolutely grow an audience by people being mad at you. (Casey Fiesler, professor of information science, University of Colorado)

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The Unimagined Loop More Unsettling Than Iran

Citrini Research, a small firm that analyzes what is called “transformative megatrends,” asked in a recent article how much money machines spend on discretionary goods? The answer not surprisingly turns out to be zero. But this seemingly modest and innocuous article that appeared on February 24, caused the Stock Exchange S&P to drop more than 1 percent, because of a speculative piece in a Substack post. It unnerved investors.

It’s a what if idea that begins now and ends in June 2028, two years from now. It most definitely is in part about Artificial Intelligence, whereby in this scenario AI systems take over the entire economy, destroying job markets, mortgages, as well as upending private credit. Well paying jobs vanish for the vast majority of people, businesses disappear, tax revenue decreases drastically, exactly when governments need money to assist its citizenry in increasingly dire straights.

What makes this article, it seems to me, especially unsettling is that Citrini’s scenario ends with a caution: “This is the first time in history the most productive asset in the economy has produced fewer, not more, jobs. Nobody’s framework fits, because none were designed for a world where the scarce input became abundant.”

AI will most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime there will be great companies. (Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI)

The Emergence

What is AI, Artificial Intelligence? At this point you could probably ask millions of people across the globe and get a wide range of responses, at least among those that have actually heard something about Artificial Intelligence in some form or another. In reality it is with us right now and becoming more sophisticated, ubiquitous and powerful.

Where is it going is of course speculation at this point even among the most knowledgeable in the field. Sorry, but even the 30-something tech bros and most definitely the Epstein class know barely more than you do. We have been told by some that it shall be the savior of humankind. Others have claimed that it will be the end of humanity as we know it. But unlike them you need to know about the price of eggs right now.

The world of AI, however, is rapidly advancing and the concept of AI autonomy is no longer science fiction or futuristic fantasy. Companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, among others, are already “training” AI in developing intuition, solving problems, using imagination and having preferences. Yes these are the collective skills that humans possess, the skills that have made us human, identified us as such.

Will all this evolve to full scale autonomy and where AI is fully integrated into human society at all levels, where the only thing humans will be doing is monitoring activity? Perhaps humans will become separate and apart.

In January 2026 Moltbook arrived, a specialized social media platform designed exclusively for autonomous AI agents (the systems themselves) to interact with each other. Humans are only allowed to observe! No, Moltbook still has a way to go at this point but the idea of AI agents talking to each each is now more than a flight of futuristic fantasy.

The End Of the Beginning

Of course there is so much more to this entire, unfolding story. And do we the citizens, the 8 billion humans, have the wherewithal to understand our role in it all, our own agency, possibly our own survival? Oh I think the jury is decidedly out. But we Americans, in the meantime, can probably still turn Iran into a pile of rubble.

A good overview of it all: SEE Data centers are a distraction. The real fight is elsewhere

Clawed

How an AI doomsday report shook U.S. Markets

The 2028 global intelligence crisis: A thought exercise

TO BE CONTINUED OF COURSE

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By chance I happened to watch the speech that Trump gave at the opening of his newly created Board of Peace, an Orwellian sounding title to say the least, especially as the current American government is hinting at bombing Iran, annexing countries and befriending authoritarian regimes, in the name of some new, yet to be defined, world order.

This “Board of Peace” appears to be a new government department, at least in this president’s unhinged brain, that could perhaps replace the United Nations and the World Health Organization by some twisted Trumpian logic. It’s a “small” story unto itself but telling in so many ways.

I couldn’t watch the entire speech. It was simply deranged and incoherent, the babbling of a deeply disturbed individual, surrounded by sycophants, assorted camp followers and knuckle-draggers, that a slim majority of American voters believed was qualified to again occupy the White House. Yeah, I know, he who hath not sinned….

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The Panopticon Effect

Panopticism is the general principle of a new ‘political anatomy’ whose object and end are not the relations of sovereignty but the relations of discipline. (Discipline and Punishment Explained, Michel Foucault)

The Panopticon was the creation of Jeremy Bentham, an 18th century English philosopher. He proposed a circular prison, the idea being that a single guard in a central tower could watch all the inmates without the prisoners knowing it or for that matter who might be watching them. The key ingredient was to force inmates to “self-regulate” their behavior. He proposed this idea to the British government to save money by reducing prison staff.

In the 20th century Michel Foucault, a French philosopher, created an entire concept of continuous internalized surveillance for a modern state, certainly inspired by Jeremy Bentham.

It is a fascinating subject, especially today in the 21st century, with our omnipresent CCTV cameras and an unregulated AI scooping up more and more personal data, along with a twisted assortment of narcissistic billionaires conjuring up trans-humanism and immortality in their very own unregulated world without constraints of any kind.

