We are so close to reversing aging, yet nobody will say a word about it. So close to saving our species from extinction. As each of us ends so ends humankind. If the conspiracy theorists and Neoliberals do not send us careening into oblivion.
Everything Traces Back To Taxes
We had a political system with the few rich people wanting more and paying for that and the many poor people wanting more and not being able to pay and a tug of war between the two. It is easy to see who has now won and the chaos the rich have used to win may burn it all to the ground.
DINO
Everything….EVERTHING political, traces back to the one percent trying to not pay taxes. They will do anything to distract, disrupt, and influence, and in fact invest vast sums to preserve astronomical wealth. They do this despite all the harm attached because they worship money as the god of this world. Human lives are not a concern…only the profit they generate. This is the 1st cause all progressives (and democrats) need to understand.
Millions of people are not going to let fascism replace democracy and that means a bloody civil war could be coming. Unbelievable and insane yet there it is. These right-wing creatures are the tools of the one percent that worship money as the god of this world: everything traces back to the rich trying to not pay taxes. Why is this not the revealed truth that is discussed every hour of every day by the media?
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/26/media/trump-interviews-reliable-sources/index.html
Trumpists are dreaming about “The Day Of The Rope” from the Turner Diaries. It is one of the anchors of their base. They will never admit it, but it is what it is.
Hypocrisy Warning
When the highest court in the land practices hypocrisy…the end is not far away. While I did say in my last post that “judges and generals” were my new heroes, I was speaking of the judges that refused to aid and abet an overthrow of the government. There are of course grave problems with a conservative-packed judiciary. I will not walk back my hero statement concerning Trumpism, but problems with judges and generals remain. What are my problems with generals? They should be trying to convert this military industrial complex into a space industrial complex. Space Solar Power as the solution to climate change.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/node/1124836/preview
Age 62, IQ 101, education GED, yet I can see what all these hundreds of millions of geniuses at the top of the food chain are completely blind to: there is only one way for humankind to escape extinction and that is to end our finite lifespan and make it indefinite. What is true for the least of us is true for our entire species- either we all make it or none of us do. And the first and most obvious challenge to overcome is to delay death by freezing people without damage (The Great Rescue) so they can be revived when aging can be reversed (The Great Awakening).
The Darkest Moment
Yes…when it was going on I figured the military was making sure Trump could not launch nukes. So I am happy about this and it goes along with judges and generals being my new heroes during early January. We all knew, at least the Americans not indoctrinated into his cult, that he was crazy. I knew it from the moment he came down the escalator.
Hijacked
My previous post identified the mystery and this kind of feedback discussion is a partial answer, if not a solution.
Sixty Years
5:55
I was talking with a church member the other day, someone with multiple degrees, who had been a military pilot, dean of a college, someone who had done amazing things with his life, and I was surprised how the conversation turned out. He told me I was a pretty intelligent person and inferred I was somehow in the same league with him. He said this because we have a similar worldview and this was a lesson to me. I don’t think he was trying to flatter me as he seemed quite genuine. There is no way I am anywhere close to that person in brainpower. We share a similar worldview because random environmental conditions led me away from all those things the average IQ is attracted to. Instead of sports and cars and endless popular culture distractions I liked to read books. After over half a century of reading those thousands of books, I am an expert at acting like I am smart, but I simply do not qualify as being highly intelligent. Make no mistake, I have a completely average IQ. If given a pass I might be able to learn to fly a military aircraft, and survive doing it a number of times, but it would eventually end badly. As smart as this person is, I, the less intelligent partner in the conversation, knew he was mistaken about me.
My fellow traveler made the mistake that most Americans are making. Most of us are just not that smart. Most of us are about average or below. Complex problem solving and the other aspects of a high IQ do not make a person some kind of higher life form, they just make them even more different when we are already each a unique being. Arguments like “Orchids and Dandelions” can be made explaining that the highly intelligent are in some ways quite fragile and this is why natural selection keeps so many trapped in stupid-world. Perhaps it is true and we need the tough-and-not-so-smart. And perhaps not. My own experience after over half a century of people-watching is that many who I would have certified as above average in intelligence, above me in that regard, were also true believers in some conspiracy theory I could see right through. So it is complicated. I am old now, with most of my life behind me, and what I have learned is there IS a profound mystery concerning our collective self-destructive behavior, and we must solve it if our species is to survive.
Harry Houdini related that it is the smart people who are the easiest to fool with stage illusions. Unfortunately for America the not-so-smart people seem to have their own illusions.
MIC2SIC Military Industrial Complex to Space Industrial Complex
Progressive taxation and elimination of tax shelters would allow the conversion of the military industrial complex into a space industrial complex…along with a Nordic Model of universal health care and paid tuition. Why a space industrial complex? Space Solar Power as the solution to the climate change crisis. I have written about this before; The Green New Space Deal.