The surveillance state is no longer some feverish dream or an imaginative creation of a dark science fiction dystopia. What information do you willingly give up every day for “convenience” and the latest app? Who do we want controlling our personal information? Be honest. Do you always read the terms and conditions before checking the box? To what degree do you already self-regulate? How shall you disappear?

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Two videos explain in detail how the Panopticon Effect works. SEE, (1) Foucault's Panopticon

(2) Foucault Discipline and Punishment Explained

Accepting Reality Is Difficult

It’s usually the initial sense that it couldn’t happen … at least here. We tell ourselves that it has nothing to do with us. It’s those others. That person has only himself to blame. Of course it will all work out once we understand what is taking place or cooler heads will ultimately prevail. I will make a phone call. Let’s just watch the game or go shopping. But you got trouble, right here in River City. Right now!

At one extreme, the discipline-blockade, the enclosed institution, established on the edges of society, turned inwards towards negative functions: arresting evil, breaking communications, suspending time. At the other extreme, with Panopticism, is the discipline-mechanism: a functional mechanism that must improve the exercise of power by making it lighter, more rapid, more effective, a design of subtly coercion for a society to come. (Discipline and Punishment)

Denouement

Do you know what a Prediction Market is? You can place a bet on virtually anything. Its supporters want no regulations placed on it. How many individuals will end up in a Texas concentration camp this month? Place your bet. Will all the Epstein files be released before the midterm elections? Place you bet. Will a functioning democracy cease by the end of 2026? Place your bet.

Do you have any idea what percentage of children will suffer IQ loss from increased mercury emissions? Will the increase of toxic soot cause more cancer and birth defects? You do know that the current American government has gutted the Environmental Protection Agency, don’t you? This could actually affect the comfortable among us. Simply an outrageous idea!

Do you know what the Congressional Review Act is? They’re coming after public lands. But quite possibly you don’t care about the idea of national parks and public spaces or even wildlife. Is this true?

The rich are different from you and me, dear boy. They don’t need bootstraps. SEE, From Epstein to Bezos, the Ruling Class Is Rotten to the Core

Do you actually think they care about you? SEE, The Epstein Files and the Hidden World of An Unaccountable Elite

I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things [protecting Jim and turning him in], and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: All right, then, I’ll go to hell… (Huck, Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, 1885)

No I no longer think it’s merely changing the cast of characters or polishing the edges of the “system” or telling yourself it will all work out for the best in the end ... or believing the 2026 mid-term election will restore sanity or block fascism. It’s now civil unrest.

CODA

Are we pretending it’s normal? Really, is it just about self-deception? SEE, Historians Confirm: Tomorrow Won't Be Better Than Today

READING

What Exactly Is a Concentration Camp

Trump official allies with Europe's far right in attacks on migration and hate speech

Note: One of my Missouri senators, Eric Schmitt, is mentioned as a sympathetic reactionary to the anti-democratic “cause” in the above Guardian article.

video: The infrastructure of Jeffrey Epstein's power

The key to defeating Trump: Mass non-cooperation

What trafficked girls think of Jeffrey Epstein and his pals

Don't go to the US-not with Trump in charge: The UK tourist with a valid visa detained by ICE for 6 weeks

For those that require Panopticon in the weeds: SEE, Discipline and Punishment

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Amongst the Weeds

It’s known as the Milgram experiment, first conducted in 1963 in the U.S. At the end of the Second World War many people wanted to understand how a country like Germany could have committed the appalling atrocities like the Holocaust. Was this unique to the German culture or perhaps a more universal human vulnerability?

Stanley Milgram was an American social-scientist who, in the 1960s, began doing research on how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. Milgram wanted to test obedience to authority. In 1963 he began a series of experiments, that still remain highly controversial to this day. You can read about these experiments below. Milgram concluded that probably a large number of people—from virtually anywhere—would inflict pain on others if told to do so.

Some 60 years later we might not be as surprised about the results of the Milgram experiment, but the good news is that there are still many people that would not participate in inflicting pain on others regardless of who might be authorizing it, or not afraid of the consequences of not “following orders.”

But unfortunately it is not merely about tweaking a system, or promising to do better, or changing the cast of participants. It is much more difficult and unpleasant the longer you wait, but then again, necessity is the mother of invention.

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Only A Few

Video: We Know Enough. Testimony from Arizona city council meeting against ICE

Who is doing what to whom? Who murdered the two Americans in Minneapolis? Was it ICE or the Border Patrol? Perhaps it’s as American as apple pie. SEE, The Border Patrol is the problem. It always has been

The Bateman in all of us. The illusion remains so compelling for so many, while he is us and we are they. SEE, From Incel culture to the White House

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups. (George Carlin)

Stepping Through the Glass Darkly

“The triangle of Epstein, Thiel and the Russians goes back to at least 2014.”

You first have to decide to enter that alternative universe. Simply because it’s a world unfamiliar to you, it does not mean it doesn’t exist, in some form, in some manner and in some way. But you are not invited and you are not chosen. That’s the good news however.

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“Trump’s paranoia about the files is not about his sexual deviance, It’s because they prove he’s a loser.”

SEE, The Big Reveal: It was Epstein's psyop all along

Following the Money: The American Sand Castle

Naturally enough if you’re a Marxist it doesn’t seem surprising at all. You might refer to it as end-stage capitalism. Of course most Americans certainly are not dye-in-the-wool Marxists (at least for the moment) or even willing to consider much beyond our vacuous, arthritic “free market” street hustle. Clearly the American sandcastle did not begin with the inception of the moronic, convicted felon in the White House. Yet….

It’s the economy stupid. (A television clip where James Carville, former advisor to President Bill Clinton, stated that the primary concern of the American voter is the state of the economy and that should be the focus in any political campaign)

Did you know that business investment has declined? According to Oren Cass, an economist for the conservative think tank American Compass, actual business investment has declined to an average of 2.9 percent of GDP over the past decade, from 5.2 percent in the 1960s.

Cass identifies financialization, as he calls it, the central problem of our current American financial system. By this he means that capitalism IS NOT doing what it’s supposed to be doing, which is primarily creating jobs and providing products and services that ate benefiting people’s lives and their families.

Needless to say many of Cass’ beliefs clash with current Republican economic orthodoxy, which clings to endless tax cuts and deregulation and of course the stubborn fairy tale about picking yourself up by the bootstraps.

By financialization Cass means an economic system that really is little more that a smoke-filled room dedicated to grift. It means manipulating money and credit, grotesque money shufflers in expensive suits gaining a commission by shuffling the “currency” of the moment, focusing on just the investor and shareholders, aiming for the highest cash flow for the few, which of course is referred to as value creation!

No of course YOU can’t play. But you’re encouraged to always fantasize naturally enough. You too can be a player. You too can become rich. Trust us. This is an article well worth reading and thinking about because it will ultimately touch you in some way. It’s the economy stupid! SEE, The Financial Industry is a Grift. Let's Start Treating It That Way

Two things are infinite: The universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe. (Albert Einstein)

READING

The man who shocked the world

Stanley Milgram shock experiment

Milgram experiment

Video: Stephen Miller recreates slaveholder ideology

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The Problem Of Death

Rene Girard was a French academic who died in 2015. He was best known for developing mimetic theory, which proposed that human desire is basically imitative, leading to rivalry, violence and the scapegoat mechanism as foundations of religion and culture. Girard seems so pertinent at the moment in the mindless world we’re wallowing in today. SEE below.

That’s just the way things are. If you don’t like it, change the rules! (Queen of Hearts, Alice in Wonderland)

Perhaps 3.6 billion kg of human flesh and bone have to be disposed of worldwide—each year. The primary way we do this is through burial and cremation. There is of course a significant impact on planet Earth when we disappear the lifeless human body intact or gather up the assorted pieces for disposal.

For example, one single cremation releases nitrogen oxides, which is like driving a car almost 3, 670 km (3600 km is 2, 237 miles). These gases contribute to air pollution. But the good news, as some suggest, is that environmental concerns and climate change are now no longer on the “most important” list; we’ve relegated them to merely problematic-likely untrue listings. Of course in the land of the blind….

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Interestingly enough, if you’re interested in irony, research now indicates that perhaps just 32 fossil fuel companies are responsible for half the global carbon dioxide emissions in 2024. Saudi Aramco was the biggest state-controlled polluter and Exxon Mobil was the largest investor-owned polluter. Who will it be next year?

The irony is that these companies have been accused of sabotaging climate action, but the emission data now available is also being used to hold these companies responsible. SEE below.

Waking Up On a Sunny Morning and Realizing You’ve Become a Grasshopper

No you wouldn’t want this to happen to you, especially if you’re an American and look at your self-worth in terms of the size of your bank account. Brandon LaRoque, a real person, woke up one morning and checked his cryptocurrency account and discovered it was empty. There was no money in it whatsoever. He was now broke and his entire life savings of $3 million had vanished.

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There is essentially no regulation of the crypto industry, and it is quite intentional. Of course there is no “deposit” insurance. But naturally enough there are some that are making millions of dollar off the gullible, hardly surprisingly. One of them is the current president of the United States. It’s a glorious grift for the few, most certainly for the president as well as his family and friends.