At 17:00 the story of when America began to disappear…we should not forget. Now we have been through a pandemic and insurrection and military withdrawal and what happened before that is fading. We must remember that money is the god of this world.
“Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George Santayana
The quote by Santayana is often used by conservatives as validating the idea of burning down everything and starting over. This is Orwellian in that it is the opposite of what Santayana meant and this is obvious when reading the full quote:
“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.“
The tremendous wealth of America can be used to save humankind from the coming climate catastrophe and insure against other dangers…or continue to enable the obscene spending displays of the super-rich. Progressive taxation has always been the unseen struggle between the survival of civilization and continuing and ever-more-destructive cycles of boom and bust. For now civilization is in full retreat from the Neoliberal ideology driving humankind over a cliff.
It Is Happening
3:30
“If they cannot be convinced, it is frustrating because any sane relatively intelligent human being will understand what the significance of the filibuster is-”
What Mary Trump is talking about is the Trumpist’s putting Donald Trump back in office if the filibuster is not removed. The filibuster is what will allow the right wing to keep all the recent anti-voting laws in effect and inevitably allow Republican controlled state legislatures to reject election results (and put Trump back in office).
This is going to happen and yet nothing is being done to stop it. Democracy in America may be about to end. If the right wing does not accept election results then a bloody civil war is in our future.
At 6:14 Sarah Chayes explains what happened in Afghanistan and in my view it is close to what is happening in America. When nobody trusts anything they are told what is left is the grifter and bully doing what they want.
I have voted only three times in my long life…for Ross Perot because he wanted to stop off-shoring U.S. jobs, for Barrack Obama in hopes he would “send the helicopters in” and get us out of the middle east, and for Joe Biden because of Trump. The jobs were offshored, Obama did not get us out, but Biden seems to be trying to get it all done. And the one percent are, as they always have, doing their best to end democracy in America. That white people are not replacing themselves is bad news because it is one of those sparks that can ignite a catastrophe. White grievance could burn it all down. I am scared.
The lesson to be learned from Afghanistan, to make the lives and treasure spent worth the sacrifice, is to realize it is not money that matters, it is we the people. Our loyalty and goodwill depends upon those in authority working for our welfare instead of maintaining the obscene wealth of the few. The Neoliberal monster slowly consuming society will destroy America as surely as corruption corroded Afghanistan till now there is nothing left to steal.
Do You Believe In America?
A couple years ago on a break I disagreed with a coworker on some political issues and the question he asked keeps haunting me. I did not realize at that time he was actually inferring I was not really an “American.” I believed we were conversing in good faith as concerned citizens. But now I understand that clearly there was no good faith then and there is none to be found on the right now. Those of us who see through the big lie and see the right working to end democracy face a looming catastrophe. The right has devolved over the last half a decade into a closed culture, a cult, of borderline fascism. They believe in a different America than I and the majority of the population do. The question that follows is which America is going to exist five years from now? Again, there are two contrasting worldviews in direct conflict and our divided nation may actually enter into a civil war over them in the near future.
Since the Reagan Revolution the belief system called Neoliberalism has been the operating system of the human species on planet Earth. Money is the god of this world. There is no argument about this…it is the truth. A truth the right has propagandized in an Orwellian fashion into the greatest good when it is of course fundamentally evil. Neoliberals do not recognize any inherent good in telling the truth and lie like the rest of us breathe. The only good, the only sacred activity, is acquiring wealth. It is an absolutely amoral philosophy deifying profit as the singular holy and all powerful force. We are now dealing with the consequences of four decades of this satanic religion corrupting society.
My coworker is typical of tens of millions of Trumpists who have a profoundly distorted worldview and this leads me to truly believe something really bad could be in store for us all…soon. I am worried. When I speak about “The Nordic Model” to Trumpists they go straight to branding me a socialist and a Marxist every time. There is no hope for these people. It is not only the hardcore right; many have been infected with conspiracy theories and I have repeatedly encountered intelligent college graduate people who believe some of this nonsense. The destruction of credibility is a recently perfected formula for generating chaos. This Firehose of Falsehood, a well known Russian disinformation tactic, is now in full play in America.
Destroying the truth just happens to be the best cover for maintaining obscene wealth. Nobody has the time to vote for progressive taxation when the communists are coming to eat your infant. The masses have been manipulated by the one percent to the point where there is a real danger of a fascist overthrow of the government and where that leads nobody can predict. Reading The Turner Diaries, racists will say a likely outcome of their white nationalist coup will be “The Day Of The Rope.” White grievance is the underlying driver and will spin out of control. Any who doubt this is a possibility should consider the laws being passed by red states blatantly arranging for their coming election results to be thrown out. It is transparently obvious the only way for conservatives to stay in power is to end democracy. Anyone can see it yet nobody knows what to do about it. And when it happens only one avenue will be left. Violence.
Ice on the Moon 