Then again, so many of us decided to put a mentally deranged gangster in the White House; after all, he promised to make America “so very great.” That’s all most of us apparently needed to hear.

Mr. La Roque, a staunch Trump supporter, didn’t appear to know that there were no regulations that would help him get his money back! In the land of the red queen corruption abounds, ignorance is placed gently on a pedestal, in the U.S. and across the globe. It’s a dreary but fascinating tale and one told by The Atlantic journalist Anne Applebaum. SEE below.

To escape responsibility for violence we imagine it is enough to pledge never to be the first to do violence. But no one ever sees himself as casting the first stone. Even the most violent persons believe that they are always reacting to a violence committed in the first instance by someone else. (Rene Girard)

The cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. (Carl Sagan, astronomer)

Looking closely at the available research can lead to serious doubts about environmentally friendly ways to die. (“How To Become a Tree,” 2026)

The Process of Complicity

We continually go back to that very specific period of time and why not. It tells us so much in so many various ways, right up to the here and now. It is the most grayish period from 1933 in Germany when democracy died until September 1, 1939 when World War Two began for real and the monsters engulfed all of us.

It is about the slowly developing story of becoming a bystander in a particular society and country, but it’s really about any society at any time and place. How fortunate we are that we can move from passivity to compliance to complicity and finally perpetration. SEE below

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How it happens in most societies is that a small percentage of people become perpetrators and a small percentage become activists and resisters. Most of us remain bystanders. The United States now stands at that proverbial crossroad. Which way will we go? What choices will we ultimately make?

The Post Script

As I wrote this post yesterday on Saturday morning, I watched the unfolding events from Minneapolis, Minnesota where another citizen was killed by ICE, ICE being little more than a collection of masked thugs, poorly trained but believing they are immune from any consequences.

You could be forgiven if you first thought a coup was going on in some obscure, failed state far, far away. But no, it is occurring right here in America. This is not some abstract exercise put on by some government agency. It is the slow unfolding of a genuine police state. It is deliberate. We perhaps can hope that some day we shall have our own Nuremberg trial and the perpetrators will be seated in the court to face justice.

We too can move from passivity to complicity to compliance to perpetration. Yes you will now be inconvenienced regardless of what you decide to do.

Mimetic Theory

How to become a tree

Half of world's 02 emissions come from just 32 fossil fuel firms

Carbon Majors

How crypto is used for political corruption

How the social structure of Nazi Germany created a bystander society

State Terror Has Arrived

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THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT, FINANCIAL OR OTHERWISE. DON’T BE A BYSTANDER.

Take up the White man’s burden Send forth the best ye breed Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives’ need; To wait in heavy harness On fluttered folk and wild Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Half devil and half child. (“The White Man’s Burden,” Rudyard Kipling, 1899. Rudyard Kipling the well known English writer and poet supported America’s colonial control of the Philippines in 1898)

It Is So Saith We

I watched recently the documentary Cover Up, outlining the career of the investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, who exposed the My Lai massacre where U.S. soldiers murdered hundreds of unarmed civilians in Viet Nam in 1968.

As well, Hersh was one of the journalists that brought to light what had occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Abu Ghraib was where Saddam Hussein tortured and executed dissidents, but also where later the U.S. Army and the CIA abused and tortured Iraqi detainees. This all came to light in 2004. In the documentary Hersh remarked that, “We are a culture of enormous violence.”

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The problem is not that Americans are uniquely bad—we’re not. But we are very good at creating illusions about ourselves. It’s always seemed to me that we want to see ourselves as just a “little better,” perhaps a bit more upright, and naturally enough morally righteous. It’s an ongoing blind spot.

That shining city on the hill that so many politicians, for example, love to talk about never quite grasp that the city has been tarnished from the very beginning. We really aren’t so very unique after all … but at our best we believe we can do so much better. Well, we are about to find out if this is truly so.

Remember President Ronald Reagan, the trained actor, who could deliver the lines better than anyone? SEE, Shining city on the hill, video

“Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” and Saving the World

I lived in Venezuela for two years, and spent slightly more than one year in Caracas the capital of the country, a city at the time of some 2.5 million people.

When I recently looked at a map of Caracas where the American forces attacked Venezuelan military installations, I realized it was about 3 miles from where I lived at the time. When I lived there it was both incredibly wealthy and corrupt. It was exciting but the possibility of violence never far away. It had the flavor of democracy but the bribe, both big and small, was ever present, eating away at the facade.

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In the 1990s it began to unravel, with oil prices dropping, the national debt growing, corruption rampant and the ordinary Venezuelan suffering. Then came the “omnipresent soldier on the white horse” to save the day and a military coup followed. It was now another failed democratic attempt in South America.

In 2005 a Harvard analysis indicated that from 1898 to 1994, the American government had intervened directly and indirectly in Central and South America a total of 41 times, which amounts to once every 28 months for an entire century.

It’s hardly an ideal way to encourage the development of self-governing democratic institutions throughout a region. But we most certainly were not encouraging democracy in general. And we are definitely not now in any way, shape or form interested in any shining city on any hill anywhere. The American government, this one especially, wants the oil and a compliant rump state. It’s all so familiar.

We live in a world, the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time. (Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff in Trump administration, in an interview with Jake Tapper of CNN, 1/5/26)

Young Mr. Stephen Miller, all of 40 years old from a privileged background, may well believe exactly what he told CNN. He and a few others like him for all I know may be quite adept at encouraging and maneuvering an uninformed, narcissistic psychopath like Donald Trump, who is showing rapid mental decline.

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We should all be concerned right now, especially in light of the murder of a young woman in Minneapolis, Minnesota. But then again we all have a responsibility to stand up to a darkness offered up by the likes of Stephen Miller, the character he works for and the putrid billionaires that support this blighted government, unless of course we are only interested in the appearance of democracy. But not only can the eggs get more expensive; they can disappear altogether—along with us, the inconvenient people.

A Moment Of Teachability

On January 6, 2021 more than 1,000 Americans attempted treason, most certainly encouraged by then President Donald J. Trump. Josh Hawley, one of my U. S. senators, waved a clenched fist in front of the U.S. Capitol declaring his support for the attempted coup.

In January 2025 the newly elected president Donald J. Trump pardoned all the convicted felons that attempted to overthrow the American government. Josh Hawley remains a United States senator from Missouri.

In Brazil in 2023 there was an attempted coup by supporters of Jair Bolsonaro the former president of Brazil. But unlike the United States that failed miserably and was unable to confront treason, Brazil dealt swiftly with the criminals that attempted to overthrow the legitimate government of Brazil. The article is worth reading. SEE, Brazil has something to teach the U.S.

READING

Federal Agents Violating Rights of Americans

Trump finally told America what this is about

Gunboat diplomacy is back. What could go wrong

Don't dignify Trump talk with 'new' world order

The White Man's Burden

This is what Venezuelans really want

The theory that gives Trump a blank check for aggression

An article that ought to be required reading for all Americans, both young and old. It says so much about so many things, including sound thinking. SEE, Science keeps changing. So why should we trust it?

Making America weaker, dumber, smaller and less competitive: SEE, Why the white America Trump dreams of is just fantasy

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I was living in Venezuela in the early 1970s. Anti-Americanism was certainly not unusual among young Venezuelans at the time as the Viet Nam war dragged on thousands of miles away. Someone once shouted angrily at me across the street, “Usted es Americano!” I hesitated for just a split second. “No, no. Soy Canadian.” I’m Canadian I shouted back. He and his friends waved and walked away. The frontier of the mind revealed.

There were also remembrances of Perez Jimenez circulating once again, the dictator that was overthrown in the late 1950s. Older Venezuelans spoke of “cincuenta y cincuenta,” fifty percent for Jimenez and fifty percent for the American oil companies.

Trump, the grotesque stage prop in the “theater of the absurd” White House, talks about taking back the “American” oil, which is decidedly not his to take no matter how bad the current president Nicolas Maduro might be. Cincuenta y cinquenta, siempre (forever).

Of course, the American government and its handlers tend to continually update the 19th century Monroe Doctrine when convenient. Is the entire hemisphere not ours after all? At least in the frontier of our minds it seemingly remains so for some.

I Have a Dream

Alonso, I’ve heard said, was born in a poor, dusty village south of Madrid, Spain. But as he was an outgoing and curious child he was recognized by one of the village leaders as an ideal candidate for the army. At seventeen Alonso enlisted in the Spanish army for a period of 10 years. But to his moderately uneasy surprise a year later he was on a crowded troop ship headed for New Spain.

His ship arrived at what is today St. Augustine, on Florida’s East Coast which in 1573, 180 years before, Ponce de Leon claimed for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, along with the rest of Florida. Indigenous people like the Timucua, Calusa, Apalachee and Seminoles did not know the king and queen of Spain now owned their lands, their cultures and their futures.

Within 3 months, Alonso was again on a troop ship headed for Mexico. He eventually found himself on Mexico’s northern frontier battling raiders from the Chichimeca Indians , as well as Apache, Navajos and Comanches primarily located in the frontier areas of what would eventually become Texas, New Mexico and Arizona some 100 years later.

Seven years went by and Alonso had learned to read and write, proving himself to be an asset to the army and the Jesuit missionaries in the region. He also had learned some of the languages of the indigenous tribes he’d been fighting against for the past several years. His military unit was now headed for an area that would eventually become Los Angeles, California, all part of Spain at the beginning of the 18th century.

Now attached to a presidio, a military fort, just south of present day L.A., he had met an indigenous woman, around 17 years old and possibly of the Tongva people, whose ancestors likely arrived thousands of years before. Alfonso fell in love.

He was now a sergeant and a valuable interpreter and scribe. Having been a frugal young man he managed to save up most of what he had earned, possibly some 250 reales or around $5,000 a year in today’s money. He was now nearly 28 years old and his enlistment was up.

He left the army, bought some land and then married and settled down to farm and raise a small herd of cattle. A year later he had his first child that he named Alexos. A year later his wife gave birth to a girl. They both agreed on the name Anna. He was now a Californian. Alonso and his wife lived for another twenty-five years. Some 300 plus years later his progeny would be Americans—U.S. citizens—of indigenous descent, Spanish descent, and perhaps Mexican descent … as well as mestizo, mestiza and mulatto.

What Are You?

Post truth is pre-Fascism. (Timothy Snyder, American historian)

Once again the dark ugliness returns and the dreams of equality recede in these United States. Do you look like you’re an undocumented immigrant? You ought not to look like that because today there is probable cause to deport you and send you to jails in El Salvador, possibly Sudan or perhaps Uganda. Truly, are we really a nation of immigrants?

You must be an authentic American; purity is essential for the strength and moral character of the new American Volk. The government will check your lineage and genealogy and then decide.

We shall stop the mongrelization of America once a for all. Our borders have shifted sufficiently so that we can now only allow “real” Americans. Yes the degree of acceptable melanin, once new guidelines are in place, will be determined by the Division of Scientific Eugenics, within Health and Human Services.

Know who is a real American and entitled to breed. Be watchful and report any and all suspicious activity. God bless these United States.

The Nazis are just a gang of stupid hooligans—but they do serve a purpose: let them get rid of the communists and later we’ll be able to control them. (character in the movie Cabaret, 1972)

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The Pachuco Invasion

In 1943 one particular young Mexican-American was badly beaten and nearly killed in what came to be called the “Zoot Suit Riot.” In my imagination he might have been related to Alfonso, who some 300 years before had purchased land only a few miles from where the riot had taken place in Los Angeles.

Like 1917 and World War One in the U.S., democracy, tolerance and the rule of law suffered in World War II. Paranoia, fear and suspicion took over. After all, we had suffered a serious surprise attack at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii by Imperial Japan.

The United States had annexed the Hawaiian Islands in 1898. It had begun five years before when a handful of Americans had staged a coup d’état, against the Hawaiian Kingdom of Queen Liliuokalani.

The U.S. government in 1942 began to round up Japanese-Americans on the west coast—U.S. citizens—and put them in internment camps … concentration camps if you will.

The Zoot Suit was popularized in Harlem dance halls in the 1930s and made well known by the likes of Count Basie and Cab Calloway. The fad, the style soon became popular among young Mexican-Americans in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Of course it was a statement about identity and the determination to be included as Americans. Not unexpectedly it upset and frightened the white establishment of Los Angeles.

Pachuco was the name given to these young Mexican-Americans that dressed in the zoot suit attire, looking to be part of the “urban cool.” They even created their own slang called calo; it was not Spanish nor English nor Spanglish.

But the trend wasn’t foreign. It was as American as jazz itself, and like jazz, it was treated as dangerous precisely because it came from communities the establishment wanted to keep invisible. (“Who looks like they belong in America,” David Alvarado, July 2025)

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Eventually American sailors and soldiers armed with wooden clubs went into the neighborhoods where these young men lived and clubbed them, tore off their clothes and burned them. You are not welcomed here, was the very clear message. Of course the United States was standing against fascism in Europe and Asia at the time, while Jim Crow laws in the United States, lasting until 1968, were very much alive in 1943.

Some 82 years later, on July 7, 2025 federal agents, some on horseback, and National Guard troops with armored vehicles in a show of force entered MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, frightening children and families. They did not uncover any violent criminals, pedophiles or drug dealers. They did, however, discover many American citizens that spoke some Spanish.

For more information on the Zoot Suit Riots and the pachucos SEE below.

“Que te pasa, calabaza?”

“Nada, nada limonada.”

[What’s going on you melon?

Nothing, nothing, lemonade.]

Gabacho: Anglo, gringo, paddy, white American

The first year of Trump’s return to the White House has shown or reminded us of many things, including the fragility of democracy, the prevalence of cowardice and the intensity of tribalism. But it has been an especially stark and galling education in the intoxication of power. (“Susie Wiles and the Intoxication of Power,” Frank Bruni, NYT columnist, 12/22/25)

“Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men … remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature.” ( Immanuel Kant, philosopher, 1724-1804)

Jubilee! *

Yes, yes 2025 is almost over. We did manage to avoid some disasters though. The good news is that more of us said NO to cruelty, ignorance and authoritarianism. That’s a good omen for 2026. Push back and don’t stop. There are many, many ways to make a difference regardless of who you are. But what you should not do is fervently hope that someone else will make all the bad things go away.

• *Jubilee: archaic word for a celebration.

• Note: I failed to add the correct accent marks to some non-English words I know.

The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you; they are unique manifestations of the human spirit. (Wade Davis)

READING

A. Zoot suits and the pachucos that wore them.

Who looks like they belong in America

Who looks like they belong

video: ZootSuit riot

How the zoot suit got so much swag

B. Discrimination against white men

White men urged to file discrimination claims in anti-DEI escalation

C. The American Ship of Fools

conference of clowns

D. Worth reading

How effective is protesting? According to historians and political scientists: VERY

These are the USA's most charitable states

Some men may downplay climate change risks to avoid appearing feminine

Neo_Nazi terror groups step up activity in US

It's time to accept that the US Supreme Court is illegitimate

Trump sending bombs into Nigeria was Christmas show for his evangelical base

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This is not who we are! After all, we’ve had our Constitution since 1789. How could they have done this? The cruelty of it all! Our Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791—234 years ago. Can you believe this is occurring in the United States?

We may hear these remarks less often at this point in time as our Constitution faces an ongoing, concerted attack, but the utterances are still loudly proclaimed, as though it’s unimaginable, foreign to our American psyche and experience, completely taking us by surprise. Are we not ever so slightly, er, better than the others? Hm-m? And, oh yeah, can you believe the rising cost of ground beef!

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A Rose Is Always A Rose, But Not Always

Many people have seen the recent Ken Burns film The American Revolution on PBS. Our war to create an independent country was nasty, brutal, long and oftentimes not remotely glorious. A great many European-Americans didn’t support it, along with many indigenous people and African-Americans. But of course a lot of people did support the war of independence, including some of my own ancestors I’m happy to say.

Speaking of “The American Revolution,” John McWhorter, NYT columnist and Columbia University linguist—and conservative— has an interesting perspective on Burn’s film. He thinks the story on PBS of our American revolution is excellent. I do as well. In addition, he’s addressed the criticism leveled by some conservatives that the series was too “woke.”

Certainly a series like the ones Ken Burns produces, such as “The American Revolution” being the most recent, it would not be surprising to find actual American historians debating particular viewpoints and even historical interpretations. But I find my mind glazing over when the word woke is leveled at a particular subject by the usual “make America great” ideologues.

You mean you don’t like what is being said because it’s contrary to what you think, believe, or wish to have as the official and established, quite possibly white people story of America? Uh, huh, and truth is flexible and malleable…?

To read McWhorter’s article, ‘The American Revolution’ Is Not Woke. It’s Magnificent, SEE below.

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Imaginary Places and Doomsday

Yes the conditions for apocalypticism are once again in the air. Luke Kemp, for one, who works at the Centre For the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, has written a book entitled Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse. It’s another starting point for discussion.

But I suspect after we dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945 apocalypticism has never really left but periodically retreats from public view and then reappears once more with new dates and times along with the “requisite” conditions for doomsday.

We have today large inequality across the globe, pandemics and rapid technological development. For Luke Kemp, societies that are built upon domination, wealth and power have within them the seeds of their disappearance and death. We have some 5,000 years of human history to prove this to be true according to Kemp, among others.

In almost every instance a collective sense of impotence and anxiety and envy suddenly discharge itself in a frantic urge to smite the ungodly—to seize wealth and power for ‘all eternity.’ (Norman Cohn, late British historian writing about prophesies and global collapse in the Middle Ages)

A Particular American History: 1917-1921

There were no opinion polls in the U.S. in 1917 but compulsory draft registration, beginning on June 5, 1917, gives us a window into the sentiments of Americans regarding conscription at this time. It was not popular.

American soldiers began to arrive in Europe and now the U.S. was an active participant in World War One, this one being “the war to end all wars.” On the home front it was also the beginning of a truly serious erosion of civil liberties that most Americans had taken for granted, at least most white Americans.

The late cultural historian, David Brion Davis, once said that, “The years from 1917 to 1921 are probably unmatched in American history for popular hysteria, xenophobia, and paranoid suspicion.” The next four years would prove to be a dark chapter in American history, and likely created conditions that made anti-democratic behavior and policies more likely to occur and even accepted right up to our present day.

The authoritarian gangsterism that we have today did not originate in the limited and diseased mind of Donald Trump or any of his fellow travelers and assorted camp followers. The cruelty, the racism and outright depravity have been part of who we are from the very beginning of our history. It’s why the struggle to create genuine democracy is not a part-time endeavor.

Get the good old syringe boys and fill it to the brim

We’ve caught another nigger and we’ll operate on him

Let someone take the handle who can work it with a vim

Shouting the battle of freedom

(A ballad once sung by American soldiers. This refers to the “water cure.” It was water boarding of captured Filipino guerrillas. The United States had claimed the Philippines as an American colony beginning in the late 19th century. Later, water boarding and torture were used against pacifists and those considered communist “sympathizers” in 1917 through 1921, among others. Water boarding is not something that was first used by the U.S. military at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. We had considerable practice long before.)

I want to say—I cannot say it too often—any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic. (President Woodrow Wilson, 1913-1921)

You might easily conclude the sentiments expressed in the above statement by Wilson is a nod of approval to the massive deportations and gutting of civil liberties that were taking place in the United States at this time. It came down to who were the authentic Americans.

My junior senator from Missouri, Eric Schmitt, recently offered his own definition of “who” is a real American. It’s as dull witted as that which Wilson stated more than a hundred years ago. But of course a frightened people obsess over WHO belongs and who doesn’t. What if we’re not real Americans?

The oldest human footprints in North America have been found in what is now White Sands National Park in New Mexico. These footprints may be 23,000 years old. The original inhabitants arrived a very long time ago. We are all authentic.

For anyone interested in the disturbing history of America in the years from 1917 until 1921 I recommend the book American Midnight by Adam Hochschild, the author of King Leopold’s Ghost. No one should be proclaiming—This is not who we are.

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A Billionaire Strolls Into An Exclusive Club

No I have no idea why we truly need a billionaire class in the United States. I think we’d all be better off if we were to rid ourselves of this clownish anachronism, ideally the sooner the better. Anyway it’s a particular subset within this class that I find both intriguing and repugnant at the same time: Unaware, narcissistic, certainly child like and often morally incomplete is how I would describe a great many of them.

The poster child for this group might be someone like Elon Musk, a narcissistic twit waving a chain saw onstage, promising to gut the American government to help Trump and of course himself. But then again some might believe this distinction ought to go to a Peter Thiel, the inventor of our current Vice-President JD Vance; however, what makes Thiel especially interesting is his apparent obsession with the Antichrist, supposedly hovering in every nook and cranny imaginable. So many of these men-children and so little time.

The latest Silicon Valley member of what the journalist Gil Duran calls The Nerd Reich is Joe Lonsdale, a venture capitalist and co-founder of Palantir, a company we ought to know much more about. This tech bro has called for public hangings to restore “masculine leadership” in America. Sean Carrol, theoretical physicist, in describing Lonsdale, has said that, “Immaturity masquerading as strength is the defining personal characteristic of our age.”

Certainly we can’t ignore another billionaire by the name of Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google. He had advised Americans and the world presumably that, “AI is the most profound technology humanity is ever worked on, and it has potential for extraordinary benefits, and we will have to work through societal disruption.” He’s said that no job is now safe—even his own. My god, could Sundar be forced to live off his billions?

This is the sort of BS that is being passed off as knowledge and wisdom today. None of us at the moment knows what AI can and will be able to do in the near future and in a generation from now. We clearly don’t know who in fact might benefit from this “promising” technology and who might not.

We can’t, however, leave it up to some tech bro running a huge corporation like Google to tell us how we must adapt. In the best of all possible worlds Sundar needs to be sat down and advised how a functioning society works, and the important part he may be able to play. Of course, as the shopworn cliche goes, elections have consequences … at least for the moment in the U.S. and a few other places in the world.

We still have choices and don’t have to accept or tolerate degenerates and buffoons in public office or overindulged tech bro types telling us how it’s going to be. This billionaire class is a problem and a serious hindrance to creating a functioning democracy that works for all of us. Of course it’s hard. But so what.

The Ending: The Fayum Portraits

It’s called “Haunting dispatches from the edge of the Roman Empire, just before its collapse.”

Subjects were alive when images were fashioned. At death the images were place over mummified bodies upon burial. Now looking at the distant past and seeing ourselves in the present. Shall we have our own images fashioned? SEE THE VIDEO: Portraits

READING

'The American Revolution' Is Not Woke. It's Magnificent

Lessons From 5,000 years

Billionaire pushes return of public hangings

Google ceo says we're all going to have to suffer

The historians behind Ken Burns 'The American Revolution'

OTHER

The environmental cost of corn

Trump wants to recreate a white America that never existed

Trump's new security strategy endangers democracy

The ethnic cleansing of U.S. will destroy it

America Can't Win Alone

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